Hoosiers (1986)
Streaming free at The Roku Channel
In 1954, Indiana high school sports had not yet been broken into classifications based on enrollment, and somehow microscopic Milan High School (enrollment 161) was able to beat Muncie Central (1,662 students) for the state basketball championship.
Hoosiers is doubtless inspired by that legendary upset, but to its credit, the movie never claims to be “based on a true story.” It’s entirely fictional. As fiction, it’s clichés by the basketful:
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There’s a new coach in the tiny town of Hickory, who has a troubled past and some coaching ideas that most of the townsfolk don’t like. There’s a town drunk who played on the team years earlier, so the coach tells him he’s the assistant coach, if he’ll just quit boozing. There’s a tough spinster, who thinks basketball isn’t all that important. It’s Indiana, though, where nothing’s more important than basketball. There are doubtless other clichés I’ve forgotten, but they’re all here.
Also as required in sports movies, there’s a montage of sweaty elbow-bumping game moments to indicate a winning streak, accompanied by music that’s a bit modern and drum-heavy for something set in the early ’50s. None of the team’s victories are easy; all season long they’re somehow always behind, clawing their way back, and winning only at the final buzzer.
So it’s two hours of movie clichés, but they’re stitched together enjoyably, unless you simply abhor sports movies. Barbara Hershey plays the spinster smarter than she’s written, nobody does the town drunk better than Dennis Hopper, and Gene Hackman is great playing the coach.
I’m not so sure about the coach’s coaching, though. A boss should listen to his workers, but Coach Hackman tells his players to shut up, do exactly what he says, and benches anyone who voices even the slightest objection. Virtually all his on-screen coaching consists of yelling at referees and giving his players tropes and truisms: “Five players on the floor functioning as one single unit: team, team, team, no-one more important than the other.” Which ain’t stupid, but it’s something any coach says.
Unexpectedly for a basketball movie, everyone on screen is white — the entire town, all of Hickory High’s players, and all the players on every opposing team — until deep into the playoffs when Hickory faces the state’s defending champs, an ‘urban’ team.
But of course, Hoosiers is a lot of fun.
Afterwards, I read a little about the true story it’s not based on, Milan High School’s team in ’54. They won most of their games in blowouts, but the championship was a nailbiter.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hopper/Welles (2020)
Orson Welles is credited as this film’s director, but it’s simply a filmed interview with Dennis Hopper. Mr Hopper is in every frame of the film, while Mr Welles is never seen, lobbing questions from off-camera.
These men are both film directors, but Welles is at least a nominee as Greatest Moviemaker Ever — Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, Touch of Evil, The Trial, several pretty good Shakespeare adaptations, and more and more. When this was filmed, Hopper had made only one film, Easy Rider, which is good but overrated, and he never topped it.
In baseball terms, Welles interviewing Hopper is like Hank Aaron interviewing José Canseco. What Canseco says might be interesting, but not when Hank Aaron’s in the room!
Welles asks thoughtful, intelligent, challenging questions, and for two hours Hopper’s replies start with uh and um and end with laughter. He’s lucid, in good spirits, and the answers he comes up with are sometimes insightful — he’s not a dummy, and comes off about as well as anyone could. But he’s no Orson Welles, and never finds the answers that Welles’s questions deserve.
The two men are cordial and polite, but by the end Hopper has been eviscerated, and I’m not sure he knew it.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Horace (1972)
Alan Clarke was a British director who, tragically, never worked on Doctor Who. He did, however, make some terrific off-beat stuff, including Stars of the Roller State Disco (punks roller skating) and Elephant (showing the Irish ‘troubles’ as a series of unexplainable murders).
This was Clarke’s first movie, albeit made for TV, and it’s unexpectedly wholesome, while still offering a solid kick in the gut.
Horace is a mentally disabled man who works at a joke shop, and lives with his overprotective mother. She always urges him not to make friends with anyone, presumably because people are awful and most ‘friends’ would take advantage of Horace, or be laughing at him. He does find a friend, though, when he meets a teenage troublemaker who’s skipping school.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Athanael is a third-string trumpeter, sent by God to blow the opening notes of the Judgment Day Overture, exactly at midnight, which will trigger the end of the world. Yup, God’s finally had enough of us sniveling humans.
“Don’t cry. Whatever’s making you unhappy will be over with shortly.”
Angels-sent-back-to-our-crappy-world was a thriving genre in the black-and-white era, and if the endtimes synopsis sounds surprisingly gloomy, relax, this is a featherweight comedy. It has half a dozen laughs, and three or four quasi-cute profundities.
Jack Benny stars, and he’s pretty good — not the ‘cheapskate’ caricature familiar from his radio and TV shows — but there’s nothing much to the movie.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
You know the political backstory, even if you don’t. It could be Afghanistan or Vietnam or Palestine, but this time it’s Algeria, colonized and controlled by France. The oppressed locals hate it, but their protests are rebuffed, the official response is only more repression, so eventually the people respond to the violence with violence.
That’s evil by our “First World” perspective, which is why this movie has always been controversial — you can’t watch it without rooting for the uprising.
One side has the power of being right, while the other side has the power of the state. When the state is tyranny — as it always is in such situations — it is difficult to condemn terrorism as the response. What alternative is there?
Anyone in Algiers might be captured and tortured by the French, and any quiet cafe or night club might be exploded by the Algerians. There’ll be gunfights, urban warfare, BS press conferences by the ‘civilized’ side, and laughable propaganda as French broadcasts tell Algerians to be proud that they’re gloriously French whether they want to be or don’t, amidst martial law and military checkpoints where anyone ‘suspicious’ is taken for ‘questioning’.
You’ll never have a thought that anyone’s ‘acting’ in this film — every moment feels utterly real — but the only professional actor in the cast is Jean Martin, who’d been blacklisted in France for his outspoken support of the Algerian rebels. In a grand twist, Martin plays the French commander who orders torture, mass arrests, all manner of war crimes, while remaining eloquent, even intellectual. He’s a monster of non-fictional proportions.
And this is a terrific movie, made on a minimal budget with maximal passion. I’ve spent a few hours reading about it after watching it, but I don’t want to rewrite what so many others have said better, so let’s just say: This is what cinema can do, can be, and so rarely is. This is a film that says something, means something, and hits an audience hard.
The Battle of Algiers deserves its reputation as the greatest war movie ever made.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
And also:
• Meeting four of the six Stooges
• Watching The Apprentice crystallized two big lessons that I learned from Mr Trump 30 years ago
… and that I’ve seen play out in his life ever since with more and more extreme consequences. The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract. The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we’re missing on the inside.
10/15/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
Horns (2013)
Horror Express (1972)
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)
Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …
— — —
Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter ‘I’.
Just add a comment, below.
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Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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