Perfect Hair Forever

Fury: written and directed by David Ayer; starring Brad Pitt (Collier), Shia LaBeouf (Bible), Logan Lerman (Norman), Michael Pena (Gordo), and Jon Bernthal (Coon-Ass) (2014): Enjoyable WWII tank movie with new-school gore but old-fashioned morality: there are good guys and bad guys, and the job of the good guys is to kill the bad guys. 

Our American heroes, led by Sergeant Brad Pitt and forced to train new addition Logan Lerman on the fly, staff a Sherman tank dubbed 'Fury' in the last month of WWII, somewhere in Germany. They're town-hopping prior to Victory-Europe Day, and things are bloody as all Hell.

The acting from everyone is solid and sympathetic, though maybe we could have used ten more minutes of characterization and ten fewer minutes of apocalyptic battlefield action. Some of the tactical goofs will make military buffs cringe. This is another version of the old story of Horatius at the Bridge. And that story is dramatically sound no matter what millennium one lives in. 

The representation of tracer fire does make some battle sequences look like Star Wars. Especially good is a running battle between four American tanks and one ridiculously (and historically accurately) superior German tank. The final, 20-minute battle at the crossroads is about as apocalyptic as any battle involving only one tank can be. Recommended.

When Harry Met Sally: written by Nora Ephron; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Billy Crystal (Harry), Meg Ryan (Sally), Carrie Fisher (Marie), and Bruno Kirby (Jess) (1989): Nora Ephron penned this romantic comedy and Rob Reiner directed in style and structure as an homage to, or swipe from, a number of Woody Allen movies. It's gentler and less neurotic than a Woody Allen film would have been, however. Can men and women be friends without the sexual element creeping in? The movie actually seems to answer that question 'No.' Recommended.

Stir Crazy: written by Bruce Jay Friedman; directed by Sidney Poitier; starring Gene Wilder (Skip Donahue), Richard Pryor (Harry Monroe), Jo Beth Williams (Meredith), Georg Stanford Brown (Rory), Barry Corbin (Warden Beatty), Craig T. Nelson (Deputy Wilson), Miguel Angel Suarez (Ramirez), and Jonathan Banks (Graham) (1980): Imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit, New Yorkers Wilder and Pryor must escape from a Southern U.S. prison by using... a prison rodeo? OK! 

Sloppy, funny, and occasionally thrilling buddy movie teams Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor at a point when Wilder was at his height as a box-office presence. You can tell the latter because he gets to sing the title song and gets the girl in a completely perfunctory romantic sub-plot. 

Pryor does what he can, though his massive talents are massively under-served by the script. Sidney Poitier directs (!) in an amiable but occasionally sloppy style. And who doesn't love Grossburger? The great Jonathan 'Mike Ehrmantraut' Banks plays a fairly significant role. Good luck recognizing him, though -- he's 35 years younger and hiding behind a cowboy hat and sunglasses. 

A remarkable-for-its-time sympathetic portrayal of a gay inmate gets undercut to some extent by an almost stereotypical confusion of 'gay' and 'transvestite.' I'm pretty sure this movie represents the first time I saw a naked woman's boobies on the big screen. Yay me! Recommended.

The Past is Prologue...to Adventure!

The Shadow: adapted by David Koepp from characters and situations created by Walter Gibson and others; directed by Russell Mulcahy; starring Alec Baldwin (The Shadow/Lamont Cranston), John Lone (Shiwan Khan), Penelope Ann Miller (Margo Lane), Peter Boyle (Moe Shrevnitz), Ian McKellen (Dr. Lane), Tim Curry (Farley Claymore), and Jonathan Winters (Wainwright Cranston) (1994):

This attempt to turn the 1930's pulp and radio hero The Shadow into a film franchise like the Batman movies failed at the box office. However, it's far from terrible. Alec Baldwin is solid as The Shadow and his alter ego Lamont Cranston, and Penelope Ann Miller and the rest of the cast do solid work as the Shadow's lieutenants, associates, and enemies. John Lone plays the Shadow's greatest enemy in the pulps, Shiwan Khan, with a light touch.

Actually, the whole movie may be a bit too light, both in tone and on action set-pieces. Still, compared to most current superhero movies, The Shadow seems like a masterpiece of plot and characterization. And there's a lot of acting and writing talent here, including welcome comic bits from Ian McKellen and Jonathan Winters. The Shadow's gal pal Margo Lane even gets to do things that don't involve screaming or fainting. Recommended.

Stand by Me: adapted by Raynold Gideon and Bruce Evans from the Stephen King novella "The Body"; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Wil Wheaton (Gordie Lachance), River Phoenix (Chris Chambers), Corey Feldman (Teddy Duchamp), Jerry O'Connell (Vern Tessio), Kiefer Sutherland (Ace Merrill), Richard Dreyfus (The Writer), and John Cusack (Denny Lachance) (1986):

An almost quintessential tale of childhood friendship was Rob Reiner's first box-office hit. The fictional Stephen King town of Castle Rock (a name King himself used as an homage to Lord of the Flies) appears here, and Reiner would name his production company after it because of the success of the movie. And that's what connects Lord of the Flies to Seinfeld.

Beautifully acted by all the boys, but especially River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton, who are both beautifully naturalistic, it's a short, jam-packed movie. Of course, the secret story of the movie is that there's a killer train wandering the woods around Castle Rock. It's already killed once, and it will try to kill again. As it's a vehicle that seems to be fixated on killing children, it may be the offspring of Christine and Pennywise the Clown. It will not stop if you are on the tracks. It will not even slow down. Highly recommended.

He Treats Objects Like Women

The Sure Thing: written by Steve Bloom and Jonathan Roberts; directed by Rob Reiner; starring John Cusack (Walter 'Gib' Gibson), Daphne Zuniga (Alison Bradbury), Nicolette Sheridan (The Sure Thing), Anthony Edwards (Lance), Tim Robbins (Gary Cooper), and Viveca Lindfors (Professor Taub) (1985): Fairly delightful though somewhat programmatic 1980's teen romantic comedy aided by unusually sharp writing and a high-calibre cast. Smart girl Alison and sarcastic goof-off Gib will eventually get together, thanks to a shared Christmas-time, cross-country trip from their East Coast university to Los Angeles.

Alison's going to see her law-school boyfriend; Gib's going to bed the eponymous "Sure Thing" his buddy Lance has set up for him. Anthony Edwards has a full head of hair and plays a goof-off! John Cusack demonstrates that he has his full John Cusack charms even in the mid-1980's! Tim Robbins cameos as a showtune-singing Young Republican! Nicolette Sheridan plays the Sure Thing as vapidly as one expects! And astronomy is important!

The film's DNA traces back to It Happened One Night and forward to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Here, it works like a charm, with the added charm of assessing the somewhat alien landscape of 1985, when not everybody accepted charge cards, bank cards were almost non-existent, and nobody had cellphones. Though Lance does get overly excited at using a cordless phone. Recommended.

Hello, Cleveland!

This is Spinal Tap, written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Rob Reiner (Marty DiBergi), Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (Nigel Tufnel), Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls) and Tony Hendra (Ian Faith) (1984): One of the three or four great, fake documentaries of all time, This is Spinal Tap follows heavy-metal survivors Spinal Tap (who started life as Beatlesque quartet The Thamesman in the 1960's) on an ill-fated album release tour in the United States.

After this would come further forays into faux documentary by Guest, McKean, Shearer and friends that would include SCTV alums Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara. This is Spinal Tap still seems like the best of these productions, in part because it seems so organic and lived-in, in part because it's got some of the great lines of all time..."It goes to eleven"..."There's a fine line between stupid and clever"..."None more blacker"..."I call it 'Lick My Love Pump.'"...and some of the great fake songs of all time, along with screwed-up concert footage, the band getting lost under the stage in Cleveland, the Stonehenge disaster, and two suspicious cold sores.

It's a hallmark of how great the film is that one forever after uses it to explain ridiculous rock-and-roll moments that happened after the film came out. U2 seem even more gormless than Spinal Tap when they too visit Elvis's grave in their horrible, pretentious, utterly real documentary Rattle and Hum. Bono seems like David St. Hubbins writ larger, and the Edge like Nigel Tufnel.

The Stonehenge sequence parodies a host of ridiculous concept albums and accompanying overblown stage shows, but it also anticipates David Bowie's subsequent Glass Spider tour and album, the latter of which opens with a portentous spoken-word bit that makes Spinal Tap sound clever and concise by comparison. And the band's desire to do a rock-opera about Jack the Ripper really doesn't seem as stupid as it should after Paul Simon's mega-flop The Capeman, a doo-wop Broadway musical about a real-life teen-aged killer of two teen-agers.

And of course there's the parade of drummers, a surprising number of which have the nickname "Stumpy." And the cameos, the best of which may be Paul Shaffer as an unctuous PR guy, though Fred Willard also has a killer bit during the band's low point. To quote Marty DiBergi, but enough of my yakking. Highest recommendation.