the groundhog day project

Jericho "Action" Jackson is a Cowboy Cop (on TV Tropes ). Captain Armbruster is Da Chief . Except neither of them really are. See the thing is, however poorly Action Jackson is executed, it seems to be trying to be something more interesting than just another rulebreaking-cop movie. He's a loose cannon, but DAMMIT he's the best we have! That's the Cowboy Cop . Furthermore: Sure, our society may be built upon rules and procedures, but they usually make for bad television. Sometimes you have to bend the rules, rough up the suspects, moon your supervisors and shred the Constitution to get stuff done. Jackson very much used to be that. As the two officers in that too-long cold open play him up as a bogeyman for criminals: Kornblau: Yeah, some say he didn't even have a mother. That some researchers created him to be the first man to walk on the moon without a space suit.  Lack: Mm-hmm.  Kornblau: Others says his mother was molested by Bigfoot, and...

I am breaking with the rules today. Instead of a fixture of my childhood as the movies have been for the last "year" of the blog. When I was figuring out where to stop the childhood deconstruction process, drifting out of my actual, you know, childhood, I discovered a few movies I had inadvertently never put on my list (And there are surely others. Still forgotten.) and figured out which of the ones still ahead on the list needed to be gotten to. Put the list together, decided on a whim to jump ahead to the end and work backward, and, depending on how this movie turns out today--it has a 5.5 on IMDb--(un)fortunately, I asked Sarah for suggestions for 80s movies I might've missed. Not that my deconstruction was entirely about the 80s; I mean I began with 1968's Blackbeard's Ghost and worked forward from there (mostly in release order, but mistakes were made) and I made it to 1992/1993's Strictly Ballroom and am working my back to 1985 again to end the...

I don't know why The Great Outdoors starts with "Yakety Yak", but it does. And it reminds me of my recent watching of Stand By Me . A far better film, but they are so different that it's hardly worth comparing. But, comparisons are inevitable when movies come and movies go time and time again. Like, John Candy was was in--what?--two of these childhood fixture movies of mine: Vacation and Splash . He was also in Planes, Trains & Automobiles , which I spent a week on in this blog back in November 2014, except that movies was not a fixture with my family. I'm not even sure we saw it on the big screen. If any Thanksgiving movie made the list, it would be Dutch , which came out in '91 so might be early enough to qualify, or Home for the Holidays , but that didn't come out until '95, far too late for the list, thought we did watch it probably every year for a while there. ( Dutch and Home for the Holidays also each got a week in that November of T...

John Hughes is involved, you know it’s going to be good on some level. Still, my obligatory ruining... or rather a quick quote from Hal Hinson, Washington Post , 27 June 1988: The gags that spring out of this situation were dreamed up by John Hughes, who wrote the script and acts as the film's executive producer, and they're all lame variations on the theme of nightmare vacations. It's hard to imagine how this theme could have been executed with less invention. Really, the main weakness of the film is not the gags--they're basic but executed well--but the disconnected structure. The raccoons, really. It feels like something tacked on when the script was too short. And then there's teen romance that never matters to the rest of the film; it just is. It's cute, but it's separate. Anyway, unlike my usual habit of writing this blog during the film, the film is over as I write now around a few scattered notes. Like this early conversation that is...

The setup for Big is simple enough: two sets of twins born in the same small-town hospital are mismatched, years later they're played by Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, each playing two roles. Class differences, a little nature over nurture, some identity confusion, and hilarity ensues. And I must take issue with some of the film's logic right away once we jump to the present. Better Midler is 42 and Lily Tomlin is 48 when this movie comes out. There should be no passing comment about Rose (Tomlin) not being herself today. She is very much herself, Sadie (Midler) just doesn't like it. But then, on the rural side--and about to make things confusing here--Sadie (Midler) seems far better integrated into country life than her rich counterpart... Until, of course, she says "this doesn't strike me as a life" because maybe this movie was made by the same folks who made Funny Farm --it wasn't--and all they know how to do is have character say things inste...

Funny Farm is not even on tonight and I've got a little more to say about that film. Because, it feels recently as I get to the movies in the later 80s, I end up wanting to fix them (like Bloodsport ) or defending them inordinately (like Willow ). And, Funny Farm is just too easy to pick apart. So many scenes just happen for no reason, no connection to other scenes, just to get to a punchline. Characters decide they like the small tow n just because. I mean, imagine that Elizabeth's book inspires Andy to rewrite his and make it better, or reading her fictional version of him inspires him to fix his life, befriend the locals, and figure out how to actually live in Redbud instead of whatever permanent vacation he thinks he's on... But, I digress because Big is on tonight. And, right away Josh has more personality and more motivation than Andy had in the entirety of Funny Farm . And, Tom Hanks' physical comedy is far better than Chevy Chase's. He doesn't ...

Bloodsport opens with a montage of violence, mostly against inanimate objects: blocks of ice, coconuts, punching bags, boards, Cut together with setup for the Kumite. Watching the film for the first time in many years, I'm reminded by the lies behind it. Like Frank Dux--the character played by Jean Claude Van Damme in this supposedly true story--said the following in Martial Arts magazine: My involvement in that tournament was part of a plan, launched in 1975, t infiltrate the criminal organizations that organized the fights. The original idea was to participate in the Kumite tournament and make a few contacts. We initially assumed I would lose, but eventually I became one of the best Kumite fighters to ever participate in the event. A 1980 article about Dux and the Kumite in Black Belt magazine opened with this disclaimer: Although there is no convenient way to verify each and every detail connected with this story, the editors have verified enough of the basic facts...

If you've been reading this blog lately-- and you're still reading? --you know I'm maybe a few steps past your average bleeding heart liberal. I side with extremists. I appreciate a violent rebellion. It occurs to me as today's film in my "movie life" list-- having skipped both Summer School and Can't Buy Me Love because I have previously included them in this blog in different contexts. Also, I realized partway into writing what follows that somehow I put today's film a year early on my list, but oh well, it's already on --gets started, this might have been my first brush with the kind of 60s radicals that I would become much more enameled with in college (the second time). The movie, by the way, is Running on Empty . A couple of 60s radicals, responsible for a bombing in '71 that blinded a guy, live their lives on the run, moving and changing names every few months when the Feds get close. Thing is, they've got two kids. Th...