Cass Timberlane (1947)

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Cass Timberlane is an awful film from the very beginning when we first encounter Spencer Tracy camped out on the bench as the Circuit Judge of Backwoods, Minnesota where he delivers a smug sermon to a couple seeking a divorce about the sanctity of marriage. Easy for him to say, what with his old lady dying in the first year of their marriage.

I will confess that I gave Judge Cass some credit when he thought to himself about how boring it was to be sitting there listening to all these boring cases. But then again, it wasn’t like he had to sit through a movie about it, either. Continue reading “Cass Timberlane (1947)” →

Body Moves (1990)

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“We have to be awesome if we want to win!” Though rich brat Kevin is clearly a douche and though his dance moves are clearly cribbed from Vanilla Ice, he hits upon the very truth of what Body Moves, and by extension life, is all about.

Like some sort of toolish Knute Rockne whipping the boys into a Gipper-inspired frenzy at halftime of the big game, Kevin (or Kev-In as the license plates on his pansy red sports car read) reaches deep into the very shallow souls of his fellow dance team members to wring all the laughably spastic moves out of them that will be necessary to triumph over all comers! Continue reading “Body Moves (1990)” →

Father Was a Fullback (1949)

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A comedy with Fred MacMurry as the hapless coach at good ole State U? Losing season? Job in jeopardy? Bring on the Flubber! Where’s the field goal kicking mule? And how about that invisibility serum and/or speed pill? And the mascots? You know they’re going to get kidnapped or at the very least eat the playbook right before State U takes on City Tech, right? Continue reading “Father Was a Fullback (1949)” →

2103: The Deadly Wake (1997)

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A rather dull piece of cheese, the cinematic equivalent of a bland chunk of mass-market Colby, 2103: The Deadly Wake did manage to accomplish one remarkable feat that should provide food for thought for all true movie buffs.

It wasn’t the fact that despite being set in the future on a futuristic ship where a fetus in a tube full of green liquid operated all sorts important ship functions that the captain still had to use a steering wheel to make left turns and such. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have the scene in all great future boat movies where the crazy captain has to use a rope to tie the steering wheel in place while he went and did something crazy somewhere else. That’s precisely the sort of thing we want in our movies about ugly brown ships floating around aimlessly while shot through a headache-inducing ocher filter for no reason. Continue reading “2103: The Deadly Wake (1997)” →

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

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The shocking conclusion you come to after watching Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan cavort around in one of these typically self-loathing movies about the movies is that no matter how bad someone hosed you in the past, if there’s a hit picture to be made with them again, no professional or personal vendetta you have against him or her is so great that it couldn’t be put aside for at least the duration of shooting.

As Kirk’s reviled producer John Shields tells Dick’s author James Bartlow, some of the best movies have been made by people that hate each other. That’s a fascinating concept and must make for some fun days at work, but I’m not sure that it adds up to much of anything beyond the film industry’s obsession with itself. Continue reading “The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)” →

Blossoms in the Dust (1941)

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Here’s a movie that’s signed onto the pro-orphan agenda that certain special interests groups continuously push in this country. It’s one of those do-gooder fairy tales where stuff like suicides and dead kids occur at convenient intervals just so that our heroine can be inspired to new heights of self-sacrifice while the audience is inspired to new depths of self-loathing for ever firing up a movie about a woman who crusades to have Texas’ law about illegitimate kids having to be identified as such on birth certificates and marriage licenses changed. Continue reading “Blossoms in the Dust (1941)” →

A River Runs Through It (1992)

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ARiverRunsThroughItPosterBy the time narrator Robert Redford solemnly intoned the final line of this film, “I am haunted by waters,” I could do no more than to sit for some several minutes and attempt to catch my breath. My two hour journey through the lives, loves, and fishing trips of the Maclean family had left me drained, my very soul touched and changed at least six times during this movie. I learned so much not only about the meaning of living a full life, but about what it is to be a man. And a son. And a brother. And a father. And the value of a really good hair conditioner.

I knew I had learned something about myself after watching this because I realized that the secret to healthy man-to-man relationships within your family is sharing a love of fly fishing, preferably in the sun-drenched, painterly-photographed outdoors of Montana as imagined by the Sundance Kid himself. Continue reading “A River Runs Through It (1992)” →