Classic Movie Review Quiz Show

Quiz Show (1994)

Directed by Robert Redford 

Written by Paul Attanasio 

Starring Ralph Fiennes, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Paul Scofield, Christopher McDonald, David Paymer, Hank Azaria, Martin Scorsese 

Release Date September 14th, 1994 

Published November 7th, 2023 

The erosion of public trust was not simply something that happened as a result of Watergate. The erosion of public trust can be traced to several different historic flashpoints that include such events as the assassination of President Kennedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, the McCarthy hearings, and, less historically well known but of a similar importance in tracking the erosion of trust between the public and the media, the public and government, and the public and the intelligentsia, is the Quiz Show scandal of the 1950s. 

Director Robert Redford lays out a strong case that the growth of cynicism toward public institutions began not just with the rebellion of the 1960s. It began with a simple Quiz Show called 21. The game was rigged. Though the venerable NBC network and uber-rich sponsor company Geritol, presented the show as a legitimate competition between everyday folks who happened to be remarkably well versed at memorizing facts, the shows were, in fact, scripted so that certain people would win. When ratings started to fall, that person would lose and be replaced by someone who might raise the ratings once more. 

It's a deeply cynical approach but, one that enthralled an America that was very early into the honeymoon phase when it came to television. It was an innocent time when people wanted to believe they could trust the people whose faces were beamed into their home everyday. People like Jack Berry (Christopher McDonald), the well dressed and affable host of 21 carried a public trust, not unlike a newsman. His integrity and that of the show mattered to the public. The show even played that integrity as a marketing gimmick. 

In the opening moments of Quiz Show we open on a bank where a safe deposit box is being opened. Armed guards remove a package. One guard passes the package to another who climbs inside of an armored car. That armored car then receives a police escort to 30 Rockefeller Center, the television home of NBC and the Quiz Show 21. Inside the package being carried, again, by armed guards, are the vaunted questions, a guarded secret even from host Jack Berry. 21 traded on the supposed integrity of the game. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell (2009) 

Directed by Sam Raimi 

Written by Sam Raimi 

Starring Allison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, David Paymer 

Release Date May 29th, 2009 

Published May 29th, 2009

There is so much cool stuff in Drag Me To Hell that I really wish I could recommend it. As a fan of Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 and of the classic Drive In, Z movies that inspired them, Drag Me To Hell evoked awesome memories of horror films past while standing alone as a hip, knowing and very modern horror movie.

So why didn't I like the movie? Drag Me To Hell is like a really great looking house with a crack in the foundation so bad it has to be condemned.

Drag Me To Hell stars Alison Lohman as Christine Brown an ambitious bank loan officer who dreams of becoming assistant manager. She is competing with a brown nosing co-worker who is admired by the boss (David Paymer) for his willingness to say no. Christine is seen as too lenient. When an old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver) comes in begging for an extension on her mortage, after not paying the last two extensions, Christine says no.

Needless to say, the old gypsy happens to be a nutball and a witch who soon after places a curse on Christine, the lamia. In three days a horned demon will rise to drag Christine to hell. Until that time she will be plagued by visions so horrifying that she may go insane before she can be dragged to despair.

Witnessing her decline is Christine's boyfriend Clay (Justin Long). He's the resident skeptic who exists to mock the psychic Rham Jas (Dileep Rao) who claims he can help with the curse. It is advice from the psychic that leads to the scene that ruined the movie for me.

I won't go into detail as I am sure some of you will still want to see this movie despite my warning. I will only say that the scene is unnecessary but more importantly, it severs our emotional tie to Christine. The scene places the movie's heroine at a distance from the audience, most  members of the audience anyway, and ruins the thrills of the rest of the movie which rely on our connection to Christine.

As for that ending. If you pay attention the whole way through you won't be the least bit surprised. Of course, if your like me, you will have checked out already after the scene I eluded to a paragraph ago.

It's such a shame that Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan who co-wrote the script, decided to put that scene in the movie because without it I think Drag Me To Hell is potentially a horror classic. Raimi crafts classic horror movie gore in ways that will twist you in your seat and make you laugh in the space of moments.

Lorna Raver's ancient gypsy is just the kind of horror film villain that escaped from the Necronomicon in Evil Dead. She looks half dead, she spews everywhere, even before she turns evil, and she can appear seemingly out of nowhere. The numerous allusions to Evil Dead will have horror fans cheering even as they cover their eyes and mouth in terror.

With so much cool stuff happening in Drag Me To Hell, I really want to like it. But I don't. That one scene. One scene. It is enough for me to put aside all that is endlessly cool about Drag Me To Hell and say skip it. Unless you are a hardcore horror fan, with a loose affiliation to the animal world, you are going to dislike Drag Me To Hell as much as I did.

Movie Review: Alex & Emma

Alex & Emma (2003) 

Directed by Rob Reiner 

Written by Jeremy Leven 

Starring Luke Wilson, Kate Hudson, Sophie Marceau, David Paymer, Rob Reiner

Release Date June 20th, 2003 

Published June 20th, 2003 

Recently I had a conversation with a friend about director Rob Reiner and it reminded me of the number of great films he has made. A Few Good Men, The American President, This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally amongst others combine great filmmaking with a pop sensibility that is entertaining and accessible without pandering.  However there have been occasions during Reiner's career when he lost that sense. In films such as North and The Story Of Us, Reiner mistakes quirky and cute for funny. For his latest picture, Alex & Emma, Reiner has the ingredients of When Harry Met Sally but the execution of The Story of Us.

Alex (Luke Wilson) is a New York writer with gambling debts that have Cuban gangsters hanging him out of a window. He has been promising for months that when his new novel was completed he would have their money. Unfortunately, he has hasn't written even a page. The gangsters give him one month to get the money or they will kill him.

Of course the only way Alex can get the money he owes, now doubled with interest for the extra time, he has to finish his novel. He can't type as fast as he thinks, so Alex comes up with the brilliant idea to hire a stenographer to type as he talks and transcribe the novel when it's complete. Enter Emma (Kate Hudson), a quirky, cute stenographer who believes she is going to work in a law office. Her meeting with Alex in his dingy apartment is one of the few bright funny scenes in the film as she mistakes him for a psycho killer.

After Alex explains what he needs from her, she's still not convinced. It's not until she reads the last page of his first novel that she agrees to work for him. That is one her quirks, Emma always reads the last page of a book to decide if the ending is worth reading toward. It's a cute quirk, but whether it's cute because it's cute or cute because it's Kate Hudson is debatable. If only the audience was given the same option because after seeing the end of Alex & Emma, I likely would not have sat through the whole thing. But I digress.

From this point on, we switch back and forth between Alex's novel about an American tutor hired to teach a pair of French kids while falling for their single mom (Sophie Marceau) and Alex and Emma as they begin to fall for each other. Naturally, elements of the real dynamic begin to seep into the novel. Alex creates a new character, a servant who he envisions as Emma without her knowing it. The character is a nice comic invention who begins as a bubbly blonde Swede then morphs into a severe red headed German and then a fiery Latina before finally settling on an American who looks just like Emma. It's a funny device but it plays as a device, a very noticeable one.

Being a romantic comedy puts Alex & Emma at an automatic disadvantage. We in the audience already expect the leads to end up together so the writers and director must come up with logical roadblocks in order to keep the characters apart til the end. The obstacles in Alex and Emma however, just don't work, especially the obvious curveball that comes near the end. It's yet another of those easily solvable situations that must remain unsolved to extend the film to its conclusion. Hudson's character is asked to do things that are illogical and defy what we have come to know of the character.

Reiner's sure-handed direction is there and he is blessed with the lovely Kate Hudson who saves most of her scenes on the sheer force of her talent and charisma. Co-star Luke Wilson however never seems comfortable and seems miscast as the roguish self-assured Alex. His offhanded laid back style never jives with the confident self-assured character he is supposed to portray and thus he came off flat.

What is really lacking in Alex & Emma however, is laughs. Hudson provides the biggest laughs, especially in her numerous incarnations in the novel, I especially loved her German accent. Very sexy. But overall, when you combine the lack of solid laughs and illogical romantic comedy roadblocks, you get an amiable attempt at romance but an unsuccessful attempt at that.