Classic Movie Review Semi Tough

Semi Tough (1977) 

Directed by Michael Ritchie 

Written by Walter Bernstein, Ring Lardner 

Starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh 

Release Date November 18th, 1977 

Published February 7th, 2023 

The classic on the latest edition of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast was inspired by the release of the sort-of Football movie 80 for Brady. 1977's Semi Tough from director Michael Ritchie is also a sort-of Football movie. The film features football, it's about football players but Football is very much not what interest's director Michael Ritchie. Rather, Football is a vague vehicle to be used to create a colorful setting for three colorful characters. 

Semi Tough stars Burt Reynolds as Billy Clyde Puckett, a running back for the Miami Football team. It was 1977 and licensing actual football team names was not something that movie studios were particularly interested in doing. Billy Clyde is lucky to play alongside one of his two best friends, Wide Receiver Marvin 'Shake' Miller. Both Billy Clyde and Shake live with their other childhood best friend, Barbara Jane 'B.J' Bookman. She's also the daughter of the owner of the Miami Football team, played by Hollywood legend Robert 'The Music Man' Preston. 

The plot, what plot there is of it, kicks in when B.J begins to have romantic feelings for Shake. This upends the friendly dynamic of the trio as Billy Clyde grows more and more jealous of his two friends. All the while, Miami is winning their way through the playoffs and on to the Super Bowl. And the movie could truly not care less about the football aspect. As I mentioned, Football is the culture in which these characters exist and Semi Tough is far more of a character piece than anything remotely like a sports movie. 

The biggest element of Semi Tough is a lengthy riff on self-help movements. If you're under the age of 30 you likely aren't aware of this but, your parents and grandparents who came of age in the 1970s briefly became obsessed with kooky self-help movements. EST for instance, the EST Movement, was a seminar in which a former Encyclopedia salesman berated people for endless hours over several days until people had emotional breakthroughs. That those breakthroughs came through the sheer force of inertia from being trapped in a hotel conference room for days while a salesman called you names was something we're not supposed to call attention to. 

In Semi Tough, EST becomes BEAT, a very direct riff on EST, right down to Bert Convy's sleazy guru opening the meetings by calling his new students A##holes. From there, he tells them that if they have a problem, it's entirely their fault, they choose to have these problems and can choose not to have these problems. This nonsense apparently worked on Shakes who came out of his visit to BEAT a complete convert, a true believer. It does not work on B.J who finds the whole experience exhausting. This leads to a conflict between Shakes and B.J that may end their marriage plans. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Spoiler Alert: Consecration's Unholy Ending

Consecration (2023)

Directed by Christopher Smith

Written by Christopher Smith 

Starring Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Janet Suzman 

Release Date February 10th, 2023 

Published February 6th, 2023 

Consecration follows the slowly cracking psyche of a woman who may or may not be the vessel of an ancient demon. Jena Malone stars as Grace, a boring eye doctor living a boring life in London. Grace's life and comfort is upended when she's told that her younger brother, a Priest, has died. Not only is he dead, he murdered another fellow Priest before taking his own life. The Nuns in the Scottish abbey where Grace's brother lived and work appear convinced that he was possessed by a demon who caused him to commit murder and take his own life. 

Naturally, Grace must investigate over the objection of Mother Superior (Janet Suzman) and the lead detective on the case, DCI Harris (Thoren Ferguson), but with the aid of a Vatican based Priest, Father Romero (Danny Huston), who is also seeking the truth about what happened. Or is he? That bit of snark is aimed at the fact that Consecration isn't a great movie. It's often a quite convoluted mess that at once frames the church as the villains and potentially the heroes. It's perhaps intended to have a twist but I am honestly unsure. 

With this spoiler alert article we will examine the characters and see if we can make sense of the odd ending of Consecration and maybe find where this failed film could have worked. From here on, spoilers for Consecration. I don't recommend the movie but you might prefer seeing it before having the characters and plot ruined. Thus, you've been warned. From here on out, spoilers for the characters and story of Consecration... 

Who is Grace? Jena Malone's Grace lives a comfortable if boring life as an eye doctor in London. Grace was an adopted child, alongside her brother, and grew up in a deeply traumatic broken home. Grace's father was crazed and abusive. Dad thought his daughter was some kind of demon and that stopping her from destroying the world started with him keeping her captive. This leads to him murdering Grace's mother before he's nearly killed himself while trying to kill Grace. 

In reality, Dad was right. Grace is, in fact, a demon in human form. She doesn't know it yet, but Grace is a powerful demon who travels through time to kill who needs to be killed to protect her secret and secure Grace's future for whatever evil scheme is supposed to play out. Grace's brother died when an older Priest figured out that killing Grace was the only way to stop the demon inside her and was endeavoring to kill Grace. Instead, the brother killed the Priest and to show the demon that she wasn't in charge, he killed himself. 

I think that's what happened. Again, Consecration is a deeply confused movie that seems to shift motivations while searching for the next creepy visual element. Grace figures out that she is the demon just as she's about to surrender to Father Romero who wants to entomb Grace and the demon under the newly consecrated church. Grace survives, murders several people, including Father Romero, and pretends to kill herself to throw off DCI Harris. In reality, she's an unstoppable evil demon who can survive anything and kill anyone she chooses. 

The film ends when Mother Superior stops sending minions to try and kill Grace and takes matters into her own hands. Showing up outside of Grace's office, Mother Superior pulls a gun on Grace only to then be struck and killed by a cab. Inside the cab is an angel bobblehead which is viewed just as Grace talks about having had a guardian angel since she was a kid. The Guardian Angel is Grace herself as a time traveling demon Nun who leads Mother Superior into the street to be hit by the cab. 

I think. Again, Consecration is highly convoluted, as you can sense from that description. I think Grace is a demon. I know we see Grace, in demon form, dressed as a Nun, traveling back in time to witness the murder of the Priest, witness her brother's death, she is responsible for saving herself from her father when he tries to murder her as a child. She's there to stab a Nun who tries to kill Grace. And, we see all of the strange, inexplicable and violent deaths that happen in front of Grace, that Grace herself commits the acts, invisibly. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert at Horror.Media 

Classic Movie Review: Loaded Weapon 1

Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) 

Directed by Gene Quintano

Written by Gene Quintano, Don Holley 

Starring Emilio Estevez, Samuel L. Jackson, Kathy Ireland, Whoopi Goldberg 

Release Date February 5th, 1993

Published February 6th, 2023 

On the new Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast Spinoff, Everyone's a Critic 1993, myself and my co-hosts, Amy K, and M.J, watch movies that were released 30 years ago that week. One movie per week and the month of January 1993 was truly awful. It was a miserable time for movies. Leprechaun was mildly entertaining but certainly not great. Body of Evidence was downright traumatizing in how sleazy it was, and Hexed, starring Arye Gross, is among the worst movies Hollywood has produced in the last 30 years. 

Thus far, the best movie we've watched is another of the worst of all time. Children of the Corn 2: The Final Sacrifice is one of the great hidden gems of the So-Bad-Its-Good pantheon. It's one of the best unintentionally funny movies I've ever had the pleasure of watching. But, the pleasure is tinged with it being a solely ironic appreciation. In the first month of the new podcast, we have not seen a single good movie. February changed things immediately. 

On the first weekend of February, 1993, Hollywood managed to finally release a good movie. National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 stars Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson in a Naked Gun style spoof of the Lethal Weapon movies. This might sound like a tired idea but the reality is that Loaded Weapon 1 is a hidden gem, an oasis of genuinely funny comedy in a sea of terrible movies of the early 1990s. Before the Scary Movie franchise ruined parody movies seemingly for the rest of time, Loaded Weapon 1 stuck to the basics of the spoof genre and created a forgotten classic. 

The plot of Lethal Weapon 1 is brilliantly silly. William Shatner plays General Mortars, a former Army General turned drug kingpin. For reasons that are ingeniously silly, he needs a piece of micro-film to help him turn Cocaine into Girl Scout Cookies that he can distribute via a subsidiary of the Girl Scouts, headed up by Kathy Ireland as Miss Destiny Demeanor. Tim Curry co-stars as the General's right hand man and right away, from the introduction of Curry as Mr. Jigsaw, you get a sense of the wonderful silliness at play. 

A girl scout gets out of a van and begins skipping towards the door of a suburban home. Just before knocking, she stubs out a cigarette. The home is a safe house where an ex-cop, played by Whoopi Goldberg is hiding out. When she finally opens here series of comical front doors and locks, we see Curry dressed as a Girl Scout and speaking with a thick, Middle-European accent. Deadpan, Goldberg invites him in so she can buy cookies and ends up dead. The back and forth in this scene is wonderfully silly and sets a terrific tone for the rest of Loaded Weapon 1. 

From there we will unite our Riggs and Murtagh characters, Emilio Estevez as the haunted and suicidal detective with nothing to lose, Sgt. Jack Colt, and family man detective, on the day before his retirement, Sgt. Wes Luger. Luger also has a tragic backstory where he nearly killed his partner and has since been unable to shoot a gun without shaking uncontrollably, a bit that pays off multiple times in Loaded Weapon 1. Each gag is better than the last. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Consecration

Consecration (2023) 

Directed by Christopher Smith 

Written by Christopher Smith 

Starring Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Janet Suzman 

Release Date February 10th, 2023 

Published February 6th, 2023 

Consecration stars Jena Malone as Grace, a doctor living in America who is called to Scotland when her brother dies under unusual circumstances. Grace's brother, a Priest, is accused of having murdered another Priest before taking his own life. Naturally, Grace does not believe that her brother would have done such a thing or taken his own life. Thus, a mystery unfolds, who killed the Priest and who killed Grace's brother and portrayed it as a suicide? 

Aiding or perhaps hindering Grace's search for the truth is Father Romero (Danny Huston). Father Romero claims to be at the convent where Grace's brother was found to re-consecrate the place and bring it back to God. He claims that he can't do that as long as lies are being told about the death of Grace's brother. So, he offers to help Grace find the truth. Meanwhile, Mother Superior (Janet Suzman) lingers in the back of many scenes looking menacing and admitting that she may have tainted the evidence surrounding the murder and Grace's brother's death. 

Eventually we learn that members of the convent blame a demon for the death of both Priests. A Nun claims that a demon possessed Grace's brother, causing him to murder the other Priest and causing him to take his own life. Whether or not such a demon exists or if the death of Grace's brother was orchestrated by members of the convent is the mystery that drives Consecration as it proceeds through its horror movie story, one bubbling with religious imagery. 

The conclusion of Consecration is frustrating and deeply unsatisfying. The whole thing turns on a Deus Ex Machina that is broad to downright silly. Essentially, one of our characters turns out to be able to be anywhere at anytime and has been orchestrating everything we have seen since the start of the movie. We learn this when we are taken back in time via flashback that shows us everything that the rest of the movie was incapable of implying. 

Jena Malone usually makes better choices than this. Malone is wonderful at playing haunted characters with deep, dark, secrets and yet, Consecration makes her weepy and weak. It doesn't suit her. She ends the movie in a much different place than she began but it feels unearned. Malone is not the wilting flower type, she has a natural strength that she brings to most of her performances. Trying to tamp that down in Consecration via bad wig and weepy eyes simply doesn't work. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media

Movie Review Linoleium

Linoleum (2023) 

Directed by Colin West 

Written by Colin West 

Starring Jim Gaffigan, Rhea Seahorn. Katelyn Nacon 

Release Date February 24th, 2023 

Published February 19th, 2023 

Linoleum stars Jim Gaffigan as Cameron, a scientist and star of a failing children's television show. Cameron dreams of being an astronaut and as we join the story, he's sending in an application to NASA. And then a corvette falls out of the sky. Inside the car is what looks like a younger, slightly better-looking version of Cameron. Later, he relates the story to his family, including his soon-to-be ex-wife, Erin (Rhea Seahorn), and his loving if capricious daughter, Nora (Katelyn Nacon). Cameron also has a son but I am not even sure he's in the credits for the film, he exists to be indifferent to his father and the story in motion around him. 

Cameron's basement man-cave is stocked with NASA memorabilia which we see as Cameron is sneaking off to sleep apart from his disapproving wife. The following day we learn that the man in the Corvette crash is a scientist and astronaut whose uncanny resemblance to Cameron is intended as a way of commenting on the shortcomings of his dreams. Where this similarly looking man has succeeded in all of Cameron's dreams, Cameron himself, is a failure. This notion culminates in this man, Kent Armstrong, taking Cameron's job as host of his children's show. 

Running parallel to this odd story about Cameron and his doppelganger is that of Cameron's daughter, Nora (Katelyn Nacon). Nora is awkward and acerbic, unpopular at school but not really caring for popularity. Nora then meets Marc (Gabriel Rus), a new kid in school who happens to be the son of Cameron's doppelganger. Nora and Marc slowly build a romantic connection despite Nora saying she's gay more than once early in the film. 

That sounds more problematic than it is as there is an explanation. That said, the explanation is bizarre and may leave some audience members deeply confused. The final act of Linoleum sees three parallel stories seemingly merge at different points in time. Characters begin to merge in terms of timelines and it all coalesces into a very interesting conclusion, though one that remains open to interpretation. I can understand audiences that are deeply put off by how Linoleum plays out. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Untamed Heart

Untamed Heart (1993) 

Directed by Tony Bill 

Written by Tom Sierchio 

Starring Marisa Tomei, Christian Slater, Rosie Perez 

Release Date February 12th, 1993 

Published February 12th, 2023 

So... let's see if I understand this correctly. We are going to work this out together, you and me, dear reader. Christian Slater is a grown adult who still believes that when he was a child living in the jungle that his father stole magical rubies from a Baboon King to try and save Slater's characters life. When the Baboon King, who was trying to murder Slater's father, finds out that the rubies are for trying to save the child, the Baboon King tears out his own heart and puts it into the child Christian Slater's chest. He believes this story still, as an adult working at diner, that he tells this to the women he's been stalking/falling in love with. 

That's something that a human being wrote down and then made into a movie. Untamed Heart is a wild damn disaster of a romantic drama. It's a bizarre movie that appears to think it's perfectly normal for a grown man to rarely speak and believe that he has a baboon heart so thoroughly that he doesn't want to get a heart transplant that might prolong his life. And he's the romantic lead in this movie. No, he's not the little brother who suffered a head injury as a child that the actual romantic lead in the movie takes care of because their parents are gone, he's the actual lead in the movie. 

Okay, yeah, that's completely insane. Marisa Tomei is the actual star of Untamed Heart as a diner waitress named Caroline. While walking home late one night, Caroline is accosted by a pair of mashers, played by Kyle Secor and Willie Garson. Secor attempts to sexually assault Caroline but is thwarted by Adam (Christian Slater). He scoops up an unconscious Caroline and takes her home where he places her on a porch swing and spends hours watching her sleep. Yeah! 

By this point, it's been established that though Caroline and Adam have worked together for some time, he doesn't speak to her or really anyone if he doesn't absolutely have to. So, if they don't know each other, how does Adam know where she lives? Well, he's been stalking Caroline for weeks, perhaps months at a time. He says he just follows her home to make sure she gets there safe but later we will learn that he was also breaking into her house and watching her sleep. 

For her part, Caroline finds all of this incredibly romantic. The 90s were a goddamned mess. If you don't believe that women have spent most of their lives being gaslighted into thinking insane things are actually romantic, you haven't seen this nutzo movie that posits a stranger breaking into a woman's home to watch her sleep for weeks or months on end, as romantic devotion worthy of them spending the rest of their lives together. 

The scene were we find out that Adam has been following Grace comes when he breaks into her house and puts up a Christmas tree in her room, fully decorated. He did this while she and her entire family were sleeping. Her reaction to this is somehow not complete horror. Instead, she responds by saying thank you and 'I can't believe you remembered.' Remembered what? Christmas? Honestly, I wonder if they had Marisa Tomei's character act dumber just so she might seem like she would buy into Slater's Adam as a legit romantic partner. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Magic Mike's Last Dance

Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by Reid Carolin 

Starring Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek

Release Date February 10th, 2023 

Published February 14th, 2023 

Can I recommend a movie solely on the strength of the sexual chemistry between the two leads? It seems like a thin premise for recommending a movie. But, Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek are so incredible together, so insanely sexy together, I kind of want to recommend Magic Mike's Last Dance. Even as the plot seems like nonsense and the story feels cobbled together on the fly, the smoldering sexual chemistry of Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek is so fiery, it's kind of worth suffering the nonsense for. 

Magic Mike's Last Dance returns Channing Tatum, and his washboard abs, to the role of Mike Lane, stripper turned furniture maker, turned bartender as we join this story. Mike's dream of making handmade furniture failed amid the pandemic and he has sustained himself as a bartender for hire at parties ever since. That's how Mike meets Maxandra (Salma Hayek). She's a bored, rich, soon to be divorced cougar who has hired Mike on the recommendation of one of her employees. 

According to said employee, Mike can give Maxandra the kind of experience she's been craving, the kind of male attention she's desired since deciding to leave her husband. Indeed, Mike reluctantly agrees to her terms and provides such an experience. Showing off his insanely sexual lap dance skills, Mike sweeps Maxandra up in a lusty tornado of writhing flesh and she's hooked immediately. Though Mike doesn't want to be a kept man, he can't resist when Maxandra asks him to follow her to London, her primary home. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media