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May 11, 2026

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TCM Film Festival Recap (2026)

 Day One

Thursday April 30th was the opening night of the TCM Film Festival,  and as  become our custom, we had the Essential pass which allowed us to go to the opening night Premiere and walk the red carpet. The feature was Barefoot in the Park from 1967 starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. It was chosen as a tribute to Robert Redford who passed last year and Jane Fonda herself showed up as the guest to talk about her experience making the movie. While I am not a huge fan of Jane Fonda, I did think that her presentation was sweet and heartfelt about her co-star. 

She mentioned how she had had a crush on him and would try to convince him that they should have an affair. I’m not sure she was really joking. She also told the story of how all the secretaries at the studio looked out the door and down the hallway when Redford was walking down the pathways of the studio.  

The movie is a light fluffy romantic comedy from playwright Neil Simon, and it had its share of crazy characters and oddball situations, and there were plenty of laughs. I know I saw the movie back in the 1970s at some point probably on television, but I had very little memory of it except that their apartment was sort of dismal and small. Redford had a very nice touch with the comedy elements and he even does kind of a silly dance as part of the story. I think there’s a restored 4K Blu-ray coming, and I will probably pick that up just to make sure I have it in my collection.

We were originally going to stay for a second movie but we got hungry and decided to make a late evening visit to Canter’s Delicatessen for a sandwich and some cheesecake to take home to Allison.

Day Two

The El Capitan theater usually hosts an animated film from the Disney Vault on the first full day of the TCM Film Festival, this year it was ”Alice in Wonderland” which was pretty surreal anytime you see it. Mario Cantone was the host and he was delightfully silly and fun and talking about the film. His expert guest was Andreas Deja , a legendary animator from Disney Studios who has worked on dozens of Disney films since the 1980s.  They talked about the things that inspired the movie and the fact that it had been one of the things Walt Disney had wanted to do from the very start. Of course there was also a discussion of how the movie finally started making money when we got to the Psychedelic era of the 60s and hippies under the influence made the film a hit.

We got locked out of “Letty Linton”, because Alice in Wonderland got out just 15 minutes before this long lost Joan Crawford film was to screen at the Egyptian. We did get in line and get a queue card but there was no way we were going to get into the film. The Theater was completely packed. So we went and had lunch in the car in the parking garage at Hollywood and Highland, and then went up for the second film of the day, which was “Dangerous Liaisons”.  

The star of the film, Glenn Close, had just gotten her feet and handprints done in the courtyard at the Chinese Theater, and she stayed over to talk about this movie. She did have some interesting information about the process, including the fact that all of her scenes were shot well after everybody else had completed their work. She had given birth just 7 weeks before and was still on maternity leave before she came to Europe to film her part of the movie. She talked about how she was unsure that John Malkovich was going to cut it as a romantic lead , but she ultimately decided that he was definitely going to work in the film.

It’s easy to forget that both Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves are also in the movie, they play secondary characters and they were both quite good despite the usual criticism that Keanu gets for playing a character in a period piece. There was a little bit of a discussion about the ending of the film, and Glenn Close revealed that they did shoot a guillotine execution, but that that was ultimately abandoned for the disturbing silent treatment ending that finishes off the film now.

The movie is a tour de force for both Close and John Malkovich, and it was certainly deserving of the awards that it received and the ones it was considered for.

Next on the agenda is just one of the most delightful moments of the festival. The presentation of the 1996 film “That Thing You Do”. This has always been a personal favorite, and it tells a great story behind one of those one hit wonders that made up pop music in the ’60s and ’70s, in this case though one that was entirely invented for the movie. The two guests were Johnathon Schaech and Kevin Pollock, who both explained how they had been cast and some of the contributions that they made to the way the story was told. The writer-director of the film is Tom Hanks, who also plays the part of record company executive Mr. White. 

Schaech explained that when he went in for his audition he improvised the snapping fingers, hand on the ear and delivery to an invisible microphone when his character says “I quit”. It was his idea to present it as if it was a song that he’s walking away from. He also literally walked away when he finished his line and Tom Hanks had to chase him down in the hallway to get him back. He said that that is the point at which he knew he was going to get the part.  Pollock on the other hand had worked with Tom Hanks on his Apollo Mission miniseries, so they had a previous relationship. Again, the actor was given quite a bit of leeway into how his character was going to be played. People sometimes mistake him for a DJ but he’s actually a local businessman who does his own commercials on the radio and that’s why the audience is familiar with him. Pollock said that Hank’s told him to do whatever he wanted with the character, and Kevin  played it very broadly with some cartoonish dancing and movements and oddball vocal delivery. He thought for sure Hanks was going to call him on it and ask him to tone it down, but he said Tom was just fine with it and it ended up in the film. This presentation and the conversation that followed the movie were highlights of the festival for us.

We then went out and got in line again to go back into the Chinese Theater for the presentation of Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Boyer had also been in “Barefoot in the Park” the night before so we were seeing him in two different movies that were made 30 years apart. It was sort of an interesting comparison. Incidentally actress Mildred Natwick had been in both “Barefoot in the Park” and “Dangerous Liasions” so we saw two stars in their own double feature at the festival, an unplanned but very pleasant coincidence.

Amanda had not seen Gaslight before and she enjoyed it quite well, the fact that the term gaslighting has become so prolific in the last couple of years is easy to understand once you see the movie. We know that we are being deliberately lied to and are expected to accept the lie in spite of the evidence of our own eyes and ears. That’s exactly what is happening as Boyer’s character is attempting to drive his wife mad as he seeks jewels that belonged to her aunt.  The movie was also the debut of Angela Lansbury and she is quite a character as a fairly slutty servant who is providing comic relief and some plot details in the film.

As much as we would have liked to stay for the midnight screening of “Vanishing Point”, it wasn’t going to work. We were not staying in a hotel downtown and so we had a 45 minute commute back to the house in Glendora, and that meant that we would not have gotten home until after 3 am.. Not something that we could do and then on Saturday morning get up for the other films that we planned on seeing.

Day Three

We had to make a tough choice on Saturday morning, and the way it played out for the afternoon meant that our best option was to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in the Chinese Theater Multiplex. I think whenever they have an older science fiction film they basically get Joe Dante out of storage and bring him to the festival. Let’s face it, this is a guy who knows what Saturday sci-fi and the 50s and 60s was all about. 

He told a couple of quick stories about the making of the film, got us hyped up for the movie, and then got out of the way. This may be the 4th or 5th time I’ve seen him introduce a movie at the festival, and he always seems to work it just right, so the focus is on the movie.

Immediately after The Day the Earth Stood Still we got back in line at the multiplex to see Captain Blood, one of my favorite Errol Flynn films. The guest was Allen Rode who has written extensively about the era of films that this was made in and in particular about director Michael Curtis, whose long association with Errol Flynn was contentious for a variety of reasons including things that happened in the making of this film.  

Mr Rode talked about the final time that Flynn and Curtis met near the end of Flynn’s life when he was broke and desperate for work, and although they had had their differences they seem to have a Reconciliation at that final meeting, and after Flynn left Curtis told his host that if it wasn’t for Errol Flynn he would not have had a career. 

Because of the timing of events at the festival, we had to step out of Captain Blood for a few minutes to get queue cards for the next film that we wanted to see. We were able to do that and then go back in to finish off the movie, but the sequence that we missed while we were gone was the great duel between Flynn and Basil Rathbone on the beach. Fortunately I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, still it would have been nice to be able to see that moment again on the big screen.

The movie that we were trying to ensure that we got queue cards for was next and that was 1979’s”The Muppet Movie”. The guest was composer Paul Williams, who did the music for the film and wrote the great classic song “Rainbow Connection”. Williams was in fine form telling great stories, and because he was going to be doing a conversation later in the festival, there was a small tribute film to him that screened before the Muppet Movie. Frankly if I had to pick a moment from the festival that was my favorite this would probably be it. I love “The Muppet Movie” and I’ve admired Paul Williams for 50 plus years. This made me anticipate the conversation that would be coming up later even more. 

Afterwards we all sang along with the “Dream Factory”at the end of The Muppet Movie and then we made our way over to the Egyptian Theater for a screening of a Fellini film. We were also going to meet up with one of the Lambs who is also going to be seeing “Nights of Cabiria”. Aaron Neuwirth saw me first, and yes I turned around to the call “hey old man”. Ouch, but it is accurate. Aaron went in first. He had already gotten a queue card and he held a couple of seats for us at the back of the theater because all three of us were going to leave as soon as the movie was done to get queue cards for the next film.

“Nights of Cabiria”, won the Academy Award for Best foreign language film back in the 1950s, and I suppose from the perspective of the time it would be deserving. Frankly, it was not my cup of tea. The lead actress was quite good but her character is frustratingly  irritating and dense to the point that she makes the same mistakes over and over again. And it may very well be that The stereotype of Italians shouting everything comes from this movie where the actors all seem to be about 20 decibels louder than they need to be. I have to admit that the three of us dozed off occasionally, and we left a little bit early to be sure we got in line for the movie that we were all anticipating.

Our final film on Saturday was “Robocop”, which I have seen on the big screen almost as many times as I’ve seen “Jaws” on the big screen. The bonus here though, was the guests, Paul McCrane who plays Emil,  the melting man in the movie, Kurtwood Smith who is Clarence Boddicker, the villain who gets the most amount of time and the juiciest lines in the movie, and RoboCop himself Dr Peter Weller.

They had a lively time sharing stories about the making of the film and commenting on the work of director Paul Verhofen in turning this film into something that was not cartoon movie junk but rather a satire of the social mores of the time. I think all of the conversations that took place during the festival are available on the TCM YouTube channel, but I will try to link this one here because it was so memorable.

Amanda and I had actually seen Peter Weller talk about Robocop in the Egyptian Theater several years before when the American Cinematheque was doing a tribute to Miguel Ferrer who passed away just days earlier. We said goodbye to Aaron after this film and once again headed home for a short night’s sleep before coming back for the last day of the festival.

Day 4

Going to a movie at 9: 00 in the morning on a Sunday is my idea of Heaven but I’m sure a lot of people felt it was a little early. One of the most fun conversations about a film at the festival however took place here as nine of the 12 kids who made up the “Bad News Bears” showed up to talk about the movie. You would think having that large a crowd of storytellers would be overwhelming but they paced themselves very well and everybody got a turn to say something about the movie and their experience in it.

All of them had very nice things to say about Walter Matthau but also the director Michael Ritchie. Some of them had been actors and some of them had been kids who played baseball and just wanted an opportunity to do so on screen. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, there is dialogue in this film that comes from not only the adults but the kids, that would certainly not be politically correct. There is language that would not pass muster with the woke police of today. With that warning the audience watching the movie laughed at all of the appropriate places and held their breath once or twice because of the language use but everyone seemed to recognize that this was a comedy not a commentary and they responded appropriately. 

I actually saw the Bad News Bears in the Chinese Theater in 1976 so it was kind of fun on the 50th anniversary to be back for another screening. I was asked about it by the cameras that were roving the courtyard before the film so I hope that that footage shows up somewhere so that people can appreciate the moment.

Our next stop at the TCM Film Festival was at Club TCM in the Roosevelt Hotel, to listen to the conversation with Paul Williams. Ben Mankiewicz introduced Williams and we also got to see the film tribute again which was nice. Paul went into more detail about the start of his career and he talked about how being an actor in a film where he picked up a guitar and started teaching himself how to play and making up a song on the spot led him to a career as a songwriter.

He could not be laudatory enough about Karen Carpenter, referring to her as an angel whose voice gave life to his lyrics and set his career path. I was hoping there would be a little bit more talk about the “Phantom of the Paradise” and I think Mankiewicz was planning on that, but Paul Williams is a raconteur and he had things that he wanted to say, so they just let him go. If there was one screening that I missed at this year’s Film Festival that I would really like to have made it would have been “Ishtar” a movie that I have championed in the face of derisive criticism since the day it opened. Williams talked about how he was trying to create songs for that film that work musically but were cringe-worthy, and frankly he succeeded. He was pretty proud however of some of the lyrical rhyming that he did and who can blame him. 

After the conversation we rushed over to the Egyptian Theater for another one of those things that we look forward to every year, the Craig Barron Ben Burtt presentation of “The Towering Inferno”. These two Academy award-winning film technicians deconstruct the visual effects and the sound effects of the movie that they talk about each year. We briefly met our friend Michael in line,  who had shown up hoping to be able to crash the presentation and was in the standby line. We told him we would try to hold a seat for him when we got inside, but he texted us that he never really got close to being able to have a ticket to the screening. Maybe next year Michael, sorry.

Burtt and Baron both have a lot of fun putting these presentations together and they showed up in their firefighters turnouts and helmets to explain how the movie was made. They had some great behind the scenes pictures and clips to show, and the story of working with fire is always fascinating. 

“The Towering Inferno” is 2 hours and 45 minutes, which sounds like a long time but it actually moves very effectively. Some people may think of it as a Cheesy disaster film, but let me tell you it works really well and plays like gangbusters on the screen. Maybe the character development is a little thin, but the plot plays out with a lot of suspense and there are some great set pieces. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen both get to play action hero in a couple of scenes and those look terrific on the big screen. Everyone was surprised at how well the film holds up, and this was the right way to see it on the big screen with great sound. 

It also turns out that Director John Landis was a stuntman on the film who took a dive out a window on fire, and he was in the audience for the screening. How cool was this bit of trivia? 

For our last film at the festival we decided to skip the closing night screening in the Chinese IMAX theater and instead opted for screening of the Gene Kelly Musical “On the Town”. The hosts for the show were Mario Cantone and Kate Flannery and I think both of them had a few shots before the screening because they were feeling good. 

They didn’t have any special insight into the film but they enjoyed talking about the three main characters and they engaged in a variation of the “F***”, Marry, or Kill?  game, and let’s just say the poor Jules Munchen came up on the short end of the stick with everyone. 

“On the Town” is an ebullient celebration of New York City and the Golden Age of Hollywood dancing. Anne Miller and Vera Ellen are terrific dancers and Betty Garrett is no slouch either. There are great sequences and memorable moments in the film and it feels really nice to close out a classic film festival with a movie that came from the Dream Factory at its height.

So that was our Festival experience and I can’t wait till next year.

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December 27, 2025

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Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang (2005) Revisit

We lost Val Kilmer this last year, and that is certainly a tragedy. He is best remembered by most as Iceman from the Top Gun films, and he was Doc Holliday in the best performance of his career in Tombstone. It is unfortunate that his role in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” is sometimes overlooked . Gay Perry, the private detective, is one of the great sarcastic narrators in film noir. When you add Robert Downey Jr and his sardonic delivery to the narration, you have what should qualify as a classic.

Shane Black is created two of the best Neo noir films of the century. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” along with “The Nice Guys”, is the perfect mix of mystery, thriller, and comedy. There’s a seemingly convoluted plot that is the basis of the mystery in this film . If you get to the end of the movie and you are still confused, don’t worry about it. The real joy in the film is just watching the characters be smart asses in the face of danger and their own stupidity.

The dialogue for this movie is pinnacle Shane Black. He should probably only write for action movies, and film noir. Although his version of the Predator does undermine his action credentials a little bit. Still,l this movie gives him enough excess status that he can burn a little bit of it on some failed outings.  Downey Jr plays Harry Lockhart, a loser and small-time crook who somehow gets caught up in the film business and is being mentored on how to be a private eye by Perry Von Schrieke, Kilmer’s character. When real murders start to happen, Harry insists on trying to solve them and tries to muscle Gay Perry into helping him. The by play between the two of them consists of some of the wittiest back and forth you will see on the screen since the days of the screwball comedies of Preston Sturgis.

Well not a parody in the pure sense of the word, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” certainly plays on the tropes of the traditional film noir. A detached detective, a femme fatale, and enough tough guy suspects to fill an arena for a fight to the death. We frequently get those fights as well. The deadpan delivery of the two stars, along with the outrageous plot points and coincidences, keep this film intriguing and lively.

One of the best illustrations of the biting and sarcastic dialogue comes when Perry in the fit of frustration asks Harry if he knows what he’ll find when he looks up the word idiot in the dictionary. Harry gives a smart-ass answer which would have been the end of it in the lesser film, but Gay Perry puts a button on the joke and dialogue rises to a new level.

Michelle Monaghan is also quite good in the film as the not quite good girl that Harry has always been in love with. She is both funny and sexy simultaneously. She is also pretty resilient in spite of her flighty character traits. As usual it’s not too hard to figure out the mystery, when a pretty substantial character actor is introduced early in the film, and then remains on the periphery during the exposition. Let’s just say that you will know who the bad guy is the minute he appears on screen. Again that isn’t really important, since the plot is mainly designed to put Harry and Perry in awkward situations and allow them to quip their way out.

It’s a little hard to believe that this film is 20 years old, and they’re only a couple of pieces of technology that give that away. Otherwise this movie remains as fresh as it was in 2005, and although I don’t think it quite qualifies as a Christmas film, it does its best to try.

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October 24, 2025

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Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025)

I will tell you up front, especially if you are new to this site, I love musicals. The form is not as popular as it once was, but the ones that manage to make it to the screen are usually going to get some attention from me, even if I have reservations about the subject or director. Hell, if Ari Aster or Robert Eggers did a musical, I’d bother to see it. Fortunately, I don’t have those reservations about this particular film. I generally trust Bill Condon as a director and, although I never read the original novel, I am a big fan of the 1985 film that was based on it. William Hurt won the Academy Award for his performance as Luis Molina, and the film played the story straight as a political drama, with tragic outcomes. 

When the story was converted to a Broadway Musical, I was frankly confused. I could not quite imagine how this bleak story of two prisoners in a South American hellhole, would work as fodder for tourists visiting New York City. Even with the fantasy sequences extended, it seemed like a longshot at best. I never saw the musical version, which was quite successful, until now. It works really well as a film, and I would be interested in seeing a stage production so I could compare the way they transition between the two worlds presented in the story. 

There will be some comparisons here to the 1985 film, since that is my original experience. I actually purchased a Laser Disc copy in the last year because I did not own it in any other form, and the cover art is really nice. I rewatched the film and confirmed my impression from 1985, this was one of the best films of the year. So now it comes time to see the musical version in a screen format, and I have to say I was nicely impressed. The tone is a little old fashioned, but that’s ok, so am I. 

There are three things that are important to talk about here, the music sequences, the original story premise and the performances. The thing that I liked the most about the musical sequences is that they remind me of the dance numbers and songs from the 30s and 40s era films that inspired them. The camerawork is not ostentatious, it is just clever enough to give us some interesting views of the action taking place. For the most part, the scenes are shown in full screen shots with very limited edits. I’m not an expert, but I would be willing to believe that some of them were done in single takes from start to finish 9if not, then a nod to the editors who made it appear seamless). The settings are often elaborate in the way a musical from bygone times would be. There are extravagant costumes, interesting backgrounds, and colors that pop every time we go to the musical fantasies. Unlike some contemporary music, you could actually follow a melody in most of the songs. This was not a Sondheim tonal fest, but a throwback to films like “Cabaret” or “Chicago”. I wasn’t humming the tunes as I left the theater, but I could if I listened to them a little more. 

Bill Condon has stayed true to the political story, but there is one significant change. Molina, the persecuted homosexual that is cellmates with Valentin, the political prisoner, is revealed much earlier in the story as an informer for the warden. That limited my ability to build the requisite sympathy for the character for a lot longer time than in the 1985 film. The prison sequences are fairly grueling, and I was happy there there was no dance number to accompany the food poisoning diarrhea scene. The story is also set more clearly in the Argentina of the 1970s. The timing of events in Argentina are closely tied to the ending of the musical, where they were not as important in the 85 film. 

A Crappy Movie Poster Does Not Help

There are several changes in the story of the old film that Molina is recounting from his memory. Those allow the fantasy character played by Jennifer Lopez, much more of a role than Sonia Braga got. Lopez continues to be beautiful on screen and her singing performance is very good, with eight or so songs to perform, including the climax title song. She has the most impressive of the musical elements in the film. Her two costars, get something that the two stars of the 1985 movie don’t get, they have dual roles not only as the prisoners but as characters in the fantasy of the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman” as Molina is telling it. Diego Luna has the heavier role in the musical sequences as the romantic interest of the star Ingrid Luna (Lopez). Tonatiuh, the actor playing Molina, has the stronger role in the prison scenes. Both of the men are quite good in the jail set scenes. Tonatiuh plays Molina with less obvious femininity than Hurt did, and the more subdued reading of the character might be better for the story, but it will probably not sustain the attention that Hurt’s performance did. This may be a case where the authentic casting works against the need for the audience to suspend it’s disbelief.

So, the movie is old fashioned, put together professionally, does right by it’s socially important political story and the music scenes all work. So why is this film going nowhere fast with audiences? I guess it is just a different world. This movie could have been platform released thirty years ago, starting in prestige locations and then getting a wider release as interest grew. That is not the world we live in anymore, and the success of the movie suffers for it. If you can find it on the big screen, go for it, but my guess is that it will be PPV this week and streaming on a service next month. Too bad, because it would bring back some old fashioned glamour to a movie going experience. 

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September 2, 2025

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Ghostbusters (1984)-Revisit/Alamo Drafthouse Movie Party

Whenever I get a chance to see one of my 1984 films on the big screen, I am going to take it. Last week the Alamo Drafthouse had a Movie Party Screening of “Ghostbusters”. The Movie Party screenings include a theme hosted introduction with a contest for a prize, and props are distributed as you enter the theater. In the past, some of the props are clever, but not useful for the interactions of the Party Atmosphere. This event however did include some props that made the screening feel like a party. We were given two foot long glowstick streamers that allowed us to join in on the ghost hunts when the proton packs came out. 

Everyone in the half full theater would wave their proton streams whenever the Ghostbusters did. It was quite a sight. I did not record during the screening, that would still be a no no by Alamo standards, but you can imagine the effect by looking at the video above. 

No one used the slime in a jar during the movie, but I did see several people eat their marshmallow at the end of the film when the Stay Puft Man makes his appearance.  

Here is a link to a decade old post on one of my visits to see Ghostbuster in a theater. 

and here is a 30th Anniversary screening link as well. 

One more link for you, this is the post on my 30 Years On Project from 2014. 

I am always happy to revisit a film that I love in a theater. Getting to do so with other fans is one of the things that makes movie going special for me. Oh, by the way, I wone the ring toss Slimer game and got two passes for an Alamo Screening. Not to shabby for a 41 year old movie and an even older fan. 

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August 7, 2025

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Robert Rodriguez Presents: Double Feature Robocop and Starship Troopers-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

Sunday was a double dose of Paul Verhoeven satire and action. The first movie was the perfection that is “Robocop”. I don’t know if I can count the number of times I have seen this film. I do know that I have seen it at least a half dozen times on the big screen, including a 2023 screening right here at the Paramount Theater. Quentin Tarantino apparently agrees with me that the script is perfect. What is also perfect are the performances from the main actors in the film. Dr. Peter Weller fully commits to the persona of the cyborg, but only after charming us as the eager to please Dad and new partner.

Kirkwood Smith, sneers his way thru the movie as the repulsive Clarence Boddicker, the crime boss of old Detroit. Although they don’t all get as much time to display their horrendous sides to us, the four toadies that make up his crew are equally loathsome, with special emphasis on Paul McCrane as Emil, the one bad guy who gets a deservingly nasty end to his story.  

I have always loved stop motion animation when it is integrated into real life surroundings. Ray Harryhausen was a cinema hero to me. Phil Tippet and his crew do a great job with ED-209, with little touches everywhere that add to the humor and tension of the film.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/2149667739&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true

Richard Kirkham · 2025_08_03_19_02_28

Robert Rodriguez Presented both films and his opening remarks are in the message above.

Starship Troopers came out a decade after “Robocop” but it contained a lot of the same bitter satire that the earlier movie did. The hostility to fascism is clear, but of course it is largely missed because we get engaged in Johnny Rico’s story and we can admire his mentors in spite of their authoritarian tendencies. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown are terrific as the older generation, trying to mold the youth of this world into soldiers and subsequently citizens.  It also doesn’t help the anti-fascist theme to have Rico’s parents be a couple of mealy mouthed characters that today might be revered to as woke.

The Special Effects in the film were pretty impressive for 1997. The vast numbers of bugs that the Mobile Infantry has to face is intimidating. Anyone who has dealt with an ant infestation will recognize how much we are outnumbered. In this world however, the bugs are not small and you can’t just stomp on them. 

Our host is friends with the star of the film and got him on the phone when it was time to go to the second movie. 

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Richard Kirkham · 2025_08_03_21_11_17

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July 31, 2025

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Boogie Nights (1997)-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

I could have sworn I’d written about this film before, but as I looked for any version of a review on the site I came up empty. It must simply be that I’ve talked about it with other people on a regular basis and so I thought I had actually written something about the movie. There are a couple reasons why this feels somewhat personal, but it has nothing to do with my drug use or participation in the adult film industry. Many of the reasons that I identify with this film have to do with the time and setting of the movie, which in some ways do parallel my own life.

The house that Eddie, our main character, lives in with his parents, before he becomes Dirk Diggler, is in Torrance California and it looks exactly like the home of my college debate partner who lived in Torrance. The interior layout and the exterior Frontage might very well have been filmed in his neighborhood. In 1981, which would be in the middle of the time that this film is set, I had a summer job making deliveries of photographic supplies to a variety of businesses, and one of my routes consisted of the San Fernando Valley. Famously, this was the home of the pornography industry at the time, much like it’s depicted in the film. Some of the locations that I made deliveries to were in fact producing magazines that were largely pornographic. So I have a tangential connection to what was going on. The one element of the film however that most closely connects me to the story, is maybe the most compelling scene in the film, the drug deal that goes wrong. One of my closest friends in college took a wrong turn and ended up working as a low-level drug dealer, in the valley. By the time he was doing this I only saw him occasionally for lunch or to talk to on the phone just to check in. I was not immersed in his lifestyle, except that there was one experience when we met for lunch and I drove him to a location where he was making drop off of his supplies. It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I ever had with him. A year later he was murdered by his partners in the drug business. So although the experience is not exactly the same I can certainly share the perspective of how crazy and dangerous the times were.

My personal connections with the story aside, this is an incredibly watchable movie that is propulsive and uses needle drops and inserts to create a sense of verisimilitude. There are some truly great performances in the film, Mark Wahlberg gives us a desperate, insecure character in the last act, for whom you can feel surprising sympathy. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a minor character in the film, but he develops a sense of pity from us that feels quite realistic. Burt Reynolds notoriously disowned the film, but his performance in it, as the father figure / pornographic film director, is one of his career best. Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Robert Ridgely, John C Reilly, and a dozen other players all create characters with big faults that we still find ourselves empathizing with, to our surprise.

I was flying solo at this performance at the Paramount, and I got there a little bit later than I usually do. I had to sit near the back on the orchestra level because the theater was packed for this Thursday night screening. The audience was incredibly receptive, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who is not making his debut with this film but for whom this was my first exposure, impressed me and everybody else with how this movie was put together.

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July 14, 2025

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Piranha (1978)

It seems like there were dozens of “Jaws” rip-offs in the late seventies. Killer Orcas, Grizzlies, and in this film, genetically modified piranha that can strip a man to the bone in minutes. This was an exploitation picture that launched the career of director Joe Dante. It has only a little of the sideways humor that characterizes his best films, but it does try to keep the audience engaged with frequent piranha victims every few minutes.

The formula is a clear set of beats stolen from “Jaws”. We start with a titillating experience that results in death, followed up by a slow discovery of what is happening, and then a series of denials of reality by officials. One of the main differences is that the obnoxious character who is trying to dismiss the whole thing, gets a comeuppance, unlike the mayor in the shark movie.

Bradford Dillman was a seventies staple as a suspicious official or businessman, and he was in a ton of TV shows of the era. Here he plays a drunk hermit like loser, who hets turned into an action hero for no particular reason. Heather Menzies, who played one of the Von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music” and Strother Martin’s daughter in Sssssss, is a bounty hunter who gets caught up in the action, and veteran horror icon Kevin McCarthy starts a long association with director Dante, playing a crazed scientist. Don’t ask why there is a small lizard man walking around the laboratory in the early part of the film. It never becomes important and it is simply a loose thread.   

“Piranha” is an efficient, low budget fright film. The film makers do the best they can with their resources and imaginations. Although many consider it a cult classic, it simply feels standard for the times. But of course those were my times so I loved it.

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June 20, 2025

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Babe (1995) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

Frankly, there may not be a more charming film in existence than “Babe”. The story of an orphan pig who tries to find his place in the hierarchy of the farm is just too sweet not to love. It charmed the hell out of us back in 1995 when my kids were seven and nine. I took the youngest with me to this screening, she is now thirty-seven and she still loves it. (She will deny it, but I suspect it played a big part in her aversion to pork). 

This film won the Academy Awards for effects the year it came out, over the shots of a space launch and rescue mission in “Apollo 13”. That win should be an indicator as to how animation and CGI were soon to dominate the film landscape. This was also the same year as “Toy Story” so you can feel the earthquake and aftershocks with those two movies.

James Cromwell received a big boost to his career after this, and we were very sad that we missed him at the TCM Film Festival, talking about this movie, back in April. We did get to see it on the big screen through the “Paramount Summer Classic Film Series” and although it was promoted as a kids matinee, there were plenty of adults there to share in the pleasure of our talking pig hero “Babe”. The relationship between Farmer Hoggett and his pig is a complicated one with a couple of grim moments, but Cromwell makes a joyous human who learns to trust his instincts and his porker buddy. 

The Greek Chorus of Mice that introduce the various chapters of the story, are still amusing 30 years later, and when the lead sheepdog, swallows his pride to get help for “Babe” from the sheep, we get a few life lessons as well. I do think having a duck do the rooster’s duties would be a lot of fun here at the house.

This movie was such a change up from the shark serial killer movie of the previous evening. Maybe all double features should work this was as a one-two punch, start with something hard hitting and then finish with something heartwarming. Two good days at the movies.

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May 5, 2025

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TCM Film Festival 2025 (Day 4)

It feels a little like sundowner syndrome when we arrive at the fourth day of the film festival. Everyone has had a wonderful time for 3 days but we all know that it’s about to be over with, even though there are wonderful things still scheduled for the afternoon. Our fourth day at the film festival was really pretty simple, we had two films that we were going to see both of them were pretty long, and then we had the closing night film.

2001 A Space Odyssey

Amanda and I made the decision to split up for the first film of the day, she had never seen “Oklahoma” before and was anxious to catch it on the big screen. And as I’ve said in other posts, although I love my daughter she has disappointed me in her lack of appreciation for “2001 A Space Odyssey”, that’s the film I decided that I would go to see. I was especially interested in seeing 2001 again on the big screen, because the guest of the day was going to be the star of the film Keir Dullea. The festival programmers seem to be doing their best to get to important guests while they are still around. Mr Dullea, is maybe the 5th or 6th guest that I saw this weekend who is in their late 80s. All of us are due to leave this Mortal coil at some point, and I’m glad that so many of these guests chose to spend some time with us while they still could.

2001 on the big screen, at the Egyptian, is something I’ve done several times before. And once again seeing the movie in a theater with a rapt audience is thrilling. We were given the whole effect, including Overture, intermission, and exit music. They have also made sure to make these presentations authentic in another way, they closed the curtains and then open them again when it’s time for the feature. To me, the sense of excitement as the curtains part and the credits begin to roll, is one of the things that makes me most love the movies. They should be an event, not just content.

The conversation with Keir Dullea, was quite interesting, including stories about how he was cast and about his working with Stanley Kubrick on the set. His wife accompanied him onto the stage to help keep him focused on particular questions. He was by no means senile, but he would wander off track occasionally or miss the meaning of the question and she assisted him quite ably without necessarily suggesting that there was anything wrong. Especially appreciated the prompt that she had at the end when she reminded him that he wanted to talk about a piece of dialogue that got cut from the film, but for which he had spent a great deal of time trying to memorize, and still has it in his head.

I did an audio recording several parts of the conversation, and I’m going to try to include them here.

“2001”, along with “Jaws” is on my list of 10 favorite films of all time. So this is a pretty good weekend for me.

Apocalypse Now

When I met up with my daughter after her screening, we were queuing up to get numbers for this 1979 Francis Ford Coppola classic. She had been quite enamored of “Oklahoma”, and I hate that I missed sitting through it with her, because I quite like the film. I really enjoyed her embrace of the songs and the story and the joy that she seemed to be having. I was a little worried that this next film would destroy some of the cheerfulness that surrounded the mornings experience for her. After all Apocalypse Now is not a happy film.

I’m not sure how she managed to get to her age without being exposed to this film more. She told me she’s only seen a few clips and doesn’t really know much about the movie. So that made our decision to see “Apocalypse Now”, here at the film festival, really an appropriate one. The guest for this presentation was director Antoine Fuqua who has directed a ton of action films that I have loved over the last 20 years. He had nothing to do with the production of “Apocalypse Now”, it just happens that it’s his favorite film and inspired him to become a director and make movies that feature kind of grit and action that Coppola provided. His commentary on the film was mostly that of an enamored fan, which is not really a bad thing. It was certainly encouraging to hear his enthusiasm for the movie, as we tried to gird ourselves for the experience.

I mentioned that in the 2001 screening, the festival was trying to create an authentic experience included the ritual with the curtains. For this screening, the authenticity was enhanced by the distribution of a booklet, that contain the credits for the film. Back in 1979, the premier screening of this movie it Cannes, was done without any credits appearing on the screen, but rather in a Nifty little pocketbook with pictures. That item was reproduced and provided to all of us who attended this Sunday afternoon screening of a decidedly depressing War film.

There are variations of “Apocalypse Now” that have become quite popular in the last few years, but this presentation was the original theatrical cut. That’s the only version of the film that I know. I’ve seen the film occasionally over the years, and I have bounced back and forth between disliking it and embracing it. Whenever I think of the distaste I might have had for the movie, it probably reflects the negativity that is such a huge part of the story. 

This time I was happy to embrace the film, and I was glad that Amanda was suitably impressed with it as well. Now if only I could get her to respond to 2001 the same way maybe I wouldn’t feel like such a failure as a father.


Heat

The closing night film for the festival was Heat, in the TCL IMAX theater. We had originally planned on watching the silent version of Beau Jeste in the Egyptian Theater. When actor Al Pacino was added to the discussion of “Heat”, we changed our minds and decided we could not miss out on the opportunity to hear one of the great actors of the 20th century talk about this movie.

The original guest was Michael Mann the director of the film, and Pacino joining him made the discussion feel a lot more complete. In fact even though there were questions, the situation felt more like a conversation with two old friends on the couch rather than an interview. Each of them remembered some things slightly differently, and they occasionally made the effort to correct a misstatement or a difference in memory.

Now I do have a confession to make, we chose not to stay for the screening of the film after the conversation. We had watched Heat last year and Amanda was not up for repeating it. It is a long film, and if we had stayed we wouldn’t have gotten home until midnight at least. So we stayed for the conversation between Pacino and director Michael Mann, and then we made our way out of the theater is quietly as possible so that we can return to the Southern California house and my daughter and her husband are living in. We got to have dinner with them instead of sending down in the diner with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

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April 14, 2025

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Ash (2025)

 Ash is a somewhat dystopian science fiction film set on another world that the human race is hoping to be able to terraform and relocate to. We get told all of that information about a quarter of the way into the story after the mystery of the horror has already begun. The way the Story begins is simple a young woman wakes up from a deep sleep and discovers that the ecosystem that she lives in is filled with dead bodies and signs of violence that she has basically no memory of.

The film is a hybrid version of Solaris, alien, and the thing. Ultimately there are about seven actors in the film but for 90% of the movie they’re only two that take up screen time. The woman named Reva, as flashbacks to some of the events, and begins to suspect that what happened might be her fault. File into her ruminations, another character shows up played by actor Aaron Paul, who clearly knows Reva, but was not at the station when whatever disaster befell it took place.

At First the movie looks fairly low budget. The sets are not much more complicated than a series of rooms that have been dolled up with some light fixtures and a few props to suggest something more futuristic. And the film is clearly something that was done on a budget. In the second half of the film though a few special effects show up that suggests that they were saving their money for a little bit more production value. A couple of models and some CGI add a little credibility to the situation. We also get a few special effects makeup sequences that are pretty good. 

The main problem with the film like this is that we are dealing with an unreliable narrator, and we all know why she’s unreliable. Also, nearly everything that we see at one point become suspect, and we wonder if we are looking at something that really happened or if it is just a projection of her consciousness. In the end it does turn out to be something of a monster movie, but it’s trying to do it in a way that is different and a little bit more cerebral. I think the ambitions outstrip the ability of the script to deliver this kind of story. The movie isn’t bad, but it isn’t very compelling either and by the time we get to the end it’s easy to feel detached from what’s going on. There is also attacked on conclusion that makes no sense but his design to create a sense of irony at the end of the story.

The director of the film is also responsible for the music, I get the impression that he is a music personality who is dabbling in the film world. It’s not that he’s on talented, but he’s not experienced enough to make this film more interesting than something to be consumed and almost immediately forgotten, in spite of the film’s ambitions. I suspect that this movie was largely made for streaming purposes, and it received a token release either because of the actors involved or to placate the director. Either way it turned out, it was a reasonable Monday evening, but again I’m not going to remember this very long.