NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #387
every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with random anti-alphabetical cheats)
The Iceman Cometh (1973)
Ichi the Killer (2001)
Idaho Transfer (1973)
No Way Out (1950)
Reacher (2022)
♦ ♦ ♦
The Iceman Cometh (1973)
This is a very long movie — nearly four hours — from a play by Eugene O’Neill, filmed by John Frankenheimer. I made it through about eight minutes.
The opening music is loud, too loud actually, but once the movie starts everything’s too quiet. Some bartender has a whispered conversation with Robert Ryan, but even with the volume up to max, there’s no hearing most of what they’re saying. Something about pipe dreams, mumble mumble.
A drunk at the next table wakes up, says something indecipherable but very theatrical, not like a drunk but like a bad actor playing a drunk. Then he over-dramatically passes out again.
The bartender looks around at the dozen drunks in the room all asleep at their tables, and Robert Ryan starts mumbling again. Huh? What did he say? I lean forward, put my head right up to the speaker, and still it’s indecipherable. There are no closed captions, so screw this.
No promises, because what little I saw looked mighty boring, but I might give this another try in the autumn, when it’s not 88°, and I can turn off the fan and perhaps better hear the whispers.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ichi the Killer (2001)
In the aftermath of what must’ve been a mass murder, some guy slips on the myriad human intestines littering the floor, in a room where gallons of blood cover the walls and more blood is still dripping from the ceiling. We’re only seven minutes into the movie, already there’s been a bloody screaming rape that made me nauseous, and now this, so I gave up.
Ichi the Killer certainly seems stylish, but gore and violence is not for me.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
Idaho Transfer (1973)
Unlike the first two films on this page, this one I watched to the end, but I’m not sure what I saw. It’s full of bland scenery, filmed on location in Nowhere, and everything’s laconic as a brief coma.
A handful of young adults, all beautiful, have built a time machine to escape the coming apocalypse. Near as I can piece together from a story that tries not to be told, deformed and simple-minded people who survived armageddon are converted into fuel.
Peter Fonda directed, presumably while stoned. The movie’s heavy on talk, with plot points and background you’ll miss if you’re not paying 100% attention, and others points you’ll miss even if you are.
Nepotism — Fonda being the son of a more famous Fonda — is probably what scored the funding for this, but also what ruins it.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
No Way Out (1950)
For decades, when Hollywood needed a black man to play A Credit To His Race, they turned to Sidney Poitier. This was his debut, billed fourth but he’s already 100% Poitier.
He’s playing newly-graduated Luther Brooks, the only black doctor at County Hospital. Lots of people are eager to second-guess Doc Brooks, especially after he’s in charge in a case that leaves a gas station bandit dead. The dead guy’s co-bandit brother (Richard Widmark) is a “vicious negro-hater” who’s amazed a black man could be a doctor.
There’s a great scene in a residential hotel that could’ve been filmed at one of my San Francisco haunts. Noise comes from every room as the actors climb the stairs and walk a hallway, and when the camera zooms in on the door, it’s old, stained, and the paint is cracked. It’s the most accurate rez hotel I’ve ever seen in a movie, only, where’s the cockroaches?
The rest of the movie’s quite good, too. 1950 is early and gutsy to make a movie this awake about black-and-white. We don’t have colored hospitals any more, and it’s been a while since I’ve heard about race riots, but No Way Out remains pertinent and worth seeing.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Reacher (debut episode, 2022)
Fresh from a series of novels I haven’t read, Jack Reacher is a very large, very tough guy who doesn’t talk much, and doesn’t drive. He gets around on the bus. Can’t remember ever seeing a show, movie, or reading a book with a main character who takes public transit, and that’s what made me think this Amazon show might be worth a looksee.
It’s obvious from the start, though, that this is a factory product. The first scene has Reacher stepping off a Greyhound somewhere in Georgia, in a pouring rain. The rain pours only for the establishing shot, though, a few seconds, and then the bus rolls away, but there’s no rain and nothing’s wet. The showmakers don’t care enough to have continuity between two camera angles.
Soon Reacher’s false-arrested for murder, and jailed, interrogated, etc, but he’s an ex-military cop, a standard-issue brilliant detective who can piece together clues and figure out anything about anybody, knows everything about everything, can kick anyone’s ass, won’t tolerate injustice, and always has the right thing to say. We get a flashback to his childhood, when he was already brilliant, tough, righteous, etc.
I made it half-through this first episode of Reacher‘s first season before yawning and giving up. I’d never seen the show before, but I’ve seen it hundreds of times — it’s every cheap action movie from the 1980s until I stopped watching cheap action movies.
For what it is, it’s adequate, and if you need another show about a brilliant tough guy who won’t tolerate injustice, by golly tune in.
Verdict: NO.
6/9/2025
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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