Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

The story opens with Kiki (Kirsten Dunst) lying in the grass and staring at the sky.  The radio announced that it was going to be a clear sky and a full moon.  Excited, Kiki rushes home.  She's going to leave tonight!  Kiki is 13, the age at which a young witch must strike out in the world, spending a year away from home to hone her magical skills.  Her mother is a witch who specializes in potions.  Under the light of the full moon, Kiki and her cat Jiji (Phil Hartman) take to the sky on a broom.  She plans to fly to the ocean and pick a town along the coast.  She finds a city!  The city finds witches quaint and looks at her as an oddity.  It is tough to find her place and Jiji would like to leave to find somewhere else.  By chance encounter, she stumbles upon the idea of a delivery service.  Her flying makes her unique.  When not delivering, she works at a bakery.  She soon has a repeat customer (Debbie Reynolds) who practically adopts her as a granddaughter.

This is a story of a girl moving to a new city and trying to fit in. This is a faux 1950s Europe that didn't suffer WWI and WWII. Here is a thriving city with no villains to purge or bigots to overcome. The big draw is the art, fantastic setting, and relatable characters. An early Hayao Miyazaki film with plenty of epic flying, beautiful scenery, and a fun story. Highly recommended.

Awesome if True!

A treatment trial in New York has shown to be 100% effective against COVID-19.  If this is indeed the case, let's ramp up the manufacture of this drug cocktail and throw open the doors!  Getting a bit stir crazy.

Sgt. Bilko (1996)

When this movie premiered in 1996, I was unaware that it was based on a 50s TV show.  After watching It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, I noticed that Phil Silvers had played Bilko.  Huh.  Maybe I'll check that out.  So I did.

Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko (Steve Martin) is in charge of the motor pool at Fort Baxter, commanded by Col. Hall (Dan Akroyd), but his primary occupation is gambling.  The motor pool is mostly a casino and the soldiers are mostly oblivious to actual soldiering.  Yet somehow, through charm and distraction, Bilko has managed to play his cons for many years.  In fact, he tells a story of Fort Dix where he was beset by Lt. Thorn (Phil Hartman), who tried to tame Bilko.  However, Thorn was eventually reassigned to Greenland, after taking the fall for one of Bilko's cons.

"What happened to Lt. Thorn, Sarge?"

"I don't know."

Later that day, Major Thorn arrived to inspect progress on an experimental hover tank being developed at Ft. Baxter.  As luck would have it, he also discovered that Bilko was still in the Army!  Payback time!

The end result is so-so.  Any one of Bilko's cons might have been hilarious in a given episode of a TV show but all together in one movie makes Bilko a blight on the Army.  It would be one thing if he did his cons on the side and did some real work.  Nope.  It's all con, all the time.  As for Thorn, he finds computer files showing that Bilko rents motor pool vehicles to the public, beer funds, gambling enterprises, and several other items but decides to frame Bilko for something he didn't do.  Sigh.

Mediocre.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

Driving like a mad man, Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) takes a turn too quickly and goes flying off the cliff.  Several good Samaritans stop and go check on him.  Russel Finch (Milton Berle), Melville Crump (Sid Caesar), Benjy Benjamin (Buddy Hackett), Ding Bell (Mickey Rooney), and Lennie Pike (Jonathan Winters) find him still alive.  Before he kicks the bucket (both figuratively and literally!), Grogan tells them of a fortune buried under a big W in Santa Rosita.  When the police arrive, the Samaritans don't mention the fortune.  Though they make an effort to join forces, they cannot agree on how to divide the buried treasure.  It's a race!  Unbeknownst to the Samaritans, Grogan was under surveillance and the police quickly realize that Grogan spilled the beans on where to find the loot from a 15 year old heist.  Captain Culpepper (Spencer Tracy) of the Santa Rosita Police keeps tabs on all the Samaritans so he can swoop in when they reveal the location.

The movie is a who's who of comedy for the era.  In addition to the main players, there is a vast supply of cameos: Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Phil Silvers, Buster Keaton, Jim Backus, the Three Stooges, Peter Falk, Norman Fell, Jack Benny, Carl Reiner, and many more.  Of course, the movie is a comedy of errors, which are a staple of such movies.  Long but lots of fun.  Recommended.

The Gambler (1980)

Brady Hawkes (Kenny Rogers) is a noted gambler.  He arrives in El Paso to catch a train to Yuma.  No sooner does he arrive than he spots a cardsharp cheating at poker.  The victims are about to draw when Brady intervenes, exposing the 'victims' as cheats as well, just not as good.  The cardsharp is Billy Montana (Bruce Boxleitner), a wannabe poker ace.  Brady teaches him a lesson by wiping him out in a friendly game with a neutral dealer.  He leaves Billy with some money, explaining you should never leave a man busted.

Brady recently received a letter from a son he never knew he had by a wife who left him.  He's on his way to help his son and probably his ex-wife.  The train trip is not dull.  There are stops for shenanigans, hired guns out to stop Brady, and a wealthy train owner (Harold Gould) with designs on a married passenger with a mysterious past.  So many backstories to reveal, all standard tropes of the Western genre.  Most Western heroes are armed with a six-shooter but Brady gets along with a two-shot derringer.

Though Kenny Rogers was famous for singing the song of the same name, he proves to be the old gambler who mentors young Billy Montana.  Recommended.

RIP Kenny Rogers

Med Cram

Want some positive news about COVID-19?  Check out MedCram on YouTube.  There are daily episodes that detail what is known or hypothesized about the latest Coronavirus.  The discussions go deep but are made amazingly clear.  Who would guess you can follow a discussion of microbiology and how a virus breaks into cells and convert them into virus factories?  If the doom and gloom is getting you down, this is a site to show that medical professionals are on the case.

Never Grow Old (2019)

Patrick Tate (Emile Hirsch) is the carpenter and undertaker of a small town during the California Gold Rush.  Though he would like to pull up stakes and cross the mountains to where the gold is, his wife (Deborah Francois) would rather stay.  Audrey is pregnant and they are doing well enough.  As they are both Catholic (he's Irish and she's French), they are still outsiders despite having joined the local protestant church.  It's a tolerable life.

One night, Dutch Albert (John Cusack) knocks on their door during a storm.  He asks where he can find Bill Crabtree.  Patrick gives directions to the Crabtree house but also reveals that the man left some time ago.  Dutch insists that Patrick show him the way, making threats when Patrick balks.  Unable to find Crabtree or get information from his terrified wife and daughter, Dutch looks for a saloon.  Closed by order of the reverend; this is a dry town.  Seeing an opportunity, Dutch buys the saloon and populates it with prostitutes.  Unsurprisingly, Patrick gets a lot more requests for his services as undertaker.  However, one of Dutch's goons has taken a fancy to Audrey.  Now she is eager to leave while Patrick - who has seen his income soar - would rather stay.

The building pressure between Reverend Pike and Dutch cannot hold.  The character of the town has changed dramatically, violence abounds, and the cemetery has a lot of fresh graves.  Which side will Patrick chose?

Filmed in Ireland and Luxembourg, this is not a bad Western.  It is odd to see John Cusack as the bad guy.  Emile Hirsch does an excellent job of being the conflicted anti-hero.  This is a very different role from Speed Racer and at no point was I reminded of that role.  Not an action-packed Western but more of a slow burn to a climax.

High Road to China (1983)

Eve Tozer (Bess Armstrong) is a daughter of a wealthy industrialist.  She is a spendthrift party girl, a flapper with bobbed hair and scandalously short skirt.  Then disaster strikes.  Word is that her long absent father is going to be declared legally dead and the company - the source of her money - will belong to the surviving partner, Mr. Bentik (Robert Morley).  She has 12 days to get her father to a British Court to avert poverty!  Worse still, Bentik has sent men to prevent her from trying.  Last she heard, her father was in Waziristan; she'll need a plane.

Patrick O'Malley (Tom Selleck) is an American flying ace who owns a couple of planes.  Exactly how he has the planes in Istanbul while also being penniless is not explored.  Nonetheless, he refuses Eve's multiple generous offers to hire him.  He finally relents when she offers 100,000 pounds.  They depart for the east under gunfire from Bentik's goons though O'Malley thinks its a jealous husband seeking revenge; apparently he's a womanizer?  All evidence is to the contrary for the remainder of the film.

Selleck and Armstrong mostly yell at each other.  Sure, we all know they will love one another by the end but it is rather sudden.  The chemistry was weak.  Of course, the characters were not well written.  Why did Eve decide that she should take the plane and do a bombing run of the Chinese soldiers?  To save her father, who had things well under control?  O'Malley is introduced as a drunken womanizer but, little more than a week later, he is sober and falling for Eve.

When they track down her father (Wilford Brimley) on the far side of the Himalayas, he explains that Eve's wealth is in no danger.  All the patents are in his name.  Gee, if only that fancy London lawyer had known that, this whole trip could have been avoided.  On another subject, why is this portly industrialist building bombs for Chinese peasants?  It would have been nice to get an adequate backstory for Bradley Tozer's wanderings.

Though weak in retrospect, it was enjoyable to watch.  May have to get the book to find out what really happened.

Candyman (1992)

Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) and Bernadette "Bernie" Walsh are gathering urban legends from undergrads in Chicago.  They are grad students and this research is for their thesis.  While reviewing a tape about the Candyman after hours, the janitor comments on it.  There was a woman killed by the Candyman in Cabrini-Green, a notorious housing project.  Helen finds the story ludicrous but decides to check on it.  Sure enough, a woman was sliced open.  Now curious, she and Bernie go to the housing project to investigate.  Her persistence attracts the attention of local gang members who attack her.  Having exposed the hoax, she is confronted by the Candyman (Tony Todd).  He explains with his ghostly voice that he must make an example of her lest his following lose faith in him.

When I originally saw the movie in 1992, it seemed a mediocre horror film.  The backstory for Candyman is vague.  Why is he called Candyman?  It isn't explained in the movie.  By the end, he appears to have been killed/destroyed while Helen takes his place as a disfigured burn victim ghost who wields Candyman's hook, the only part of him not consumed in the bonfire.  Seeing it again with the benefit of knowing more of Candyman's backstory from sequels, this is a pretty good film.  It isn't the standard horror film.  It's a film noir-horror-romance mash up.  There are indications that Helen is the reincarnation of Candyman's lost love, or at least she is a look alike.  Thus, he attempts to woo her to join him, destroying everything that gives her a will to live.

A sequel is scheduled for June of this year and will see some of the stars from the 1992 movie return.

Lost Light

Harry Bosch has been retired from the LAPD for nearly a year when he starts investigating one of his unsolved cases.  A production assistant on a movie had been murdered and it looked like a sex crime.  Bosch had hardly started investigating when that very movie production was subject to a $2 million heist.  It now looked like the murder had been a smoke screen for the heist so it was rolled into the investigation at Robbery Homicide Division.  Bosch was off the case but never forgot it.  The detectives who had taken over were later shot in a botched robbery while having lunch; one was dead and the other was a quadriplegic.  Despite being warned off the case, Bosch dug in.  The case had drawn interest from the FBI and the newly-minted Homeland Security apparatus.  Was terrorism related to the heist?  Had it been coincidence that the officers on the case were shot?

As usual, this is a Connelly mystery where everything ties together.  No coincidences.  Well, maybe there are some coincidences, Bosch has to admit but he still thinks they are rare.  Of note, there are more bad actors in law enforcement.  This is a common trope for Connelly and has finally gotten old for me.  In order to hide the villain in plain sight, the villain is a cop, FBI agent, or the like.  Sure seems like there are a lot of bad eggs.

Unlike all previous Bosch novels, this one is told in the first person.  Not a fan.  I didn't much like Jack McAvoy in The Poet, which was also first person.  At one point, Bosch complains about new law enforcement rules that came about since 9/11; this seems more like Connelly ranting than Bosch.  Bosch has a history of crossing lines to solve crimes but now he's a stickler for limiting law enforcement.  Yeah, that didn't sound quite right.

Despite these complaints, it is still an excellent book and well worth the read.  Recommended.

Money Not So Decisive

Michael Bloomberg has ended his presidential campaign after having dumped $500 million dollars on his brief run.  For that kingly sum, he won American Samoa.  Yes, he won 49.9% of the votes, which is 175 votes.  No, that isn't a misprint.  Tulsi Gabbard was second with 103 votes.  Wow, what a huge turnout.  Of course, Bloomberg won delegates in states where he didn't carry the state, accumulating 60 delegates.  Meanwhile, Joe Biden's campaign was close to insolvency and yet he won 10 delegates for every one Bloomberg won.  Huh?  Conventional wisdom says Bloomberg should have dominated the field thanks to his money advantage.

Bloomberg spent more on his short-lived primary campaign than Hillary Clinton spent on the primaries and general election combined.  As has been demonstrated time and again, money does not automatically mean victory.  Well-funded incumbents have been trounced by shoe-string campaigns.  For example, Eric Cantor outspent Dave Brat by 40 to 1 and still lost in 2014.  Joe Crowley outspent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by 18 to 1 and lost in 2018.  Jeb Bush started the 2016 campaign with a daunting $100 million war chest but he flopped.  His campaign won 4 delegates.

What Bloomberg needed to do was hire a Russian strategist.  According to Rachel Maddow, the Russians were able to swing the national election in 2016 for the bargain sum of $200,000 to $300,000 in Facebook ads.  Or did they?  If Bloomberg couldn't win even one state with $500 million, how credible is it that Russia swung the election with 0.05% of that amount?  It isn't.