Brubaker (1980)

Prison reform, by Robert Redford. Like the guy in The Human Condition (which is, of course, a thousand times better), Redford’s Warden Brubaker wants to run a humane prison, which is probably impossible but you’re rooting for him, and dang he’s good-looking.

The movie’s all sorta grim, but nowhere near as grim as reality behind bars, and it spends too long with pretty boy Redford silently watching all the horrors.

Brubaker is Hollywood liberalism, futile and shallow unless you know nothing about American prisons. It’s OK, but it’s sooo ordinary and expected.

Verdict: MAYBE, or YES if you’re less cynical than me.

♦ ♦ ♦

Cold Lazarus (1996)

Buncha scientists in a future dystopia are trying to reactivate the neurons of a man who’s been dead for 374 years. And it’s not easy, dealing with budget cuts and bureaucracy alongside the unpredictable responses of a long-gone soul. This is a four-part Brit mini-series that’s very British — far too intelligent and too weird to have been made for American TV.

The dead guy is played by Albert Finney, but he’s not the star here. It’s more about the scientists and the political and corporate intrigue in their future time. Finney is great, though, Diane Ladd has a hoot with her evil supporting role, and the rest of the cast are unknown to me, but they all have interesting faces. Not a 22-year-old underwear model among them, which again is the opposite of anything made for American TV.

The script has teeth that aren’t dentures, the story takes place in a slightly heightened reality, and the set design is almost Dr Suessian. Cold Lazarus delivers a fluid mix of gravitas and whimsy, written by Brit lit and TV impresario Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective), who was dying of cancer and knew it, and holds nothing back.

Adding to the strangeness of it all, I learned from Wikipedia afterwards that it’s sort of a sequel to another Potter show called Karaoke, which starred Finney while the same character was still alive. Since I haven’t seen Karaoke, I can vouch that seeing it is not necessary to understanding and appreciating Cold Lazarus, which you really oughta.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Cunk on Earth (2022)

This is a series from BBC that looks and sounds exactly like a science show on public telly — a droll host traveling the world and walking through scenic sights and talking with experts and blah blah blah.

What’s different is that the host is Philomena Cunk, offering the dumbest, strangest, and most hilarious observations, always with a straight face. Played by Diane Morgan, everything about her performance is perfection, and the writing is to a sense of humor what Carl Sagan was to the sense of wonder.

How did they get these real experts (I looked a few up, and they’re real) to sit opposite Cunk and answer her absurd questions without either laughing or storming off the set? Like, she asks one of the ubiquitous archaeologists and experts: “Did a philosopher ever think of an idea so big it split their head open?” And he answers, “Not that I’m aware of.”

You’ve probably seen brief clips from this show online, which is how I discovered it, but the hilarious clips aren’t really the highlights. There are no highlights, or it’s all highlights. Five episodes, half an hour and about 500 laughs each. I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as much, and unlike the Marx Brothers, Cunk rarely breaks for a song.

Amazingly, the show was created and produced by Charlie Brooker, who does the same chores on the very different Black Mirror.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Shogun (1980)

Jimmy Clavell wrote the novel Shogun, and it was a huge best-seller despite being about 1,000 pages long. I was in high school and the book was too dense for me, couldn’t finish it, but a few years later NBC made it for television.

Again it was a huge hit, but again I couldn’t finish it, this time because I had to work and missed a few episodes and after that, without streaming or a VCR, why bother watching?

The first episode on TV totally wowed me, though, so I’d always meant to watch the whole series, and now I have. It stars the late Richard Chamberlain as 16th century Captain John Blackthorne, who’s shipwrecked, stranded, and imprisoned in olde feudal Japan, where he doesn’t know the language, the culture, or anything at all.

NBC gave the show a huge-for-TV budget and filmed it in Japan, and then, crazy as fuck, they decided to tell the story without subtitles or dubbing. The Japanese actors speak Japanese, and like Blackthorne, you don’t know what they’re saying. Blackthorne picks up the language one word at a time, and you will too, if you’re paying attention.

When English-language translators are on screen, they’re often Blackthorne’s enemies, and you wonder, as he does, whether they’re interpreting the words or shading them. The unscrupulous English-speakers are Catholic missionaries, Jesuits, and Blackthorne hates religion. “God curse you and all priests,” he says, quickly earning my affection. Not a line you’ll often hear on network telly.

There’s a remarkable moment, seared in my mind from watching half of this back in 1980, and re-seared from watching it all last night. Blackthorn is in a Japanese prison, where he’s been told there’s no escape, no release, no parole; prisoners are held there, sometimes for years, until their names are called for execution. One morning, Blackthorn’s name is called, and he thinks he’s about to be shortened with a sword to the neck. His only friend, a priest, tells him to quickly confess his sins and absolution will be granted. Blackthorn says nothing. The priest repeats, desperately, “Please confess, my son, you have only moments.” Blackthorn gives the priest a sad, minimal smile and says, “Go with God, father,” and then walks to meet his fate. Bad-ass.

Shogun is pretty good, sometimes amazing. The first episode is the best, but the rest of the series never jumps the shark.

Weirdly, it was five episodes on TV, but for the video release it was re-edited to four. Quick research reveals that they simply re-stitched everything, but the whole story is still there.

It’s commercial TV but often doesn’t feel like it, only occasionally looking a bit cardboard. Toshiro Mifune co-stars magnificently, and eventually Orson Welles shows up (off screen) to narrate the more complicated scenes and plot points. The love story between Chamberlain and some Japanese actress did nothing for me, but the rest of the show’s jolly good.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Star Wars (1977)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas made this dang fine popcorn fantasy about Luke Skywalker battling the evil empire. It’s nothing much to think about, no Citizen Kane, but it’s a blast.

Everybody loves this movie, but very few people under the age of 50 have seen it, because Lucas spent the rest of his life tweaking it, adding this, subtracting that, reworking the effects, even re-titling the damn thing — and the original simply isn’t available.

But this is the real thing, unseen for decades. Some Star Wars nut has gone to intergalactic lengths to illegally reconstruct the movie as it was in 1977. For tech reasons I don’t pretend to understand, the file is huge, a dozen times the size of any movie I’ve ever downloaded, and my computer simply couldn’t do the work, so my excellent on-line friend Claude mailed it on a thumb drive.

And it is magnificent, thank you, sir. The imagery is pristine, fresh, no scratches. It’s digital, obviously, since it’s coming from a thumb drive, but you’d swear it’s film, with vivid skin tones and that slight granulated look of genuine photography. It didn’t look this good when I saw Star Wars a dozen times in the summer of ’77 at the United Artists theater in Seattle’s Belltown.

It probably sounded better at the UA, but only because the theater had Dolby and my system has only mono, but this is the real Star Wars, with no cuts, no re-edits, and Han Solo never walks over a slug-like Jabba the Hut. It’s not “A New Hope” or “Episode IV.”

Only problem is, the soundtrack is in Urdu, with no option for switching to English, or English subtitles. The Urdu dubbing captures the nuance, though, and having seen the movie so many times, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” still comes across, even when it’sآپ کو کبھی بھی گندگی اور بدمعاشی کا” اتنا گھناؤنا اڈہ نہیں ملے” گا۔.”

Honestly, the same scenes gave me the same goose bumps. The light sabre battles are still thrilling, and the grand conclusion loses nothing in translation. Not knowing a word of it is less distracting than all the changes in the ‘official’ version, and after the initial surprise, the Urdu actually adds some intangible but inarguable strangeness and, I shit you not, makes it even better.

Now I want to watch all the classics in Urdu!

Verdict: BIG YES.

4/6/2025

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer.

No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff. 

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