vhsiv Reviews

Dark Honeymoon (2008 Video)

A Hoot!

[7/10 · 25 August 2008]

If you like intentionally bad movies, this might be your cup of tea.

I have a bit of a weakness for inspired camp, especially movies that can walk that fine line between plausible and over the top -- It's a difficult tension to manage, but 'Dark Honeymoon' manages it.

Lindy Booth is the real star of this one. Since her debut on the unfortunately short-lived sow,'Oyssey 5', she's made a specialty of playing crazy girlfriends -- sweet on the outside, but a bunch of broken marbles, once you get her home. 'O5','Wrong Turn', 'Cry_Wolf' and here, she plays the batsh#tinsane girlfriend and does a marvelous job with it.

What is impressive here is the support that writer-director David O'Malley got here -- Eric Roberts, Darryl Hannah, Tia Carrere and Roy Scheider -- strong almost A-list players, all -- each playing supporting roles in what would otherwise be a cheesy teen-age slasher flick. But the demographic of this flick is just a bit twisted, as the protagonists here, Kathryn and Paul are int their mid- to late-20's, already just a bit out of scope for the usual mall crowd.

The other oddity here is the emphasis, if not effort that was put into the music -- though the film has a cheap, raw look to it (think DePalma's 'Sisters') it has a world-class soundtrack that rivals anything executed by Bernard Hermann. The music definitely kicks this movie up 3 notches above whatever dreck it would have been without the efforts of Juan Colomer and his big string section.

If you like Lindy and you're a fan of early, Hitchcock-inspired DePalma, this is one that you probably want to investigate, if only for a fun ride.

Africa Unite: A Celebration of Bob Marley's 60th Birthday (2008)

Not much more than a celebrity travelogue...

[3/10 · 25 June 2008]

This film is a strange confab of celebrity travel souvenir and retrospective of the Rastafarian movement on the occasion of Bob Marley's 60th birthday.

Much of the surviving Marley clan is featured here — Ziggy, Rita, Cedelia, Damian and Julian — there's music and interviews. And more interviews — interviews with lots of people who just happened to show up for Bob's birthday celebration down in Ethiopia. There's Danny Glover, Angelique Kidjo, Lauren Hill and others but the participants here seem to be fighting over Marley's legacy as much as celebrating it.

But the title of the film is 'Africa Unite' and NOT 'A Posthumous Celebration of Bob Marley's 60th Birthday'. Though the film doesn't come together as a cohesive narrative or a document of an important event, it does feature a few good, informative moments for people unfamiliar with Marley and/or the Rastafarian movement.

Notably, Haile Selassie's 1963 address to the U.N. and the pan-African movement are addressed after the 2nd half-hour, the same speech that Marley put to music and recorded as the song "War".

But the relationship of these celebrities and the search for human rights, cultural development and education get somewhat muddled as the filmmakers wander back and forth from hotel conference-rooms to the streets of Addis Ababa apparently seeking some sort of grilled-cheese manifestation of the departed musician. There's plenty of archival footage and information about Haile Selassie, but those who are really interested in the subculture and Marley's impact might do better to see Jeremy Marre's 'Rebel Music' (2001), Awake Zion (2005), The Promised Ship (2000) or any of the many Wailers concert videos.

Ripley Under Ground (2005)

Released at long last...

[7/10 · 21 September 2007]

Filmed back in 2004, but left on the shelf for 3 years, 'Ripley Under Ground' aka 'White On White' has been released on DVD in Europe.

Barry Pepper plays Ripley as something of a low-key rock-star - long hair, a close shave and charisma to burn – and the tone of the thing is far lighter than any of the previous incarnations - 'Purple Noon' ,'The American Friend', 'The Talented Mr. Ripley', 'Ripley's Game', etc.

Some early reviewers have referred to it as a 'comedy', but it's not, really. Unfortunately, the lighter tone actually hurts the film a bit, because this outing paints Mr. Ripley as less of a menace and sociopath than any of the Ripley films that have preceded it.

This interpretation apparently sprang from a comment that Ms. Highsmith made about the films adapted of her novels: She apparently felt that the films missed the humor of her character and the droll wit of her dark plots. But the humor in this effort tends to undermines the suspense.

Beside having freed Mr. Pepper from the short-haired grunt roles that he usually plays, the film really allows Alan Cumming and Claire Forlani to shine in ways that they usually aren't allowed to when they are shoe-horned into American accents. She is officially excused from having participated in 'Meet Joe Black'.

It's a good, but not great film. The delight was seeing Barry Pepper stretch-out in the kind of role he's seldom given.

I typically enjoy the Ripley films and novels for their psychopathy, but this was different enough to be enjoyable. If you come across it on cable or the Shanghai bootleg carrels try not to overlook it.

*** out of *****

The Triangle (2005)

Great potential, poor payoff

[3/10 · 21 December 2005]

After being wowed by the first night, I had hoped for something just a *little* better.

In their promotional material they seemed as though they were as jaded with much of the Triangle conspiracy material as they, the producers, were. However, after 2 nights of wonderful build-up, O'Bannon, Devlin and Singer took their eyes off the target and shifted their focus from the Bermuda Triangle to the myth of the Philadelphia Experiment.

Meh! And then they wasted Lou Diamond Philips in a side-story, that felt like padding. If they wanted to put forward a notion of alternate-reality and subtle changes, they ought to have done that with one of the other principals, and not just isolated LDP in his own little microcosm.

What many viewers, and I'm sure most people who came to Rockne through 'Farscape' were probably hoping for was something as inventive and experimental as that show had been, even if this episode echoed Farscape's 'A Human Raction'. Many of us Farscape fans were just plain disappointed.

The plot would have been much tighter if they had remained with the economy of the principals and placed greater emphasis on the mystery of the Triangle, rather than try to throw in the kitchen sink of wormholes and other gobblety-gook. Time-travel and alternate-reality stories are all about as threadbare as the last 'Star Trek:TNG' episode that used them.

None of the actors can really be blamed here, as their efforts were all solid. They only suffered from a weak script. O'Bannon - or the SciFi Channel – ought to have passed the script under the noses of O'Bannon's old workmates David Kemper and Richard Manning. They could have helped steer this production into a rock-solid effort, worth more than just the forgettable effort that appeared here.

The Island (2005)

Michael Bay has a brain. Who knew?

[7/10 · 24 July 2005]

As a first-time outing without the overadrenalized Jerry Bruckheimer, 'The Island' comes off as a well considered project. While few of the ideas posited in this new film are 'new', Bay and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have done a more than serviceable job of recycling ideas from other movies that arrived D.O.A.

'The Island' is of course a remake of 'Parts:The Clonus Horror', one of the most sordid of D-grade Mystery-Science Theater 3000 candidates - 'Coma' made on a budget of $350,000. Straight-to-video? Straight-to-the-SciFi Channel? Not even close. Even Albert Pyun never managed to stink 'em up this bad - though he came close, many a time.

But I'm supposed to be talking 'The Island' here, and not 'The Clonus Horror'. The Island' is a good movie, built on a solid script, excellent production values and sound performances delivered by A-list actors. As I sat in the theater watching this movie, I found myself going through a mental checklist, "'Logan's Run', check. 'The Island of Dr. Moreau', check. 'Brave New World', check. 'Revenge of the Sith', check. There are even shades of 'Total Recall' and 'Gattaca' buried in here, as the film is a dystopia-buried-in-a-futuristic-consumer-fantasy kind of flick. The question remains, though - was this picture brought to fruition by Michael Bay, or just one of the higher-ups at Dreamworks SKG - SKG as in Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen.

Ewan MacGregor redeems himself here, for the 6 years he spent trying to imitate Alec Guiness in the woebegone 'Star Wars' prequels. There's a wonderful long moment in the film where we're reminded he was once Scottish - 'Shallow Grave', 'Trainspotting' anyone? And OMG! Scarlett Johansson is actually a fairly attractive woman - I really couldn't tell before, with her abused girlfriend and serfdom turns in 'Lost In Translation' and 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. Again, who knew? But the former Director Bay manages to shine through in some areas, with his signature explosions and oddballs in the supporting cast: Steve Buscemi, showing greater range than evidenced before, demeans himself once again, while Ethan 'Neelix' Philips shows up to disgrace himself as a roly-poly balding-on-top Stryker refugee.

For shame! Is it possible to have a Michael Bay movie without cartoonish archetypes? Michael Mann got over it - I suggest that Bay get ahold of the manual and further his attempts at meaningful content. There may be something more memorable than 'Armageddon' or 'Pearl Harbor' in Bay's future. Let's hope that he's able to continue the evolution and that audiences can catch up.

One Way Out (2002 Video)

Pretty great for a late-night cabler!

[8/10 · 3 January 2005]

First things first - let's lay out the dirty linen: I avoided this thing during normal waking hours, given the 'noir' log-line and the Jim Belushi principal. But between 3 and 5 am, this film was pure gold. Sometimes things just work out that way, especially if you miss the first 10-20 minutes, as I did; years of insomniac viewing have taught me that some beginnings are better missed than seen.

Such was my approach to 'One Way Out' - and it paid off.

How could I have expected Jim Belushi to pull off a Michael Chiklis-like transformation and play a corrupt cop, caught between a rock and a hard place? In fact, the performance is so compelling that it threw me off of the main arc of the plot: While the story may be a bit formulaic, Belushi's performance is a wonderful distraction - I didn't even see the denouement coming, until I was watching it on screen.

In my opinion, this was a far, far better film than the Paltrow/Douglas/Mortenson vehicle of 'A Perfect Murder', as the actors here play against type, and triumph over the material.

Highly recommended! Furthermore, Angela Featherstone, Jason Bateman and Guylaine St. Onge provide excellent support. Not a dull moment.

While I'm not sure that I could recommend this film for viewing during the light of day, I *highly* recommend this movie for it's late night/early morning consumption. A qualified 8/10.

Anonymous Rex (2004 TV Movie)

meh...

[2/10 · 5 December 2004]

Having not read any of the novels, I don't feel that I can supply a fully-informed critique; however I can provide a critique of the piece as a piece of filmed entertainment.

I'm usually disappointed by most SciFi fare, but I checked this one out on the basis of the reviews that the novels had gotten.

I was less than impressed by the script. For months I had heard what a funny and entertaining piece of work the books were, but that value failed to manifest on the screen. The initial discouragement of 'a modern-day dinosaur-detective, pursuing his career disguised as a human in a rubber costume' failed to be salvaged from the execution of the screenplay. While the 'rubber-suit idea had been updated, the script and the actors' performances didn't seem to be in on the joke - the voice-overs were dire, and the story wasn't funny or humorous, just contrived.

In the end, this film was no better than the average broken-genre absurdity that the SciFi Channel has been broadcasting over the past several years: It was just a bland disappointment manufactured by a network that either doesn't understand genre television or has bent so far over to broaden their audience that they've alienated their original constituents with 'family fun' like this feature.

Hanover Street (1979)

a lame, schizophrenic wwii set-piece

[2/10 · 27 August 2004]

This film has very little going for it, other than the participation of Plummer and Ford. I honestly wanted to like it, given my respect for Hyams and many of the actors, but this just fell flat, in so many ways.

First, Lesley-Ann Down: has she ever managed to be the romantic lead in a WWII picture that didn't end up being a piece of made-for-TV garbage? I say this after having tried to watch her in 'Arch of Triumph' (1985) with Anthony Hopkins, a remake of a project with 'Casablanca'-level ambitions that simply fell flat; this remake hardly improved upon the 1948 version. In 'Hanover Street' Ms. Downs' performance certainly wasn't enhanced by the flat dialogue and her wholly unsympathetic character. The woman is cheating on her husband, plain and simple, without explanation or cause. A stronger actress would have demanded a better backstory for this character, some 'Sophie's Choice' or 'Plenty' content to make her more fathomable, but this round-heeled wife of a British Intelligence officer (Plummer) is nothing but a liability. If she was able to be 'picked-up' by Ford as easily as she does in this film, her character would have been victimized by a German Agent, long before she encountered Ford. This film tries hard to be a romantic something-or-other, but this woman's got a kid and no obvious conflicts of interest with husband Plummer. That's one raspberry, right there.

As for the schizophrenic element, about 2/3rds the way through, Hyams tries to turn this thing into a War film - Ford and Plummer go behind enemy lines together into Vichy France, but the plotting is sloppy as they are thrown together by chance. Hyams spent some small amount of time setting Plummer up as some sort of spy-chief, training other British Officers to to operate behind enemy lines and Ford is to be the Allied pilot that flies them to their destination. Fortunately, unfortunately in these scenes, Ford and Plummer share the strongest moments in the entire film, and the two male leads have more chemistry with one another than either has with Ms. Down(er).

After doing all this spy-stuff exposition, Hyams promptly kills off all of the German-speaking British Agents and saddles Plummer with an untrained, monolingual Ford to complete a highly specialized intelligence heist in Central France. Plummer parachutes in with a German uniform, Ford with his Hogan's Heroes flight jacket... as if he wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb, once he hit the ground.

It's truly no surprise that this film laid an egg at the box office - it is entirely uneven in terms of both script and story. If you want to see Ford in a better war-movie, see 'Force 10 from Navarone' - better yet, go straight to the top, and see his cameo appearance in 'Apocalypse Now'.

As for this film, I can't even begin to imagine the market influences that allowed this script to be greenlit. The Americans were making gritty urban dramas - 'Coming Home' (1978), 'Midnight Express' (1978), 'The Deer Hunter' (1978) and the next year saw the release of 'Apocalypse Now' (1979),'Being There' (1979) and 'Kramer vs. Kramer' (1979). I suppose this film had the potential of filling that warm-spot that the British have for soap-operas and patriotic war-stories.

While 'Hanover Street' may have had some promise as a script, it really just falls rather flat in it's execution. Ford in a pilot's uniform is simply not enough to save this turkey of a film.

She's Out (1995)

where are all of the other reviews (UK)?

[27 July 2004]

I picked this DVD up on a lark, because I'm a tremendous fan of the original 'Prime Suspect' series, though not LaPlante's later 'Killer Net' - 'Net' is an interesting premise, but could have benefited from better research.

Anyway, this was a pretty good feature - well drawn characters and an interesting storyline, even if it takes an abrupt left-turn toward the 2nd episode.

I won't go into the particulars, but if you're a fan of British Crime drama, and 'capers' in general, this miniseries is highly recommended. I was not familiar with Ann Mitchell's work, but she's tremendous here in an ensemble cast that's nothing short of spectacular.

I'm really surprised that this miniseries hasn't shown up on either Masterpiece Theater or BBCAmerica. Here's to hoping! Catch it if you get the opportunity.

7/10

Unspeakable (2002)

could have used a better editor...

[23 July 2004]

Just a quick comment...

This is one of those films that I caught about 15 min. late on late-night cable. That missed 15 made all the difference. The clunky exposition - 'Tonight', '3 Days Earlier', etc., etc. - played no part in my first impression, and the film played as a straight jailhouse drama, with LESS ludicrous pseudo-science, fewer superhuman feats perpetrated by the arch-villain.

I was so intrigued that I programmed my Tivo to catch the West Coast feed of the film, and that was the good-bad mistake. This film would have been far more effective if they had eliminated the backstories at the beginning of the film and the wannabe 'Another Heaven' (2000) aspects of the Jesse Mowatt character. The director and the editor overplayed their hands there.

The pluses for this film are that the leads - Dina Meyer, Lance Henrickson, Jeff Fahey and even the writer/actor Pavan Grover turn in acceptable performances. I was especially impressed by Meyer here, in her capacity to convey sympathy, compassion, authority, fear, etc. Dennis Hopper's contribution however, is execrable: his lines are terrible, and he chooses to read them like a 'tough love' southern caricature.

The 'metaphysically-enhanced serial killer' is an overcrowded field. It has been done to death. If anyone is out there writing such stuff, it is best that they limit their palette - too many psychic powers and sci-fi gadgets can put a serious hurt on one's story. Otherwise, this one is well-enough executed, and ironically a full cut above the junk that's habitually ground-out by the SciFi Channel.

If it's a late night or early morning, definitely worth biding one's insomnia by...

5/10

Ronin (1998)

Another almost-great film...

[14 July 2004]

When I first heard about 'Ronin', and it's premise, back in 1998, I was excited.

Here was the director of two of my favorite films, 'The French Connection II' and 'The Manchurian Canditate' making a comeback, in a gritty espionage thriller, set in France. Many reviewers heralded 'Ronin' as John Frankenheimer's return-to-form after such clunkers as 1996's 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' (remake) and limp would-bes such as 'The Holcroft Covenant' (1985).

'Ronin' was good, but it wasn't great. When I saw it the first time, 6 years ago, I had a couple of nagging problems with the film, but now I can only boil it down to one-and-a-half.

As a nominally 'gritty' caper film, it really fails to establish a firm 'sense of place'. Sure, it's set in France, and sure, I watched and listened to Frankenheimer's commentary about camera-coverage, 3- and 5- shots when working with an ensemble cast. While most of these actor-centered elements were covered reasonably well, Frankenheimer really didn't make proper use of the cities and towns he was shooting in - Paris, Nice, Villefranche, Arles - or establish these characters' relationships to them - to those PLACES - as well as he might have.

Granted that my comments come from the point of view of someone who's independently spent time in both Paris and Provence, but over all, Frankenheimer essentially homogenized France here - about half the film, the exteriors, were shot on location, while the other half was shot on a sound-stage. That is/was the first mistake: For someone who avows an interest in a 'documentary feel', he betrays it, almost entirely. The obvious flip-side to this is Frankenheimer's use of Marseilles in 'French Connection II', where he made a point of capturing a lot of the grit and grime of a city that continues to creep me out, whenever I visit it in person.

Not so, in 'Ronin' - the streets of Paris, etc. are always clean, even when they were in the sketchiest neighborhoods, that almost certainly don't get a regular cleaning. In a sense, Frankenheimer et al. never really got out of the studio with this film, as it was so entirely limited to the limited universe that the 5 or 6 protagonists inhabited when they were together.

Unanswered questions - Who are they working for? What's in the case? Etc. - are fine for thrillers like this, but Frankenheimer really failed to give these characters an existence outside of their criminal caper - and the little café scene at the beginning of the film is *hardly* enough to sustain the 'foreignness' of the location for the duration of the film. All of the principals - Reno, McElhone, DeNiro - all seem to have a reasonable familiarity with either Paris or France in general - AND a need for alternate Parisian locations to eat and sleep, yet none of this is supported.

My point here is that previous and successive films in this genre work well because they communicate a very strong sense of quotidienne (everyday) existence outside of the 'caper', and gave the viewer a sense of _place_ *before* the criminals disrupted that fabric with their violence and other exploits. Other examples of good script/location work in this genre include Alan Parker's 'Midnight Express' (1978), the entirety of Neil Jordan's output ('Mona Lisa' [1986]), 'The Crying Game' [1993], 'The Good Thief' [2003]) and Stephen Frears ('Dirty Pretty Things' [2002], 'Sammy and Rosie Get Laid' [1987], 'The Hit' [1984]). In short, the precedent that Frankenheimer laid-down 23 years before was virtually ignored in this, his 1998 film. Even the craptastic remake of 'The Italian Job' (2003) managed to convey a sense of foreign location - Italy, France, etc. - so what went wrong with 'Ronin'?

Perhaps, the failure of this film should be lain across the threshhold of the script-doctor - David Mamet (e.g. failure to shore-up a promising script) or Frankenheimer, since many of 'French Connection II's conventions were borrowed from William Friedkin in the originating film. But both arguments should be entirely moot, considering an entirely new generation of filmmakers have capitalized upon the 'script/location' paradigm that Frankenheimer helped to create - Roger Avary, in 'Killing Zoë' (1994); Doug Liman, in 'The Bourne Identity' (2002); Guy Ritchie, in 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' (1998) and 'Snatch' (2000); even Tony Scott made good use of location coverage with 'Spy Game' (2001), but he is categorically *not* a GenX filmmaker.

*SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD*

The film really stutters in the final half-hour, with the conclusion at the Hippodrome. Frankenheimer had all of Paris at his disposal - many, many of scenic streets, public plazas, unique architecture and a labyrinthine subway-system - yet he chose to frame the conclusion of this well-traveled tale inside a sports-arena, which could have been shot in Cleveland, OH if not L.A.

In this way, the specificity of *place*, which Frankenheimer worked - however tenuously - to establish in the film's previous 90 mins. is all but evacuated. And thus ends our interest in 'Ronin' as an 'international' crime-caper.

Intrigue (1988 TV Movie)

pretty good...

[7/10 · 18 May 2004]

Recently I've gotten onto a kick of enjoying unglamorous thrillers, that don't involve wire-work, jujitsu acrobatics, special effects or CGI, and this film fit the bill. It is a sometimes gritty but highly realistic look at what it might take to smuggle someone out of a foreign country without the benefit of a private plane, fancy gadgets or an unlimited expense account.

I don't know what '80's problem' the other reviewer had with this film, bit I thought this was a well-done film that only suffered from the economy of being made-for-TV - those 'shortcomings' aren't about the budget, rather they're about pacing. The opening sequence leaves a question unanswered for far too long, and the final scene, which concerns the death of one of the characters is just a bit too 'pat'. But then again, I may be spoiled by the patience exhibited by Fred Zinnemann in his 'Day of the Jackal'.

In a certain sense, this film is a lower-budget cousin to films like 'Jackal' and 'Midnight Express'. There are lots of dead-drops and hand-offs are the product of the protagonist's advance preparation - if you don't have your eyes open, you'll miss a lot of plot-points. Scott Glenn and Robert Loggia turn in acceptable performances with only a few glitches that are directorial errors, rather than errors made by the performers. If you're in the mood for a thriller that doesn't parade any twenty-somethings - or, for that matter, thirty-somethings - with a fairly intelligent script, by all means, check this one out.

Yet another Scott Glenn film (after 'Man on Fire') worthy of a remake, if only to touch up the script and give the film a proper budget.

7/10

The Fourth Protocol (1987)

Uneven, but satisfying...

[30 April 2004]

I'm a big fan of Michael Caine's Len Deighton films - 'The Ipcress File', 'Funeral in Berlin' and 'Billion Dollar Brain' - even *if* the films got worse as they went along.

Even though it's based on a Forsyth book, it's practically a 'return to form' for Harry Palmer - a conceit that's easily swallowed if you allow that Sgt. Palmer might have to assume more than one paper identity over the course of his career. Sir Michael is in top form here, as is Pierce Brosnan and one of my favorite British actors, Ian Richardson of 'House of Cards' fame.

In fact, it's an altogether plausible thriller - until you get to the American actors. Sure, Ned Beatty and Joanna Cassidy are great actors - but whoever thought that Russian Intelligence agents, save for Brosnan, should sport American accents should be forced to spend a month in some inarticulate American suburb. It almost ruined an otherwise good film. When the round and blustered vowels were rolling out of Mr. Beatty's mouth, I had to wonder if the film were meant to be a dig at American influence over the UK, much like those xenophobic Japanese monster movies - Godzilla, etc. It was just a bit of a stumbling block to try to paint these Americans as Russians, when they weren't *trying* very hard to be Russians.

A plus for this film was that it tried, somewhat, to depict the preparations that Brosnan had to make as an enemy agent. Not as meticulous as 'The Day of the Jackal', mind you, but it was on course. I recommend it to fans of cerebral, non-glamourous spy films.

Harry Palmer is back, sort of.

Strange Hearts (2002)

a pleasant surprise...

[6 April 2004]

***Slight Spoilers Below***

I caught this film almost by accident this morning on cable, in just about the last place I'd expect to find it: HBO.

This film is an easy match for anyone who enjoys any of Paul Thomas Anderson's early films, as it revisits some of the territory of 'Hard Eight' and Lodge Kerrigan's 'Claire Dolan'. Sorry, no Gwyneth Paltrow-as-a-hooker here, but this film explores a sort of strange, alternate universe at the center of our fickle, ADD American culture.

The inimitable Robert Forster stars here as a sort of con-man (Jack), living off of the fringes of televised Game Shows and other short cons. He lives in a 'resident motel', as he works toward a big payoff scheme, his 'Rat in a Can'. I won't describe it here - you'll just have to see it for yourself.

In any case, this film charts the Forster character's search for luck - if not a payoff - such that he and the Rose McGowan character (Moira, an 'exotic' dancer) can escape L.A. to retire in Mexico.

Into this stalled romance-cum-caper stumbles Henry (Kip Pardue), who seems to have all of the luck that Jack lost, when his career as a child-actor went belly-up. Just let it be said that opportunities open up for Henry, and Jack tries and fails to exploit them.

But the 'plot' here, while it is amusing, is not the thing to study - rather, it's the characters: They're not wacky, not over-the-top, not for people who'd just as soon be watching 'Friends'. Rather, these characters are on a voyage to discover their own 'centers' rather than try to rig other games and schemes to support themselves.

Definitely worth a look, especially for fans of independent films. 6/10.

Femme Fatale (2002)

almost... almost...

[15 March 2004]

I missed this one in theaters, but bought it on videotape, watched it and forgot about it, only to watch it late last night in crippled aspect-ratio (full-screen) on HBO.

I'm a DePalma fan from way back, and 'Sisters', along with 'Carrie' and 'Dressed to Kill' rank as three of my all-time favorite films. I'm also aware of DePalma's long-standing debt to Hitchcock, not to mention Coppola, with his excursions into the mafia-genre ('Scarface','Carlito's Way' and 'The Untouchables'). The principal problem with this film, I think, is that Mr. DePalma had TOO MUCH money at his disposal.

Many other directors seem content to do smaller-scale pictures once they've been through their 'blockbuster' period - Paul Schrader with 'Affliction', Roman Polanski with 'The Pianist', Neil Jordan with 'The Good Thief' even Joel Schumacher with 'Phone Booth'. DePalma is well past the moment where he needs to 'prove' himself to his studio-masters, so why on Earth did he have to produce 'Femme Fatale' with all of the gloss and slickness of a 'Mission Impossible' installment?

This film would have gone down better without the over-polished location - (Paris? Overdone. Why not Marseille, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome or Milan? Even then, the Paris in *this* film is too clean by 3/4) - the slick photography (those dolley shots, 2-shots, split-images and long pans were nice, but did they have to be *perfectly* lit?) - and the ex-model heroine (Grace Kelly was extraordinary, but her beauty denied any possibility of her character having any 'interiority', DePalma would have done better to recruit Asia Argento, Franka Potente or Natasha McElhone for the 2-way part of his heroine). Any of those three elements could have been adjusted with the net end of both lowering the cost of the film and making it far more atmospheric. The 'contrasting' film that comes to mind here is Michael Radford's 'B. Monkey', which probably didn't cost $20M to make, as opposed to this marquee picture, which cost $35,000,000, and then flopped at the box-office.

Sometimes 'less' is more. There's much in this film to appreciate, but 'Sisters','Obsession' and even 'Blow Out' were more gritty. More of the former, please...?

Lifeforce (1985)

***an underrated gem

[7/10 · 3 February 2004]

Like several other reviewers here, I'm surprised to see many negative reviews on this film. Dan O'Bannon's previous effort was the groundbreaking 'Alien' of 1979. Because it and 'Star Wars' introduced the stylistic approach of 'Used' or 'Dirty Space' in art-direction for these kinds of features doesn't mean that this was the only way to produce them.

Rather than dismiss 'Lifeforce' out-of-hand as a sort of schlock and primitive exploitation feature, it's important to recognize that the film draws upon the 'esteemed' traditions of British horror and science-fiction - specifically Hammer and American International features like Quatermass (specifically 'Quatermass and the Pit', 1967), Doctor Who and 'The Day of the Triffids' (1963), if not the works of Gerry Anderson ('UFO', 'Space:1999' and 'Thunderbirds'). But none of these influences would be a surprise if other reviewers recognized writer O'Bannon's genre-scholarly appreciation for 'Queen of Blood'(1966) and 'It! The Terror from Beyond Space'(1958) - the immediate sources for 'Alien' (1979).

Granted this film has some 'legacy' elements, but perhaps it's worth comparing this film to its more immediate peers - 1981's 'An American Werewolf in London' and 'The Company of Wolves' (1984) - other 80's films that share a 'looking-back' while they adapt those stories to the 80's zeitgeist. All three films drew on earlier incarnations of the same, but substantially sexed-up their themes (because they could), and, at the same time they recognized the tongue-in-cheek, humorous aspects of their projects.

Neil Jordan's 'Wolves' played to many of the psychoanalytic memes floating around at the during the '80's, while 'American Werewolf' curdled its theme as a 'coming-of-age' film. It's called artistic license, and the adaptations of these three films are no less valid than the latter-day dramedy inherent in the 'Scream' franchise, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' and 'Final Destination'. But these teen-targeted, films seem to be part of a box-office trend, whereas the 80's films like 'Lifeforce' belong a canon of British sci-fi - even if this one was written by an American.

In many ways this film holds up much better than latter-day disaster and alien-invasion flicks ('Independence Day', 'Armageddon', 'Deep Impact') in that the 'solutions' don't reside in gun-battles, weaponized payloads and testosterone. At the opposite end of the pole, it is unfortunate that Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron didn't examine Tarkowski and Lem more closely before they remade 'Solaris'...

The goal of this film was fun, not ponderousness or stupidity.

7/10

Excalibur (1981)

A great film, one of my all-time faves...

[9/10 · 27 January 2004]

Before we had Peter Jackson to interpret our 'modern' fairy-tales, and wire-work to negate the effects of gravity, we had John Boorman's 'Excalibur'. Not to deride all of the CGI fans, there *was* a way to do things in the days before computer-generated SFX. That said, this film still holds substantial amounts of water, more than 20 years after it was filmed.

I'm one of those feebs who never managed to read all of the Tolkien books (one only), but I've read no fewer than 4 versions of Mallory's 'Mort D'Arthur' as a teenager and musty college English Literature student. *This* is the film that always did it for me. The script, the cinematography and the performances are all top-notch, especially with the many off-center characterizations, Nigel Terry's Merlin being the most outstanding.

The other notable thing about this film is it's relative *lack* of slickness: These days, anybody who rides a horse or wields a sword in a film is ninja-graceful - not so here. I'm not so sure you could classify this as realism per se, but Yuen Wo Ping (The Matrix) was *not* the fight choreographer, and nobody associated with the Chinese Opera School had anything to do with this production. Rather, Boorman embraces the fact that anyone who straps on a couple hundred pounds of armor and tries to fight on top of a horse with 30 pound weapons *isn't* going to be the most graceful or coordinated bloke around. This kind of 'realism' is both admirable and refreshing.

So, if you're in the mood for a swords-and-sorcery film without all of the slickness, an engaging (and faithful) storyline and more than a bit of 'creative anachronism', this film is well worth checking out.

8/10

Kiss of Death (1995)

Ooooh - ahhh! A sadly underrated crime drama...

[8/10 · 26 January 2004]

I've got my asbestos suit on already, but I thought this was Nicholas Cage's finest two hours. His transformation and portrayal in this film rank up there with DeNiro's in 'Raging Bull'. Granted, this film is not for those who were looking to see Cage reprise his role in 'Raising Arizona'. This is a hard-boiled film, every bit as vicious as Scorcese's 'Goodfellas' and it remains in my Top Ten of crime films, along with the Godfathers and the Goodfellas.

Nick Cage is a revelation here, and Caruso is every bit as serviceable. I suspect that critics didn't like this film because they preferred the lighter, surreal performances that preceded it, and weren't prepared to see him in a straight drama, much less the *absolutely frightening* role of Junior Brown. The flip-side of this is that he's more than able to play 'dark' characters. If his Uncle Francis (Coppola), Scorcese or Abel Ferrara want to employ him for a gritty role, he's more than capable of taking it on.

8/10 for an absolutely *iconic* performance from Cage.