The Great American Pastime: A Review

 

THE GREAT AMERICAN PASTIME

Welcome to Rick's Texan Reviews Annual Opening Day Movie Review, where I look at a baseball-related film to coincide with the AAA Opening Day for the El Paso Chihuahuas. This year, I look at the funny frolics of Little League.

Long before we had the Bad News Bears, we had the Willow Falls Panthers. The Great American Pastime looks at the dangers of Little League Baseball, from pushy parents to dirty players. While essentially a B-film, The Great American Pastime has just enough charm to carry it over.

Bruce Hallerton (Tom Ewell) loves watching baseball, but he is not big on other things, such as his wife Betty (Anne Francis) or son Dennis (Rudy Dee). A surprise opportunity for father-son bonding comes up when a group of fellow attorneys ask him to be their Little League team manager. Unfortunately for Bruce, Dennis is placed on a rival Little League team. Still determined to make the best of it, Bruce continues managing the disastrous Panthers.

The poor record does not win him any fans among the Panthers' parents save perhaps for one: the luscious Doris Patterson (Anne Miller). This femme fatale of the Little League set always laughs at Bruce's jokes, invites him (and his family) to dinner and appears delighted to be near the plain Bruce. Betty clearly dislikes this black widow, much to Bruce's confusion. Bruce now has to content not only with Betty's growing green-eyed monster but Dennis adopting the questionable "win-at-all-costs" attitude the Tigers have. Will Bruce grow to bring at least one win to the hapless Panthers? Will he let Doris down easy? Will he get a big surprise from Doris and Betty?

The Great American Pastime is fully aware that it is meant to be a bit light. As such, I judge it on whether or not it entertained me and made me laugh. It did this mostly well.

What did surprise me was in how almost progressive The Great American Pastime is when it comes to adultery and sex. Granted it was a bit in double entendre and suggestions, but it worked quite well. Remarking on what he considers Doris' best attributes (raising a son as a widow), he says, "I take my hat off to her". Betty instantly fires back, "Please make sure that's all". After an outraged Doris crushes Bruce's dreams of a mistress, she informs him that she was only buttering him up to get a favorable position for her son Herbie. As she orders him out of her house, she gives him a parting shot. "Now run along and...play with your marbles". 

Read that any way you like.

The Great American Pastime also features two black players. Sadly, we never heard from them or the parents, but I find it a step forward. 

The performances range from the amusing to the tolerable. Tom Ewell is pleasant enough as Bruce, a put-upon man who creates his own disasters. Appropriately silly when working with Doris, he does not do so well when bemoaning his situations to Betty. Francis is a bit weak as Betty, but to be fair it was not a great part. The thought of Miller as this Little League temptress is amusing, more so given the plain-looking Ewell. However, she did quite well in the role. The Great American Pastime is also an early role for Dean Jones as the eager young coach. Bruce's voiceover description of Buck Rivers has one of Nathaniel Benchley's clever lines: "His teeth were so white they made me nervous". 

We get a lot of amusing zingers in The Great American Pastime. Early on, Bruce describes his team as "a nest of midgets". Later on, he attempts to make Betty sympathetic to the black widow Doris by telling her that her husband "disappeared into the jungle". "What was he: a baboon?" she derisively responds. After a disastrous game, Dennis is talking about the results with the family dog, Smidgen. An irate Bruce asks that Dennis stop. "Why? You afraid he'll get your job?", Betty replies.

One thing that I think was a flaw was in having Ewell address us directly in the opening and closing. I think we could have done without the voiceovers too, though it is not a deal-breaker for me. 

At a brisk 90 minutes, The Great American Pastime knows when to start and when to finish. A light affair, The Great American Pastime may not be great itself, but it is pleasant enough and fully aware. 

DECISION: C+

2024 Opening Day Film: Mr. Baseball

2023 Opening Day Film: Angels in the Outfield (1954) 

2022 Opening Day Film: Bull Durham

2021 Opening Day Film: Alibi Ike

2020 Opening Day Film: Mr. 3000

2019 Opening Day Film: Ladies' Day

2018 Opening Day Film: Fear Strikes Out

2017 Opening Day Film: Eight Men Out

Venus (2006): A Review (Review #1960)

VENUS (2006)

I start my Venus review with a curious observation: whoever chose this poster to advertise the film ought to be publicly horsewhipped. It is downright frightening, this disheveled old man staring back at me, almost dead-eyed. Moreover, it tells us absolutely nothing about what Venus is about. HE can't possibly be the goddess of love. Venus, Peter O'Toole's eighth and final failed Best Actor nomination, probably would not be remembered save for that sad distinction. That is a shame, as Venus is a good film about mortality and a mutual great awakening to the joys of life.

Relatively successful actor Maurice Russell (O'Toole) has become adept at playing corpses, finding fewer roles in his seventies. He exchanges pills and reminiscences with his acting friends and colleagues Ian (Leslie Philips) and Donald (Richard Griffiths). Ian is at first delighted that his great-niece is coming to London to care for him. He soon finds Jessie (Jodie Whitaker) a boorish nightmare. Ian begs Maurice to take her off his hands. The ever-rakish though secretly ill Maurice agrees.

As Maurice and Jessie start to know each other, they find the generation gap pretty large. Jessie, uncultured, uncouth and unsophisticated, is opening up to Maurice about her life. She occasionally teases him about looking and touching her, which he finds delightful. For his part, Maurice finds new vim and vigor despite his growing illness owing to his prostate. He does wine and dine her, but he also gets her a modeling job, posing for art classes. Maurice also brings art and culture into her life. 

Still, Ian, who still dislikes his tart of a great-niece, finds their relationship, whatever it is, distasteful. As they all push and pull away and at each other, will Jessie grow in life as Maurice fades away from it? Will the lifelong friends reconcile before it is too late? 

The title Venus comes from Maurice's nickname for Jessie, partially inspired by the Diego Velazquez painting Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery in London which Maurice shows her. Venus is a very brisk 95 minutes long, and in that time director Roger Michell guides his actors to very good performances.

At the top of the list is Peter O'Toole, who as stated earned a Best Actor nomination for the film. He handled the comedy well, such as when he does a pratfall attempting to see Jessie's first nude modeling. After accidentally barging in and causing a ruckus, Maurice attempts to play it cool by asking, "Is everything all right?". 

O'Toole has a droll manner as the knowing rascal Maurice. Speaking about the nightmare that his great-niece is, Ian tells his friends, "Martha said there is no job in the countryside". Maurice observes in O'Toole's magnificent voice, "There must be some demand for barmaids and prostitutes". When persuading Jessie to go to a theater performance, he observes, "It won't be as good as Celebrity Love Island, but it'll be live". 

However, in O'Toole's performance, we see the vulnerable, even regretful aspects of him. Some of his best scenes are with Vanessa Redgrave as his ex-wife Valerie. Here, just the two of them, we see Maurice coming to terms with his failures in love and more importantly, with his own mortality. 

There is poignant moment where he and Ian go to a small church which contains memorial plaques to their fellow thespians, some of whom they knew, some whom they did not. As a chamber orchestra begins to play, these two BFFs begin an impromptu waltz, finding joy and acceptance that they too will eventually find their names here. 

An aspect of O'Toole's performance that may go unnoticed is how Maurice, as a still-working actor, has a few scenes where he is acting in two roles: Maurice and whatever character Maurice is performing. In a clever bit of editing, we first see Maurice fall in Ian's apartment after essentially hitting the clubs with Jessie immediately followed by him in a hospital, surrounded by family begging him not to die. We soon quickly establish that the hospital is a studio, and Maurice is playing yet again another dying man. It was a clever twist in screenwriter Hanif Kureishi's script. Later, Maurice takes Jessie to a location shoot, where Maurice is acting in a Georgian drama. Made up in full Georgian makeup and costume, one briefly gets caught up in that story, showing O'Toole's range.

Peter O'Toole is a standout in Venus, bringing Maurice's joie de vivre as he accepts his impending death with grace, though not perhaps with a lot of dignity. This is a man who loves life but who also faces his mortality with a mix of fear, regret and acceptance. 

It is hard to judge Jodie Whitaker in Venus, which was her film debut. She was fine as the tawdry but evolving Jessie. In fairness, she has a wonderful, quiet moment when she, while bathing, talks about a forced abortion to Maurice, waiting outside. Earlier, Maurice told Jessie that the sight of a beautiful woman would be the most beautiful thing that a man would see. When she asks what would be the most beautiful thing that a woman would see, after a pause Maurice says, "Her first child". It was not clear why that caused Jessie to become upset, but this scene explains that. We also see how, by the end, Jessie had changed for the better, the woman who terrorized her great-uncle by just lying about eventually became a responsible young woman. 

In their smaller roles, Philips, Griffiths and Redgrave also did well. The interplay between O'Toole and Philips revealed a longstanding bond right from the start, where these two old men exchange medication and tell each other the pros and cons of red or white pills. Griffiths has some of the funnier moments, such as when he expands on Maurice's skills with women. Maurice, lover of words, assures his friend that he is "a scientist of the female heart" who can get Jessie off his back. Donald adds on that Maurice is "a professor of pussy", which shocks Ian and amuses Maurice. 

Venus also features Corrine Bailey Rae's Put Your Records On, which dominated the airwaves back in the day. It does describe Jessie's evolved character, and lends Venus a nice, casually upbeat ending and chill vibe. 

Venus is a short, simple story well told, with good performances all around. People who might worry that the May-December relationship is sordid I think might misread it. I do not see it as a sugar daddy-pretty young thing situation, though there are elements of that. It is, however, not exactly a grandfather and granddaughter type either. I put it as a strange dance between people who may not have sought each other out, but who ended up in better places thanks to their interactions. 

DECISION: B-

My Favorite Year: A Review

 

MY FAVORITE YEAR

Television's early days were never so wild and outlandish as My Favorite Year, a wonderful and brilliant comedy with a bravura no-holds-barred performance from Peter O'Toole. My Favorite Year is a delightful romp, full of heart and joy but able to move you in its softer moments. 

My Favorite Year is 1954 according to our protagonist, Benji Stone (Mark-Lynn Baker). Stone is the newest and youngest writer on television sketch comedy show Comedy Cavalcade, starring Stan "King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna). Kaiser is abrasive, temperamental and prone to delusions of grandeur and insecurity. He also is not afraid of spoofing mob boss Karl "Boss" Rojek (Cameron Mitchell) with a series of comedy sketches about "Boss Hijack". Rojek does not like being openly mocked, but despite the danger that is the least of Kaiser's concerns.

That belongs to this week's Comedy Cavalcade guest star, matinee idol Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole). Swann is a drunk whose best years seem behind him. He delights in being scandalous, but he is also suave, charming and even insecure behind the bravado and swashbuckling derring-do. Benji, who is a massive Swann fanboy, dares to stand up to not just Kaiser but the equally loud and abrasive Comedy Cavalcade head writer Sy Benson (Bill Macy), insisting that Swann should not be replaced as the guest star. Kaiser, impressed by Stone's act of defiance, agrees to keep Swann in the show, provided that Stone keep his eyes on Swann. Stone won't be alone in trying to keep Swann out of trouble, for Swann's longtime New York chauffeur Alfie Bumbacelli (Tony DiBennedetto) is an old pro at keeping Mr. Swann from his most extreme behavior.

With that, Benji Stone and Alan Swann begin their weeklong adventures. Swann offers guidance in Stone's wooing of Comedy Cavalcade production assistant K.C. Dowling (Jessica Harper). Swann takes Stone to dinner at the Stork Club, where he helps Swann squire a pretty young thing. Stone also takes Swann to have dinner with his mother Belle Steinberg Carroca (Laine Kazan) and his stepfather, Filipino bantamweight boxer Rookie (Ramon Sison). 

As the week comes close to ending, Swann and Stone learn more about each other. Despite his image, Swann is really at heart Clarence Duffy, a Scotsman who went AWOL from the British Navy with dreams of becoming an actor and managed to become a movie star. Stone reveals that he is really a Benjamin Steinberg, who does not hide his Jewish identity but is embarrassed by his family's behavior. On the day of the broadcast, Swann has swanned off to Connecticut in a failed effort to see his daughter Tess, whom he loves but is afraid to reconnect with. Will Alan Swann pull himself together enough to perform live in front of a studio audience, a prospect that terrifies him? Will Boss Rojek get back at King Kaiser literally on the air?  

My Favorite Year is really about Stone's favorite week, as the story takes place in that short time period. Screenwriters Norman Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo (from a story by Palumbo) crafted a story that was in terms outlandish and heartwarming, where the characters can be crazed one moment, touching the next. 

A good moment that shows how My Favorite Year balances absurdity with sincerity is when Benji takes Alan to the foreign land of Brooklyn for a Steinberg family dinner. We get a lot of Borscht Belt comedy when Aunt Sadie (Annette Robyns) pops in wearing her wedding dress, apparently oblivious as to how bonkers it looks. Even Belle looked shocked, and Belle is no shrinking violet, insisting on calling her guest both "Al" and "Swannee". As a bemused Swann looks on, Aunt Sadie comments that she's worn that dress only once before.

This scene has some funny moments, like when Benji scolds his mother for calling Swann "Al". "If I bring Jolson or Capone, you can call him Al", he says. Uncle Morty (Lou Jacobi) replies, "Jolson's coming?". However, we see what makes My Favorite Year so special: Peter O'Toole's performance. O'Toole as Swann here is unflappable and surprisingly respectful and respectable given the odd goings-on. He is gracious towards Benji's family, which is no small feat. When Uncle Morty brings up past sex scandals involving Swann, everyone else is appalled. 

Swann, however, reveals the gentleman behind the rogue. Calmly answering Morty's question about his schtupping past, he says that the answer is no. Swann points out that people like him are targets, often accused of things that they did not do. However, he adds that because of who he is, he sometimes is allowed to get away with murder on other things, so in his mind, it balances out. 

These types of scenes, where O'Toole reveals the gentleman and gentle man behind the swashbuckling persona, are a real acting treat. O'Toole certainly can do the broad farce and drunken pratfalls with great enthusiasm. He even has one of the film's best lines when he realizes, to his horror, that Comedy Cavalcade will not only be live but in front of a studio audience. As his panic grows into a frenzy, he ends his meltdown by shouting out, "I'M NOT AN ACTOR! I'M A MOVIE STAR!".

However, shortly afterwards, Benji finds Swann in the studio hallway. O'Toole shows Swann not as the plastered buffoon he's taken for, but as a frightened man, terrified of being a failure and not living up to the image that even he is not sure is real or fake. O'Toole showcases a range that is simply remarkable in My Favorite Year. One moment he can have you laughing at how outlandish he can be, like when he looks at a fire hose that he can use to try and shimmy down to a lower floor like a man who has discovered fire.

The next moment, you see him silently watching Tess come out of her mother's house. Staying in the car, we see the joy in seeing her fade into fear, him crouching back into the seat. It is a beautiful performance: funny, touching and knowing of this man, a charming, smooth and intelligent but roguish and undisciplined one. It is one of Peter O'Toole's greatest screen performances and an underrated one.

Everyone else in My Favorite Year is not up to O'Toole's level but they are pretty serviceable. Out of the rest of the cast, I would put DiBenedetto as the best, his Alfie very understanding of "Mr. Swann" and his pretty bonkers behavior. Mark-Lynn Baker is "introduced" in My Favorite Year, and I think he did well as Benji Stone/Benjamin Steinberg. He and O'Toole work well together, especially whenever Swann gets Benji's name wrong as either "Stoneberg" or "Stoneburger", which brings no reaction. He did not do so well when he was attempting to tone done his family's behavior, a bit too forced in my view.

Same with some of the other performances. They worked up to a point, but I feel conflicted in that I think that they were meant to be broad but somehow still did not fully work. Bologna was a strange figure: sometimes not funny but exaggerated, other times fine. As a side note, the two comedy sketches shown as part of Comedy Cavalcade (the Boss Hijack sketch and the musketeer sketch meant to spoof Swann's persona) were not funny at all.  

Still, it is a credit to director Richard Benjamin that My Favorite Year rolled pretty smoothly. I hope that people will watch and remember My Favorite Year for being more than Peter O'Toole's seventh Best Actor nomination. It is a fun, nostalgic homage to early television and how our cinematic heroes may be more real than we think.   

DECISION: B+

As Good as It Gets: A Review

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

Melvin Udall is not someone that if you met, you would not want to be around. You certainly would not like him. However, one of the elements in As Good as It Gets is that despite all logic, we end up liking, even loving Melvin no matter how awful he is to others. As Good as It Gets is a wonderful comedy, blending humor and heart where you find yourself laughing even at things that you would cringe at.

Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) writes successful romance novels, but he is in many ways a loathsome person. He insults people openly, sometimes shockingly. While he does have obsessive-compulsive disorder, Melvin is also extremely difficult to deal with in his routines. Among those is having breakfast at not just the exact same restaurant but at the exact same table. If anyone else dares to sit at his table, he will not shrink from going beyond mere insults to being downright bigoted in order to get them out. Only Brooklyn waitress Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) can work with him. 

She also is the only person who can put Melvin in his place. When he dares suggest that her chronically ill son Spencer (Jesse James) will die like everyone else, she makes clear that if Melvin ever brings up Spence again, she will not serve him. For once, Melvin backs down, mostly due to how that would upset his routine though perhaps a small part of him feels shame about targeting a child.

He won't back down when it comes to insulting his openly gay neighbor, painter Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear) and his little dog too. Simon struggles to confront Melvin, something Simon's art dealer and friend Frank Sachs (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) does not have a problem with. Simon's newest model, hustler Vincent (Skeet Ulrich), poses for two weeks. However, Vincent is party to his fellow hustlers robbing Simon, almost killing the painter. Melvin, no fan of Simon, at least has enough sense to contact the police.

Now, Melvin owes Frank a favor for not beating him up before. That favor? Look after Verdell, Simon's beloved dog whom Melvin cannot stand. Despite himself, Melvin soon starts bonding with Verdell. He also finds that, despite his misanthropic nature, he soon starts getting involved in the lives of both Simon and Carol. When he finds that Carol cannot come serve him because of Spencer's illness, Melvin pays for a specialist to treat him. He goes so far as to venture from Manhattan to Brooklyn to see if Carol can come back to work. 

Melvin also agrees, very reluctantly, to go with Simon to Baltimore to see if Simon's estranged parents can help him financially. Terrified that Simon will attempt to seduce him, Melvin pushes Carol to go with them. On their way to and from Baltimore, friendships and romances build, fall and return.

As Good as It Gets is a master class in writing thanks to Mark Andrus and director James L. Brooks' screenplay. The story flows smoothly, where Melvin's evolution from almost anti-human to somewhat functional but still crass person is natural even though he still says awful things. We know that Melvin is a very terrible person at the beginning, when he dumps Verdell down the garbage chute rather than see the dog urinate on the floor. Add to that how, when Simon asks about Verdell, Melvin replies that he thought that Simon was referring to "that colored man that I've been seeing in the halls".  

As the film goes on, Melvin continues saying the most awful and bigoted things. However, the end result is that we laugh at him, not with him. Melvin's overall uncomfortableness, his thorough thoughtlessness is all played for laughs. We do see, however, that a wonderful element of As Good as It Gets is that we see that for all his awfulness, Melvin has another side to him.

We see it when he is writing his newest romance novel, the words of love pouring out. We see it whenever someone, be it Carol or Frank, stands up to him. As the film goes on, the delight that he has with Verdell makes Melvin almost cuddly. How can we hate someone who sings Always Look on the Bright Side of Life to a dog?  He still is in many respects a horrible person; by the time he introduces Carol and Simon to each other as "Carol the waitress, meet Simon the fag", we see that Melvin is less monstrous and more clueless about people.

There is also a sense of schadenfreude when Melvin has to endure a serious of disasters: he loses Verdell to Simon, is refused to be seen at the psychiatrist's office for his insistence on not making an appointment and finds a new waitress at his table. When he finally is ordered out of the restaurant over his boorish behavior, Melvin's body language shows a man thoroughly dejected, the applause from the other restaurant patrons giving this scene a greater comedic punch. 

The film is filled with great quips and insults. I think the best-known one is when he is asked how he can write women so well. "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability", he replies to a female fan at his publisher's office. 

As Good as It Gets also has the great blessing of Jack Nicholson in the lead role. Nicholson makes Melvin into a funny character both despite and because of his behavior and bigotry. I think it is because there is a slight impishness in Nicholson's performance, as if we saw that for all his outward bluster and boorish behavior Melvin has something of a heart. He shows the vulnerable man behind the eccentric behavior. Melvin is a misanthrope, but he also is able to see joy in how children are fond of Verdell. You end up being charmed by Melvin, some of the time, and that is due to Nicholson's performance.

Nicholson has a strong group of actors working with him. In a curious turn, I think Helen Hunt is the weaker of the three main characters (Melvin, Carol and Simon). It is not that Hunt, in her Best Actress Oscar-winning performance, is bad. She has a wonderful scene where she struggles to write a lengthy thank-you note to Melvin, which is quite moving. The problem with Hunt's performance is that she struggles quite audibly with her Brooklyn accent. It is a case of trying too hard to sound like someone born and bred in the borough when that accent not just comes and goes but goes from heavy to nonexistent. I think it might have been better if Hunt had not adopted or attempted the Brooklyn accent, which could have been easily explained away as Carol being a transplant.

Greg Kinnear, who was best known at the time as the host of the comic clip show Talk Soup, had made a few films before As Good as It Gets, but here he did one of his best performances, rightfully earning a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Fey without being cartoonish, Kinnear made Simon into a lost man struggling not so much with his sexuality but with his own sense of worth separate from that. Kinnear has a standout scene where he is on the telephone to his mother. The shift from someone looking for help to someone who sees that he is not helpless is there in his performance. Kinner also has a nice bit where he imitates Nicholson, showing Kinnear a good mimic and Simon capable of having a spine.

If I have a few caveats about As Good as It Gets, separate from Hunt's dodgy accent, are with some plot points. I struggle with the idea that anyone would have hired a street hustler to be Simon's model versus looking for a professional. We never saw how Melvin came to find that Simon had been robbed and attacked. I had a major issue at the scene where Simon's injuries and reaction to them were played for laughs. 

Still, overall, As Good as It Gets holds up very well. Yes, Melvin says awful things that are insulting at best, downright racist and homophobic at worst. However, that is part of the joke: that Melvin, as abrasive as he is, is unaware that he looks foolish. It is hard not to laugh throughout As Good as It Gets, a crowning achievement for everyone involved. 

DECISION: B+

Drive My Car: A Review

 

DRIVE MY CAR

Some things are universal, and some things are specific to certain cultures. Drive My Car touches on both elements, covering grief while also keeping to its Japanese setting. While the film's length may be off-putting to some, once the film gets rolling Drive My Car becomes a strong portrait of letting go. 

Successful theater actor Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) has built a strong reputation for his multilingual dual skills of directing and acting on the stage. His wife Oto (Reika Kirishima) is a successful television screenwriter, giving him her newest risqué scenario for Japanese television. Kafuku is in high demand as an actor, director and theater judge. Leaving for a theater festival, he is delayed and forced to return, where he finds Oto having sex with Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) an actor from a new television project. Kafuku quietly sneaks off, only to find that Oto asks that they have a talk when he returns. When he does return, he finds Oto dead of a brain hemorrhage. 

Two years later, Kafuku is still processing his mixed emotions, as he is now alone, he and Oto having lost their daughter many years ago. He has been invited to a theatrical residency in Hiroshima but is displeased when told that he will need a driver during the residency. Kafuku has been driving his beloved red Saab 900 Turbo for years even with his glaucoma (diagnosed after an accident). Moreover, he uses the drives to listen to tapes of Oto feeding him lines, which relaxes and helps him with his productions as well as keeping Oto alive. His new driver, Misaki Watari (Toko Miura) is a bit of a sullen girl, but efficient at her job. She is also 23 years old and would have been the same age as his and Oto's daughter had she lived. 

Kafuku will direct the theater's production of Uncle Vanya with a multilingual cast. To both their surprises, Kafuku casts Takatsuki in the title role, the actor having fallen on hard times due to personal scandal. As the rehearsals go on, the trio of Kafuku, Watari and Takatsuki deal with their own guilts and regrets about the past with varying degrees of success. Will another scandal that involves Takatsuki force Uncle Vanya to be cancelled? Will Kafuku have to pull double duty? Will he and Watari reconcile with themselves and heal? 

Drive My Car is a bit of an endurance test. The first forty minutes is about Kafuku and Oto, which technically is all pre-credit. I wonder if this could have been covered in less time. It does allow us a chance to be with the characters and build up the dynamic between Kafuku and Oto. However, it at times feels like too much, especially when you think that Drive My Car is more than just Kafuku's story. 

However, once one settles into things, he or she will find that Drive My Car does reward those willing to endure writer/director Ryusuke Hamagushi's adaptation of Haruki Murikami's short story. There is a scene where Kafuku and Takatsuki talk in soft tones about Oto: the former's awareness of her rampant infidelities as a coping mechanism while still loving him, the latter filling in the story which Kafuku did not know how it ended. All this while Watari is listening up front, rarely even expressing much except at one point where her eyebrows go up when she hears that Kafuku and Oto's daughter would be the same age as Watari had she lived.

This scene, not built on grand emotions but on quiet tones and glances, is a master class of acting, writing and directing. Hamaguchi gives us a great moment to close this scene when Kafuku offers Watari a cigarette where she can indulge in her one major vice, then Kafuku joins her. Hamaguchi allows the symbolism to speak for itself. 

He also at times finds clever ways to give us background. For example, we do not know why Takatsuki is now slumming it in a theater production until Kafuku and Watari take a ferry to Watari's hometown to give him time to consider whether or not to act and direct Uncle Vanya. We hear from a far-away television about Takatsuki's past record, which tells us while giving us that information in a logical way.

The performances are not just universally good but multilingual. We have scenes where Uncle Vanya and Waiting for Godot are performed in different languages ranging from German to Indonesian. Kafuku's newest production of Uncle Vanya is similarly multilingual: there are Chinese and Filipino actors, and even an actress who uses Korean Sign Language. It is eventually cleared up how this cacophony is clear to the audience (a large screen has several simultaneous translations). However, the staging of Uncle Vanya is so good that at times one almost forgets one is watching Drive My Car and focuses on Uncle Vanya.   

Nishijima and Miura form a great double-act as Kafuku and Watari. Individually they both excel, particularly Nishijima who carries the bulk of Drive My Car. He not only has to play Kafuku but also at times characters from Waiting for Godot and Uncle Vanya. His performance is never showy but actually quite quiet, which makes it all the more effective. The same goes for Watari, who has her own moments when she talks about her mother and the regret she carries with her own relationship. They grieve in different ways but find a way to process that grief to peace.

Again, I think length will be an issue. I think the nearly three-hour runtime, coupled with it being in Japanese, will scare some people off. I admit to struggling initially with the film, finding it interesting at times but dragging at others. Eventually though, particularly after a drive with Kafuku and Takatsuki, I became more involved. Drive My Car is well-written, directed and acted throughout. Straightforward and respectful, one will find Drive My Car well worth the trip.

DECISION: B+

Thrilla: A Review

THRILLA

The COVID-19 pandemic hit everyone in many different ways. For Mike "Thrilla" Davila and Adam "Bomb" Collaride, it put both their business and championship dreams close to ending. The documentary Thrilla chronicles their joint struggles while giving us a background into the men themselves. Well-told albeit with a few hitches, Thrilla is a rarity in documentary filmmaking: a film that documents something.

Thrilla, the documentary notes, was filmed during the summer of 2020, a tumultuous time as the world was in panic over the COVID-19 virus among other things. Among those whose lives COVID-19 impacted are Mike Davila and Adam Collarile, jiu-jitsu fighters and newly established businessmen. While the world was in the grips of social distancing, Davila and Collarile were focused on getting Davila to make the required weight to compete in the Eddie Bravo Invitational, a Jui-jitsu competition in El Paso, Texas. Davila, whose nom de guerre is Thrilla, knows that winning the Invitational will be not just great for his and Collaride's Legends Martial Arts business. It will be a crowning achievement in his career.

When they arrive in El Paso, Davila is at 150 pounds, but he must get down to 145 with days if not hours to go.  That he is at 150 pounds is actually a major improvement from where Davila was seven weeks earlier, which was at 188 pounds. That means Davila has to lose 43 pounds in less than eight weeks, a daunting task even for a fit athlete. As Thrilla counts down the weeks, noting the impressive weight loss, we also see the inner strength that both Davila and his friend and business partner Collaride have.

We learn from them about their backgrounds: their struggles in bonding with their fathers, their determination to build up something not just for themselves but for others. Mike Davila at one-point remarks that he had get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Collaride, for his part, notes that Mike is a sweetheart but when he is on the mat, he's a killer. 

They had become friends over time, though Mike initially was a bit leery of how joyful Adam was. At long last, they work on opening Legends Martial Arts studio, getting help from families and friends to make their dream come true. Legends opens on February 8, 2020. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo orders all non-essential businesses to close March 22, 2020. Owing to the proximity of jiu-jitsu, Legends finds itself fighting for its life almost at birth. Davila and Collaride may be down, but by no means are they out. They keep working, keep training and push on. They push on with their business and push on with the tournament. Will Thrilla win in El Paso? Will Mike and Adam not just become legends but build a legacy for future legends?

Thrilla is a wonderful portrait of two men who are both competitors and brothers-in-arms in so many ways. The most obvious way is in competing in Jiu-jitsu, a field which Davila and Collaride are passionate about. They also, however, compete within themselves. Davila's fraught relationship with his own father, Collaride's determination to leave something good behind, all are showcased in Thrilla. 

The film is not just about these two men, but about the importance of friendship and loyalty. Adam, a strong jiu-jitsu fighter in his own right, will accompany Mike to Texas despite the New York COVID restrictions because Mike needs someone in his corner (COVID prevents an audience). There's more than poetry to that analogy. These men, despite their different personalities, know that they have each other's backs. Mike, Adam, another instructor by name of Steve Ramos, and all those who go to Legends: they are more than training their bodies. In a sense, they are training their hearts and souls. 

It takes a great skill to make a weekly countdown of weight loss almost tense. Credit to director Ricardo Aguirre, Jr. for managing to build up suspense as we get a weekly countdown. Davila goes from 188 in Week One to 179 in Week Two, 172 in Week Three, until we get to 12 hours before the official weigh in. The tension and suspense are built up so well, and by this time we know and care about Mike and Adam, that when we see the disparity between Mike's weight scale and the tournament weight scale, we are as equally flummoxed and frustrated when they do not match.

As a side note, I marveled at not just how much weight Davila was able to lose in a relatively short amount of time given how I have twenty pounds that stubbornly won't shift after two years. I was amazed that Mike Davila is at the time of the tournament 37 years old. 

Intentionally or not, Aguirre, Jr. in Thrilla made a film about more than two men training for a jiu-jitsu tournament and working to keep their new business alive amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. He made a film about friendship, loyalty and how a man can measure his strength from more than whom he can defeat on the mat. 

Davila and Collarile are business partners and friends, but they are also distinct personalities. Even on how they came up with the name Legends for their workout studio appear to have different origin stories. I believe Mike said that it came due in part to their proximity to Sleepy Hollow, trading in on the Legend of the Headless Horseman. 

However, in their stories of where Legends came from, we see their life philosophies come through. "Everyone wants to be a legend", Adam says, keeping to the idea of the importance of leaving something behind. Mike, for his part, notes on the importance of what comes between your birth and your death. Referencing how headstones are inscribed, he says, "That small dash is your legend". Despite any cliches about fighters, these two muscular and fit athletes are quite poetic.

Thrilla has one or two issues that stick out. A particularly embarrassing moment is when on-screen text notes Governor Cuomo's decree. It reads that Cuomo "orderd" (sic) businesses considered non-essential to shut down in order to combat the spread of COVID-19. I also think that Thrilla is not strictly speaking about Mike "Thrilla" Davila, so it is a bit of a misnomer. Adam "Bomb" Collarile is just as much a part of Thrilla as Thrilla is, so I was a bit puzzled why the film was named Thrilla. Granted, these are minor details, and hopefully the misspelled word is fixable. It just looks bad.

"Opening the gym has always been a dream, and dreams come slow", Adam observes halfway through Thrilla, emphasizing the last word. Dreams, however slow or small they seem to others, are worth fighting for. Mike "Thrilla" Davila and Adam "Bomb" Collarile, two decent men well profiled in Thrilla, show that legends are not born but made, and made with others beside you.

DECISION: B+

The Exorcist: Believer. A Review (Review #1955)

 

THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER

After having not one but two prequels and two sequels, The Exorcist got a third sequel. The Exorcist: Believer, from what I understand, was meant to be the first of a new series of Exorcist films. Judging from what a fiasco Believer is, I think we can put that idea away. The Exorcist: Believer is a horror film in that it is horrible beyond imagining. 

While on a mix of a photographic assignment/vacation in Haiti, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr.) and his heavily pregnant wife Sorenne (Tracey Graves) find themselves in the midst of a major earthquake. The voodoo blessing that Sorenne got for their baby girl Angela didn't help save Sorenne's life as Victor is forced to decide between saving the mother or the child.

Thirteen years later, the teen Angela (Lidya Jewett) still wonders about her mother. She and her BFF Katherine West (Olivia O'Neill) decide the best thing to do is having their version of a seance to contact her. They end up disappearing into the Georgia woods, terrifying their parents Victor and Tony & Miranda West (Norbert Leo Butz and Jennifer Nettles). The girls are eventually found, frightened, but what they think is a few hours has actually been three days. The deeply Christian West family and the atheist Fielding family are relieved to find the girls alive. However, they also observe their strange behavior. Angela attempts to strangle Victor with her mother's scarf. Katherine creates a scene at Service, screaming about "the body and blood".

What could be going on? To find out, Victor eventually seeks out Chris McNeill (Ellen Burstyn), who after her daughter Regan's exorcism has written a book and talked for years about their experiences. Could Angela and Katherine be possessed by a demonic force? Ann Brooks (Ann Dowd), a nurse and former nun, seeks out help from Father Maddox (E.J. Bonilla). However, it will take an all-hands-on-deck approach, as this exorcism will need the Baptist Pastor Revans (Ralph Sbarge), Victor's neighbor and Pentecostal minister Stuart (Danny McCarthy) and witch doctor Dr. Beehibe (Okwui Okpokwasili) along with Ann and a bit of Father Maddox to try and expel the dark forces from the girls. Who will live, who will die and who will be literally blinded by their own stupidity?

The Exorcist: Believer has a screenplay credited to Peter Sattler and director David Gordon Green, with story by Green, Scott Teems and most surprising to me, Danny McBride. It would not surprise me if more hands were involved in the script. However, if so, at least these people had the good sense to not want to be publicly recognized. 

The Exorcist: Believer is awful, awful, awful on every level imaginable. It might have even found new levels of awfulness unknown to man or demon. It is close to an hour in this almost two-hour movie before we get the first glimpses that something is satanically amiss. In that time, the audience must endure Leslie Odom, Jr.'s totally blank expression. The Exorcist: Believer has the worst single performance in Odom, Jr. to where one genuinely wonders if he can actually act or was just so bored with things he did not bother to act. No matter what the situation, Odom, Jr. had the same blank expression. 

The nadir of this expressionless performance is when Victor and Chris go to the West house to find Katherine. The house is in total shambles, yet Victor calls out for Tony as if everything is fine and he just happened to wander in. Absolutely no reaction to the conditions around him, Odom, Jr. carries on, apparently totally oblivious to how the West house was pretty much destroyed. 

The Exorcist: Believer also finally manages to drag then-91-year-old Ellen Burstyn into an Exorcist sequel (Linda Blair popping up in a last-second cameo). Blair appeared in Exorcist II: The Heretic, and Jason Miller decided that he needed work desperately enough to appear in The Exorcist III. Now, the set is complete, but at least Blair has the excuse that she was a teenager when she agreed to The Heretic. Burstyn should be embarrassed by this, particularly a noted line where she mentions that she herself did not witness Regan's exorcism.

"My opinion? Because I'm not a member of their damn patriarchy," she tells Victor over why she thinks she did not see the exorcism. Leave aside for the moment the patronizing and downright idiotic suggestion that sexism kept her out (I doubt that the two priests would have allowed anyone to witness, let alone participate in this ritual). In less than ten minutes, she ends up going alone into Katherine's room, attempting some kind of exorcism herself. Chris, who we are told is so knowledgeable about exorcisms that her memoir A Mother's Explanation is almost a how-to guide, gets literally stabbed in both eyes by a crucifix. For all of Chris' bemoaning about "the patriarchy", she ends up proving Fathers Merrick and Karras right in their exclusion of Chris. 

Every performance from the adults is deeply embarrassing to silly, making The Exorcist: Believer into almost a comedy. I won't pick on Jewett and O'Neill as they are children who were given a thankless job and, I believe, did the best that they could with what they had. The adults, however, had no excuse. They all en masse looked laughable. 

The Exorcist: Believer is worse in even the most basic elements of character. One wonders if anyone behind the film has ever met a Christian, let alone understand them. There is no way, NO WAY, that a Baptist minister would agree to participate in any kind of ceremony with essentially a witch doctor. The blending of Christian and occult practices would appall Reverend Revans (technically it is Pastor Revans, but I find the alliteration of Reverend Revans funny and perhaps unintentionally revealing). Moreover, The Exorcist: Believer seems to make the case that the occult practices of voodoo are what ends up saving at least one of the girls. After all, Believer begins with Sorenne receiving a blessing from a voodoo priestess.

Even if you rejected any objections to The Exorcist: Believer on it being almost vicious in how it treats Christianity be it Protestant, Catholic or Pentecostal, you cannot expect people to take seriously a character named "Dr. Beehibe". Demons flee at the name of Dr. Beehive. 

I now genuinely think that The Exorcist: Believer was not a serious attempt to make a horror film. It was meant as a spoof. Either that, or maybe Danny McBride just looked out the window, saw a beehive and said, "Now THERE'S my witch doctor who will take down the devil". When Katherine calls out "The body and the blood" at her service, I was howling with laughter. 

On so many levels, The Exorcist: Believer does not make any sense. Father Maddox, in a rushed scene, attempts to convince the local Catholic hierarchy about the need for the exorcism "based on what I witnessed with my own eyes". In the film, he witnessed nothing. As much as the film wants us to be shocked or horrified or empathetic towards the characters, we fell nothing. Well, perhaps contempt for them to where when the possessor demands that the parents choose between Angela and Katherine, I would have been fine if neither made it.

Should you be curious as to which child lives or dies, it should be clear. 

The Exorcist: Believer attempts to make things scary with its dominant greenish/bluish tinting throughout. The end result is just to make the film look ugly and laughable. The editing, particularly during dual examination of the girls, makes it almost frenetic to confused. 

Simultaneously boring and blasphemous, The Exorcist: Believer may not be just the worst film of 2023. It may be one of the worst films of all time.

DECISION: F-

THE EXORCIST FILMS

The Exorcist

Exorcist II: The Heretic

The Exorcist III

Exorcist: The Beginning

Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist