Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

"John Candy: I Like Me" (2025)
Colin Hanks (Tom's son) directed this documentary about the life and career of the late John Candy, the Canadian comic actor who took Hollywood by storm in the 80s. Clips from his film catalog and commentary from co-stars like Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Macaulay Culkin, and many more paint a portrait of a well loved guy who unfortunately struggled with anxiety off screen. A touching trip down memory lane.

JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME (2025):
I learned a lot about the subject from this documentary. I'm embarrassed to admit that, because of Candy's reputation for depression (and particularly one story I recall where he told Roger Ebert he felt lonely), I always figured he was single. It was gratifying therefore to find he was happily married for his entire career and had two children. But there are lots of ways to feel lonely.

My Dad died at age 47 when I was 17 and I spent 30 years feeling a lot of dread about that (and now feel weird to have outlived him). Candy's father died at age 35 when John was 5 (!) and that isn't quite the same thing - it's worse, obviously - but I can empathize to some extent w/ Candy's anxiety and ennui. Also, fwiw, both my father and John Candy were huge football fans/boosters w/ youthful aspirations to play that ended early in their lives due to bum legs. (According to this doc, Candy lived 25+ years w/o a kneecap on one leg - which seems impossible if true!) I know (and, uh, care) little about organized athletics, but the portion of this film that covered Candy's enthusiastic late-life ownership of a Toronto football team really delighted me.

Also, I'm a big fat guy who has spent his entire life having strangers or loose acquaintances say things to me like "You know who you remind me of?" And depending on what year it is, the answer has always been either John Candy, John Goodman, or Chris Farley. (Once in HS I was lucky enough to get "Peter Ustinov.") BTW I lost 60 pounds around 15 years ago and kept it off for a few years and a couple of people told me I looked like Crispin Glover  or Hugh Grant  , neither of which seem accurate to me either. (I look pretty much like the guy in the photo at left.) But it just goes to show that people simply are eager for any opportunity to remind a fat guy that he's fat. There's a brief sequence of archival clips in I LIKE ME where interviewers subject Candy to inappropriate jabs about his weight. He's understandably irritated, because his weight was something he rarely or never thought about. Of course, he should have thought about it a little bit more, as his widow ruefully comments. But the guy had a lot more weighing on his spirit than cheap fat jokes.

JC:ILM worked on a lot of levels for me - as character study, as celebration, but also as a valuable archival object on its own merits. Honestly I starting watching it for the Catherine O'Hara interview clips  and there are some good ones, as well as a clip of her eulogy at Candy's funeral (and her sister Mary Margaret singing at said funeral) and Candy/O'Hara outtakes from HOME ALONE. There's also good interview footage of Eugene Levy, Bill Murray, 100 year-old Mel Brooks, and other priceless folks who may never get their own feature-length documentary. (Okay, Murray might; Brooks has of course outlived everyone he worked w/ prior to the late 80s, so who would appear in his?) So there is a lot of value onscreen here.

4/5    Among many other highlights, Maureen O'Hara (no relation to the aforementioned O'Haras, besides spiritual) on late-night TV predicting that Candy would go on to a career as a serious actor and would play Charles Laughton's great roles.  Bless her... nobody ever compared me to Laughton!

[M.10rda]

Anaconda.
We thought that Jack Black and Paul Rudd were playing themselves in this one, a la My Name Is Bruce or the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but it turned out not to be. Very few comedies make me laugh out loud, tending to just vaguely amuse me instead and this certainly wasn't any different. I did enjoy it, but I am very glad that we bought a DVD copy of it for £10 rather than renting it on Amazon for twice that.
Pretty sure it would have been a much better movie if they had just played themselves though.

THE ANACONDA (2026):
I pretty much agree w/ Alex. Black and Rudd appear quite invested in this project, Thandiwe Newton gets great mileage w/ restraint and understatement, and I found Steve Zahn less irritating than he used to be. Early scenes are set in my home of Buffalo, NY (though not shot here) and the jokes about Zahn being "Buffalo sober" as opposed to literally sober ring true. 

However this was never as funny or smart as I wanted it to be. The scene 2/3rds of the way through where the film crew runs into the other film crew on the river helped underline its shortcomings for me. There could have been an alternate universe and superior version of THE ANACONDA that was more meta, maybe darker and uncompromising, like BURDEN OF DREAMS only w/ a giant killer snake. Alex mentioned UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT and that isn't quite such a brutal meta-satire, yet it's definitely closer. The writers of THE ANACONDA obviously were just shooting for another TROPIC THUNDER, and I guess they succeeded. (I don't think TROPIC THUNDER is nearly as smart or funny as it should have been, either.)

Also, the giant killer snakes. They look extremely fake/CGI, which is fine for me actually, and yet I still could barely look at them. I've always hated snakes (even normal-sized ones) yet somehow I managed to watch and enjoy the original ANACONDA (maybe twice) and also watch its sequel, which features, like, dozens of anacondas. I must be getting old and perhaps my giant killer snake movie-watching days are behind me. I used to love scary rollercoasters too but the "Incredible Hulk" and "Jurassic Park" rides at Universal Studios were too rough and painful/unpleasant for me last week. 

3/5    BTW the film wraps up at the "Buffalo International Film Festival", which (whether the screenwriters knew it or not) is a real thing but nothing really to celebrate. A true filmmaking meta-horror movie could be made about its founder!

[Rev. Powell]

DEATHSTALKER (2025): A renegade grave-robber becomes a savior after discovering a magical amulet. Deliberately dumb nostalgia piece, with lots of rubber-suited monsters and no nudity. Check it out only because they don't make 'em like this anymore. 3/5.

[chainsaw midget]

Stay Tuned (1992)

If you didn't watch TV in the 80s and early 90s, this movie won't be half as funny to you.  If you did, it's got a lot of funny bits, parodies, and jokes aimed at old TV.

The plot is that a husband who spends all his time watching TV and a wife, who's successful and pretty much fed up with her husband get sucked into the Devil's very own TV and have to survive lethal parodies of various shows in order to make it back out. 

It's got John Ritter, Jeffrey Jones (The dad from Beetlejuice or Mr. Rooney from Ferris Bueller), and Eugene Levy all giving good performances. 

and brief appearances by Don Pardo and Captain Lou Albano. 

It's not a great movie, but it's enjoyable.  There's also a very brief cute Three's Company joke.

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT: An obsessed doctor sews the head of a maniacal rapist onto the body of a giant simpleton, because why not? With Bruce Dern, Pat Priest (who's yowsa-yowsa hot hot hot), and, for some reason, Casey Kasem. I'd seen the movie unriffed and forgotten most of it, which shouldn't really happen with a movie about a 2-headed rapist. Truth is, it's a bit too sleazy for Rifftrax---they do better with pure cheese---but the Casey Kasem jokes kept me laughing often enough. 3/5 (2.5/5 unriffed).

[M.10rda]

PANAMA HATTIE (1942):
"Hattie" is a Bette Midler-type brassy showgirl in Panama (natch) who has three sailors whose names all begin w/ the letter "r" following her around like love slaves, sex slaves, or just simps. However a new Naval officer in town catches Hattie's fancy (and his British butler does likewise for Hattie's galpal "Flo") in spite of the officer's mean daughter constantly mocking Hattie's fashion. Also there are German spies in Panama (again, natch). At the end the cast addresses the audience and reminds them to buy War Bonds. 

But the plot is scarcely The Thing in PANAMA HATTIE. Director Norman Z. McLeod wasn't just collecting a paycheck, he was clocking in overtime to deliver as much Romance, Comedy, Action, and Musical value as possible to entertain depressed wartime Americans. The Romance is lame, of course, but the Comedy is fast and furious, and inevitably some of the gags connect. The Action - well, the film could do w/o a long third act sequence where the three Sailors ("Rags", "Red", and "Rowdy") make like the Three Stooges or the Bowery Boys in a "Haunted" House with the German spies. However, the Musical Numbers - Yowza!    Honestly I FF through those in many 30s and 40s comedies - naaaht here, friends.

Tapdancin' Sailor #1 Red Skelton (who I still get confused w/ Red Buttons TBH, who was also a tapdancin' sailor) is fine, a little strident; Sailor #2 "Rags" Ragland is funny half the time and looks exactly like a young Anthony Quinn (he's not); but Sailor #3 "Rowdy" (Ben Blue) really delivers the comedic goods and can dance like a madman. Ann Sothern as "Panama Hattie" is better than I'd feared, but she's shown up in a few numbers by an actual Latinx singer who (alas) would make more sense in the title role. (Lena Horne also shows up for one song to similarly upstage whitey.) But the real showstoppers in the dance numbers are "the Berry Brothers", three African-American dudes who are among the best dancers I've ever seen. Honestly PANAMA HATTIE would be improved 300% if the Berry Brothers replaced the white guys playing "Rags", "Red", and "Rowdy".  I guess "Rowdy" could play a different role.

But the real draw in PANAMA HATTIE is "Flo", played by Virginia O'Brien. Remember the weird, highly articulate chick who has a solo in the early big number in THE BIG STORE starring the Marx Bros - the one who seems hypnotized by either Carl Dreyer or Werner Herzog? That's Virginia O'Brien. She stole my heart in her 60 seconds from BIG STORE (and stole that whole movie) and it turns out she did a bunch more musicals in (larger) supporting roles. I will now endeavor to see most or all of them.  Each of her 3-4 solos in PANAMA HATTIE are bona fide events. If TV's "Daria" was a Golden Age of Hollywood musical performer, she could only be Virginia O'Brien. Big ups to Norman McLeod for knowing a one-of-a-kind talent when he saw one!       3.5/5