News You Can Bruise for 2019 June

(2) Sat Jun 01 2019 11:07 May Film Roundup: Missed a chance to see Claude Shannon doc The Bit Player (2018) at the museum, just making a note of it here so I remember to see it later if and when it becomes available online. Here are the movies I did see in May, often to my detriment:

• Spaced Invaders (1990): One evening I had a drink when I maybe should not have had a drink, and I decided to rent a movie whose trailer I had seen on television when I was a kid. For about two weeks in 1990 I really wanted to see Spaced Invaders, but trekking to Bakersfield to see a movie that no other family member wanted to see? The movie might as well have been showing on Mars (where, ironically, it was banned).

  It's a shame because I would have liked this movie in 1990, but its time has passed. It's watchable, they really tried, it has some fun miniature effects and set design and a really good Uhura costume, but it's not funny or scary or surprising. Around the 70 minute mark I abruptly started wanting them to wrap it up. That's also when the alcohol wore off, so the booze was probably contributing a lot to my enjoyment. That said, there are a few things to like about this movie:

  1. It's better than Mars Attacks! (1996), on a much lower budget. Although most people don't like Mars Attacks! I imagine this is a minority opinion. I'll stick with it because I think I hate Mars Attacks! more than average. I mean, Mars Attacks! has Jack Nicholson, Spaced Invaders has an alien doing a Jack Nicholson impression. I ask you: which is funnier?
  2. Pretty sure this is the only movie I've ever seen where a military unit has a political officer. I'm also pretty sure it happened by accident because they were ripping off something else, but I'll take it.
  3. The kid in the duck costume is funny; I liked the actor's delivery.
• What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine (2018): DS9 fans need to see this, non-fans don't care. It's predetermined! Sumana and I are huge fans so we had to see it on the big screen as part of a Fathom Event. Certain bits of this movie (remastering a big space battle in HD) went right past us, although according to IMDB trivia (aka the opinion of someone on the Internet) this whole movie is a ploy "to convince CBS to remaster DS9 in High Definition." That seems like the sort of stunt fans pulled to try to get Nintendo to release Earthbound on Wii Virtual Console, so I'm skeptical. Although Earthbound eventually did happen, so maybe.

  Overall this was a great time. Best parts of this were the interviews with actors and producers. In particular, Nana Visitor and Andrew Robinson are great. Speaking as a writer... we don't necessarily work well live. We need time to find the best version. The day where the DS9 writing staff breaks an imaginary season 8 provided representative footage. Some really good ideas and discussion, some good starts that would need refinement after day one, and some end-of-BSG specials—bad ideas that probably can't be fixed precisely because you think they're great. It worked as a behind-the-scenes, but I found it very awkward.

• Aliens (1986): I was really skeptical that some space marines were going to be able to deal with a whole bunch of xenomorphs when the whole point of Alien is that a single one is unstoppable. But Aliens is in a different genre, plus the marines have heavy firepower where the truckers were trying to kill an alien with a mop and a Leatherman. And in the end, they weren't in fact able to "deal with" anything, so it checks out. Alien is a better movie because it did the worldbuilding, but this was fun, and a more even film overall. Paul Rieser a nice surprise.

  In my Alien review I made fun of Ridley Scott for an IMDB trivia item saying he'd envisioned the xenomorph peeping on Ripley voyeuristically, but in Aliens trivia I learn: "Sigourney Weaver asked that in the film her character should... have sex with the alien". That's also a bad idea, but at least it's not Porky's bad. Keep it in the subtext, folks.

• The Sting (1973): Scott Joplin is buried in St. Michael's Cemetery in Queens, and every year the cemetery hosts a concert in his honor. I really like this sort of tradition, but Burns Night is the only other example I can think of.

  Anyway, Sumana had recently gotten into Joplin, so we went to this year's concert and had a good time. Upon returning home I proposed that we rent The Sting, the film that anachronistically contributed to the Joplin revival of the 1970s. Thus, our watching experience—and my actual review—began.

  This was a fun ride full of heisty Hamlet cliches and few surprises. Having read a book on old-timey cons I knew how these things go, but Sumana, who AFAIK has not read a book on old-timey cons, also immediately figured out the climactic twist as soon as it was introduced. But it's fun to see the classic cons put into action without actually losing all your money.

• Five on the Black Hand Side (1973): Sometimes I hear about an interesting obscure movie playing at Film Forum or such, and I can't make the showing so I file away the movie for a later rental. This was such a movie, a fun domestic comedy based on a play. Classic low-budget 1970s fare, but not something you need to pay to see on the big screen.

  This movie was shot in L.A., not far from my old neighborhood, but the play clearly takes place in N.Y.C., in what I think is an example of sticking too closely to the original script. But playwright Charlie L. Russell also wrote the screenplay, so he had his chance. Unless they didn't tell him where they were going to shoot? I dunno, feels like there might be a story there.

  Godfrey Cambridge (previous Film Roundup appearances: Bye Bye Braverman, Cotton Comes to Harlem) is in one brief scene at the start of this movie, and not only is he given major billing, but in his one scene he rear-ends some other guy's car and the first thing the other guy says is "Hey, you're Godfrey Cambridge!" A true star.

• Blankman (1994): Another movie I wanted to see as a kid. I rented this one sober and maybe that was a mistake, because it's pretty bad. The best I can say is there are some fun "wacky gadget" practical effects and homages to Batman '66. Everything else is awful. I won't enumerate it all because I chose to see this movie, knowing it was probably bad, so I have no cause to act outraged. Curiosity: SATISFIED.