GERRY (2003) *** ½

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THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE (2019) ***

Jesse Eisenberg stars as Casey, a meek accountant who is accosted and mugged on a dark street.  After healing from his injuries, he decides to take up karate lessons to learn how to be more masculine and protect himself.  He excels at rudimentary karate and quickly moves up to the rank of yellow belt.  His Zen-like instructor (Alessandro Nivola) takes a shine to Casey and invites him to attend his “night class”, which is much more strenuous, deadly, and possibly illegal.  

The Art of Self-Defense reminded me a bit of Observe and Report as both films contain the same brand of dark humor.  Both also deal with men wrestling with possible mental illness working a job they are unfit to be employed.  There’s also a bit of Fight Club in there as well, as the movie starts out as primarily about fighting, but then takes a foreboding turn in the second act where the characters stop grappling and begin focusing their energy to criminal endeavors.  (Minus the satire though.)  

Eisenberg is ideally cast as the hero.  It’s fun seeing his transformation from introverted geek to alpha male.  It’s Nivola who steals the movie though.  He kinda looks like Armand Assante channeling Bruce Springsteen as the ultra-masculine, self-absorbed, and potentially whack-a-doodle “Sensei”.  He totally disappears into the role and chews the scenery while issuing hilarious monologues about what it means to be a man and the importance doing masculine things.  I know one thing:  If they ever reboot Karate Kid 3 with Nivola in the Terry Silver role, they’d have my $15.

After a rather flawless first half-hour, the film kind of falters once it becomes clear that Nivola is a nut and his night class is a front for his sociopathic tendencies.  Once he starts playing his students against each other and pushing them into illegal extracurricular activities, the fun slowly drops out of the movie.  Naturally, this all leads up to a final confrontation between Nivola and Eisenberg which manages to be surprising, frustrating, but fitting at the same time.  I can’t quite say The Art of Self-Defense is a great movie, but there are enough flashes of brilliance, especially in the early going, to make it a champion.

BOOKSMART (2019) * ½

Booksmart is essentially a female version of Superbad.  That isn’t the worst idea for a movie, but unfortunately, it’s a tone-deaf, clunky, and often times unbearable chore to sit through.  That’s mostly due to the insufferable batch of unlikeable screechy characters that we’re stuck with for 102 painful minutes. 

The film follows the time-honored high school comedy tradition of having two outcast best friends (Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein) trying to get laid on the last night of school.  The big difference is that we have two women as our leads and one of them is a lesbian.  This could’ve worked, but there seems to be more of an emphasis on humiliation and heartbreak than anything, which runs against the grain of the silly early scenes.  

Those allegedly comedic scenes feel especially belabored and drawn out.  Working on the conceit that the girls don’t hang out with the popular kids, therefore have no idea where the party is, they must travel from lame party to lame party looking for the big kegger where all the cool kids are at.  All this does is eat up a lot of screen time, and worse, isn’t very funny.  (I think it was about the time the characters were using Harry Potter shit for pick-up lines that I started to mentally tap out.)

All Booksmart really did was make me feel old.  High school is a lot different now than when I went, that’s for sure.  Even though what the girls go through was far removed from my own experiences, the film does very little to make you care about them.  Movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Edge of Seventeen, while vastly different from my days of a teenager, still managed to engage and inform, while giving you characters you could relate to.  This movie has none of that.  

Even worse, is when it finally looks like the gay character has found a compatible match, she winds up vomiting all over her, which just seemed needlessly cruel.  First-time director Olivia Wilde handles these scenes of embarrassment and exclusion without much finesse, which makes them even more uncomfortable to watch.  The pacing especially drags in the second act as Wilde lumbers from one unfunny scene to another without much energy.  

The only real fun comes from a bizarre stop-motion drug trip scene in which our heroines are inexplicably transformed into Barbie dolls.  This sequence has a spark and edge to it that’s missing throughout the rest of the film.  Wilde’s husband, Jason Sudeikis is also good for a laugh or two as the dopey principal, but for the most part, Booksmart is rather witless.  

EAST MEETS WATTS (1974) **

Larry Chin (Alan Tang) travels from China to San Francisco to find the man who killed his wife.  Along the way, he crosses paths with a soul brother named Stud Brown (Timothy Brown) who’s being hassled by a racist cop (Aldo Ray) who handcuffs them together.  They give the cops (not to mention another assorted crop of racist shitkickers) the slip, get the cuffs off, and decide to work together to take down a local drug kingpin (James Hong).  

East Meets Watts is what you get when Al Adamson can’t make up his mind whether he wants to make a Kung Fu movie or a Blaxploitation actioner.  He splits the difference and tries to give both genres his own unique spin.  It’s obvious that the Kung Fu sequences are much more competent.  By “much more competent”, I mean they’re just as crummy as your typical low budget ‘70s chopsocky flick.  Still, there’s plenty of kicking, chopping, and nunchuck twirling to keep your interest.  We also get at least one memorable death when Tang rips a guy’s scalp off with his bare hands.  

The Blaxploitation elements are the weakest aspects of the movie, mostly because Adamson films the action so poorly.  Simple shootouts and chase scenes are rendered nearly incomprehensible thanks to the schizophrenic editing.  There’s also an unintentionally hilarious subplot involving a mute love interest (played by Carol Speed from The Mack) that will leave you howling.  

The scenes where our two heroes are cuffed together work well enough.  You almost wish they had spent the whole movie that way.  Think a Kung Fu version of The Defiant Ones.  (The Defiant Wongs?)  However, whenever they split up for their separate missions, the movie often spins its wheels.  Despite its shortcomings, I find it hard to completely dislike any film that features Aldo Ray AND James Hong, so it’s still worth watching not only for die-hard Kung Fu and Blaxploitation fans, but for connoisseurs of cult movie stars as well.

AKA:  Dynamite Brothers.  AKA:  Killing of a Chinese Bookie.  AKA:  Stud Brown.  AKA:  Main Street Women.  AKA:  Dynamite Brown.

THE YESTERDAY MACHINE (1965) **

A teenage couple break down on route to a football game.  On their way to a gas station, they cross through a wooded area with a posted “No Trespassing” sign.  The girl disappears into thin air and the boy is shot by, get this… Confederate soldiers!  A befuddled reporter and the missing girl’s lounge singing sister investigate and run smack into a Nazi plot to build a time machine.

The Yesterday Machine is just different enough from the norm to be memorable, but it’s not quite weird enough to be called “good”.  Things kick off with a memorably cheesy beginning featuring a cheerleader standing along the roadside and twirling her baton to a rock n’ roll beat.  The highlight though is the hilarious lounge number, “Leave Me Alone”, sung by Ann Pellegrino, one of the surliest performers I’ve ever heard.  This has got to be one of the most ridiculously pessimistic songs recorded on film.  This song alone is almost enough to make it recommended.  I don’t think Pellegrino has sung anything before or since.  She probably wanted to quit while she was ahead.

Unfortunately, whatever merits the film may have are canceled out by the sluggish pace.  It also suffers from a truly crappy villain.  Jack Herman, who plays the Nazi doctor, sounds like Ludwig von Drake and is about as menacing too.  Once he shows up, the whole thing gets bogged down with a lot of talky scenes of unending scientific gobbledygook.  Old time cowboy star Tim Holt gives the movie a shot of class as the police lieutenant on the trail of the Nazis, but the majority of the performers are amateurish at best.  

In short, if it wasn’t for “Leave Me Alone”, I doubt I would remember The Yesterday Machine tomorrow.

THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER (1973) **

While attending the funeral of her estranged mother, Diane (Belinda J. Montgomery) bumps into Lilith (Shelley Winters), an old friend of the family.  Lilith invites Diane to stay in her home, and before she can even move in, the mute servant (Jonathan Frid) is trying to warn her something’s amiss.  Diane eventually figures out Lilith is some sort of Devil worshipper and gets out of there quickly.  When Diane meets the man of her dreams (Robert Foxworth), she forbids the ever-meddling Lilith to stay out of her affairs.  Too bad she was pretty much doomed from the start.

Poor Diane had to realize she was in danger right from the get-go.  I mean you know you’re in trouble when Shelley Winters invites you to stay at her house where there are devil paintings on the wall and Barnabus Collins is her mute servant.  If that doesn’t tell you that you’re trapped in a crappy Made for TV Rosemary’s Baby knockoff. directed by Jeannot Szwarc, I don’t know what will.

Written by Colin Higgins, who had just written Harold and Maude the previous year (and would go on to direct 9 to 5), The Devil’s Daughter follows the standard ‘70s Made for TV horror formula to a tee.  Something cool happens in the opening minutes to grab your attention, and then you have to wait until the last few minutes of the film for something equally compelling to occur.  Even when it finally happens, it’s wholly predictable and tame.  I guess that would’ve been an acceptable trade-off if everything in between hadn’t been such a slog. 

The supporting cast is strong though.  Diane Ladd makes a memorable impression as Diane’s ill-fated mother in the opening scene.  Joseph Cotten also does a fine job as the kindly old judge who probably isn’t all that kindly after all.  The funniest casting is Abe Vigoda as one of the Devil worshippers.  Not only do you get the hilarious visual of seeing Fish dressed in a black cultist robe, you get to hear him TRYING to do a Mexican accent, but he basically just sounds like Boris Karloff.  That alone makes The Devil’s Daughter almost worth watching. 

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924) ***

Douglas Fairbanks stars as a miscreant thief who is content on picking pockets and living life like a complete scoundrel.  One day, he spies a fair princess (Julanne Johnston) and falls head over heels in love with her.  Wearing garments he’s stolen from the bazaar, the thief poses as a prince to win her hand, but is flogged publicly when his true identity is discovered.  Afterwards, a contest is held, and it is declared that the man who brings back the rarest treasure will take the princess as his bride.  The thief then goes off into the desert and faces various perils in order to find a precious treasure and prove his love. 

Fairbanks is a lot of fun to watch, especially while performing feats of derring-do and flashing his Cheshire Cat smile.  The real star though is production designer William Cameron Menzies who combines the lavish sets with the amazing costumes and the incredible special effects with eye-popping pizzazz.  Even when you can spot the seams in the matte work, the artistry needed to coordinate all those departments together (particularly for the time) is considerable.  One thing is for sure, there’s more imagination and old-fashioned movie magic on display in one given frame of this movie than many modern-day blockbusters have in their entirety. 

At 155 minutes, The Thief of Bagdad is really way too long for its own good. Things get particularly pokey during the middle section.  Once Fairbanks goes on his quest, the movie kicks into fourth gear and moves at dizzying speed.  In this stretch of the film, he fights a giant lizard, encounters a creepy looking tree man, and does battle with an enormous bat.  I think my favorite moment though was Fairbanks’ duel to the death with a vicious looking sea spider.  Too bad these scenes are rather fleeting and are quickly over before they can really begin, but monster movie fans are sure to love the creature designs.  The famous scenes of Fairbanks riding on a magic carpet pack a punch too.  

Despite the sometimes-overwhelming length, this Thief of Bagdad is a lot more fun that 1940 remake, which was co-directed by Menzies.

AKA:  The Thief of Bagdad:  An Arabian Nights Fantasy.