Henry Fool (1997)

Henry Fool is a convicted pedophile who imagines himself a writer. He's full of pompous self-importance, with a habit of delivering long monologues, whispering when he thinks he's profound. He's just been released from prison, and befriends an introverted garbageman named Simon Grim, and inspires him to write, too.

Ah, but Grim turns out to be a better writer than Fool. He soon finds a publisher, who makes an unbelievably lucrative offer to publish his first poem, telling Grim cynically that "your poem will make more money than any book of poetry ever published." A few scenes later, Grim's won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This is not the way publishing works, but writer-director Hal Hartley knows that — he's just not much for reality. Henry Fool is more about what the events symbolize, I think, than about what happens.

There's an attack midway through the movie, for example, that would leave the victim scarred and needing at least weeks, maybe months of recovery, but it's immediately forgotten.

Grim's sister (Parker Posey) marries Henry Fool, even after catching him fucking her mother on the couch. For most women, I daresay, fucking their mother would be a dealbreaker.

The film has numerous unreal and vulgar moments like that, including a barf scene, an underage girl offering to suck Henry's dick, and full coverage of Henry shitting loudly and liquidly on a toilet. Such scenes are juxtaposed against Henry and Grim's intelligent, literary conversations about poetry, writing, and art.

For all his crassness, Fool is no fool, and his running dialogue with Grim is smart and philosophical. "Follow your own genius to where it leads without regard for the apparent needs of the world at large, which, in fact, has no needs as such, but, rather, moments of exhaustion in which it is incapable of prejudice. We can only hope to collide with these moments of un-self-consciousness. This divine fatigue."

An offended non-reader says, "Have we debased our culture to such an extent that a garbageman with a head full of sick ideas is legitimately referred to as a poet, and where the filth he spews can be accessed by any child old enough to turn on a computer? Is this what we have come to?"

Yes, I believe that is what we've come to, and I'm recommending the film. It is trashy but highbrow, unrefined but intellectual, and it's frequently and intentionally grating. The whole darn movie is like a smelly loudmouth walking into a demure cocktail party and giving what-not to all the fancy people.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Bad News Bears (1976)

Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) is a heavy-drinking schlub who's been bribed into coaching a Little League baseball team. He doesn't like the kids, doesn't put any effort into it, and unsurprisingly, the kids get their butts kicked in the season's first game.

This motivates the coach to begin giving a damn, so he starts actually coaching, and recruits two new players for the team — Amanda Whurlitzer (Tatum O'Neal), an ex-girlfriend's daughter he'd taught to throw a fastball a few summers earlier, and Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley) a motorcycle punk and troublemaker who can hit a curve.

It's better than your average kids or sports movie, and I'm surprised at how formulaic it isn't. The kids are a bunch of stereotypes, but they don't end up a group hug, or a fistfight to defend each others' honor. None of them are 'rescued', and Coach Buttermaker comes out of it only an incrementally better man. It's also refreshingly vulgar, in the way that 12-year-old kids really are.

There's a rivalry in the league, a team we're supposed to hate, but the kids on that team are just kids too, not particularly evil or mean or even extra talented.

The other team's coach (Vic Morrow) is a bit of an ass, but hardly more so than Buttermaker. Both coaches put far too much pressure on their players, hollering and bullying them as if they're pros. And both seem to eventually figure out they've been butt-heads, but — again bucking the formula — they don't figure it out in a big dramatic scene. They simply crank down their buttheadery.

Strangest of all, it's not really about who wins or loses, and the closest the movie comes to a moral is when Kelly wants to quit, and Coach Buttermaker says, "This quitting thing, it's a hard habit to break once you start."

Here's how good this movie is: When Amanda started pitching, I was trying to see whether Tatum O'Neal was actually throwing the ball, or they'd brought in a body double to hurl those blazing fastballs. And then, the movie absorbed me so much that I forgot to try figuring it out.

Also: Jackie Earle Haley! Loved him in Breaking Away, and I've seen him and liked him in other films, but I didn't know he'd started as a child actor.

Written by Bill Lancaster, who seems to have written only this and the screenplay for John Carpenter's The Thing. If you ask me, that makes him 2-for-2.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Futuresport (1998)

Dean Cain, Vanessa Williams, and Wesley Snipes star in this uninspired ripoff of a dozen better movies.

Armed rebels are trying to take Hawaii back, so they storm the annual futuresport championships in New Orleans. The very stupidly named 'futuresport' is a combination of skateboarding, basketball, and battery and assault. It's supposed to be the most popular game on earth, but just like present-day football or soccer, it never even approaches being interesting.

Verdict: BIG NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Gow the Head Hunter (1928)

a/k/a Gow (1931)

a/k/a Cannibal Island (1956)

This is a non-fiction travelogue through some South Pacific islands now known as Vanuatu, narrated by Edward A Salisbury (1875-1962). He was a millionaire who spent 18 months piloting his yacht through the Marquesas Islands, becoming acquainted with local cannibals and head-hunters.

We're told that some of Salisbury's film footage is too repulsive to be publicly screened, so if you're hoping to see cannibals chewing fresh flesh off a human armpit or thigh, you'll be disappointed.

Gow is sporadically fascinating, and shows several tribes fishing, dancing, climbing trees, and smiling for the cameras. The closest I've seen to this kind of photography is National Geographic, back when it was a good magazine. Salisbury, not coincidentally, was a regular contributor to Nat Geo in his day.

Actual anthropologists are supposed to be neutral and non-judgmental, but Salisbury wasn't an anthropologist. His commentary is peppered with casually racist and sexist observations. Here's a history that's told as quickly as you'll read it, offering only the info, with no indication that any of it might be troubling:

"The missionaries compelled the men to wear cotton pants and shirts, and put hideous Mother Hubbard wrappers on the women. The natives were not accustomed to this, they became very warm, the clothing became saturated with perspiration, and they'd sit in the cool trade winds. The wind blowing through the wet cloth gave them colds, and this turned into pneumonia, and thousands of them died. Today I doubt very much if there are 300 Marquesians left."

Without even taking a breath, the narrator's next line is, "They lead a carefree life, these Marquesians," over video of topless native women swimming.

Jeez, Salisbury seriously did not give a damn about people who weren't white. "They have the mentality of three- or four-year-old children, and the bodies of adults."

Gow is an interesting look at people and places very different from ours, and inadvertently an unpleasant reflection on our culture.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Johnny Reno (1965)

Dana Andrews never was much of an actor in anything but stern authority figure roles, so he's fine as a straight-arrow US marshal who gets bushwacked by a couple of accused killers.

Jane Russell co-stars as a bawdy broad who takes no crap, Lon Chaney plays a lazy old lawman eager to avoid confrontation, and John Agar is a bad guy who's not rotten to the core.

This is an enjoyable old-style western. A good time is had by all who don't get shot.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

This flick seems to have been forgotten, but it was very controversial among stupid people when it came out. How dare you make a movie about Jesus, was the gist of the hubbub, but there's almost nothing for the devout to get upset about here. It's by far the most sympathetic and realistic portrayal of Christ I've seen in a movie.

Before his calling to preach, the carpenter Jesus is shown collaborating with the Romans, building crosses to crucify other Jews. Which isn't Biblical, but guess what? The movie isn't based on the Bible, it's based on a novel.

This Jesus seems a little less meek than the pansy we were taught about in Sunday School, but he's not an action hero or anything. His followers call him 'rabbi', a reminder that Jesus was Jewish, not a Christian, and many Christians probably didn't like that.

As I understand the fable, Mary Magdalene was supposed to have been a prostitute; the film shows her at work.

The apostle Peter is a wussy, and his 'The Rock" nickname is sarcastic.

And like the title says, Jesus faces actual temptation, especially a long imaginary sequence while he's dying on the cross. What, you want your Jesus to have never even considered anything but following orders and dying like he was supposed to?

That's about all the liberties taken, but overall the movie is nearly annoying in its reverence.

Directed by that old Catholic, Martin Scorsese. Music by Peter Gabriel. Jesus is Willem Dafoe, and Judas is Harvey Keitel.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Sid and Nancy (1986)

Written and directed by Alex Cox, this is the perfect Sid Vicious biopic. It is loud, vulgar, mean, and miserable, just like punk rock, and presumably Mr Vicious.

Gary Oldman stars as Sid, with Chloe Webb as his doomed squeeze, Nancy Spungen. They're addicted to heroin and boredom and each other, and inherently not the kind of people I'd usually want to spend an hour and a half with, but I just did and don't regret it.

It's not much about the music, though there is some, nor is it about the Sex Pistols. It's a punk love story, not at all romantic and with a famously tragic ending. Difficult watching, but it's arguably Cox's masterpiece, even more than Repo Man.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming attractions:
• Animal Crackers (1930)
• Being There (1979)
• Dumbland (2002)
• Flight/Risk (2022)
• Ghost World (2001)
• In Transit (2018)
• Prime Risk (1985)
1/26/2023

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever's on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you're missing out.

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Illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim. Real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. Reviews are spoiler-free. Piracy is not a victimless crime. Click any image to enlarge. [Comments & conversations invited.](mailto:[email protected]?subject=Comments for Mostly Words)