News You Can Bruise for 2021 February 1

(1) Mon Feb 01 2021 23:46 January Film Roundup: This month, by popular request (Sumana's pretty popular around here), I'm bringing back my gimmick from July 2013 where I list a fanciful connection between each pair of movies I reviewed this month. Fortunately this month there are only three movies to connect in a web of fun:

• Quartet (2012): A pretty enjoyable dramedy that gives older actors the chance to ham it up. We got two dramatic characters and two funny characters, the plot hits the beats in the order you think it will, it's fine; the pleasure is mostly in enjoying the British Acting.
  • Bonus connection to last month's Irma La Douce: Famous singer comes to town.
• Speed (1994): This is really, really fun, and captures the feel of Los Angeles around the time I was living there in college. In fact, here's a story I've apparently never told before: when I was in college I saw a Santa Monica bus like the one in Speed get hit by a car! No one was hurt, everyone got off the bus and started filling out forms. I actually remember being on the bus when it was hit, and filling out a form with a little stub pencil, but I'm not claiming that because it's easy to confabulate that kind of memory. My point is, Speed takes certain liberties with the sturdiness of that kind of bus. One tap and it's down for the count.

  The bigger problem with Speed is that the core middle bit, on the bus, is such a perfect action sequence that it's been raptured straight to Movie Heaven. The subplot about the bad guy and the two completely different transportation-based set pieces that flank the bus sequence are Left Behind, looking cheesy and sheepish by comparison. I mean, you've probably seen Speed and it's probably been a while. Do you remember the elevator sequence? No, I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Die Hard. Or maybe Gremlins 2.

  Speed is nearly two hours long. Much as I love any time the LA Metro shows up on screen (hello, Captain Marvel), you coulda cut that whole sequence, saved a bunch of money, and packed in two or three more showings per day of a ninety-minute Speed in a busy multiplex.

  It would be great if last year's showing of Gravity and this year's Speed acted as bookends on the pandemic, but it ain't happening. I will point out that Sandra Bullock's Speed character, like her Gravity character, spends a lot of time calling for help from people who can't help her. But that's not the movie I came here to find a connection with! How about:

  • Connection with Quartet: Tune man.
• The Devil And Miss Jones (1941): A pretty fun film with some good old-timey New York jokes ("I work at the automat. I have charge of blueberry pies.") falls flat at the last possible minute by setting up a scenario where management recognition of a union is the only realistic way to achieve a happy ending and then... skipping right to the happy ending, letting you draw whatever conclusions you want about how the plot got there. Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Oh, definitely on your side, for sure.

  This film has no creative connection to the similarly-named porno classic, to the extent that I wonder whether the director of The Devil In Mrs. Jones had heard the title but never seen the film. It seems like the common situation where you mishear something, decide your mishearing is cooler, and do your own thing based on the mishearing.

  • Connection with Quartet: Romance blooms among the elderly.
  • Connection with Speed: Bad cops.