On the way I planned to stop by and visit, and maybe
interview, legendary “Naked Bookstore” owner Paul Winer at Quartzsite’s Reader’s
Oasis Books…
It turned out, alas, I was two days too late; you can read my
story about it here.
But since we were in Quartzsite, we took a minute to visit
the grave of the famed camel driver Hi Jolly; here’s me and The Kid at that distinctive
monument…
As for the Noir Festival, it offered rare showings of a
couple of obscure gems, both in beautiful new 35-millimeter prints (hopefully
they’ll both show up soon on TCM). 1956’s
The Scarlet Hour…
…starred sultry Carol Ohmart, cheating on her abusive
husband James Gregory with sap Tom Tryon; it also featured early scene-stealing
by the young Elaine Stritch. And there was the wonderful moment when Gregory,
renting a car for some shady business, asked rental guy for “the most
inconspicuous car you’ve got." And if all that wasn’t enough, Nat “King” Cole appears in
it, and sings.
Richard Fleischer’s Trapped (1949), which begins like a docu-drama with a stentorian narrator, turns into a good lurid melodrama with just-as-sultry Barbara Payton, in the clinch with Lloyd Bridges as an escaped counterfeiter. Bridges is a brute here, but fabulously dapper; when we first see him he’s brought into the warden’s office at the federal penitentiary, but he looks like he’s dressed for lunch at the Brown Derby. He keeps getting into fights throughout the film, and I wanted him to knock it off, because I hated to see his outfits get messed up.
Caught up with this one belatedly:
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu—Almost twenty years ago it fell to
me to review, for New Times, one of the animated Pokemon movies. It
was an alienating experience, sitting there, watching the incomprehensible
action up on the screen, all the while aware that it was perfectly comprehensible
to the kids around me in the theatre. Now I’ve seen the franchise’s first
live-action feature film, and I’m only slightly less perplexed.
For the uninitiated, a Pokemon—the term derives from “Pocket
Monster”—is any of a large selection of strange creatures, variously fuzzy or
downy or scaly, featured in Japanese video games and trading cards and toys and
TV cartoons and so on. Some of them fly, some swim, others are quadrupedal,
with what look like giant cloves of garlic growing out of their backs.
Certainly the most famous is Pikachu, a furry yellow
sort-of-cat with red cheeks and a tail that resembles a bolt of electricity.
He’s the star of this new film, a mystery set in an alternate reality in which
humans and Pokemon co-exist.
The story starts with Tim (Justice Smith), a human kid,
traveling to “Ryme
City” after hearing of
the death of his estranged police detective father. He soon meets his father’s
companion Pikachu, here rendered in CGI and voiced by Ryan Reynolds. In a grand
film noir tradition, Pikachu’s an amnesiac. The two of them team up with
obligatory plucky young reporter Kathryn Newton to probe a convoluted intrigue
involving the escape of a powerful dragon/kangaroo/dinosaur-like Pokemon called
“Mewtwo” from a research facility.
That’s about as coherently as I can summarize the plot.
Besides, if you’re a Pokemon buff you don’t need me to summarize it for you,
and if you’re not, you need it even less. All I can say is that it’s an
impeccably well-made movie in the modern style, briskly edited and scored, with
the CGI seamlessly intermingled with the live-action cast and settings. The
nattering of Reynolds is amusing at times, the human leads are likable, and
such veteran character actors as Bill Nighy and Ken Watanabe turn up in
supporting parts. And any movie that gets Bill Nighy a paycheck can’t be all
bad.
