FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / April 2021 / Gabriel Ricard
Image © Paramount | ViacomCBS
You would think dicking around on Film Twitter would give me ideas for Captain Canada, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m not particularly striving for relevancy, and I don’t seem to have anything to add to any given discourse that’s going on.
I specifically cite Film Twitter because that’s seemingly where all the action is. I have even less interest in Facebook Groups, although I am certainly in more than a few.
I want to have conversations with people, but what do we talk about? What do all of you talk about on Twitter? I’m up for discussing whatever I’m watching, but that’s hit-or-miss with the rest of the world. Award shows? The possible death of the movie theater industry (I doubt it)?
Movies, trivia, and analysis I can go into forever. Current events, by and large, either don’t interest me, or have a very, very short lifespan for my attention.
I think we ran out of shit to discuss about Martin Scorsese and Marvel a couple of years back, but what do I know?
Larger topics like racism, sexism and so on in Hollywood? I have thoughts, sure, and they have wound up here, but I’m generally in the mode of listening for those things. I don’t want to be another self-deprecating white guy, but I really don’t think you need elaborate opinions from me on most of these things.
Am I just a casual fan of movies? Not deep enough for things that people actually want to talk about? I don’t think that’s it. If anything, I’m just not very interesting when it comes to a great many subjects. There are my little obsessions, my brief thoughts on the issues of the day, and that’s about it.
That’s enough to keep this column going. And at this point, I’m okay with those things only being of interest to a few people.
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Wait, hold on, Paramount+ has been out for about a month at this point. How are you enjoying it? I know I’m excited to have so much fresh, sassy, content to contend with! Please, send me all relevant Paramount+ hashtags and talking points. I’m eager to be part of at least one cultural revolution per decade.
Tom and Jerry (2021): D+
Image © Warner Bros. Pictures
I really do hope kids like this more than I did. That’s not snark. They’re the primary audience here, as we try one more time to make Tom and Jerry distinctive beyond their glory days several decades prior.
Yet the movie is also very clearly, like a lot of stuff in this arena (Sonic the Hedgehog would be one) marketed to people roughly in my age bracket who have kids. I suppose a little younger than that at this point, but still.
Asking for a Tom and Jerry movie I would actually enjoy in my mid-30s is not as insane as it may sound to you.
Besides, I don’t have nearly as much time to hate-watch something as I used to. At the very least, I want to be entertained. I set what I think is a reasonable bar for that with movies like Tom & Jerry.
The movie fails on two crucial levels for me. It puts an enormous amount of attention on its human characters, including talented actors like Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña, and then doesn’t bother to make them very interesting. What we do get with the iconic titular duo is a shadow of everything that ever worked about their cartoons. It is fairly hard to tell the difference between this movie and other older properties being adapted for what will be an audience of young and old.
Some of those movies still work for me. Some wind up being better than I would have guessed. Tom and Jerry is a good example of everything that doesn’t work for me. I’m just glad I didn’t have to waste my money and risk my health on seeing it in a theater. The 20 pretty good minutes that made up this film’s finale was not enough.
The Optimists (1973): B+
Image © Paramount Pictures
By 1973, Peter Sellers output was firmly settled on the ground of being uneven as hell. The comedic brilliance didn’t seem to be coming as easily to the human chameleon as it had once had. Blame drugs, a relentless work schedule, undiagnosed mental illness, or whatever the case may be. Sellers was struggling by this point to be seen as more than just a has-been with a few more lucrative years ahead of him.
While The Optimists, based on a novel by Anthony Simmons (who also directed) is not remembered on the level of Sellers’ best-known works, such as A Shot in the Dark, Being There, or Dr. Strangelove, it is one of the actor’s strongest efforts in the final stretch of an extremely prolific career.
The Optimists uses a simple story with simple stakes, that of a homeless man and his dog (Sellers, only playing the homeless man, in case you were wondering) bonding with two working class children. Sellers is borderline unremarkable here, but only when compared to his most outlandish characters. The notion that Sellers only truly explored the dramatic side of his comedy talents with Being There just isn’t true.
The Optimists isn’t spectacular, but it’s one of the best from a man who continued to do good work, even as his health and personal life utterly disintegrated.
Shane (1953): C-
Image © Paramount Pictures
I understand Shane is considered by many to be one of the greatest western films ever made. As much as I love the genre, and as much as I particularly love older films in this genre, even the more problematic ones, Shane was surprisingly disappointing to me.
Seemingly, I had a reason to avoid seeing it for so many years, despite knowing its reputation. Nothing wrong with the story, in which a weary gunfighter (Alan Ladd) looks for, and fails to find, peace with a homesteading family. Nothing wrong with the cinematography (which won an Oscar), which has a long-standing, well-deserved reputation for being utterly gorgeous.
Where Shane falls apart for me is in its pacing, some of the performances, and the utter lack of chemistry between Ladd and literally every other character. Even the child in the homesteading family, after he falls hopelessly in love with Ladd’s gunfighter as a father figure (telling his actual dad, played by Van Heflin, to essentially go fuck himself), seems as though he’s interacting with a man who could seemingly be played by literally anyone.
Maybe it isn’t fair to hang much of the failure of this movie for me on Ladd, who’s pretty dead at this point. Unfortunately, it’s his name on the marquee, and it’s his character who drives one of the dullest established classic films I’ve ever seen.
Daughters of the Dust (1991): A+
Image © Kino International
An enormously satisfying, distinctive story of family, culture, and history, Daughters of the Dust is one of those movies I hope finds a larger audience in the 2020s and beyond. The movie has always had its fans, but it deserves greater historical appreciation. It is also one of the best stories about family I’ve seen in recent memory.
Daughters of the Dust depicts a family from coastal South Carolina’s Gullah community making a bold, potentially dangerous move. It is an effort to assume control of destiny itself. The film also spends a good deal of time showcasing the beauty of the locations in which the story is set. Daughters of the Dust exists as an incredible visual poem, when it simply steps back and allows the surroundings to enrich the humanity in front of us.
At the same time, Daughters of the Dust is also just a well-acted, well-shot, and incredibly well-written drama about the pull of the past on those trying to move forward in the present. If you want to see Julie Dash, one of the great unsung filmmakers of the 80s and 80s, at her very best, you’ll be glad you took the time to seek out Daughters of the Dust.
Blood Diner (1987): B+
Image © Lightning Pictures | Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Despite a rough start, Blood Diner very quickly establishes itself as one of the weirdest fucking horror movies of the 1980s.
Less of a fully-formed film project, and more of a fever dream with massive amounts of gore, surprisingly likable characters and strong performances, and a plot that actually provides some genuine sharp turns, Blood Diner was never going to find a large audience. I just don’t think everyone is going to be on board for the story of two brothers who use their diner as a front to sacrifice unsuspecting women to a soul-thirsty Lumerian goddess.
No, it doesn’t sound like much, but Rick Burks and Carl Crew are quite memorable as the brothers, murdering and arguing their way through an increasingly bizarre plot.
Yet a plot that manages to keep your disbelief and mild wonderment at it all running fairly high. A low budget and a simple plot give way to a significant amount of imagination and energy.
This may wind up in your “So bad it’s good” category (I actually think it’s a pretty good movie), but I’m confident that if you like stuff like Re-Animator and Brain Damage, this movie is going to have significantly more good than bad.
Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.