The Death Of OJ Simpson

Cancer is awful. It killed my mother. It nearly killed my Dad. And now, it has claimed another victim. Cancer just killed OJ Simpson.

Most people deeply affected by his crimes will understandably celebrate his demise. I certainly will not miss him. But cancer is an insidious disease. I’ve seen firsthand how it gradually destroys a life, how it painstakingly sucks all the joy out of even the most positive, upbeat person like my Mom. And how chemotherapy drained the energy out of my Dad. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, even a murderer like OJ Simpson.

And make no mistake about it. He killed his ex-wife. He destroyed Ron Goldman. We’ve seen the photos. We know the evidence. Remove all the racial politics of the time. There’s no doubt what Simpson did.

There’s a scene in the original Barbershop where Cedric The Entertainer’s flamboyant character, known for his outspokenness, blurts out what everybody in Ice Cube’s shop is thinking but won’t say:

“We know OJ did it.”

Everybody knew.

The Simpson murder trial was a spectacle, not genuine justice. It was about misplaced loyalty towards a man who did not want to be seen as Black until he was in trouble. It was about a historically wronged community who picked the wrong champion to defend, one they knew deep down was completely unworthy of their support, all to stick it to a system of white supremacy that protected him the entire time and remains mostly unchanged.

To understand who OJ Simpson was and how he came to be, you only need to see one film, the Oscar-winning documentary OJ: Made In America, one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.

Over the course of eight gripping hours, we learn so much about one of the most consequential public figures in history, a man who grew up in a broken home and then went on to break two more of his own.

The story of OJ Simpson is the story of a man who grew up with no boundaries, who spent his dysfunctional childhood mostly left alone with his friends unsupervised because his exhausted, hardworking, divorced mother needed to take on three jobs just to keep him fed, housed and clothed.

His estranged father was gay, a revelation that had a profound impact on how he viewed masculinity and which his ex-wife Nicole Brown believed was a major factor in his horrendous abuse towards her.

Simpson came to fame, of course, as a young football star destined for the NFL where he would thrive as a running back despite never winning a Super Bowl. Although he hated the bitterly cold winters in Buffalo, the team he played for the most, it never affected his game. He retired a legend.

Coming of age in the 60s and 70s, Simpson was a shrewd operator and a moral coward. While other Black athletes were prominent in the civil rights movement putting their own careers on the line for racial justice and equality, Simpson calculatedly avoided being associated with them. He infamously asserted, “I’m not Black, I’m OJ.” And he openly used racial epithets against other African Americans he wanted nothing to do with.

Like many sociopaths, he was charming and likeable. It led to a pioneering and highly lucrative endorsement deal with Hertz rent-a-car. He was seen as completely non-threatening to white America who openly embraced him. As he ran through airport after airport in TV ad after TV ad, delighted honkies would shout, “Run, OJ, run!”

He made movies like Capricorn One and The Naked Gun Trilogy. His success on the field led to a second life as a sideline reporter for NFL broadcasts. He seemed to live a charmed life.

You had to read The National Enquirer to learn the truth like the time he beat up Nicole on New Year’s Eve 1989 which was not picked up by more respectable mainstream media.

It wasn’t until four and a half years later when he murdered her and Ron Goldman in a terrifyingly intense rage that we all learned what the Enquirer had uncovered this entire time. He was no hero. He was garbage.

OJ: Made In America offers another telling moment about Simpson’s treatment of Nicole right from the very start of their relationship. On their first date, he was so rough with her that her clothes were all torn and ripped. Try as she did to love him as he was, once that was impossible she tried even harder to leave him, finally divorcing him and moving on with a new partner.

We don’t know very much about Simpson’s first marriage to a Black woman which also ended in divorce. Did he abuse her, too? As far as we know, he didn’t which isn’t unusual, by the way. Toxic men don’t necessarily abuse all their partners.

But when it came to Nicole, OJ couldn’t let go. He began stalking her, even watching her be intimate with her new beau from outside her own window. After reaching his breaking point, Simpson successfully disposed of the murder weapon, a large knife, but left behind a trail of blood that sadly was not enough to convict him in the eyes of a mostly Black jury with a misguided agenda to keep him out of prison. Fuck you, Mark Fuhrman.

The OJ Simpson story is also one of uncomfortable irony, the story of a Black man who wanted to seamlessly blend in with white America, who wanted nothing to do with Black causes, who was actually good friends with a number of LAPD officers both white and Black.

While white America was enraged by his violence, Black America, for the most part, was in denial, hoping for once that one of their own would not be locked away. But he wasn’t one of their own. He was OJ. He was a wife beater and a double murderer, an obscenely wealthy star who basked in his own undeserved immunity. He was only Black when he needed outside support.

I will never forget October 3, 1995. I was in College at the time hanging out at our cable FM radio station. Someone came in saying they were about to announce the verdict so we all rushed out and hurried to the end of the hall where a staircase led to a lounge where students hung out in between classes.

There were no seats available so we had to stand and bend over uncomfortably just to see the TV. There was an impatient hush amongst the crowd. Surely, he’s fucked, I thought.

He wasn’t. As soon as the jury foreman stumbled out the not guilty verdict an offensive and collective cheer rang out like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I was so fucking disgusted.

We had a closed circuit TV station that had monitors all over the school. They usually broadcasted college sports when they weren’t showcasing computer graphics announcing college events and activities. But that day every monitor was tuned to the trial on CNN.

As I walked past one, Simpson’s obnoxiously smiling face was still on TV so I gave it the finger, a powerless gesture that didn’t change anything. But it was how I felt, how a lot of us felt including a number of dissenting Black folks who may or may not have been as vocal. It was a lonely position since it curiously felt like we were in the minority.

Three years later, Simpson would finally meet his match in court. He would lose a civil trial that was brilliantly litigated by Daniel Petrocelli who later co-wrote an excellent book about the experience. Snippets of his preliminary hearing testimony would later air in a terrific A&E doc that showed just how badly the Los Angeles DA’s office bungled their own prosecution.

There were a couple of things Petrocelli and his team uncovered that Marcia Clark and company missed. Simpson had written a book in the 70s where he bragged in his typical cavalier fashion that he was a very good liar, that it came easily to him.

And then, there were the shoes. Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman’s killer left behind bloody shoeprints at the murder scene just outside her house. The shoes turned out to be really expensive Bruno Magli’s that only a few hundred people were wearing at the time. When confronted by Petrocelli, OJ claimed he would never wear such “ugly-ass shoes”.

But the lawyer had an extensive amount of photos of him wearing them at numerous NFL football games as he was performing his duties as a sideline reporter for NBC. I’ll never forget the bewildered look OJ gave when Petrocelli showed him the photos. His eyes widened considerably. If only this had happened at the criminal trial.

Simpson wasn’t exactly warmly embraced following these two cases. No one in Hollywood would hire him for parts (his last legitimate gig, an early 1994 pilot for a cancelled series about navy seals, remains unreleased) so he would have to take whatever cheap, demeaning gig he could get.

The most memorable was a ghostwritten book bizarrely named If I Did It. Because he owed the Goldmans tens of millions from the civil case, they took ownership eventually re-releasing it with the If shrunk within the top of the next word I and adding the subtitle “Confessions Of The Killer.” Simpson asserted he had an accomplice named Charlie who tried to talk him out of confronting Nicole and that he conveniently blacked out during her actual murder so he couldn’t actually confess to anything specific.

Judith Regan, the book’s publisher, then sat down with him for a TV interview, the very idea of which completely pissed off so many people, including the Goldmans, the Fox network foolishly yanked it, effectively cancelling its broadcast. Regan was understandably furious. She said she did it hoping he would admit culpability. It would eventually be aired more than a decade later on the same network. The increasingly weird Simpson did not come off as innocent or credible.

And then over a decade later, after numerous screw-ups that in two instances led to a couple of light fines, he fucked up again in the dumbest of ways. OJ and a few of his goons decided to confront a sports memorabilia seller who was in possession of some of his artifacts. Claiming they were stolen from him, OJ decided to take them back by force. The FBI was paying very close attention.

He was soon arrested. The man who got away with committing a double murder would eventually be convicted on the 13th Anniversary of his wrongful acquittal, a point that was not lost on me nor one of his criminal defense lawyers in OJ: Made In America.

After nearly a decade in prison, he would charm the authorities into paroling him. That part of the story, his life after incarceration, inspired another great A&E doc that revealed disturbing things about Simpson like how he would talk to an invisible Nicole on a plane ride clearly feeling haunted by his actions, dark thoughts that went otherwise unexpressed publicly. (He never fully confessed.) Consider it a spiritual sequel to Made In America.

Simpson, who died two days ago surrounded by family at age 76, one year older than my Mom, had apparently been sick with prostate cancer since last year. It’s a terrible disease even when it affects someone as depraved and monstrous as him.

We need to find a cure for all cancers. We need a better justice system that stops protecting the rich and the terminally toxic. We need to stop disproportionately ruining the lives of so many far less privileged folks of colour, especially the innocent ones. And from the beginning of their lives we need to teach boys to be kind to girls, to respect everyone’s boundaries including their own.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, April 12, 2024
3:17 a.m.

House Of The Dead (2003)

All nudity is gratuitous, Roger Ebert often said. In House Of The Dead, Uwe Boll proves his point.

Point the camera at a dancing fool? She’ll flash you. Crank up a jam she likes? Off comes her top. Her seasick boyfriend just blew chunks on her blouse? Well, she can’t wear it and wash it at the same time now, can she? Guy she’s been dancing with all day would rather stay on the beach? No thank you. She’ll jump in the water wearing just a thong. She only jumps out when it’s suddenly unsafe. This isn’t a frothy teen romp, honey. Wake up.

House Of The Dead is a patchwork of recycled hackery, an unoriginal horror movie that doesn’t know how to shock or startle. Random titty shots aside, it only knows how to bore.

Two dumb storylines come crashing together here. First, there’s the lure. A bunch of twentysomethings are invited to the party of the summer. (Sadly, it’s not SummerSlam). The way this event is billed you’d think at the very least thousands of people would be in attendance, grooving and frolicking away on this isolated island in British Columbia.

Instead, it looks like maybe three dozen people are here bopping around in a small, designated space to undanceable techno courtesy of silent DJ Bif Naked (who did film an acting scene but it was excised). It inspires an unintentional laugh. This is supposed to be a heavily wooded area but it might as well be someone’s backyard.

While this rave is decidedly not raging, another small group of partiers are bummed the boat has left without them. This is what you get for being 15 minutes late. So, one of them attempts to bribe a couple of conspicuous smugglers to take them all to the island.

Clint Howard, who’s dressed like the heel from I Know What You Did Last Summer, plays the wildly inconsistent first mate Salish while Jurgen Prochnow is Captain Kirk. Yes, he’s heard all the bad jokes and no, he doesn’t like them. (Neither do I.) I think he’s supposed to be a Southerner but I don’t know any who say “reckon” with a thick Teutonic accent. Despite a long career of playing heavies, Prochnow is surprisingly unintimidating and stiff here, even when he suddenly brandishes that large knife out of annoyance. Whatever you do, don’t say Spock.

When first approached, Salish is cranky and unwilling to help. At first reluctant to take on horny ravers as passengers, that all changes when money is offered to the captain. Sweetening the deal is the sudden arrival of boat inspectors demanding to come onboard. Suddenly, a thousand bucks to play boat taxi sounds very appealing indeed although Kirk stupidly blurts out after the fact that the money wasn’t necessary. He would’ve taken them for free! Sure, dick.

Meanwhile, Salish dramatically goes from being hostile to paternal worrywart, going so far as to offer a crucifix necklace to one of the girls “for protection from evil spirits”, this after warning everybody about the bad mojo they’re about to experience on the Island of Death. Wrong subgenre cliche, pal. This isn’t a possession movie. It doesn’t matter anyway. She never wears it. The power of Christ does not compel her.

Upon arriving ashore, Salish privately pleads with Kirk that he doesn’t want to turn back without the kids. Does a thousand bucks really make you more compassionate? The Captain just wants to unload the goods they’ve been smuggling. Because ravers are always looking for black market grenades.

By the time they actually show up to the rave, the party’s over. And this gang is either in denial or completely clueless. But we know what’s happening, just like Salish and Kirk. The place is infested with the undead and they are insatiable. They manage to eliminate all but a handful who the stragglers eventually bump into during a brief moment of reprieve. A cameraman shows them what happened on his camcorder but his work is hopelessly shaky and sloppy. You can barely see anything. You feel nothing.

Eventually all the partiers learn the full backstory. A bald Spaniard from the 18th Century wanted to live forever and figured out a way to make it happen. It involves mutated blood and other people’s body parts. (We are sadly spared the flashback revelation of a eureka moment which might’ve been fun.)

Aesthetics be damned, he doesn’t seem to care that he looks like De Niro in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein dressed like The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Unless he brings hot babes back to life, what is exactly the point? Shouldn’t have hung yourself when you looked good, ya knob.

Now about 200 years old, it must be exhausting to be constantly hunting for new victims through his growing zombie army just to keep him going. Again, what is the point? One unfortunate face tonguing aside, he doesn’t exactly like to get down. He doesn’t need more time to catch up on his reading. He just doesn’t want to die. As a result, his isolated life seems so dreary and unfulfilling.

House Of The Dead is a colossal dud. At times, it wants to be The Matrix so bad even going so far as to mimic those slow motion bullet time effects during woefully uninspired fight sequences. Boll has a huge hard-on for that rotating camera shot that he uses as a showcase moment for every remaining babyface fighting for their lives which just adds to the pretentiousness.

How convenient that the late arriving partiers and the initial rave massacre survivors all have access to Kirk and Salish’s crates of automatic weapons which help them reduce the threat somewhat until they’re all out of ammo. How lucky that they all know how to aim and fire them perfectly with just split second instructions beforehand. And how miraculous that two of the women can summon the power of the martial arts when a gun is unavailable.

What’s really stupid is the opening scene which reveals in the film’s first minute who the sole survivor will be, the one who’s not going to turn into a monster. This deflates any potential for suspense and surprise. This character acts as an occasional narrator who quickly introduces the heroes right at the top and later openly mourns the murdered, including a couple of lovers. I didn’t care.

Based on the popular arcade game series from Sega (the “sponsor” of the doomed “gathering”), quick shots of The House Of The Dead, as it is called, are randomly inserted for no good reason multiple times throughout. It’s distracting while also reminding you that playing games is almost always more enjoyable than watching their misguided screen adaptations. Time has not been kind to the game’s less than stellar graphics.

“House Of The Dead isn’t Citizen Kane,” the film’s co-writer and executive producer declares in the DVD liner notes.

No shit.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, March 24, 2024
3:25 a.m.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1985)

She’s the new kid in school, an army brat that has never known stability. She’s awkward and shy, somewhat uncertain of herself. But despite frustrations at home, she’s full of cheer and the thing that gives her the most joy is Dance TV, a daily institution in her new adopted home of Chicago.

Janey’s cheerfulness immediately attracts the attention of Van Halen fanatic Lynne, who becomes her new best friend. She, too, loves Dance TV. And when they watch the British host (who sounds Australian to me) announce a contest to find two new dancers to join the show’s regulars, nothing else matters. Janey’s dream is about to come true.

Sarah Jessica Parker plays her while Helen Hunt is the mischievous Lynne, her boy-hungry classmate who is curiously and paradoxically unattached despite having a strong libido and seemingly low standards, although even she wants nothing to do with creepy Jonathan Silverman.

Yeah, let’s talk about him for a minute. A wannabe entrepreneur constantly hustling unauthorized Dance TV merch that no one buys, this annoying shit is also an unapologetic perv with no boundaries.

Peeking down a woman’s top when she’s bent over (thankfully unseen), making an inappropriate comment to Janey (thankfully unheard by her), his worst moment comes at a dance club called The Court (neat-o outdoor neon sign, though).

Muscling in on somebody’s gal, he proceeds to convince her to play along with a World War II-inspired scam. It’s all to get her to raise her arms, so he can “radio Tokyo”, if you sniff what The Earl is baking.

Romantic comedies in the 1980s were notorious for making jokes out of sexual assault and for normalizing such abuse. Watching this compulsive creep grab the horrified woman’s tits thinking this was ok is the most uncomfortable scene in the entire film. I wish I had the same reaction when I first saw this as a less enlightened teen myself.

I blame my former dance partner. Her family invited mine to have a fun night with them at their house, something that happened a lot in the late 80s and early 90s. One time, I’m thinking 1987, while the parents were yakking away in a different room, she wanted me to see this movie which did not sound appealing but she played it anyway. Her big selling point was the radio Tokyo gag which did not make the film any more enjoyable. But yeah, at the time, it amused me, if for a fleeting moment. It doesn’t anymore. I know better.

It’s the only scene I still remembered from all those decades ago, probably because for the most part I wasn’t really paying that close attention. I just didn’t care. Watching Girls Just Want To Have Fun Again on my own terms recently with much greater focus, I now fully understand this is familiar underdog terrain. There’s no doubt what will happen during the big contest at the end. But I liked Hunt and Parker, yet to have their breakthroughs, and their natural chemistry even though they’re given zero funny things to say. (The only actual laughs come from the music news reporter on Dance TV who admires the artificially enhanced bodies of the men carrying her around on furniture and a special thank you in the end credits to The Buttheads. Tough luck, Beavises.)

Silverman’s own best friend is Lee Montgomery, a hunky piece of dream meat who greatly resembles a young Joey Lawrence. (A bit insecure himself he needs to be convinced by his obnoxious pal to even try out for the show.) Hunt notices him first but Parker is reluctant. Defiantly, Hunt, a great wingman, immediately blurts out Parker’s number to him during the outdoor auditions for the Dream TV contest and very quickly, he’s calling her for night rehearsals. They clash over their differing styles even though doubles do most of the dancing. (An unintentional laugh comes the first time Parker’s replacement starts doing backflips during her tryout because it’s so noticeable.) Parker seems conflicted but that won’t last long.

Movies like this always have a spoiled vamp to provide adversity for the hero. Holly Gagnier, who resembles a young big-haired Sophia Bush, is the snotty daughter of a bottle factory mogul who actually employs Montgomery’s supportive dad. Thinking like a wrestling booker, she wants to be put over, ethics and rules be damned. (She pays her audition partner to make sure Hunt doesn’t make the cut.) That starts a childish war between her and Parker.

When Parker sneaks out of choir practice for a day rehearsal with Montgomery, Gagnier rats them out pretending to be one of the humourless nuns at their girls only Catholic high school by calling her strict, overprotective dad, a retired military bigwig who doesn’t want her gallivanting out at night on her own. But for some reason during the call Gagnier uses her own name. (Maybe she wanted to send a message?)

Parker and Hunt find out that Montgomery’s been invited by a lusty Gagnier to a country club soiree being thrown in her honour. So the gals, feeling devious, decide to make multiple photocopies of the invitation Montgomery temporarily thinks about throwing away and hand them over to as many undesirables they can find including punks and female bodybuilders, all of whom crash the party and start breaking shit. One of those punks is apparently Robert Downey Jr. but I didn’t spot him.

Getting desperate, Gagnier’s white-haired dad puts the belated squeeze on Montgomery, who gets grumpy when things don’t go his way, threatening some kind of unspoken retribution against his dad which ends up being an empty threat. His dad hates the gig and doesn’t even give a fuck.

Even though the movie runs less than 90 minutes, it takes an awful long time to get to the finale when the six advancing couples from the outdoor tryouts dance it out for Chicago one last time. Of course there’s a tie. Of course the babyfaces will get a push after a sudden death dance-off. And yeah, Hunt gets a consolation prize at the last minute after being the subject of a screwjob.

However, during the earlier auditions, I preferred these two Black girls, identical twins, who unfortunately don’t get any lines. During the TV show, they do a mirror bit but their earlier routine is stronger.

The best couple in the finals actually dance first but are essentially extras with forgettable names like the twins. Since it’s between the heels and Parker & Montgomery, based on the dancing alone, the booking is correct.

My Mom was an accomplished dancer for much of her life and later ran her own respected dance studio. I don’t remember if she actually saw this movie. It never came up in our conversations. But I think she would’ve agreed with me that the men and women who dance either during the auditions or on numerous airings of Dance TV are all talented, including a young Gina Gershon, apparently, although during the opening credit sequence the men are given more challenging moves to perform and therefore stand out more, at least at the start of it.

Some of the music, much of it original and written for the film, is catchy if a bit slight. You can understand why the soundtrack was not a best seller, though. It’s danceable fluff that won’t shatter your senses or leave a lasting impression, although the uptempo Dance TV theme might be an exception to that.

Cyndi Lauper, who famously covered Girls Just Want To Have Fun but with changed lyrics, outright refused to allow her version to be used in the film. It honestly doesn’t make any difference to the overall quality. I’ve never liked that song, anyway. It always drove me nuts as a kid.

The actors do what they can with the usual subpar slop they’ve been given. God knows almost all of them deserve better, especially a very young Shannen Doherty, Montgomery’s younger sister, who develops a gross crush on Jonathan Silverman, for some reason. When he plants one on her in celebration at the end, she is wide-eyed and thrilled. (At least, he doesn’t “radio Tokyo” again.)

Based on the way he treats other women, I was hoping for a different reaction.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
4:18 a.m.

Ed (1996)

It’s never a good sign for a sports team if they need a wild animal to help them win games. Such is the case with the Santa Rosa Rockets, a minor league baseball franchise in every sense of the word.

Managed by Jack Warden, they’re doomed to be basement dwellers even after acquiring a new starting pitcher with a wicked fastball.

In what has easily been the most questionable decision he’s ever made in his career, Matt LeBlanc picked this embarrassing travesty as his first feature film after finally breaking through on Friends. Courtney Cox held out for the Scream franchise. What’s his excuse?

Clearly living out an on-screen fantasy as a baseball player, LeBlanc obviously set aside all artistic standards he may have had for that big moment. You know the one that every cinematic underdog dreams about. Winning a championship against all the odds.

The problem is we’ve seen that story countless times before and it’s getting very tired indeed. In Ed, LeBlanc easily impresses the Rockets during his tryout despite being a farmboy without a proper uniform.

But during an actual game, he routinely craps out. He’s not fooling anybody at the plate. After the damage is done, he’s always taken out before the game is over by a reliever who would rather have his job. (By the way, what’s going on with his face? Why is he so overly tanned when he’s almost always wearing a ballcap?)

Little does he know, his luck will abruptly change and not because he’s been reduced to rubbing a horseshoe. Early on, he’s asked to pick up the new mascot, a chimpanzee the franchise dubs Ed Sullivan purely, I believe, for a throwaway newspaper headline gag that probably went over the head of any poor kid subjected to this stupidity.

Right away, we have a major problem. That’s not a real monkey, it’s a smaller guy in a costume and it’s immediately distracting. Also, Ed’s not funny at all. In fact, he’s a nightmare to be around. LeBlanc not only has to bring him to the ballpark, he has to make him his roommate in his tiny apartment which doesn’t make any sense. Why is he stuck with him?

Ed is loud and energetic. He constantly breaks things. He also farts a lot. LeBlanc despises him so much he cruelly buys him a giant bag of dog food which he makes him carry home and upon being offered a sample is rightly rejected in an instant. He’d rather have LeBlanc’s TV dinners which don’t look any more appetizing.

Struggling to win a game, LeBlanc is also facing pressure on a different front. There’s a single MILF living in his apartment building (she’s a waitress in a local diner) and she’s been quietly wondering why they still haven’t hooked up yet. He’s so reluctant to make a move that her cute young daughter openly asks him, “Are you gay?”

It’s weird seeing a kid play matchmaker this aggressively when LeBlanc has enough stress in his life. (And what happened to her dad, anyway?) But he eventually gives in and of course, things go well at the carnival. That said, would you leave your child alone with a wild, undisciplined animal? The kid’s lucky he’s friendly and not real. He’s immature, not an actual threat.

Ed has a secret. He can actually play, up to a certain point. The gag is he belonged to Mickey Mantle who apparently taught him how to play third base. He certainly didn’t teach him how to hit. In his one at-bat, because of his extremely low strike zone, he gets a game-winning walk without ever taking a swing, which turns the tide for the Rockets now destined for redemption. Tommy LaSorda eventually becomes interested in their revived star pitcher.

However, future Jesus Jim Caviezel will not be joining them. Despite encouraging LeBlanc to go on using Carlton Fisk as an inspiration, he gets cut from the team not even halfway through the movie. Imagine the humiliation of being the only player who gets fired, especially when your hairy replacement becomes a star attracting national media attention.

Then, most insanely, Ed gets sold to some abusive circus folk by the weird guy from Frasier, the son of the owner, now sporting a toupee so obvious it openly invites lazy mockery.

By this point, LeBlanc has suddenly softened his stance with the chimp, even allowing him to join him in bed at night. But it’s only after his new girlfriend, the single MILF, browbeats him into planning a risky rescue that he actually bothers to locate Ed and attempt to bring him back to the team.

But in the ensuing chaos as they flee a couple of goons, one of whom has already used a tazer on their purchased prisoner, the chimp, a frozen chocolate banana addict, gets accidentally locked up in a freezer truck leading to a bogus health crisis. With the single MILF’s cute daughter by his side at the hospital, everybody is waiting for him to wake up. This manipulative ploy only worked for E.T., you know, because we actually cared about him.

Even though Courtney Cox had made movies for years before Friends, LeBlanc was the first castmate to make one while the show was on the air. One wonders what he turned down in order to make this crap. To be fair, the much missed Matthew Perry made two zero-star stinkers of his own: Almost Heroes with Chris Farley and Serving Sara with Liz Hurley. But none of those turkeys starred a guy pretending to repeatedly fart in a fake monkey costume.

Opening in March 1996 and tanking immediately (it didn’t even make 5 million dollars), I vividly remember LeBlanc appearing on Regis & Kathie Lee at the time trying to sell Ed as something worth paying to see with a straight face. He knew this sucked. He knew he fucked up.

Rightly nominated for four Razzies, Ed should’ve had a clean sweep. Spare a thought for poor Cockroach from The Cosby Show who plays either the shortstop or the second baseman, not that it really matters. And Bill Cobb, too, the second-in-command behind Warden. I hope they never listed this on their resumes.

Ed hasn’t been the only animal sports comedy. A year later came the first of many Air Bud movies. I didn’t like that one, either, but at least it had laughs and some charm, just not enough of the former. And say what you will about the hockey-playing chimp in MVP, Ed is more unbearable.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
4:00 a.m.

For Richer Or Poorer (1997)

I have a problem. I watch a lot of bad movies, willingly. And it’s getting worse. Maybe it’s because of how I’m feeling these days. It is a dark time, after all. Maybe it’s a sickness I caught from my Dad who loves hate watching soap operas. Either way, I just can’t stop.

So, why do I do it? Why do I allow myself to be disappointed repeatedly like this? Why the need for more mediocrity? Well, for starters, I don’t want to be left out of the cultural conversation. But more importantly, there’s a perverse joy in writing about trash.

Call it critic’s revenge, call it what you will. Sometimes, it feels really good to vent and mock. All this self-imposed suffering shouldn’t be wasted in silence. Out of this torture must come catharsis.

In For Richer Or Poorer, the mismatched Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley are a bickering couple barely surviving high society. He’s supposed to be a high-powered real estate mogul. She’s a long-suffering socialite who would rather start her own clothing line.

After ten years of marriage, they are still trying to keep up appearances, even provoking jealousy from the likes of Marla Maples, if you can believe it, who wholeheartedly buys that everything is kosher.

But after a sales pitch for a religious-themed amusement park (far from “hilariously offensive” as intended) goes horribly wrong at their anniversary party at the Plaza in New York, when they return to their penthouse apartment, the masks come off. They’re the Roses without the violence. No decent zingers, either. Just a lot of formulaic roasting. They don’t even sleep in the same bedroom anymore.

Not helping matters is their crooked accountant Wayne Knight who has somehow implicated both of them in his own financial fraud. Their accounts get frozen and soon supremely dumb IRS agent Larry Miller is on their trail.

In a scene emblematic of the complete phoniness of this story, Miller mistakes a satellite phone Allen pulls out as a gun and immediately shoots it out of his hand. The idea that a rich white guy would ever be threatened like this by a trigger-happy white cop is beyond absurd. It’s no wonder it takes almost two hours to finally arrest the couple.

But of course, the only fraud they’ve actually committed in public is pretending they’re happy, decent people while privately, these selfish knobs are swimming in their own debt and resentments. Long story short, they end up in a stolen cab barely escaping Miller, the FBI and the NYPD who for some reason stop following them altogether after surrounding each other mistaking the IRS clown as a threat in his own right.

Riding around all night, while trying to avoid a cow in the road, they ultimately crash into a nearby pond, the cab conveniently plunging out of sight for most of the movie. Spending the night outdoors, Allen realizes they’re now in Pennsylvania Dutch territory. He overhears that a couple of cousins are supposed to arrive here in a month. Why not pretend to be those cousins showing up earlier than expected?

Using Peter Weir’s Witness as a guide, they immediately ditch the wedding rings, something they were already planning to do anyway. When Alley acts a little too normally for this crowd of stiffs, the plan is to say they both come from a more “liberal” community. Even Helen Keller would see through this bullshit.

Jay O. Sanders looks ridiculous with that Emo Phillips wig and fake beard, an appearance that to a certain degree is meant to be deceiving. He’s the head of this large brood and is more or less an amateur marriage counselor for Allen and Alley who will inevitably reconcile along the way. The problem is I never believed them as a couple in the first place.

Both instantly realize that being Amish means longer days of working and shorter nights of sleeping. While Alley works in the kitchen helping to prepare meals and in the rest of the house scrubbing floors, Allen is trying to break in Big John, a seemingly untameable horse so he can plow the fields and plant corn. He also serves as a counselor himself advising a guy on how best to get Sanders’s oldest daughter to marry him since he can’t get past his anxieties. He even helps him get a deal on some land he wants to buy for his future family, although I’m not sure his blunt technique would work in the real world. It would probably get him thrown out the door.

Allen adapts relatively quickly, even going so far as to slow grow the Abe Lincoln beard. But it takes Alley much longer. It isn’t until she learns the women hate having a lack of colour options for their drab attire that she suddenly finds a reason to start a fashion line. Even Sanders will end up wearing a flashy orange dress shirt.

Meanwhile, the couple’s scrambling attorney Michael Lerner, who instantly knows the feds have tapped his line while continually updating a frustrated Allen, is trying to locate the elusive Wayne Knight who barely manages to escape the long arm of the law himself. To not give Newman any great quips is a travesty. Perhaps he should consider himself lucky that he’s barely given any screen time once he disappears. I didn’t realize Switzerland had an extradition treaty with America. Should’ve fled to the Cayman Islands, ya boob.

All of the attempted humour here is very cheap and groany. Like the scene where Allen is asked why a married Amish man such as himself doesn’t have the Lincoln beard. Alley answers for him. It’s because he had an infestation, if you will, and had to shave it off. But it was a quick problem to solve. Blame it on the “minute lice,” she says.

During the sales pitch for The Holy Land, the misbegotten theme park proposal, Allen talks about an exhibit he plans to call Torah! Torah! Torah!, in honour of the holy book of Judaism. Thinking cross-promotionally, he also says the Japanese will flip for it, too. You know, Tora! Tora! Tora! Yeah, pretty fucking lame, guy.

Because Sanders plays a character named Samuel and even named his baby after himself, when the kid cries one night while everybody is gathered and awake, and Alley finds out his name, she refers to him flippantly as “another son of Sam”. We get it. Make it stop.

Not only is there not one laugh in For Richer Or Poorer, there’s no sincerity, either. This might be the phoniest movie I’ve ever seen. Allen and Alley are fakes, as is Maples, Knight is a crook, Miller has no business carrying a gun and even the Amish turn out to be full of shit. In the inevitable scene when Miller and the cops finally swoop in at the worst possible time, Sanders and company act as though they’ve been betrayed when they obviously know the real cousins they’re expecting who conveniently show up at the exact same time as the feds.

There’s a bogus courtroom scene where Lerner earns his money at the last minute but I’m not sure justice is served. That cabbie can’t possibly be happy. And then the expected reconciliation with Sanders and his wife. It’s not necessary when no one is upset. Why’d they string them along? And why do they even give a shit about their marital problems? There’s no pay-off here.

Same with the scene where Allen gives Sanders a parting gift as a thank you for all his hospitality and advice. I actually had to look up the Wikipedia summary to find out what’s actually hidden in the back of that antique stop watch he gives Sanders since his facial expressions left me confused. He can’t sell shit.

For Richer Or Poorer was released in late 1997 and was directed by Bryan Spicer. His first film was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie. It’s slightly less bad than this steaming pile of dung. For Richer Or Poorer performed so horribly with audiences and critics, Spicer never directed another feature film again.

He figured out the only way to get me to stop watching bad movies. He stopped making them altogether.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 18, 2024
3:49 a.m.

Oppenheimer Squashes Barbie At 96th Oscars

The bomb obliterated the toy. The doll with the blonde hair might have made more money back in the summer but that didn’t mean anything to the motion picture academy.

The three-hour historical drama Oppenheimer was the big winner at the 96th annual Academy Awards taking home seven golden gongs in total including the big one. Although disheveled Best Picture presenter Al Pacino seemed a little loopy during his unnecessarily oddball appearance at the end of the night, at least he was given the right envelope and said the correct title, a genuine worry since the La La Land/Moonlight debacle of 2017. (Where was Warren Beatty?)

As expected, Christopher Nolan was named Best Director. He thanked his wife Emma Thomas for not only producing all his films but all of their children as well. Oppenheimer also won for its cinematography, its original score and for film editing.

“Proud Irishman” Cillian Murphy was named Best Actor who was the first winner to actually acknowledge his fellow nominees (“I’m in awe of you.”), a practice that used to be routine but was rarely employed this time for some reason. Noting how we’re all living in the world that his title character unfortunately created, he dedicated this prize “to the peacemakers everywhere”.

His co-star Robert Downey Jr. was easily the funniest recipient as he collected his golden naked man for Best Supporting Actor. Already making me laugh when he tapped his once coke-filled nose during host Jimmy Kimmel’s typically uneven monologue, he facetiously thanked his “terrible childhood” and even got a solid dig in at co-presenter Tim Robbins who had a Freudian slip while kissing up to nominee Robert De Niro during the presentation. (He said “Oscar-winning” instead of “Oscar-worthy” which was funny in its own right.) Downey thanked his second wife and dedicated his win to his kids.

Yes, instead of showcasing clips from their respective movies, the Oscars brought back the ass-kissing gimmick that Roger Ebert would’ve loved but for me instantly inspires ridicule, although the delightfully weird Nicolas Cage didn’t disappoint. I mean I was amazed none of the acting nominees were thanked for their extraordinary farts and courageous dumps. Retire the sucking up and bring back the clips.

It was a surprise to me that Emma Stone secured her second Oscar for her lead role in Poor Things but not for those who were paying much closer attention to industry insiders. Briefly overwhelmed and concerned about a possible wardrobe malfunction, she was gracious in thanking her family and her fellow cast and crew members, correctly noting it takes a team to make a movie. Besides Murphy, she was the only other winner to acknowledge her fellow nominees, even going so far as to “share” her prize with Lily Gladstone who didn’t get to make history herself. Hollywood must still be pissed at Sacheen Littlefeather.

Poor Things won three additional technical Oscars for its costumes, its make-up & hairstyling and for its production design, taking away two more possible gongs from Barbie.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named Best Supporting Actress, the only award handed to The Holdovers which lost Best Original Screenplay to the critically acclaimed Anatomy Of A Fall, its only trinket. “God is so good,” she exclaimed multiple times as she went on to thank her mom for convincing her to be more than a singer and give theatre a try. Gracious and emotional, she once “wanted to be different” but ultimately realized “I just needed to be myself.” She also thanked her publicist which led to a couple of other winners, including Downey, making tongue-in-cheek references to this moment during their own promos. (Downey thanked his stylist and the guy who tried to get him insured during his darker days.)

The Holocaust drama The Zone Of Interest was named Best International Feature and inspired the only direct acknowledgment of the ongoing genocide in Gaza as the film’s director actually mentioned the word “occupation” in his acceptance speech which was slightly undermined by him also seemingly knocking the resistance’s successful October 7 attack that caught an arrogant white supremacist army sleeping at the wheel. Both-sidesing a lopsided massacre just to make a point about dehumanization misses the point entirely. The film also won Best Sound over Oppenheimer.

The lone win for Barbie was for its hit song What Was I Made For?, the second songwriting Oscar for its creators, the whorephobic Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell. They previously won for penning the Bond theme No Time To Die a couple of years ago.

Speaking of good nights for double winners, the Japanese anime legend Hayao Miyazaki, who wasn’t in attendance, received his second Best Animated Feature Oscar for The Boy And The Heron, 21 years after first winning for Spirited Away beating the likes of Elemental and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.

Cord Jefferson, the Best Adapted Screenplay winner for American Fiction, its only prize, made a good point about the “risk-averse” nature of Hollywood, how they’ll easily spend 200 million on a supposedly surefire smash (which lately hasn’t worked out so well) when they could make many more smaller budgeted films that would generate far more buzz and ultimately more profit. I don’t expect anyone to listen to him.

As for the broadcast itself, there were genuine moments of hilarity like Danny DeVito calling out Michael Keaton, his Batman Returns co-star, who responded with a perfectly stern deadpan; John Cena getting into an otherwise uneven argument with Kimmel over whether he should go through with a 50th Anniversary tribute to the infamous streaking incident and then slowly walking across the stage with a giant envelope across his crotch while humourously presenting Best Costume Design (not to mention him wearing a makeshift dress and then shaking hands with The Rock backstage); Steven Spielberg paying off a Kate MacKinnon joke about being sent “tasteful nudes” by simply nodding as well as selling a Kimmel reference to The Fabelmans with just a bemused look; and The Fall Guy co-stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt roasting each other and their respective movies over the whole Barbieheimer phenomenon.

I also enjoyed the fact that some presenters did two awards at once which greatly saved time. But what was with the In Memoriam segment? Because they never went to full screen, you had to strain your eyes to see some of the names. The camera was too far away, there were no close-ups at all. It was aggravating and insulting.

While it was wonderful that there will finally be a best casting director Oscar next year, the best the academy could do for long suffering stuntmen was a clip package? Where’s their fucking Oscar category, you heartless assholes?

The complete list of winners:

BEST PICTURE – OPPENHEIMER

BEST DIRECTOR – Christopher Nolan (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST ACTRESS – Emma Stone (POOR THINGS)

BEST ACTOR – Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Da’Vine Joy Randolph (THE HANGOVERS)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Robert Downey Jr. (OPPENHEIMER)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – THE BOY AND THE HERON

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – GODZILLA MINUS ONE

BEST SOUND – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – OPPENHEIMER

BEST FILM EDITING – OPPENHEIMER

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – OPPENHEIMER

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – What Was I Made For? (BARBIE)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – POOR THINGS

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – ANATOMY OF A FALL

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – AMERICAN FICTION

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT – THE LAST REPAIR SHOP

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, March 11, 2024
4:05 a.m.

2024 Oscar Predictions

BEST PICTURE – OPPENHEIMER

A failing novelist with an unexpectedly ironic success. A Hitchcockian murder plot involving a wrongfully accused innocent. The life of a famous big-nosed conductor. The rise and fall of the father of the atomic bomb. A 20th Century massacre against Indigenous Americans. A couple living near a concentration camp. A grumpy teacher babysitting some stranded students at Christmas. Two old friends, once close, now drifting apart. A bunch of different girls named Barbie. Emma Stone with bad eyebrows.

These are the ten nominees in the race for Best Picture this year. But let’s be clear. There isn’t a race. It’s a foregone conclusion.

That means you can easily forget about American Fiction, Anatomy Of A Fall, The Holdovers, Killers Of The Flower Moon, The Zone Of Interest, Past Lives, Maestro and Poor Things. As Michael Cole would say, thanks for coming. The producers of these films ain’t getting called up to the stage.

Since July, the only two movies that generated any kind of significant Oscar buzz were Barbie and Oppenheimer. The shrewd marketing campaign of plugging both titles simultaneously with a single word brought large audiences back to the theatres, and not a moment too soon. COVID-19 shut down the business off and on for a significant amount of months starting four years ago as studios overly relied on streaming at times to try to make up for lost profits which ultimately didn’t work. (DVDs and Blu-rays are better, you knobs.)

With life more or less back to normal now despite the continued threat of these constantly evolving variants, few films in 2023 matched their cultural and financial impact. While the toy movie made more money, the three-hour black and white history lesson is the more traditional favourite. The Oscars are notoriously snobby towards comedies and that tradition will undoubtedly continue on March 10.

Director Christopher Nolan has been waiting for this moment his entire career. Now in his early 50s, although I haven’t seen all of his movies, I’ve yet to see him release a bad one. I liked Interstellar, really enjoyed his remake of Insomnia, marvelled at the inventive Inception and consider his Dark Knight Trilogy to be the best comic book franchise of all time.

Much like Steven Spielberg, the academy has been waiting to honour him with something outside the realm of fantasy. With Oppenheimer, they now have their opportunity.

BEST DIRECTOR – Christopher Nolan (OPPENHEIMER)

As Roger Ebert wisely advised year after year, the strongest indicator is the Directors Guild of America award. If you win that prize, nine times out of ten you’ll go on to win the Oscar, that is as long as you’re nominated for one, of course. (Ben Affleck won the DGA in 2013 for Argo, but curiously did not make the shortlist for an Academy Award.) This year, Christopher Nolan won for helming Oppenheimer. There is no need to discuss anyone else. It’s his gong to lose.

BEST ACTRESS – Lily Gladstone (KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON)

It’s the usual mix of newcomers and veterans vying for the top acting prize for women. Annette Bening’s been here five times since 1991. She left quite the impression in The Grifters, so much in fact that Warren Beatty cast her in Bugsy which left another but curiously did not result in another nomination. That wouldn’t come until another memorable turn as the dysfunctional, oblivious mom in American Beauty. After her nomination in the average Being Julia, she was also shortlisted playing one of the gay moms in The Kids Are All Right.

Which leads us to her lead role in Nyad about the famous open water marathon swimmer. Could she be a spoiler here? My guess is it’ll be 0 for 5 on Oscar night.

Carey Mulligan’s had a couple of shots herself. She struck out for An Education, her breakthrough performance, almost 15 years ago. She was last singled out for the controversial Promising Young Woman where her whining about one critic’s review of her may have cost her a golden trinket. Despite having no such heat this time around, her ongoing slump will still continue as well.

Emma Stone’s already won for La La Land and Sandra Huller will have to treasure being part of this rarefied company for what will probably be the only time in her career.

There have long been complaints about actors of colour not getting regular pushes at the Academy Awards. Lily Gladstone’s acclaimed performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon has been cleaning up on the awards circuit since the season began. Better leave some room on the mantle for the biggest prize of them all.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS – Da’Vine Joy Randolph (THE HOLDOVERS)

Speaking of that, here’s another opportunity to give someone, in this case a big Black woman, a significant mega push. Da’Vine Joy Randolph has been given award after award after award for her highly praised role as a grieving cook in The Holdovers.

Originally successful on Broadway where she was nominated for a Tony after playing the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg role in the musical version of Ghost, she’s been in a bunch of films over the past decade including The Angriest Man In Brooklyn, which featured one of the last appearances of Robin Williams, the unfortunately awful Office Christmas Party, a couple of high-profile animated sequels and the recent Rustin where she plays the pioneering gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.

Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife, could play a spoiler here but I’m thinking the academy will reward her for something else down the road. Jodie Foster has already won two lead Oscars for The Accused and The Silence Of The Lambs, and while it’s been a while since she was last handed a golden gong, her chance of a third is highly unlikely. First-time nominees America Ferrera and Danielle Brooks, also longshots, will cancel each other out.

It’s Miss Randolph all the way for Best Supporting Actress.

BEST ACTOR – Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER)

The real and the fictional battle it out in the race for Best Actor this year. On the one side, you have the desperately mischievous author in American Fiction played by Jeffrey Wright who I first saw as the heel in the so-so 2000 Shaft remake, and Pig Vomit himself Paul Giamatti playing a teacher in 1970s New England in The Holdovers.

On the other, you have the famed New York conductor Leonard Bernstein as portrayed by frequent nominee Bradley Cooper, the Black closeted gay MLK confidant turned neoconservative Zionist Bayard Rustin as inhabited by Colman Domingo and the conflicted inventor of a horrific weapon J. Robert Oppenheimer, an assignment given to the Irish actor Cillian Murphy.

While Domingo is probably the one nominee who would get the most from an academy push since he’s the only one most viewers have never heard of (despite a long list of credits including a couple of Tony-nominated stints on Broadway), all signs are pointing to just one likely winner on March 10, one who has already had an equally busy high-profile career in the business.

I’ve been a Cillian Murphy supporter since I first saw him in Red Eye, a thrilling, tightly wound Wes Craven thriller mostly set on an airplane. As he delivers the heat in such a cold, detached manner for much of its running time, he meets his match in Rachel McAdams, his resilient hostage who knows how to think quickly and effectively in a crisis. The scene where she stabs him so hard in the throat he can’t speak inspired me to jump off my couch and shout, “Yes!” If only every movie villain left such a mark.

A longtime favourite of Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer marks Murphy’s sixth collaboration with him. (Rejected as a possible Bruce Wayne, he played Scarecrow in all three Dark Knight movies.) More than 20 years after he appeared as a survivor in the overrated apocalyptic zombie thriller 28 Days Later, his Oscar night will feel far more triumphant. In the recent past, there was another Colman who ended up taking Best Actress by surprise, but in this case, the result will be far more predictable.

Murphy’s got it.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR – Robert Downey Jr. (OPPENHEIMER)

Right away you can remove Sterling K. Brown and perennial nominee Mark Ruffalo from serious contention, the latter having already lost on three previous occasions. Another academy favourite, the great Ryan Gosling, whose best work in Blade Runner 2049 and First Man were both criminally overlooked, has also swung and missed twice before. His casting as Ken in Barbie was divisive which I suspect will be reflected in the voting.

Crotchety Robert De Niro, who recently lost a lawsuit to a former disgruntled employee he tortured and has been mostly wasting away as hardheaded fathers and creepy grandpas in one terrible comedy after another, is already a two-time winner. His latest Scorsese collaboration a rare critically acclaimed detour from his usual laughless fare. Although it’s been more than 40 years since he snagged a gong for Raging Bull, he ain’t winning a third.

Everyone loves a redemption story, how one falls from grace only to rise from the ashes and scale even bigger heights of success, if you’ll forgive my trifecta of cliches there. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Robert Downey Jr. was a mess. Despite a very fine supporting performance as Michael Douglas’s agent in the excellent Wonder Boys and strong reviews for his brief run on TV’s Ally McBeal, his addictions were killing him. Had he not finally cleaned up his act, who knows how long he would’ve carried on.

I wasn’t a big fan of the uneven Chaplin but he deserved that first nomination for playing the influential silent comedian. 15 years later, he had an incredible 2008, first playing Iron Man which became his signature role and getting a second nomination for playing an actor so desperate to win awards he employs blackface in Tropic Thunder.

Looking impossibly boyish while approaching 60 as he continues to be one of the most well liked stars in the modern era, Downey has disproved Fitzgerald’s famous theory. He has survived long enough to thoroughly enjoy a second act. And it will be capped off with an Oscar for Oppenheimer.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – THE HOLDOVERS

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – AMERICAN FICTION

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE – THE BOY AND THE HERON

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE – THE ZONE OF INTEREST

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – What Was I Made For? (BARBIE)

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN – BARBIE

BEST COSTUME DESIGN – POOR THINGS

BEST FILM EDITING – OPPENHEIMER

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS – MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – OPPENHEIMER

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT – RED, WHITE & BLUE

BEST ANIMATED SHORT – WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING

BEST SOUND – OPPENHEIMER

BEST MAKE-UP & HAIRSTYLING – POOR THINGS

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
4:09 a.m.

Fall (2022)

Fall is Frozen in the desert. Instead of three friends stuck on a malfunctioning ski lift in the dead of winter, two hot babes are stranded on top of a 2000-foot TV tower in the hot sun. Whereas the trio in Frozen are genuinely forgotten victims caught in an unfortunate dilemma while on vacation, the women in Fall have no one to blame but themselves. To put it bluntly, if this was real, their story would be prominently featured on Ridiculousness.

We first meet them on a mountain climb. Adventurous Hunter (Reese Witherspoon doppelganger Virginia Gardner) is the buxom, free-spirited blonde YouTuber afraid of nothing. Her best friend Becky (Grace Caroline Currey who looks like the love child of PJ Harvey and Sally Hawkins) is the more reluctant brunette who needs to be talked into doing something risky like this. Clearly, she would never come up with any of this on her own.

Along for the ride is Becky’s equally fearless husband Daniel (latter-day Scream alumnus Mason Gooding). It does not take you long to predict what will happen to him. I just wish it was more jolting. The scene is crucial in establishing what will happen next. Beautiful scenery and expertly maneuvered cinematography aside, the expected pay-off is rather underwhelming. We barely know these people.

Nearly a year later, Becky remains in deep mourning, drowning herself in booze and popping those anti-depressants like Tic Tacs. Daniel’s remains are in her custody which she clings to like the holy grail. Desperate to hear his voice, she calls his cell just to hear his jokey outgoing voicemail message until it’s finally disconnected at the worst possible time.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays her deeply concerned father. They once had a strong bond over pro wrestling (he has a Stone Cold Steve Austin bobblehead on the dashboard of his car and his ringtone is the old Legion Of Doom entrance theme that I didn’t realize was co-written by Jimmy Hart), but are now as distant as Peter Hook and New Order.

He keeps calling, she never picks up. Isolated from everyone, he finds her, probably not for the first time, coming out of a watering hole tipsy and pissed.

He tries to reason with her. Hey, maybe Daniel wasn’t this great guy you thought he was. Maybe it’s time to finally move on and be happy again. In turn, she feels smothered and attacked. He fails to convince her that Daniel wouldn’t react the same way if the roles were reversed. When he blocks her attempt to drive drunk, she snaps and eventually walks home defeated as always.

On the verge of suicide, another familiar ringtone saves Becky’s life in ways that she will never expect. Hunter’s back home (Becky’s dad’s been calling her, too) and thinks she has a foolproof plan to rescue her lonely pal.

There’s a discontinued TV tower not found on any map that’s about twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Thin, long and rickety, no reasonable person would ever think of scaling this aging monstrosity. Hunter is not reasonable.

She wants Becky to face her fears in a most visceral manner, a sort of radical, extreme form of cognitive therapy, you could say. The brunette won’t accept her father’s wisdom but she will ultimately go along with this doomed expedition. She continually puts her faith in the wrong people.

Once they get there it becomes very clear that Hunter never did her homework. She didn’t mention all those determined vultures nor the fact that the tower looks like it’s barely holding together. She also didn’t seem to know that you’re not actually allowed to be anywhere near this thing.

“NO TRESPASSING – DANGER OF DEATH” reads the sign in front of a locked gate. You cannot say they weren’t warned. With the sun blazing, Hunter as always takes the lead. Becky needs constant encouragement to keep going. Should’ve brought more than one bottle of water, ladies.

Hunter has her own YouTube channel. She calls herself Danger D (sounds more like a Bud Bundy rap persona) and films all her global exploits, greatly emphasizing her sexuality. (“Tits for clicks,” she explains unapologetically while wearing a very revealing push-up bra. Two guys wrote this.) Hardly seems worth it though when the Lara Croft wannabe only has 60000 followers. More like cleavage for clicks.

Instead of connecting a GoPro to her chest while they climb, Hunter will only film short clips with her phone at the start and finish, and when they finally reach the top, she will also insist on having snaps taken while foolishly dangling over the edge of a tiny platform hanging on only using one hand. Then she will push the reticent Becky to do the same, even though during the climb she clearly saw a big loosened screw plummeting right past her.

Basking in their lucky triumph, it’s time to come down and go home. But of course, that giant ladder will break and collapse, and despite running through a number of ideas to get off this fucking thing, they will be left here baking, thirsting and starving for days. How they avoid sunburn is a mystery.

During the accident, their bag of supplies and their video drone fall off the platform but conveniently land in a spot where they, after a while, will eventually be retrieved, although the circumstances of that retrieval won’t be fully clear until a pivotal moment when we realize the importance of regular sleep. (That said, it’s enough with the “it was only a nightmare” False Alarms which you always see coming., only one of which is a bad omen.)

All the while, there are hope spots. A couple of shady guys in the area who maybe can see them high above if they can make enough noise or attract enough attention. A message written in eyeliner and attached to that drone if only it can reach their hotel when it’s at its busiest. Their cell phones with pre-typed emergency texts each secured and padded in Hunter’s running shoes waiting to be sent but needing to be dropped to the ground because there’s no signal at 2000 feet. (You can only look at pictures and videos from up here.)

You can pretty much guess how a lot of this will go. The two men who they think will save them turn out to be more interested in their abandoned car. The first cell phone drop does not result in an immediate rescue. And I laughed very hard when disaster strikes their drone.

Actually, it takes two attempts to fly the damn thing. First, it doesn’t have enough juice and needs to be recharged. After they MacGiver a solution, introduced during the diner scene, Becky is the one who has to climb even higher to implement it. Cue the hovering vulture.

And then there’s the internal drama between the two friends. Long before it’s revealed, you know exactly why Hunter’s been avoiding Becky. It makes you wonder if guilt is her real motivation rather than altruism. And if she’s really regretful, why did she get that tattoo? I mean it’s like she wanted to get caught.

Having to put her sudden resentment aside so they can both survive this very dumb dilemma they haphazardly threw themselves into, Becky will soon realize she now has a reason to let go. Thinking catastrophically, she belatedly admits she blew it with her dad and films what she thinks will be her last video to him. If you watched Frozen, you know she’ll be fine. That meddlesome vulture, on the other hand.

Let’s be clear about one thing. The set design and cinematography are the absolute best things about Fall. They picked beautiful locations to film. No stunt doubles here, even though the actors were never in any real danger. The best scene is the climb. It’s harrowing. The movie does an excellent job of making you believe that’s a big-ass tower and it’s never a good idea to look down. You can feel it in your legs. I can only imagine how this all looked on IMAX a couple of years ago during its profitable theatrical run.

The problem is the circumstance that leads to this expedition. Hunter’s solution to help Becky overcome her depression is to put her in another dangerous situation similar to the one that caused that depression in the first place. And the result is exactly the same!

And what about their lack of preparation for potential calamities, inexcusable considering the opening scene. Hunter wholeheartedly believes this will be a quick little release for her friend and then everything will be back to normal. They only bring water! On a hot sunny day! There are no contingency plans whatsoever. When they find themselves fucked, over time they improvise with the limited capabilities of their handheld technology and not very well, either. You’d think past experience would inspire more caution.

Look, I get it. Becky’s stuck in a horrendous rut. Her life is frozen by tragedy. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. She needs something powerful to pull her out of the darkness and back into the light. But surely, there are healthier ways to get past your grief.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, February 16, 2024
3:07 a.m.

Watcher (2022)

He lives on the fifth floor in the old building across the street. When night falls, there he is, staring at her, just a shadow without a face. This is what happens when you’re hot and take forever to put up curtains.

Such is the dilemma lovely Maika Monroe faces in Watcher. With her cute Kurt Cobain haircut and striking angelic features, she is a Hitchcockian heroine completely out of her element.

The decision she makes to uproot her American life for a duller one in Romania of all places is beyond misguided. It’s all because of her selfish, clueless partner. And he’s far from hunky.

He happens to speak the language fluently (she’s just starting to learn it) and he’s agreed to move here because of the opportunity for advancement. He’s a workaholic marketer barely home in their new apartment.

Left alone for much of the time, she wanders the streets and sites of beautiful Bucharest during the day and lollygags around at home during the night. She gave up acting for this?

The only excitement is uncertain danger in the form of The Spider, a mysterious serial killer with a predilection for decapitation. There have been several victims thus far, all young women, but just one survivor. Who’s next?

Her rather boring existence gets a lot more interesting when she decides to take in a joined-in-progress screening of Charade (subtle, guys) and there he is, moving up in the row right behind her, groaning a little like Michael Myers. But you can’t top the master.

And when she almost decides to give in to her once abandoned nicotine addiction (she eventually falls off the wagon), there he is again seemingly following her around in the grocery store. That’s not a good place to put jarred pickles, fellas.

Already wanting to go home, besides reverting back to those nasty ciggys, Monroe starts making questionable decisions, like waving at the guy one night just to make sure, yes, he is in fact stalking me. (Were you really that doubtful, toots?) Or later when she spots him wandering around town and starts foolishly stalking her stalker as she watches him feeding the pigeons and taking in a meal outdoors, even going so far as to follow him into his rundown building. (Why do you think he’s covering his face with that newspaper? He can see you, bitch!)

That last ploy backfires. He calls the cops on her and suddenly, there he is at her door, quietly pretending to be embarrassed, deliberately avoiding eye contact as they are forced by the same officer she contacted a little earlier to avoid such a scene to shake hands because you know, this was all a big “misunderstanding”. It will not be their last meeting.

“Fucking cops are useless,” a wise man says later on. But come on, this is just dumb.

Even dumber is the reaction of her man, who despite going back to the grocery store to look at surveillance footage (they can only get a sideview of his face which she quickly captures on her phone) and even going with that same cop to the weird guy’s door just to confront him, does not believe she’s in any danger. He even gets caught making a bad joke about it, in Romanian, right in front of her to colleagues at a cocktail party. Why exactly is she with this asshole?

It is not until the inevitable climax that he finally realizes, oh shit, maybe I should’ve believed her. As she looks straight at him in the last shot, I was hoping she would say, “I’m going home. Don’t call me.”

Watcher is a frustrating experience. It starts very slowly with a couple whose chemistry is non-existent and who aren’t particularly enthralling. Basically, not much happens despite the pretty scenery.

Then things start to pick up considerably during an at-home dinner when a discussion about The Spider reveals some disturbing details. Over time I started feeling that welcome sense of dread in my stomach, the same feeling I had throughout much of The Shining.

But at the same time I didn’t really care about many of the characters in Watcher and so we have all this unsettling atmosphere skillfully orchestrated through camera and score but no real investment in the outcome of the plot which you can easily predict anyway.

Monroe’s got charisma with a capital C but her character’s a total contradiction, an odd, incompatible mix of fear and chutzpah.

One minute she’s having a premonition about what could happen to her (a nightmare that becomes all too real), the next she’s a courageous amateur detective on an impromptu reconnaissance mission but without a disguise or a weapon.

Unable to sleep because of her anxiety (first, because of the move and then because of him), after getting someone else to confront her future attacker by pounding on and yelling at his front door without success, she herself knocks as well only to encounter the man’s elderly and harmless father instead. No woman would do this in the real world. They’d be hopping on the next available plane.

The villain is too much like Norman Bates, an antisocial, short-haired nebbish who reeks of obvious awkwardness, a screaming red flag that doesn’t seem to attract any attention beyond his doomed victims. Like Monroe herself, we know what’s in that bag. How come no one notices a smell?

He draws too much attention to himself and yet even the police are looking elsewhere. He looks the part but how does he stand out amongst a long cinematic legacy of woman-hating serial killers? How can he stand out when he’s not original? Plus, he seems more like a rapist than a murderer to me.

And he’s also hit-and-miss when it comes to his technique. Monroe makes friends with her neighbour, a former ballet dancer who she unexpectedly discovers is now a stripper in a strange underground club that is apparently located in the same building as The Spider. (By the way, how do they get tipped if they’re strutting around in glass cases? Is there a slot where you can shove in Euros?)

At some point, she goes missing and Monroe gets understandably worried. When we find out her fate, we’re wondering why the killer botches his aim with his next victim. Regardless, how is she able to survive for all that time having lost all that goddamn blood? Shouldn’t she have passed out already?

Writer/director Chloe Okuno was onto something here. She has a great visual sense, her cinematographer making highly effective use of existing European architecture but her story lacks imagination. She and her craftspeople can set a mood as well as Kubrick and his team but can’t pay it off like they could.

Watcher lacks dark humour, too, unlike the underrated Ginger Snaps. Its uneven pacing reminding you over and over again that it’s an indie film with a start-and-stop fetish. But Halloween is just as entertaining when it’s not terrifying you. It does not suffer from any inconsistency and we cared about everybody. What’s this movie’s excuse?

I’ll tell you. It’s an overdependence on False Alarms in between those slow-ass conversations and underwhelming horror scenes. I must’ve counted half a dozen over the course of the film. When it actually tries to be scary, like I said, it doesn’t know how to apply the exclamation point.

Despite being made by a woman, stripped down to its very essence Watcher is very much another recycled woman-in-danger thriller. Yes, much is made of Monroe’s alienation especially in the company of Romanians who don’t speak her language. But it’s The Spider who dominates, the only reason to pay attention. If only he lived up to the billing and the killing.

There’s a famous adage in fiction. If you introduce a gun at some point in your story, it ultimately has to go off. Bottom line, someone needs to pull the trigger. The second Monroe’s friend shows her her own pistol, Watcher has already spoiled its ending. It would’ve been more impactful if she aimed it at her boyfriend.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, February 3, 2024
2:33 a.m.

How To Eat Fried Worms (2006)

Joe Guire is an asshole. So is his older brother. Neither deserves any sympathy for how they treat other kids.

And yet, one is seen as the bigger villain and, in the end, the only villain. From where I sit, they are mirror images of each other. If they swapped bodies, nothing would change. And no one would even notice the difference.

Joe is the ginger you don’t want to fuck with. The second he lays his beady eyes on you, he already knows how he’s going to torment you. This miserable little shit even wears a “death ring” for extra heel heat. One slug to the gut and you eventually die because the poison the death ring supposedly contains takes a while to work its way into your system. It’s obviously bullshit but you only have two choices: snatch the ring and examine it for yourself or wait until you reach the eighth grade to find out for sure. And it’s easier to wait in fear then get your ass beat.

Silly ring gimmick aside, I knew kids like Joe. They were relentless bullies until an adult would intervene and they would finally back off. One would take pleasure in throwing my hat over a neighbour’s fence that was so high you wouldn’t be able to climb and retrieve it. (He later tried making headphones out of plasticine but they stuck to his ears and wouldn’t come off. Karma can be wonderful.) Another would fill my toque with snow and put it right back on my head. (He had teeth like a beaver and looked like a stereotype.) It has been decades since I suffered from their cruel antics and I hope never to see them again.

Young Billy feels the same way about Joe. He’s the new kid in school and absolutely hates it. Leaving his friends behind because his dad is starting a new job in a new town, from the moment he arrives he is instantly targeted. It does not help that the humourless principal palms the top of his head while introducing him to his new classmates.

During his first lunch break, Billy discovers his thermos has been sabotaged. Expecting to pour out a drink, out come a pile of worms instead. The fiendish Joe is firmly in control or so he thinks. Billy, a dedicated soccer player, does something no one has ever done before. He fights back. He pretends he likes eating the creepy crawlies and then throws one right at Joe’s stupid face. He should’ve thrown the whole lot.

This, of course, does not solve the problem (but it does get him over as a babyface to the whole school). Joe doesn’t take kindly to those who fight back. It only encourages him more. And thanks to his equally bullied co-conspirators (one of whom looks like a young Robert Smith with his unusually spiky haircut), Billy is seemingly on his own. But after his first encounter with Joe, he is befriended by the very tall Erika and shortly thereafter, a dancing fool named Adam. Both will remain loyal, although Billy probably doesn’t deserve Erika’s support the way he treats her sometimes.

Things come to a head when a bike chase leads to a breaking point. Tired of all this bullshit already, Billy makes a terrible bet with Joe. He has to eat 10 worms by 7 p.m. on Saturday, their first day off. The loser has to shove worms down their pants while walking through their school hallway on Monday.

With a title like How To Eat Fried Worms, there’s no room for subtlety or nuance, nor should any be expected. You can’t say you’ve haven’t been warned about the gruesomeness you’re about to subject yourself to.

But since this film deviates so much from its original source material I was very surprised by how triggered I was and how depressing it is to see so much unnecessary, unjustified cruelty in a kids movie. There is nothing funny about any of this.

Erika is repeatedly mocked for her height and her name. ”Erk! Erk! Erk!” Joe and his kowtowed cronies constantly chirp at her. I’m pretty sure they would stop altogether if she brought her bow and arrow to school and threatened to use it. (Billy spots her expertly practicing her archery in her backyard.) Because of what happens during that pivotal lunch period, Billy is forever referred to as “Wormboy.” Even the dopey principal is given a demeaning nickname - Boiler Head – which doesn’t even make sense. ”Pencil-necked geek” would be more accurate.

It’s not just the names themselves that aggravate me so (although they’re obviously not the worst thing you can be called; this is a PG movie, after all), it’s the intention. It’s always the intention. The constant degradation and dehumanizing of these characters makes for an unpleasant viewing experience. You’re not laughing, you’re cringing and getting angrier. Like Billy, you just want it all to stop.

And then there’s the sheer absurdity of the bet itself. Billy, it is established right from the start, has an unusually sensitive stomach. Whether it’s watching his annoying little brother drool or eat disgusting food that somehow remains mostly on his face, following the spin cycle a little too closely while their MILF of a mom does laundry or simply riding in a car, it does not take much for him to hurl.

So how are we to accept the very idea of him eating and swallowing worms without provoking a similar episode? I mean he doesn’t even dry heave! And he’s not eating them raw, remember. The worms are cooked and deliberately covered & mixed in increasingly unappetizing muck to the point where if this was Sal Vulcano being punished on Impractical Jokers, he would quit the show.

By the end, Billy comes up a little bit short because of an unforeseen problem. Feeling guilty for not winning legitimately, he predictably comes up with a compromise solution. All of this only happening because he and the others who have slowly but eventually switched sides see how Nigel mistreats Joe. Sorry, but this little bastard is “a joke”. I certainly wouldn’t be standing up for him. I’d be throwing him in the lake.

Realizing he’s been checkmated by a determined foe while obviously appreciative for the belated support, an embarrassed Joe instantly softens and the bullying stops. And we end with two people humiliating themselves for the sake of fairness before everyone enjoys a collective dance break, only briefly interrupted by the aforementioned scold in charge. Come on. What world are we living in here?

Depriving us of the joy of a true prick getting his comeuppance is the last straw for me. It doesn’t even have to be violent retribution, nor even truly vengeful. It just needs to be satisfying, an exclamation point that more convincingly ends the hostilities. Bullies are a scourge and a cancer and should never be celebrated. And they sure as hell are not your future friends unless they genuinely become better people and stay that way. I don’t remember Joe saying, “I’m sorry,” or even begging for forgiveness.

The message of How To Eat Fried Worms is a cold one irresponsibly masquerading as heartwarming reconciliation. Billy has to literally torture himself just to stop his own torture and make these dimwitted goons his friends. It hardly seems worth it.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, January 29, 2024
11:01 p.m.