Rex Baxter Dot Com

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I regret to inform you that my good friend Jay Gould has recently passed. I am just now returning from his funeral. I pen this letter in the back of the burial parlor’s shabby brass coach. The service was attended by all manner of labor bosses and even the man Tammany himself. Also in attendance was Jay’s lovely daughter Helen, whose breasts are perfect.

One really could not have asked for a better winter’s day for a funereal service. The robins were singing in the pines. Helen’s breasts were there. A light snow still clung on the grass from the previous night. If I am called upon to mourn, I hope that it will always be under such ideal conditions.

I fondly recall how Jay and I would cavort round the clubs in Union Square among the musicians and painters. On those night we lived like true bohemians. We danced and laughed and played ragtime on the pianoforte. One of us would sometimes handle his daughter Helen’s breasts. Helen Gould’s breasts are top notch.

Jay Gould will be missed. He is survived by his large finance company, his wife Helen Day Miller Gould, and his children, one of whom is Helen Miller Gould, whose breasts I have touched a few times.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

December 8, 1892

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

“The Dark Knight” is a parable for the struggle between upright elected law enforcers versus their mercenary, crudely more efficient counterparts: the Pinkertons. Its name refers to a character who skulks around a futuristic city filled with the tallest buildings conceivable. Referred to by criminals and allies alike as the Bat (due to his penchant for dressing as said flying skunk) or the Bat-man, we have here a classic example of the kind of man the Pinkerton Agency is wont to hire. Yes, he may be a maniac whose morals are questionable, but he is harshly effective in seeing his version of justice and the law upheld. Like the Pinkertons, we are given the impression that the Manbat never sleeps. Also like those notorious detectives-for-hire, there is no telling how for the Bat-man will go to realize his vision of justice and order.

But this is not the Bat-man’s story. This is the story of a district attorney named Harvey Dent. Indeed, the titular Manbat holds Harvey, the proverbial new sheriff in town, in high regards. Mr. Dent is the hope that this city of Gotham has been clamoring for. He is seen as a replacement for the ham-fisted noble carnage offered by the vigilante Bat. Dent makes a name for himself early by teaming up with the Manbat and police detective Jim Gordon (played deftly by Gary Oldman) to lock up 500 of Gotham’s criminals.

All the while, the city’s most dangerous criminal, a clown named simply the Joker, is hatching a scheme to aid the city’s mob bosses by eliminating Dent’s most powerful weapon, the Manbat. This Joker is a criminal more insane than a badger marooned on an island of gourds (as the saying goes).

Now, I have a fond regard for clowns. There is nothing funnier to me than an orange man riding a common cat around a circus ring while his nose runs grape jam and his hat is on fire (incidentally, that young clown grew up to be President Hayes). But this Joker simply will not do. Clowns are supposed to be sources of mirth and chestnuts, not knife-borne threats to ladies’ mouths. The evil machinations of this green-haired creep were enough to send shivers down one’s spine. I have not so adamantly wished for a man’s demise since I saw some wretched sailor fighting a defenseless ram last week. He is most dangerous because he does not operate for money or material gain. He simply wants chaos, and he is willing to test Harvey Dent’s (and Man-bat’s) character to conjure discord.

It would have been easy to simply stuff actors into tights and pancake them with makeup and see how many times they can foil each other. Actually, there are quite a few such thrilling tete-a-tetes in this film. But it also goes much deeper. It asks us whether it is possible to remain good and true in a world prone to chaos and the worst in each of us. I found myself asking what my stance was on the difference between justice and revenge. In the end, is a hero a man defending an unwritten code of honor, or simply the servant who has saved the most lives? Is it enough for a Pinkerton to protect the property of the men who hired him, or is he required to answer also to a yet higher power? If I see a wino falling down a flight of stairs, do I laugh and let him slide as the law demands, or do I reach out and save the drunkard? These are the questions posed by the Joker and pondered by all else between the explosions and heavy punches.

I do wish the story had focused more on the Bat-man than on the rise and ultimate fall of the cocksure district attorney. Much ado was made about the scar-faced denizens of this berg (the worst case being that of the terribly maimed Maggie Gyllenhaal) when it seems that Batman alone could be the driving force for 6 or even 7 movies of his own. In the end, this movie thrilled me. It flew along at an incredible pace, twisted frequently like a freak’s spine, and left me demanding to know more about the complex (if not incredibly realistic) characters.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

July 20, 1892

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I sat back from the enthrallment of “Punch-Drunk Love” with the same appreciation for life that accompanies waking from a fever dream. Most of the movies I have seen were created with the intention of conjuring a feeling of triumph in their hypnotized viewers. This film also inspires a feeling, but it is one of frustration. This movie nags. It jabs the ear drums like a bee tied to a swab. It progresses without logic toward an end where your hero must, he simply must, have his revenge, and then delivers in a subtle victory that selfishly defies expectations. Far from triumphant, this movie still had enough power to make me feel the harried malaise experienced by Barry Egan (played by Adam Sandler). In this way, “Punch-Drunk Love” has succeeded where other films dare not even tread.

On the surface, the story of the film doesn’t add up to much. A man hesitantly falls in love with his sister’s coworker. He scams his way to the Kingdom of Hawaii by hoodwinking a pudding magnate. He gets into some trouble with a criminal genius who uses a sexy telephone scheme to relieve men of the finances. He finds a small piano. He never changes out of his suit. All told, this could be anyone’s humdrum life.

But the engine of all this action is Sandler’s Egan, a bundle of nerves more raw than a salad in Christ’s day. He has trouble understanding his own reactions to the million little things that go wrong for him. When big problems begin amassing for him, it is all he can do to keep from existing in a constant berserk rage. The movie shows us all the pain in Barry Egan and allows us the privilege of being the only observer who truly understands the difficulties with which he wrestles.

Then when he confronts the main villain we are denied the macho climax we expected, which gave me a taste of the denied visceral release that haunts our hero. It is a choice that further humanizes a protagonist who already twitches with some of the more shameful parts of humanity that seethes in all of us.

There are days when the plaintive crying and needy demands of my patients bring me to an emotional state where it would be easy for me to fling children from high windows and stab and stab these patients’ torsos until only a fleshy web of ligaments remained. Being a civilized man of decorum, of course, means that I cannot act upon these valid impulses. But there is seemingly no man who has not been pushed around by the seemingly harmless gadflies of existence until something simply needs to be smashed and ruined. There is a little bit of Barry Egan in anyone who has ever simply been fed up.

Emily Watson is delicate and yet unflappable in this movie. She takes Barry’s eccentricities in stride, giving the feeling that she can ably handle the chaos he creates, even if she can never truly understand it. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s gruff extortionist is all bombast and unearned yet honored high status, making his eventual return to normal just as damning as a defeat of complete destruction would have been. Adam Sandler is a revelation is this role. The quake in his voice betrays the tectonic plates of angry bile shifting around beneath his fragile demeanor. No one on screen, Barry included, has a clue where the rage comes from. Our being able to count the pieces of this put-upon puzzle is due entirely to Sandler’s fright and potent hostility. Something tells me Adam Sandler could conquer any role he is given, where lesser actors would choose to simply pick basically one character and play it over and over again.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

July 13, 1892

Punch-Drunk Love (Single Disc Edition)

• Actors: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmán
• Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: December 2, 2003
• Run Time: 95 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

It is with rapt pleasure and jittering excitement that I report to you that I have escaped from my pantry. With new eyes I gaze upon my study, my parlor, my mailman, my cellar. It was but months ago that I was taking inventory of my kitchen’s stock (I had next to nothing) when the pantry door was blown shut and was rendered quite stuck. I wrote you letters during this months-long misadventure, dear Ghost. Needless to say I have long since used those letters to bury my waste in the pantry’s northwest corner. I haven’t the temerity to mail them.

Imagine my wry familiarity with the fare you have manifested for me this time. After I’d checked in with my patients and paid the cheese man my cheddar arrears, I sat down for a viewing of the film “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks. Where Tom Hanks had to reinvent fire-building, I had to reinvent flossing (I had a jar of moths’ filaments leftover from Christmas). Where Tom Hanks had to slice coconuts with an ice skate, I had to fend off moles with a husked ham cob. Where Tom Hanks had to deal twice with the wrenching loss of his one true love, I …

Well, regardless, I was stuck in the pantry.

“Cast Away” is about a man ruled by the clock. Ever since the railroad timetables were standardized, the world has ticked along at an inexorable pace that can only be ignored by the foolhardy or the idiots (who anyway are prohibited from owning timepieces). Chuck Noland is so dominated by his sense of time and work ethic that even Christmas dinner with his oft-Southern girlfriend’s family can stand in the way of his schedule. After he tells his fair dame that he’ll “be right back” he is whisked off onto a flying contraption on a doomed trajectory.

What follows is the best part of the movie. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy a saccharin display of quaint family charm and true love lost, but there is just something enthralling about watching a marooned modern man do menial things on an island. I could have used an additional hour of watching Mr. Noland learning the rules of this beautiful purgatory.

I could imagine this movie ending with a swell of strings and a chill up my spine, or with a silent sunset and a last exhale. The movie’s actual ending is somewhere in between, and it was not up to the daunting task of living up to its spectacular second act. In the end, the gloss of this film which makes it the best stranded-on-an-island vision imaginable proves too jarring when applied to the hotel rooms and rainy garages of civilization.

Tom Hanks is a miracle in this movie. He conveys more harried strength in a single glimpse than any of today’s actors can express in a monologue screamed over the heckling masses. Perhaps my zeal can be attributed to cabin fever following my imprisonment in my own home (thanks go to my maid for returning from her vacation to Barbados, albeit 2 weeks late). Save for the end and some of the beginning, I loved “Cast Away!” Bravo!

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

July 6, 1892

Cast Away (Widescreen Edition)

• Actors: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt
• Directors: Robert Zemeckis
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: March 5, 2002
• Run Time: 143 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I should very much like to know who invited the traveling faire to pass through town. Have these festival organizers no decorum? They must, they simply must, know that I am hopelessly enthusiastic about gambling my savings away at carnival games. Why, this very weekend, I played the game of Skipping Pins until my billfold was quite flat in shape. I can fold the thing in quarters now! I close my eyes to nap this hazy afternoon and behind my eyelids I can still see the sinewy neck of the proprietor of this gaming stand and the way his weathered skin drew taut when he turned his head or grinned.

This gives me pause. Is my situation not unlike the situation endured by the officers aboard the submersible USS Alabama in the film “Crimson Tide”? The movie sees a magical submarine boat populated by American naval officers. If the operations and procedures of war were not taxing enough as it is upon its soldiers, imagine the effect of all these politics occurring within a steel tube that offers no point of escape! Every square inch is in high demand. All the feats of technical savvy and physical brawn must be made in a space essentially the size of a hallway filled with 300 men. When the sailors are ordered to fire the world’s most powerful artillery upon their Russian enemy, they begrudgingly accept their yoke. A second communication is cut off halfway during its transmission. It may be an order to stand down and avoid mutually assured destruction, but there is just no way to know.

Today I picture myself in the role of Lt. Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington) and my criminally amiable foe as Capt. Ramsay (Gene Hackman). Do not the both of us feel that we are in the right? I should say that we do! There I stood with gristly puck in hand, measuring what would have to be my final chance to win a stuffed toy fern, knowing with all my being that I was a hero on a campaign of destiny. But certainly this games broker, whose name was Bors, must have seen in me his doom wrought in bone and unblemished flesh. It is all analogous to a standoff that would prevent cataclysmic war.

O Cabinet Ghost, what is the nature of evil? When Hunter balked at the prospect of decimating his Russo-Militaristic enemies with a rain of bombastic fire he was certain that his actions were for the good of all his fellow men. But what if his initial orders stood without his knowledge and he was simply securing the doom of his countrymen? Should we consider Hackman’s commander an evil man simply because he follows orders and exhibits the necessary rigor required for managing a warship that somehow operates beneath the waves?

Our emotions can sweep us away. Having heaved my ultimate puck and missed the mark I pleaded for a mulligan, but Bors was not having it. I said that I am a doctor and have saved many lives and deserve more chances that the common layman, which would have been a dashing argument had I not been gesticulating wildly enough to poke a young girl behind me in the eye with my thumb. I believe I apologized profusely enough to this girl, who had little business doddling around in my blind spot, to avoid the fate of hot caramel being dumped on my head by her mother. Her mother, to my barber’s chagrin, had a different perspective.

And there is the rub! No force of evil, whether it be Gene Hackman or Bors the carnie or this little girl’s mother who carries around hot caramel, walks through life intending evil intentions. It took “Crimson Tide” to remind me that even the most aggressively stanced opponent will believe that Providence and morality is on his side. Objectively, removed from the emotions of the combatants, this would make any victory in any situation an evil occasion. As Hunter says in the movie, “the enemy is war itself”.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

April 6, 1892

Crimson Tide

• Actors: Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen
• Director: Tony Scott
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: February 4, 1998
• Run Time: 116 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

The film I viewed today seems to have been drawn. That is, as a movie is normally a succession of photographs passing before the eyes so quickly that the images seem to be in motion, this film could have been a series of drawings. And what things these drawings can do! Today I watched a fat man hitting himself in the eye with a claw hammer, a baby exploring a magical worm-tunnel in her sandbox, a squirrel with a thousand eyes cavorting, and God manifesting himself as a shaft of light to induce a demented rant in an old man. All this in the first ten minutes of the movie!

The story concerns a comic buffoon ruining Lake Springfield by dumping a silo’s worth of pig droppings into it. The US government attempts to quarantine the befouled area by dropping a gigantic glass dome over the town, entombing its citizens. Homer escapes with his family, but they are torn by the man’s inability to set aside his own selfish and idiotic goals for the sake of his clan.

The movie is framed like a satire, but half the time I couldn’t understand what it was lampooning. It’s as if the creators spent years creating a complex mythical world populated by zany archetypes and made this movie as a representative glimpse. My complaint is that they assume any casual viewer would be able to recognize these characters.

Funny: “Bountiful penis. Amen.”
I don’t get it: “Spider-pig.”
Funny: Lisa’s automatic lifting platform going berserk.
I don’t get it: A Spaniard in a bee costume.
Funny: The completely idiot-proof barrier. “I simply can’t!”
I don’t get it: Marge washing one dish in a burning house.

There is so much mania that the five cumulative minutes devoted to sentimentality and plot do not pack much of a punch. I, being a confessed ninny, have been moved by more stories of hamsters belonging to diplomats (of course I refer to Sir C.E. Howard Vincent’s beloved pet Grover) than I was by this movie. I didn’t care that Homer’s family left. I didn’t care that Lisa had fallen in love. The whole affair was treated as if its events would have no effect on the future of this world. If every moment is packed to capacity with bits and gags, then how can we feel any gravity summoned by the pathos behind it all?

To be sure, the gags I understood were very good gags. I feel as if I just spent Thanksgiving with a hilarious uncle who speaks some foreign language. His anecdotes are beyond me, but his pratfalls are the world’s finest. I was tickled and frustrated over and over in quick succession, like a whore at an Irish chicken factory on Friday. Give me a movie that creates a world within itself before playing against its own parameters. As it is, this film seems like a swatch taken from a rich tapestry when, honestly, the tapestry itself would have been nice, too.

This movie does not pass muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 30, 1892

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

A good story is populated by good characters. Any layperson could have burned down the governor’s myrrh shed last autumn and it wouldn’t have even made the blotter. That it was burned down by the cantankerous boxer Fitz Leroi who is famed for dipping his valets in sugar and rum before taking them dancing made that event the sensation of the the coast. “LA Confidential” is a great tale. It’s a mystery with as many twists, turns, innuendos, and intrigues as can be demanded of a crime story. It is the combination of this masterful storytelling with its nuanced characterizations that propels the film into plain perfection. Inasmuch as I watch movies emblazoned onto platters by a cabinet whose magic I do not fully understand using an electro-magnetic marvel of futuristic technology, this movie was even more amazing than most of the movies I’ve seen.

The movie is driven by the actions of three cops who all respect justice, but could not seek it in more different ways. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) is a flashy constable leading a second life as an adviser to movie-makers in Hollywoodland. How exhilarating! A movie within a movie! It’s like a Russian nesting doll of Kevin Spacey contribution. Bud White (Russell Crowe) is seemingly the toughest man in the world and, as a cop, is willing to bend the rules to see wrongs righted and rights un-wronged. And then there’s Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), a young buck of a cop who uses dogged adherence to the letter of the law in the hopes that he will live up to his legendary crimefighting father.

Together, these unlikely colleagues investigate and set straight a town where a mob boss has been deposed, his would-be replacements keep getting executed, hookers are surgically altered (yick!) to look like glamorous famous actresses, and a dirty ex-cop (incidentally Bud’s ex-partner) is killed in a massacre at a cafe that is more than it seems. Indeed, the movie seemed wrapped up completely about halfway through. The mastery here is that this first summit was by far not the high point of the film. What could have been a second half of fits and starts is instead a beautifully conceived tapestry of deceit and revelations that keep the events one step ahead of any viewer’s anticipation. Tremendous movie! Boffo!

More than just a gripping tale, “LA Confidential” stands as a voice reporting the grim reality of police corruption. Indeed, some of the biggest victories for law and order happen as a result of help from the city’s shadier corners. I was reminded of the Haymarket Riot, wherein the brave police of Chicago had no choice but to shoot and shoot and shoot those crazed potentially-armed anarchists before they took over the carnival. Well done, boys!

I could never be a hooker cut to look like a famous actress. Sure, it’s fun to pretend to be famous people. When I was a tyke I would pretend to be Sitting Bull’s squire by sealing a feather to my head with a lump of hot crayon. But the whores in this film, particularly Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), are whores of character. Lynn has real moral fiber. Even her slip of betrayal against Bud was, as she says, intended to be helpful. I just know I would lapse. I’d be set up in a fancy Hollywoodland bunaglow with my film reels and Palmetto tree-lined yard and decadence would set in. Before you know it I’d be up to my waist in reefer ash and pulling taffy from my ears. What kind of a whore is that, I ask you! It is a testament to the filmmakers that these characters are strong enough to avoid the snootier pitfalls that their lifestyles would seemingly afford them.

I’d like to buy the makers of this film a lobster. Tonight I’m going to eat a handful of sugar and sleep as this film plays so that I may dream the film. If I could sire sons, I’d name them all Danny DeVito followed by a number based upon the order in which they were born (Danny DeVito was great in this movie).

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 26, 1892

L.A. Confidential

• Actors: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger
• Director: Curtis Hanson
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: April 21, 1998
• Run Time: 138 minutes

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

It is plain to see that young people today have shorter attention spans than previous generations. Why, in my youth, I could sit and watch a mud river squish by for two whole days before I needed a lemonade break to regain my focus. These tots today, with their pull-wagons and jars of buttons, can hardly focus on a passing bob thread long enough to knit a ream of sweaters (a good job for a kid at $0.14 a day!).

For this reason, I believe the intended audience of this movie “Stardust” must be children, due to its serial, episodic nature. More a fantastic hodge-podge than a whole organic piece, it still stands the test of quality if not unity. To give you a taste, sir ghost, of the all-over-the-placedness of the film’s plot, I shall deliver my summation in one long sentence:

Eighteen years ago a man crossed a forbidden wall and sired a bastard son with a magical princess not expecting that the child would be delivered to him to raise and would grow into our hero, Tristan (Charlie Cox), who falls in love with a rich girl (Sienna Miller) despite his place as a poor market boy and promises to deliver to her a piece of a fallen star in exchange for her hand in marriage and when he finds the fallen star it turns out to actually be a young lady named Yvaine (Claire Danes) who is being pursued by a powerful witch (Michelle Pfeiffer) and several evil princes so that they can rule the magical kingdom on the forbidden side of said wall, and then Robert Deniro pilots a zeppelin and wears dresses.

After that, it gets a little confusing. Simply put, this film was unable to make the transition from a series of illustrated Olde-English-style stanzas to a feature film without losing some roughness at its seams. It’s a problem which can be easily overlooked, due to the high-form winking performances from its actors, especially Ms. Pfeiffer and Mr. Deniro. Combine the large acting with the spectacle of magic effects and ghosts and sparkling scenery and the whole exercise becomes downright jovial; a celebration of itself. Stardust never coheres, but it boasts enough to win me over regardless.

I admire the craft that it took to turn the hideously old Michelle Pfeiffer into a charming, less-old version of herself. She must have sat in a chair for hours while masons and carpenters stuffed so much skin tone epoxy under her jowls and into the ostrich-feet around her eyes. She should be applauded for taping her body so extensively that there is nary a sign that she possesses breasts at all. Those same makeup artists ought to be applauded for their steadfastness in painting Robert Deniro’s mole a shade darker than Satan’s black mucus.

I don’t under stand why Deniro’s Captain Shakespeare was included in the film, actually. He appears, befriends our star-crossed (har har) heroes, sends them on their way, and becomes quickly irrelevant thereafter. And he dances around in a dress, causing an awkward intervention with his manly crew that bears no significant fruit at all. In a story about a cross-dressing sea captain fighting the forces of evil, this would have been a dynamite turn. In a story about a poor boy becoming a man in a magic kingdom, it’s a flowery distraction.

But what a complaint! The whole movie is distractions! And after all, what else is the point of a fantasy story like this? Am I to expect to extract all the lessons of moral uprightness and success in life from a movie where magic and mundane kingdoms lie side-by-side and the only man protecting the border is too old to fight, run, or reason aptly? If all I ask of Stardust is roughly two hours of winks and grins, then it delivers with elan.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 24, 1892

Stardust (Widescreen Edition)

• Actors: Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Claire Danes
• Rating:
• DVD Release Date: December 18, 2007
• Run Time: 127 minutes
• DVD Extras: “Good Omens: The Making of Stardust” production featurette, deleted scenes, blooper reel (Ricky Gervais shines), theatrical trailer

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

An automobile ran over the mayor two months ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. The motorist did not realize that he’d struck a politician but he’d felt the telltale thud of humanity on his bumpcrop. And so he backed up to investigate, trodding his car over the mayor yet another time. Seeing nothing, he pulled forward again over the mayor to be sure that he’d feel a bump again. He did. This rolling-over back and forth went on for twelve minutes until the mayor’s teenage son entered the truck parlor and put a stop to it. The point I am trying to make is that automobiles are terrible contraptions (the mayor is fine).

I was agog at the minute-long politico-history lesson that started “The Kingdom” off but, if I catch the gist properly, I am to understand that Americans will become so reliant on their automobiles that they will cede economic superiority to the Ottomans so they may suck at the teat of the Arabs’ plentiful oil fields. Imagine! Oil under Persia! In this context our heroes (a black man, a pretty woman, an old man, and a funny Jew) report to the scene of an explosion in the heart of the occupied desert. A particularly macabre vision from this crime is the sight of a bearded man disguised as a helpful police officer drawing children closer to him before saying a quick prayer and blowing himself and his charges to so many smithereens.

In fact, all of the violence in this film is displayed with great reverence for speed and noise. The horseless wars of this world thunder by so quickly that at times it’s hard to tell which Muslims are evil and which are just not-evil enough to tolerate the Americans. It goes to show that if automobiles, aeroplanes, and high-octance heliocopters were not available there’d be much less carnage to worry about.

When the dust settles, this film does passably well letting us into the lives of its heroes. I wondered why Jason Bateman’s character was not assigned a spine. Aren’t these fellows supposed to be crackerjack police officers? You’d think he could at least handle a sidearm so as to, I don’t know, prevent himself from being kidnapped as easily as a pregnant pony. That is quite easy! Remind me, sir ghost, that if I ever travel to Arabia I’ll need to pack more protection than my signature quiver of quips. I’ll need Jamie Foxx.

Mr. Foxx has enough bravado and presence to lead this squad. He helped me forget that reconciling the loss of hundreds of lives in the middle of a tense warzone (made all the more tense by the presence on ominously speedy auto-cars) could probably not actually be resolved by the derring-do of four American interlopers and their brown-toned native sidekick. The abrupt tacking-on of an Aesopian moral at the film’s end would’ve been a skirt-lifting wink in the hands of a lesser performer. Mr. Foxx carries it with gravity.

How many letter X’s are in the word “foxx”? I thought it was only one.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 19, 1892

PS From the Editors: See the links in Rex’s reviews? Those are safe to click on, folks. We promise. They’re not paid links; they’re just stuff around the web that we found interesting. Surf away!

Dear Cabinet Ghost,

I have recently finished viewing the movie you manifested named “King of Kong”. I am always tickled by the possibilities created by the imaginary future worlds illustrated by your movies, sir ghost, but the effect is usually most gripping when it is kept in the background. This film could have spent a lot of time telling its viewers how exactly they got an electric monkey into a tall cabinet and had it kidnap a dwarf woman over and over again. Wisely, it ignores these minutiae.

The movie itself documents the struggles of two men who live very separate lives but share a common purpose: to defeat the aforementioned electric monkey. In this grim vision, humanity has made a game of sorts out of this important mission. Where any sane contemporary fellow would realize that this tiny ape is in a good position to cause unspeakable discomfort onto his female captive, the pasty heroes in this film seem unfazzled by the caveat that, try as they might, their efforts are always in vain. Kill screen, indeed. The simian must be defeated!

As bothered as I am by the apparent loss of so many diminutive virgins and the failures of just as many stout plumbers, I found myself transfixed by the lives of the soldiers prosecuting this surreal war. We are first introduced to the decadently-maned Billy Mitchell. This man fights the battle of Donkey Kong like no other. He sets a world record for his ability in chasing the heinous chimp and spins that success into a whirlwind high life of selling sauces and generally looking dour. For years Billy is idolized by his brothers-in-arms and stands astride the world of electric monkey-chasing like a Colossus.

Billy has earned his glory, and he basks in it almost prissily so until he meets his match in a half-idiot who somehow is a better stool-riding soldier than he. This man, Steve Wiebe, wields his instinct for pattern recognition like a sword and buckler in the siege. The sequence where white lines demonstrated the paths he created was mesmerizing and more than enough to let me know that this was no ordinary monkey fighter.

As the movie unfolds and the gorilla keeps eluding escape, the real story begins to emerge. Billy’s throne is challenged time and again by his autistic would-be ally, and Mr. Mitchell is not above the use of treachery to hang on to his title. As this movie rounded the end of its first sixty minutes I found myself clucking my tongue and audibly anguishing that Mr. Wiebe might not have justice. I had become fully involved, though I was resigned at that point to the belief that the great Kong could not ever possibly be defeated by either of these champions.

After all, sir Cabinet Ghost, that is the real idea examined by this film. When the goal these heroes have set for themselves crushingly reveals itself to be unattainable, and all their efforts and connivances turn out to be futile, do they simply give up? Will they be stopped by the idea that their fiddling at knobs and buttons amounts to nothing at all in the end? Doesn’t the fact that the monkey almost certainly is having his way with a human lady behind the scenes for most of the goings-on overshadow any glory that could be had by a high score? No, no, and no. A thousand times, no! In this world, sometimes a monkey is just going to end up raping your girlfriend and that’s how it is. That is no reason to give up and stop climbing the ladders. We can learn a lot from these bologna-breasted soldiers.

This movie passes muster.

Sincerely,

Dr. Rex Baxter

March 16, 1892