Perry Mason

The day after Christmas in 1931, an infant, Charlie Dodson, was kidnapped for a ransom of $100,000.  Though the ransom was paid, the child was dead. The police suspected the child's father.  However, his alibi checked out and the child's mother was arrested and charged.  The kidnappers were discovered dead in a murder-suicide scenario.  Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin) had been having an affair with the lead kidnapper.  E. B. Jonathan (John Lithgow) had accepted the case when the father, Matthew Dodson, was accused.  However, Matthew's father, Herman Baggerly (Robert Patrick), was unwilling to foot the bill for an adulteress.

Sister Alice McKeegan (Tatiana Maslany) was a radio preacher with a nation-wide following.  Herman Baggerly was a supporter of her ministry, and the Dodsons were members of the church.  Alice involved herself in the case, much to the irritation of the church fathers and her own mother, Birdy McKeegan (Lili Taylor).  Curiously enough, the lead kidnapper and Emily's lover had been an accountant for the church.  It is noteworthy that Sister Alice is largely based on a real person, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), a radio preacher based out of Los Angeles.

Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) was a divorced father, a dishonorably discharged officer from the Great War, a failed dairy farmer, and a private eye living a hand to mouth existence.  He is a man with few friends and spends much of his time depressed or drunk, often both.  He has the emotional self-control of a toddler who wants his mother to buy a toy at the store.  He is only too happy to cheat, if that is what it takes to get his way.  "There's what is legal, and there's what is right."  Perry is E. B. Jonathan's investigator, who more often argues with his boss; it is a wonder that E. B. put up with him.  This Perry Mason is a foul-mouthed slob.  The number of F-bombs dropped might compete with a Tarantino film's use of the N-word.  This guy is an interesting character, but he isn't Perry Mason.

Della Street (Juliet Rylance) was E. B. Jonathan's secretary, though she spent most of her time arguing with her boss, quite similar to Perry.  She must be repeatedly reminded to answer the phone.  Della lived in a boarding house; one of the other boarders, Hazel (Molly Ephraim), is her lover.  Yes, Della is a lesbian; must get that representation in there.  Oh, Assistant DA Hamilton Burger is also homosexual; don't want to leave the fellas out.  It turned out that Della did most of the work for the law firm and expects to be a partner in a couple of years.  Really, E. B. proved to be an empty suit with an over-inflated ego.

As a Depression-Era show, one expects a downer soundtrack.  Such is delivered.  There is a repeated melody that signals sadness and depression.  There are no breaks in the gloomy setting, just one long tale of woe and dread.  It's a miracle that there were not more suicides among these characters.

The trial, which serves as Perry Mason's first as a lawyer, is ludicrous.  DA Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) pinned his entire case on the fact that Emily was having an affair with the kidnapper.  He proved beyond any doubt that she was an adulteress, therefore you must find her guilty of murdering her child and sentence her to hang!  Not only is his case thin on evidence, he knows the detectives on the case were corrupt; heck, he demanded that the detectives eliminate anyone who knew too much.  Yes, the whole justice system is rotten to the core.  Half of the stuff that Perry and his fellow investigators, Pete Strickland (Shea Whigham) and Paul Drake (Chris Chalk), uncover proved to be inadmissible.  Sure, that's nice for the audience to see the full story but it helped the case not at all.  Then there was the imaginary cross-examination of the actual killer that harkened back to the Raymond Burr series.

Excellent cast, a terrific film noir setting, this had lots of potential.  However, it should have been some original character, not an origin story for Perry Mason that changes all the characters.  Watch Spider-Noir instead.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

Dr. Heywood Floyd authored a report on the Discovery mission to Jupiter in the wake of its failure.  Years later, the US is preparing a new ship to find out what happened.  However, the Russians also have a ship that will go to Jupiter; they will arrive a year earlier.  Despite rising tensions between the US and the USSR in Central America, Dimitri Moisevitch (Dana Elcar) suggests a joint operation.  Three Americans - Floyd, Curnow (John Lithgow), and Chandra (Bob Balaban) - travel to Jupiter with the Russian crew.  By the time they arrive, tensions between the US and the USSR are on the brink of war.  This makes cooperation between the Americans and the Russians difficult.  While flying near Europa, they send a probe and are on the brink of seeing something when the probe is destroyed.  Hmm.  Later, they airbrake in the Jovian atmosphere before rendevousing in orbit around Io with the Discovery.  Doctor Chandra reactivates HAL and investigates what went wrong.  Meanwhile, strange events are happening.  Visions of Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) abound and the massive monolith destroys another Russian probe.

The movie's big failure is that it takes place in a future that never came.  The USSR was gone less than 10 years after the film was made.  The inclusion of Cold War politics was a mistake and adds very little.  Also, despite being made 15 years after the original, the special effects are less impressive.  Though there are lots of Russian cosmonauts on the Leonov, only two get much development.  There is Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren) as the commander and Max (Elya Baskin).  Baskin and Lithgow have good chemistry during the spacewalk transit between the Leonov and the Discovery.  Baskin proves to be a very likable character, which was doubtless intentional considering his fate.

A sequel that is very different from the original.  Just okay.

Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

While his dimension-hopping rocket car is being prepared for its maiden voyage, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is busy performing emergency brain surgery at the request of a colleague, Dr. Sidney Zweibel (Jeff Goldblum).  Having successfully completed the surgery, he flies to the desert and arrives only moments before the count down finishes for his rocket car.  Woosh!  He breaks the sound barrier and then - thanks to the "oscillation overthruster" - he drives through a mountain, thus visiting the 8th dimension.  When he returns to the desert, he has a brain-like alien life form attached to the undercarriage.  Hmm.  The last man to travel to the 8th dimension - Doctor Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) - returned utterly insane.  The very day that Banzai succeeded in breeching the 8th dimension, Lizardo escaped from the asylum; this is no coincidence.  Lizardo was possessed by John Whorfin - a Hitler-like figure from Planet 10 who had been banished to the 8th dimension.  If Whorfin can get his hands on Banzai's oscillation overthruster, he will be able to release his followers from the 8th dimension and reconquer Planet 10.

 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension has a comic book feel to it and also has a vibe of not being the first film.  Buckaroo has a band of allies, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, who get only the barest of introductions.  It's kind of like Ant-Man showing up in Captain America: Civil War; we all remember him from Ant-Man so he doesn't need a backstory.  There is a lot of that in this movie, from the Blue Blazer Irregulars to the unexplained watermelon.  There is even the oddity that Penny (Ellen Barkin) is the long lost twin of Buckaroo's deceased wife, a weird way of bringing back the same actress for the love interest even though she was killed off.  All of this was fully explained in the last film and is included here as something of an Easter Egg.  Except there was no last film.

 

The movie has a lot of oddball features.  Every alien is named John.  Surnames vary wildly and are often silly: Bigboote (pronounced Big Booty or Big Boo Tay), Small Berries, Yaya.  In addition to being a neurosurgeon and particle physicist, Buckaroo is also a rockstar and has a comic book series detailing his adventures.  His entourage all go by nicknames like Rawhide (Clancy Brown), Reno Nevada (Pepe Serna), Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith), and New Jersey (Goldblum).  It is never explained why?  New Jersey has only just been recruited to the Cavaliers so we see him transition from Dr. Sidney Zweibel to New Jersey.  When asking him to join the crew, Buckaroo wanted to know if he could sing.  You need to be a member of the band.  Very quirky.  Buckaroo Banzai is a character who needs an origin story, something along the lines of Batman Begins.

 

John Lithgow is over the top, which is par for the course.  I've generally found him to be an overactor in the William Shatner vein of acting.  His wacky Italian accent, constant bluster, and random misquotes make Lizardo an unstable villain who is more likely to defeat himself than require a hyper-competent adversary like Banzai.  He is more comically demented bumpkin than evil mad scientist.  Lithgow is at his best in serious roles (e.g. The Crown, Interstellar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes).  It may be he has mellowed with age.

 

An oddball movie that is unfocused but still fun.