The
Bad News Bears: 1976 comedy
directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Walter Matthau, Tatum O’Neal, Jackie
Earle Haley, Chris Barnes, and Erin Blunt.
Morris Buttermaker is an alcoholic former minor-league baseball player
who is recruited by a local city councilman to coach his son’s little league
team, the worst in the league.
Buttermaker recruits a few ringers to round out his motley crew, they
slowly start improving, and set their sights on their archenemies, the Yankees,
and the championship game.
It’s an awesome movie, even if you
don’t like baseball. It’s funny and
weird; it’s like The Sandlot minus
the saccharine nostalgia. It deals
honestly and openly with the competitive drive around parents living
vicariously through their children – what happens when you preach the whole
it-doesn’t-matter-if-you-win-or-lose trope and the kids get wise? The score
suits it perfectly – a bunch of misfit kids fumbling their way through baseball
games set to Carmen. It’s a little
offensive at times, and the last half hour is kind of depressing. But totally worth seeing. My favorite scene is when a pitcher is fed up
with his coach and in retaliation he fields a ball and holds it to let the
opposing team score– this goes out to every asshole parent or coach that cared
more about winning than about how the game was played.
Dead
Men Don’t Wear Plaid:
1982 mystery-comedy directed by Carl Reiner and starring Steve Martin
and Rachel Ward. Here’s the pitch: it’s a comedic send-up and homage to 1940s
noir, complete with costumes by Edith Head, score by Miklos Rozsa, and
incorporating footage from 18 different noir movies. Seems like it would be right in my wheelhouse.
Sounds darb, right? Eggs in the coffee? But it was a trip for biscuits. It took my favorite genre and turned it into
screwball – the worrrrst. Even my love
of Steve Martin couldn’t keep me interested.
Thor: 2011 Marvel superhero movie directed by
Kenneth Branagh and starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston,
Anthony Hopkins, and Stellan Skarsgard.
The alien race of Asgard (think Norse mythology) has existed in an
uneasy truce with its enemies the Frost Giants, and they guard the peace of the
Nine Realms, which includes Earth. When
Thor, the son of the Asgard king and his presumptive heir, makes a bold
retaliatory stroke against the Frost Giants he is sent to Earth as a mortal
until he learns humility. Thor’s
chaotic, scheming brother Loki uses this as an opportunity to seize the throne,
and sends an automaton to kill Thor, thus catching Earth in the crossfire. Meanwhile, Thor is attempting to avoid
capture by government agents and win his way back to his kingdom, all while
making eyes at Natalie Portman. Those
dreamy, dreamy eyes.
It’s fine? Really I just wanted a refresher on the Avengers backstory. Hemsworth is awfully pretty, Hiddleston is
perfect as Loki, Kat Dennings is funny in her small role; it’s entertaining and
light and requires no thought or effort.
Pet
Sematary: 1989 horror
adaptation of the Stephen King novel, directed by Mary Lambert and starring
Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, and Mike Hughes. The Creed family – Louis & Rachel, their
son Gage and daughter Ellie - has just moved to the small town of Ludlow,
Maine. They immediately befriend their
elderly neighbor Jud, who shows them around their property, including a path
through the woods to a pet cemetery. A
short time later, Louis is working at a university hospital when a young man is
brought in with severe wounds and quickly dies.
That night the man’s ghost visits him and warns him about the dangers
lurking in the cemetery. When the family
cat dies over Thanksgiving, Louis is distraught over how to break the news to
his kids, and Jud convinces him to bury the cat in a hidden part of the
cemetery – and the cat soon returns to the family home, but is somehow different. Then a horrible tragedy occurs, and Louis is
tempted to use the power of the cemetery again – but what will return from the
cemetery if he does?
It’s okay. It’s an interesting idea, and made me want to
read the book, but the acting is mostly subpar, it’s not scary, and it went off
on weird tangents too frequently. Some
of the side plots may have been left in because they had more significance in
the book but seem like unnecessary distractions in the movie.
The
Central Park Five: 2012 documentary
about the Central Park Jogger case, directed by Ken & Sarah Burns and David
McMahon. In April 1989, Trisha Meili was
brutally raped, beaten, and left for dead in New York City’s Central Park. Despite being only one of 3,254 rapes
reported in the city in that year alone, it quickly gained national media
attention due to the viciousness of the attack, and because Meili is white and
a group of black teenage boys (Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond
Santana, Kharey Wise, and Yusef Salaam) were hastily charged with the crime. Due to the trauma that Meili suffered she had
no memory of the attack and could not identify the assailant(s). The prosecution’s case against the five
juveniles relied almost solely on their taped confessions, since there was no
physical evidence linking them to the crime.
During the trial they all recanted their confessions, pointing out that
they were held and interrogated for hours, were lied to by police, and did not
understand what was happening. They were
all convicted and served out their full sentences. It wasn’t until 2002 that another man
confessed to the crime, which was confirmed with DNA.
It’s
a crushing, maddeningly upsetting documentary, and you should absolutely see
it. It’s understated, focusing mostly on
interviews with the five men, all of who speak very openly and candidly about
their experiences. It was hard for me to
imagine the tensions of 1980s New York, and I would have appreciated a little
more of that historical context in the exposition, but that’s my only minor
criticism. It’s amazing. Watch it.
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