Western

Buck and the Preacher (1972)

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When I was recently hospitalized, I became a fan of the Western genre. It harks back to the time I watched them with my father was I was a kid. Sure, I was more drawn to the anti-hero type, but it was one of the only times I bonded with him. One of his favorites was the 1972’s Buck and the Preacher, respectively starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in the title roles.

Having been through emancipation, slaves try for a better life during westward expansion. Buck (Poitier) is a wagon master, trying to take a party to the west. However, they cross paths with a cadre of dirty racists — creeping parties of white pissants who try to take them down, maiming and killing all. Buck teams with the Preacher (Belafonte), doling out two-fisted vengeance along the way, with help from an Indigenous tribe. Out of sight!

Poitier and Belafonte are a dynamite duo, giving a new spin on the slightly unmatched platonic couplings; despite being a gruff loner, Poitier is no-nonsense, trying to get these people to their new home, while Belafonte is a religious huckster who goes against type.

What I really like is the film’s score by jazz musician Benny Carter. His twanging riffs have a real lustrous sheen in the wah-wah category, giving the whole soundtrack a real chugging atmosphere. Much like the film, I can’t say enough about it. —Louis Fowler

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Comedy

The Day After Halloween (2022)

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For me, the day after Halloween is one of regret, over the sheer multitude of peanut butter cups and gummy confections consumed. For the roommates of The Day After Halloween, it’s one of confusion — as in, why is a dead girl in our bathtub? Until they’ve answered that question, regret remains TBD.

Shot in Pennsylvania, the shaggy-dog indie comedy follows Addison (Danny Schluck, writer and co-producer) and Hayes (Brandon DeLany, Air: The Musical) as they spend Saturday, Nov. 1 (obvs), piecing together substance-fragmented memories of the previous night’s debauchery. Their back-and-forth glimpses gradually allow us to know Addison and Hayes (uh, Moonlighting much?) beyond the duties of running The Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Addison is a smart-ass slob, irresponsibility personified; Hayes is the more adult of the two, yet pressured by an outta-his-league girlfriend (model Aimee Fogelman) to gain enough ambition — fun-sized, even — to attend college.

With its blackout-cum-befuddlement concept, comparisons to The Hangover trilogy are inevitable and merited; however, the influence looming largest over The Day After Halloween is Clerks. To its detriment, Schluck’s script trafficks in Kevin Smith’s droll, smarmy, too-knowing patter, so everyone’s conversations amount to a stand-up routine for an audience of one or two. You hear it in discussions of everything from ALF to anuses, Raggedy Andy to rape and Jehovah’s Witnesses to jerk-off patterns.

That said, as with Smith, it scores a base hit every now and then, whether pegging older women as “brutal beasts fueled by white wine and Pilates” or a crafting an action plan to deal with the tub corpse: “We’re gonna need tools, duct tape and a fuck-ton of Febreze.” One thing Schluck and first-time director Chad Ostrum have going for them is an element of surprise: Yeah, it takes a turn. In the end, The Day After Halloween is just engaging enough to like, yet clearly made with more love than transferred to viewers. —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

Karate Bearfighter (1975)

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When we last left karate expert Masutatsu Oyama (Sonny Chiba) in Karate Bullfighter, he was ripping the horns off a charging bull. With such strong chopsocky powers, whaddaya do for an encore? Ladies and gentlemen, may we present the Toei Company’s immediate sequel, Karate Bearfighter.

From Wolf Guy director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, it plays like two movies in one. In the first half, Oyama does little more than make a sake-and-meat soup, whore himself out for some freelance bodyguard work, ignore the woman who loves him and anger some karate students. But when some of his closest friends are killed, he’s thirsting for revenge.

Onto the second half, where Oyama befriends a little boy who steals his suitcase. The boy, Rintaro — Japanese for “runt,” I assume — lives with a boozehound father. As Oyama teaches the tot the skill of catching fish with one’s fists of fury, news arrives that Rintaro’s dad has been smashed by a falling tree, and without a costly operation, will die.

Someone agrees to pay for the operation, so long as Oyama can kill a bear with his bare hands — hence the title. (Try this tactic with the next spam call you receive: “Yes, I’ll sign up for your auto warranty service … if you slay a grizzly in return.”) Thus begins Karate Bearfighter’s best scene: Oyama battling to the death with a live bear. Or, as is painfully obvious even with the animal obscured by weeds and whatnot, a guy in a bad bear suit.

Where does a Chiba movie go from there? Having him kill some dudes who come at him flinging chains and spears, that’s where. Oh, and poking a guy’s eyes out for dessert. —Rod Lott

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Action

Ambulance (2022)

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Dear Santa,

What I really want for Christmas is a new drone. One with a camera and that goes real real fast.

If you get me this drone, I will be very very happy. I will make a movie with it. It will be about an ambulance that gets taken by bank robbers and is chased all over Los Angeles by the police cars and helicopters. I might even call the movie Ambulance. Maybe I will get a big star like Jake Jillinhall Gillinhall Gillenhal G. to star in it. He’s good!

I could use the drone to do lots and lots of cool camera tricks. It could swoop down streets real real fast or hover over their heads. I might even want to use it like in normal shots where the people who make real movies wouldn’t use it. Maybe if I make those shots super duper quick like a split second, no one will know.

But mostly I just want to use the drone a lot! I really really want people to watch my movie and then say “Hey he got a new drone!”

So please please bring me that drone. I gave you half an Oreo.

Your friend,
Mikey Bay

—Rod Lott

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Action

Moonraker (1979)

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Moonraker is the James Bond movie I hated as a kid because it wasn’t Star Wars enough. Today, I like it for the same reason.

Coming right smack in the middle of Roger Moore’s roguish run of seven 007s, this adventure tasks Bond with locating an American space shuttle reportedly hijacked while in flight. In his way are giant-sized foe Jaws (Richard Kiel, back from The Spy Who Loved Me) and bearded kazillionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale, The Day of the Jackal), who looks like a Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces toy guise come to life; in his bed is the delectable Lois Chiles (Creepshow 2) as CIA scientist Dr. Holly Phenomenalblowjob Goodhead.

The third and final Bond for director Lewis Gilbert, Moonraker has much to recommend, starting with the cold open’s airborne tussle while plummeting from a plane. From there, one can rely on the nauseating centrifuge sequence, the fight atop cable cars, a musical wink to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a boat chase, Bond’s struggle with a massive python and Q’s exploding balls. On the flipside, the film also boasts a ridiculous gondola pursuit that goes too far over the top by venturing out of water, a pointless Magnificent Seven parody and, ironically, nearly all the scenes in outer space.

Famously, For Your Eyes Only was announced as the next 007 outing in The Spy Who Loved Me’s closing credits, until Star Wars’ stellar success convinced producer Albert R. Broccoli to postpone for a cash-grabbing trip to space. While that worked for the box office, it doesn’t gel well in a movie that does just fine on terra firma; a sense of cohesion suffers. Turns out, in Her Majesty’s secret universe, lasers belong in one spot and one spot only: nearing Sean Connery’s crotch. —Rod Lott

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