The Writer's Poke

In the sequel to Romancing the Stone, we start off on a ship. No attempt at realism here. Definitely on a Sound Stage. Jack (Michael Douglas) and Joan (Kathleen Turner) are fighting off pirates that for some reason look straight out of Mad Max.  Then cut to "reality." Joan and Jack are actually living it up on a yacht. In the last movie, they had planned a romantic year of sailing around the world. And here they are, off the coast of the French Riveria, six months into the trip. She's typing her latest novel, but this time, instead of thinking her "pure cheese" writing is good, she recognizes just how horrible it is, and throws her typewriter overboard. It seems like an ill omen for the sequel, as what was lauded and applauded in the first movie might now be seen with sober clarity in the sequel. The stuff she writes is shite, and maybe it's also the movie admitting its store is shite.   The sequel was rushed into production after the original film did bette...

This is the first in a trio of films with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito -- the other two being The Jewel of the Nile (1985) and The War of the Roses (1989). The movie opens in the American West, and the story is pure cheese. Cut to Joan Wilder (Turner) sitting at her typewriter. She's a romance novelist, and she's just finished her latest novel. She's pleased with the way it came together at the end. Based on the opening sequence, are we then supposed to excuse the movie itself for being pure cheese? My thought being: This is a framing device, and starting off with one of Joan Wilder's romance novels makes little sense, unless we're being prepared for the movie itself as being another one of her romance novels. Maybe one that "really happened" to her, but one that she will then fictionalize and write as a romance novel. As I watched it, I thought: The quality of the script and the filming is on par with the 1980s TV show The A-Team... ...

This is Lon Chaney's only non-silent film, a remake of the 1925 The Unholy Three. He would die of lung cancer at the age of 47 after the filming of this movie.  What might interest me most about this version is Charles Gemora in the Gorilla suit. In the 1925 version, they just used a monkey, and sometimes they'd play with camera distortion to make the monkey appear bigger and more dangerous. In the 1930 version, it's just Gemora in a Gorilla suit. Convincing? Not really, but the brief bio on Gemora I read was interesting.  Gemora began his movie career just by hanging around the entrance of Universal Studios. According to IMDb, the Filipino Gemora was just 5' 5", and he would have a 30-year career in film, usually uncredited in the Gorilla suit. When he wasn't the Gorilla, he was worked as a make-up artist. The list of films he worked on is quite impressive, including: Island of Lost Souls (1932), Double indemnity (1944), and The Ten Commandments (1956) as a ma...

Professor Echo (Lon Chaney) is a ventriloquist at the Carnival. His life philosophy is simple: Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry. His pickpocket partner is Rosie O'Grady (Mae Busch). He loves her, but she happens to love Hector (Matt Moore). The Carnival doesn't make a lot of money for Professor Echo and the other "freaks," I'm guessing. So, Echo also dresses up as an old woman and runs a pet store on the side, as you do. Eventually, he gets together with the World's Strongest Man and the World's Smallest Man. They form a faction called the Unholy Three, and they case a rich person's house so they can still some rubies. While Echo never wanted things to go violent, the other two men in the Unholy Three don't have the same scruples. The owner of the rubies dies, and the men decide to frame the murder on Hector. But Echo is a good guy. He can't let Hector go to the chair for something the Unholy Three did, even if that would clear the way fo...

Did I watch this last night, or was it a fever dream? I guess I've discovered I want to know what kind of story I'm watching. I expected this one to be something of a comedy. Sometimes I will cheat a little and scroll through Letterboxd reviews or critic reviews. If they write stuff like "dark comedy," then I will expect some sort of comedy element.  I wasn't really seeing that as I watched. I mean, sure, I get that some of it is "dark" and perhaps somewhat absurd/comedic, but I was trying to fit this movie into neo-noir. Ultimately, that's what I think it is. You have Frank (Steve Martin), a dentist with a successful practice, fall for a Susan (Helena Bonham Carter), a drug addict. Is this plausible? Is she really that much more seductive and attractive than Jean (Laura Dern), fiancée and a dental associate that works in his clinic? Does Susan fulfill some sort of fantasy? Does Frank really fall for her just because she will have sex with him in the...

I'm sure I only noticed this because I watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) and Weird Science (1985) back-to-back, but both John Hughes films freeze on the chaos/change agent character at the end of the film. In Planes, the freeze is on the smiling Del (John Candy); and in Weird Science, the freeze is on the winking, smiling, and now high school boys' gym coach, Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). I thought about that for a while, because maybe Del and Lisa are more similar than you'd think on the surface. In any event, they serve similar purposes in each movie. But when you start watching Weird Science, you're not worried about the freeze shot at the ending. In fact, although I've seen the film a number of times, I've never thought about it being a "Hughes" movie. However, his Chicago fingerprints are all over it. (Even in Planes, another movie I don't immediately think of as a Hughes movie, when they show the exterior of Neal's -- Steve Martin -- ...

This is a John Hughes film. I never really think about it as such, because Steve Martin and John Candy are front in center in my mind. I should mention that this movie utilizes micro-scenes from known actors very well. By that, I mean, the movie opens with Kevin Bacon and Steve Martin (Neale) racing for the same New York taxi. Bacon is only in the movie for that scene, maybe three minutes tops, but it's a cool scene, and it was nice that Bacon played the part. It seems to add to the movie. Even shorter, Ben Stein plays an airline counter agent. He has one line and is in the movie for less that 20 seconds. But you notice him. The use of "micro-scene performances" by known actors like Bacon and Stein interests me, because sometimes they seem "important" and "useful" when the parts are being played by someone we recognize. Other times, you might notice someone in a movie with a bit part, and you are left wondering, "Why did they bother to agree to be...