QUIZ LADY (2023) stars Akwafina and Sandra Oh as a dysfunctional pair of sisters — respectively an office drone and a perpetual failure to adult — who reunite when Mom’s gambling debt leads to a local crime boss confiscating their beloved pug. The best way to get the 80 grand required? Have Awkwafina go on Jeopardy — or a reasonable facsimile — but while she knows everything beloved host Will Ferrell could possibly ask, she’s also petrified of becoming the center of attention.
This was charming and goofy; I like that almost everyone, even the gang boss, turns out nicer than they seem and gets a happy ending. That doesn’t always work for me, but this time it did. And Oh and Akwafina are awesome in the lead roles. “I never bake any more and I feel so unfulfilled.”
THE NASTY GIRL (1990) was a black-humored comedy based on the true story of Anna Rosmus; having read it before, I picked it as our date night movie last weekend, figuring correctly that TYG would like it. The protagonist is a bright German Catholic in the last century (the format is a documentary about her case, though they only stick to it erratically) who decides to report on her town’s history under the Third Reich — their stubborn resistance to Nazi rule, their defense of the Jews, the Church doing the right thing — but it soon becomes clear that the popular history she knows is a printed legend and the truth is much darker.
I enjoyed this when I saw it on cable back in the 1990s. I like it more now, partly because I know how badly Germany fell short of thorough de-Nazifying and partly because the enthusiasm for covering up unpleasant history that embarrasses important people seems even more relevant now (not only Ron DeSantis’ educational guidelines but previous cover-ups too). “Is it a free dictatorship then?”
THE BEGINNING OR THE END (1947) opens quite cleverly as scientists embed various records of the nuclear age in a time capsule including the movie we’re about to watch. What follows is a fairly true-to-life account of 1930s atomic research and the Manhattan Project (I take it as a given there’s some fudging of the facts), bogged down in the Seriousness of the topic. The scientists working on the project are all unsettled by the potential for destruction but the film constantly assures us that this project is not only necessary but done out of the highest moral principles; the final scene is a sunny vision of a utopian future — sure, nuclear power is scary but it’s going to usher in a new golden age! It’s very much in the spirit of pro-nuclear propaganda of that era (check out the book Nukespeak for examples) but it hasn’t aged well. With Brian Donlevy as General Groves, Hume Cronyn as Oppenheimer, Joseph Calleia as Enrico Fermi and Robert Walker, Audrey Totter and Hurd Hatfield among the sizable cast. Competently made and performed but ultimately it collapses under its own seriousness. “If the theory is wrong, we could lose something valuable — such as Chicago.”
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