Movie Reviews: Split Second (1953)

Split Second
directed by Dick Powell

Split Second is a surprisingly entertaining film noir that was the directorial debut of noir and comedy leading man Dick Powell, whose work as hardboiled detective Phillip Marlowe was previously reviewed here. 

Split Second has the same plot lines as previous films such as Key Largo and The Petrified Forest, both Bogart vehicles. 

It's probably no accident that the lead bad guy seems to be channeling Bogart. There's a nod to O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief".  

So originality is not this film's strong suit. That doesn't matter. This film looks at human emotions. Humans don't change that much. So why should our stories change? Some people believe that there are only a few basic stories that are told over and over again, regardless of time, race, or culture. 

Russia and Ukraine War: Quick Thoughts

I hope that the Russia: Ukraine War ends soon with minimal loss of life. In most cases war is an obscenity. 

However, it's impossible not to notice the tremendous implicit bias in the war's media coverage. 

Some pundits have expressed shock and horror that war is occurring in Europe. 

The unspoken feeling is that Europeans should be more advanced than this, not like those other "uncivilized" people of the world. For those other people, evidently, life really should be 'nasty, brutish, and short.' 

One journalist recently made this explicit. I doubt that he has any special animus against people who aren't white or European. He just takes it for granted that such people aren't as advanced or as civilized as his (presumably white) audience.

“Civilized”
pic.twitter.com/AiU7uVmjMr

— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) February 26, 2022

There are deadlier wars currently occurring in Ethiopia and Yemen. There are people losing their lands and lives in a slow motion strangulation in Palestine. Western powers drop bombs on people in Syria and Somalia with a disregard for civilian casualties. Boko Haram is still kidnapping and murdering people in Nigeria. 

Bridgewater New Jersey Racism

Justice is supposed to be blind. If the so-called justice system is not blind then it's of no use. 

This is a truism if you happen to be Black and especially if you happen to be a Black male. 
You will be treated more harshly than anyone else for the exact same violation.

It would be comforting to think that this bias only happened in the bad old days or in certain backwards Southern states but it still happens everywhere today. 

The different standard is so obvious that in the latest example even the white (or at least non-Black) person who benefitted from this bias recognized it and called it out.

A video of police officers breaking up a fight at a New Jersey mall has sparked anger over accusations that law enforcement treated the two teenagers involved in the scuffle — one Black and one white — differently. 

Movie Reviews: Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills
directed by David Gordon Green

This slasher film is a sequel to the 2018 film which was itself a sequel to the original 1978 classic original film and a retcon for some of the various sequels, remakes, and reboots that have taken place in the intervening forty years. It is also the second film in a trilogy. 

Perhaps the final film, imaginatively titled Halloween Ends, will at long last end the saga of Michael Myers.  I hope so. Halloween Kills tries an appeal to nostalgia for those of us who remember the 1978 film by bringing back some characters from that film or its immediate sequel. 

I felt no such sentimentality.

I don't think anyone missed those characters. Halloween wasn't a film where (children aside) you had much feeling for characters besides Laurie Strode. This film doesn't establish WHY we should care about people who implausibly survived their own encounter with Michael Myers. 

I might have cared about them more if the film showed me the murders' impact on their lives, families, and relationships-in short what the 2018 film did with Laurie Strode, then considered a gun crazed paranoid grandma. Halloween Kills opens after the events of the 2018 film.  

Book Reviews: Everything Has Teeth

Everything Has Teeth
by Jeff Strand

Do you like horror stories? What kind? What is the point of a horror story? 

Is it to give you chills? Should it make you think about society's various "isms". Is it to make you laugh? 

Or should a good horror tale disgust you? 

Should it make you run to the porcelain throne and lose your lunch? Should it make you wonder about the probity or mental stability of the author? 

Is a good horror story something that you hide from friends or family members lest they think that you are morally bent?

Is a good horror story something that makes you feel guilty for having read it? 

Is a good horror story something that makes you want to see the author and his/her publisher hauled before Congressional Committees for televised denouncement? 

Or is a good horror story something that makes you keep the lights on a little later than normal or jump at some unexplained nighttime creak on the stairs or scratch at the window? Jeff Strand is a writer who is able to evoke all of the above responses in the reader. 

Movie Reviews: Hit!

Hit!
directed by Sidney Furie

I think that some people might unfairly dismiss this early seventies film as a low quality blaxploitation film. It wasn't that at all. 

It's an action drama that was directed by the same fellow who had just recently directed Diana Ross in the Billie Holiday bio Lady Sings The Blues. 

Hit! was not originally conceived as a "Black" movie. It was supposed to be a Steve McQueen vehicle. 

It was a sign of the times that the director and producer did not change the demographics of the cast or the race of the female love interest when Black actor and then male sex symbol Billy Dee Williams became attached to the film as the lead actor.  

This film, like many seventies movies, takes its own sweet time setting up events. It lets things play out naturally. 

Movie Reviews: Born To Kill

Born to Kill
directed by Robert Wise

Robert Wise also directed West Side Story, The Andromeda Strain, The Sound of Music, Audrey Rose, and The Hindenburg among other films. Born to Kill is a post war film noir that stars noted knucklehead Lawrence Tierney in the male lead. 

As in the film Bodyguard that came out shortly after this movie, Tierney is playing a tough guy. 

The difference here is that in Born to Kill, Tierney is a bad man, very bad actually. He's not someone that you want around you or taking interest in your affairs. 

We can all argue over the technical definitions of words like "evil", "sociopath", or "psychopath" but it's fair to say that Tierney's character is a man who takes everything personally, lies without any remorse, views other people as tools to be used in his inevitable rise to fame and fortune, and has a very low boiling point for committing violence. 

Call it what you like but this guy is bad news. 

Born to Kill asks what sort of society produces men like this, and worse, what if there are women like him as well. What happens when they run into each other? Likely nothing good, that's what. This movie also takes a few shots at the sexual mating strategies of men and women. Sometimes these strategies work and everyone is happy. Other times playing such games can get people hurt.