Rex Baxter Dot Com

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I should very much like to know who invited the traveling faire to pass through town. Have these festival organizers no decorum? They must, they simply must, know that I am hopelessly enthusiastic about gambling my savings away at carnival games. Why, this very weekend, I played the game of Skipping Pins until my billfold was quite flat in shape. I can fold the thing in quarters now! I close my eyes to nap this hazy afternoon and behind my eyelids I can still see the sinewy neck of the proprietor of this gaming stand and the way his weathered skin drew taut when he turned his head or grinned.

This gives me pause. Is my situation not unlike the situation endured by the officers aboard the submersible USS Alabama in the film “Crimson Tide”? The movie sees a magical submarine boat populated by American naval officers. If the operations and procedures of war were not taxing enough as it is upon its soldiers, imagine the effect of all these politics occurring within a steel tube that offers no point of escape! Every square inch is in high demand. All the feats of technical savvy and physical brawn must be made in a space essentially the size of a hallway filled with 300 men. When the sailors are ordered to fire the world’s most powerful artillery upon their Russian enemy, they begrudgingly accept their yoke. A second communication is cut off halfway during its transmission. It may be an order to stand down and avoid mutually assured destruction, but there is just no way to know.

Today I picture myself in the role of Lt. Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington) and my criminally amiable foe as Capt. Ramsay (Gene Hackman). Do not the both of us feel that we are in the right? I should say that we do! There I stood with gristly puck in hand, measuring what would have to be my final chance to win a stuffed toy fern, knowing with all my being that I was a hero on a campaign of destiny. But certainly this games broker, whose name was Bors, must have seen in me his doom wrought in bone and unblemished flesh. It is all analogous to a standoff that would prevent cataclysmic war.

O Cabinet Ghost, what is the nature of evil? When Hunter balked at the prospect of decimating his Russo-Militaristic enemies with a rain of bombastic fire he was certain that his actions were for the good of all his fellow men. But what if his initial orders stood without his knowledge and he was simply securing the doom of his countrymen? Should we consider Hackman’s commander an evil man simply because he follows orders and exhibits the necessary rigor required for managing a warship that somehow operates beneath the waves?

Our emotions can sweep us away. Having heaved my ultimate puck and missed the mark I pleaded for a mulligan, but Bors was not having it. I said that I am a doctor and have saved many lives and deserve more chances that the common layman, which would have been a dashing argument had I not been gesticulating wildly enough to poke a young girl behind me in the eye with my thumb. I believe I apologized profusely enough to this girl, who had little business doddling around in my blind spot, to avoid the fate of hot caramel being dumped on my head by her mother. Her mother, to my barber’s chagrin, had a different perspective.

And there is the rub! No force of evil, whether it be Gene Hackman or Bors the carnie or this little girl’s mother who carries around hot caramel, walks through life intending evil intentions. It took “Crimson Tide” to remind me that even the most aggressively stanced opponent will believe that Providence and morality is on his side. Objectively, removed from the emotions of the combatants, this would make any victory in any situation an evil occasion. As Hunter says in the movie, “the enemy is war itself”.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

April 6, 1892

Crimson Tide

• Actors: Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen
• Director: Tony Scott
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: February 4, 1998
• Run Time: 116 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

The film I viewed today seems to have been drawn. That is, as a movie is normally a succession of photographs passing before the eyes so quickly that the images seem to be in motion, this film could have been a series of drawings. And what things these drawings can do! Today I watched a fat man hitting himself in the eye with a claw hammer, a baby exploring a magical worm-tunnel in her sandbox, a squirrel with a thousand eyes cavorting, and God manifesting himself as a shaft of light to induce a demented rant in an old man. All this in the first ten minutes of the movie!

The story concerns a comic buffoon ruining Lake Springfield by dumping a silo’s worth of pig droppings into it. The US government attempts to quarantine the befouled area by dropping a gigantic glass dome over the town, entombing its citizens. Homer escapes with his family, but they are torn by the man’s inability to set aside his own selfish and idiotic goals for the sake of his clan.

The movie is framed like a satire, but half the time I couldn’t understand what it was lampooning. It’s as if the creators spent years creating a complex mythical world populated by zany archetypes and made this movie as a representative glimpse. My complaint is that they assume any casual viewer would be able to recognize these characters.

Funny: “Bountiful penis. Amen.”
I don’t get it: “Spider-pig.”
Funny: Lisa’s automatic lifting platform going berserk.
I don’t get it: A Spaniard in a bee costume.
Funny: The completely idiot-proof barrier. “I simply can’t!”
I don’t get it: Marge washing one dish in a burning house.

There is so much mania that the five cumulative minutes devoted to sentimentality and plot do not pack much of a punch. I, being a confessed ninny, have been moved by more stories of hamsters belonging to diplomats (of course I refer to Sir C.E. Howard Vincent’s beloved pet Grover) than I was by this movie. I didn’t care that Homer’s family left. I didn’t care that Lisa had fallen in love. The whole affair was treated as if its events would have no effect on the future of this world. If every moment is packed to capacity with bits and gags, then how can we feel any gravity summoned by the pathos behind it all?

To be sure, the gags I understood were very good gags. I feel as if I just spent Thanksgiving with a hilarious uncle who speaks some foreign language. His anecdotes are beyond me, but his pratfalls are the world’s finest. I was tickled and frustrated over and over in quick succession, like a whore at an Irish chicken factory on Friday. Give me a movie that creates a world within itself before playing against its own parameters. As it is, this film seems like a swatch taken from a rich tapestry when, honestly, the tapestry itself would have been nice, too.

This movie does not pass muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 30, 1892

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

A good story is populated by good characters. Any layperson could have burned down the governor’s myrrh shed last autumn and it wouldn’t have even made the blotter. That it was burned down by the cantankerous boxer Fitz Leroi who is famed for dipping his valets in sugar and rum before taking them dancing made that event the sensation of the the coast. “LA Confidential” is a great tale. It’s a mystery with as many twists, turns, innuendos, and intrigues as can be demanded of a crime story. It is the combination of this masterful storytelling with its nuanced characterizations that propels the film into plain perfection. Inasmuch as I watch movies emblazoned onto platters by a cabinet whose magic I do not fully understand using an electro-magnetic marvel of futuristic technology, this movie was even more amazing than most of the movies I’ve seen.

The movie is driven by the actions of three cops who all respect justice, but could not seek it in more different ways. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a flashy constable leading a second life as an adviser to movie-makers in Hollywoodland. How exhilarating! A movie within a movie! It’s like a Russian nesting doll of Kevin Spacey contribution. Bud White (Russell Crowe) is seemingly the toughest man in the world and, as a cop, is willing to bend the rules to see wrongs righted and rights un-wronged. And then there’s Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), a young buck of a cop who uses dogged adherence to the letter of the law in the hopes that he will live up to his legendary crimefighting father.

Together, these unlikely colleagues investigate and set straight a town where a mob boss has been deposed, his would-be replacements keep getting executed, hookers are surgically altered (yick!) to look like glamorous famous actresses, and a dirty ex-cop (incidentally Bud’s ex-partner) is killed in a massacre at a cafe that is more than it seems. Indeed, the movie seemed wrapped up completely about halfway through. The mastery here is that this first summit was by far not the high point of the film. What could have been a second half of fits and starts is instead a beautifully conceived tapestry of deceit and revelations that keep the events one step ahead of any viewer’s anticipation. Tremendous movie! Boffo!

More than just a gripping tale, “LA Confidential” stands as a voice reporting the grim reality of police corruption. Indeed, some of the biggest victories for law and order happen as a result of help from the city’s shadier corners. I was reminded of the Haymarket Riot, wherein the brave police of Chicago had no choice but to shoot and shoot and shoot those crazed potentially-armed anarchists before they took over the carnival. Well done, boys!

I could never be a hooker cut to look like a famous actress. Sure, it’s fun to pretend to be famous people. When I was a tyke I would pretend to be Sitting Bull’s squire by sealing a feather to my head with a lump of hot crayon. But the whores in this film, particularly Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), are whores of character. Lynn has real moral fiber. Even her slip of betrayal against Bud was, as she says, intended to be helpful. I just know I would lapse. I’d be set up in a fancy Hollywoodland bunaglow with my film reels and Palmetto tree-lined yard and decadence would set in. Before you know it I’d be up to my waist in reefer ash and pulling taffy from my ears. What kind of a whore is that, I ask you! It is a testament to the filmmakers that these characters are strong enough to avoid the snootier pitfalls that their lifestyles would seemingly afford them.

I’d like to buy the makers of this film a lobster. Tonight I’m going to eat a handful of sugar and sleep as this film plays so that I may dream the film. If I could sire sons, I’d name them all Danny DeVito followed by a number based upon the order in which they were born (Danny DeVito was great in this movie).

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 26, 1892

L.A. Confidential

• Actors: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger
• Director: Curtis Hanson
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: April 21, 1998
• Run Time: 138 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

It is plain to see that young people today have shorter attention spans than previous generations. Why, in my youth, I could sit and watch a mud river squish by for two whole days before I needed a lemonade break to regain my focus. These tots today, with their pull-wagons and jars of buttons, can hardly focus on a passing bob thread long enough to knit a ream of sweaters (a good job for a kid at $0.14 a day!).

For this reason, I believe the intended audience of this movie “Stardust” must be children, due to its serial, episodic nature. More a fantastic hodge-podge than a whole organic piece, it still stands the test of quality if not unity. To give you a taste, sir ghost, of the all-over-the-placedness of the film’s plot, I shall deliver my summation in one long sentence:

Eighteen years ago a man crossed a forbidden wall and sired a bastard son with a magical princess not expecting that the child would be delivered to him to raise and would grow into our hero, Tristan (Charlie Cox), who falls in love with a rich girl (Sienna Miller) despite his place as a poor market boy and promises to deliver to her a piece of a fallen star in exchange for her hand in marriage and when he finds the fallen star it turns out to actually be a young lady named Yvaine (Claire Danes) who is being pursued by a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and several evil princes so that they can rule the magical kingdom on the forbidden side of said wall, and then Robert Deniro pilots a zeppelin and wears dresses.

After that, it gets a little confusing. Simply put, this film was unable to make the transition from a series of illustrated Olde-English-style stanzas to a feature film without losing some roughness at its seams. It’s a problem which can be easily overlooked, due to the high-form winking performances from its actors, especially Ms. Pfeiffer and Mr. Deniro. Combine the large acting with the spectacle of magic effects and ghosts and sparkling scenery and the whole exercise becomes downright jovial; a celebration of itself. Stardust never coheres, but it boasts enough to win me over regardless.

I admire the craft that it took to turn the hideously old Michelle Pfeiffer into a charming, less-old version of herself. She must have sat in a chair for hours while masons and carpenters stuffed so much skin tone epoxy under her jowls and into the ostrich-feet around her eyes. She should be applauded for taping her body so extensively that there is nary a sign that she possesses breasts at all. Those same makeup artists ought to be applauded for their steadfastness in painting Robert Deniro’s mole a shade darker than Satan’s black mucus.

I don’t under stand why Deniro’s Captain Shakespeare was included in the film, actually. He appears, befriends our star-crossed (har har) heroes, sends them on their way, and becomes quickly irrelevant thereafter. And he dances around in a dress, causing an awkward intervention with his manly crew that bears no significant fruit at all. In a story about a cross-dressing sea captain fighting the forces of evil, this would have been a dynamite turn. In a story about a poor boy becoming a man in a magic kingdom, it’s a flowery distraction.

But what a complaint! The whole movie is distractions! And after all, what else is the point of a fantasy story like this? Am I to expect to extract all the lessons of moral uprightness and success in life from a movie where magic and mundane kingdoms lie side-by-side and the only man protecting the border is too old to fight, run, or reason aptly? If all I ask of Stardust is roughly two hours of winks and grins, then it delivers with elan.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 24, 1892

Stardust (Widescreen Edition)

• Actors: Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Claire Danes
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: December 18, 2007
• Run Time: 127 minutes
• DVD Extras: “Good Omens: The Making of Stardust” production featurette, deleted scenes, blooper reel (Ricky Gervais shines), theatrical trailer

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

An automobile ran over the mayor two months ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. The motorist did not realize that he’d struck a politician but he’d felt the telltale thud of humanity on his bumpcrop. And so he backed up to investigate, trodding his car over the mayor yet another time. Seeing nothing, he pulled forward again over the mayor to be sure that he’d feel a bump again. He did. This rolling-over back and forth went on for twelve minutes until the mayor’s teenage son entered the truck parlor and put a stop to it. The point I am trying to make is that automobiles are terrible contraptions (the mayor is fine).

I was agog at the minute-long politico-history lesson that started “The Kingdom” off but, if I catch the gist properly, I am to understand that Americans will become so reliant on their automobiles that they will cede economic superiority to the Ottomans so they may suck at the teat of the Arabs’ plentiful oil fields. Imagine! Oil under Persia! In this context our heroes (a black man, a pretty woman, an old man, and a funny Jew) report to the scene of an explosion in the heart of the occupied desert. A particularly macabre vision from this crime is the sight of a bearded man disguised as a helpful police officer drawing children closer to him before saying a quick prayer and blowing himself and his charges to so many smithereens.

In fact, all of the violence in this film is displayed with great reverence for speed and noise. The horseless wars of this world thunder by so quickly that at times it’s hard to tell which Muslims are evil and which are just not-evil enough to tolerate the Americans. It goes to show that if automobiles, aeroplanes, and high-octance heliocopters were not available there’d be much less carnage to worry about.

When the dust settles, this film does passably well letting us into the lives of its heroes. I wondered why Jason Bateman’s character was not assigned a spine. Aren’t these fellows supposed to be crackerjack police officers? You’d think he could at least handle a sidearm so as to, I don’t know, prevent himself from being kidnapped as easily as a pregnant pony. That is quite easy! Remind me, sir ghost, that if I ever travel to Arabia I’ll need to pack more protection than my signature quiver of quips. I’ll need Jamie Foxx.

Mr. Foxx has enough bravado and presence to lead this squad. He helped me forget that reconciling the loss of hundreds of lives in the middle of a tense warzone (made all the more tense by the presence on ominously speedy auto-cars) could probably not actually be resolved by the derring-do of four American interlopers and their brown-toned native sidekick. The abrupt tacking-on of an Aesopian moral at the film’s end would’ve been a skirt-lifting wink in the hands of a lesser performer. Mr. Foxx carries it with gravity.

How many letter X’s are in the word “foxx”? I thought it was only one.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 19, 1892

PS From the Editors: See the links in Rex’s reviews? Those are safe to click on, folks. We promise. They’re not paid links; they’re just stuff around the web that we found interesting. Surf away!