TOP GUN MAVERICK, Laurel & Hardy, Scarlet St. + more

 TOP GUN MAVERICK (2022) — Old is new again and Tom Cruise, who would be eligible for AARP membership, has been resurrected 36 years after the original Top Gun for a wild blue yonder thriller.  I was less than thrilled.  Junior bird men and bird women duel it out in the sky against missiles to knock out the threatening installation of an unnamed country (I assume Canada).   Leonard Maltin wrote that Anthony Edwards was the reason to see the original, but his character was knocked off in the ’86 Top Gun.   Most Navy officers after 36 years have retired to a trailer park near San Diego, but not Cruise who is cast in yet another golden oldie, a Mission Impossible sequel.  The recycling of scripts won’t stop —at the Riverview a Jurassic Park sequel is next month’s feature.

“It could have been a 1942  film with Cary Grant and Randolph Scott,” said Rick Notch.

Howard Hughes made his mark with aerial warfare in the 1930 “Hells Angels” and tried again in 1950 with “Jet Pilot” but it was shelved until 1957 when RKO was gone and moviegoers weren’t interested in dueling pilots from cold war countries.

A few blocks form the river in a residential neighborhood is the Riverview Theater, a 50s mid century modern design with an oval shaped auditorium.  Very "modern" copper drinking fountain and furniture.

THE PLAYER — It was marketed as a ‘thriller” but it’s a subversive dark comedy where an unpleasant Hollywood studio executive murders a screenwriter but then who cares?  Overkill with cameos of celebrities.  Buck Henry is featured as a writer trying to sell the exec (Tim  Robbins) on a sequel to “The Graduate” which seems like a terrible idea.  Whoopi Goldberg plays the cop leading a dysfunctional investigation of the murder where a “reliable witness” identifies another cop (Lyle Lovett) as the perp.  Not to be missed. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105151/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

SCARLET STREET (1945- Universal) — This is the drug of choice for film noir addicts.  Fritz Lang’s classic film noir is a biblical tale of lust in the garden of evil where the prostitute Kitty (Joan Bennett) dangles her ripe fruits under the twitching nose of the lonely artist/cashier Chris (Edward G. Robinson) who takes a bite.  Aided by her pimp played by a regular visitor to the dark side, Dan Duryea, they take the hapless Chris for all he has or can steal.  Kitty reveals her cheapness and vulgarity in the restaurant scene with Chris where a straw carelessly dangles from her lips while she nervously talks.  A contrived conversation amongst strangers on a train offers an opinion that Chris will have to pay a steep price for the wages of sin. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038057/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

THE HOODLUM (1951 Eagle Lion Classics) — Actor Lawrence Tierney was the reigning king of the bad boy genre and he hasn’t mellowed in this low budget film noir directed by Max Nossock (Dillinger).  After laying waste to his family, his dying mother denounces him thusly:  “What can momma do; go to the electric chair for you.  I was blind.  I always stuck up for you.  I should have let you rot in jail.  Your brothers’ girl friend died with your unborn baby in her.  You are the smell.  You are the stink.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043655/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1

BENEDICTION (UK 2022) — A very sobering look at life in Great Britain during World War I, including discrimination against gays and staggering loss of lives.  Showing now at the Main theater on the river in historic St. Anthony Main with the Prime Timers.  Cobble streets are quaint but the Dodge Dart didn’t appreciate the ride.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6852178/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

SWISS MISS (1938 MGM Roach) — Laurel & Hardy are moving yet another piano in this musical but this time it’s over the alps on a flimsy rope bridge with a menacing ape.  Not the best L&H but some great musical numbers including the flag throwing extravaganza and a sound stage full of dancers in town square.  In a droll British moment Eric Blore and Walter Woolf King sing “I Can’t Get Over the Alps,” which infers that the “miss” in Swiss is secondary to the mountains if you hadn’t guessed.  (Blore has some very amusing moments with Edward Everett Horton as a fussy butler in the 1930s Fred & Ginger RKO musicals.)  In July 1963 on a steaming hot LA day before air conditioners were standard in cars I was at the Roach Studios with John Miller of Ontario and his girl friend for the auction of props from L&H films, most of which went to the museum.  A sweet women on a camp stool shared L&H memories from her photo album when her husband Charles Rogers was music director at this Culver City studio — a sad movie land moment.