Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is non-fiction, a thoughtful consideration that the prudent application of explosives on oil pipelines might be more productive than the nearly-nothing that’s being done to combat climate change.

This movie says it’s based on the book, but they’ve hung a fictional plotline from the title, to tell a story of a modern monkey-wrench gang out to blow up an oil pipeline.

Let’s acknowledge at the top that it’s a workable thriller. You’ll be thrilled. Beyond that, I have some complaints.

It’s told in a jagged style, with flashbacks to establish each character. The entire movie is structured of flashbacks, scenes building some effective tension and advancing the story, but every scene ends abruptly to begin the backstory of the next member of our bomb-plotter crew. It’s a trick that grows tedious. Each of the movie’s 9, maybe 10 bomb-plotters gets the full backstory treatment, though most aren’t interesting enough to warrant the time they’re given.

They’re all between the ages of 20 and 25, so it’s Generation Z to the rescue, and not a one of them couldn’t have a career as an underwear model. If anyone tries blowing up a pipeline in real life, or in a better movie, please invite at least one person who’s a little older and has some experience with explosives.

The big plot twist is that one of the blow-up plotters is actually working undercover, feeding info to the cops. Sigh. Anyone who’s been involved in even the mildest non-violent political action knows there’s a cop or two working undercover at every meeting. Usually the cop is the one suggesting something illegal. That’s America, so it isn’t an effective ‘twist’.

In a movie that plays up the stereotype of ‘scary eco-terrorists’, it’s doubly important to make the politics and science convincing, and it’s voiced, it’s coherent, but it’s brief and clichéd. There’s no line or moment in the script that might break through a Fox viewer’s indoctrinated disbelief in climate change.

The music by Gavin Brivik must be mentioned. It’s blaringly monotonous, like audio waterboarding — fast-paced ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba for an hour and a half, with a recurring bassline. It could’ve been written by AI — just input ‘tension’ and ‘music’ .

The book How to Blow Up a Pipeline is excellent, still recommended by me, and I was hoping the movie would do it justice. It doesn’t. It’s not a bad movie, just disappointingly ordinary — an average caper flick.

Verdict: YES, for at least touching on the politics and science.

♦ ♦ ♦

This is a serious educational film, showing two Eskimos constructing a shelter. Their igloo is made with large bricks of frozen snow, and no mortar except snow dust, which moistens with the sweat of humans building it, then freezes the bricks together. Takes two men an hour and a half to build, and takes you ten minutes to watch and learn how it’s done.

From the National Film Board of Canada, this is refreshingly free from any whispers of white superiority, and it’s better than the edu flicks we had to watch when I was in school.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

How to Commit Marriage (1969)

Frank and Elaine are happily divorced, but when their barely-adult daughter has a baby out of wedlock, they adopt the child. Will bringing up baby ruin the grandparents’ divorce?

Bob Hope, Jane Wyman, and Jackie Gleason star. It’s obviously a sit-com story, and falls apart if given a moment’s thought, but Hope has a knack for making even the dumbest lines funny. Gleason does not.

The daughter’s baby-daddy is Tim Matheson, 9 years before Animal House, and they’re in a rock band called The Comfortable Chair, which was a real band so the music is surprisingly not awful. Professor Irwin Corey has a couple of scenes as an Indian guru.

There are a few laughs, but not enough to recommend the movie.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

A very quick, colorful cartoon about wind and lizards and Elvis. I detected no story, but it looks great, feels spacey, and it’s a pleasant way to spend five minutes. Made by Veronica Solomon, and not listed in IMDB.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

How to Frame a Figg (1970)

Everyone in City Hall is in on the graft, except lowly accountant Hollis Figg (Don Knotts). He notices cash discrepancies, but the mayor whips up phony evidence that Figg’s the mastermind of the corruption. Figg’s hope for exoneration is in the databanks of the city’s second-hand high-tech computers (the Large-capacity Enumerative Officiator, or LEO).

This is pretty stupid, but Knotts is funny. He gets a bowling ball stuck on his hand, rides an elevator that never gets the floors right, gets squirted with ketchup, and goes to a funeral in drag, where he’s hit on by one of the male mourners.

You will laugh a few times, but have a lower IQ at THE END than you had at UNIVERSAL PICTURES PRESENTS.

Verdict: MAYBE.

♦ ♦ ♦

How to Have an Accident at Work (1959)

Of all the cartoons that used to play before movies, Disney’s were and remain the unfunniest to me. In this one, Donald Duck works at a factory, forever ignoring all the safety rules, and talking in his annoying voice.

“Don’t throw a monkey wrench at the machine!”

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

A make-up artist who specializes in monster movies is laid off by the studio. Then it’s revealed that he’s also an expert in hypnosis and mind control, as he seeks his vengeance by creating a werewolf to terrorize the city!

There are no real thrills or frights here, but you’re offered “Guest Star John Ashley singing ‘You’ve Got to Have Ee-ooo’,” and the guy playing the killer is pleasantly not what you’d expect. The storyline depends on half a dozen people being relentlessly stupid, but comes together as modest, low-budget fun.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

This isn’t a remake of the 1950s How to Make a Monster, and it’s better for it.

A few game designers are offered a million-dollar bonus if they can make a new video game with the scariest monster ever. Deadline is in three weeks — Go!

The movie is silly but not stupid, modern schlock with style, and offers some laughs to go with the bloodshed. The graphics, both in-game and on-screen, are dated, because the movie is 20+ years old, but we like old movies here. This one gently kicks butt, and ends with unexpected cynicism.

Written and directed by George Huang (Swimming with Sharks). Produced by Colleen Camp and legendary effects wizard Stan Winston.

IMDB says it was made for TV, but it doesn’t have that TV ‘look’, and there’s brief nudity and naughty language and gore.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

… and out of alphabetical order …

Radiation-soaked giant insects terrorize New Mexico and make their giant-insect-way to Los Angeles, in Them!, one of the better 1950s sci-fi panic films.

The movie starts without Hollywood’s ordinary ten minutes of la-di-da normalcy; right from the opening credits, you know something is wrong, and the tension lasts all the way to the end.

The special effects are special; someone hammered and stitched together a fairly convincing and Oscar-nominated giant ant.

This was one of the first nuclear monster movies and rocks the genre, complete with a gentle but thoughtful conclusion. It’s all in glorious black-and-white except for the opening title card, which shouts Them! in vivid crimson.

James Arness, James Whitmore, and Edmund Gwenn star, with smaller bits for soon-to-be-famous Fess Parker, Richard Deacon, Leonard Nimoy, William Schallert, and Dub Taylor. Joan Weldon is featured as a smart and sassy scientist despite being a woman and all, and she’s good enough she should’ve been a star.

Includes at least two Wilhelm screams.

Verdict: YES.

12/24/2024

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
How to Survive a Plague (2012)
How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2016)
Howard the Duck (1986)
… plus schlock, shorts, and
movies out of alphabetical order…

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