California Girls: The Motion Picture (1983)
So, yeah . . . courtesy of all of the stock footage — and its resulting documentary feel — some are inclined to call this bee-boppin’ lesson in tedium a “mondo movie.” Well, yeah, if “mondo boring” is a thing. Any film that feels the need to suffix their film title with “The Motion Picture” […]
The Beatles: Influence on Film 2
This is the second installment in our three-part series. We are discovering 33 films in the series, with 11 films each over the next three days — at 3 PM — as part of our third “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” installment. The films are listed by year of release. Backbeat (1994)Ian Softley (Hackers) makes his […]
A Bullet for Pretty Boy (1970)
Wow! This movie has it all! It’s an American International Pictures release! Cheapjack drive-in copycat Larry Buchanan! Beach flick purveyor Maury Dexter! Still livin’ the dream ex-’60s teen idol Fabian! And a connection to Jim Morrison? Strap on the popcorn bucket! In 1967, Warner Bros. hit a $70 million payday on a $2.5 million investment […]
The Beatles: Influence on Film 1
This is the first in a three-part series. We are discovering 33 films in the series, with 11 films each over the next three days — at 3 PM — as part of our third “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” installment. As we developed this third “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” in February, the 52nd anniversary of […]
The Divine Enforcer (1992)
“Open the gates of Hell! For I am the right hand of God!” — So speaks Father Daniel Trust us: We aren’t plot spoiling when we tell you what we have here is a great idea of a Sylvester Stallone Cobra (1986) ripoff — with Sly as a catholic priest, instead of a toothpick-chewin’ rogue […]
Catch Me If You Can (1989)
Well, as with the previously-reviewed-this-week Corey Feldman-fronted Round Trip to Heaven, this Down Under car flick is a doublesploitation whammy: we all know what makes a carsploitation movie . . . but what makes a teensploitation movie, now that’s the question. Well, for me, it’s when your film has 30-year-old teenagers — in this case, […]
Varieties on Parade (1951) and Forty Acre Feud (1965)
We’ve made it our life’s mission to watch and review — sans his twenty-plus westerns as a producer, writer and director — all of Ron Ormond’s secular and Christian films. (The westerns will get done, eventually.) And we’re almost there. We’re left with The Eternal Question (1956), a soft skin-flick of which we have yet […]
Kentucky Jubilee (1951) and Square Dance Jubilee (1949)
Bruce Eder, in the liner notes of the 1989 The Criterion Collection reissue of A Hard Day’s Night, reminds us that, in a 1964 review of that classic Beatles’ film, critic Andrew Sarris described it as “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals.” Since then, the term “jukebox musical” has, in my opinion, gone a wee-bit […]
Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (2021)
“Lunch’s defiantly unfashionable sort of feminism is the main point of interest in this documentary. Viewers will . . . marvel at a woman who, at 60, seems just as fierce as she was 40 years ago.” — John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter Filmmaker Beth B and multi-media artist Lydia Lunch have been friends since […]
For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close (2021)
“We knew that to make the definitive movie about this icon/unknown, we would need to take the same kind of creative risks that he was famous for. As someone known for breaking down genres and experimenting with form — not to mention playing fast and loose with the truth — we decided to apply the […]
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