Just One More Thing: The Most Crucial Game

A retrospective by Forrest Humphrey

Paul Hanlon (Robert Culp) is a premier football team manager, and he's grown tired of the team's young, immature, party animal owner, Eric Wanger. So one day he stages an alibi, heads out to the young man's home, and bashes his skull in with an ice block while Wagner is swimming. With the murder weapon safely melting in the pool and the murder looking like an accident, Hanlon escapes, and its up to our battered Lt. Columbo to figure out how Hanlon did it.

What I like about this episode is how truly stumped Columbo is for most of the runtime, seemingly unable to get around the villain's alibi. He does find his first clue pretty quickly, reinforcing how intelligent he is with the unorthodox way he gets tipped off. This leads to another great game of cat and mouse between our two leads, and as with my previous episode, it remains amusing to see the villain so aggravated by the bumbling detective.

I wont spoil the final section of course, but Columbo's final “eureka” moment is quite satisfying, and the last moments are so very gratifying for it. Peter Falks' charm continues to shine here, playing his run down beat cop character perfectly. Culp also puts in a great turn as the murderer, tossing out convincing excuses with efficiency, he keeps Columbo stumped for an impressive amount of time. Overall, another very satisfying episode.

Comments

John Travolta month: Saturday Night Fever

A retrospective by Brooks Rich So this was not the big start of John Travolta's career. That would be the classic sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. But this did elevate Travolta to another level. For any of you going oh come on. This silly movie with a disco soundtrack? Come on, Brooks. Just wait. Have you ever actually seen this? This isn't about disco. Disco just happens to be the music of choice. This about the kind of people who are kings at the dance clubs and then losers the rest of the time. There is a lot of darkness and truth in this film. So if you've never seen it please. Do yourself a flavor and check it out. Just watch it and then come back to read this. This is a movie about the different types of people we become between our real lives and our weekend lives. Tony Manero is a regular working class guy in a Brooklyn neighborhood, struggling to make ends meet and dealing with his loving but at times overbearing family. He lives in the shadow of his priest brother. ...

John Travolta month

Get your dancing shoes on! Order a Royale with Cheese! Blow millions in an overblown sci-fi disaster built around a weird Hollywood religion! Because for the month of June we are discussing the filmography of the one and only John Travolta. A man saved from being a laughing stock in the early '90s by a director making one of the greatest American masterpiece. A man who then had a stunning run of films before blowing all his goodwill not once but twice. But we of course do not disparage the great John Travolta. We want to celebrate him like we do with all of our monthly subjects.

Forgotten Film Friday: Melinda and Melinda

A retrospective by Brooks Rich I know Woody Allen is a complicated figure. He is a creep in a lot of ways and some people find his sexual weirdness to be too much. I get that. But on the blog I sometimes like to separate the art from artist. Not always to be sure. Jeepers Creepers will never be covered here because Victor Salva is a useless piece of human garbage. What he did I can't ignore. Allen I can push aside him being weird to cover him now and then. It's hard to write a film blog and not mention a Woody Allen film now and then. The man has some bangers. And I've always wanted to cover this film. The concept is so interesting and Allen post 2000 is fertile ground for Forgotten Film Friday. So let's look at the film and not Allen himself. Melinda and Melinda is a dual narrative about a woman named Melinda, an underrated and brilliant Radha Mitchell, who shows up unexpectedly at a dinner party in New York. The film questions if life is inherently tragic or comic a...

Cinema Basement

Search This Blog