PIST-OFF

As a movie this doesn't exactly qualify as gripping drama or comedic brilliance. It is a movie serving a terribly niche audience of pinball enthusiasts. If this is not you, then you are likely not to be much entertained by it. The story is about Roger Sharpe a writer at GQ in the early to mid 1970s who is a fan of pinball. The centerpiece is that he testified before a board of NYC city commissioners trying to overturn pinball's status as illegal gambling machines. To pad out what otherwise would be a short film we go into more details of Sharpe's life and some background to the history of pinball.

It should also be noted that this is a shoestring budget movie, so don't go combing the credits for any famous names. The only place that this holds the movie back is that the mustache on the young Roger looks absolutely terrible and fake. It's a fun little movie with some meet cute moments but were obviously not in citizen kane territory.

Another thing i take issue with is the subtitle "the man who saved pinball" which strikes me as both odd in that arguably pinball had reached it's economic and cultural zeitgeist in the mid 70s and was therefore VERY far from needing saving. It also strikes me a very new york-centric. New yorkers often take the view that everything outside the five boroughs is essentially poe dunk as inconsequential as it is forgettable. Pinball was completely legal in a great many places across the US that happened not to be named New York City.

Again as film there's nothing outright bad but nor anything groundbreaking here to see, but that's OK. If you have anything more than a passing interest in pinball it'll be 90 minutes you won't regret...... unless it was 90 minutes you could have been playing pinball.....

6/10.

Okay, between Equilizaer, Jason Bourne, John Wick, the Accountant, Taken, and god knows how many other movies and franchises, how long until we have reached our limit on normal-guy-with-special-ops-background-takes-on-the russian-mafia movies can we get. I mean each of these movies on their own is fine enough. They're well made and cheap fun. But my god, it is beyond formulaic at this point. The cheap russian mafia stereotypes, the endless supplies of henchmen, the old friend our protagonist can depend on, the kidnapped girl, the 200+ men who lose their lives on behalf of one girl's sexual integrity, etc etc. Every one of them seems interchangeable in a way even the old 80s action movies often wouldn't have dared to be so similar. Dear hollywood, please find something else.

Student Bodies treads ground in a place ripe for spoof, the horror genre. And it is an early enough entry that it has most of the tropes down without them being overly familiar. The humor here is pitched along the lines of Airplane or Kentucky Fried Movie of throw a lot of random jokes in and see what sticks. But for reasons I can't explain the jokes don't quite make it. At one point a character hands another (crying) character a series of increasingly absurd things that the girl uses to daub her eyes. This is definitely ZAZ territory but for reasons I can't quite explain it doesn't quite land. Perhaps if I'd seen this at age 8 instead of 48, would it have got more than a knowing half-grin from me? Perhaps.....

i feel there was lots of potential here that was wasted but can't explain in what form that the waste was manifested. What would be really interesting would be a ZAZ commentary track exploring this. That itself could be highly worth watching.