Friday Night Movie Recommendation #27 "Outland" (1981)

The Comic Critic's Review of "Darby O'Gill and the Little People"

 Darby O’Gill and the Little People was featured regularly on the weekly television show The Wonderful World of Disney. I’ve seen it so many times I’ve lost count. It’s a perfect family movie, or at least I thought so when I was a kid. I loved watching Darby and King Brian of the leprechauns engage in their battle of wits—even though I knew how it would always end. Darby O’Gill and the Little People is a wonderful fantasy movie. It captured my imagination and held me enraptured. I think it might have been my first introduction to Irish myth and legends. I never thought it overdid Irish stereotypes. Yes, we knew that Darby preferred spending his time at the pub rather than on the estate. But we always felt it was because that’s where the audience for his leprechaun stories was. Having a bit of a pint was just a lucky happenstance, not a signature of alcoholism. I’ve not seen Darby O’Gill and the Little People in a while. With the slew of newer fantasy films available, I can see how some might have overlooked this now seldom-seen Disney film. Pull it out of the vault and watch it with your family. You will find that it’s much better than a lot of the nanny films sitting on your shelf.

The Comic Critic Reviews "Zardoz"

Zardoz is a cult classic. Part of its charm is its fearlessness. Like a man with no rhythm or moves hitting the dance floor just because he loves to dance and screw what anybody else thinks, Zardoz goes for broke on the screen. Embarrassment is not an option. So, it’s not an embarrassment that Sean Connery shows off just how hairy a Scotsman can be in a scarlet loincloth with suspenders and thigh-high boots. It’s not an embarrassment that this fairly decent post-Apocalypse melodrama’s script is slightly overshadowed by sets and costumes that look like they came out of a discothèque designer’s wet dream. It’s an Irish-American production with director John Boorman being given pretty much free rein after the highly successful film Deliverance. While Zardoz did not fare well at the box office or with critics, it did find its audience in the video rental market for those looking for truly unusual and bizarre entertainment. Its cult following has grown so strong that love it or hate it, Zardoz has become entrenched in our culture.

The Comic Critic Reviews Goldfinger

What makes Goldfinger one of the best Bond movies ever? It wasn’t the first James Bond film. It wasn’t even the first James Bond film featuring Sean Connery. It wasn’t the first with a great villain or the first with great spy gadgets. But it was the first to have every each and every element of a Bond movie reach out and please its audience all the way through. We loved hating the villain. We found the henchman exotic and threatening. The car was a lovely thing. The women were beauties. Everything in the film looks great, from costume design to the giant ceiling-mounted laser, which has a more Buck Rogers flair than your normal industrial machine. All the elements you desired for a spy movie were delivered, wrapped up in a song that drove itself up the charts. While the music was fantastic, it can’t take all the credit for this fantastic Bond. The producers learned an important lesson from the theme song of Dr. No. That theme became the Bond movie theme. Great care went into selecting, composing, and writing the theme songs that would play well and set the tone for the following Bond movies. What makes this one of the best ever is that they got everything right. Drawing this strip was easy; all I had to do was list just a few things that went right in the movie, then punctuate it with a gag.

Why do I give Goldfinger only a nine? Because I didn’t get to see it in the theater. Why didn’t I get to see it in the theater? Because I was only two years old. Because my parents had the common sense and courtesy not to take a toddler to a movie filled with gunfire, explosions, and a plot that didn’t involve animated animals. Am I getting sidetracked onto the subject of people bringing in underage children to watch inappropriate movies? Yes I am. Just because the film has a tiger in it, you don’t take your six-year-old daughter to see Life of Pi. I personally don’t care what movies you watch with your kids at home. But a theater is a communal experience. And while it might take a village to raise your offspring, you don’t take them to see The Village while their still in nappies and cant follow the plot, get squirrely and then start a long wheezing cry that spoils everybody’s experience. I’m sorry, but if you’ve got enough mulla to bring your kid to the theater, you’ve got enough to cover a baby sitter. And that’s why Goldfinger only gets a nine.

The Return of Stickman #1156

It's time for the name game.