Awesomely Shitty Movies: Batman (1989)

Hello and welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies here at Enuffa.com, where I examine a wonderful piece of popcorn fare and essentially ruin it for everyone.

Today I'll be talking about the Father of Modern Superhero Movies, Tim Burton's 1989 opus Batman, starring Jack Nicholson as The Joker and Michael Keaton as the title character.  When it first came out, Batman was a major pop culture event, garnering huge mainstream media coverage and all sorts of cross-promotion, in a manner not seen since the original Star Wars films.

Still a fantastically awesome poster.

Batman was something of a risk for Burton, as a dark, brooding superhero film had never been attempted, and most mainstream audiences still thought of the Caped Crusader in terms of the campy 1960s TV show.  But in the comics, Batman had long since returned to his Noir-ish roots, and Burton drew inspiration from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, as well as taking visual cues from Film Noir and German Expressionism.  The result was an unusually dark comic book film that took quite seriously the idea of a man dressing up as a bat to fight crime.

But while the movie felt absolutely right at the time, it has to a certain extent been rendered obsolete by some piss-poor sequels and Christopher Nolan's superb Dark Knight Trilogy, as well as Matt Reeves' new, even Film Noir-ier The Batman.  Watching Burton's film now is great fun for nostalgia purposes, but it honestly became a little hard to take seriously after the advent of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the good and the bad of Tim Burton's Batman....



The Awesome


Michael Keaton

Remember how outraged we all were when Keaton was announced as Batman?  As I recall the exact quote from everyone upon hearing the news was "What. The goddamn. Hell??"  But at the time Keaton was a pretty splendid Batman/Bruce Wayne.  He brought a quiet sense of morose intensity to the role and despite not being at all physically suited to play a 6'2" 215-pound superhero, made us all believe he was The Dark Knight.  As with many aspects of this film, Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy bettered Keaton's performance by a pretty wide margin (In fact, after watching Christian Bale in the suit, Keaton looked positively waifish by comparison), but his portrayal stood for 16 years as the best cinematic Batman.

Look at that six-pack.  That suit must work out.

Top Ten Things: WrestleMania Demotions

Hey everyone, welcome back to another Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com! 

Now that this year's spring extravaganza is in the books, I thought I'd go back and take a look at some of the worst WrestleMania demotions in history.  What do I mean by that?  Well I'm talking about instances where a particular wrestler either main evented or featured very prominently in a WrestleMania one year, only to get the booking shaft at the following 'Mania.  I picked the ten fifteen most glaring examples of this and I'm presenting them in chronological order.  Here we go.

1. Paul Orndorff - Main Eventer to Curtain Jerker

"Mr. Wonderful" was one of the great WWF heels of the 80s.  His feuds against Hulk Hogan were the stuff of legend.  Unfortunately Orndorff was also kind of a split personality, character-wise.  Nowadays certain wrestlers turn face and heel with the frequency of an 80-year-old with incontinence (see Show, Big), but in the 80s a character turn was a big deal.  Orndorff however was unusually fickle, feuding with Hogan, befriending him six months later, turning on him again, befriending him again, etc. 

Orndorff headlined the inaugural WrestleMania, teaming with Roddy Piper against Hogan and Mr. T.  Despite taking the pinfall, Orndorff was featured in one of the biggest matches in company history.  At 'Mania 2 though, a babyface Orndorff found himself opening the show in a totally forgettable four-minute double countout with Don Muraco.  Thus the tradition of WrestleMania Demotions began.

2. King Kong Bundy - Caged Monster to Comedy Act

King Kong Bundy was a legitimately scary dude in 1986.  He was a 6'4", 450-pound wall of humanity with a shaved head, whose finisher simply consisted of squashing a guy in the corner of the ring.  He challenged Hulk Hogan for the WWF Title at 'Mania 2 in a Steel Cage match (The first and only time a WrestleMania has been headlined by such a bout).  While no five-star classic, the match cemented Bundy as an imposing threat to the Title.  Fast-forward a year later, and Bundy was stuck in a goofy comedy match, teaming with two minis against perennial jobber-to-the-stars Hillbilly Jim and two other minis.  After only three-plus minutes, Bundy earned a disqualification by bodyslamming Little Beaver.  A far cry from nearly dethroning the WWF Champion the previous year.

Top Ten Things: Debut WrestleMania Matches

Welcome to yet another Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!


It's WrestleMania season and that means my brain looks for 'Mania-related nonsense to write about.  You can read a few of my previous such lists HERE, HERE and HERE.

Today I'll be talking about the greatest WrestleMania debuts in history.  By that I don't mean wrestlers who actually debuted at WrestleMania; that would be a short list that more or less begins and ends with Fandango (God, they actually jobbed out Chris Jericho to that guy....).  No, I mean the first WrestleMania match of a given wrestler or tag team (or in some cases multiple stars in the same match).  Looking back at the history of this great annual tradition, there have been some quite notable WrestleMania rookie performances.  In some cases a new star was launched right into the main event of the biggest show of the year, something that's basically unthinkable in today's WWE, where WrestleMania is more often than not The Showcase of Semi-Retirees.

But enough complaining; here, in chronological order, are the eleven greatest performances by WrestleMania rookies (plus four honorable mentions).  As noted, there are a couple of entries where I included every participant in a given match due to all of them being 'Mania first-timers.



Honorable Mentions

Ted Dibiase made his WrestleMania debut in the 1988 WWF Title tournament, lasting all the way to the finals and the main event, and coming withing a hair of winning the championship.

Kane's first 'Mania match was a near-show stealer of a semi-main event, as he took his onscreen brother The Undertaker to the limit.

Japanese sensation Shinsuke Nakamura made his 'Mania debut in a very good (not quite great) WWE Title match against AJ Styles, after winning the 2018 men's Royal Rumble.

Former UFC crossover star Ronda Rousey made her WrestleMania debut in 2018 as well, tagging with Kurt Angle to defeat Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, and shining a much bigger spotlight on the women's division.

1. British Bulldogs - WrestleMania 2

Davey Boy and Dynamite became a WWF tag team in 1985 and pretty quickly climbed the ranks, due in no small part to the excellent matches they were having with fellow Stampede Wrestling alums The Hart Foundation.  Their tag team feud was pretty legendary and brought new levels of athleticism to the WWF tag division, which up until that point mostly consisted of informal pairings of singles stars.  The Bulldogs would challenge Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake for the straps at the second WrestleMania, stealing the show in a hard-hitting, action-packed bout that culminated in one of the more unorthodox finishes I can remember; Davey rammed Valentine's head into Dynamite's rock-hard skull, knocking both of them out, and covered "The Hammer" for the win.  It was unusual but it got the job done, and the Bulldogs enjoyed a 10-month reign before being dethroned by their old rivals, Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart.

2. Demolition - WrestleMania IV

Echoing the Bulldogs' quick rise to fame, in 1987 longtime WWF midcarder Bill Eadie was teamed with NWA import Barry Darsow to form a Road Warriors-esque tandem called Demolition.  Ax and Smash, as they were now known, instantly caught the attention of the fans, with their rugged, smashmouth brawling style and colorful, intimidating appearance.  Strong booking and solid in-ring performances helped Demolition stand out from both the other WWF teams and their inspiration The Road Warriors, and by WrestleMania IV they were challenging Strike Force for the titles.  After a 12-minute battle, Demolition's manager Mr. Fuji handed Ax his cane, which was used to knock out Rick Martel and win Ax & Smash the championship.  Their first reign would "smash" all previous longevity records in the tag team division, lasting a whopping 16 months (a record that stood for 27 years) and cementing Demolition as one of the all-time great teams.

3. Nasty Boys - WrestleMania VII

Wow, ANOTHER tag team.  I'm gonna be honest, I never got why Brian Knobbs and Jerry Sags were pushed in every promotion they wrestled for.  I was never impressed with them in any capacity, and in the case of their WWF run I'm sure at least part of it was because of their friendship with Hulk Hogan.  But whatever the reason, Knobbs & Sags became number-one contenders for the tag belts a scant three months after their WWF debut (by winning a tag team battle royal), and at WrestleMania VII they captured the titles from the Hart Foundation, after which Bret and Jim went their separate ways.  The Nastys held the belts until SummerSlam when they ran into a brick wall known as The Legion of Doom.  They'd never win the titles again, and by early 1993 they were fired from the WWF.  But their 1991 rise to the top was shall we say, meteoric.

Top Ten Things: WrestleMania Promotions

Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com! 

It's WrestleMania season, which always gets me thinking about nerdy things having to do with the Showcase of the Immortals.  I previously wrote about WrestleMania Demotions, citing ten examples of a particular star going from a position of great prominence one year to an afterthought the next (poor Randy Savage suffered this fate twice).  But in the spirit of positivity let's take a look at ten examples of the opposite situation.  There have been times when a given talent either opens the show or only gets scraps at the WrestleMania table one year and is then catapulted to a potentially career-making moment the following year.  Here are ten such scenarios...

1. King Kong Bundy - WrestleMania 1 to 2

The monstrous Bundy made a statement in his WrestleMania debut, literally squashing jobber to the stars S.D. Jones in what was meant to be a record-setting nine seconds but actually went more like 24.  Still it was a one-sided, dominant appearance that helped establish the 450-pound monster with a wider audience and groom him as one of the company's top heels.  Just one year later Bundy would challenge WWF Champion Hulk Hogan in a steel cage match at the second WrestleMania, enjoying a career peak as Hogan's most forbidding opponent to date.  Bundy was sadly never positioned at that level again, and if you refer to my Demotions list, he found himself way back down the card a year after this.  But going from a 24-second undercard squash one year to a huge main event the next is quite a promotion.

2. Chris Jericho - WrestleMania 17 to 18

WrestleMania X-Seven is considered by most to be the apex of the Attitude Era, a culmination of everything the WWF product had evolved into during the Monday Night War, as well as a celebration of their total victory over WCW.  Chris Jericho arrived in the WWF late in the ratings war and wasn't yet positioned as one of the very top guys by early 2001, more a beneficiary of the WWF's dominance than a factor in getting them there.  Thus his match at WM17 was a brief Intercontinental Title defense to open the show.  But one year later he found himself the company's top champion, seemingly being groomed as one of the next class of main eventers.  On paper everything looked great; Jericho would defend the Undisputed WWF Title (just unified with WCW's version) against Triple H in the main event of WrestleMania X8.  Unfortunately egos and bad booking got in the way, and this feud was horribly botched from start to finish.  Jericho was booked as a fluke champion, and worse, he was the third wheel in Hunter and Stephanie's recent onscreen breakup, presented as Steph's whipping boy instead of as the company's top heel.  The resulting match was an underwhelming foregone conclusion, and Jericho quickly fell down the card over the next several months.  Still, Chris Jericho went from WrestleMania curtain jerker to main eventer in the span of one year - no small feat.

3. Kurt Angle - WrestleMania 18 to 19

The same year Chris Jericho was headlining the show, Kurt Angle was thrown into the midcard against Kane, in a serviceable but fairly forgettable affair - frankly a rather shabby way to have treated one of the more important figures in the Invasion angle.  But 2002 was the year Angle really proved himself as a main event player, delivering stupendous PPV matches against Edge, Chris Benoit, Rey Mysterio, and Los Guerreros (the vaunted Smackdown Six Era).  By year's end Angle had won the WWE Championship, and the WrestleMania plan was for him to put over WWE's newest main event sensation Brock Lesnar.  This dream match of collegiate wrestling champions was almost derailed when Angle discovered he needed neck surgery, but he opted to tough it out for the one match before going under the knife.  The result was a classic 'Mania main event (and the first PPV main event in over five years to not include Austin, Rock, Triple H or Undertaker) that showcased both men's grappling skills and climaxed with a horrifyingly botched shooting star press from Lesnar.  In just over 365 days Kurt Angle went from a secondary player to a WrestleMania elite.

WWE WrestleMania 38, Night 2: Brock & Roman Phone It In

Night 2, for the third consecutive year, was easily the weaker of the two WrestleMania shows; even the presence of another super-energized crowd (likely comprised of mostly the same people as Night 1) couldn't cover for a mediocre-at-best slate of matches.

If you missed the Night 1 review, click HERE

Things started out with promise (after a seemingly interminable Triple H appearance that ended with him leaving his boots in the ring to officially retire), with the RAW Tag Title match.  RK-Bro, Street Profits and Alpha Academy delivered a very enjoyable spotfest with nonstop action, some great big-move moments, and a finish that brought the crowd to its feet.  Why WWE changed the rules for three-way tags to have three legal men at all times, I'm sure I don't know, but it didn't hurt the flow here.  There were some big dives to the outside from Chad Gable and Angelo Dawkins early on, and Riddle played the babyface in peril once again but made the hot tag to Randy Orton.  RK-Bro cleaned house and set up stereo draping DDTs, but their dual RKO attempt was broken up and Street Profits hit Gable with a Doomsday Blockbuster for a nearfall.  The finish came when Montez Ford's top rope dive was countered into a Riddle RKO and Gable's was countered with an Orton RKO for the win.  Post-match Street Profits offered to share a drink with RK-Bro and Gable Steveson (seated at ringside) but Chad Gable interrupted.  Steveson gave him an overhead suplex for his trouble.  Thus far Steveson doesn't have nearly the natural charisma of a Kurt Angle or a Brock Lesnar but we'll see.  This was a very good opener.  ***1/2

Not so good (at all) was the next match, as Bobby Lashley had to try and carry the near-immobile Omos to a passable match.  They got six minutes, most of it unwieldy and not very exciting.  This guy needs to be sent back down to developmental until he can move around well.  Lashley did what he could, including a hard-earned vertical suplex which served as the bout's high point.  A bad-looking back spear and a proper front spear later, and Lashley was the winner.  This would be the first of three matches on this card to end with a spear.  But tell me how overused the superkick is again?  *

Alright, the third bout was one of those matches I was dreading, knew was going to be super embarrassing and stupid, and yet it was maybe the most purely fun thing on the show.  Sami Zayn and Johnny Knoxville had one of the better dumb comedy matches you're ever likely to see.  This was pure crap and it's stuff like this that makes the average person roll their eyes when you mention the phrase "pro wrestling," but it was a big, stupid guilty pleasure.  They started out with standard garbage-match antics - trash cans, crutches, cooking sheets, a stop sign, etc.  After Sami suplexed Knoxville through a table, Party Boy showed up to interfere and stripped down to his thong.  Then Wee Man appeared and bodyslammed Sami, which was impressive.  Knoxville triggered a pyro as Sami climbed to the top rope, causing him to crotch himself on the top turnbuckle, then rolled a bowling ball into his groin.  Then came the mechanical ball-kicking machine, then Sami walked into the giant hand (which somehow appeared out of nowhere).  Knoxville put Sami through a table covered with mousetraps before putting him in a giant mousetrap (that didn't work quite right).  Knoxville covered him for the win and the Jackass crew celebrated.  This was unfathomably stupid but sadly one of the most successful things on the show.  Would I have rather seen Sami vs. Ricochet for the Intercontinental Title?  100%.  Like I said, this is why no one takes the secondary belts seriously.  I'll be a good sport and give this ***1/4.

WWE WrestleMania 38, Night 1: Becky & Bianca Steal the Show

Man, it's almost hard to believe the same company put on these two WrestleMania shows.  The first night was a pretty good, approaching very good, WrestleMania card, with three matches reaching or approaching four-star territory by my count, and a feelgood main event.  Night 2 had a somewhat promising first half and then kinda drove off a cliff and never got back on track.  The two worst matches of the weekend were on Night 2, and a comedy match featuring the guy from Jackass more or less stole the night.  That's not good at all.  I will say the crowd was nuclear for both shows, so at least there's that.  I haven't seen a WWE crowd this hot in a long time.

For the Night 2 review click HERE

Both nights had time management issues, because it's WWE and they don't know or don't care about fitting everything in properly.  The New Day-Sheamus/Holland match got moved from Night 1 to Night 2 and ended up going 100 seconds anyway.  Given the four-hour running time of each show there was of course no reason Balor vs. Priest and the Intercontinental three-way couldn't have been included.  It makes me laugh when WWE fans refer to AEW as minor league; not once has AEW ever had to bump a match off a major show completely because they ran out of time, while WWE's done it countless times over the years.

Night 1 started with the Smackdown Tag Team Titles, a match that had promise but was unfortunately derailed by an injury when Rick Boogs attempted the John Cena double fireman's carry spot and his knee buckled.  Apparently he suffered both a torn quad and a torn ACL, poor soul.  That left Shinsuke Nakamura to hastily finish the match against the Usos, and he ultimately fell victim to their version of the 3-D.  This only went 7 of the planned 14 and thus fell very short of expectations.  *3/4

The second match wasn't a whole lot better, nor could it be given Drew's opponent.  Baron Corbin had a typical Baron Corbin match, while Drew did his best to elevate it, hitting a Kenny Omega dive to the outside at one point.  Corbin hit End of Days and Drew kicked out, made a comeback, hit the Future Shock DDT, and finished him with a Claymore.  Post-match, Madcap Moss got in Drew's face, but Drew took his sword and actually cut two of the ropes (which was for some reason accompanied by an exploding sound - were there pyros inside the ropes?).  We got numerous endless video packages while they changed out the ropes.  This match was just there.  **

Top Ten Things: Batman Theatrical Films, RANKED

Welcome to a special edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!

Now that the dust is starting to settle following the release of Matt Reeves' buzzworthy new take on the Caped Crusader it's time for fanboys like me to do what we do - place The Batman in an opinion-laced Top Ten list.  It's clear from the varied big-screen (and small-screen) adaptations, not to mention the gamut-running comic book takes on the character, that the Batman mythos is simply the most thematically and atmospherically rich superhero lore ever created.  Over 80 years after the vigilante in the cowl and cape first swung onto the pages of Detective Comics, fans and creators alike are still dissecting his dual personas and his unparalleled rogues gallery, and as The Batman's impressive box office receipts show, there's still a healthy public appetite for all things Gotham.  

So let's get after it, shall we?  I've ranked the fourteen theatrically-released Batman feature films but left out 2016's Suicide Squad since Bats only had a cameo in that one, and 2019's Joker since we only see Bruce Wayne as a boy.  Man, looking over this list and how different the various interpretations are it's hard to believe these are all about the same character....

14. Batman & Robin

Yup, 25 years later Joel Schumacher's second and (thankfully) final Batman film is still the worst of the bunch.  In fact it's possibly the worst movie I've ever seen.  Had it been written as a straight-up satire like its primary inspiration (Batman '66 and its companion TV series), it might've at least worked as a tongue-in-cheek sendup.  But tonally it couldn't decide whether it was trying to be that or an earnest summer blockbuster, and it failed to work as either one.  George Clooney (widely considered the worst-ever onscreen Batman) looks like he'd rather be working on any other project.  Arnold Schwarzenegger's dialogue consists almost entirely of bad puns.  Chris O'Donnell provides Exhibit A in the Why Robin Doesn't Work as a Film Character trial.  Alicia Silverstone gets shoehorned into this film, painfully morphing her Clueless character into an action heroine.  Only Uma Thurman's performance can be described as successful, as she somehow finds the balance between campy cartoon and femme fatale.  B&R nearly ended Batman as a cinematic property, underwhelming at the box office and drawing the ire of fans and critics to the point that its intended sequel was scrapped and Warner Brothers went eight years before releasing a new Bat-movie.  As my wife once described it while I was hate-watching Batman & Robin on TV one Saturday afternoon, "This is what a Batman movie would be like if a ten-year-old wrote it."  Absolute drivel, this film.

13. Justice League (Whedon cut)

Faring not much better is DC's half-assed answer to Marvel's massively successful Avengers saga, an intended tentpole film the studio rushed headlong to get to, despite having no real plan and certainly no real patience.  Man of Steel unwittingly served as DC's shared universe springboard, BvS hastily introduced the rest of the Justice League without giving people a reason to care about them, and Wonder Woman became the one truly successful piece of the DCEU.  But then came the main event, all but derailed when director Zack Snyder abruptly left the project after the death of his stepdaughter.  The studio, still desperate to deliver their Avengers counterpart for a November 2017 release, brought in the guy who'd helmed the first two actual Avengers films, even though tonally Joss Whedon and Zack Snyder could not be more different.  In answer to (very valid) criticisms that Batman v Superman was too dark and devoid of fun, Whedon was instructed to bring levity and a lighter color palette to Justice League, reshooting over half the existing footage (complete with the world's worst CG effect to cover Henry Cavill's moustache).  The result was a terribly uninteresting tonal smorgasbord with garishly fake-looking special effects, very poor performances, and amateurish color timing.  The theatrical cut of Justice League somehow managed to be the least successful DCEU entry in the entire series, despite its original purpose as the big team-up event picture.  See what happens when you don't plan these things out?  

WWE WrestleMania 38 Preview & Predictions

This weekend is WrestleMania 38, and as usual WWE is doing their best to put on the least exciting lineup they can!

Don't get me wrong, there are a few bouts I'm genuinely looking forward to.  But then there are numerous bouts that belong nowhere near the biggest show of the year, and some GLARING omissions.  

Just take a look at this.

Guys who have a match at WrestleMania 38:

Johnny Knoxville

Logan Paul

Happy Corbin

Rick Boogs

Ridge Holland

Pat McAfee

Austin Theory

Otis

Omos

Guys who do not have a match at WrestleMania 38:

Finn Balor (current US Champion)

Ricochet (current Intercontinental Champion)

Damian Priest (remember how protected he was for like a year?)

Sorry WWE loyalists, there is ZERO excuse for the company's two secondary singles champions to be left off a TWO-NIGHT show while some D-list celebrities and not-ready-for-primetime players get slots.  None.  This is why no one takes those two titles seriously anymore.  What's worse, the WWE and Universal Titles are almost certainly being unified for a little while, so the company could really do with a secondary title that means something to fill that void, no?  I'm pretty sure when Vince puts these shows together he thinks "Hmmm, how can I ruin the night for at least 20% of the audience?"  Whether it's a good SummerSlam marred by that Becky-Bianca squash, a good WrestleMania marred by that Sheamus-Bryan squash (wow, that was TEN YEARS AGO), or an historic women's main event marred by being on after midnight at the end of a seven-hour show, Vince is apparently incapable of presenting a big PPV without including a heaping dose of goodwill-damaging stupidity.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a WWE bitch-fest, so let's predict some matches.

94th Academy Awards Preview & Predictions

This Sunday it's the 94th Annual Academy Awards, and unlike last year's COVID edition, this one should feel a lot closer to normal.  Thank god for that, last year's show was pretty flat and forgettable, particularly given the order in which the trophies were doled out.  Let's get back on the clock, shall we?

I've only seen half of the Best Picture nominees so far, but I'm hoping to add at least a couple more before the weekend.  We'll see.

Best Picture

Belfast

CODA

Don't Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Justin: Anywho, the field this year is quite varied, particularly in the all-important Best Pic category, where we have drama, mystery, sci-fi, satire and a musical.  I like it when numerous genres are represented, one of the benefits of up to ten nominees being considered.  Of the five films I've seen (Dune, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog and West Side Story), I think my sentimental favorite is Dune, being a huge fan of both Frank Herbert's complex sci-fi universe and Denis Villeneuve's superb first-half adaptation.  As for which film was actually the best of the five, I think I'd go with Guillermo Del Toro's atmospheric, intense noir remake Nightmare Alley.  As for which film is going to win, I'd say it's between the longtime odds-on favorite and Golden Globe winning The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion's oppressive western drama, and the recent PGA winner CODA, a dramedy about growing up with deaf parents.  I could see CODA pull an upset, but I guess I'll go with the safer bet.

Pick: The Power of the Dog

Mike: I've only seen two of the nominees this year (Dune and Don't Look Up) which has been my worst year yet when it comes to movies. I'm not sure how on God's green Earth Don't Look Up nabbed a nomination but whatever. Probably because of the cast. Anyways, this category is a very interesting and close one to watch. The buzz has been tilting in favor of The Power of the Dog but CODA walked away with the SAG and PGA and that's not a bad place to be since only two movies have nabbed both and lost the Best Picture Oscar. The dark horse is Belfast but I don't see that happening. So, let's make our picks just as interesting shall we?

Pick: Coda

Oscar Film Journal: Atonement (2007)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal here at Enuffa.com!  We're only six days away from this year's ceremony, so let's get back on track and examine some more Best Picture nominees....

Today it's the 2007 period/war/romance/metafiction drama Atonement, starring Keira Knightly, James McAvoy, Saoirse Ronan, Juno Temple, and Benedict Cumberbatch, a veritable who's who of future English stars.  Atonement was directed by Joe Wright and based on the acclaimed Ian McEwan novel, the story of how a single malicious lie can cause a ripple effect that destroys lives.  Without giving too much away, the film begins at a 1930s English country house, where the family's youngest child Briony witnesses what she thinks is an inappropriate sexual episode between her older sister Cecelia and her love interest Robbie, their housekeeper's son.  This misunderstanding leads to Briony's conclusion that Robbie is some kind of sexual deviant and she later lies to the authorities about a subsequent rape accusation, with dire consequences.  

I don't want to divulge more than that, which does make it difficult to discuss what a visually and narratively inventive film this is.  We see two events occur both from Briony's uninformed point of view and then from Cecelia and Robbie's, illustrating how easily things can be misconstrued when one doesn't have all the facts.  This allows us to empathize with Briony's naive viewpoint even though she's jumping to conclusions with neither the full information nor an understanding of complex adult relationship dynamics.  At the same time we're able to grasp just how harmful her lie is, because the true version of the events in question shows us the tender innocence of Cecelia and Robbie's budding romance.  Thus the eventual repercussions of Briony's actions are that much more heartbreaking.

RIP Scott Hall (1958-2022)

The wrestling community is reeling today from the loss of Scott Hall, taken at age 63 due to surgery complications.

Given how fast things move in the pro wrestling industry it's easy to forget that Hall was an integral part of not one, but two hugely influential 90s events, not to mention one of the unlikely success stories in getting an offbeat gimmick over.

I first became aware of Hall thanks to a 1988 issue of Wrestling Superstars magazine, which included a feature about wrestling's strongest men.  Hall was ranked in the 30s somewhere and I noted his resemblance to Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. (in fact his first ring name was "Magnum" Scott Hall).  However the first time I saw him on television was in 1989 when he was brought into the NWA as part of their young talent initiative.  He had an obviously impressive physique but a forgettable persona, and thus got lost in the shuffle, only to resurface two years later with a completely different look, as Diamond Dallas Page's new prospect, The Diamond Studd.  For the record I had no idea this was the same guy at this point.  This gimmick didn't have much success either and Hall once again never got out of the undercard.

Then one Saturday morning in 1992 the WWF showed the first of a series of vignettes designed to introduce their newest signing, Razor Ramon, a foul-tempered, gold-chain-decked Cuban heel with an obviously fake accent, shown bragging about his street toughness and bullying various vendors and restaurant workers.  My first impression as a sixteen-year-old was that this character was goofy and cartoonish and wouldn't go anywhere.  

Then I saw his in-ring debut.  

Movie Review: The Batman (2022)

Time to take a little break from talking about Oscar fare (although, who knows...) for a look at a brand-new theatrical release, one that I've been breathlessly anticipating for a good two-plus years.

Broodingly swinging into cinemas this past weekend, Matt Reeves' suspense thriller epic The Batman impressively manages to honor previous cinematic iterations of the iconic superhero while also presenting him and his universe in a fashion we've never seen before on the movie screen.  While Christopher Nolan's vaunted Dark Knight trilogy for the most part kept the character grounded in reality there were still fantastical elements to each film - the microwave emitter designed to vaporize the water supply, the citywide network of cellphones rigged up to transmit sonar imagery to Batman's goggles, etc.  But Reeves and his team have taken Nolan's realism-based approach one step further, presenting the story in grimy, believable detail in a manner akin to 1970s crime drama, via a 1990s David Fincher aesthetic.  

The Batman in this universe isn't a superhero at all, but a tortured, vengeance-obsessed vigilante prowling the streets and looking for criminals to punish.  He's inexperienced, only two years into his grand mission to redeem the dysfunctional, corrupt hellscape Gotham has become, and aside from idealistic Lieutenant Jim Gordon (a terse-lipped Jeffrey Wright), he's seen as a freak and a troublemaker by the GCPD.  

But Gordon needs Batman's help more than ever when the police stumble onto a series of grisly murders carried out by another masked "crusader" calling himself The Riddler (Paul Dano in a frighteningly unhinged performance).  The killer is targeting respected public officials and leaving clues specifically for Batman to solve, hoping to catch the attention of the cowled avenger who seemingly inspired him.  The clues lead Batman deep into Gotham's dingy underworld as he investigates possible connections to crime boss Carmine Falcone (a gravel-voiced John Turturro), his deputy Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepot (Colin Farrell, unrecognizable but having the decadent time of his life under all those prosthetics), and a mysterious cat burglar who moonlights as a mafia nightclub hostess (a sultry Zoe Kravitz who conveys intense chemistry with her costumed costar, in the most three-dimensional Selina Kyle cinematic characterization to date).

AEW Revolution 2022: Another Triumph

AEW does it again.  For the third straight time, All Elite Wrestling has presented an absolutely stellar PPV, full of excellent matches up and down the card, with very few exceptions.

The festivities included three pre-show matches, which for me felt like a bit much; the crowd was pretty tired at later points in the show from the extra hour of wrestling.  I'd have limited the Buy-In to the one six-man match (and probably shortened it by a few minutes).  That said, the House of Black-Death Triangle/Redbeared was a tremendous bout, one of the best pre-show matches you'll ever see.  Erick Redbeard looked great in his AEW in-ring debut, free of WWE's narrow definition of what a big man should do between the ropes.  The heels won as expected, after Malakai used the mist on Redbeared and Brody King finished him off with his variation of the Rikishi Driver.  This was a helluva six-man and I look forward to Rey Fenix coming back for the rematch.  ***3/4

The PPV proper kicked off with Chris Jericho vs. Eddie Kingston, in a 14-minute war that would've been right at home on a G1 Climax show.  These two stiffed the hell out of each other in an AEW career highlight for both of them.  Jericho flipped off the crowd early to solidify himself as the heel in this story.  After a brutal-looking half-nelson suplex from Kingston, they chopped each other red multiple times during the match.  Both guys used eye pokes, but Jericho took over with a suplex off the apron to the floor.  The finishing sequence saw Jericho hit two Codebreakers, but Kingston fought through and hit two spinning back fists, followed by his Stretch Plum submission, forcing Jericho to tap out.  This was a great moment for Kingston, finally winning a high-profile match over the former AEW Champion.  Post-match Kingston offered a handshake but Jericho refused and walked out, reneging on his promise to acknowledge Kingston as the better man if he lost.  Really strong opening match that exceeded my expectations.  ****

The first true Match of the Night contender was next as Jungle Boy & Luchasaurus defended against The Young Bucks and reDRagon, in exactly the kind of match you'd expect from these three.  This was 19 minutes of non-stop tag team beauty.  It would be impossible for me to recap it all, but all three teams looked great.  Jungle Boy kept right up with the four tag veterans, while Luchasaurus got several big moments where he'd come in and clean house with power moves and then defy his size with aerial tactics.  Midway through the match the alliance between the Bucks and reDRagon broke down as these things tend to do, and each team stymied the other's chances for victory.  After a series of nearfalls, Jurassic Express hit their tandem powerbomb finisher on Matt Jackson to retain the titles.  Super fun tag title match that furthered the Bucks-Dragon dissolution while making the babyface champs look great.  ****1/4

Oscar Film Journal: West Side Story (2021)

Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!  Time for the second consecutive Steven Spielberg movie review....

Today I'm talking about the 2021 remake of the legendary classic West Side Story, a notion that was admittedly a hard sell for me, being such a fan of the 1961 version.  For devotees of the original film, this new version is more easily enjoyed if you think of it like an updated stage revival of a classic, rather than a remake designed to replace the old one.  I found myself thinking of the original film often, particularly during my favorite musical numbers and the more emotional scenes, comparing these acting and choreography choices to those.  Thus my enjoyment of this movie was tempered - like I said, redoing such a seminal piece of filmmaking is a tough sell. 

First let's look at the positives.  Set in the late 1950s with a song order closer to the Broadway show, this movie hits some new thematic notes in its frankness about racial tensions and the immigrant experience.  Where the 1961 version had to keep things a bit sanitized and appropriate for all ages, this script was afforded the chance to explore these themes with a bit more honesty, through a 2021 lens.  For example the events of the story take place against the backdrop of a major New York City gentrification project, as the rough Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican neighborhoods over which these gangs are fighting are being torn down to make room for Lincoln Center and other new developments.  The relationship between Bernardo and Anita is also given a feminist twist as he pressures her to move back to Puerto Rico with him and have a bunch of kids, while she wants to stay in New York City and launch a tailoring business; its this exchange that leads into the famous "America" number, taking place in the streets instead of on a rooftop.  I found it refreshing to see these new twists on the familiar story, and especially to know that every Hispanic character in the film was actually played by someone of Hispanic heritage.  No brown-face needed here, thank Christ.

AEW Revolution 2022 Preview & Predictions

Holy jeez, what a lineup AEW's put together for this weekend.  For the third time in a row the young wrestling promotion has the chance to deliver their best show to date; Revolution 2022 boasts arguably their strongest-ever on-paper card, with three top matches all-but guaranteed to exceed ****, plus a blazing tag team battle, a heated Women's Title match, and the chance for some big surprises.

First off, Tony Khan now owns Ring of Honor.  Wow.  I'm not sure what the long-term plan is, whether they'll try to keep ROH as a separate promotion (an historically difficult thing to pull off - just ask WWE or Jim Crockett Promotions), or whether they bake ROH's roster into AEW's (maybe even more difficult considering how little TV time there is for AEW's existing roster), or if they'll create a new AEW presents Ring of Honor show that involves a lot of crossover.  Regardless, the vast ROH tape library is in great hands and AEW has the foundation for a stunning streaming service, hopefully on HBO Max.  Being a wrestling fan in the early 2020s just keeps getting more interesting....

Now for the PPV: I don't want to jinx anything, but it's very possible we could see the second-consecutive 10/10 PPV from these guys, a feat I don't think any other wrestling company has ever achieved.  Of the nine matches I could see at least five of them hitting four-star territory, and a few of the others could conceivably get there as well.  Let's dive in, shall we?

TBS Championship: Jade Cargill vs. Tay Conti

Alright, one match I don't see earning a ton of accolades is the TBS Title match.  Yes Jade Cargill has the look and aura of a superstar, but her in-ring still needs a lot of work.  She's improving though, and her last couple TV matches have been decent.  Tay Conti is a solid worker who can hopefully guide Cargill through a strong title defense.  There's no suspense about the result, Jade is retaining here, but I wonder who the company has in store to eventually dethrone the inaugural champ.

Pick: Jade retains

Tornado Trios Match: Andrade El Ídolo, Matt Hardy & Isiah Kassidy vs. Sammy Guevara, Sting and Darby Allin

I'd probably have put Sammy vs. Andrade for the title on this show and moved the six-man to a free TV spot, but this should be fun regardless.  The crowd is always excited for Sting and Darby, Sammy always does something noteworthy in his matches, and Andrade is a helluva worker.  Matt Hardy has been teasing the impending debut of his brother for weeks now, so I wonder if that happens here.  I'd be lying if I said I'm super excited about Jeff Hardy joining the company.  Yes he's a major star, but he's been a liability at numerous points throughout his career and I'm not sure how much upside he has at 44.  He'd fit right in with Darby and Sting I suppose - three generations of brooding facepainted characters.  Anyway I think the good guys win here.

Pick: Sammy, Darby and Sting

Oscar Film Journal: Munich (2005)

Welcome to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  We're only a few weeks away from this year's ceremony....

Today's subject is another film I'm ashamed to admit I just now got around to watching.  There's a pair of years in the mid-aughts where the one Best Pic nominee I hadn't seen up until recently was directed by one of my all-time favorites.  In the case of 2004 it was Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, and for 2005 it was Steven Spielberg's powerful, gripping political thriller Munich, about a team of Mossad agents tasked by the Israeli government with assassinating a slew of Palestinian targets, in retaliation for the terrorist attack during the 1972 Olympics.  Led by Avner Kaufman (in a pretty spellbinding performance by Eric Bana), the team spends hundreds of thousands of US dollars searching the entire European continent for the targets and picks them off one by one.  

Despite wanting to maintain plausible deniability for the assassinations, the Israeli government, via Kaufman's handler Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) insists that the team use bombs as their primary weapon, in order to make as high-profile a statement as possible.  The goal is to make examples of these targets and deter future terrorist attacks, but of course as the story progresses and the team really begins to consider the consequences of this mission, the unavoidable question arises, "But what happens when they retaliate against our retaliation?"

Oscar Film Journal: Broadcast News (1987)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

We're headed back to 1987 for a look at James L. Brooks' third film, Broadcast News, starring Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks, about a trio of characters who work in the, well, broadcast news business but get snared in both a love triangle and a professional one.  

Holly Hunter is Jane Craig, a star producer so in-demand she has no time for a social life, who sees the TV news industry on the verge of crisis as it becomes more about fluff and sensationalism.  Albert Brooks is her best friend and colleague Aaron Altman, an extremely talented journalist who lacks social skills and isn't particularly photogenic, and thus isn't seen as anchor material.  William Hurt is Tom Grunick, a former sportscaster given an anchor position despite not being particularly qualified, mostly on the basis of the camera loving him and his innate ability to "sell" a story.  Tom is hired by the Washington DC news affiliate where Jane and Aaron work - Jane is initially repelled by him because of his (admitted) lack of qualifications but also strangely attracted to him for his looks and willingness to learn, while Aaron resents him immediately as he himself becomes persona non grata, both at the station and as a romantic suitor for Jane.

Oscar Film Journal: Nightmare Alley (2021)

Welcome to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

Time for another of this year's Best Picture nominees, the atmospheric, dread-laced film noir by acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley!  Starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette and Willem Dafoe, Nightmare Alley is the second film adaptation based on the 1946 novel about a down-on-his-luck carny, on the lam for murdering his father, who joins up with a traveling carnival and gradually carves out a lucrative grift for himself as a mentalist.  

Cooper's character Stan takes carnival grunt work at first but befriends a married couple who teach him the ins and outs of the carnival's psychic act Madame Zeena (Toni Collette), warning him however that learning too much about this particular con, especially when it involves "contacting the dead," will only end badly for him.  Meanwhile the carnival owner Clem (Dafoe) explains how he gets drunk vagrants to agree to join the "Man or Beast" geek show, by getting them hooked on opium and threatening to fire them if they don't go all-in to sell the act.  Stan convinces Molly, one of the other performers who does an electrocution act, to leave with him and put together their own psychic show, using the system of verbal cues Zeena and her husband Pete taught him, and they become a success in Buffalo, NY, performing for wealthy spectators.  The aforementioned warnings of course go unheeded and things take a turn when Stan is recruited for private consultations regarding deceased loved ones, for which he enlists the help of a noted psychologist (a steamy femme fatale performance by Blanchett) who knows much about Stan's new clientele.  I won't divulge anything further, but if you know the genre or the fatalistic nature of Greek tragedy, you can imagine where this is going...  

Oscar Film Journal: Stagecoach (1939)

Welcome to the Oscar Film Journal here at Enuffa.com, where I examine a Best Picture-nominated film, either from this year or yesteryear.

Today I'm heading way back to 1939 again, to review one of the most influential of all Westerns, John Ford's early opus Stagecoach, featuring an ensemble cast that included John Wayne in his breakout performance, but also Thomas Mitchell (whom you might recognize as Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life), and Andy Devine (whose voice you might recognize as Friar Tuck in Disney's animated Robin Hood), as well as John Carradine, Claire Trevor, and Louise Platt.  The film's premise is fairly simple - put a host of characters of divergent backgrounds and moral inclinations together in a confined space, and see how they all interact with each other.  It's a very familiar concept seen as recently as Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, just to name an example.  In Stagecoach you have the lawman, the driver, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the doctor (drunk for most of the film except when he has to sober up to deliver a baby), the corrupt banker (who pontificates early in the film about the virtues of deregulation as he's engaged in major embezzlement), the gambler, the soldier's pregnant wife, and the outlaw, all traveling from Arizona to New Mexico for various reasons, with the very real danger of an Apache attack looming over the entire trip.  

As expected the prostitute is ostracized early on, and only the outlaw treats her like a human being, while the dashing gambler makes it his personal mission to look after the soldier's wife, having served under her father in the Confederacy.  The lawman intends to turn the outlaw in to the authorities upon their arrival, while the outlaw toys with the idea of escaping so he can exact revenge on another outlaw for the murder of his father and brother.  We're introduced to the ensemble in quick succession, but the film breathes enough to let us form opinions of all the characters and draw our own allegiances.  Thus when the various threads play out and the inevitable Apache attack comes, we care enough about the characters to be invested.

Oscar Film Journal: The Power of the Dog (2021)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  The 94th Awards are only six weeks away and I have some major catching up to do - to that end, let's look at another one of this year's nominees!

The frontrunner this year is Jane Campion's psychological drama/western The Power of the Dog, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee.  The film is set on a 1920s Montana cattle ranch, owned by Phil and George Burbank (Cumberbatch and Plemons).  The unkempt, dour Phil does most of the ranching work, along with a team of hired hands, while polite, good-natured George handles the business end of things.  While on a cattle drive the brothers stop over at an inn owned by Rose (Dunst), for whom George immediately develops romantic feelings, consoling her after Phil cruelly mocks her awkward, effeminate son Peter (Smit-McPhee).  When George and Rose marry and she moves to the Burbank ranch, it sets off a contentious battle of wills between Phil and his new in-laws.  

And that's about all I'll say regarding the plot; The Power of the Dog is one of those films where you don't fully know what you're seeing until it's all over and you've had time to piece it together.  Campion's writing and direction are so subtle in fact, it's almost a little frustrating trying to figure out what's happening between the characters and why.  And yet, once you've completed the film and reflected a bit, you begin to marvel at what she's done and how skillfully she's toyed with your expectations.  One's sympathies shift from character to character throughout the story, no small feat considering what a loathsome cur Phil seems at the outset.

Oscar Film Journal: Gone With the Wind (1939)

Welcome to a rather unusual entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

I say unusual because today's subject is a film about which I had very strong mixed feelings, in a way I'm not sure I've experienced watching a classic movie.  Gone With the Wind is of course considered one of the all-time great epic films; adjusted for inflation it's still, over eighty years later, the highest grossing film ever made.  Seriously, based on 2020 ticket prices this movie made just shy of $1.9 billion DOMESTICALLY, almost $900 million more than current domestic box office champion Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  So suffice it to say this record is not likely to ever be broken.  Like, ever.  Pretty staggering considering its 220-minute running time.  

But back to mixed feelings.  Gone With the Wind is, from a cinematic standpoint, a stunning achievement in filmmaking; massive in scope, visually breathtaking, pro-feminist in a roundabout way, well ahead of its time in dealing frankly with issues the Hays Code tended to stifle, and boasting numerous great melodramatic performances.  This is epic 1930s filmmaking at its finest (minus the score, which is so ever-present in every scene it fails in its primary task of heightening the drama).

As political commentary goes though, this film is pretty wretched.  Based on Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel, GWTW is told from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara, a wealthy southern debutante-turned-businesswoman trying to maneuver her way through Civil War/Reconstruction Era society.  But thanks to Mitchell's Jim Crow south upbringing and the impression left on her by films like Birth of a Nation, the novel and its movie adaptation are steeped in revisionist Lost Cause myth, rather shamelessly whitewashing the horrors of slavery and presenting the African-American characters as crudely drawn stereotypes - well-treated house servants without a need for independence.  The Yankees are presented (mostly offscreen) as ruthless conquerors who burned the beautiful Old South to the ground, the carpetbaggers as opportunistic parasites exploiting the decimated post-war economy.  The whitewashing goes so far there's actually a scene where Ashley Wilkes chides Scarlett for employing white ex-cons at low wages, saying something to the effect of "I can't support building a business on other people's misery."  STUNNING lack of self-awareness there, Ash.  To her credit, Scarlett calls him out with "You didn't seem to mind using slaves," and he replies "We didn't treat them poorly."  Holy shit dude.  Even for the late 1930s this blatant disregard for the ugly truths about slavery seems shocking to me.  And yes, I know segregation was alive and well, Jim Crow was still fully in effect, and apparently the agrarian elegance of the Old South was still being romanticized.  Still given the borderline insidiousness of this misrepresentation, it's pretty shocking this film was so universally well-received 75 years after the end of the Civil War.

Oscar Film Journal: Licorice Pizza (2021)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal here at Enuffa.com!  Hey look, it's a 2021 Best Picture nominee!

Yes, now that it's officially joined the ranks of the Academy's illustrious Best Picture candidates, I can write in this "journal" about Paul Thomas Anderson's latest opus, Licorice Pizza!  Based loosely on the adolescent misadventures of his friend Gary Goetzman (noted Hollywood producer and former child actor), Licorice Pizza is set in 1973 and mostly centers around a budding romantic relationship between 15-year-old child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman in an auspicious debut that does his father Philip Seymour proud) and 25-year-old photographer's assistant Alana Kane (folk-rock musician Alana Haim, also making her motion picture debut with a bang).  The pair have an odd sort of anti-meet-cute, during which Alana makes it clear she has no interest whatsoever in the precocious, cocksure Gary.  But when he asks her to meet him that evening for dinner, she does so anyway.  From there they become almost inseparable, Gary clearly harboring real romantic feelings toward Alana, while Alana isn't really sure how she feels about him.  They become business associates when Gary starts up a waterbed store, but during the gas crisis of '73 it becomes untenable due to supply chain issues.  Alana then decides to break into acting and later local politics, while Gary goes into the pinball machine business.  

But all of these plot points are more or less incidental.  Just as PTA's 1997 masterpiece Boogie Nights wasn't so much about the adult film industry as it was about a gang of misfits looking for love and happiness, Licorice Pizza is less about Nixon-era LA and more about two oddball young people trying to find their respective places in the world while consistently and inexplicably gravitating toward each other.  It's almost a bell-bottom-clad When Harry Met Sally, but with a far more bizarre supporting cast.  

Oscar Film Journal: The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  This year's Academy Award nominations are imminent, so it's time to start bingeing Best Picture nominees once again.

Today I'm traveling back to 1933 England for a satire of sorts, The Private Life of Henry VIII, starring Charles Laughton in the role that put him on the map, along with his wife Elsa Lanchester, one year before her star-making performance as The Bride of Frankenstein.  TPLOH8 (as I'll be calling it to save time) is a rather comedic look at the infamous 16th century monarch and his string of marital failures, depicted in tongue-in-cheek fashion, with Laughton playing the decadent, gluttonous king as a short-tempered buffoon without a grown-up attention span.

We jump into the story during his second marriage, as his first to Catherine of Aragon "contained no particular interest" and ended in uneventful divorce.  At the film's start Henry is married to Anne Boleyn, whom he's ordered executed for infidelity - by all accounts she was falsely accused and the charges were a pretense to free Henry up to marry Jane Seymour, portrayed in the film as a youthful, simple woman who wasn't going to cause him any trouble.  Seymour of course died in childbirth and the country later clamored for Henry to remarry; we get multiple scenes of the king's servants and cooks gossiping about his love life and Henry himself hemming and hawing about what he should do next.  For political reasons he courts German princess Anne of Cleves (Lanchester in a very funny performance), who has no interest in Henry and makes herself as unappealing to him as possible, using their brief marriage to achieve her own political ends.  Finally after the dissolution of his fourth marriage, Henry settles on Katherine Howard, a woman from his court, whom he'd had designs on for years.  Katherine values advancement above all else and their marriage seems a convenient arrangement for both partners, but gradually she learns that a loveless marriage is also a joyless one, and falls in love with Thomas Culpepper.  Henry executes both of them and ends up marrying a domineering shrew, Catherine Parr, with whom he remained until his death.

Oscar Film Journal: L.A. Confidential (1997)

And we're back with another entry in the Oscar Film Journal!

This one's a little different for me, as I'd actually seen today's subject in the theaters when it came out.  But viewing L.A. Confidential as a rather naive 22-year-old, I must confess most of the film went way over my head.  The labrynthine plot, with its varied, seemingly unrelated threads and pretzel twists left me confused and disengaged by the end.  I dismissed the film as overrated and dull, and somehow erased 95% of it from my memory.  Indeed, I was surprised to discover on this second viewing that Danny Devito and James Cromwell were in it; that's how little I remembered.

So suffice it to say, this viewing of Curtis Hanson's acclaimed neo-noir was essentially a fresh look for me, and what a difference a quarter-century makes.  Where in 1997 I was largely unfamiliar with the film noir genre, 1950s culture, the appalling notion of corrupt police departments and their code of silence, etc., watching this film through my early-middle-aged 2022 lens, I was fascinated.  

For those unfamiliar, L.A. Confidential concerns three principle LAPD officers and a mass murder that may or may not have involved numerous cops, a stash of heroin, and a prostitution ring.  The three main characters are all seemingly on different sides of the straight-and-narrow.  Edmond Exley (Guy Pearce) is a young, clean-cut optimist who plays things by the book while taking advantage of every legitimate opportunity for career advancement.  His father was a police detective killed in the line of duty, the assailant never caught.  Bud White (Russell Crowe) is a tough-as-nails cop with a mission to punish abusive men (with good reason, as a 12-year-old he was forced to watch his father bludgeon his mother to death) and a penchant for beating a confession out of perps.  Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a star detective who consults on a hit TV show and also has a side hustle with a tabloid reporter, setting up high-profile celebrity arrests.  All three get wrapped up in the mass killing case, as their police captain (an icy James Cromwell) increasingly reveals that he may not be what he seems.

Oscar Film Journal: Fences (2016)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  For those joining us in progress, it's awards season so I'm catching up on as many past Best Picture nominees as I can before this year's Oscars.  

The latest nominee to which I circled back is the 2016 drama Fences, starring and directed by Denzel Washington, with Viola Davis, and based on the Pulitzer-winning play by August Wilson (who also adapted it for the screen).  Fences is a simple narrative about a working-class African-American family in 1950s Pittsburgh.  The patriarch Troy works as a garbage collector, and the film begins as he and his best friend/coworker Jim head home for their weekend ritual of sharing a bottle of gin and engaging in spirited debate about work, baseball, Troy's past, his kids, etc.  Troy has two sons from different mothers, the elder is Lyons, a 34-year-old musician who often drops by to borrow money, and the younger is Cory, 17, who lives with Troy and his wife Rose.  Cory is a promising high school student who's being courted for a football scholarship, but Troy, having hit a glass ceiling as a pro baseball player (Major League Baseball wasn't yet integrated during his career in the Negro Leagues), is disillusioned with pro sports and doesn't want his son suffering the same fate.  Rose quietly puts up with Troy's bombastic posturing but calls him out when he takes it too far, like when he claims to have actually won a wrestling match with death.  Troy's mentally impaired brother Gabe lives nearby and often visits; Gabe earned $3000 in disability compensation after sustaining a head injury during World War II, and Troy used the money to buy the house he and Rose live in, while Gabe has since moved out.  

Oscar Film Journal: Minari (2020)

Welcome to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

Well I've completed my viewing of every 2020 Best Picture nominee, and rounding out the list is Lee Isaac Chung's semi-autobiographical drama Minari, about a family of Korean immigrants who move to rural Arkansas in the early 80s.  The father Jacob plans to start a Korean vegetable farm serving the growing number of countrymen and women immigrating to the region, supplementing his funding by taking a chicken-sexing job (that's separating baby chicks by gender to weed out the males who aren't useful for either meat or egg production).  Jacob's wife Monica, having grown up in the city, isn't excited about leaving their former life in California to move to the country, and would've been content to remain in the chicken sexing business if it meant being able to provide for their two children.  But Jacob wants something more than a menial 9-to-5 job, and their conflict about what's best for the family plays out throughout the film.  To make life more palatable for Monica, Jacob arranges for her mother Soon-ja to relocate from Korea and provide childcare, and her relationship with their son David (a rather disagreeable six-year-old with a heart condition) takes center stage during the film's second act.

Minari is a quiet, contemplative film with very relatable themes - chasing one's dreams as opposed to just being a worker bee, wanting to do so without needing to rely on other people, making choices between one's family and the self (when of course those two things often aren't mutually exclusive), and of course failure.  Countless films have been made about pursuing the American Dream since the advent of cinema, and Minari puts a personal and unusual twist on this classic format, with a film steeped in old-school American "values" for lack of a better word, but from the point of view of an immigrant family who speak their native language most of the time (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association drew deserved criticism for nominating Minari as a Foreign Language film instead of as a Best Picture candidate, on the grounds that over 50% of its dialogue was in a non-English language - an absurdly arbitrary metric).  

Oscar Film Journal: The Hours (2002)

Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!

Today I'll be talking about the 2002 drama The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and in a turn that won her an Oscar, Nicole Kidman.  Based on Michael Cunningham's 1999 novel, the film is a triptych, three separate stories that play out simultaneously before our eyes, connected thematically.  The first takes place in 1923 and concerns English writer Virginia Woolf (Kidman) and her most famous work Mrs. Dalloway, a day-in-the-life story dealing with themes of mental illness, existentialism, and sexual orientation.  Woolf drew from her own experiences and injected much of herself into the titular Dalloway, who questions her life choices throughout.  The second part of the film's story is set in 1951 and centers around Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), an unhappy, pregnant housewife who spends her days caring for her first child without any sort of fulfillment.  Like Mrs. Dalloway (and Woolf herself), Laura is finding herself attracted to women, while also struggling with suicidal thoughts.  The third segment is set in the present day (2001 in this case), and stars Streep as a New York publishing editor possessing many of the same character traits as Mrs. Dalloway, her day mostly spent prepping a literary award party for her friend and former lover Richard (Ed Harris), who is slowly dying of AIDS.