JW-18 Reviews

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978 TV Movie)

Something for the Archaeologists

[1/10 · 26 January 2000]

For years I suspected I had imagined this -- that it was some weird childhood hallucination. It was not. This is gloriously, hilariously bad: somehow they managed to bring in the central cast of the original movie, yet the picture itself is directed -- I do not exaggerate -- on the Ed Wood level. It's over 90 minutes long, with much padding devoted to, for example, domestic life among the wookies (there is a long sequence of Chewbacca's wife watching a cooking show) -- and, in what is surely one of the most disturbing sequences ever aired on television, some asexual virtual-reality wookie porn.

I thought I was going to be able to get through it without hitting fast-forward, but then Bea Arthur started singing...

Breast Men (1997 TV Movie)

tongue-in-cheek biopic

[23 August 1999]

I usually hate made-for-TV biopics -- arguably the sloppiest, most formulaic, and most boring genre of film. This witty picture about the inventors of the silicone breast implant is an exception: it sticks to the formula, but it always keeps its tongue in its cheek. Filled with visual jokes and inspired casting (Lyle Lovett as a chemist!), it's about as good as this kind of picture can be -- which is a lot better than I thought.

The Oklahoma Kid (1939)

Anarchy in the OK

[7/10 · 8 July 1999]

How did this one get past the Hays Office? James Cagney doesn't just break the law: he *denounces* the law, and work, and empire-building, and Indian-killing, and basically preaches anarchism. And not only does the screenplay support him, but he ends up getting the girl. This is hardly a great movie -- it's sometimes quite clumsy, and I'm not much of a Cagney fan anyway -- but it's fun, and it's definitely a curio.

Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963)

On the Contrary

[3 February 1999]

I think Godard's segment is the best of this quartet: it is a quiet but powerful science-fiction story of the kind "The Twilight Zone" would have aired if that show were half as cerebral as it pretended to be. It reminds me a bit of Chris Marker's "La Jetee." Pasolini's film, by contrast, is of little interest to those of us who aren't tortured ex-Catholics; Rosselini's is pointless and boring; and Gregoretti's is a belabored presentation of a single joke -- and not a particularly funny or insightful joke at that.