Friday Morning Review: "High Plains Drifter" (1973)

Starring Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill, Billy Curtis

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Written by Ernest Tidyman, Dean Riesner

Produced by Robert Daley

105 minutes

3.5 stars

As someone who watches quite a bit of westerns, and even studied the genre to a degree in college, High Plains Drifter is one of my personal favorites, an easy classic, and certainly a landmark directorial attempt for Clint Eastwood. While not the high water mark for the revisionist genre that Unforgiven was, and not as technically brilliant as Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter begins Eastwood’s bending of expected western archetypes as continued in those films.

This is an early example of the “Weird West” subgenre, a fusing of the Western with, in this case, the occult or supernatural. Eastwood plays the Stranger, a rugged gunfighter appearing out of the haze of the desert and stumbling into the town of Lago, where he may or may not have unfinished business—left over from another lifetime. If that premise doesn’t do it for you, I don’t know what will.

High Plains Drifter was filmed along the shores of Mono Lake in California, whose exposed alkaline sands and craggy limestone rock formations are decidedly alien. The result is a production that is dreamy and surreal, aided by a ghostly synthesized score that sounds like wind moaning though a cave. The town of Lago reads like some final waystation for the damned, perched on the brink of a purgatorial void. For the grand majority of the film’s proceedings, we are limited to this place, only occasionally offered glimpses outward, through gaps between wooden buildings to the bleached white horizon of the desert beyond, or the unnatural blue abyss of the lake. The stark sense of place owes much to Eastwood’s unique selection of shots and vantage points, revealing just enough of the town to give us a sense of familiarity, but not enough to make us feel like we’ve overstayed our welcome. By keeping the action (for the most part) contained entirely within the town and its limited outskirts, Eastwood makes Lago seem like the last human settlement in existence, a rustic oasis in the middle of a bare, apocalyptic wasteland.

I like to think of this film as sort of an update on High Noon, or rather a “part two,” continuing its allegory of a community that remained silent while its members were blacklisted, with a more explicit, almost tongue-in-cheek approach. Both films feature a sheriff character betrayed and deserted by cowardly townsfolk who refuse to stand up to evil; this one assumes Will Kane died and came back as a vengeful ghost. Also, the townspeople don’t just vanish from the streets, taking refuge behind locked doors as in High Noon—they watch tepidly from the sidelines without raising a finger, occupying a very deliberate presence in the man’s death. I’m not surprised John Wayne turned down a role in this film, after his active participation in the blacklisting of High Noon screenwriter Carl Foreman. High Noon came out directly in the midst of McCarthyism; John Wayne and Howard Hawkes made Rio Bravo as a response, and I like to think of High Plains Drifter as Clint Eastwood’s answer to both of them.

Eastwood’s “Stranger” is less the duty-bound, courageous Will Kane, and more the grim “Man With No Name” a la Fistful of Dollars. It’s Eastwood at his most badass, a notion that was never far from my mind as I watched the familiar antihero character put three holes in three heads from a barber’s chair, slickly escape a hotel assassination attempt with a “dynamite” ace up his sleeve, and lasso a guy screaming into the night by his neck. As close as it is thematically to High Noon, this is a much darker story, about a Will Kane who went through the depths of hell and came out the other side changed. This one takes advantage of women, exploits the townspeople’s need for security and dependence on someone to do the job for them, and indulges in the town’s material offerings, all with a dark sense of humor. Although it’s left mostly ambiguous, there’s always a sense that his motivations are more sinister in nature.

Of course, a film as ambitious and experimental as High Plains Drifter is not without its flaws, and this is the kind of movie that’s better in retrospect than while you’re actually watching it. The mostly straightforward plot is marred by a few unwieldy scenes that raise the wrong questions—a casual rape committed by the protagonist, his continued objectification of the women in the town—as well as a few detriments to the minimalism aspect, such as a couple different shootouts that occur outside of town. The blood is also laughably fake, but I’ll let that one slide since this was probably one of the earlier instances of actual gore in a western in the first place.

Those problem scenes, however, will tend to be forgotten when reflecting back on the film as a whole—which I have to say, is just fucking cool. Other scenes, (the town “literally” painted red, “Hell” on the town sign, etc) will always override them in your mind’s eye.

Boasting some pretty iconic imagery, even as a derivative, revisionist film, High Plains Drifter is a unique western ghost story. You really can’t argue with its cultural significance (it was featured viewing on the syllabus for my Western class in college), or its sheer badass factor. If you haven’t seen it and you’re a fan of Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” from Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Friday Morning Review: "Freaked" (1993)

Starring Alex Winter, Michael Stoyanov, William Sadler, Megan Ward, Mr. T, Brooke Shields, Randy Quaid, Alex Zuckerman

Directed by Alex Winter, Tom Stern

Written by Tim Burns, Tom Stern, Alex Winter

Produced by Stephen Chiodo, Harry J. Ufland, Mary Jane Ufland

80 minutes

2.5 stars

Freaked is the brainchild of Alex Winter, that guy from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and one of the vampires from Lost Boys. As such, it’s kind of a spiritual sequel to The Idiot Box, Winter’s sketch comedy/variety show which ran on MTV from 1990-1991. After producing only six episodes, Winter and pals signed a movie deal with 20^th Century Fox, and Freaked, like a six-armed mutant risen out of a chemical sludge, was born.

Right from the very beginning, the animated opening title sequence brings back a flood of 90’s MTV-programming nostalgia. It’s no secret that MTV’s stamp is all over this movie, from its “sensory overload” aesthetic of excessive dutch angles, zoom-ins, and oversaturated prime colors, to its crude and gross mix of camp, social satire, and pop culture references. It’s what would happen if MTV took a 90’s-era Nickelodeon cartoon and made a live-action film adaptation. Furthermore, to say this is a “black comedy” is like calling Rocko’s Modern Life a “critique on corporate culture.” It works, but it’s not your first instinct.

Winter plays former child star Ricky Coogin, who relates the events of the film in an interview session with a Ricki Lake-type daytime talkshow host played by Brooke Shields. Relating his account of how he came to be hideously disfigured, Ricky’s tale begins when he signs a deal with EES (the “Everything Except Shoes” Corporation) to promote their controversial fertilizer product Zygrot-24, rumored to be extremely toxic. Accompanied by his perverted but loyal friend Ernie (Michael Stoyanov), and hounded by his relentless number-one fan Stuey (Alex Zuckerman), Ricky travels to South America to act as the spokesperson for EES and quiet the environmentalist concerns. When he gets there, however, he’s quickly smitten with Julie (Megan Ward), the organizer of the protesters, and the gang invariably wind up on an adventure together that has nothing to do with the corporate gig. The next thing we know, they decide to check out Randy Quaid’s roadside freak show, but end up becoming his captives in his latest “mad scientist” venture, assisted of course, by none other than Zygrot-24. What follows, amidst ham-fisted dialogue and greatly-exaggerated acting, is a sometimes disturbing, sometimes unwatchable, always ridiculous experience.

Freaked has the makings of a cheapened Terry Gilliam film, the body horror of David Cronenberg (in particular, the dream-like weirdness of Naked Lunch), and the tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top violence of Sam Raimi (think Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness). I want to say it has the mise-en-scene of Tim Burton, but really only the “afterlife waiting area” scene of Beetlejuice comes to mind; its zany collection of mutated and mutilated characters would be right at home in this film. Freaked has the non-sequitur comedic style of a Monty Python episode or a Mel Brooks movie, and the same kind of shenanigans you’d expect to find in Police Academy or Naked Gun. At one point, Stuey gets sucked out of an airplane, followed by an old man in a wheelchair, before a stewardess plainly walks up and closes the aircraft hatch. (The kid eventually lands on the ground below, gets up, says, “Hey, I’m okay!” before some debris falls on his head.)

The reality depicted in Freaked is squished and distorted, viewed as if through a kaleidoscope. It’s a wacky, frightening blend of twisted surrealism and jacked-up psychedelia, coming together to create a constant wonky, off-kilter feel. The result is like a bad acid trip. When you reflect back on what you’ve seen, it’s like stringing together the random, bizarre segments of a half-remembered dream from the night before. Nothing makes sense; what seemed to work in dreamland is now utterly absurd in hindsight.

As entertainment, Freaked skates a fine line between the inspiringly bizarre and the just flat-out stupid. Only someone with very immature sensibilities and the attention span of a second-grader will truly appreciate the monster that Alex Winter and his buddies have created. His raunchy brand of humor seems mostly directed at ten-year-olds, but sometimes will veer into R-rated territory. If you have the patience for, and can stomach the film’s unique brand of harebrained lunacy and occasional idiocy, there may be something worthwhile for you here. Otherwise, I suggest you pass on this like you would a high school cafeteria’s mystery quiche.

Friday Morning Review: "Navy SEALS" (1990)

Starring Charlie Sheen, Michael Biehn, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Dennis Haysbert, Rick Rossovich, Cyril O’Reilly, Bill Paxton

Directed by Lewis Teague

Written by Chuck Pfarrer, Gary Goldman

Produced by Brenda Feigen, Bernie Williams

113 minutes

2.5 stars

I would have liked this movie fifteen years ago, back when I was going through my pre-adolescent military phase, and a bunch of guys blowing up some other guys with (then) state-of-the-art weaponry was all I needed. Navy SEALS isn’t a straight-to-DVD, patriotic glorification of advanced warfare, heavily endorsed by the US Navy—but it’s damn close. If it isn’t the kind of movie that was made to get a surge of young guys to sign up with their local recruiter, I don’t know what is.

The film boasts such star power as Charlie Sheen and Michael Beihn in a Tom Clancy-type plot, but one which is more in line with the Clancy-label videogame franchise than any of his novels. The tone is decidedly more Top Gun than—well, really anything else. You won’t appreciate this film if you’re expecting any sort of commentary.

The premise is simple. We see both “sides” of the lives of the men on a rough-and-tumble Navy SEALs team: one side when they’re on mission, the other when they’re off, with a few highlighted dramatic subplots interspersed between. The various attempts at endearing us to the characters are painfully obvious, first-date awkward. It’s basically Top Gun all over again, without the planes, and with Charlie Sheen standing in for Tom Cruise.

As hard as these guys work, they play even harder. We’re meant to assume that the experience of bullets flying past your head on a regular basis is automatically coupled with the mentality of being a larger-than-life, gung-ho risk-taker—the kind of action junkie whose night of shots isn’t complete until the bar is actually on fire, and for whom the instance of a towed car inspires hairbrained stunts of legend, involving a bicycle chase down the freeway, a Fast and the Furious-style hijacking while in-transit, and Jason Statham-brand maneuvers to escape oncoming traffic while driving in reverse. Yes, we understand that they’re supposed to fit the “badass tactical unit on-the-clock/rowdy-but-loveable gang of guys off-the-clock” stereotype, but a scene in which they tear up a golf course, consequence-free, starts to border on the absurd.

In the foreground of this merry band of hotshot supermen, are Hawkins (Sheen), Curran (Beihn), and Graham (Dennis Haysbert). As an added bonus, Bill Paxton plays a sniper they all lovingly refer to, while on mission, as “God.”

Hawkins is the wild, untamed one, with a simple need: a need for speed. Duh. He’s politically incorrect, he improvises, flies by the seat of his pants; a showy, hot-headed maverick. To help further illustrate this, he drives a red convertible. His “dramatic arc” is foreshadowed early on as a sort of need to seek a balance to his action high, to learn how to disconnect from his adrenaline rushes.

Curran is the leader, and thus the careful, rigorous strategist of the team, always the professional. He’s all about functionality and protocol; his mind never far from the job. To help you better understand his character, he drives a black, all-purpose Jeep. His dramatic arc is sort of a “struggle with the burden of command” type of thing.

Graham, at the beginning of the film, is about to get married. Unfortunately, just before the ceremony commences, everybody’s pager on the groom’s side starts to go off. This signals a drop-everything-at-a-moment’s-notice, priority-one mission call, and the bride is left hanging. Graham is skirting two worlds, that of the job, and that of the responsibility that comes with being a married man. He will have to choose one or the other—where to place his commitment—before the end of the movie, or before he dies, whichever comes first. Naturally, he’s more conservative and mature than the others.

While on the opening mission, which is supposed to be an open-and-close extraction of a captured American aircrew, Hawkins and Graham stumble upon a cache of Stinger missiles which could prove disastrous if allowed to remain in the possession of the terrorists. Unfortunately, Hawkins fails in his initial attempt to destroy the missiles, and Curran orders the entire team out before he can get another chance. This lapse in judgment precipitates the rest of the plot, as now the SEALs have to track down the missiles across the globe.

Very early on, the film sets up the rule that Intel is key—the team’s general badassery in the field is totally reliant upon good Intel, and rendered utterly useless without it. To this end, the team develops an information-based relationship with a Lebanese journalist played by Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, who drives a wedge between Curran and Hawkins when the two develop a mutual attraction to her.

What starts out as a brotherly, competitive relationship between the two naturally turns into a bitter resentment, further compounded by Hawkins’ sheer idiocy at certain points. Unfortunately what might have made for an interesting dramatic rivalry, never goes to the depths I wanted it to, the tension not thick enough; the conflict not deep enough to warrant more than a passing reflection. Unwilling or unable to push the drama further, and the script to new levels by exploring unfamiliar territory, the writers, Chuck Pfarrer (himself a retired SEAL commander) and Gary Goldman too often elect to “play it safe.” By this I mean they’re too afraid to make any lasting ruptures to the framework they’ve established in the opening acts, and tend to get out of a scene before the conflict threatens to go anywhere interesting. The action while on missions is highlighted; the team’s “time off” serves only as filler—it should be the other way around. Each time I thought a scene was going to cover new ground, the characters were plunged into another mission that put development on hold, and made it seem like everything was fine again between them, all rifts magically repaired. It’s almost as if all the “mission” scenes were written in order, by a giddy 12-year-old, and then all the “off-mission” scenes were written, by the same kid, now grown-up. The first collection is just a series of action scenes, by someone who thinks what they’ve created is a story, and the second collection of scenes is a story, but one that yet lacks maturity and experience.

And so, what you have in Navy SEALS is the start of an inquiry into the fragility of a friendship that is never really resolved. In a more interesting movie, we might have seen Curran pass his sights over Hawkins, and linger over him, the distinction between him and the enemy blurred for a delicate moment. Graham’s wife might have actually threatened to walk out on him if he didn’t make a choice one way or the other—the scenes between them, as they currently stand, are conflict-less, and essentially pointless.

While there are some memorable scenes, Navy SEALS is ultimately a hunk of clay that could have been a nice vase but which somebody decided to just make into a kitschy paperweight.

Friday Morning Review: "The Woman In Red" (1984)

Starring Gene Wilder, Kelly LeBrock, Gilda Radner

Directed by Gene Wilder

Written by Yves Robert, Jean-Loup Dabadie, Gene Wilder

Produced by Victor Drai

87 minutes

1.5 stars

Further proof that Gene Wilder is not a director, The Woman In Red is one of those movies that should probably just be swept back under the rug of the eighties, and quietly forgotten as you back slowly away.

As a comedy, it’s a scattershot barrage of hit-or-miss gags. Mostly miss. Wilder is too busy trying to force cartoonish antics out of mind-numbing, lifeless situations that he forgets to make an entertaining movie. It’s certainly not his finest hour, but that goes without saying.

Essentially a movie about an affair that never takes place, The Woman In Red is based on a French film, Un éléphant ça trompe énormément, translated into English as An Elephant Can Be Extremely Deceptive. As an American remake, it feels dumbed-down and uninspired. Wilder fails to make the most of his scenes, and manages their transition to the screen poorly. I get the impression he had his hands full with both directing and acting duties. The result is a juggling act of disproportionate, eclectic odds and ends, all threatening to clatter to the floor at any moment.

Wilder plays Teddy Pierce, a low-risk, low-reward kind of guy with an average job, an average group of friends, and an average wife. Bored with this average set of circumstances but basically content, Teddy one day spies a woman in red (a slightly embarrassed Kelly LeBrock, who knows she’s only in this to look good) walk over a grate in a parking garage as a gust of wind causes her dress to fly up. Needless to say, he gets quite a show. At that point everything changes, and Teddy becomes obsessed with tracking her down. The woman, Charlotte, a successful model with her face plastered on every billboard in San Francisco, is involved in a campaign with Teddy’s ad agency, but in their chance encounters, barely acknowledges his existence. He tries unsuccessfully to capture her attention, initiating a series of gags including mistakenly setting up a date with a repulsive co-worker (Gilda Radner, who, it might be worth noting, Wilder married shortly after the film’s production), clumsily passing himself off as an experienced horseback rider, and getting an extreme makeover, all while convincing his doting wife Didi (Judith Ivey) that an affair is the last thing on his mind. By accident, he eventually does win the affection of Charlotte, and spends the second half of the movie trying to get into bed with her, while keeping up the charade with his wife.

I would say it runs out of steam at that point—but for a movie to run out of steam, it has to at least have some in the first place. The way the narrative is set up only distanced me from the comedy. Characters are hard to read and events that are critical to the central plotline are sometimes totally ambiguous. The relationship between Teddy and Charlotte doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, and when they finally do start actually interacting it happens between the scenes, revealed to us in narration!

There is just too much unresolved weirdness; tangents are introduced that go nowhere and have no significance. At one point, we have a random, uncalled-for subplot about one of Teddy’s friends who turns out to be gay. The outing is made over lunch, and the character in question just kind of smiles while his friends look around awkwardly; the subject is never addressed between them for the rest of the movie, and the dynamic of the group never changes.

In the first act, we’re shown a glimpse into the fractured relationship between one of Teddy’s friends, a real scumbag (Joseph Bologna) and his wife, who leaves him once she finds out about his flagrant adultery. In a subsequent scene, Didi innocently reveals that she owns a gun, repeatedly and inadvertently resting the barrel right in Teddy’s lap while he’s in the middle of a fake phone conversation to lay out the façade of being “called into work on a Wednesday night.” In these scenes, Wilder sets up a simple expectation of the consequences of his character’s intended actions—but by the end, it’s unclear what sort of message, if any, he’s trying to leave us with, when the sleazy, cheating friend’s marriage falls right back into place, and a revelation of Teddy’s duplicity never occurs.

By the end I finally figured out that The Woman In Red wasn’t one movie, it was two. The first, from the beginning to roughly the forty-minute marker (halfway into the already scant running time), is the story of a man vying for the attention of a hard-to-get woman. Once she finally notices him, the second movie begins, in which a man tries and fails miserably at the task of having an affair, barely making it to the bedroom.

I might have been willing to forgive some of the meandering, mismanaged narrative if we had a decent protagonist to serve as an anchor—but Teddy is too much of an oafish loser to be endearing and runs dangerously low on redeeming qualities; incidents of karmic injustice and his resultant bumbling slapstick are largely wasted. Wilder, starting to show his age, plays Teddy with a meek concupiscence, but in scenes where he throws himself onto the hood of Charlotte’s car in the rain, and watches her undress, he comes off as more of a creepy lech. At least the way in which he handles his secret fantasy in front of his wife is halfway intelligent, but the reverse psychology tactics don’t exactly match the doddering simplicity of his character.

While Kelly LeBrock is quite possibly the most sensual creature on the planet, Wilder doesn’t bother to instill her with any personable nuances or characteristics that pique our interest beyond the visual level. There was never a moment where I was ever firmly aware of who she was; in fact until the end, due to her relative absence from the actual proceedings, I was convinced she was some ethereal, abstract idealization of a woman invented by Teddy’s fleeting subconscious—a delusional fantasy just barely derived, surface details only. Unfortunately the film is not that deep, so to speak.

Friday Morning Review: "Less Than Zero" (1987)

Starring Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr., James Spader

Directed by Marek Kanievska

Written by Harley Peyton (based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis)

Produced by Jon Avnet, Jordan Kerner, Marvin Worth

98 minutes

3.5 stars

In a low-level film production class in my third year of college, our instructor, Jack if I recall, told us the two things to never include in our short scripts. We were about to enter into pre-production on our five-minute, 16mm films to be shot on the much-loved, spring-wound Bolex camera, and Jack was trying to jar us out of the hackneyed mentality that had befallen many a student filmmaker to come before us. Those two things, were of course, drugs and scenes shot in cemeteries. Perhaps more amusing than his facetious aside was the collective groan that followed. He went on to say that in the history of cinema, there were only two good movies ever made about drugs—and those movies were Requiem for a Dream and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

While his lofty expectations for what constituted a good drug flick got the pot stirring for the rest of that class period, and wasted more time than it should have, I found myself thinking back to that “lesson of the day” as I wondered where to begin with Less Than Zero. The fact that it has a strong anti-drug message can’t be understated. Where it differs from the source material (Bret Easton Ellis’s book of the same name) is that it seems to go for the low-hanging fruit, and does so pretty conspicuously. The question is, does it deserve to be considered a good film in spite of, or because of that fact?

I won’t lie, Less Than Zero has some sort of irresistible appeal for me. It’s definitely not to everyone’s taste, but remains one of my personal favorites from the eighties, a hugely underrated film that I think has more to say than just, “say no to drugs.” I forced myself not to bring any pre-conceived feelings to this review, though I suspect it’s a less-than-objective one.

The story involves three high school friends, from the day they graduate to Christmas six months later. In that time, they have all but drifted apart, emotionally as well as geographically—with straight-edge, college-bound Clay on the east coast and former girlfriend Blair and best friend Julian rapidly sinking into an abyss of drugs on the west. When Clay returns home to sunny L.A. to attempt to salvage his relationship with Blair, he finds Julian in need of some serious help and has to dig him out of an early grave.

Director Marek Kanievska seems to take the scared-straight approach, and of course a lot of that has to do with the studio’s efforts to clean up a lot of the X-rated, meandering existentialism of Ellis’s novel, in an attempt to put together a marketable package with three-act structure, an identifiable protagonist and a clear moral doggie bag to leave the theater with. The movie takes great liberties with the novel from what I understand, and I have a pretty good idea of what that means after having experienced both the cinematic and literary versions of American Psycho. Less Than Zero doesn’t have the cartoonish, satiric spin Ellis’s other adaptation does, and is instead a story told with gritty portent. Having not read the source material in this instance, I could only approach the movie as the landmark acting achievement in Robert Downey Jr.’s career that it surely is, and as a product of the eighties and all that that implies. Of course it’s possibly too dark and serious to be called an “eighties classic,” for fear of being lumped in with most of the movies you’d find in that category.

I’ll admit, it’s hard to feel passionate about these rich Beverly Hills kids stuck in the past and burning out. But their circumstances are thus to more effectively communicate the theme of reconciling old memories with the harsh reality of the present.

The film’s main point of contention, I feel, is whether or not Clay (a distant Andrew McCarthy) is a likeable protagonist. He’s the “responsible one” in the trio, yet is continually more interested in rekindling his high school romance than rushing to the aid of his best friend. Unfortunately, neither the character, nor McCarthy’s performance, can carry the movie. Were he more of a down-on-his-luck loser, someone who was no stranger to failure and whose experience of trying to make it meant he had to actually work for a living, he might bring something more meaningful to Julian’s complete downward spiral of self-destruction. Instead, I get the impression that at any moment, Clay could become the same person Julian is. What makes him so different?

And so, instead of a dramatic story of reconnection, we have a study of a human train wreck, brought to us by the phenomenal Robert Downey. As Julian drifts further and further away into oblivion, and Clay’s role remains passive, we watch the tragedy unfold. Exploring the elements of Julian’s life that have brought him to this point is like playing hopskotch over a trail of broken glass. Caught in the middle between the dark (Julian) and the light (Clay) is Blair (the lovely Jami Gertz), who is nearly a stone’s throw away from being dragged down into Julian’s world herself.

Julian is a terrifying picture of failure, or rather someone very much unable to deal with or process that concept. When we meet him, he’s on the verge of whoring himself out to pay back debts owed to the drug dealer (James Spader) who essentially owns him. He’s a complete mess: sweaty, hair matted, eyes bloodshot, dried vomit at the corners of his mouth. Desperately clinging to the notion that at any moment, everything is going to fall into place. If you’re familiar with Robert Downey Jr.’s history surrounding the film you know the story doesn’t end after the credits roll; the line between his on-screen character, and the reality of his situation behind-the-scenes, was largely blurred. Whether he brought a little something extra to the role, or the role rubbed off on him, I’m not sure. Knowing a few people like Julian, whose total refusal to accept rock bottom and be reasoned with only precipitate more severe consequences later down the pipe, I found his portrayal to be scarily spot-on.

As a film about or dealing with the consequences of hard drug use, Less Than Zero instills this lingering sense of unease that I think is quite unique. Julian is always on the verge of a breakthrough, but closer to a relapse. You know this is never going to end well. Thomas Newman’s powerful, haunting score evokes the nostalgia of childhood and happier days, yet each swell, when it hits, is deadly serious. And the bleak conclusion gives me a chill every time.

Drugs and scenes shot in cemeteries: Less Than Zero has both. Jack, this one’s for you.

Friday Morning Review: "The Chase" (1994)

Starring Charlie Sheen, Kristy Swanson, Rocky Carroll, Henry Rollins, Josh Mostel, Ray Wise

Directed by Adam Rifkin

Written by Adam Rifkin

Produced by Cassian Elwes, Brad Wyman

89 minutes

3 stars

Once in a while a movie comes along that offers absolutely nothing substantial, and has barely any impact on you whatsoever, yet you can’t help but enjoy. The Chase is that kind of guilty pleasure.

I didn’t come away any different from the experience, and the second the credits appeared I immediately went on to other things, but I’ll give it three stars for keeping me thoroughly entertained and even making me laugh out loud a few times. And yes, the humor is mostly lowest-common denominator, whippy and zany, with a sprinkling of heavy-handed social satire thrown in for good measure. May not be to everyone’s taste, but I found it hilarious.

It’s “light-bulb” entertainment, flies buzzing around one, that is—the kind of movie that comes on as you’re flipping channels and you can’t help but watch, until it cuts to commercial and you move on to something else. The kind of movie that holds your attention only while it’s right in front of you. It’s not something I can really go into any sort of depth about, but I’ll try.

In the very definition of a cold open, The Chase begins with Jackson “Jack” Davis Hammond (Charlie Sheen) taking a sexy blonde stranger hostage in the middle of a gas station convenience mart when two cops become tipped off to his suspicious behavior. We don’t know what he did, but he’s already on the run even before the movie began. Clumsily disarming the cops, and hijacking Natalie Voss’s (Kristie Swanson) BMW while she’s still under the assumption his own gun isn’t really just a candy bar, Jack tries to skip town but within minutes, almost every TV channel news team in the San Diego area has seized upon the story and begins broadcasting the ensuing police chase live.

From here on out, the movie is basically one long action sequence, shot mostly in real-time, that never lets up (except for one miraculous sex scene that is probably infamous in some circles). We gradually find out the exposition from news broadcasts, snippets from a police report, and as Jack relates it to Natalie when they have some down time. It’s a unique approach that might be strenuous for some. Jack and Natalie stuck in a car together as the cops bear down on them is the kind of scenario that would have lent itself perfectly to some Tarantino-esque dialogue, but that would have been a totally different movie.

Director Adam Rifkin’s movie is cheap and fast, a deliberate product of a culture raised on MTV, and surely that of an adrenaline-boosted, cocaine-induced film crew. Jerky, zoomed-in handheld shots predating The Bourne Supremacy, and snappy, MTV-inspired editing, come together to form something so magical, that you can literally come in at any point, and know everything that is going on in less than a minute. All to a token 90’s metal soundtrack delightfully composed by Richard Gibbs of Battlestar Galactica fame.

Jack is one guy who just can’t catch a break, and when it rains, it pours. While all the action takes place along a single highway, Rifkin continually raises the stakes with cartoonish embellishment.

A vast number of off-kilter, flamboyant performances to the point of caricature collide in the pot, each threatening to steal the show, but none of them coming out on top.

I feel weird saying it, but Jack’s casual offhandedness (“No offense, but what a dickhead”) and downtrodden “fuck the system” attitude couldn’t have been played by anyone other than Charlie Sheen.

In a squad car hot in pursuit, Henry Rollins and Josh Mostel play beat officers being taped from the back seat a la “Cops.” Rollins’ steely-eyed officer Dobbs is less a cop and more of a performer at heart playing to the camera, empowered by the sense of “fear and respect” his title holds, and relishing questions about whether or not he’s ever had to kill anyone in the line of duty.

From the Channel 8 Skycopter, a garish, seizing-upon-every-development-with-extreme-theatrics traffic reporter (Rocky Carroll) relates all the action with epic commentary. I would imagine every single one of his lines of dialogue was written with an exclamation mark (“That medical school truck is spilling cadavers all along the freeway!”).

Ray Wise rounds out the cast as Natalie’s multi-millionaire dad, looking like he just stepped in from a wormhole to Twin Peaks.

At its highest level, The Chase is a satire of nightly news programs playing to attention-deficit audiences, the kind of dramatization prevalent in reality shows, documentaries hungry for sensationalism, and the media in general, seizing on a story and devouring it like piranhas.

There’s not much more to it, but that’s kind of the beauty.

Friday Morning Review: Mobsters (1991)

Starring Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, Costas Mandylor, Michael Gambon, Anthony Quinn, F. Murray Abraham, Chris Penn, Lara Flynn Boyle

Directed by Michael Karbelnikoff

Written by Michael Mahern, Nicholas Kazan

Produced by Jim Ballantine, Carolyn Bates

104 minutes

2 stars

Mobsters is many things: a story of four gangsters who grow up together on the streets of New York, a beginner’s primer to the world of organized crime, a highly dramatized history lesson about the formation of the Commission. It’s also many different movies, rolled into one. A collage of mob clichés, as if the filmmakers slid a tray down a cafeteria lunch line and picked scenes out, a la carte, from other films.

This film opens on the mean streets of Brooklyn, 1917. Charlie “Lucky” Luciano (Christian Slater)—though he has yet to grow into that nickname—is an angsty, frustrated youth whose father is terrorized by mob boss Don Faranzano. A friend of his is later killed in the street by a rival boss, Joe Masseria, while the masses look on as if from the stands. Lucky quickly learns to despise that kind of power, and lays awake at night dreaming of the day when he will have his turn.

The story of four gangsters who grow up together on the streets of New York takes place in the span of a single cut. We flash ahead fourteen years to Lucky’s half-Italian, half-Jewish crew, all grown up, strolling down the same streets in the height of fashion. We get the impression they’re kind-of-sort-of a big deal—but not big enough, as Meyer (Patrick Dempsey) elucidates with an analogy derived from a half-full glass of whiskey. Bootlegging is the name of the game, but aside from a flashy, cutaway montage of them standing side-by-side, firing their Tommy guns in unison at the camera, we never find out exactly what that entails; what goes on behind-the-scenes. Their dabblings in general mobster mayhem and looking good in suits plays out against the backdrop of a coming war between two big mob families—yes, that’s right, the equally vile Faranzano and Masseria clans.

By smooth-talking and building up a reputation, Lucky is able to negotiate his gang into a unique partnership with either of these two crime lords of the old guard. From this point on, the story plays out like Yojimbo or Fistful of Dollars, with Lucky’s outfit pitting both factions against each other—but Mobsters is less thrilling, and less intelligent than either of those films. Lucky will fall into bed with Masseria, whose monicker “fat pig” is well-deserved (and contributes to the film’s best—and possibly only original scene), only to sell him out to Faranzano, before double-crossing Faranzano. In the end, it’s nothing more than a giant “who’s gonna whack who” clusterfuck. For a subplot, Lucky enters into a “friends with benefits” relationship with sultry Mara Motes (Lara Flynn Boyle), that never really goes anywhere significant.

The script is at times painfully simple and at others far too ambiguous. The sparse exposition in the first act misses out on opportunities to endear us to this band of brothers—and those few, deliberate attempts that do crop up hit just a trifle too hard. I could always tell whenever I was meant to feel a certain way; the film’s “charm” was lost on me. I never participated on an emotional level, never bought into the reality. I was always aware I was watching a movie. In the second half, there’s some interesting dramatic tension between Slater and Dempsey, but their characters’ relationships aren’t developed nearly enough in the first act to reel you in.

Mobsters is derivative of a lot of things, but handles none of them well. It tries hard to be The Untouchables, but doesn’t feature a single compelling character, much less performance, to serve as an anchor. It tries to capture, but ultimately lacks the dark wit and slick pacing of a Scorcese film. It’s a lot like Once Upon A Time In America but without the passage of time or deep thematic reservoir; itself lighter, choppier, and streamlined. Sometimes I felt like I was watching a highly-condensed version of Boardwalk Empire in this regard. The production is lavish, but pales in comparison to Dick Tracy. Lush set pieces are wasted on the trite and formulaic story.

If any of the films I’ve listed here are name-brand items, this is the generic label. We’re talking “Irish Treasures” or “Choco Spheres” on a shelf next to “Lucky Charms” or “Cocoa Puffs.” Strictly speaking, it’s a poor man’s Coppola.

If you can suspend these criticisms, the film itself is an enjoyable ride, just one you’ve probably taken before. There are some amusing bits, such as the wild card contract killer “Mad Dog” Coll—but when the filmmakers aren’t recreating scenes from other movies, it’s clear they’re drawing their inspiration from the pages of an encyclopedia.

The Ten Best Films of 2010

10. Greenberg / Exit Through the Gift Shop (tie)

From the man who nearly defined the plotless indie flick, Greenberg is a severely underappreciated classic. This might be Noah Baumbach’s most accessible movie yet, aided in part by the fact that the main character is played by Ben Stiller, in what I can surmise to be his Lost in Translation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The latest in a continuing series of vehicles for established comic actors to transition into the world of drama, with interesting and commendable results. Now I wouldn’t necessarily put this in the same league as those films, and I don’t think it’s as good as Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, but it’s got one of the best scripts of the year, second only to probably The Social Network.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is another coming-to-L.A. tale, but that’s where the similarities between it and Greenberg end. Banksy’s tongue-in-cheek sense of social parody is definitely reflected in this, his directorial debut about a riotously eccentric amateur videographer who becomes an unexpected, overnight sensation, and as a sidenote explores the underground world of graffiti art. Banksy tells a clever story about what it means, and what it takes, to be an artist, commercially and critically, in today’s confused world. The film calls into question what is and isn’t art—where the line is drawn or blurred—with a wry sense of humor and an uncanny sense of realism. The fact that audiences couldn’t tell if this was an actual documentary or just Banksy having fun all the more proves his point.

9. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

This is Pee-Wee’s Playhouse for the generation who grew up watching Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, all grown-up. There’s a sea of cherubic faces in this movie, and it was a huge flop, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of this seamless marriage of cinema and videogames. The line between those two mediums isn’t just blurred, it’s lost completely in the ensuing chaos. I can’t imagine anyone rendering this adaptation of the comic more effectively than Edgar Wright (“Shawn of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz”), whose MTV-style editing and pitch-perfect sense of comedic timing is quickly becoming legendary. And if you’ve seen “Spaced,” you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Despite what seems to be the popular conception, you don’t have to be emo, scene-kid, or a hipster to fall in love with this movie, but you may have to have played a few fighting games in your day. The references to the golden age of comics and 16-bit gaming drop like coins in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a kaleidoscope of attention-deficit imagery that hits you like a sack of potatoes. You’ll be seeing stars for days. The appeal does have a limited window, but if you’ve picked up an SNES controller or dumped quarters into an arcade fighter, you’ll laugh. If you grew up reading comics in the eighties and nineties, you’ll laugh. If you’ve ever been in or around an indie-type band, you’ll think this is a riot. Between this and Kick-Ass, it was a good year to be a nerd.

8. The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer is a movie that recalls the best of Hitchcock, from its classically suspenseful score to its precipitous sense of pacing. Of these picks, this movie probably entertained me on the most levels simultaneously. I was intrigued by its political subtext, enchanted by its comprehensive sense of place (the North Sea island of Sylt standing in for Martha’s Vineyard because of Polanski’s inability to set foot on U.S. soil), and engaged in its “everyman unraveling a conspiracy”-type plot. Polanski could make a grapefruit mysterious if he wanted to. He could take a day care center and make it the nexus for a sinister national secret. Ewan McGregor as the average guy caught up in something over his head, is both likeable and fallible. One of my favorite scenes involves him staring himself in the mirror, poised on the brink of slipping beneath the covers with the British Prime Minister’s wife, calmly telling himself “Bad idea”—before Polanski cuts to him invariably doing just that.

7. Kick-Ass

Kick-Ass is so gleefully irreverent that Nick Cage shooting his bulletproof vest-clad daughter to expand her pain threshold, and a group of mobsters arguing over the mechanics of cooking a traitor in a giant microwave, are a couple of its milder scenes. The only thing I found more satisfying than Chloë Grace Moretz slicing and dicing baddies was reading the reviews of critics who were offended by this no-holds-barred gore fest. With a liberal dash of Tarantino, Sam Raimi and Sergio Leone, Kick-Ass is the rare movie that lives up to its title (there are few other words to describe it). Bar none, it’s the most fun I had at the movies this year. An overlong climax, and its tendency to go for shock value for shock value’s sake, are minor hiccups in a film that succeeds where the previous Mark Millar adaptation, Wanted, failed. If you like Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Shawn of the Dead, and Fight Club, you’ll embrace this one with open arms. Guilty pleasure or otherwise, it’s one kick-ass time at the movies.

6. Inception

I’m very amused by Inception’s “love it/hate it” relationship with critics. My reaction was probably the mildest amongst my floored friends the first time I saw it. I’d been anticipating the movie for longer than any of them and was slightly pissed Nolan hadn’t gone a more “Terry Gilliam” route in his far-too-logical, heavily rule-based depiction of dreams; disappointed he didn’t show us more of the bizarre, surreal imagery he used to sell the movie in the trailer. I was worried I would like it even less the second time around, but to my delight, I actually appreciated it more. Sure, the movie reaches levels of convolution bordering on pure silliness (for every hard rule about how things work in these dreams, there are 20 other sub-rules to explain those, and 20 rules per each of those for an exponential mind-clusterfuck). But it works as long as you keep in mind Ellen Page’s line that it’s not about imagery, but the sense of it being indistinguishable from reality. Every creative choice Nolan makes, no matter how complicated, supports this theme. Cobb’s reality “outside of dreams” (if you believe any part of the film is “real”) is a noir-ish thriller, where he’s always on the run from corporate bounty hunters. The movie wouldn’t have worked if this was any different, if the two “realities” presented were noticeably dissimilar. Here was another big snub for Directing Oscar. Nolan is definitely the showman of the year in the same sense that James Cameron was in 2009.

5. Catfish

Catfish falls in line with what seems to be the underlying theme for docs this year, this sort of “is it real or just a hoax?” mockumentary fare (I’m Still Here, Exit Through the Gift Shop, etc). Of those films, this one captured my imagination and stuck with me the longest. For those who have inadvertently (or purposefully) skipped ahead and spoiled the ending a la Wikipedia, I can testify to the experience that you can still watch the movie and be entertained, even if you know what’s coming. Knowing what was coming down the road, as the layers of this mystery unfolded, I still appreciated how the filmmakers had crafted something both Hitchcockian and rife with social commentary. This was another movie I approached as an anti-Facebook satire of internet culture, and one that I think hits a lot harder than The Social Network. Besides the heavily-marketed suspense aspect, it’s a picture of how we live our lives, online or otherwise in this brave new world. Angela’s obvious social issues are no more a contributing factor to that eerie picture than Nev’s unflinching faith in the reality of what he is presented.

4. Black Swan

Is it highbrow art or just torture porn masquerading as such? Black Swan may be a psychological shock-fest with little plot or substance, but as a trip, this is one hell of a roller coaster ride. Natalie Portman plays Nina, a technically flawless but prude and passionless ballet dancer in a tragic tale of the self-imposed pressure of perfection. While a tensely competitive dance company is the obvious backdrop, this is a universal story that transcends profession and which I, as a writer, for example, can especially appreciate. Dark, macabre, and shot with gritty realism, Black Swan is a brilliant companion piece to Darren Aronofsky’s last intimate work, The Wrestler. The psychological horror aspect is very Lynchian, but tamer than other mindfucks exploring inner realities that have come before it, namely Lynch’s Inland Empire, to which I couldn’t help but draw certain similarities.

3. The Town

Ben Affleck’s engaging tale of Townie bank robbers trying to escape their grim purgatory took me by surprise. It’s the movie I got the most into this year, cheering both sides of the cops-and-robbers dynamic like I did in The Fugitive, on the edge of my seat the whole time. This is a movie where every moment, every plot development, is no less than exciting. The Town is many things, an exploration into the delicate, brotherly relationship between Affleck’s and Renner’s characters, a “forbidden fruit” love story, and a solid directing/acting achievement for Affleck, who can put this in his portfolio beside the equally-good Gone Baby Gone. My pick for best supporting actor this year? Jeremy Renner as the high-strung Jem Coughlin.

2. 127 Hours

For me, there was never a more gripping moviegoing experience this year than Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, a chilling and creative adaptation of Aron Ralston’s autobiography, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. James Franco remains my personal pick for best actor of the year, turning in a soul-bearing, up-close-and-personal performance. The camera is rarely more than three inches from his face, the takes are long and uncut, and Boyle uses mostly available light. No room for slip-ups, in other words, and there aren’t any. While we’re on Oscar nominations, the biggest snub of the year has to be Boyle for director. He’s created something truly unique here, a rendering not just of the hard external reality, but also the inner psychological reality of Ralston’s situation. Like Fincher, he has managed to turn what could have been a simple autobiographical account into a universally dramatic tale, in this case one of dependence and independence. While the film’s themes can be boiled down to the simple statement: “that’s why you always leave a note,” Franco’s reflection over the pieces of his life that had led him to this point, and the grim realization of the poetic justice of the situation, are a dramatic masterstroke by Boyle.

1. The Social Network

Whether you see it as a glorification of internet entrepreneurship, or a scathing criticism of social media and its greater implications on our rapidly-changing society, you can’t deny that at its most basic level, The Social Network is a movie about connection and disconnection. Director David Fincher has once again created something that defines a generation, just as Fight Club did for the last decade. I have a feeling that he has also painted a cinematic Rorschach print: you see what you want to see in it. If you’ve been a Facebook user since the “old days,” you might feel nostalgic like I did. Most of us know now that Facebook is a circus compared to what it was, back when it was exclusive, invitation-only—that was its appeal over MySpace and the like. I’d been seriously considering deactivating my account for some time; seeing this crystallization of ideas put me over the edge. Afterwards I felt like an extra in Mark Zuckerberg’s life, just another statistic in his business venture. Whether you see him as a monster poised to take over the digital landscape or a true genius—and whether or not that has anything to do with his fictional depiction—The Social Network is that rare movie that can entertain both perspectives at once; a darkly satirical portrait of greed and disconnection.

Honorable Mention: Monsters, The Kids Are All Right, The Fighter, True Grit, Toy Story 3, The Crazies, Shutter Island, Winter’s Bone, I’m Still Here

Friday Morning Review: "The Legend of Hell House" (1973)

Starring Pamela Franklin, Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, Gayle Hunnicutt, Roland Culver, Peter Bowles

Directed by John Hough

Written by Richard Matheson

Produced by Albert Fennell, Norman T. Herman, James H. Nicholson, Susan Hart

95 minutes

2 stars

In The Legend of Hell House, an aging millionaire contracts a team comprised of a physicist and two psychics to make an investigation into the possibility of “survival after death.” That investigation takes place in the “Mount Everest of haunted houses,” that is, the Belasco House, where the concern isn’t just the survival of ghostly personalities—but the survival of anyone who dares step inside.

My problem with the film isn’t that it has a crappy premise. My problem is that it has a decent premise that just isn’t handled well enough—wasted by a combination of missing exposition, spotty characterization, and a lack of dramatic material. I got more into the character descriptions I wrote after the fact, than I did the characters themselves while watching—proof that at the nexus of this film there is something worthwhile, just mismanaged and largely unexplored.

While the story might not be anything to write home about, the ambiance, if anything, is worth noting. It’s a creepy, atmospheric trip of a movie. Inspired cinematography and a moody, sparse soundtrack highlight the dark voyage. Outside, a surreal abyss presses upon the house from all sides, black cats creep about stone walls against foggy voids, and inside, there’s no relief from the demons that haunt every room. The creepiness is reflected in the characters, especially McDowall, whose thick glasses and out-of-touch nature add a chilling presence to the scenes he’s in. It’s scary in a way that defies the “deluge of shock and gore” formula employed by most second-rate horror flicks. That said, it’s certainly no Shining.

When the characters arrive at the Belasco House, they find the windows all bricked over, permitting no daylight. This notion sent a shiver down my spine, but unfortunately the filmmakers miss a plethora of opportunities for creating interesting lighting setups; once inside, ugly lighting serves only to reveal and emphasize the tacky sets.

The house itself is filled with perversely erotic reliefs and more than a few instances of dungeon-esque architecture. Yet there’s not enough character to set it apart from every other haunted locale we’ve seen. The cobweb-draped menagerie littered about seems to be just an arbitrary assortment of creepy-looking furniture, picture frames, candelabras, and so on that have been sitting in the prop room for the last twelve years.

Stark, doc-like titles conveying the exact date and time, each accompanied by an electronic sigh from the brooding background score, are meant to give the film a scientific feel, fall in line with the observational, procedural nature of the plot, and echo the theme of a controlled experiment—but their recurring frequency over too limited a span of time is only jarring and quickly becomes farcical.

The motley cast of characters on the team include Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill), the stalwart skeptic, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), his wife just along for the ride, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), a young psychic who is most receptive to the presences in the house, and Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall), an eccentric physical medium, and the only survivor of the previous investigatory attempt. None of these characters ever really won me over. Characterization is sparse, undeveloped, and mostly one-dimensional. I attribute this to the film’s apparent lack of a first act. For a screenplay adapted from a novel by the novel’s author, it’s literally devoid of exposition.

Barrett subscribes to solely empirical rationalizations for the psychic phenomena that occur in the house, while Florence, under constant assault by ghostly manifestations, ascribes the same phenomena to something spiritual. Therein lies the film’s only attempt at dramatic conflict. Throughout all of their experiences, Florence remains weirdly unperturbed; offended more by Barrett’s skeptical views than, say, an instance in which she’s raped by a ghost. It takes a dead cat in the shower to rattle her resolve.

Barrett brings the scientific method to the table, but the voice of reason comes from the slightly unhinged, not-all-there Fischer, who has chosen to shut himself off to the energies of the house. He’s mostly removed from the proceedings until Barrett and Tanner (and their competing philosophies) are removed from the picture after having been showcased at the forefront of the plot.

The one thing the characters have going for them is that they’re not idiots, and Barrett’s rant about the house as a giant battery for “mindless, directionless” electromagnetic radiation is interesting food for thought. But some of the more intriguing dramatic potential is left by the curbside.

The film’s “scares” involve the characters’ successful or unsuccessful attempts to dodge physical manifestations Final Destination-style. The suspense begins to wane once it becomes apparent that all you have to do to survive, is not stand directly under a chandelier.

Luckily, the various instances in which the otherworldly force manifests itself aren’t causes for alarm. The characters, professionals though they may be, react with casual indifference to the temper tantrums of a narcissistic ghost—about as unnerved by this noisy, occasionally violent poltergeist as they would be by a meddlesome mouse. The wife character is meant as the layman, an anchor in the supernatural proceedings, but her reaction to the house’s manifestations is sometimes just as insipid.

The exorcism of negative energy in the house by machine is an interesting plot development that comes too late. A more interesting movie would have featured this as the central plot mechanic, from the very beginning. Here it feels like an afterthought, out of place.

The plot itself is a dreadful bore. Barely anything happens, and those events that do take place aren’t causally related to each other. We never transcend the premise of: four paranormal investigators in a house reacting to loud noises and objects moving of their own accord. It’s just a shouting contest between two bickering characters amidst a canvas of scares and creepy moments.

I could see the film benefiting from an update where the house itself is more thoroughly and creatively explored, revealing the same kind of distinct personality as that of the Paper Street Soap Co. from Fight Club. An update featuring characters that are fully fleshed-out and actually likeable. Where the psychic manifestations are more subtle in nature, and thus more open to interpretation, waxing in intensity as the plot progresses (instead of being so brazenly overt from the get-go).

What this boils down to, when you look at the sum total of its parts, is just another made-for-TV movie of the week, a bad X-Files episode. Although the core idea deserves to be remade—but not by Rob Zombie, and neither Rose Red, nor Scary Movie 2, count.

Friday Morning Review: "Demolition Man" (1993)

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne

Directed by Marco Brambilla

Written by Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, Peter M. Lenkov

Produced by Joel Silver, Michael Levy, Howard Kazanjian

115 minutes

2 stars

“Only While Intoxicated.”

With Demolition Man, I felt the need to create a new umbrella category of films, and that’s the title I’m going to run with, for now.

I’m not going to delve too deep into Demolition Man. You know all about this movie already, and even if you haven’t seen it, you know exactly what it is.

I never saw it when it first came out; in fact I knew of it only by reputation—so mine is a completely unsentimental perspective. Bear in mind, this review comes not from a place of childhood nostalgia but from one of clinical objectivity.

As the film opens, the camera sweeps over a dramatic vision of L.A. circa 1996: an out-of-control city run rampant with crime. I say “dramatic” because in the foreground, the Hollywood sign is in flames.

As the opening titles play out, the movie grants us a preview into its own future: a future of unnecessary Dutch angles, overused slow-motion, and corny one-liners. John Spartan (Sly Stallone), a no-holds-barred juggernaut, combats the relentless crime waves like a caffeine-fueled teenager in a first-person shooter with infinite ammo. What kind of name is John Spartan, anyway? Jesus.

Wesley Snipes plays Simon Phoenix, another thirteen-year-old in a grown-up’s body who likes to play with fire. As Bill Cobbs points out later on, “he’s evil in a way you’ve never read about…a criminal the likes of which you’ve never seen.” Uh-huh.

In any case, these two are mortal enemies, destined to battle each other forever or something. Stallone finally apprehends Snipes, but ends up getting a bunch of hostages killed due to an oversight, so they’re both sentenced to 70 years of “sub-zero rehabilitation.” ‘Cause that’s how shit works in the future—I mean, 1996.

In the real future, 2032—we know this from the new-age, Tangerine Dream-inspired synths as Spartan wakes up from cryo-stasis—San Diego and Los Angeles have been merged into one planned city called “San Angeles,” a place that has been stripped of all human interface. Here, concepts like crime—and sarcasm—are urban legends, long-forgotten memories. “Safety Above All” is the catch phrase, as everything that is, and possibly can be bad for you, has been outlawed: cigarettes, swearing, even salt to name a few. This is blunt-force satire at its finest.

Dennis Leary, as an underground (literally) revolutionary-type character, is the only bright spot in this crisply utilitarian universe. Too bad we hardly ever see him.

In this world, the police force is completely ill-equipped to deal with, much less respond to, even minor incidents. A responding officer to the situation caused by a public miscreant references a computer-generated script dictating proper police procedure. One measly little murder—for instance when Simon Phoenix escapes cryo-stasis and kills the presiding doctor—is a matter of national security. Hence one character’s sledgehammer of a line, “We need an old-fashioned cop.” Cue the Demolition Man.

Why is John Spartan nicknamed the Demolition Man? ‘Cause he blows shit up. That’s his style.

As he proceeds to wreak havoc across the pristine city, he’s chaperoned by Lenina Huxley (three guesses to name the reference), played by Sandra Bullock, as hot and as wooden as she’s ever been. She’s mildly competent where the rest of her crew is utterly hopeless only because she’s nostalgic for an era she never knew, fascinated by the “vulgar” twentieth century.

For as mystified by the future as John Spartan is, Pheonix is a kid in a candy store, hacking public access terminals left and right with the ease of Mark Zuckerberg. Don’t worry, this is explained later on in the, uh…plot.

The “badness” of Demolition Man is obvious. I’d basically written my entire review in the first twenty minutes of the movie, to give you some context. The question is, can it be enjoyed as a total farce?

Indeed, there’s plenty of humor abound, mostly unintentional. The best parts of the movie are its glaring plot-holes, its inconsistencies, its head-scratching nonsense. Computer systems are hilariously outdated; an operating system in the police headquarters looks like something the director’s kid drew with a crayon.

The bits that actually work include John’s frustrated attempts to use the advanced technology that has replaced toilet paper, and his discovery that his specialized rehab has granted him a psychological sewing complex—since he apparently lacks sophistication.

Some of Stallone’s offbeat dialogue is priceless (“Somebody put me back in the fridge”). The “Schwarzenegger as President” prediction, coupled with Sly’s reaction to said revelation, is probably the comedic high-note of the movie.

The general appeal is watching Stallone, a “caveman”/“barbarian”/“relic of the past” (you’ll hear these labels flung around endlessly by infuriated authority figures) ruffle feathers and generate automated citations for swearing every two seconds.

Certainly the comedic value of Demolition Man, intentional or otherwise, can’t be denied. But why should audiences have to settle for tripe like this? Why can’t we have these same themes in science-fiction, and also something with substance and intelligence? It seems to me like Demolition Man is a prime example of what sci-fi was in the nineties: innately lowest-common-denominator entertainment, barring a few exceptions. It belongs in the wasteland of ruined potential.

For a film like Demolition Man to be considered acceptable by even our most relaxed viewing standards, it needs to offer something more than just a formulaic, by-the-numbers screenplay that could have been written by a ten-year-old. Honestly, by the halfway mark I was just waiting for it to be over. Bored with its flash-bang sense of pacing, its expositional beats that hit with blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. Seriously, you could walk away from this movie for twenty minutes, make a sandwich, come back, and know immediately what was going on. Even the mechanics of its action sequences are inane, fight choreography robotic at best.

Demolition Man, like the character whose namesake inspires its title, is most certainly, and thankfully, a relic of the nineties. Decent in memory, but during, it’s more like the monotonous car ride of a family vacation (“are we there yet?”).

I’ll repeat: Only while intoxicated.

And believe me, I most certainly was.

Friday Morning Review: "Hoffa" (1992)

Starring Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Armand Assante, John C. Reilly

Directed by Danny DeVito

Written by David Mamet

Produced by Caldecot Chubb, Danny DeVito, Edward R. Pressman

140 minutes

3 stars

At its most basic level, a biopic, Hoffa is your typical patchwork assembly of flashbacks told over the course of forty years as the titular character, portrayed by Jack Nicholson, navigates his way from the loading docks of warehouses as an organizer for the Teamsters Local 299, to the presidency of the entire union itself. The narrative that ties the plot together takes place in the parking lot of a secluded, rural diner in 1975 where Hoffa spends the last hours of his life. This seemingly banal sequence, grounding us in the present, and presented in real-time, I found to be the most intriguing. The film purports an explanation as to the cause of his mysterious disappearance, which, if you’re familiar with the story, you know is coming at the very end.

I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say I was pleased with how that event was handled. The narrative, with the deliberate pace of a Sergio Leone western, slowly builds up an expectation over the two-hour-twenty running time, and in my case, that expectation was not only met but exceeded. While straying a bit from the history books, it’s a slick, powerful ending with shocking brevity and an emotional resonance that neatly ties up the themes of the film and recalls the best of Coppola.

Hoffa is less the story of a man, and more the story of an entire American working class that became swept up in his influence, enchanted by his power. That group is personified in Danny DeVito’s character, Bobby Ciaro, a common trucker who becomes Hoffa’s personal aide and closest friend through the years.

As Hoffa waits in a hot car in the parking lot, and Ciaro makes some calls inside the diner, we jump around through time, skipping through the chapters of Hoffa’s life not with dainty steps but with giant leaps, omitting decades at a time. The transitions between scenes are sometimes jarring, sometimes seamless, but always creative. The film seems to take a page or two from Citizen Kane in its presentation. Uninitiated viewers will struggle to keep up, but the history is less important than the raw impression you draw of the man, colored by Ciaro’s memories. Viewers who know one or two things about the mythology surrounding Hoffa’s disappearance are invited to look for clues in these flashbacks, and meanwhile, in the present, we advance unerringly toward his pre-supposed fate.

Nicholson turns in a captivating performance, in part aided by an Oscar-nominated makeup job and a superb script by dialogue wizard David Mamet, capturing Hoffa’s raw charisma.

The film moves right along, not stopping for stragglers. Mamet’s script skips a lot of exposition, and assumes you know quite a bit already about the history surrounding the man. If you don’t, a quick Wikipedia run will be enough, although the film has less emphasis on the history lesson aspect and focuses more on the universal story to be told, which I found to be an interesting study of charisma, influence, and the power to affect millions. Say what you will about Jimmy Hoffa, but that power can’t be denied.

As Ciaro, DeVito is as serious as he’s ever been, showing a side of himself we’ve rarely seen. We see him relegated to the role of lackey, and in most cases, bodyguard. From an early point in the film in which he accosts Hoffa with a knife, right up to the very end, he’s associated with weapons. The message is obvious: he will defend Hoffa to his last dying breath. That is the extent of his reverence for the man: unconditional. A recurring story that he tells about how he joined up with the Teamsters slowly warps over time, picking up a certain dramatic punch through the years like a rolling stone gathering moss. This story serves as a sort of metaphor for the romanticism surrounding Jimmy Hoffa, a testament to the man’s charisma rubbing off on Ciaro, and a reminder to us of how Ciaro colors his memories.

In constructing the scenes, Mamet and DeVito do a commendable job of glorifying Hoffa’s rise through the eyes of his followers, capturing the energy of being caught up in something larger than oneself. I found myself quite swept up with the story, this rousing ballad of the working man. That story wisely focuses less on the man himself, and more on Ciaro’s perceptions of the man throughout history. We’re never offered more than a fleeting glimpse of Hoffa’s personal life, and for good reason.

We experience Hoffa mostly by his sheer presence amongst the people close to him, and to those who regard him as an icon. His influence, the way he affects the atmosphere of a room, what happens when his name is dropped—these are the aspects the story explores. This is the lens through which DeVito chooses to show us Hoffa. It’s not a biographical resume of important exploits or turning points in the man’s career, it’s a reflection of the response he garners from the people around him—an effect which is only enhanced by the passage of time, as his name carries more and more weight.

Aside from a few technical faux pas, DeVito shows remarkable maturity and competence as a director—although we know his career since is marked by such debacles as Death to Smoochy and Duplex. All the same, I quickly found myself judging this film by the same standard I would expect from a Scorsese picture. It certainly has the same feel. The only quality it lacks, in this regard, is that darkly satirical spin, that biting sense of humor Scorsese has. Hoffa is certainly an intriguing, compelling character study, but it’s not a “fun” movie. I can’t imagine it has much replay value. But it is definitely worth checking out.

Friday Morning Review: "Broadcast News" (1987)

Starring William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter, Robert Prosky, Lois Chiles, Joan Cusack, Jack Nicholson

Directed by James L. Brooks

Written by James L. Brooks

Produced by James L. Brooks

133 minutes

4.5 stars

I didn’t expect much going in from Broadcast News, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps its place in the canon of film was eclipsed, at least in my limited memory, by 1976’s much-lauded Network. After having those expectations thoroughly annihilated, I can safely say that Broadcast News is the best movie I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing.

At its most basic level, it’s an in-depth exploration into how a fast-paced network newsroom operates. Writer, director, and producer James Brooks perfectly captures the rush of developing and delivering a great news story.

But it’s clearly so much more. As the poster tagline suggests, “It’s the story of their lives.” Indeed, this is the story we’re not supposed to see, the humanity behind the curtain. William Hurt, Holly Hunter, and Albert Brooks are a joy to watch as the players in a quirky love triangle—sometimes rectangle—that takes center stage in this frenetic environment.

Tom (Hurt) is the “face” of the news team (I can’t emphasize that enough)—the talking head, the personality. He’s all about appearance, which is just about his only asset (the only things in his desk are a hairbrush and two freshly-laundered shirts)—but he’s not vain; he’s too dumb to be egotistical. It’s perhaps his well-meaning doltishness, or his self-consciousness around smart people, that makes him endearing. He represents the “New Age” kind of reporting, putting a human face on the story. He’s someone the viewers can trust and bond with. But his news isn’t reality, it’s a fabrication. He’s a performer, and he’s sensational.

Jane is the producer, immediately likeable and brilliantly acted by Holly Hunter. She thinks and moves the fastest—but she’s dreadfully boring. Unfortunately, she’s a control freak, and Tom’s brand of news—showcasing the drama going on behind the curtain, the empathy of the news team—goes against everything she’s about. You’d think: okay, they’re foils, can’t stand each other, until the sparks fly and they inevitably drift into a romance (this is, after all, billed as a rom-com, but there’s some powerful drama to be sure). Of course it’s not that simple. Their relationship is symbiotic, and in that way much more real and believable, while transcending reason. This is a movie where characters fall in love with each other not for arbitrary, plot-serving purposes (“I think you’re attractive, let’s start a romance”), but because it’s true to life.

Aaron (a hilarious Albert Brooks) is the third wheel in the blossoming office relationship, and the function he fulfills in the office machine is similarly ambiguous, more of a cog than an integral component. While he is clearly the smartest, he has no “spice” factor, and fails to stand out to the execs. He’s the unrecognized mule for a “network that tested his face with focus groups.” With regards to Jane, he’s old hat. Brooks brings an undeniable comedic punch to the role, employing the brand of bitter, self-deprecating wit he’s now well-known for.

These three characters form a sort of holy trinity, their roles serving each other. And they’re quite locked-in to these roles, as Aaron unfortunately finds out. Tom is the “face” for a reason—there’s a delicate science to his appearance that comes natural only to him. The film’s most engaging scene involves Aaron, watching the broadcast at home, feeding raw insight to Jane over the phone, in turn dictating talking points to Tom via earpiece, who only vaguely understands the news but is made to look like a razor-sharp expert. “I say it here, it comes out there,” Aaron mumbles as he looks on in horror.

In Broadcast News, James Brooks creates a place where you’d really want to work, and that brings me to the fourth character, which is the newsroom itself. Busy and chaotic, nobody here is good at separating their work from their personal life. There’s an undeniable sense of camaraderie, of community. These people are a family. You feel like an intern, a fly on the wall watching the players interact.

Brooks does a great job of creating the sensations of tension and payoff that are part of daily life in the newsroom. You really feel on the edge of your seat as Tom delivers his first news piece, guided by Jane, in turn referencing Aaron’s thoughts—and an overwhelming urge to participate in the jubilations as the team wraps up.

The halfway point of the film introduces a new layer of competition to the dynamic, as the network experiences massive cutbacks and layoffs. The mechanics of the workplace are so thoroughly constructed by this point that it’s especially heartbreaking to see the news team begin to dissolve; impossible to imagine these characters anywhere else, in any other context. Of course this economic subplot, responsible for ushering in the film’s climax, is especially relevant today.

I found the film to bear an even greater relevance for modern, attention-deficit generations, for our “more is more” world where media capitalizes on every little workable morsel, where media loves scandal, and is very partisan, news teams and anchors either red or blue. Where it’s less important what the news is, than who’s telling it.

But like some of the best films that deal in heavy subject matter, it’s not political, it’s not dense, it’s not preachy or informative. Like the tagline states, it’s just a human story. A smart romantic comedy about smart people navigating romances. Where things aren’t so black and white. Aaron’s not exactly the perfect guy and Tom’s not the devil, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Each line is just dripping with subtext in a script that’s as full of laughs as it is intelligence. And while some of the dialogue can be a little heavy-handed, and on-the-nose at times (especially for a movie about ethical journalism and truth in broadcasting), that’s a miniscule gripe in the scope of the entire picture, which is altogether a colossal achievement.