Spy stuff! Action! Suspense! The inspiration for James Bond!
BQB here with a review of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
It’s very rare in today’s exceedingly woke times to see an action movie where men are macho and are allowed to blow shit up, wreak havoc, shoot guns and damn it, my ding dong just got hard thinking about it. Excuse me for a moment. Talk amongst yourselves.
Alright, I’m back. Based on former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s declassified in 2016 documents, this story tells the tale of the UK’s first special forces mission, which essentially began MI6 or Great Britain’s first foray into spycraft and/or clandestine missions. Coincidentally, it was also the inspiration for the James Bond films, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
It’s WW2 and the Nazis command the Atlantic Ocean. They’re choking off trade to England, sinking supply ships with their U-Boats. Said boats are supplied by only 4 ships based in Fernando Po, an island colony in Africa owned by then neutral Spain. To bomb the port outright would be to bring Spain into the war on the side of the Nazis, an outcome to be avoided. Thus, Winston Churchill (a heavily made up Rory Kinnear) with assistance of Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes) recruits a “dirty dozen” (not exactly a dozen) but a collection of “war criminals” – i.e. not atrocity perpetrators in the war crime sense but soldiers who have been thrown in prison because for whatever reason, they didn’t follow orders.
This is a dirty job, one requiring men who will be disavowed if caught, so Churchill needs men with less than stellar reputations, willing to get their hands dirty and the dirtiest among them is Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) who leads the squad. Cavill looks like he had fun with this one, laughing maniacally as he shoots and blows up Nazis.
March would go on to be the inspiration for James Bond, the character in a series of novels penned by Ian Fleming, who has a minor role as a character in the film played by Freddie Fox. Apparently, his time as Grubbins’ assistant in the operation inspired Fleming to put pen to paper.
Directed by Guy Ritchie who has a great track record.
Overall, it’s quite a fun film and a much needed relief from super woke fare. Go see it today.
Holy smokes, 3.5 readers, have I been holding my water on this one a long time.
So much so that I’m ready to pee my pants.
In the wake of the pandemic, when I became addicted to online food delivery because it was verboten to go shopping yourself, I wrote a novel based on some of the wacky hijinx I experienced as a customer. (Order a pastrami sandwich on rye and they deliver you a Velvet Elvis painting? WTF?)
Anyway, last summer, your favorite proprietor of a blog with only 3.5 readers was contacted by a representative of a website with 3.5 bazillion viewers. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Yes, that’s right. Pornhub. No, just kidding. Netflix.
Initial e-mail exchanges went like this:
NETFLIX GUY: “Hi I work for Netflix. Are you Bookshelf Q. Battler? I know you write under a pen name but I’d like to talk to you about your book, Shop Buddy. I really enjoyed it.”
ME: “Ah, so you’re the one.”
NETFLIX GUY: “Ha ha. I’d like to talk more. Can we speak on the phone?”
ME: “How do I know you’re a real Netflix guy and not some weirdo trying to steal the rights to my book?”
NETFLIX GUY: “How do I know you’re the real Bookshelf Q. Battler and not a chump posing as BQB?”
So after a long round of emails and phone calls where we sufficiently verified each other’s credentials, we were off to the races, and as scary as it was, I, as in the “man behind the curtain” of BQB very nervously identified my true self to people who gained my trust that they wouldn’t reveal my identity and discussions began.
Initial negotiations were over video conference calls and that was surreal. They were nice enough to understand I was a true novice to the industry and suggested I get an agent before things continue. That did slow things down as I had to seek out an agent and I got turned down a lot until I was savvy enough to start mentioning I have a potential Netflix deal.
Frankly I was little skeeved by the whole agent hiring process. It felt like I’d already done the work of landing the tuna in my boat but after several interviews with different potential agents, I found one I liked and as she explained (I used the tuna in the boat analogy with all of them), she was wise enough to point out that that yes, I’d landed the tuna but she would be the one to knock it out, skin it, and fry it up with lemon pepper and basil.
Mmm. Lemon pepper fish. Rich in omega 3s.
Anyway that slowed things down till January, but then the really nitty gritty stuff began. Hooray for Hollywood! Yours truly actually got on a plane and flew out to Tinsel Town. I met my agent. I met with Netflix people. I met crackheads on Hollywood Boulevard but that’s irrelevant.
To my great surprise, I did things that only a person with balls would do, so apparently I am a baller now. I said to my agent. “Should we shop around? Should we see if Hulu wants to be in the Shop Buddy bidness? What about the fine people over at HBO Max? Can I get a meeting with the good people at Amazon Prime and rub Jeff Bezos’ bald head for good luck?”
Agent agreed. We shopped. No interest from Hulu or HBO. Amazon had enough interest for a meeting but not enough to invite Jeff so I would not get to rub Jeff’s head which is a shame. I deserve to as my books have made him upwards of 17 entire cents. I made the point in the meeting that, you know, my book is hot right now because I self-published it on Amazon so if you guys let someone else snap it up, they’ll be significant egg on your faces. I worded it nicer than that but you get the drift. Frankly, I couldn’t believe I was able to say such things to such important people. They nodded graciously and saw the point but thought the whole thing was too weird. A book written by a guy with a weird pen name? Too weird.
So ultimately, that’s why I went with the Flix to the Net. They really understood my vision and the cool thing is they agreed to go along with the whole Bookshelf Q. Battler mystique. In fact, we’re in development in on a BQB’s Twisted Shorts series and we’re all in agreement that there’s more free publicity, fanfare and, well yes, cold hard cash-o-la to be made if the man behind the curtain remains a mystery for now and people are left wondering who the heck wrote all this schlock? Who is he? What’s his deal? Why so mysterious?
How would a BQB series work? We’re a little vague on that but basically someone would play me and introduce each story in the anthology with some quips and one liners. We all agreed I’m too gross and disgusting to play myself. I agreed. They were nicer about it. Various euphemisms were employed to avoid telling me I’m too gross and disgusting to do the job myself and that a handsome person must be hired to play me so I appreciate that. BTW this is all theoretical at this point so I should mention no deal on BQB’s Twisted Shorts has been made at this time though it is in the works. They liked my short stories and think they could sell with the tag line “Black Mirror meets Monty Python.” Sounds about right.
But I digress. The point is Netflix will a) give me money and b) keep my ID a secret. Personally, I’m fine with that because you know, this could all be a flash in the pan and if so, I’d just rather keep my little old life as is. What Netflix offered for the movie deal was generous, but not life changing. Perhaps in time we’ll get there but all good things come to wait.
Look at me rambling. So, back to the main point. The movie! Finn Wolfhard! Yes, Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fame has signed on to play Steve Anderson, the titular Shop Buddy, who, post-college, can’t find a job to save his life so has to go through the indignity of slinging grocery bags for an online shopping service. In doing so, he has to deliver a lot of strange, questionable items to a disturbing old man, all while a series of high-profile kidnappings is putting his town in the news.
I gotta tell you, the funny thing about life is, it’s weird how you think a thing will impress people and it doesn’t, but then something else will. I have only shared this info about a potential Netflix deal with a very small handful of close friends and family the past year. Having kept this info close to the vest, I assumed not too many people knew but holy crap, once it got out that the Finnster was involved, it came to my attention that the BQB friends and fam network has more leaky holes than a siv, because I am, quite literally, no word of a lie, getting damn calls like the one below every day. No one in my small social circle was impressed I had a movie deal under way, but once it came out that this famous ferret faced kid was involved, it was like I became the second coming. (It’s ok, I got permission to call him a ferret face. “We like the cut of your jib, BQB,” they said. “Do your thing,” they said. We’ll see how long that lasts.)
SIDENOTE: OK I’m sorry I called you a ferret face, Finn, but it’s this blog, so everyone gets made fun of here with me being the biggest butt of all the jokes, pun intended.
RANDOM DUDE: “BQB! Hi! This is So and So. Remember me?”
ME: Who?
Dude: So and so! You know! I sat behind you in third grade. I ate all my boogers and stole your lunch money. We were thick as thieves!
Me: WTF?
Dude: Ah, BQB you old kidder. Anyhoo, I made the mistake of mentioning I was in third grade with a guy that knows Finn Wolfhard.
ME: I don’t know him. Never met him.
Dude: Even so, my daughters wont shut up about it. Any chance you could get them a meeting? Maybe he could pose for some selfies and sign some autographs?
ME: Dude, sign my ass. :Click:
OK, I never was that rude. I let everyone down gently by reminding them, hello, I have never met this freaking kid. Yes, I’m even nice to the bullies who used to throw spitballs at the back of my head in school and now pretend like that never happened and that we were best of friends because they want me to intro their kids to Finn F’N Wolfhard.
And yes, God help me, ex-girlfriends including the literal one I thought I would marry only for her to tell me to drop dead and never contact me again, they tracked me down, found my number, call me up to ask if I can arrange a meeting between their kids and Finn.
Actually, they start high. Can I arrange a meeting between their kids, Finn and all of the freaking Stranger Things kids plus Winona Ryder and David Harbour but if that’s not possible then just Finn is ok. Oh, really? Just Finn is OK? Thanks Ex-Girlfriend Who Dumped Me Over Nonsense 20 years ago and left my life a shambles. That’s really nice of you to say that Just Finn would be ok to meet your ugly mutant offspring.
Sigh. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called her kids mutants. They’re blameless in all this. Ugly? Well, facts are facts. Oh, alright. Fine. They’re not ugly…that I know of. They could be. I mean, they share genetic material with their mother so there’s a statistical probability that…you know what? I’ll shut up.
“BQB write one of your patented, non-sensical, rambling blog posts to tell everyone about the movie,” the Netflix suits said.
Mission accomplished.
Anyway, without further ado, see below for what you’re all waiting for. Finn’s early test screenings where he reads his lines which, well, they’re my lines! I wrote them and it’s pretty cool. My agent tells me that Finn’s agent tells her that this has the potential to be a good project for Finn, that though he’s already super famous between Stranger Things and Ghostbusters, this will give him a starring vehicle where he gets a lot of screen time to be himself outside of a science-fiction role, so whodathunk a schmuck like me could make that happen?
First, let me hand it to this franchise. At a time when brick and mortar movie theaters are dying on the vine, these flicks put butts in seats. My local cinema, usually sparse on any other night, was packed to the rafters tonight, with nerds of all ages dressed in Ghostbusting outfits, ready to enjoy the show. That’s not bad for a 40 year old movie series.
I went into this expecting great disappointment, but I was pleasantly surprised. IMO, it’s very good and I advise all 3.5 of you that it is worth your time.
Why did I think it would be poopy? A) The last two installments weren’t so hot – i.e. Lady Ghostbusters of 2016 and Ghostbusters: Afterlife of 2021. Actually, I thought 75 percent of Afterlife was a decent movie with the late Egon Spengler’s grandkids, daughter and her BF coming together with friends to solve the mystery of Egon’s last ghost hunting case only to SPOILER ALERT just copy the ending of the original film in the last 25 percent of the movie. Lame.
B) The reviews of this installment were awful. All the critics warned their readers that they’d basically seen piles of poop with more charisma. I was surprised the reviews were that bad – I mean, surely it had some redeeming qualities, right? But no. The critics hate this movie.
So, for some reason, boredom, or just loyalty to a franchise I have loved since my youth, I went to see a movie I was sure would suck but to my surprise, it was really, really good, so those critics can go lick Slimer’s greasy green taint for all I care. Was that too much? Sorry. That felt like too much.
The plot? The Spengler family from the last film has moved to NYC to take over ghostbusting operations out of the famous firehouse their patriarch Egon and his BFFS once operated out of. The fam includes Mom/Callie (Carrie Coon), step-dad Gary (Paul Rudd), daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and son, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard).
Ex-EPA dickless pencilneck from the original film Walter Peck (William Atherton) is now, horror of horrors, the Mayor of NYC and continues his anti-Ghostbusters hard-on, using his office to make the lives of our favorite proton pack wielders harder than ever.
Meanwhile, all the superfluous kid friends of the Spengler fam have come to NYC in various capacities, either working for Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) in his well-funded, super-high tech ghostbusting operation, or with Ray Stantz (Dan Akyroyd) on his YouTube show about paranormal activity.
Double meanwhile, the ecto-containment unit aka ghost prison where the ghostbusters have been depositing ghosts for 40 years is full to capacity and Winston needs to put his top nerds on the case before the ghosts make a break for it.
Triple meanwhile, creepy weirdo Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) sells an old relic he finds in his dead granny’s belongings to Ray’s occult shop, thus starting a chain of events that leads to an ancient demon with the power to scare humans so bad that they literally freeze to death, being busted loose.
It’s up to the Spenglers to save the day, with assistance of some old familiar faces. Akroyd and Hudson get a great deal of screentime and fans will be happy to know that their roles are pretty integral to the plot. Bill Murray is briefly in it in the middle, and then briefly in it at the end. Critics say he phoned his lines in but honestly, I don’t think those critics understand his deadpan sarcasm as his perfectly time one-liners brought down the house with the audience I watched it with. Annie Potts reprises her role as Jeanine Melnitz, the Ghostbusters’ secretary, but she gets to suit up this time.
You know, my complaint about Ghostbuster sequels has always been that the success of the original had very little to do with ghosts. The original was less about things that go bump in the night and more about four guys who saw a need that desperately needed to be met, developed new technology to meet that need and against all odds, started a business to provide a valuable public service. Along the way, they deal with naysayers, bureaucratic red tape, and the fact that the science they are dealing with is very theoretical and could blow themselves the eff up at any time. This all led to good comedy as well as to the audience rooting for the underdog.
Ghostbusters 2 managed to capture some of that underdog vibe but the last two modern sequels didn’t really capture it. They tried to focus more on the ghosts and on villains working with the ghosts but the problem is, and sure this sounds silly for a film called “Ghostbusters” but the original’s popularity just had very little to do with ghosts.
But here they managed to get some things right. They created a villain that was very scary and made stakes that were quite high. They captured some of that underdog charisma by having Peck breathe down the heroes’ necks again. They brought back the old guard ghostbusters and treated them with respect. Sure, we would have loved to have seen more of Murray but all three out of still living Ghostbusters plus their office worker got their turn to shine.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If they can make more like this, the franchise might have a future yet.
Boy, am I ever tired of hearing this one, 3.5 readers. In fact, I’m so tired, that’s me above, shouting into my iconic bullhorn.
Iconic! Everything is so iconic! So and so is sooooo iconic. This actor is iconic. That actress is iconic. That singer is iconic. That athlete is iconic. This person is iconic. That person is iconic. That outfit is iconic. That dog is iconic. That cat is iconic. Look at my breakfast! It is so iconic! My cornflakes are so iconic! My scrambled eggs? You better believe they’re iconic! Oh boy a few hours later I will poop it all out and those poops? Iconic!
Usually you can trace a trend like this to the source. Someone famous said it or something but its just like every nimrod got together and decided “iconic” was the new thing. It’s someone decided to make fetch happen but it actually happened. WTF? Why is iconic so iconic?
Icon defined (according to the iconic Oxford dictionary, which is very iconic) = “a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or worthy of veneration (veneration defined as great respect or reverence.”
So, in another words, someone or something to be worshipped. Is that what we’re doing now? We got rid of God and we’re replacing him with dum-dum celebrities and stupid bricka-brack? “Oh, did you hear the latest Dua Lipa song? She’s so iconic? Mmm, these truffles are so iconic! Hold on, I have to take an iconic call on my iconic iPhone! Hello? Iconic person here. Who’s calling? Are you iconic?”
Everyone is saying that everything is iconic but no one says that someone or something is an icon because that would essentially be giving up the goose. It would be admitting that this is all blasphemous. No one says that skinny waif Ariana Grande who probably only eats three iconic almonds a year is an icon. No, that would be going too far. Then you’d be saying she’s a deity. So, people say she’s iconic. Like a deity. That’s ok. That’s fine with everyone. Jesus died for our sins but Ariana sings pop songs so you know, she’s to be worship liked Jesus.
Think I’m joking? Here’s an alternate definition of “icon” provided by the Iconic Oxford Dictionary, which is iconic:
“a painting of Jesus Christ or another holy figure, typically in a traditional style on wood, venerated and used as an aid to devotion the Byzantine and other Eastern Churches.”
That’s right. Icons are also paintings of Jesus and other holy figures – relics that are worshipped by religious people to demonstrate their piety and everybody is just throwing “iconic” around. “Oh blah blah blah, I’m an idiot and I think this spaghetti is so tasty its iconic and did you catch that TV show on Netflix? It was so iconic and OMG this new Halsey single is so freaking iconic.”
I’m not joking. Sometimes when I absolutely have to I venture out of my hermit cave and wade through the unwashed masses and I listen to the stupid millennials. It may not even be the stupid millennials anymore. Who is the generation after the stupid millennials? Whatever. They’re probably stupid too.
Anyway I listen, not that I’m eavesdropping but because they’re loud and obnoxious so you can’t help it and they’re always “iconic” this and “iconic” that. My goldish is iconic. These flaming hot cheatos are iconic. Those socks are iconic.
I hear it on the radio. I hear it in podcasts. People say it in stupid YouTube videos. It is all over social media. I can’t take the iconic saturation anymore.
Put on your dress and run from the mob, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review of this classic film.
SPOILER WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUND. If you haven’t seen it yet, and you’ve only had 65 years to do so, I’d suggest seeing it first, then come back here to read and discuss.
I’ve been meaning to watch this flick for awhile now. Why? Because YouTube of all places has been telling me to. I’ve developed an interest in Broadway shows as of late and there’s a new one based on this classic film. Watching showtune clips gave way to clips of this flick that left me in hysterics and finally, I got around to watching the whole shebang on HBO Max. You can too if you have it.
The set-up? In 1929 Prohibition Era Chicago, an illegal speakeasy (i.e. a club where banned alcohol flows freely) is raided thanks to a tip by police informant Toothpick Charlie. Spats Colombo (George Raft) doesn’t take kindly to rats in his outfit, so he and his boys rub TC and his boys out.
Alas, down on their luck jazz musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) were in the wrong place in the wrong time and accidentally witnessed the entire tommy gun session. They swear they won’t tell anyone but Spats doesn’t like to leave loose ends and so a hot pursuit begins.
The Jazzsters need to get out of town and fast. The only way out? Donning wigs, makeup and dresses and joining an all-female big band on a train trip to Florida. Hilarity ensues as Joe is very uncomfortable with the get-up, opting to keep it simple and going with “Josephine” so as to not stray too far from his real name, Joe. Meanwhile, Jerry gets comically too comfortable with the situation, lets his imagination run wild and while Joe thought Jerry would call himself Geraldine (thus keeping it simple), Jerry calls himself Daphne and gets way too elaborate.
On the ride, the dudes are on sensory overload. As he ogles all the women in their underwear, Jerry remarks to Joe that he feels like his childhood dream of being a kid locked overnight in a candy store, free to feast on all the sweets without repercussion. Joe, a bit more sensible, reminds Jerry to “go on a diet” lest they get discovered, have to come out of hiding and Spats gives them a bad case of lead poisoning.
The lads meet Sugar Kane (the one and only Marilyn Monroe), a ukulele player and singer in the band. Joe is smitten but Sugar relates that her whole life, she’s has nothing but trouble dating lousy bum saxophone players. Joe as Josephine listens to Sugar’s tale and sympathizes but secretly is miffed that his true self, Joe, doesn’t stand a chance, seeing as how Sugar has sworn off bum musicians and has pledged that once she gets to Florida, she’ll only date well-respected millionaires.
Further hi-jinx ensue in sunny Florida. “Daphne” i.e. Jack Lemmon in drag, is relentlessly pursued by pervy millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown), who won’t take no for answer. At first, no is Daphne’s only answer until Osgood proposes and Daphne/Jerry falls in love, obviously not with Osgood but with Osgood’s money, fantasizing about bilking the old perv for a big settlement and fat alimony checks once Osgood realizes he’s been duped into marrying a dude and demands a divorce. Joe reminds Jerry that, you know, there are laws against that sort of thing. Hey, it’s a movie made in 1959 about 1929 after all.
Double meanwhile, Joe disguises himself as an eccentric billionaire, claiming to be the heir to the Shell Oil company fortune, and only referring to himself as “Shell Oil Jr.” He dons a yachtsman’s outfit complete with the hat and speaks with a phony Cary Grant accent, all to impress Sugar.
The fun climaxes when it turns out the mafia has a yearly Florida retreat under the guise of “Friends of the Italian Opera.” Jerry and Joe spot Spats and manage to hide just in time to avoid being rubbed out. Alas, the big boss of all American organized crime, Little Bonaparte (Nehemiah Persoff doing an impression of Mussolini as a mobster) thinks Spats went too far and draw too much heat on the organization when he rubbed out Toothpick Charlie back in Chicago, so he has his men rub Spats and Spats’ goons out.
And…boy, Joe and Jerry and the mob need to stop meeting like this because they just witnessed another murder! So off on the lam they go again. Jerry as Daphne accepts Osgood’s proposal just to get safe passage aboard his yacht and get the heck out of Florida. He convinces Osgood to bring Joe and Sugar along as bridesmaids.
At some earlier point, Sugar discovered Joe was a fraud but has since forgiven him, realizing that deep down he’s not such a bad guy. You do have to suspend disbelief and you know, forget the part about how he pretended to be a billionaire just to get into her pants. But anyway, the truth is out and they’re in love now and all is forgiven.
Safe on the launch boat and on the way to the yacht, Daphne/Jerry has a heart and realizes he doesn’t really want to defraud Osgood for his cash. He comes up with a series of excuses as to why he and Osgood can’t get married, hoping that Osgood will dump him/her and be the bad guy. I smoke, I’ve been living with a saxophone player, I can never have children, the list of excuses goes on and on while Osgood, each time, says he doesn’t care and will accept Daphne.
Finally, Jerry removes his wig, drops the girl voice and says in his regular voice, “I’m a man” and Osgood ends the film on a humdinger of a line – “Nobody’s perfect.”
It’s funny on so many levels, especially when you consider this movie was released in 1959. It’s funny if you’ve ever been in a situation where you want out of a relationship, but you want to let the other person down easily, so you come up with all these criticisms of yourself, but they won’t take the bait, and Osgood’s that hard up that he won’t let Daphne go even upon realizing that she is a he.
But then when you REALLY think about it, yeah, it becomes obvious that Osgood knew Daphne was a dude all along and was totally into it. The movie ends with a befuddled Jack Lemmon mumbling to himself in confusion, trying to make sense of what is happening, trying to figure out why this dude won’t let him go even after learning that he is a dude and being shocked to realize that, you know, this probably means that Osgood is totally gay.
Big for 1959. I’m surprised they got away with it.
So, there you have it. I gave the whole movie away but in my defense, I did give a spoiler warning.
Tony Curtis is great as the brains of the duo, the guy that keeps reminding his partner to commit to character lest they get shot by pursuing mafiosos. Jack Lemmon, who was nominated for an academy award for this role, is hilarious as he commits way too much, at times forgetting that he’s a dude. The scene where he dances about the hotel room, periodically stopping to shake a pair of maracas (he’d just come in from a long night of salsa dancing) and tells Joe about his plan to marry and divorce Osgood for a pile of money had test audiences laughing so hard that they stuck the maracas in so Lemmon could shake them for a few beats between lines to give everyone a chance to laugh as he moved from line to line (so I read online).
And Marilyn? What can we say about dear, sweet Marilyn. How sad she died so soon. I have to believe she was chosen for this film because there was some underlying message that while some dudes might like to dress up like ladies, nothing beats the real thing. As Jerry fumbles about in a dress and in heels, he constantly complains about the draft on his undercarriage, how he feels like he’s constantly about to fall over – how do women put up with it all? How do they do it? Women move “like jello on springs” i.e. there’s a gracefully sashaying to it all that men can’t replicate. Add to that Jerry/Daphne gets unwanted gropes and advancements and complains about having to fend off Osgood’s undesired perversions and you’d think this movie was made in 2024 with how it puts men in women’s shoes and asks them to sympathize with what the fairer sex has to go through.
Marilyn really was more than a dumb, blonde bimbo. She was the heart of this picture and really brought it home. The underlying theme is Joe and Jerry put on dresses and wigs and sort of got a glimpse about what its like to be a woman, but Sugar has to live with it daily – all the hopes, dreams, disappointments that go along with it. It was woke before anyone knew what woke was.
I have yet to see the Broadway remake so I’ll reserve judgment. I can already tell based on previews that at least one of the dudes comes to embrace drag as in “Oh wow having to put on this dress because the mafia was chasing me helped me to discover I was really a chick in a dude’s body all along.” I guess its 2024 so the showrunners feel they have to do that but I don’t know…there’s a lot of humor in the original with Joe and Jerry not really wanting to dress up like chicks at all. Yes, true, Jerry got a little too comfortable with it but no, he never wanted to bang Osgood. He just wanted his money, but then had a heart and decided not to put the old coot through that.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. This movie has inspired me to start watching other Marilyn Monroe movies, so I’ll let you 3.5 readers know how this goes. And I’m not sure what praise from this blog is worth, but praise to Billy Wilder who made this and several comedies like this in that era.
SIDENOTE: As I watched this, I couldn’t help but see it as an early roadmap to many of the zany comedies we know and love today. Many a comedic film finds the protagonists having to embrace some ridiculous premise. From Weekend at Bernie’s, where the dudes had to pretend like their dead boss was alive, to Me, Myself and Irene where Renee Zellwegger had to go on the run with schizophrenic Jim Carrey – humor is found when characters have to put up with something comically stupid but there’s no way out but through so they just keep putting up with X absurd premise until its conclusion. I don’t know that Some Like It Hot was the first comedic film to do this but it was definitely an early adopter that paved the way and made it popular.
Double sidenote – After watching this movie and googling, I learned Tony Curtis is Jamie Lee Curtis’ father. IDK how I was a movie fan all these years and didn’t know that.
BQB here with a review of this early 90s flick that it has taken me 32 years to see.
The 1990s were an exceptional time for movies and I was a film buff even as a young lad, so it surprised me to no end when in the 2010s, parody after parody of Alec Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” speech began surfacing on YouTube.
Really? There was a movie in the early 90s starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alan Alda about a bunch angry, depressed, sociopathic, high-strung, stressed-out junk real estate salesmen and I’m just finding out about it now?
Alas, it took me at least another decade to get around to watching it until this weekend but boy, am I ever glad I did. There’s not a lot to the story. It’s more of a mood caught on camera than a film per se. Like I said, I didn’t even know it existed until 20 years later and only watched it 30 years later, but it may very well be the greatest performances given by all of the actors above. Well, to be honest, though Spacey is good in it (and forgive me for complimenting him but this came out long before the alleged perversions) his role is palpable yet not as prominent as the others.
So, what’s it all about?
On a dark and stormy night, a man simply called Blake (Alec Baldwin) is sent from the corporate office to Premiere Properties, a seedy boiler room in New York City where washed up sales-jerks while away the hours, living off commissions earned by duping morons into buying useless properties in Arizona. You’d almost feel sorry for these chumps if you weren’t constantly reminded that their job is to bilk other chumps.
Blake informs the salesmen that they suck so bad at their jobs that they’re all fired but they’re in luck, if you can call it that. They have one week to redeem themselves and prove themselves worthy of being rehired by logging in boku sales numbers. Winner gets a Caddy. Second place? Box of steak knives. Third place. Go home. You’re fired. Don’t like it? Eff you. Go home and cry to your wife and kids. You know how the speech goes.
The sales-dudes are irate to be spoken to this way. Have you ever suffered through any sort of humiliation at work? We all have at some point. Even if you can honestly say you’ve put in 20 or 30 years of relatively good service and been rewarded with good management, I’m sure at some point you suffered through a boss looking to make a name for himself, who barked non-sensical orders at you, who expected you to deliver everything while giving you absolutely nothing to work with, who demanded you volunteer free overtime, working late into the night but don’t you dare be late the next morning and so on.
Sometimes, these bosses have the working stiff by the balls and when they know it and the squeeze too hard, its enough to make a man go berserk. Three out of four do just that. Shelley “the Machine” Levine (Jack Lemmon), Dave Moss (Ed Harris) and George Aaronow (Alan Arkin) all flip their lids in their own way.
Moss and Aaronow are middle aged with families while Levine is elderly with a wife in the hospital and mounting bills as a result. None can afford to lose a job and all fear they’d never be able to compete with youngsters in the job market.
Levine, once a veteran salesman but now has hit a slump, pledges to get out there and kick ass. Lemmon was infamous in his youth in the 1960s but this role really brought him into the modern era. The old guy is just so sad and desperate that he reeks of it and he deserves an Oscar for the way he composes himself, going from weepy sad sack to composing himself on the phone so that he can pretend to be a high-falutin’ big shot, quoting facts and figures to chumps he’s trying to reel in, even going so far as to pretend to talk to a non-existent secretary in the background, asking her to book flights to all sorts of great places because, you know, he’s such a successful salesman, after all and hasn’t steered a client wrong yet.
Meanwhile, Moss vows revenge and plots to steal the highly coveted, so-called Glengarry leads. These are leads the company has bought because apparently, long before the internet made it easier to separate a chump from his cash, sales companies would pay other sales companies for a list of their marks. It’s a running issue throughout the film that the sales-jerks are irate with the company for holding out on the leads, that they won’t give them the names of people who have a strong likelihood of buying, but the company’s philosophy is these guys are losers who can’t even hoodwink elderly pensioners into buying so they’d probably just screw it up if they company turned over names they paid top dollar for.
I don’t know. I’m not in sales. In a way it makes sense but then again, if no one is calling these big fish and trying then why bother paying to know who they are in the first place? The main complaint of the sales-chumps is that it was uncalled for for Blake to chew them out like they’re a bunch of idiots because they’re doing the best with the lousy leads they have and if the company would just turn over the good Glengarry leads they would call them and make the sales but the company won’t do it. It’s confusing so I guess imagine a construction company that won’t buy its workers any hammers or nails or tools of any kind but still says, “Build a house by Friday, idiots, or you’re fired and by the way, we have a whole warehouse filled with tools we just think you’re too stupid to use them so figure out how to build a house with dirt.”
Aaronow is angry and repulsed by all of this, made to worry even more that Moss told him about his plan to steal the leads. He wants no part of it but Moss tells him it’s too late. He’s already a part of it. He listened to Moss talk about it and if he isn’t going to the boss to tell, then he’s an accessory, even if he does nothing, which worries George sick.
Pacino’s character, Richard Roma, has the best philosophy for making it through life and tough times at work and I dare say one scene in a Chinese restaurant where he’s explaining it all is better than his entire body of work in the Godfather. It sounds too simple to be true, but to dumb it down, Roma essentially tells one of his clients, James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce) not to sweat it. Life is just a big series of stuff that happens to you. Some of it you want to happen. Some of it you don’t. Some of it you’re glad happened. Some of it you wish hadn’t happened. Just stop worrying about it. Much of it is out of your control. Forget about what you can’t control and focus on what you can control. Let go of the past and focus on today and tomorrow.
And thus, while all the other salesmen spend the whole movie running around like their heads are on fire, trying to either meet Alec Baldwin’s outrageous sales demands or to get revenge on him, Roma takes a screw it all attitude. Life is just a bunch of stuff that happens, so he’ll do some stuff and see what happens. He’ll keep his cool. He’ll make some calls. He’ll try to make some sales. If he makes some, that’ll be great. If he doesn’t, whatever. He’ll find another job. Or he won’t. Life is so uncontrollable and unpredictable you’ll worry yourself into oblivion if you try to figure it all out.
Pacino scores one of the more memorable lines of the movie outside of Baldwin’s rant. Irate over a screw-up, he tells office manager John Williamson (Kevin Spacey) that his job is to support the sales staff and to not sabotage them, to work with them and not against them. Truthfully, throughout the film, and especially with the act of holding back the leads, it feels Williamson is working against his team, even though he’s following orders from his corporate overlords.
If you’ve ever had a boss who demands results, yet ties your hands behind your back, tells you to perform but you better not do A, B, or C or X, Y or Z and don’t think about asking for help with this or that…I’d say show them a clip of Pacino’s speech in this movie but they wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Ultimately, there’s no happy ending here. There’s certainly no romance. There’s no women. There’s no traditional Hollywood story. If it were a traditional story, one of the sales-jerks would find a way to meet the quota and save the day while simultaneously exposing the outfit for the fraud that it is but no, everyone starts out mired in purgatory and everyone ends up mired in deeper purgatory. Such is how it goes for those stuck in gigs they despise, especially in the :::shudder:::: dreaded private sector.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Note it’s based on a David Mamet play and essentially is like a play put on film. Watch on netflix.
Don’t you love it when a movie you expect to be poop turns out to be gold?
Well, ok, silver. Alright, bronze. Still worth a watch though.
BQB here with a review.
When I read the premise of Amazon’s “Ricky Stanicky,” I thought it sounded very stupid indeed. Three young friends in the late 1990s blame all of their mischief on an imaginary friend named Ricky Stanicky. Teachers. Cops. Parents. Angry neighbors. Whenever the boys are in trouble, the boys simply tell them that Ricky Stanicky did whatever rotten deed just transpired and even worse, he just ran that-away. The adults have a scapegoat to blame and the boys are off the hook, scot-free. The rouse works so well that they continue their fake friendship with “Ricky” well into their adulthood, imagining wild and crazy stories of stupid things that Ricky did to explain to their wives, families, co-workers and bosses why they can’t do something, be somewhere, or take part in some dumb thing they really don’t want to do. “Oh sorry, I’d really love to go to your boring thing but you’ll never believe what that jackass Stanicky roped me into.” Works like a charm.
Alas, the jig is up when the friends overplay their hand in adulthood. Friends Dean (Zac Efron), JT (Andrew Santino) and Wes (Jermaine Fowler) claim Ricky is desperately clinging onto life due to a raging case of testicular cancer and needs his bros to fly to their side. In reality, they’re flying to Atlantic City to party hearty rather than attend JT’s wife’s baby shower.
When Mrs. JT goes into labor early, Wes cracks under pressure and almost confesses to the lie but Dean saves the day and explains that Ricky made the whole ball cancer thing up just to get the bros to come visit him to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the removal of his previous ball, also from ball cancer, and apparently the boys invent lies about Ricky’s gonads to get out of doing stuff a lot. Now non-existent Ricky is in the doghouse and Dean and JT’s wives want to give the prick a piece of their minds. Thus, they demand the friends produce Ricky in the flesh at once so they can chew his ass out and rip him a new one.
This is a tall order since Ricky is imaginary, but leave it to sleazy lounge singer Rod Rimestead (John Cena) to save the day. The bro-heims hire Rod to pose as the Rickster and take the fall.
All seems well except Rod’s personal life sucks so bad that he actually enjoys being Ricky so much that he fully embraces the imaginary life the boys have built for Ricky over the course of several years, wielding these lies to get a big time job, make lots of money and friends, completely invade their world and refuse to go away. This might sound far-fetched, but in today’s social media age, maybe it isn’t, for the lads have spent years building Ricky a robust social media presence full of tales of impressive globe trotting adventures, which Rod (as Ricky) uses to woo and impress his way to the top.
Thus the boys are left with a conundrum – how to extricate this poser from their lives without confessing to their own complicity in the fraud?
As I watched this film, I felt a certain sense of familiarity. The completely ridiculous premise that the film sticks to like glue, no matter how absurd it gets. The potty humor. The Providence, RI setting. “Boy, this sure feels a lot like one of those old Farrelly Bros comedies from the late 90s and early 2000s that I used to know and love.”
Sure enough, it was. Turns out that Prime gave on of the Bros a deal and said bro still walks the walk of old school gross out comedy, no easy task in today’s hyper woke age. Older folks like me who remember when comedy films used to be funny will enjoy this one.
True, it’s silly. It won’t go down in history. It will be forgotten in 6 months but its pretty solid with some decent gut busting laughs. Its worth your time.
Can you believe it, 3.5 readers? I have been blogging for an entire decade now. I started ten years ago in March of 2014. Were any of you reading this here at the time? If so, thank you. I really thought there’d be double of you by now, at least 7 readers, but 3.5 is still pretty good.
Did you know Jimmy Hoffa could be hiding in this blog, 3.5 readers? That’s right. He could be somewhere in this website all along and no one would know because only 3.5 people ever read this damn thing.
BQB here with a review.
5 years. 5 long…actually not so long years it took me before I got around to watching this flick. If you told me as a young man I’d wait five years to watch a Scorcese movie starring Pacino and DeNiro, I’d say your out of your mind, but at three and a half hours, who has that kind of time?
Finally, I decided I would never have that long to devote to a movie in one sitting (I nearly wanted to write a stern complaint letter to Marty when I sat down for what I thought would be two hours of Flower Moon only to find I’d unwittingly signed up for a four hour marathon), I set out to watch this movie in 10-20 minute bites over the course of a week, with a watch of the final hour this weekend.
Does it lend as much gravitas to watch it in bits? Maybe not but that’s the only way I could ever get through this thing. Marty is a light touch with the editing scissors in his old age.
But while the more recent Flower Moon could have been easily reduced by half to two hours, this film does contain a lot of interesting snippets of history intermixed with theories (of the conspiracy variety?) vis a vis the death of the infamous union leader.
To be fair, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) did a lot of good in his life, promoting the union movement and convincing companies to put worker safety, retirement, benefits and futures ahead of bottomlines. But there was also some bad, as he did go to jail for fraud.
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
But the movie isn’t so much about Hoffa as the man this flick alleges did him in. Now, I should say up front, no one really knows who killed Hoffa. Technically, no one knows for sure that he died. Officially, we just know he went missing in 1975 and was legally declared dead in 1982 after not being seen for 7 years.
After years of going to war with the Kennedys and sparring with various mafiosos, could he have decided to just run off to the mountains and live out the remainder of his days? Sure, but probably not. He had a pesky habit of publicly challenging his enemies to bring it on and he ain’t goin’ nowhere so he doesn’t really fit the profile of a runner.
So chances are, he was probably forced to take an eternal dirtnap by one goon or another. Do we know that goon whodunnit was Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro)? No, so we have to keep that in mind as we watch this long, long absurdly long film.
The tale is an epic, spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s. Sheeran is a young truck driver with a wife and family, looking to make a little extra money on the side when mobster Russell Buffalino (Joe Pesci) recruits him to do odd illicit jobs. Sheeran eventually moves up the food chain, becomes a close friend of Jimmy Hoffa, graduates from hitman to union leader himself but keeps doing wetwork on the side. I want to say allegedly because WTF do I know but hey, that’s what this movie says, not me, so don’t come after me, Sheeran Estate.
Sheeran is eventually torn between his two close friends, each who had a part in making him a success (or at least rich – if you call being a mobster goon a success). In his old age, Hoffa has stepped on too many toes and many a wiseguy wants him to go, with Russell being the main advocate for his removal (on ice). But Hoffa wants to stay and has the ultimate IDGAF attitude, threats be damned.
Alas, Sheeran will have to make a decision. And I guess I already told you what decision he made (my lawyer says I have to tell you according to this movie) so you don’t have to watch it for three and a half hours, unless you want to. Hey I did say spoiler alert.
The good? I have to hand it to DeNiro and Pacino. Both are men of advanced age yet they still got it. Pesci’s not bad either. You learn a lot about history as Sheeran is presented as sort of the Forrest Gump of the mafia – his alleged hits (hey, I said alleged!) turn the course of many a historical tide while he goes largely unnoticed, which I guess, if you’re a mafioso trying to stay out of a can, is a good thing.
BONUS: Sopranos fans will be happy to see many of the old gang back at it. Forgive me for forgetting the actors names, but I’ll just refer to them by their Sopranos characters – Charmaine, Beansie, Eugene Pontecorvo, Gerry “The Hairdo” Torciano. Apparently, there were some more, so forgive me for not getting to them all and there were some who didn’t make it to the screen but were involved behind the scenes.
Plus if you like Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano has a pretty prominent role.
Also, there are a lot of big name actors who are in it just in supporting roles. For example, Anna Paquin of Sookie Stackhouse fame plays Sheeran’s perpetually shy daughter, and she barely says a word because her character is perpetually shy.
The bad? Even with all the de-aging techniques, from CGI to makeup, it’s very difficult to suspend disbelief and see a 75 year old DeNiro as a young family man early in the film. I’m not sure what could have been done differently. Younger actors could have been cast but we would have been robbed of Pacino and DeNiro starring together. And the challenge of the film is that it covers a 50, almost 60 year period, so even the younger actors are outfitted in bald caps and gray wigs by the end. There was probably no way really to avoid aging and/or de-aging the talent. To that end, the film deserves a lot of credit in the make-up department.
Also, Pacino and DeNiro are two of the most famous Italian-American actors of all time, but they are playing Irish characters. That’s fine by me. I don’t really care about the cultural appropriation hullabaloo, but there are times when Pacino is playing Hoffa, saying things like “I don’t care if those guineas come and get me” and “Don’t Italians name their kids anything but Tony?” that seems silly for one of Hollywood’s most famous Italians to be saying.
If you like history, you’ll love this movie. My only concern is that, you know, no one really knows for sure who killed Hoffa except Hoffa and whoever killed Hoffa. Hoffa obviously can’t tell us and at this late stage, whoever killed Hoffa is probably gone too, whacked by Father Time if his mafia friends and/or rivals didn’t get him (or her I hate to be sexist but it was most likely a him). So it’s an awfully big claim to say that Sheeran killed Hoffa and movies have a tendency to become fact in the minds of the masses and yet how can we ever really know for sure? If he didn’t do it, then this movie is pretty slanderous.
But I suppose we’ll never know for sure what happened and whodunnit unless an unlikely 100 year old witness steps forward with the evidence.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. I’ll hand it to Pesci, DeNiro and Pacino. They’re twice my age and more active than I’ll ever be.
SIDNOTE: I might have been Hoffa in my past life because it feels like everyone’s purpose in life is to constantly annoys me, I take these annoyances very personally, I tell them to eff off yet the come back anyway, I hate bad manners and also I love ice cream.
Across 110th street, I’m bringing this review to my 3.5 readers.
This oldie but goodie popped up on Netflix and I couldn’t help but watch it. IMO, it’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s best though in history, it tends to be forgotten when ranked up against the likes of his more popular works like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
The plot? I’ll be honest, I’ve seen this movie a few times since it first came out in the late 1990s and it still confuses me but my best description is its like The Sting but at a shopping mall and with shopping bags instead of briefcases. Money is changing hands and you’ve got to follow where it’s going.
Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a mid-forties stewardess for an airline that flies between Mexico and California. She makes low-pay and subsidizes her $16,000 a year salary by running cash for illegal gun runner Oddell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson.) Robbie keeps his cash stored in safety deposit boxes at a bank in Mexico to keep it from being confiscated in case he is ever arrested. He brings it up as needed from time to time with Brown’s help and her stewardess gig is the perfect cover.
Or so they thought. ATF agent Ray Nicollette (Michael Keaton) is onto the scam and pinches Jackie on a money run. When Brown is bailed out by grumpy yet kindly, middle-aged bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Nicollette gives her an option – she can either go to jail for a long time or she can help with a sting operation and catch Odell in the act of accepting the illicit cash.
The problem? Jackie could dummy up and do her time but Odell has a bad habit of bailing out past accomplices who have been pinched through Cherry and killing them before they can testify. Cherry sees the pattern and fears he’s being used. Brown sees the pattern and fears she’ll end up DOA like ex-Odell accomplice Beaumont (Chris Tucker).
And so, a crazy, convoluted plot begins, one in which Jackie and Max conspire to bring in the cash, keep it for themselves, yet still somehow con Odell into thinking Jackie is on his side and con the Feds into thinking she’s on their side, fulfill the requirements of the Feds’ sting and get off the hook while evading Odell’s tendency to murder potential witnesses.
Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda round out the cast as Odell’s henchman and girlfriend.
So, where to begin?
Pam Grier was at the height of her career in the 1970s with several funky blacksploitation films. Go check out some of those films and she is truly a foxy mama. However, the 1970s was an era of low standards in Hollywood. Many 70s flicks, when looked at through today’s eyes, come across as glorified student films with all kinds of crazy, nonsensical things going on.
Tarantino loved those films dearly and brought 70s nostalgia to his 90s filmmaking and gave Grier a film made with modern techniques that she so greatly deserved. Though she’ll be remembered for classics like Foxy Brown and Coffy, this movie is a love letter to those films lone gone by. She’s absolutely beautiful in this, a tragic figure, someone who is smart but obviously had some bad breaks, wishes she had achieved more and is finally given a chance to run off with a score that will change everything late in life if everything goes off without a hitch.
Cherry’s character is the same. He’s spent his life running down crooks and is tired of it. He wants out of the bond game and could use a cash infusion. My one criticism is it’s implied early in the film that he’s going to retire after the scam but doesn’t. I can see why he doesn’t but I don’t want to say here so as to not give it away. At least I assume he doesn’t retire. It looks like he doesn’t at the end of the film. The romance between Cherry and Brown is touching and understated, much different than say, the young love you see on film. Young love, the stakes aren’t that high. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll find someone else but Cherry and Brown, you want them to end up together yet understand there are many obstacles in their path. At the same time, they are at an age where this is their last chance for love.
Quite literally, this may be the best movie for all the actors involved. Jackson is legendary but he’s Jackson in every film. He’s Jackson here too but Tarantino creates a menacing character in the form of a man who has spent his whole life amassing a fortune through evil deeds and isn’t about to lose it lying down.
SIDENOTE: Jackson wears a different Kangol hat in every scene in this flick. When I saw it as a young man, I thought those hats were so awesome that I bought a couple, wore them often, then eventually realized I was the only white guy I knew wearing them, felt a bit pretentious and self-conscious and stopped. Alas, I never made them look cool, but Jackson surely did. I’ll be honest though, looking at this movie through modern eyes, I realize, yeah, Kangol probably gave Tarantino a boat load of money to turn this movie into a commercial. In one scene, Jackie and Odell both wear Kangols and its like, come on, even back then no one was wearing that many Kangols.
Tarantino was the great resurrectionist of 70s careers. He did it with Travolta in Pulp Fiction and did it again with Grier and Forster, who was a 70s tough guy. Sadly, I don’t recall Grier going on to do too many things though I think she was in a few more 90s flicks after this. Forster went on to do a ton of movies after this up until his recent passing.
Keaton’s career had cooled in the 90s so this movie was good for him though I’d say his rehash happened more recently.
DeNiro is also legendary but like Jackson, he just plays DeNiro, except he’s different here. He really comes across as a dumb guy who is easily miffed and annoyed by little things. I won’t say how that feeds into the plot.
And then there’s Bridget Fonda. Ahh Bridget. I think this will be the part she is long remembered for. She’s so beautiful and naughty in this. She had a lot of parts in the 90s and then went away and I was sorry to see online that she got fat. Hey, I can’t complain. I’m fat myself. Time is a real SOB. At least she had this movie though. What did I have?
I think this is the first or maybe one of the first movies I saw Chris Tucker in too.
STATUS: Shelf -worthy. God, it feels like I saw this movie yesterday.
Bookshelf Battle 