The Writer's Poke

Roger Ebert added this one to his Great Movies canon, and I thought: Really? And since I watch all of those movies, I thought: Eventually I'm going to have to watch this one whether I want to or not. I live in Minnesota, and I've listened to the show on the radio from time-to-time. I'm not sure I've ever listened to a full episode, unless I just happened to be in the car and it was playing... My impression of the movie is that it captures the spirit of the radio show. The only real difference is that it uses some pretty big stars to play the roles of the radio show's usually much more modest cast. So, what attracted so many A-listers to make up this film's ensemble cast? Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Lindsey Lohan, Woody Harrelson, John C. Reilly, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Klein, and of course, GK himself. Is Keiller so much on an American icon that they all wanted to be associated with this film? Was it because Roger Altman was directing? I'm not sure what Altman...

Although I've seen bits and pieces of this version over the years, I've never sat down to watch it from beginning to end. What I've seen was enough. I just didn't like the over-stylization. Which is funny, because when DeCaprio did that MTV version of Romeo + Juliet (1996), I loved it. Now that I've finally taken the time to watch this version, I've decided that I at least understand, at least in part, what they were going for here. Gatsby himself is a recreation, a reinvention. There is no "real" Gatsby. He's rendered in the imagination. The whole story is a fabrication, a fantasy, a dream. None of Gatsby is "real," and so why shouldn't his story be told as a CGI-enhanced fantasy? It's interesting to note the few places where the film tones down the CGI and lets the set work in a more "realistic" way. One place is when Daisy and Gatsby are in his two-story dressing "closet." He's on the second floor throwi...

If high school football matters to west Texas, then size matters to Wales. Because quite frankly, what else sets Wales apart? Everyone easily recognizes Ireland, Scotland, and England, but Wales? What's it known for?  I'm sure there are a few mainstream movie titles that are longer, but at 12 words long, this one is pretty long. And, it essentially contains the synopsis of the story. Anson (Hugh Grant) is the Englishman. He and his partner come to the small Wales community to measure the mountain, and World War I is in the background. Soldiers in Europe have dug trenches across the continent. They know what's possible.  So, when the measurement is complete, the "mountain" turns out to be 16 feet short. It's just a 984-foot hill. But the town decides, with the blessing of the local clergyman, to make their hill into a mountain, one pailful of dirt at a time. Everyone pitches in, and after climbing the hill five times in single day. the octogenarian Reverend Jon...

Did you remember that Billy Bob Thornton (Coach Gary) is in this one? I didn't.  For the most part, I guess I'm not a big fan of this genre of movie -- the football team that overcomes all the obstacles, or in the case of this specific movie, maybe doesn't. Is/Was west Texas this much into football? Is football really all towns like Odessa have? That's really sad, as is the idea that your life peaks in high school, and after that, all you have is your high school football ring. (And what about the male cheerleaders? The movie shows that there were some. How were they treated in high school and the local community?) According to the notes at the end of the movie, many of the kids on this team would go on to have at least some minor success in football at the college level. That makes me think that maybe life doesn't peak in high school after all. Maybe it just feels like that in the moment, although Charles (Tim McGraw) is definitely an example of a guy that peaked i...

Like most people, I'm watching this one for the Angelia Jolie/Antonio Banderas pairing, but as I stroll through the reviews, I noticed that one person mentioned this is a remake of Mississippi Mermaid (1969) -- aka La sirène du Mississipi. So yeah, I'm going to have to watch that one to see if the story is better told in the original.  For this remake, I like the story, although I'm not always sure about the plot or the backstory. First, Luis (Antonio Banderas) advertises for a mail-order bride, but he lies about his wealth, claiming to be a clerk, not an owner, of a coffee plantation. He wasn't looking for someone who looked like Angelina Jolie. He was content with a woman who was plain, kind, and had good breeding hips. He doesn't believe in love, but he does believe in a long, stable marriage.  Julia (Angelina Jolie) also lies. She wasn't the woman who responded to his ad. How did she know Luis was rich? There'd be no reason for her to try to catfish a cl...

Mockery might not be a fable in the strictest sense, but the simplicity of the characters and what they represent made me think of it as a kind of fable as I was watching it.  Sergei (Lon Chaney) is a poor peasant somewhere in the Siberian forest. Countess Tatiana (Barbara Bedford) runs into him and asks for his help getting to Novokursk. This is during the Russian Civil War, and although Sergei doesn't know she's a countess, he's obviously going to help her. She's a beautiful woman, and Sergei would probably help her regardless. His only fear is that they will get to Novokursk and then she will forget about him.  When they arrive in Novokursk, her Countess identity is revealed, but she stays true to her promise, helping Sergei find employment. But they are of different social classes, and so this limits the amount of time they will have together as "friends."  Meanwhile, Sergei is listening to Ivan (Károly Huszár), who is poisoning Sergei's mind against t...

Steve Martin was 34 when he played Navin in The Jerk (1979) -- probably 10 or 15 years too old for the role in my opinion. He's over-the-top and basically the Steve Martin of the "wild and crazy guy" stage show, not yet an actor. Thirty years later, he plays Adam in It's Complicated. His "wild-and-craziness" is limited to about a 5-second scene when he's on the dance floor after taking a hit. Otherwise, he plays the part with quietness and total reserve. It's just amazing to see how far he came as an actor, but 30 years prior, he could only be "on," and over his acting career, he learned how to shift gears. He didn't always have to be his persona. He could act. In a way, Steve Martin's acting journey reminds me somewhat of Robin Williams's -- both are known for being completely over-the-top, but both learned how to take on serious roles. I really liked this movie. The focus of the film is on Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Ba...

Larry (Steve Martin) comes home one day to find his girlfriend, Danielle (Robyn Douglass) in bed with Raul (Richard Delmonte). She tells him to leave, and he does, taking out the trash on his way out, as she instructed him to do. Fifteen minutes after being dumped, he runs into Jack (Steve Lawrence), who's out on a stroll with his wife and his girlfriend. He tells Larry that he's heard about Larry's break-up (the one that happened just 15 minutes ago), but not to worry. Danielle has already broken up with Raul. Now she's dating a rock band. It's that kind of movie. Anyway, Larry ends up in the park. He's taking up the right side of a park bench, and here comes Warren (Charles Grodin). He's in the same position as Larry, but he seems a little wiser to what happens next. Warren takes up the left side of the park bench, and the two become fast friends. I love Charles Grodin. Mainly, I remember him for the intentionally awkward segments he would do with Letterma...

It was Marlow (Humphrey Bogart) who tells Rigby (Steve Martin) that dead men don't wear plaid. "What does it mean," asks Rigby rhetorically, "I'm still not sure," he admits. But who wears plaid in film noir, period? No one. Maybe it would ruin the feng shui. So the "gimmick" of this movie -- the "seamless" blending of archival footage from classic films -- is actually pretty cool, and if it's been done before or since, I'm not aware. The closest thing to it I can think of is how Forest Gump is integrated into historical events... but Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a groundbreaking film with the technique being utilized, and I don't think it's ever been attempted again. In Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Martin gets to "interact" with maybe 15 or 20 classic actors -- from Bogart and Cary Grant and James Cagney to Barbara Stanwyck and Veronica Lake and Ingrid Bergman. It's a real sight to see, and I can imagin...

After watching Sgt. Bilko and hearing what my friends had to say about The Jerk (1979), I realized that I was too harsh in my assessment of The Jerk. It had a lot of funny bits, and yes, it might even be a homage to Citizen Kane, for Pete's sake. Sgt. Bilko might have its defenders too, but for now, I'm not going to be one of them. The movie is based on the 1950s TV series, and I can imagine a Steve Martin as a young boy watching that show, much like I would have been watching Gomer Pyle, USMC, at the same age. But somehow, I never got into the characters or the story. I'm a big fan not only of Martin, but also his costars in this one, Phil Hartman and Dan Akroyd. Nothing about their characters intrigues me, however, and this is also one of the rare films that even Martin admits that maybe the concept just didn't work. What was it about the 1990s? Did any of us make it through that decade unscathed? Thanks, Nirvana.

I felt like I missed something with this one. In Roger Ebert's review of The Jerk (1979), he indicated that the audience reaction to comedy is subjective in movies. I thought that was an odd observation, but his observation might have been an apology for him not finding the humor in The Jerk. Then, in his review for Bowfinger, Ebert wrote that the comedy "works on all cylinders." Well, now I'm the one wondering what I missed, because I just didn't find it all that funny. I like the basic premise: Bowfinger (Steve Martin) is a director that's never made a movie. He's got an idea to make a movie with Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy), one of the hottest African American actors working in Hollywood, but the catch is, he will make the film without Ramsey ever knowing he's in it, because Ramsey would never make a movie for an unknown director like Bowfinger. The idea is absurd, but it's interesting to see how this film is able to make the concept "work....

Steve Martin's first movie features him as the wild and crazy guy from his comedy show, not Steve Martin the actor. That's my main issue with this one, I think. He screams and yells throughout the movie, and it's just annoying to watch. The persona might work on stage, but it doesn't work on screen. In Roger Ebert's review, he notes that he didn't find this movie to be all that funny, but that it might be a "love it or hate it" type of comedy. If you like Steve Martin's comedy, and I do, I'm sure original audiences were more likely to be a little more forgiving. But in terms of longevity, I just don't think this movie has "it." It opens with a stand-up routine joke -- that he's the son of poor black Mississippi sharecroppers. When he leaves home, they do tell him he's adopted, and that makes him feel better, in a sense, because he never understood why he didn't like the Blues. He like lame white Big Band music, and so ...

Computers are programmed by human beings. As such, the answers they provide are only as good as their programming. In the film, Pavel is a good programmer. As far as we know, the information he puts into the computer program was solid. Pavel's dad not only re-checked the data, but he also went out onto the lake himself to make sure with his own eyes.  In other words, he did his due diligence, and he wasn't blinding accepting that the computer was right or that the lake was safe. And the lake actually was safe, at least the night before the accident.  We never learn why the ice cracks. We know that it should have held 3 times Pavel's weight, but we're not 100% sure how many people were on the lake at the same time the day of the accident, or if Pavel and his dad added the necessary data to take into complete account the fact that the stream entered the lake. Although Pavel's dad warned his son not to get too close to where the stream entered the lake, maybe the ...

When you're dating someone, how much do you know about them? Maybe that's the point. It's why you date them, to find out.  Davis (Steve Martin) and Becky (Dana Delany) seem to have a dating advantage -- having known each other from birth. Davis has always felt like Becky is "the One" and rather than propose with a ring, he proposes with a house that he, as an architect, has designed himself.  He must not have known her as he thought he did, because she says no, which throws his world into chaos.  As a sidenote, he builds the house in their small hometown. It's a place where everyone knows them, and everyone knows everyone's business. Steve might work and keep an apartment in the City, but Becky still lives in the small town. It's just amazing that he was able to build the house for Becky without anyone ever finding out or gossiping about it.  But once Becky rejects Davis, the real story begins. Gwen (Goldie Hawn) is a Hungarian waitress that Davis meet...

Kids don't get the parents they want or need; that seems to be a common idea, and the Buckman kids certainly didn't have the best dad. On the other hand, maybe parents don't get the kids they want or need. Everyone seems to be something of a disappointment to everyone else, and in the end, everyone may be too self-centered to be the person that others need them to be. Is that the message of this film? Gil (Steve Martin) doesn't want to turn into his dad Frank (Jason Robards). He wants to spend time with his kids. He wants to be a good dad. Even though he tries hard, he still isn't able to have perfect kids. That bugs him. Frank knows he wasn't the perfect dad. That might bug him, too, but in a rare heart-to-heart, he tells Gil that parenthood never ends. His 27-year old son, Larry, is kind of deadbeat with a gambling problem. Frank wants to be there for him and makes him a deal. Larry, however, isn't able to change. He just takes off. Frank can't do anyt...

"And may I remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty.." -- Cher, taking the pro-immigration position You can be clueless about this movie being a modern-day adaptation of Emma, but if you've never specifically watched it as Emma, then give it a shot. Watch a version of Emma first and then watch Clueless. I just did that, and I'd say it adds at least a 1/2 star to my rating. Cher (Alicia Silverston) is completely Emma. She's trying to match people, fix people, and figure herself out. And the whole movie ends with a wedding, just as it should. Let's briefly highlight the Emma of Clueless. Wallce Shawn found himself in this one, playing Mr. Hall, Cher's high school Debate teacher. He looks small and thin in this role, and I noticed that he's about 52 when he played this part... which is sick, because that's my current age. Somehow Mr. Hall hands out Cs to Cher and her friends. How dare he? (By the way, Cher narrates the story thro...

The Gwenyth Paltrow version came out the same year, and I also saw the 2020 version recently. These other adaptations have a lot to offer, and I liked each quite a bit. This one isn't bad, but Kate Beckinsale doesn't stand out to me as Emma, nor is the story all that compellingly told. It just feels muted somehow. Maybe it's partly the DVD copy, which feels a bit old and "blurry," too. When I went back to look at my review for the 2020 version, I noted how the colors "popped" and how everything was sharp and vivid. That's just not the case with this version. What I do like about this version is the way it handles some of Emma's imagination scenes. We get to do a quick look into Emma's head, and it's fun and instructive to see what she's thinking about as she's matching up different people. Of course, what's somewhat annoying about the story is the characters: They're all rich. They all live to dance, eat, gossip, and find ...

Charles Laughton can do more with a subtle shift of his left eyeball than most actors can do with their entire faces. And as Quasimodo, most of his face is hidden behind a mask. I can only imagine how much time he must have spent in the chair each day to have the mask and body suit applied. But he still had one good eye to use, and that's all he needed. Esmerelda (Maureen O'Hara) has the "It factor," and even though she's a Gypsy, every man immediately falls in love with her. Gypsies in 15th century France are enemy #1. They are banned from even entering Paris, but her mission is to get justice for her people, and perhaps, she's so beautiful that people will listen to her. The King does, for sure, most everyone else seems to be at least partially sympathetic to her cause. Anyway, every man must fall in love with her at first sight. It's funny, because O'Hara is a beautiful woman, but all of the actors playing Gypsies are portrayed as dirty and rough lo...

Montag's black. He's not married. Clarisse is an informant, not 16 and not his neighbor. Captain Beatty writes down Goodreads quotes on slips of paper and burns them. He seems conflicted, like he's really not sure which side to be on. I don't mind that this version doesn't "follow the book." It's cool to see that the firefighters rarely burn books. Their job is more to keep the culture pure. What they spend most of their time destroying is knowledge more generally -- hard drives, languages, art, and digital records -- anything they designate as cultural graffiti. Anything that they determine is a threat to peace and stability. The firefighters are also more specifically "American" -- in the film, the border exists, and getting across to Canada seems to be a possible goal. I also noticed that the film is okay borrowing from other sources. It feels like this film borrows ideas and concepts from 1984, among other sources. In other words, the fil...

This version plays up the "book" adaptation angle, but as others have noted, even though it's reading the "text" to the audience, it's not the actual text of the novel. Why read "the first paragraph or Chapter 1" and then completely change the opening? Pretty weird. Another thing to point out -- Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine are just a couple years apart in age. I think Welles is 28, which is a shockingly young Rochester -- I just watched the George C. Scott version, and Scott was at least 15 years older when played Rochester. Joan Fontaine, on the other hand, is a little too old -- maybe 26 -- to be playing the part of Jane Eyre, and she's also way too pretty... probably the best-looking Jane Eyre of all the various actresses who have played Jane Eyre.. and although Jane Eyre is supposed to be horribly plain, no version casts a plain actress. But in what universe is Joan Fontaine plain? Overall, I like this version when it goes goth and works...