All posts by Rod Lott

Best Movie Scenes: 549 Memorable Bank Robberies, Car Chases, Duels, Haircuts, Job Interviews, Swearing Scenes, Window Scenes and Others, by Topic, Second Edition

bestmoviescenesMan, oh, man, how I truly wanted to love — or even just like — Best Movie Scenes, because I find film-related lists a blast to read. One of my favorite parts of my recent Christmas-to-New-Year’s vacation was poring over all 288 small-print pages of 10 Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists, an impulse-clearance purchase that turned out to yield rewards of pleasure exponentially greater than my meager $2 investment.

Needless to say, I was thirsty for more. Yet Sanford Levine’s paperback round-up is a bad date in itself, starting with a wholly unnecessary framing concept that simply does not make sense.

Barring a reprint of Levine’s two-page introduction, my words can’t explain adequately the bizarro idea the author puts forth: a strange scenario in which he and his friends are members of über-niche organizations like the Best Neck Brace Scenes Club, complete with regular meetings and voting and all.

Yeah, I don’t get it, either.

But that doesn’t stop him from carrying it out through the entirety of the book, organized alphabetically by subject, including such topics as “Sagging Shoulders” and “Name Mispronunciation.” (Admit it: You’re dying to know what he’ll name as cinema’s all-time finest “Fluttering Drapes” scenes, right? Right? Well, it’s here.)

Under each topic are several unnumbered examples, written in a mumble-mouthed manner that stands squarely between baffling and rambling. As an example, read this excerpt about 1979’s rom-com Starting Over, a Burt Reynolds/Jill Clayburgh pairing mentioned in the “False Teeth” chapter:

“While false teeth fans prefer to see an actual denture, they are not averse to scenes in which false teeth are merely mentioned, as long as they are mentioned in a favorable light. … For the record, marriage proposal fans: did put in a claim for this scene, but it was quickly dropped when false teeth fans, possessive about their territory, threatened to have every actor and actress in every winning marriage proposal scene checked for dentures.”

For a second example, this in-full verdict on the 1973 prison drama Papillon, within the entry on “Food Mushing”:

“Some food mushing scenes are not for the fainthearted. This is especially true when they are set in a solitary confinement cell on Devil’s Island. Food mushing fans, however, are not easily revolted. So when Steve McQueen is put on half rations for not squealing on Dustin Hoffman, he shows he can mush food in a revolting way with the best of them. The fact that the ‘food’ he mushes is beetles and grasshoppers in no way violates Rule 3 in the newly revised Food Mushing Manual. In essence, Rule 3 states to the be eligible for a food mushing award, an actor may mush anything as long as it is eventually eaten.”

Now imagine that for about 200 pages, because that’s what Best Movie Scenes is. And I stress the word “imagine,” because I discourage you from reading it. At least those two examples actually reference scenes, because Levine sometimes cheats by not mentioning any. One example, from “Accounting,” is Moonstruck: “In an informal vote the membership elected Cher the prettiest accountant ever to balance the books in a movie.”

I think that the author may be aiming for comedy, but if so, it was lost on this reviewer without a rimshot to cue me. Levine keeps returning to the same titles (Chevy Chase’s Funny Farm earns no fewer than three spots), which demonstrates a dearth of imagination, and occasionally throws in recipes. Repeat: recipes.

Worst of all, and perhaps I’m just nitpicking, but it pains me to no end when books on film don’t bother to get simple facts correct. Peter Riegert is a fine comedic actor deserving of more press than he gets, so it’s an insult to mangle his name as “Peter Reichart,” which isn’t even close.

Revenge of the Nerds II is referred to only by its subtitle of Nerds in Paradise; Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part III is rendered as Godfather III; and in Levine’s mixed-up mind, David Fincher’s The Social Network is praised for having taken home Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director — prizes it famously lost.

And on and on it goes, wrongly, lazily, poorly and painfully.

Again, the friend in me grabs you by the shoulders and, with a gentle shove, nudges you instead toward 10 Bad Dates with De Niro, which is everything Best Movie Scenes is not: erudite, witty, logical, readable. —Rod Lott

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Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

eyeslauraOh, those Eyes of Laura Mars and the things they see! As played by Faye Dunaway, her Network Oscar still fairly fresh, Ms. Mars is a photographer by trade whose violent, sexual, trashy shots court an equal share of hype and hysteria, and best can be described as something you’d expect to see in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, should the lingerie purveyor ever publish a catalog post-doomsday.

With a ridiculous amount of media attention showered on her book-release party — complete with live, televised footage from the red carpet — Laura’s big night is deflated by news of the mysterious murder of her book’s editor. It’s merely the first in a series of stabbings to come.

eyeslaura1That Laura “sees” the homicides happening in her mind is problematic enough. (That Dunaway plays it like the proverbial deer in the headlights is another.) That the crimes are staged to match some of her photos is worse. Investigating is a police detective (Tommy Lee Jones in the unibrow-and-hair-helmet phase of his career) for whom she starts to fall, despite being a suspect.

As directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), the film is as expected: a workmanlike thriller sporting as much gloss as the pages of fashion mags that pay Laura’s utility bills. But as dreamt up and co-written by Halloween maestro John Carpenter, it’s a real disappointment. His made-for-TV movie of the same year, Someone’s Watching Me!, generates considerably more suspense at half the star wattage. —Rod Lott

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FDR: American Badass! (2012)

fdr“Badassery is not born, but often thrust upon you.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Because tragedy plus time famously equals comedy, we can laugh along with something like FDR: American Badass!, a low-budget film built upon bad taste, but with the skills good enough to pull most of it off. “Who ordered the burnt honky with a side of polio?” is but one example of its anarchic and anachronistic sense of humor.

Appearing to have more fun onscreen than ever before (The Rocky Horror Picture Show included), Barry Bostwick tears into the role of POTUS 32 like the old pro he is, portraying the Depression-era prez as a trash-talkin’, freestylin’ blowhard who’s okay with never walking again as long as his penis still functions. His legs stop working when he contracts polio from the bite of a werewolf, naturally.

fdr1As the film posits, the werewolves (whose makeup makes them look like stand-up comedian Richard Lewis) are the doing of Hitler’s Nazi Germany in a bid to rule the world, thus kick-starting World War II. The only thing standing in the pack’s way? FDR and his Einstein-pimped machine-gun wheelchair.

This hysterical historical is an extension of the literary mash-up craze that quickly infiltrated Hollywood with the likes of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But what that megamillions project forgot is something FDR: American Badass! does not: Don’t let the humor end at your film’s title. This entry may be dirt-cheap, but good jokes cost nothing to deliver. You have nothing to fear but the fact that Ross Anderson’s script bears too many gags relying on oral sex (inching toward either homophobia or latent desire?), but blessedly more that do not. It helps that the entire supporting cast is game and without shame.

Directed by Garrett Brawith (Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury), FDR is a spirited spoof with enough LOLs to merit multiple terms of office; today, we call them “viewings.” —Rod Lott

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Jumper (2008)

jumperThe “jumper” of Jumper is a young man named David (Hayden Christensen, Star Wars episodes I through III) who suddenly and inexplicably acquires the gift of teleportation. (Plot points pop up and vanish almost as quickly.) The newfound power allows him to escape an abusive father and get the bright idea to “borrow” considerable cash sums from bank vaults.

While romancing Millie (Rachel Bilson, TV’s The O.C.), a childhood crush grown up to be a clueless barmaid, David is chased not by the cops, but by the Paladins, a shadowy organization for whom Roland (Samuel L. Jackson, sporting white hair that makes him look like a Fisher-Price toy) works. Yes, that’s right: David is not the only “jumper,” as he learns when he meets the cocky Brit named Griffin (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot).

jumper1The mild joy of Steven C. Gould’s 1992 source novel stems from its childlike view of an amazing power. With the on-the-page David greeting his newfound skills with equal guilt and glee, it’s not unreasonable to view it as a thinly veiled tale of hitting puberty and discovering the magic of erections.

For the screen, however, the normally gifted director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) reduces that story to a mere special effect. Although mildly diverting, there’s nothing all that innocent — or human — about it. Wooden, however, is a quality Christensen has in spades. –Rod Lott

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Death Nurse 2 (1988)

deathnurse2Thirty seconds is all it takes for nurse-school dropout Edith Mortley (Priscilla Alden) to kill her first victim in Death Nurse 2. As viewers of its previous year’s predecessor know, timing is not among writer/director Nick Philips’ strong points. Hell, I’m not sure he has any strong points, thereby resulting in an auto-accident watch made more difficult by being shot on video.

This sequel offers more of the same: more of Edith grousing, “You nosy old bitch”; more scenes from Philips’ Criminally Insane/Crazy Fat Ethel films passed off as her dreams; and more minutes, yet this still fails to hit an hour by a handful of seconds.

deathnurse2-1Plot? Edith continues to kill patients, but at least DN2 offers a twist: This chapter’s new admissions are indigents the mayor finds pesky, from the alcoholic Brownie (Philips’ wife, Irmgard Millard, playing a different drunk from DN1) to some crazy guy who spouts rhetoric in front of City Hall about the country being headed toward socialism. (Yes, Philips apparently predicted the establishment of the Tea Party.)

Still, Death Nurse 2 is so lazy that it even reuses scenes from its big sister. This follow-up easily boasts the saga’s best sequence, when Brownie and her butcher knife chase Edith ’round and ’round the living room furniture — so cartoony, it lacks only a Carl Stalling score.

Once more, the movie just ends by petering out mid-scene. Oh, how were all the loose threads supposed to conclude? —Rod Lott

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