The Miami Dolphins offered 13,000 tickets to their game on Sunday. Only ~11,000 were sold. Is that because people were scared of the pandemic, the weather, or being forced to watch the Miami Dolphins play "football"?

We all should have watched movies instead. Perhaps movies like these:

145. (1799.) The First Wives Club (1996)
Great cast, mediocre result. I'm always game for a buddy revenge comedy, but the movie lost me at the high-rise window washer scaffold misadventure, which would have been too silly for most sitcoms.

146. (1800.) The Red Shoes (1948)
Put this film in the category of movies disappointed by a bad ending. I admit that the dancing is pretty darn good, but having a real ballerina acting the part of the put-upon artist/romantic lead left an insurmountable hole at the center of the film, a flaw that was left badly exposed by the abrupt conclusion.

147. (1801.) Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Frank Sinatra really loved gangsters, didn't he? His film roles are filled with bad guys with a heart of gold, such as here, where smuggling, counterfeiting, and gunfights are presented as victimless crimes. On the up side, this does A) prove that Peter Falk was a great comedic actor and B) introduce the world to "My Kind of Town." So not all bad, then.

148. (1802.) Smorgasbord (1983)
Nothing about this anthology series of loosely connected vaudeville skits *should* work, and very little of it actually does. There are a few genuine chuckles, but most of the skits are either terrible, one-note ideas or have had the comedic timing destroyed by director Jerry Lewis indulging performer Jerry Lewis's ego. (The editor is Gene Fowler, Jr, who also edited the abysmally paced It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. So he probably deserves some blame, too.)

149. (1803.) Brewster McCloud (1970)
There's no way to describe this movie without making it sound absolutely nuts, so here goes: A bird-obsessed boy living underneath the Houston Astrodome avoids sex and builds a flying machine while under investigation for a string of murders. See? Nuts. There's also no disputing the fact that I loved it! The Player is still my favorite Robert Altman-directed film, but there's a new entry at second place.

150. (1804.) Never So Few (1959)
Is being a commando soldier really any different than being a gangster? Watching Frank Sinatra in the role, the answer would appear to be no. This dawn of World War II movie's plot examining the absurdity of the Rules of War is made nearly insufferable by the shoehorned inclusion of a romance with Gina Lollobrigida.

Take it from Steve McQueen: drinking Coke makes you cool!

More to come.

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Speaking of movies I don't know why anyone would make: Batman: Hush. That's the latest direct-to-video animated Batman film from the factory at Warner Bros Home Entertainment.

The movie is based on 12 issues of the Batman comic released in 2002/03. Jeph Loeb — the pen behind Commando — was credited with "writing" the story, although he admitted that most of what he did was create ad hoc justifications for what Jim Lee wanted to draw. Jim Lee, you see, is one of the true superstars of the comic world. Back in 2002 he has just been bought out by DC Comics and they wanted to get their money's worth. That meant putting Lee on the best-selling comic, Batman, and letting him do his thing.

As you might guess, the result was that "Hush" is a series of cool looking images hanging from a story frame that barely makes sense. ("Barely" is probably too generous a word.) Few cared at the time because of Jim Lee, and the collected comics continues to be best sellers because of Jim Lee. Creating a movie from that story while subtracting Lee's distinctive personal visual style is like reading War and Peace translated from the original Russian into pig latin.

So why would Warner Bros bother with such a doomed exercise? I'm guessing because people have heard of "Hush" and don't realize (or care) that it is based more on visual art than story. And Warner Bros is only interested in squeezing as much cash from each extant property as possible forever and ever. Their corporate motto: Diminishing returns are still returns!

If you're really interested in who/what "Hush" is, do yourself a favor. Go buy a comic instead.

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I just watched Schwarzenegger's movie Commando straight through for the first time. (I'd only caught the very end before.) I found it very amusing. I should have watched it before now. I had no idea that it had such a robust cast: In addition to the obvious Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, and Alyssa Milano, the film featured Dan Hedaya (who looked afraid of the gun he was firing at the film's climax), Bill Duke (the world's blackest man), David Patrick Kelley ("Warriors, come out and play!"), Branscome Richmond (who is in almost every non-speaking role in the past 30 years where a Portuguese/Spanish/Mexican/Indian is getting his ass kicked and the director needs a good reaction shot but we all know him from Renegade), and Bill Paxton (as Bill Paxton; is there any other role for him?). I mean, damn.

Speaking of casting, when it comes time for Schwarzenegger's Col. John Matrix to kill everyone in sight, it's pretty clear that they weren't filming on location in Latin America. (Wait, is John Matrix even a real name? His daughter's name was Jenny Matrix? Could I just make a movie and call someone something really stupid like Ford Taurus and get away with it? At least "Action" Jackson and "Desolation" WIlliams were nicknames.) I think every extra was a white guy wearing a really bad Groucho mustache and fake sideburns made of felt. Perhaps the grooming habits enforced by Dan Hedaya's deposed dictator were the reason that he was overthrown in the first place. It can't be easy to fight a coup d'etat when you have to make sure that you aren't sweating off your spirit gum.

It would have been a MUCH better film if any attempt had been made to make Matrix's antagonist Bennett look a) strong, b) fearsome, or c) less like a butch fag. (Clearly, this is the character that South Park's Mr. Slave is based on.) Bennett's mustache is the worst looking thing in the movie after his leather pants and sleeveless chainmail shirt. As Matrix taunts him into a hand-to-hand knife duel, his face goes through some orgasmic contortions that I think are just a little bit uncomfortable to watch on a man dressed in fetish gear before a bodybuilder who has been oiled-up for a "straight" action scene. Then I'm suddenly supposed to believe that this flabby gay man has equal strength to manly-man Matrix, who I've watched break steel chains in his bare hands, lift a phone booth over his head, remove a bolted down car seat, and kill Bill Duke? Um, no.

It's also completely worth noting that this film was penned by Jeph Loeb, a comic book writer that I once respected. That is, until he teamed up with Jim Lee to produce one of the worst stories in the history of Batman only to wash it down with some of the worst stories in the history of Superman/Batman. >sigh<. Credits for the film bill Loeb as "Joseph Loeb III," the same writer who wrote Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf 2, which really means that I shouldn't have ever respected him as a comic book writer in the first place. Teen Wolf was the only movie that I was ever embarrassed for having watched. My skin still crawls thinking about it. Curse you, Michael J. Fox, for following up Back to the Future with that, that... thing!

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