Airport (1970)

Never would’ve chosen to watch this, but it was my brother’s pick for our once-monthly movie. It’s utter mainstream piffle, and kinda fun.

There’s a snowstorm in Chicago, and a 707 is stuck on the airport’s longest runway, which severely crimps operations during the blizzard. It’s Hollywood’s idea of a blizzard, of course; it looks like an ordinary November day in the midwest.

Burt Lancaster stars, overacting all the way. At the height of the ‘blizzard’, his wife demands a divorce, his daughter runs away, the airport’s neighbors send legal demands that the airport shut down overnight every night — starting at midnight tonight — oh, and there’s a mad bomber on an incoming flight.

Dean Martin co-stars as a cocky and demanding pilot, whose girlfriend the stewardess is pregnant. Helen Hays, “First Lady of American Theatre,” plays a little old lady stowaway, a crime everyone takes ridiculously seriously.

Amid all the soap-opera elements, the ‘happy ending’ is that both leading men, Lancaster and Martin, leave their age-appropriate wives for much younger women. Everything here is sexist, mildly racist, and makes heavy 1970s overuse of split screens. It’s primo big-budget schlock.

My dad worked at Boeing and was a huge enthusiast for aeronautics, and took our whole family to see this movie in 1970. He loved it, probably because it’s bloated with presumably-paid product placement for Boeing — half a dozen lines of dialogue scattered through the film, always about how great Boeing’s planes are (were) designed and constructed.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Deciding Vote (2023)

George Michaels was a New York politician from a heavily-Republican district, who cast the deciding vote in the state senate in 1970, to keep abortion against the law. When he saw the results on the tote board, though, that the legislation had failed by just one vote, he asked for the floor, and switched his vote.

The bill had already passed in the Assembly and the Governor had promised to sign it, so Senator Michaels’ change of heart legalized abortion in New York. Within a few years, women had legal control of their bodies in several other states, and the Supreme Court (then an institution interested in justice) overturned abortion restrictions nationwide. One vote can make a difference, as they say.

This is a short documentary, not even twenty minutes, about Sen Michaels’ change of heart. No fluff, straight to the point, here’s a decent man doing the right thing, though he knew it would torpedo his career.

It’s kickass filmmaking, with two small complaints. It’s weird to make a film on this topic a year after Roe v Wade was overturned without mentioning it, and Deciding Vote is soaked in tinkly piano music that adds nothing but manipulation of the viewers’ emotions.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Razor’s Edge (1984)

Bill Murray stars as Larry Darrell, a fairly ordinary schmo born to upper-middle class life, with a rich, pretty fiancée and a job offer to become a stockbroker. War intervenes, and like everyone always says, it’s hell.

Larry lives through it, but he’s not the same, and decides he doesn’t want the life that’s been laid out for him. Instead he spends his savings being a bum in Paris, trying to figure out where he fits into the universe. He invites his fiancée to join him, but she’s skeptical. She wants an easier life, more money, fewer cockroaches.

This is an excellent adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s powerhouse novel. It’s gut-grabbing and thoughtful, as Larry endures war, then tries to recover from it, and seeks answers from wisdom-speakers in the mountains of Tibet.

Or maybe India, I’m not sure. It’s almost a trope now, but The Razor’s Edge is the novel that introduced the seek-wisdom-from-a-guru-in-the-mountains cliché.

High above our mundane world, Larry finds what he’s looking for, unravels the riddle, but doesn’t share the answer with us. And I can understand that. I’ve figured out the meaning of life too, but do you think I’d tell you rubes?

Much like the novel, it’s a frickin’ fantastic story, until the point where Larry finds the answers. After that it’s only very, very good.

Murray famously demanded that Columbia Pictures make this movie, as part of his paycheck for appearing in the much bigger moneymaker Ghostbusters 2. Some people thought it was nuts to have a funny guy do Somerset Maugham, but Murray is exactly right in the role. He even infuses the character with bits of humor, but never too much.

Catherine Hicks, Theresa Russell, Denholm Elliott, and James Keach are all top-notch in supporting roles.

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Scared to Death (1947)

Bela Lugosi’s only starring role in color, this is a turgid mess of clichés and tripe, narrated by a corpse on an autopsy table. Except for Lugosi, the acting is strenuously over the top, with everyone in the cast trying to sell a stale tale to the cheap seats in the back row.

Verdict: NO.

♦ ♦ ♦

Shadow on the Land (1968)

This is a made-for-TV movie from the 1960s, envisioning America as a police state. The plot is your basic good guys struggling against tyranny, but they’re doing it for 19-inch television, so it’s mostly action and drama, foot chases and ominous orders, but it’s light on what caused the end of civil rights, and doesn’t show much of the brutality that linchpins an authoritarian empire.

Wikipedia says the movie is based on Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, but I’m calling BS. I read Lewis’s book a month ago, and it has no characters in common with this, nor anything plotwise beyond the concept of fictitious fascism. Lewis isn’t credited, and his estate would’ve sued if he was. The film itself says, “written by Nedrick Young,” and “created by Sidney Sheldon.”

It’s an unsold pilot for a TV show, with TV aspirations and a TV cast, plus Jackie Cooper and Gene Hackman. It’s corny but watchable, quaintly interesting, with all the depth of its era’s Ironside or Marcus Welby.

Verdict: MAYBE.

5/1/2025

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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