The Last Movie You Watched

[Foxaèr]

Has anyone watched Detective Pikachu yet? If so, do you know where I could watch it online for free?

No.

And it's a movie I'll never see.

Much like ET.

I'm not a pokemon fan, but E.T. was awesome.

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is The Babe Ruth Story.

If you've been following the Deep Hurting Project, you might know that my initial impetus (one of many) was the observation that both my favourite film of all time and the worst film I'd ever seen at that point were both featured on the 366 Weird Movies Blog (and then wondering if Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny even counted as a film due to its mostly being comprised of a pre-existing film of Thumbelina, edited in its entirety into the film, including credits.) Now, perhaps fittingly, now my favourite film and the worst non-asterisked film I've ever seen both have something in common: they both feature "Singing in the Rain."





It may or may not be worth noting that the first two times I put this in my Blu-Ray player, it started growling so loud it threatened to overpower the soundtrack. I can only assume that even it was enraged at having to show it to me.

The Babe Ruth Story is nominally a biopic telling the story of Babe Ruth. In practice, it's more or less a hagiography of Babe Ruth. This might not be so bad; the research I've done into Babe Ruth (which mostly consisted of watching Pride of the Yankees and skimming the TVTropes and Wikipedia articles about him since I know bugger-all about baseball) doesn't seem to have uncovered any particularly galling behaviour (it's not like he's Ty Cobb). And, as a bonus, the actor they cast to play him, William Bendix actually knew Ruth personally. He was a batboy for the Yankees and saw Ruth hit 100 home runs, and got fired because he bought Babe twelve hot dogs and eight sodas between games in a double header and he got a bad case of indigestion that kept him from playing the second game. And to boot, he was an Oscar nominee. Where did it go wrong?

Well, I might use the "how do you fuck that up" clip, but it's clear exactly how they fucked up. It's clear when they spend the first five minutes as a boring travelogue for the Baseball Hall of Fame, where they spend several minutes going over plaques until they finally get to Babe Ruth's, and they call him "The Superman of Baseball." That's actually mild in comparison to some of the insane shit they have him do. Among other things, he cures a paralysed kid and makes him walk just by saying "Hiya, kid" to him. Even Jesus said something more substantial when he made the lame man walk.



And, Hell, the infamous called shot from the 1932 World Series apparently cured a kid's cancer.



(To be fair, this was apparently [very loosely] based on a real incident from the 1926 World Series and the truth is so muddled that many think it was just a hoax.)

And what's most galling about this film is the way they portray Babe Ruth. It's to be expected that they'd idealise someone like him, especially someone so beloved, who was still alive (albeit just barely) when the film was made, especially in an era when the booze and hookers he indulged in IRL (meanwhile, in this film, he warns to kids that smoking will stunt their growth) would have fallen foul of the Hays Office. But, bizarrely, Bendix' performance is best described as "profoundly stupid and childlike with a millieu of family comedy gangster." Apart from Bendix not looking or sounding like the Babe at all, he's given lines like "$600! There Ain't that much money in the whole world!" Lines like this would be clunky and idiotic coming from a child. In this film, they come from the 42-year-old William Bendix playing the 18-year-old Babe Ruth. I should point out that Bendix, up to this point, was mostly known for playing gangsters in movies like The Glass Key or soldiers in movies like Lifeboat. At times, it seems like a mentally challenged man written by Damon Runyon, especially when he tips a kid $200 after finding out his biggest tip before this (given by Babe Ruth himself earlier) was $100. To be fair, I've heard this story attributed to Sinatra, and it almost seemed plausible, but seeing Bendix saying "Who's da cheapskate gave you da measly hundred bucks" just makes it sound even more cheap. At one point, he goes into a hospital dressed as Santa promising to tell the children about "Da Tree Bears dat was all Chicago Cubs." So the sight of Bendix like this is utterly bizarre. To be fair, I think they're aware of how stupidly they've written him: in one scene, he's talking with his manager in a restaurant when a woman (his future wife Claire, presumably combined with his first wife, as was a common practice in biopics at the time) points out a flaw in his technique. His response is to look bewildered and say "your voice is changing" to the man. You know, maybe if they took this route and went with it (and presumably took Babe Ruth's name off the film), this performance may have been tolerable. But they attached it with a performance in a really shitty movie that's supposed to be serious.

And, of course, I should have to remind you after that stupidity that he's still treated by the film as a god among men, a cinematic yurodiviy, if you're being incredibly charitable. You know, Pride of the Yankees really idealised Lou Gehrig, but at least Gary Cooper's Lou Gehrig was still a recognisable human being. Bendix' Babe Ruth is not that. Fun fact: there's another biopic that would have been included in the Deep Hurting Project if they actually released it on DVD: Wired. It was a really tone-deaf biopic of John Belushi mixing subpar SNL reenactments (because they couldn't get the rights to the actual material) and John Belushi being insulted in the afterlife for the drug use that killed him (up to and including a scene where he gets autopsied while he's alive and screaming and a laugh track plays). It was still better than this. At least Michael Chiklis nailed down Belushi. At least they tried to delve into the darker aspects of Belushi's life. This film is a shallow hagiography with no redeeming qualities, not even any sort of historical accuracy. It insults the viewer's intelligence all the way, and still, many critics at the time actually fell for it (at least Bosley Crowther didn't.)

One more thing to point out: I had an uncle who was really obsessed with (among other things, like NASA, dinosaurs, and Dr. Who) baseball, and The Yankees. After he died, we found a painting of Mickey Mantle among his possessions. I don't know if he ever set foot in New York (we're from Chicago), but with the Yankees' record, it's not surprising that someone'd latch onto them. He was kind of abrasive, and railed against Obamacare even as he languished in a charity hospital because he didn't have insurance to cover his health issues. I don't know how horrible he would have been in the age of Trump, but I'd love to be able to spend two more hours with him, united in the opinion that The Babe Ruth Story is the worst film ever made.

[Fake Messiah]

I watched movie "Footloose" (1984) about group of teenagers in 1980s fighting Christianity with dancing.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I watched movie "Footloose" (1984) about group of teenagers in 1980s fighting Christianity with dancing.

"Is it still the greatest movie in history?"

"It never was."

[Rev. Rye]

After dealing with my business ethics exam, the worst movie I've ever seen, a more critically acclaimed movie about ISIS, and a brief malware scare that seems to have been averted by my clearing my cookies and cache, I decided to finally relax with Won't You Be My Neighbor. It can be a bit surreal for me to deal with such unabashed positivity, especially after a stressful situation, but they let you into some of the more serious moments, like brief insights into his own less than ideal childhood, rare footage including Daniel Striped Tiger and Lady Aberlin talking about the MLK RFK assassination, and the occasional moments where the score sounds like they're trying to do mockbuster versions of popular songs for some reason, like "Another One Bites the Dust" or Philip Glass' "Opening."

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Waiting for the announcement of the conjoined video of the last two Infinity Stones movies, to be called "To Infinity Wars, and Beyond!"

[Foxaèr]

Wine Country

When a group of longtime girlfriends goes to Napa for the weekend to celebrate their friend's 50th birthday, tensions from the past boil over.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Get Carter

One of the better gangster films to come out of the UK in the 70s.  A London gangster travels to Newcastle to investigate the death of his younger brother.  Starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, and Britt Ekland's boobs.  Biggest take away:  Michael Caine would have made an acceptable James Bond if he could have damped down the cockney accent.  Certainly would have been better than that travesty, Roger Moore.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Endgame alternate ending:

Thanos: "Where's the infinity stone?"

Doctor Strange: "It's in this dog."

Thanos after killing the dog: "Did you think that would stop me?"

Doctor Strange: "Wait for it..."

John Wick: "Has anyone seen my new dog?"

Thanos: "Fuck!"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Spoilers, mate!!

Boru