Moonlight and Magic

2007, 1080hd

Johnny's comments

Moonlight & Magic is a 2007 comedy drama where two misfits Rocky (Tim Burns) and Frank (Maxine Klibingaitis) (aka Moonlight & Magic) go on a crime spree around Belgrave doing everything from robbing cafes and op shops, stealing food, throwing eggs and attempting to pinch the nipples of women with tongs amongst many other things (one scene with a woman who had a mastectomy is absolutely baffling). They meet a bunch of characters along the way, most of them naked while an Indigineous man, also naked, looks over them. Their victims also talk incessantly about them. That's pretty much it.

Silly movie, typical Timothy Spanos stuff (Prisoner Queen, Boronia Boys, Sizzler '77, Throbin '84) but set down the road from his usual movies in Boronia. Plenty of attempts at campy humour definitely influenced by John Waters but nowhere near as entertaining as Waters' movies. Wanders all over the place and never all that coherent and forget the plot, it barely has one. Spanos's movies are definitely an acquired taste and I don't mind some of them but not this one. It's a rambling mess...

Maxine Klibingaitis film clip (see below)

Lucky Break

1994, vhs

Johnny's comments

Lucky Break aka Paperback Romance is a 1994 long forgotten romantic comedy where Sophie (Gia Carides) is a wannabe romance novel writer and when Eddie (Anthony LaPaglia) hears her reciting one of her stories, he instantly falls for her. He asks Sophie out but she is reluctant because she is disabled and thinks if he finds out he'll reject her. So she ends up rejecting him but is still keen. She spies on him and finds that he has a fiancé Gloria (Rebecca Gibney). When she looks as if she's going to be found out spying on him, Sophie runs away but gets in a tangle and ends up breaking her disabled leg (lucky break!). She then meets Eddie at a party and she now has a way to hide her disability and still go out with him. They hit it off but time is running out with the cast set to come off and she still hasn't told Eddie about her disability. Also Eddie is involved with a missing piece of jewellery and a weird detective Yuri (Jacek Koman) is chasing him and also falls for Sophie in a Russian literature way.

Utterly silly and nutty movie that goes from one ridiculous concept to another poorly thought out one until it lands on a crazy crime plot that doesn't begin until 30 minutes left in the movie. Kept thinking that it'll turn out that Sophie was faking her disability as there's that much ridiculous stuff going on. Gloria knows about Sophie and just lets her hang around Eddie like she's borrowing him from her. The concept just never works. If you want a better Carides/LaPaglia movie, I recommend Brilliant Lies.

Pandora Finch film clip (collage below)