Year: 2017

Infused with a tragic sense of personal melancholy as his wife was murdered in real life, writer/director Brad Silberling’s unfairly neglected 2002 drama Moonlight Mile is a heartfelt and consistently moving piece of cinema that features sterling work from Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon as grieving parents, baby-faced Jake Gyllenhaal as their emotionally stunted would-be son-in-law who decides to stick around in the immediate aftermath of his fiancée’s death, reluctantly going into business with the man whom he would’ve called dad, and Ellen Pompeo as a local bartender/post-office clerk who catches Gyllenhaal’s sad eye and who is also nursing her own bit of heartbreak. Beautifully captured by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (The Weather Man, Nebraska, 3:10 To Yuma) in dark tones and a brown-black-orange color palette that is frequently gorgeous in an off-kilter manner thanks to his interesting choice in camera placement, Silberling’s emotionally delicate screenplay fed right into the fragile mindsets of his characters, with the story moving in unexpected directions while still containing its fair-share of overtly audience pleasing moments. I really hope that this film gets the Blu-ray transfer upgrade that it so deserves.

The film’s soundtrack is absolutely stunning (and sadly out of print on compact disc so very expensive via third party sellers on Amazon) and features classic tracks from The Rolling Stones (the film takes its name from their song), Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Sly and the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane, Robert Plant, and many more. Silberling is an interesting filmmaker with an eclectic set of credits; I rather enjoyed his stylish and bittersweet City of Angels, and his bizarre and trippy sci-fi comedy Land of the Lost is better than most people gave it credit for being. But this is easily his most assured piece of storytelling, and I wonder why he hasn’t become more prolific throughout the years. There’s always been “something” about Moonlight Mile that has grabbed me, and I’m not sure, outside of the obvious and previously stated, what that “something” exactly is. And upon multiple viewings, and as I’ve gotten older, the performances from Hoffman and Sarandon have gotten even richer and more affecting; the narrative looks at life in a very direct fashion, finding awkward humor in certain spots that challenges your pre-existing expectations of films such as this. It’s nice to see that Silberling has a new film coming out later this year…

Taking familiar material and spicing it up with some unexpected touches and a strong dose of extreme personal triumph, last year’s thoroughly entertaining and always absorbing true-life boxing movie Bleed for This, from writer/director Ben Younger (Boiler Room, Prime), deserved a lot more than to bomb at the box-office and draw only middling critical responses. What were people expecting? This movie hits all the proper beats, digs in deep to the hardscrabble world that it presents, and features extremely strong acting work from Miles Teller as Vinnie Pazienza, Aaron Eckhart as his alcoholic trainer, and Ciaran Hinds as Pazienza’s father. The ringside bouts are bloody and brutal, the dialogue is appropriately rough and frequently profane (and also very funny in numerous spots), and the car-accident sequence and subsequent rehabilitation that Pazienza went through is as harrowing and squirm inducing as anything I’ve seen in a while, with a large part of that feeling stemming from the fact that this occurred in real life. Pazienza DID have the metal “Halo” device screwed into his skull (not sure which scene was tougher to view, putting it on, or taking it off…), he did go back to training while nursing his broken neck, and he did go on to fight again and become a champion.

All of this is communicated with fleet storytelling by Younger, and a dedication from all of the actors in making everything feel honest and believable, especially Teller, who clearly went all out physically, and really makes you care about a rather stubborn individual who makes some decisions which aren’t easy to understand. And after dropping a great supporting turn in Clint Eastwood’s Sully, Eckhart had another lost-in-the-shuffle performance in Bleed for This, playing a has-been trainer who can’t control his liquor but who still is sharp inside the gym and ring. And Hinds, who has a truly unique sense of screen presence, clearly had a blast playing the tough-love but rational father of Pazienza, a man prone to spouting the “F-word” in tandem with colorful put-downs and vulgarity, but also a man who at his core loves his family and would do anything for them. Larkin Siple’s hand-held cinematography conveys the required uneasiness and grittiness that the story demands, the soundtrack is peppered with some choice cuts, and Zac Stuart-Pontier’s sharp editing allows the film to effortlessly breeze through its 110 minute running time. Also, as it must be noted: Ted Levine POWER. Bleed for This is currently available on Blu-ray/DVD and via various streaming providers.

Not many films instilled as much wide-eyed wonder in me as a youthful movie-lover as The Flight of the Navigator, which was released in the summer of 1986, and while not attaining the runaway big-screen blockbuster status that it truly deserved, has lived on throughout the years as an all-time cult favorite for many children of the 80’s. Directed with a terrific sense of old-school movie-magic by Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Big Top Pee-wee) and written with gee-whiz excitement by Michael Burton and Matt MacManus from a story by Mark Baker, child star (and future bank robber…) Joey Kramer got the role of a lifetime as a kid who gets abducted by a friendly alien (voiced by Paul Reubens but credited as Paul Mall!) who then takes him forward in time from 1978 to 1986, all the while battling the charms of a then extremely young Sarah Jessica Parker. The supporting cast included Cliff De Young, Veronica Cartwright, Matt Adler, and Howard Hesseman, but the film’s narrative was squarely placed on Kramer’s young shoulders, and he did a great job interacting with the various creatures and showing genuine responses to his otherworldly craft.

The Flight of the Navigator included some of the earliest full-on CGI effects, and features strong cinematography from James Glennon (About Schmidt, Election, Deadwood, Carnivale) and a lively musical score from Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future, Predator, The Delta Force). The film had a weird gestation, as it was first attempted to be set up as a Disney production, with the Mouse House ultimately declining to produce, but agreeing to distribute. The film was lensed on location in Florida with the scenes set aboard the ship shot in Norway on a budget of $9 million, with box office receipts reaching nearly $20 million in America; critical response was favorable. And over the years, it’s become one of those treasured items for many people that feels too refreshingly quaint to be remade in today’s overly slick and cynical CGI movie landscape, though an update has recently been threatened. I hope they leave this property alone, as it works just fine as is, and no amount of money will be able to replicate the original’s sense of overall wonderment. The Flight of the Navigator is available on Blu-ray and DVD, and as an Amazon and YouTube streaming option.

Robert Redford’s brilliant family drama Ordinary People is a great movie. How could it not be? It’s real. It’s genuine. Nothing is overdone. And everything works. Redford’s invisible direction, for which he won an Oscar in no less than his directorial debut, is sublime, never showboating in any aesthetic fashion, instead allowing Alvin Sargent’s sensitive and deeply layered screenplay (which was based on Judith Guest’s novel) to do all the heavy lifting. And because Sargent was a master when it came to dialogue and crafting scenes that felt inherently real and honest, there’s nothing about Ordinary People that rings false or feels ill-conceived. The exemplary performances are beyond description. Donald Sutherland as the nice-guy father trying to keep his family together, Mary Tyler Moore with her bottled up rage and intense emotional repression, Timothy Hutton dropping a tour de force performance as an anguished, suicidal teen, Judd Hirsch as the kind shrink who takes a liking to Hutton, fresh-faced Elizabeth McGovern as Hutton’s object of desire – everyone was absolutely remarkable in this delicate piece of work. John Bailey’s plain and focused cinematography is a clear-cut lesson in less is more; sometimes you just need to frame the actors and hold the shots for a bit longer than normal (Jeff Kanew’s patient editing is superb) and pure movie magic will become the result. Marvin Hamlisch’s piano-centric score is the icing on the cake. The winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Hutton), Ordinary People was a critical favorite and box-office smash, and despite 37 years elapsing since its release, its power remains undiluted. No major studio would be interested in making this film today and that’s a really sad fact of life.

The Nickel Ride is a cool as a cucumber crime film from 1974, patiently directed by Robert Mulligan (Summer of ’42, The Stalking Moon, To Kill A Mockingbird) from a sly, morally ambiguous screenplay by then-newbie Eric Roth (Munich, Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Insider). The plot centers on a “key-man” named Cooper (Jason Miller), who works for a local crime syndicate, and always carries his ubiquitous key chain at all times. His job is to run a group of Los Angeles-based warehouses that house stolen goods, but things get complicated when a real estate deal turns south and local gangsters led by an evil John Hillerman who feel threatened by Cooper’s knowledge of the ins and outs of the various illegal activities. Before he knows it, someone has been sent to kill him. But who? And why? Roth’s script is clever and shifty, never giving up its full hand until the final moments, and it must be said that Miller’s ability to convey pensive, sullen, broken-down alpha males was truly signature.

The film is more about its tense atmosphere and the anxiety that Miller projects as an actor than it is about anything else; his underplayed performance rests in his eyes and body language and the way his sullen face is captured within the frame. The Nickel Ride was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen with a love for shadows and darkness by legendary cinematography Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner, Cutter’s Way, Altered States, Rolling Thunder) and features a low-key musical score from Dave Grusin (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Three Days of the Condor, Oscar-winner for The Milagro Beanfield War). The Nickel Ride screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d’Or before getting lost in the theatrical market with less than a $2 million domestic gross. The film is available on DVD as a double feature with the outlandishly entertaining John Frankenheimer oddity 99 and 44/100% Dead from Shout! Factory, and would easily fit the bill for a great night of 70’s crime cinema where you never can truly guess how things will end up.