Movies

The Green Slime (1968) Space station comes under attack by energy-eating blob monsters that can reproduce themselves from a single cell. It's amazing how a movie that has so much going for it in the way of sets, models, characters and story can come out so boring. It seems to me that much of it was shot too close - not enough variation between shots, not enough scale and depth in the scenes. Something about it has never worked for me - I had a hard time sitting through it years ago and it is still tough. 5/10

The Detective (1968) I didn't realize these two movies were made in the same year but they couldn't be more different. I first became aware of this from a trailer included on the disc with Sinatra's 1967 film Tony Rome. Now, Tony Rome is a tongue in cheek action drama full of snide lewd sexist and racist "humor," crude stereotypes and clumsy dialog that seems to be striving for a Playboy Magazine Lifestyle effect but the result is more like a waterlogged issue of Swank or Rascal. It's a dreadful and degrading film to watch. The Detective is the other side of the coin, as if he had to balance out all the errors of Tony Rome. It is genuinely intelligent and sensitive, and it addresses social and sexual issues in an outstandingly mature manner. Its treatment of homosexuality in particular is probably the most equitable to appear in any popular American media of the time. Sinatra plays a genuinely decent and unprejudiced man slowly being ground to pieces by a sociopolitical system that crushes decent people underfoot and raises bastards and assholes to positions of power and authority. This is a superior and powerful film with an excellent cast, with as much to say about our world today as it did then, and I think everyone ought to see it. 10/10