Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2022.14

These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I’ve recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made the list of around 1600 ratings publicly available. I’ve included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other—I rate the film on how well it suited me for the genre and my mood and. let’s be honest, level of intoxication. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid spoilers.

Kiss of Death (1995) — 6/10

Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso) is a recovering alcoholic and ex-con, living with his recovering alcoholic wife Bev (Helen Hunt) and their daughter. While Bev is at an AA meeting, Jimmy’s cousin Ronnie (Michael Rapaport) shows up to beg Jimmy to help with a “job”. He just needs a driver because one of his truck drivers showed up drunk. Ronnie plays on his cousin’s conscience, whining that Little Junior Brown (Nicholas Cage) will kill him if he fails.

Jimmy helps out, but the whole job is a clusterfuck. The Feds bust up the party very quickly. The drunk driver in Jimmy’s cab wakes up and tries to shoot them in panic. He shoots through Jimmy’s hand and into agent Calvin Hart’s face (Samuel L. Jackson). The Brown crime family steps up to help Bev, but with Ronnie as the go-between, Bev’s $400 per week ends up being only $150. Ronnie offers to let Bev work for him and quickly tries to entice her with booze and hitting on her. Ronnie’s working her hard, but the Browns demand that he take her home. He does—but to his own home, where he takes advantage of her. She leaves in a hurry the next morning, crashing his car into a truck and killing herself.

Ronnie lies right to Jimmy’s face at the funeral. Rapaport is so good at being a primo scumbag. Jimmy turns state’s witness and reveals just enough that the Browns think that Ronnie is squawking. They beat Ronnie to death. Jimmy gets out of prison and gets hitched to his former babysitter, who’d been watching his kid the whole time he’d been in prison. The DA (Stanley Tucci) strong-arms Jimmy into helping him out, caring not one bit if he’s going to burn the man’s life even further.

Jimmy starts working with Calvin, both of them hating it. Jimmy gets closer to Little Junior Brown, who’s just taken over his recently deceased father’s empire. Junior is highly unstable and quickly ends up shooting one of his main business partners Omar (Ving Rhames). Omar was a Fed in a different investigation. It’s a shitshow. Junior realizes that Jimmy was squealing and targets him and his family. Stuff happens. The DA tries to burn Jimmy. Jimmy burns him instead. Jimmy and Junior have a showdown. Jimmy wins. The end.

Persona (1995) — 8/10

In this film more than in The Rite, the black-and-white camera in incredibly crisp and details. The head-on shots of the doctor Läkaren (Margareta Krook) and the patient remind me of Chuck Close paintings. Bergman loves the lights and shadows.

The absolute most riveting part of the film was when Alma (Bibi Anderson) was telling the story of how she’d gone to a beach and was sunbathing nude while her husband was elsewhere. A woman came up from another island, having sought out the beach because of better sun and more seclusion. She lied down next to Alma, also nude. After a bit, they observed two local boys watching them from a nearby dune. The other girl bade one of them come over, helped him undress, and then pulled him down onto her and into her, whereupon they both orgasmed immediately. At the girl’s urging, Alma called the boy over and he was there, upon her, erect again, and in her. She orgasmed immediately, causing him follow suit, whereupon she’d orgasmed again and again. She went home, had dinner and wine with her husband and she said that the subsequent sex with him had never been so good and would never be so good again.

The first male voice in this movie was at over 80% of the movie. It’s Mr. Vogler, Elisabet’s husband (Gunnar Björnstrand). He accepts Alma as Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) while the real Elisabeth looks on. She seems to slip into the role nearly effortlessly, but then, after having consummated with Vogler, she flips out, demanding a sedative, and chastising herself for not being able to keep up the charade.

Soon after, Alma finds Elisabet with the picture of her son that she’d received earlier in the summer and that she’d torn up. Alma recounts the history of how and why Elisabet had even had a child—it was to prove that she could be motherly, that she could play the role of mother. But she hated the baby even before it was born, she found her self wishing it would be born dead. After a long birth, she hated the child. She continued to hate the child. Finally, family took the child and she could return to her career. The boy loved his mother and she could not reciprocate, she doesn’t want to reciprocate. She finds him repulsive. This scene plays out once with Elisabet in focus and then once more—in its entirety—with Alma in focus. The faces begin to overlap as Alma cries that she is not Elisabet Vogler.

At the end, Alma slices her own wrist with her thumbnail, Elisabet gorges on the blood, Alma forces her head into it, then starts to pound slaps on her face. The symbolism escapes me. Back at what looks Elisabet’s hospital bed, Alma gets Elisabet to say a single word, “Nothing.”

Alma wakes to see Elisabet preparing to leave the lake house. Alma does the same, closing things down.

Forbidden Planet (1956) — 4/10

This movie has not aged well. Its visuals are fine, but the actors, story, and acting are not good. This is a movie about the Navy, but in space. There is a single female character and she is sexualized (I mean, obviously, what with nearly everyone else being in the navy). She is smarter and better-educated than nearly everyone else, and she has no experience with other humans, but she absolutely assumes the role you would expect her to have in post-war U.S.A.

Perhaps the most interesting part was the introduction where they state that it took until the end of the 21st-century to for man to reach the moon (off by about 130 years), but that it took only another century to invent faster-than-light travel.

So, they’re off to a planet that still took them 18 months to reach. They approach the planet, but are warned off by Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon). He and his daughter Altaira (Anne Francis) are the only survivors of a mysterious force of nature that wiped out all of the other colonists.

Morbius is accompanied by Robbie the robot, a ludicrous man-suit that can barely move, but is supposedly powerful and a force to be reckoned with. Morbius built him from schematics he found in the ruins of an alien civilization.

He’s also found a machine that booster his already prodigious 180+ IQ to even more dizzying heights. The commander (Leslie Neilsen) and doctor (Warren Stevens) of the visiting ship also brag about their high IQs. It doesn’t prevent them all from swooning at the sight of a shapely breast, though.

There are many, many more machines of incredible power that were left by the long-deceased aliens. The humans are incredibly impressed by this even though they have a faster-than-light drive. They eventually end up pissing off the planet, but it’s not the planet that they’ve pissed off, but their own raging ids that are trying to kill them, in the form of an energy beast that has been called into being by the planet’s powerful machines. They surmise that this is the reason the original aliens died out—despite their incredible accomplishments, they still had not controlled their own inner lives and their technology enhanced this to destroy them. Hell, maybe there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Anyway, the super-smart and hot lady doubles down on her daddy issues and pledges to leave with the commander, who she probably can’t wait to start pumping out babies for. Morbius flips out and his id-monster almost kills them, but he finally denies it and controls it, although he’s fatally wounded in the process. Luckily for Altaira and the Commander. Morbius has the Commander trigger a planetary self-destruct, then tells them to get 100 million miles away to be safe. They do, and hypothesize that humanity will end up like the Krell, but that they will be able to remember this incident avoid falling into the same trap, which is probably the craziest fucking thing anyone’s said in a movie full of crazy fucking things they used to say in the fifties.

I’m 100% certain I’ve seen it before, but I hadn’t reviewed it yet. I put it on my list for a reason, but I can’t remember for the life of me what that might have been. It really wasn’t very good. Maybe because Leslie Neilsen was in it?

Erik the Viking (1989) — 6/10

Erik (Tim Robbins) is a conflicted Viking who doesn’t like raping or pillaging. He feels guilt for the death of a village woman Helga (Samantha Bond), who he managed not to rape, but couldn’t save. Erik wants to end Ragnarök to put an end to this pillaging and plundering. He learns from Freya (Eartha Kitt) that the giant wolf Fenrir is covering the sun and resolves to bid the Gods remove it.

Erik and several fellow villagers embark on a seemingly hopeless journey for the edge of the world to find Valhalla and/or Asgard. Erik’s grandfather (Mickey Rooney) luckily does not join them. I have no idea what Mickey Rooney is doing in this movie. Did he need money that badly? Exposure? Ernest the Viking (Jim Broadbent) is there, but I didn’t recognize any of the other actors or actresses.

Loki (Antony Sher) is there as well, convincing the local blacksmith Keitel (Gary Cady) to join the group in order to sabotage the effort. Why? Because an end to war would mean an end to blacksmithing. Well, it wouldn’t, really. It would mean you’d be blacksmithing other things, but this is the argument that Loki brings and that Keitel believes, which is pretty much exactly the argument that keeps the U.S. government pouring nearly a trillion dollars per year into its military.

Loki uses the same reasoning to convince Halfdan the Black (John Cleese), a local warlord, to do his best to thwart Erik’s mission.

After long travails and nearly being eaten by a dragon and nearly sinking, Erik’s boat runs aground in the shoals of their destination Hy-Brasil, an idyllic land where the sun shines, no-one is allowed to kill anyone else, the clothes are skimpy, the sun shines, and musical talent is scarce. Erik promptly beds Princess Aud (Imogen Stubbs), daughter of King Arnulf (Terry Jones). It is utterly unclear what attracts her to him, but that’s pretty much par for the course. He’s tall, I guess. He is a filthy viking with a completely unkempt beard and hair, which you would think would turn off the attraction, but what do I know?

Halfdan has also found Hy-Brasil, but Erik and his men fight them off. Loki is on that boat and talks his way back into Erik and his crew’s good graces (he is the trickster God, after all). He also ends up killing Snorri (Danny Schiller), who had discovered Loki and Keitel just as they were about to throw the Horn Resounding into the ocean so that Erik wouldn’t be able to use it to call the Gods.

The murder causes an earthquake (the prophecy of Hy-Brasil) and the island begins to sink under the ocean. King Arnulf and the rest of the population deny that it is happening (foreshadowing of the response to climate change) and sink beneath the waves. Princess Aud accompanies Erik on his mission. She sounds the first note on the horn, propelling them beyond the edge of the world. Erik sounds the second note and they get to Valhalla. They convince the petulant child-Gods to remove Fenrir from in front of the sun, but the Gods tell humans that this won’t end war.

Christian missionary Harald (Freddie Jones) continues to both proselytize and to deny that any of this is happening. This is good for Erik and his crew because Harald is the one who can get back to the ship and sound the third note that rescues them from Muspelheim (Hell), where they’d been banished because they couldn’t stay in Valhalla since they hadn’t died in battle and they couldn’t go to Asgard because they weren’t Gods.

Harald’s blowing of the final note teleports them all back home. Halfdan is there and has subjugated the village. Harald falls out of the sky in the boat and crushes them. The sun comes out.

Moonlighting s01-s05 (1985–1987) — 8/10

“If people didn’t have eyes to be sure with, it wouldn’t be so easy to fool ‘em.”

—Abby Cadabra (S02E13: In God We Strongly Suspect)

The first season is absolutely top-notch, bringing something absolutely new to American television. The sheer amount of dialogue and snappy repartee was overwhelming—at least three times as much dialogue as any other show at the time. There are a lot of zingers, but no laugh track. Lines pile up on each other with no pause for laughter. Shows like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel follow in its footsteps.

Maddie Hayes (Cybil Shepherd) is a former model with considerable assets, all of which are stolen by her accountant. She is left with a few businesses in various states of viability. The Blue Moon Detective Agency is one of them. David Addison (Bruce Willis) convinces her that the business, despite its lack of profitable cases, should be allowed to live. She decides not only not to sell the asset, but to take over as boss there and help make it viable.

There is no overall story arc other than this and Maddie and David’s growing affection for one another. That’s the part that would take over the show eventually and lead to its lower rating. Three seasons of watching two adults pretend not to like each other despite loving each other is a bit much (and there are two seasons to go).

They have a plethora of styles and intros for the episodes. Though there are some formulaic components, there is a lot of artistic freedom. They often break the fourth wall, and even had one episode where they just showed the actual Moonlighting set, which was the kind of meta stuff that you’d ever really seen in Mel Brooks movies.

• S01E03 is an episode with high-powered laser guns at an advanced aerospace firm
• S01E05 is a Murder on the Orient Express reenactment
• S02E03 sends Maddie to Brazil to confront her pilfering accountant
• S02E04 is a brilliant one set in the 50s, in black-and-white, where Maddie and David play out possible solutions to a crime of passion in a jazz club (we get to see Cybil sing her little heart out)
• S02E10 is an absolutely inspired and wacky Christmas episode
• S02E12 has Agnes DiPesto (Allyce Beasley) go to an investigator’s ball, where she’s embroiled in a murder
• S03E03 goes all over the place, but ends up with David boxing for Don King
• S03E07 is a period piece where David and Maddie take the lead roles in a reenactment of the Taming of the Shrew
• S03E08 is a reenactment of A Christmas Carol with Maddie as Scrooge.
• In S04E05, David goes to prison in a case of mistaken identity while he’s trying to get to Chicago to meet Maddy, who’s pregnant, but the real magic in this episode is Herbert Viola just crushing a serenade cover of Sexual Healing to Agnes in Cool Hand Dave: Part I
• In S04E06, David’s in prison in Cool Hand Dave: Part II and he’s singing in solitary, while the suits at the studio are recruiting for a new David Addison. We see a line of Addisons around the building, all dressed in his various costumes from the series, with the suits walking through them. Lovely meta-meta-meta visuals. Really inventive. But the best is yet to come: An operatic musical number with the chain gang just knocking it out of the park. Almost a bit reminiscent of Jesus Christ Superstar.
• The rest of S04 is a dreary death-march of moping and whining about how everything is everybody else’s fault. David learns lamaze with Terri (Brooke Adams), a PhD of music he met when he went looking to take lamaze training on his own. Maddie is in Chicago with her parents, being an utter shit of a person. Maddie eventually comes back, but takes the train, marrying the super-wonderful Walter Bishop (Dennis Dugan), who doesn’t deserve to be embroiled in this fiasco, but handles it with aplomb. David throws them a wedding, but they all end up in the hospital when Terri goes into labor. Neither Maddie nor David comport themselves well here. It’s a shitshow.
• S05E01 kicks off with Bruce Willis playing Baby Hayes in Maddie’s womb. This is a bit of a recap of how awful they’ve been to each other over the years, but his guardian angel assures him that this means they love each other very much. Maddie loses the baby at the end of this episode. This episode wasn’t especially good, but it was a helluva a dark way to start the season.
• S05E04 is about a botched plastic surgery and is a return to the form of seasons 1 and 2 (finally)
• So5E05 was about a woman who shoots and wounds her harassing boss at a board meeting. It was absolutely premeditated and it was absolutely assault with a deadly weapon and it was absolutely attempted murder. That she only hit him in the ankle was because she was a terrible shot. Maddie channels the culture of 30 years hence and absolutely thinks that she can get her absolved of all crimes if she can only prove that she was harassed. David thinks that she’s unhinged. They take opposite sides of the case. People seem to have a very difficult time of there being two crimes: he harassed her (that’s probably a fine and maybe firing) and she tried to kill him, absolutely not in the heat of the moment. Two crimes. One does not justify the one. The former is perhaps a reason for the latter, but that lady still has to own her crime. We live in a society.

• S05E10 is ostensibly about David shacking up with Maddie’s cousin Annie (Virginia Madsen). It also features a cameo by Demi Moore as the woman that David is initially attracted to, before he ends up with Annie. This is an allusion, of course, to Willis’s first marriage. However, the best part of this episode is, once again, Herbert Viola, who gets all the best lines and steals the show with his subplot about the Sapperman case—wherein he is all but convinced of the wife’s treachery. He presents his evidence to the firm with a filmreel and soliloquy.

  “Mrs. Sapperman was born on August 27th, 1932, to Shmul and Helen Menmum of Ozone Park, Queens. After moving to Los Angeles in 1957, Adele went to work for the firm of Sapperman, Sapperman, Sapperman, shown here. But the story does not end here. We must look beyond the white-picket fence, the lace curtains in the windows, the well-kept flower gardens…because, behind this tranquil suburban façade, there lurks a dark story of faithlessness and betrayal. There goes Mrs. Sapperman now, in the family station wagon. Is she going grocery shopping? Or is she going to stain something that was once pure? …giving herself to another man? …letting a total stranger run his hands over the soft, white flesh that once was Seymour Sapperman’s alone? And then, having slaked the carnal thirst of the beast within her…will she return to the open arms of her loving husband? Still glistening with the sweat of another animal? Jezebel, harlot, adulteress, thy name is Adele! [a scarlet letter A appears on-screen]”

• S05E13 is the final episode of a five-season run—and the writers new that it was all over. They hurriedly got Agnes and Herbert married (with Wynn Deaupayne (Timothy Leary) as a very non sequitur guest), then spent the last 10 minutes going full meta—again, and for the last time—worried that they would disappear at the end of the show. They went and found their producer Cy (Dennis Dugan) to ask what they could do. He answered,

  “Hey, even I can’t get people to tune in to watch what they don’t want to watch anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I love you two kids. But can you really blame the audience?Case of poison ivy’s more fun than watching you two lately. […] People don’t want laughs, David. They want romance. Romance is a very fragile thing. Once it’s over, it’s over. And, I’m afraid for you two, it’s over. […] Oh goody, that’s exactly what America wants to see: David and Maddie, friends. People fell in love with you two kids falling in love. You couldn’t keep falling forever. Sooner or later, you had to land someplace. People cared about you two because you cared about each other. Even when you didn’t wanna care, you still cared and you couldn’t not. You cared until you couldn’t care any longer. You two were a great love story.”

  It was a very meta-show: McGillicudy (Jack Blessing) ended up dying, not of the illness he’d announced at the beginning of the episode, but because he had no more lines. Maddie and David try to get married, but the priest tells them that “the sacrament of holy matrimony isn’t something to be entered into lightly,” to which Maddie replies, “we don’t want to enter it lightly, we just want to enter quickly.”

  Wonderfully, they kept the “Anselmo Case” alive the whole season—a Macguffin if there ever was one—then announced at the end of the credits that, “Blue Moon Investigations ceased operations on May 14, 1989. The Anselmo Case was never solved… and remains a mystery to this day.”

  All in all, an excellent capper to the season and the series. Chapeau. They went out with grace and humor and style.