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louie-bergquist
Reviews
Savage Streets (1984)
Death Wish meets Valley Girl on PCP!!!!
I came for Paul Kersey as an 80s teen played by Linda Blair. I stayed for the firehose of insanity that fleshes out the threadbare plot! Platinum so-bad-it's-good fun.
Sinatra (1992)
Entertaining enough, I suppose
To distill the entire expansive saga of the 83 years Old Blue Eyes shared this earth into four hours would be an impossible task without offending some corners of his latter-day devotees by virtue of omission. That said, despite being executive-produced by youngest daughter Tina Sinatra, the miniseries does a fairly comprehensive job covering many of the salacious highlights of his romantic life. I can't think of too many areas touched on in Kitty Kelley's infamous unauthorized tabloid biography that were missed by this production.
One notable inaccuracy is the over-emphasis on Sinatra's relationship with Ava Gardner. In the film, they remain together well into the presidency of John F. Kennedy; in truth, they were only married until 1957. (As an aside, I was also disappointed they did not mention the couple's drunken episode, circa 1945, when the two shot up the town of Indio, California with some pistols Sinatra happened to be carrying around.) His 22-year marriage to Barbara Marx, by far his longest-lasting of four, is not even touched on.
Personally, I would like to see a film that deals with the stories behind some of Frank's more under-appreciated works. In particular, I'd like to see a dramatization of the making of his ill-fated CBS TV show as well as some of the radio work he did during his early-50's career slump. Sinatra had a turn at DJ-ing a weekly show called "To Be Perfectly Frank" as well as starring in the mystery series "Rocky Fortune", which followed "Dragnet." Both were on NBC around 1953, between shooting and the release of his great comeback vehicle "From Here to Eternity." Also, his rescue from drowning by one-time friend Brad Dexter and the ensuing tension which doomed the production of 1967's "The Naked Runner" would make for good screen drama. Sammy Davis's expulsion from the Rat Pack due to his cocaine use in the 1970's would have been fun to watch as well. But, perhaps such anecdotes are too obtuse for a miniseries that clearly plays to the back of the house, albeit as well as one could hope.
Saving Christmas (2014)
Cheap, Condescending Exploitation Masquerading As Family-Friendly Fare
If TV's Mike Seaver was truly out to "put the Christ back in Christmas", he would have known better than to go with pathetically dissect-able straw-man arguments and revisionist non-history. If he sincerely felt the need to contribute a faith-positive cinematic effort this holiday season, he could have made a modest effort not to insult the intelligence of his purported ideological peers to such a gross extent. Instead, Kirk Cameron makes a movie that claims to refute secular interpretations of winter solstice celebrations, but instead seems to hold severe contempt for its own target audience.
Clearly, Kirk saw the surprising profits enjoyed by the recent wave of low-budget Christian-themed films like "God's Not Dead" and "Heaven Is For Real", and decided he wanted to get in on the action. Cameron's vested interest in this project became clear when he took to Facebook imploring his followers to inflate the poor ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. However, had he might have done better to put half as much energy into a competent production and perhaps a marginal amount of historical research. For that matter,Cameron could use a refresher on his own holy book (how about starting with Hebrews 13:5, 1 Timothy 6:10, Matthew 6:24, Acts 8:20, Isaiah 46:6?) Perhaps he should also review the 9th Commandment.
Spoiler alert: Kirk Cameron spends 75 minutes spouting historical inaccuracies to a supporting cast sporting forced smiles, and about 5 minutes setting up unfunny slapstick sequences and obsequious dance segments, both of which are solely for the purpose of padding out the trailer to give impressionable moviegoers the idea that "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas" is "light-hearted" and "feel-good".
Manson (1973)
Vincent Bugliosi's Wet Dream...Now With Extra Hype
In 1969, a group of drug-addled hippies committed a string of murders in Los Angeles County, the first to get their money back from a dope deal gone bad, the rest as a pot- inspired half-arsed ploy to smokescreen the police. A deputy district attorney named Vincent Bugliosi was desperate to make a name for himself. A marriage was made in headlines. Bugliosi knew the story at face value wasn't salacious enough to sell books, so he began to fabricate an intricate yarn tying the whole mess to a career convict that these stoner dropouts had been following around. He dazzled the press with grandiose tales of a flower-power Jesus figure who brainwashed clean-cut middle-class kids with sex and LSD, and ordered the enslaved to commit murders out of an apocalyptic race-war paranoia. Also involved in this wild fable were an "English recording group" called the Beatles, who gave this Mescaline Messiah his visions through a white-jacketed double album featuring the song "Helter Skelter". In the process, Bugliosi turned a petty criminal named Charlie Manson into a creation of media mythology named Charles Manson, Evil Incarnate.
There are some good reasons for Manson enthusiasts to watch this movie; there is extensive footage of the Spahn Ranch and the remaining stragglers from the so-called Manson Family. The interviews with Sandra Good and Danny Bonaduce-doppelganger Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme are amusing, as they feed into Bugliosi's made-for-TV mythos of hippies-turned- killers by mugging with various deadly weapons. But the ringmaster here is clearly Bugliosi and his spin on the events, which is obvious from his shameless hamming for the camera from first introductory shot. And the obnoxious narrator sounds like a drunken Jack Webb, inflecting overt judgement at every turn (I get especially nauseous when he fawns about "beautiful, honey-blonde Sharon Tate" or derisively snides that Manson's girls think "everyone should have a father like Charlie"). The interviews with the visibly high Paul Watkins are especially insipid, as he leans on his ever-present flute trying to remember what Bugliosi- orchestrated revisioning of family philosophy he's parroting.
For anyone trying to suss out what actually happened that summer of 1969, look elsewhere. Anyone interested in seeing a contemporary slab of propaganda released for the sole purpose of exploiting Vincent Bugliosi's nascent wet dream, this is for you.