What I’ve Caught Up With, April 2023:
Film: Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
It’s tempting to say that Hollywood Shuffle is a movie industry-based version of Al Yankovich’s UHF, but this came first by a couple of years. Writer/director/star Robert Townsend is a wannabee actor who gets a part in a movie, but it turns out to be stereotypical and horribly racist. Much of the movie is taken up by his fantasies of roles he’d like to have and the life he’d like to lead, much like a modern-day Walter Mitty. A tremendous cast includes Helen Martin, John Witherspoon, and a chunk of the Wayans clan. It’s a lot of fun—it could honestly stand to be another 15 minutes or so longer. There’s more that could be done here, and this is smart enough to make it worthwhile.
Film: Commando (1985)
What can you really say about the antics of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Commando is a standard revenge plot movie from the mid-‘80s. Matrix (Arnold) is an ex-commando who is drawn out of retirement when his daughter (Alyssa Milano!) is kidnapped. Knowing that she’ll be killed regardless of what he does, he decides to hunt down the kidnappers with the help of a scared Rae Dawn Chong. Ridiculous action, sprays of bullets, and guys falling out of towers follow in rapid succession. Best known for a couple of sold post-kill one-liners, Commando is kind of ultimately forgettable in the sense that it blends into pretty much every other move in this genre.
Film: The Harder They Fall (2021)
No one thinks twice about a Western with a mainly white cast, so why does it feel so surprising to see one where all of the main cast is Black? The Harder They Fall is a pretty standard oater—bad guys and good guys, and bad guys who are our good guys that steal from other bad guys. There are a lot of relationships and debts to settle here, and everybody is gunning for everybody else. It’s fun, and if you like the Old West and horses, you’ll find a hell of a lot here worth seeing. It winds up hyper-violent, sort of modern day Peckinpah, and I mean that as a compliment. A good cast, too. With respect to everyone in this, I’ll legitimately watch anything that has LaKeith Stanfield in it.
Film: Angel on My Shoulder (1946)
In what is quite a shock to me, I might have found my least favorite Paul Muni performance. I’ve been a Muni apologist since my first watch of I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, but in Angel on My Shoulder, Muni’s role is reduced to a sort of weird melodrama. A spin on Here Comes Mr. Jordan, this one starts with the death of a gangster (Muni) taken back to Earth to inhabit the body of an uncorruptible judge (also Muni). All of this is orchestrated by the devil (Claude Rains). It’s a fun set-up, but the plot only happens because Muni’s gangster is too stupid to understand what is happening, why he’s back alive, or anything else he’s expected to do. The idea is far better than the execution.
