ONE, TWO, MANY (2008)

Stuttering John Melendez went from being a once-great celebrity-crashing interviewer on The Howard Stern Show to a kind of dare-hire-announcer by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, and watching ONE, TWO, MANY it seems like he never left Stern and had nothing to do with... while this was made... being part of the biggest late night talk show franchise ever... The latter because there are hardly any star cameos here... the kind needed that even, back in the 1970's, guerilla filmmakers like Greydon Clark would insert into his junkyard vehicles to legitimize them... Also, John's basically doing a mid-1990's Stern imitation in the simple plot-line of being obsessed with finding the perfect girl who's the perfect girl because she'll invite another girl to bed... In that he discovers who's the best thing here... who doesn't seem as cheap and contrived as the two-dollar sets that looks as if they dressed the same studio-location into apartment rooms, bathrooms and nightclubs depending on the loose script where John and his slacker buddy hang around New York City...

Enter Bellamy Young, a beautiful actress who has actually done some mainstream vehicles, and she's far too pretty for both the real John and his fictional character loosely based on him... the Stern show attack interview niche-niche fame replaced by a 15-minute run on phone commercials with a monkey... She almost makes ONE, TWO, MANY seem like it's almost a faint replica of the kind of rom-com John seems to be both parodying and celebrating with a barrage of sex-comedy relationship cliches and the kind of nasty-schlock, from one-night-stands to flatulence, that, again, was what Howard Stern pioneered into becoming so commonplace that John's movie comes across as being far more dated than risque... It's questionable why National Lampoon would produce this mess; then again the two movies between their only hits, ANIMAL HOUSE and VACATION, were MOVIE MADNESS and CLASS REUNION, two of the worst raunchy comedies ever created...  But throughout all the garbage, Ms. Young is worthy of so much more, and it's a mystery why she even wasted her time, beauty and talent here at all... but it's John alone who goes down with this ship, with his name literally written all over it.  Rating: 1/2

MANTRAP: STRAW DOGS DOCUMENTARY (2003)

Good, bare-bones documentary on both Straw Dogs the movie, famous and infamous for the double-rape sequence of the ingenue played by Susan George, an active part here, and especially of director Sam Peckinpah, who many... including Dustin Hoffman... wanted replaced... Thank God that didn't happen, because Straw Dogs is Sam Peckinpah's greatest movie, and imaging someone else doing it would be like imaging The Wild Bunch with another director...

And while there's a kind of quick feminist viewpoint of the double-rape sequence, in the movie's actual story, the girl character, Susan George's Amy, wife of Dustin Hoffman's David, had once loved the first man, and always despised and hardly knew the second man... And that second man was played by British bad boy actor Ken Hutchison, the scariest and meanest of this British wild bunch, and seeing him old in 2003, drinking and smoking, is neat because not only did he quit acting in 1999, but he was such a great actor, and doesn't even have a cult status at this point, and really should; while other interviewees included are Del Henney, the first man, who Amy once loved... and veteran actors then-and-now Peter Vaughan and TP McKenna... And plenty of memories of Dustin Hoffman himself, a very deep, thoughtful, artistic man, you can tell: The only downside is towards the end, when they start to psychoanalyze Peckinpah to a ridiculous fashion, insinuating that the violence of his movies (especially Straw Dogs) reflected his own deep-rooted hatred toward the women in his life: something they NEVER do to violent movie directors like Quentin Tarantino or a slew of others who Peckinpah influenced... Thankfully, at this navel-gazing point of the doc, it's all finished: they basically saved the worst for last. Grade: B

A FEW FORGIVABLE FLAWS OF 'MAD MEN' (2007)

MAD MEN is a lot like BREAKING BAD, other than both being the greatest cable shows ever, with extremely flawed leading men who are borderline villains, or perhaps anti-heroes... with blonde wives fighting back, and being hated by audiences for it... But MAD MEN never seems to completely know where its true strengths lie, and that's in Jon Hamm as ad-man Don Draper, who, through two marriages, has flings on the side and, sadly, these become more important than the business at hand, which includes creative pitches to non-creative companies where, especially during rejections, we see the true power, and color, of Don Draper... 

More of this was needed to make MAD MEN a truly perfect series like BREAKING BAD and less of a nighttime-soap opera, despite an abundance of middle-aged women viewers dreaming they could initially sleep with the square-jawed Hamm to then be cheated-on... a less-is-more actor who has never been able to get near this kind of intensity on the big screen, for which... like Bryan Cranston... he doesn't seem suited quite like television... And other flaws include the producer's son in a reoccurring role (as a creepy kid turned robotic teen) that tilts the cringe meter, stopping the show in its tracks while the central ad men, other than Draper and scene-stealing Roger played by John Slattery, master of the one-line quip... are really boys, seeming far too young for their very grownup jobs... In fact, if you look at pictures of the real life ad-men: they are mostly in their forties, or else look that way, as opposed to being counter-culture whiners against capitalism... which wouldn't quite work in this kind of job (only Joel Murray as normal-looking every-man Freddy genuinely resembles one of the true advertising guys)... Also, the series has to flow evenly with not only the soapy bedroom diversions, but true stories taking shape, from JFK to MLK's assassinations, in which these fictional characters flow through history like Jack and Rose on the TITANIC... And in this, sometimes the whole series seems geared towards a political agenda of sorts, more than bordering on cliches and generic left-wing platitudes... the teenagers are all dropout hippies who are smarter than the parents who raised (and spoiled) them, all soldiers die in war, and every businessman has 100 affairs: with supermodels, no less... But for the most part, what works is that Don Draper himself stays the same, with the slick short hair and perfectly-suited stiff suit while those around him progressively wear late-1960's-driven costumes (one major reason the early seasons are the best)... And really, when it comes right down to it, MAD MEN is about one person despite all that's going on around him. Rating: ****1/2

FONZO (2020)

Title: CAPONE Year: 2020 Rates: *

For all the people who loved The Untouchables and thought that old Al Capone had to pay for the rest of his life rotting in prison because of that tax evasion thing, there's a neglected part of history that many would be both surprised and then let-down about... being that Capone actually got out and lived about a decade, and with money to boot... The footnote of that is that he suffered from dementia and wasn't all there, which was actually only the last couple years after the first couple years after lockup...

Most are praising Tom Hardy's performance because it's hard not to praise Tom Hardy, but he's all makeup and imitation here, nothing else, really... Matt Dillon plays his former mentor Johnny and seems in even more of a cruise control mode than Hardy's Capone, who at least has a reason being he's so messed up mentally... But nothing much happens except for showing a guy getting what he deserved after he got what he deserved by the far more entertaining story of his peak as a gangster... one scene as he lies in bed, he... well let's just say the audience gets to actually watch brown stuff spraying from his rear-end and it's not supposed to be hilarious but it seems like something out of Neighbors or Old School, and, anyhow, Josh Trask, poor fella, he just can't catch a break... The "It Guy Director" in Hollywood had a chance here, after failing at the top, to prove himself with arthouse but... there's simply nobody home here, and the lights aren't even on.

ROAD TO PERDITION

title: ROAD TO PERDITION
year: 2002 rating: **

At the very end, the 12-year old son of a hit man, who had spent six weeks on the road with his father, on the run, narrates that he lived a lifetime on that particular journey. And while it feels a lifetime length-wise, hardly anything really happens to make the viewer agree that it was quite a ride. But that's not without some anticipation along the way. Like Hanks' Michael Sullivan, a former "enforcer" for Paul Newman's 1930's-era gangster chief John Rooney, having to rob a string of banks and to teach his son to be a getaway driver in the process. But what follows is a quick, much-too-easily-pulled-off montage. If this were made twenty-years earlier, those scores would have to provide thrills, action, suspense, but here it's superfluous filler. Only Jude Law as a menacing, photo-snapping creep on Hanks' trail is memorable... and we're simply supposed to hate him for wanting to kill the endearing mainstream star who always wins.  

Meanwhile, unlike its obvious cinematic muse, MILLER'S CROSSING, the mob boss and his supposed best friend/hit man never seem all that close to begin with, unlike Albert Finney and Gabriel Byrne, who are like inseparable father and son. One scene where Newman and Hanks play the same song on the same piano may as well have been danced on a giant floorboard-keyboard and their friendship would have felt more, well... BIG or something... so that the inevitable betrayal (involving Newman's trigger-happy son, a pre-Bond Daniel Craig) would actually mean something when things turn sour. But all there is is the praised dark-room GODFATHER style cinematography, but set in the rain-soaked East Coast Great Depression: For that, just watch MILLER'S CROSSING and it's all there... With something actually inside above and beyond this coming-of-age, violent revenge picture that isn't innocent/moving enough or intense/thrilling enough to successfully blend both. 

THE L WORD: LIGHT MY FIRE EPISODE

Season 3 Episode 4 2006

You gotta love THE L WORD for the surprisingly few times it takes on then-President George W. Bush for not allowing anyone to bash him, when in fact he was the most bashed President in history (until now... Trump) and didn't care one bit, unlike Obama... say something about him you're a racist...

It's just funny how the Left wants to be the underdog and the overlord both, and this preachy episode as Mrs. Bette Goes to Washington is made up for by a delicious seduction by Dana Delaney as a supporter of Gays... And even John Kerry is mentioned as a supporter of her support, which was timely as Kerry had run against the man who gets bashed on a show that says he never allows it... Too funny, huh?

SMALL TIME CROOKS

Year: 2000
Rating: **1/2

Without giving credit, Woody Allen basically remakes LARCENY INC. where, in that Edward G. Robinson B&W crime-caper, thieves dig from underneath their strategically purchased suitcase store to a bank: The store winds up making more money than they'd have stolen, and Woody changes the business to cookies while SMALL TIME CROOKS plays so with many old movie cliches it seems more a parody than a remake...

Woody shifts from his usual neurotic movie-loving intellectual to a contentedly simple-minded ex con (the biggest stretch is when he thinks Humphrey Bogart's gold seeking SIERRA MADRE set classic is titled TREASURE ISLAND). And he's definitely not alone: Wife Tracey Ullman (the cookie-maker) provides the buried lead, especially during a very abrupt second-act shift as LARCENY morphs into MY FAIR LADY as Hugh Grant plays an intellectual art dealer doubling as a very subtle shyster...

Perhaps too genuine to be genuinely crooked, or all that interesting beyond good looks to fool a street savvy dame, he's constantly holding his proper, pompous tongue, giving loaded etiquette lessons to the new-rich ex-stripper, who has no education and even less taste in clothes, furniture — you name it. And while, overall, SMALL TIME CROOKS is a guilty pleasure, there's genuine heart in director/actress Elaine May as Ullman's kooky cousin...

Whether strolling along waterfront walkways from ANNIE HALL and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or watching TV while admiring James Cagney's Cody Jarrett for loving his infamous mother — Elaine and Woody have far more chemistry (and funnier one-liners) than the frenzied marrieds, whose HONEYMOONERS banter gets annoying, quick. And good news/bad news: Woody and Elaine returned years later, as a married couple in the Amazon Series, CRISIS IN SIX SCENES. But it made this movie seem like MANHATTAN by comparison, or, more fitting, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, Woody's first and funniest role as a criminal.

THE L WORD

Year: 2004
cast: Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirschner, Erin Daniels, Malaya Rivera Drew
Rating: ****

A perfectly cast ensemble of different personalities that both clash and connect with an equal balance and, like any soap operatic series it keeps the viewer interested in the characters that are all stuck in the quagmire of maze-like relationship purgatory. The only problem is how political the show can get, targeting only Right Wing Christians when the more-gay-hating Muslim faith is never mentioned (throughout the series are many harsh critiques on President George W. Bush while, ironically, it's also mentioned that The Bush Administration doesn't allow criticism).

The "worst" character is also the most important, at least initially, providing the white rabbit into the wonderland of lesbians... save for Pam Grier, sister of control freak Bette played by Jennifer Beals, in a relationship with a lip-less, whining bisexual named Tina. And they're not the only couple on board. Jenny's married in the first season, and has an affair that brings her into the fray and then, by season two, she becomes the most preachy and, intentionally, pretentious, by the end basically the villain "Joan Collins" of the series, where she's bad on purpose (aided by a cute, sneaky Malaya Rivera Drew, pictured above, on the left, and below).

Alice is the smart ass: providing (albeit whiny and polarizing) not really "comic relief" but a relief of being vulnerable and funny through good (Erin Daniels as a pro tennis player who dies in the third season) and bad relationships (getting dumped by said athlete), all posted on her website. Meanwhile, an androgynous Shane is the token player (but Shane is not butch). A Joan Jett of the Runaways era-looking grunge chick, any and every (outside the group) girls, gay, straight, bisexual, are after her, and it's fun how the more monogamous lesbians react to her wild lifestyle, which is what most people expect them all to live... giving the L WORD a glimpse not just into a lifestyle but into a group of friends that struggle with love and loss without juggling too many cliches.

SIN CITY

year: 2005

cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy, Nicky Katt

rating: *

The look of this movie and THE SPIRIT, both written by "Graphic Novel" guru Frank Miller, is the same: scantly hand-drawn, purposely cheap looking discolored backdrops. Whatever this "new look"...feeling as if a punchdrunk Roger Rabbit molested cheap Japanese anime while giving birth to a braindead Matrix wannabe... is called, it should be forever done away with. This vapid, tacky mess, directed by Robert Rodriguez and with a "special director credit" to Quentin Tarantino, both who've gotten mossy in their middle age... is simply horrible. Porno-esque slowly timed acting and gloriously lame violence all seems like a lonely comic book reader euphorically visualizing his melodramatic dream-film.