It: Chapter Two (2019) ***

(Warning: Contains spoilers for the first installment of "It" from 2017)

Adapting Stephen King's work to the screen has always been a tricky affair. King is a great storyteller and a great creator of horror because he knows that the scariest thing in this world is the human mind. His stories may have a supernatural element, but the biggest monsters in his stories are always the human ones. So much of his horror takes place in his characters' twisted, confused, flawed, utterly human heads that it's hard to translate that onto a movie or TV screen. You get the occasional classic, like “Carrie” or “The Shining,” but a lot of King movies just suck.

This is the second effort at King's excellent novel “It.” I finally saw part of the 1990 TV mini-series, and it is un-watchable! Tim Curry is fairly memorable as Pennywise the clown, but the rest of the cast, including Harry Anderson and John Ritter, don't carry their weight. The soft-focus cinematography is very dated, and the special effects look like something from a 1970s Dr.Who episode.

Fortunately, director Andy Muschietti has done a much better job at this iteration. I especially liked his first installment, “It,” which came out in 2017 and focuses on a group of kids in Derry, Maine who call themselves The Losers. All damaged or bullied in some way, The Losers do battle against an ancient evil living under their town, an evil which rises every 27 years to feed on children. “It” feeds on fear and can take on any form, but it mostly appears as a clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). The Losers defeat It in 1989, driving It into hibernation. They then grow apart, grow into adults, and most of them leave Derry.

“It: Chapter Two” picks up in 2016. Only Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) still lives in Derry, and oddly, only he has any memory of Pennywise and the Losers' fight against It. The other Losers have managed to forget all that stuff. When kids start disappearing again, Mike recognizes what is going on and notifies his old friends. None of them know exactly what the phone call is about, but they know that they have to return to Derry, and they know it's for something bad.

The first chapter of this story was tightly wound, perfectly cast and paced. Unfortunately, Chapter Two is a bit uneven. They recruited some top-notch talent for the grown-up Losers, including Jessica Chastain as Beverly, James McAvoy as Bill, and, best of all, Bill Hader as jokester Richie. Bill Skarsgard once again is chilling as the murderous clown. The plot, however, goes in fits and starts. I think the problem may be that the novel was too much story for a single movie, but not enough for two, especially movies of this length. Where the first movie maintained laser focus on the kids, Chapter Two bounces back and forth between 1989 and 2016, and its 2 hour 49 minute run-time feels padded. Despite the leisurely storytelling pace, some of the main plot points feel forced, a sign of lazy writing.

With two really long movies to work with, you wouldn't think Andy Muschietti would have had to leave out anything from the novel, but one of my favorite concepts from the book is missing in the movies. In the book, It doesn't just feed on the town, It also feeds the town. Due to Its magic, Derry is way more prosperous than the usual small town, and the adults are complicit on some level with the arrangement. As long as their own children aren't involved, adults in Derry tend to avoid seeing what is happening in the town. It was an interesting commentary on people's ability to ignore injustice and atrocity when it benefits them, and I don't know why this motif didn't make it into the movie.

Despite my quibbles, “It: Chapter Two” is still decent entertainment. 2017's “It” is excellent, and having watched that, you may as well settle in for Chapter Two. I suggest limited expectations, and given the length of the movie, a comfortable couch.

3 stars out of 5

Spenser Confidential (2020) **

Back when people still watched network TV, there were three kinds of movies: The first kind were the ones shown in cinemas, the Real Movies. They might later get shown on TV, but to be a Real Movie, it had to start out on the big screen. Then there were Straight-to-Video Movies, which were usually exploitative and almost always trash. Somewhere in the middle were Made-for-TV Movies. I think some of them were pretty decent, but I can't honestly remember any of them. I guess that's one of the defining features of TV movies; they are forgettable. 

I suppose the Straight-to-Video market has transitioned to BlueRay, but most people don't really buy their movies anymore. TV movies must still exist, but I cut the cord a long time ago, so it's been ages since I saw one or even an ad for one. What we do have in abundance now are Straight-to-Streaming Movies, and the jury is still out on them. Theoretically, the economics of streaming services should allow lesser-known, lower-budget, artsy films a chance to shine. The Straight-to-Video market had the same potential, though, and we know how that worked out. The difference is that back when we had video stores, you didn't walk into the store and within 3 seconds have someone in your face, pushing some trashy, Straight-to-Video movie on you. Netflix, on the other hand, automatically starts playing the trailer for whatever you scroll to, and they are really pushing their straight-to-streaming “Netflix Originals” these days. “Spenser Confidential” is one of these.

If you are familiar with the Robert B. Parker novels about the private detective, Spenser, and his shady ally, Hawk, or maybe have seen the TV series based on the books, “Spenser: For Hire,” then forget all that. Other than character names, “Spenser Confidential” has nothing in common with what came before. Mark Wahlberg plays Spenser, a disgraced Boston cop jailed for assaulting his police Captain. We meet Spenser as he is finishing up a 5-year prison sentence. Free at last, Spenser reunites with his father figure, Henry (Alan Arkin), avoids his ex-girlfriend Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), and meets Henry's new protege, an aspiring MMA fighter named Hawk (Winston Duke.) Spenser's plan is to learn to drive a truck, then have a quiet life out West. When his former captain, a corrupt cop, gets murdered, Spenser is drawn back into the world of crime and police corruption.

If you ignore the dissimilarity to previous Spenser stories, it should be possible to enjoy this as a straight thriller, but its charms are limited. The thing absolutely reeks of lazy writing and bad acting. The actors aren't given much to work with, and they do a bad job with what they have.

A friend of a friend writes e-books, meaning books that will never see print. He just loads them up on Amazon, and people pay a buck or two to read them on their tablets. He has said that the key to that kind of work is not producing good writing, but producing lots of it. People will apparently read anything if you simply ensure that they never run out of content. Netflix seems to be operating on the same principle. I can't honestly think of a reason for a movie like “Spenser Confidential” to exist, but I guess some people will watch anything.

2 stars out of 5

A Boy and His Dog (1975) ***

So, you see this title, and you figure it must be a sweet, family-friendly movie about the love between a boy and his dog. No clue that this is actually a twisted, gonzo tale of sex and survivalism in a post-apocalyptic world, featuring a telepathic dog.

Don Johnson plays the boy, Vic, who roams the post-nuclear wasteland of what used to be Kansas with his dog, Blood, who talks to him telepathically. The boy takes care of finding food, shelter, and the like. Blood's job is to sniff out girls, as Vic is more interested in getting laid than getting fed. They avoid murderous gangs and radioactive mutants until they meet a girl who entices Vic to an underground city, threatening the boy/dog partnership.

Based on the short stories of Harlan Ellison, “A Boy and His Dog” was not a box office success, but it has become a cult classic. I can see why. It's like “Mad Max” with a sense of humor, and the theme of a young man who only cares about getting laid is really realistic. The young Don Johnson is perfect as Vic, and Susanne Benton is cute enough to lure a teenage boy underground. Even the canine actor who plays Blood is good.

Make no mistake, this is a a cult classic, not a slickly produced mainstream film with a traditional, romantic story. It's weird, but good weird!

3 stars out of 5

Urban Cowboy (1980) ****1/2

Sissy: “You a real cowboy?”

Bud: “Well, that depends on what you think a real cowboy is.”

This exchange defines the movie “Urban Cowboy,” a movie that itself redefined the concept of what a cowboy is, not to mention ushering in a surge in soft-country music sales.

The movie got its start as a September 1978 article in Esquire magazine, which happens to be the same publication that, two years earlier, published “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” the article that led to a little film called “Saturday Night Fever.” “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America's Search for True Grit” was born when Esquire editor Clay Felker visited Houston from New York to give a talk at Rice University. Afterwards, a Texas journalist took Felker out on the town, and when Felker saw Gilley's bar, bigger than a football field, with its mechanical bull and giant dance floor, he knew this was something people needed to read about.

Felker summoned writer Aaron Latham, who had roots in Texas. Latham spent his nights at Gilley's, meeting regulars and looking for a hook to hang his story on. He found it in Dew and Betty, a couple of teenagers who met at Gilley's, got married quick, and eventually split up, because, really, what does an eighteen-year-old know about making a marriage work? During one of the periods when their on-again-off-again relationship was on the rocks, Betty started riding the mechanical bull, just because Dew told her she couldn't. A story like that is lightning in a bottle, and Latham wound up with a hit article that got optioned into a hit movie.

John Travolta wasn't the obvious choice to play a cowboy. After “Saturday Night Fever,” he was the disco guy. Debra Winger, on the other hand, was mostly a nobody. They turned out to be perfect as Bud and Sissy, a couple of beautiful, young rednecks, each dumber than the other. The supporting cast has some gems, including Barry Corbin and Brooke Alderson as Bud's aunt and uncle. Madolyn Smith Osborn is excellent as Pam, the rich girl who tries to steal Bud away. Her cheekbones are even better than John Travolta's. Scott Glenn, of course, is pitch-perfect as the dangerous, ex-con cowboy.

And then there's Gilley's, the biggest supporting character of the film. Much of the filming was done in the actual bar, using real Gilley-rats as extras. The point of the story is that all these country people are drawn to the city for oil jobs, and they want something to remind them of their country roots. That's why they wear cowboy boots and drive pickups around suburban Dallas. Gilley's gave them that sense of community with like-minded people.

The country music resurgence spawned by “Urban Cowboy” eventually fell out of favor, criticized as “not real country,” as other, more traditional acts took over the country music scene. It's the same cycle that always goes through styles of music. It's true that a lot of that late 70's/early 80's, highly-produced country music is indistinguishable from the soft-rock of the time, but it doesn't mean the music was all bad. You cannot deny that “Urban Cowboy” has a great soundtrack. It's a mix of classic rock (“Lyin Eyes” by The Eagles, and Mickie Gilley doing a cover of “Stand By Me”), classic country (“The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by The Charlie Daniels Band), country-blues (“Don't It Make You Wanna Dance” by Bonnie Raitt), and soft country (“Could I Have This Dance” by Anne Murray). In the end, this question of which songs are “real country” is similar to the question of “What makes a real cowboy?” It depends on what your definition is.

4.5 stars out of 5

PS - It turns out I reviewed this back in 2015. I ranked it higher with this viewing, and I'll stand by that. The movie has really held up over time!