His Mind is Clear

I can't quite understand how there can be so many unknown Altman films. He's an acknowledged master, but who has heard of Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976)?

It starts in the Wild West (and stays there). Savage Indians are attacking a lone woman in a cabin. But as the camera draws back, we see that it is only a rehearsal for the Indian attack in the Buffalo Bill's show, with Joel Grey as the producer/director. Maybe they should set the cabin on fire?

Altman does his usual thing for a while, letting his camera roam and rest on a few random subjects - the old veteran telling tall tales of Indian slaughter to a band of Indian kids, some wranglers, Ned Buntline (Burt Reynolds), the author of the penny-dreadful novels of the old West that made Buffalo Bill famous. We hear many stories about who "discovered" Cody and made him famous, in fact. And finally, Buffalo Bill Cody himself, Paul Newman, on his white horse.

In the back room, the boys cook up a scheme to boost ticket sales: Get the biggest, baddest Indian of all times - Sitting Bull, recently surrendered to the US Army. So the call goes out and a great Indian (Will Sampson, Chief Broom) and his tiny, wizened companion (Frank Kaquitts) come into the compound. Of course, the small, silent Indian is Sitting Bull. He stays nearly mute for the whole movie, with Sampson speaking on his behalf.

The movie seems to be set up to compare the bluster, half-truths and mythologizing of Buffalo Bill and his crew against the deep dreams and clear mind of Sitting Bull. In one climactic scene, Bill sends Sitting Bull out in front of the audience with no script, no back up, nothing but an introduction. Sitting Bull rides around the ring once, and the audience boos. Silently, he rides around a second time and the audience cheers wildly.

This is a fun movie, in all the usual Altman ways - the scope, the busy-ness, the lived in world it creates. That's all without Kaquitts as Sitting Bull. Kaquitts is a native of the Stoney Indian First Nation in Canada, where this movie was filmed, and was elected their chief. He has amazing presence, silent and still. He also has more than one chance get a few digs in at the Cody, and through the power of his dreams, summons President Cleveland to the show.

I have not managed to mention Geraldine Chaplin as Annie Oakley, who is a great straightman to her nervous Frank Butler, John Considine. But now that I have, I should mention that Shelley Duvall plays the First Lady, newlywed Mrs. Cleveland. Somehow, I feel that having both Geraldine Chaplin and Shelley Duvall in the same movie is redundant.

Tucker and Dale’s Rescue Rangers

Since Ms. Spenser enjoys horror more than I do, I’m always looking for some good spooky thrills. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) didn’t qualify. But it sure is fun.

A gang of college kids are going camping in West Virginia - stop me if you’ve heard this before. We were reminded of the band in MST3K’s Pod People. A pickup truck passes them, and the hillbillies driving give them long, intense stares. Later we find out that these hillbillies are Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine). The stare was because Dale was taken with all the beautiful young women. At a rest stop, he tries to talk with them - but because he’s carrying a scythe and is kind of bashful and awkward, they think he is creepy.

So while they are setting up camp and telling horror stories about hillbillies murdering college kids, Tucker and Dale arrive at Tucker’s “fixer-upper” summer place, a rundown shack. It’s dusty, broken down, and there are ominous newspaper clippings on the wall. Dale can’t believe the grandeur. Then the kids go fishing and the hillbillies go fishing. One of the girls, Katrina Bowden, falls off a rock and hits her head, so Tucker and Dale take her back to the shack. Dale is pretty much smitten and tries to make her comfortable while she is unconscious.

The kids decide that Tucker and Dale have kidnapped Bowden, and start sneaking up. Meanwhile, Tucker accidentally chainsaws into a bee’s nest, and starts running away, waving his chainsaw. One of the kids thinks he’s being chased and runs away - straight into a tree branch impaling himself.

So it goes: one kid sees Tucker working a wood chipper and tries to push him in, but falls in himself. The sheriff arrives and accidentally shoots himself in the head. One by one, they are all dying.

When Bowden wakes up, she’s scared, but Dale’s sweet nature grows on her. In fact, she’s studying communications and when the kids still left alive come to rescue her, she sits them down to talk about their feelings. Then things get real.

There are two great things about this movie. The first is in the premise: Due to prejudice and coincidence, some college kids think two sweet hillbillies are psycho killers - and they wind up killing themselves. It may seem tough to spin this out into a whole movie, but they make it seem effortless, inevitable. But the real great thing is Tucker and Dale. Tucker is the irascible friend, always teasing and acting superior, but he always tells Dale how great he his and how much he has to offer. Dale is just a big shy dummy, full of heart, and (plot point) never forgets a trivial fact.

I guess I can’t really say that the college kids, even Bowden, are quite so well drawn. But I’d rather see stereotyped yuppies than hillbillies.

So, come for the shocks and laughs, stay for the heart. Now, can anyone suggest a really scary movie for Ms. S?

Shocker

We queued up Shock (1946) because it stars Lynn Bari, but more importantly, Vincent Price. We didn’t really know anything else about it, and that was enough.

It starts with Anabel Shaw checking into a San Francisco hotel. Her husband, who she thought was lost in the war is coming home, and she has arranged to meet him here. Nervously, she waits, and waits, falls asleep and has nightmares, wakes up and walks to the window. Across the way, she sees Vincent Price arguing with a woman, and kill her.

When her husband, Frank Latimore, shows up the next morning, he finds her staring out the window, unresponsive, in shock. The hotel doc recommends the best brain doctor in town, who is staying right at this very hotel: Vincent Price. And he knows what she saw.

Price and his nurse, Lynn Bari, take her to his private sanitarium, and try to brainwash her into forgetting. When that doesn’t work, they decide to take stronger steps: insulin shock treatment, ending with a fatal overdose.

This may not be the greatest B-movie, but it has a great concept. Everyone thinks Shaw was driven mad by the loss and re-appearance of her husband. When she accuses Price of killing his wife, that just confirms it. The tension in the insulin scene is incredible - sending someone into insulin shock over and over is very scary torture, even when it isn’t being done to hide a murder.

Our leap of faith was justified, and even if it hadn’t been, it’s only 70 minutes long.

Left Hand Red

Twister (1996) seems to have a reputation as kind of a guilty pleasure. Now that we’ve seen it, it’s one of ours too.

It’s about Bill Paxton (“Game over, man!”) taking his new fiancée Jami Gertz out to the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, to get his soon-to-be-ex-wife Helen Hunt to finally sign the divorce papers. Hunt is out in OK with her band of merry storm chasers, that Paxton left to become a TV weatherman and marry a sex therapist (not as sexy as it sounds).

The merry band all assume Paxton has come back to join him -  a fun band of scruffy hobby scientists and grad students, including Philip Seymour Hoffman in a sort of Jack Blackish role. They also run into Cary Elwes as the corporate sellout (vaguely Eurotrash?) storm chaser with the big budget and poor attitude. As you might have guessed, Hunt convinces Paxton to join in on one more storm hunt.

There are small tornadoes, big tornadoes, twin tornadoes. There are wrecked trucks, bridges, and one drive-in movie screen destroyed in the middle of The Shining (Steven Spielberg produced). Of course, Gertz gets fed up with Paxton’s storm chasing addiction, making this a “comedy of remarriage”. It’s handled fairly well: Gertz is always on the phone with a client, even in the middle of a storm, and she does get pretty hysterical after a house almost collapses on her, so clearly she’s not right for him. But she leaves on her own terms, tells Paxton they are through and says, “I know my way home.”

Although I kind of liked it as a rom-com, it was really a special-effects extravaganza. Director Jan de Bont pulled out all the stops, to the point of severely injuring Helen Hunt more than once. Not sure it was worth it, but it’s a lot of fun.

It looks like Michael Chrichton worked on the script, which may account for the total lack of scientific coherence.

Second to Last

Now that we've seen Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), we're up to date on released Star Wars movies. We no longer fear spoilers.

Out of all the Star Wars movies, this is one. It has enormous scope, juggling several plots - or one plot and several subplots. Basically, the remaining Resistance are fleeing from the First Order, when Dameron Poe, Oscar Isaac, decides to lead a bombing attack on their dreadnought. This starts with a cute scene where he calls General Domhnall Gleeson then pretends he can't hear him. He keeps saying, "Should I hold? I'll hold", while Gleeson gets madder and madder. Of course, it's a stall, to get the bombers in range. Sadly, although they damage the dreadnought, they lose most of their ships. Now all they can do is run - and the First Order has a tracking device on them, and they are running out of fuel.

Also, General Organa, our beloved Leia, gets sucked out of the bridge into space, which has got to hurt.

Meanwhile, Rey (Daisy Ridley) is trying to get Luke (Mark Hamill) to train her and join the fight himself. But he's old and embittered because he let his student and partner Rylo Kenny (Adam Driver) go to the dark side.

Meanwhile, back in space, Poe, Finn (John Boyega) and new character enter: Rose (Kellie Marie Tran) go AWOL on a side quest to a casino planet. This is basically an extended James Bond riff, featuring Benicio del Toro as a raffish thief.

But here's the odd thing about this movie: everything Poe does either fails or works only marginally. Meanwhile, Laura Dern, as Vice Admiral Holdon, has been quietly getting things done while General Organa is unavailable. I think this is done subtly, but maybe I just don't pick things up very quickly.

So, I guess the next movie will be the last movie in the last trilogy, so after that we will hear no more about that galaxy long long ago and far away. Unless, against all odds, they try to milk the franchise to death. If they do, I'll probably watch.

Pussycat Hats

When I realized that I had let Josie and the Pussycats (2001) float to the top of the queue, I was worried. Ms. Spenser asked me why I hated her so much. Then, the amazing happened: It turned out to be great.

It starts with the boy band Du Jour getting on their sponsored private jet with manager Alan Cummings. Although Du Jour (including member Seth Green) are idiots, they have noticed something odd about their recordings. Cummings promises to explain after he talks to the pilot. He goes up front and tells the pilot to “take the Chevy to the levee”, and they bail out, leaving the plane to crash. Now he needs another (disposable) band. Next stop, Riverdale, home of Josie and the Pussycats.

Josie is Rachel Leigh Cook, songwriter and lead singer. Rosario Dawson, in her first big role, plays bass. Tara Reid is on drums as Melody, a lovable ditz. She’s kind of a mixture of Peter Tork and Goldie Hawn. She is also about the only thing I remember from the comics - pretty sure I never saw the cartoon.

To get this out of the way first, the Pussycats have a great sound. It’s got a great Joan Jett/Runaways feel, maybe softened just a bit. They even have a “Cherry Bomb” song: “Teenaged Prom Queen”. So I would rate the music as “good”.

Other characters include Gabriel Mann as Alan M., folk singer and maybe boyfriend to Josie. Paulo Costanzo plays the Pussycats snobby and dim manager, and Missi Pyle lays his twin sister, who says she is only in the movie because she was in the comic. Parker Posey plays the head of the record label who is using the disposable bands to sell stuff to kids. They are all really good.

So, interesting plot, strong cast, good music, and the jokes tend to work. Kind of like the Spice Girls movie (which is probably an influence), an unexpected hit.

Weak

We love classic rock documentaries, and The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (2016) isn’t bad. But it doesn’t have much new, at least not for me.

As you might guess from the title, it focuses on the Beatles days as a touring band, from Liverpool to Hamburg to America to the roof of Apple Studios. The main takeaway is that their equipment was pitifully insufficient for the stadiums they wound up in. Combined with the insane screaming of their fans, that made them pretty much inaudible.

We do get some nicely cleaned up performance footage, but I don’t feel like there was much I hadn’t seen before. A lot of the best seemed to be borrowed from the Maysles’ movie. Watch that instead.