Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXXIV

During the last calendar quarter of 2018 I only had an opportunity to catch eight movies on television.  Two of them, M*A*S*H and Ten Little Indians, I'd seen before long ago, bringing back the memories related below.

Once in awhile a discussion might turn to funny scenes in movies.  On more than one such occasion I've offered as my favorite a scene from M*A*S*H, a 1970 satire about war directed by the incomparable Robert Altman.  The setting is an army "hospital" on the Korean Peninsula during the early '50's combat.  The hospital is mostly comprised of several tents and makeshift buildings.  Donald Sutherland and Tom Skerritt play two hot shot surgeons, Hawkeye Pierce and Duke Forrest, who make up their own rules as they go along.  They can get away with their devil-may-care approach to life because (i) as surgeons they are indispensable, treating the critically and not-so-critically wounded GIs brought in by ambulance from the front lines, and (ii) the chief commanding officer of the camp is Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake (the low key, inestimable Roger Bowen), who has almost no control over what his subordinates are up to.

When they're not in the operating room, Hawkeye and Duke are best friends and tent mates.  Their drink of choice is a dry vodka martini, consumed liberally throughout their non-working hours.  One day a third surgeon, Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould), reports for duty.  He fits right in with Hawkeye and Duke, which is to say he's witty, sarcastic, chauvinistic and flamboyant.  They are three of a kind.  When Trapper John first walks into their tent, Hawkeye and Duke offer the new arrival a martini, apologizing for the absence of the requisite olive.  After all, they are thousands of miles from home and nowhere near civilization.  With that, Trapper John pulls a jar of olives from the breast pocket of his jacket and, much to the astonishment of his two new drinking buddies, plops the plump green globe into his cocktail.  Perfecto!

One of my favorite authors is Agatha Christie.  One year, circa 1976, I had my eighth grade English students read her 1939 classic, And Then There Were None.  The plot involves a gathering of ten strangers inside an old mansion on a remote island.  They have been invited by a mysterious Mr. Owen whom none of the guests has met.  Due to the weather and other uncontrollable factors, once the guests have arrived there is no escaping and no telephone availability.  Then one by one, the guests start being murdered, but there are no witnesses.  Soon the survivors realize that the murderer must be one of them.  My students almost unanimously enjoyed the novel which, by the way, is the world's best selling mystery of all time.

In 1965 the book had been made into a movie with the title Ten Little Indians.  As part of a fund raising project, my class and I decided to rent the movie and show it on a Friday night in the school's basement auditorium.  The public was invited for a relatively cheap admission fee.  The 16 millimeter film arrived the day before and I decided to view it by myself that evening.  Oh boy, trouble!  There was a scene in the film which was not in the book.  The guests played by Hugh O'Brian and Shirley Eaton ended up in bed together, a scene which lasted about two minutes.  How was I going to be able to show this to an auditorium filled with grade schoolers and parents?

Here was my solution.  After the auditorium filled up that Friday night but before the movie started, I thanked people for supporting our fund raiser and then advised them that, in recognition of the young kids in attendance, I would turn off the projector's lamp during a certain scene.  (I did not tell them that another factor I considered was my job security.)  That's exactly what I did; no one objected.  In fact, while the light from the projector was off the auditorium was almost rendered pitch black, an unintended effect which added to the spookiness of the story.  The dialogue between O'Brian and Eaton's characters was still audible, but thankfully bland.  The show was a success and we managed to make a few bucks.

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These are the eight movies I viewed on the small screen in the fourth quarter of 2018.   

1. Friday Night Lights (2004 drama; Billy Bob Thornton is the head football coach of a large high school in a west Texas town, where all they care about is winning the state championship.)  B-

2. Little Women (1994 drama; Susan Sarandon, whose husband is away fighting in the Civil War, oversees her household of four loving and creative daughters, including Winona Ryder and Claire Danes.)  A-

3. M*A*S*H (1970 war comedy; Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are hot shot surgeons in a life saving but highly irreverent ad hoc hospital near the Korean battlefields.)  A-

4. The Mission (1986 historical drama; in the 1750's, Jesuit Jeremy Irons founds an Indian mission above Argentina's Iguazu Falls, converts slave trader Robert DiNero to the order, and attempts to persuade Archbishop Ray McAnally to protect the natives from European settlers.)  C

5. On Chesel Beach (2017 drama; Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle, a young couple from very different backgrounds, get married but are unable to consummate their marriage, causing them to go their separate ways with much regret.)  C+

6. RBG ( 2018 documentary on the life of the second woman ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)  B+

7. Ten Little Indians (1965 drama;  ten guests, including Hugh O'Brian and Shirley Eaton, are trapped on a remote island, and someone among them is out to kill them all.)   B

8. Time For Me To Come Home For Christmas (2018 romance; Josh Henderson, a country music star, and Megan Park, who does not know he's a celebrity, are forced by a midwestern blizzard to head home together to Tulsa.)  B-