THE LAST BOY SCOUT – A REVIEW BY J.D. LAFRANCE

by J.D., posted in Film Review

3BRLjwxF2rmVFedrQkjNdPcd8UwShane Black’s career has had a fascinating, meteoric rise and fall (and rise again). The screenwriter hit the big time when his breakthrough screenplay for Lethal Weapon (1987) sold for $250,000. This kick-started a wildly popular action film franchise. He soon hit rock bottom with the heavily re-written (by others) modest hit, The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), the script of his that sold for a staggering $4 million. And yet, even his weaker efforts still contain decent action sequences and playful banter between characters. What seemed to be missing in Black’s later films was depth and characterization – elements that made his screenplays distinctive. Perhaps this was as a result of meddling and script revisions at the hands of others. For Black, screenwriting came easy: “The fact that there were so few rules associated with it, so few actual structural maxims … you can just do what you want. So I played around and it was fun. I would just type to keep myself entertained. It turned out people liked that. They felt it represented an interesting way to go, but for me it was truly just typing to keep myself entertained.”

Studio executives were only interested in using Black to write formulaic drivel. Determined to make it, he wrote Lethal Weapon. The script was a blast of fresh air and ended up being made into a big budget action film starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. This kind of thing almost never happens in Hollywood and it’s a testimony to Black’s skill as a screenwriter that he achieved this kind of success so early on in his career. Lethal Weapon grossed over a $100 million. In the best tradition of Hollywood, money talks and so in 1990, Black was paid $1.75 million (an unheard of amount at the time) for The Last Boy Scout script. The next year it was made into a 1991 action movie starring Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans and directed by the late Tony Scott.

The film starts off literally with a bang as a pro-football player (a pre-infomerical Billy Blanks) pulls out a handgun right in the middle of a play and shoots three opposing players in his way to getting a touchdown before killing himself. Joe Hallenbeck (Bruce Willis) is a private detective hired by his best friend (Bruce McGill) to protect a stripper named Cory (Halle Berry in an early role). The best friend is subsequently blown up in a car and the stripper gunned down by thugs. Her washed-up, football-playing boyfriend Jimmy (Damon Wayans) hooks up with Joe to get some answers and some much needed payback.

“I had this period where I didn’t think I was any good at anything and fought desperately to stay afloat,” Black said in an interview with Creative Screenwriting magazine. And with that feeling in mind, Black wrote a movie that pushes the world-weary detective stereotype to then new, surreal levels. Willis’ performance and Black’s screenplay combine to produce a portrait of a guy who is so down and out that our first glimpse is a shot of him passed out in his own car while being harassed by snotty neighborhood kids with a dead squirrel. When we meet Joe he has a pretty simple outlook on life – a mantra, if you will, to start each day: “Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You’re gonna lose. Smile you fuck.” Willis, who has made a career out of playing world-weary tough guys, nails the defeated vibe that sticks to Joe like stink on dog poop. Joe’s actually a very disillusioned good guy, an ex-Secret Service agent who saved the President’s life once but got fired after he punched out a senator (Chelcie Ross) with a kinky streak. Throughout the movie, Willis delivers deadpanned one-liners while constantly getting the crap kicked out him. As a result, you can’t help but root for him as he and Wayans send the baddies to their well-deserved violent deaths.

Willis plays a classic burn-out, sporting the traditional slovenly appearance of a down-on-his-luck P.I. complete with unshaven look and rumpled clothes that he slept in. And that’s the best he looks, from that point on it’s all downhill as his face takes on cuts and lacerations accrued from fighting numerous bad guys. Joe actually uses his disheveled appearance to his advantage, like when a random baddie takes him into an alleyway to kill him. Joe buys time by cracking jokes about the flunkie’s wife and then, when the guy lets his guard down, stabs him in the throat with a broken bottle. The guy gurgles, “You bastard,” to which Joe curtly replies, “And then some.” Willis was born to spout Black’s dialogue. He’s the master of sarcastic comebacks and gets some real doozies in The Last Boy Scout. At one point, Jimmy chides him, “You read much?” Joe replies, “My subscription to Juggs magazine just ran out.”

Jimmy is also at an emotional cul-de-sac of sorts – popping pills to stave off chronic pain from football injuries he picked up as a player. Like Joe, he’s been disgraced from his former profession, kicked out of the league for gambling. He now spends time feeling sorry for himself by cultivating a drinking problem and nailing anything in a skirt despite having a super-hot stripper girlfriend played by Halle Berry (only in the movies!). Like Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon, Jimmy lost his family to tragedy and it taints his entire worldview. Life means nothing and solving his girlfriend’s murder is the only thing he has left. Wayans shows that he’s more than just a goofy funnyman in a scene where he tells Joe how he got kicked out of football. It is an angry tirade tinged with hurt and bitter resentment as he was basically chewed up and spit out by an uncaring organization. His speech touches upon the harsh realities of professional sports.

Scott populates his movie with a fine collection of character actors, chief among them Noble Willingham as uber rich football team owner Sheldon Marcone and stand-up comedian Taylor Negron cast wonderfully against type as one of Black’s trademark polite, well-spoken sociopaths (see also Lethal Weapon’s Mr. Joshua and The Long Kiss Goodnight’s Timothy). Marcone is also a repeating motif in Black’s scripts. He’s an old, privileged white man who is greedy and corrupt. Think of the money-laundering retired general in Lethal Weapon and the war-mongering CIA boss in The Long Kiss Goodnight. Black clearly sees these men as the source of real evil in the world, pulling the strings that will result in death and destruction in the name of money. In all three films, the protagonists face insurmountable odds to do what is right regardless of the danger or risk to their own well-being.

Like most buddy action movies, the relationship between Joe and Jimmy starts off with plenty of friction as the quarterback resents the private investigator watching over his girlfriend because that’s his job. They trade a few insults and then decide to team up when she’s killed. Black has fun playing around with the dynamic between two guys who basically hate each other but are thrown together due to extraordinary circumstances. At one point, Jimmy cracks a joke to lighten the mood between them only to be rebuffed by Joe. Jimmy tells him, “I’m just trying to break the ice,” to which Joe replies, “I like ice. Leave it the fuck alone.” There are all kinds of snappy banter between them as Wayans tones down his trademark goofy shtick and more or less plays straight man to Willis’ deadpan humor.

Unlike a lot of buddy action movies, Black allows for the occasional lull, like the moment where Jimmy looks at a photograph of him and Cory and you can see on his face how upset he is by her death now that he has a moment to reflect on it. No words are said, Wayans’ face says it all. Joe and Jimmy represent the last bastion of decency in a world that is corrupt and morally bankrupt, where best friends double cross each other, wealthy businessmen are blackmailed, and wives cheat on their husbands. The deeper our two heroes go into investigating Cory’s murder the more corruption they uncover.

The aforementioned alleyway sequence and Cory’s death are vintage Tony Scott moments with his trademark look: smoke, neon and rainy streets at night. Think of it as the director’s version of a neo-noir. He is equally adept at action sequences as he is with showdown set pieces, like the scene where a henchman repeatedly offers Joe a cigarette only to punch it out of his mouth. Joe has been captured and is unarmed and outnumbered but he still has the balls to threaten to kill the guy if he hits him one more time. There is palpable tension as we wait for Joe to follow through on his threat (or be killed), which he does with brutal swiftness. It is reminiscent of the famous showdown between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in True Romance (1993) where a tense scene could erupt in violence at any moment.

Successful screenwriter Shane Black made headlines in 1989 when he sold his spec screenplay (written without a contract from a studio or a producer) for The Last Boy Scout to the David Geffen Co. for an unprecedented $1.75 million. He had wisely taken advantage of the boom of independent production companies that sprouted up in the late 1980s looking for big budget action scripts. It must’ve come as validation of his abilities after what he had been through.

After his meteoric rise with the success of the script he had written for Lethal Weapon, a sequel was inevitable. The studio gave Black first crack at it. Something had happened to the writer after enjoying a taste of notoriety and his first draft was even darker than what he had written for the first movie. For starters, he proceeded to kill off Mel Gibson’s character. Not surprisingly, the studio didn’t want to go that route and Black quit the project. Then, he lost the desire to write. A family illness coupled with the break-up of a long-term relationship rocked his already shaky confidence. For the next two years he did no writing and instead lived in fear of the next project and failing. Out of this dark period in his life came the script for The Last Boy Scout, which he wrote in five months.

For the script, Black drew on such influences as hard-boiled crime fiction by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald because they wrote about “personal integrity, morality, conflict, dealing with insanity, dealing with pain and death.” He wanted to write a modern private investigator story set in Los Angeles. He decided to set his story with the sleazy side of professional football as the backdrop because it matched up well with his take on a Chandleresque private investigator story. For Black, football “combines the spirit of the American hero with the spirit of American greed.” After finishing the script, he didn’t think it would sell because “it was weird” and “too rough for most people. It’s not a commercial formula; it’s a very raunchy, down and dirty detective film.”

Originally, director Tony Scott had a war movie taking place in Afghanistan set up as his follow-up to the Tom Cruise racing car movie Days of Thunder (1990). However, the script didn’t come together and he was given The Last Boy Scout. He liked it so much that he agreed to do it. Not much has come out of what went down during filming but what little has suggests a contentious shoot. With titanic egos like producer Joel Silver, movie star Bruce Willis and Tony Scott, they were bound to clash and they did as Scott later admitted, “I got caught a little bit between Bruce and Joel Silver … I was pushed in terms of the cast and in terms of how I was shooting it.” He also felt that Black’s script “was better than the final movie.” Of the experience, all Silver would say was that it was “one of the three worst experiences in my life.”

The Last Boy Scout performed fairly well at the box office and has since enjoyed a second life on video and television (thank you, TBS). Black went on to get paid more than $1 million for his rewrites on The Last Action Hero (1993), a criminally underrated romp that is the granddaddy of self-reflexive action movies. This movie was crucified by critics and did not perform as well at the box office as expected but this did not tarnish Black’s reputation either. However, he disappeared from movies for a few years before coming back with a vengeance with the quirky private detective movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and Iron Man 3 (2013). The Last Boy Scout is a lean, mean guilty pleasure with a misanthropic streak that is uncompromisingly un-PC in attitude. This is further reinforced by its rather poor view of women. They are either liars and cheats (Joe’s wife), whores (Cory), or foul-mouthed brats (Joe’s daughter). Joe takes it all grimly in stride because hey, he’s already hit rock bottom. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything, including himself. Action films don’t get any nastier than this one.

STEVEN ZAILLIAN’S SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISHER — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

bobby fisher

I absolutely adore Steven Zaillian’s directorial debut Searching for Bobby Fischer. Zaillian has a nearly flawless track record as a big-gun Hollywood screenwriter, and his directorial efforts have also been excellent (A Civil Action and the underrated All the King’s Men), but his first film is a nearly perfect, humanistic piece that zeroes in on character in a way that few dramas ever dare, especially when considering that the film is told through the POV of a 10 year old chess prodigy, who likely has some developmental and social anxieties, if not outright disorders. I’ve been obsessed with this film for over 20 years. I viewed it in the theater at 13 years of age, it was a go-to film when it endlessly played on HBO back in the day, and throughout the years, I’ve turned to this great, unassuming, patient work at least once every 365 days on my well-worn DVD, because it reminds me of how effective a simple story can be when the acting is extra-precise and when the writing compliments the direction and vice versa. It also helps to have had Conrad Hall calling the shots behind the camera; this is yet another beautifully textured and composed piece of work from one of the most legendary of cinematographers ever to grace the medium. The plot centers around a kid named Josh who is discovered to be a chess whiz by his parents and family members. They encourage his passion and gift, which leads him to an extremely intense and strict instructor named Bruce (played with devilish charm by Ben Kingsley), who pushes young Josh both emotionally and psychologically to be the best chess talent he can be, along with never forgetting how to be a decent person along the way, without sacrificing a competitive edge.

Bruce continually hypes up and compares Josh to chess great Bobby Fischer, allowing the youth to develop the idea that one day, he might be as great as that iconic yet mysterious figure. There’s also an affecting subplot between Josh and a speed-chess hustler named Vinnie, perfectly captured with great spirit and flair by Laurence Fishburne. And let’s not forget about the incredibly moving family dynamics between Josh and his parents, played by the brilliant team of Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen, both of whom radiate warmth and respect and support for their son, even under the most trying of situations and circumstances. And over the course of the film, it’s remarkable to witness Josh become his own person, after so many others have projected what they want him to be or to become, without ever asking Josh what it is that he really wants to do. The lead performance from then eight year old Max Pomeranc is nothing short of sensational; there are adults who have been acting for years who don’t come close to the complexity that he delivered in this challenging piece of work. It’s also interesting to note that Pomeranc was an actual chess player before filming began (even appearing on a Top 100 list for his age group, according to Wikipedia), and that he never went on to act in another substantial film again. But he’ll always have his tremendous performance in this amazing film to hold close to his heart. Zaillian has long been a considerable talent, expertly balancing his artistic sensibilities with the demands of the studios who are always courting him for big adaptations or structural work on their blockbusters. It’s not hard to see why. This is a great film and Zaillian is a class act.

 

OUT OF SIGHT – A REVIEW BY J.D. LAFRANCE

by J.D., posted in Film Review

“It’s like seeing someone for the first time. You can be passing on the street and you look at each other and for a few seconds there’s this kind of recognition. Like you both know something, and the next moment the person’s gone. And it’s too late to do anything about it. And you always remember it because it was there and you let it go. And you think to yourself, what if I stopped? What if I said something? What if?” – Jack Foley

This bit of dialogue from Out of Sight (1998) perfectly captures the essence of the relationships between the characters in this film. It is about the what ifs and the what could have beens. What the characters do and, more importantly, what they don’t do that directly determines their fate.

As the film begins, Jack Foley (George Clooney), a career bank robber, escapes from a Florida prison with the help of his loyal accomplice Buddy (Ving Rhames). In the heat of the moment they kidnap a beautiful Federal Marshall named Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). She and Jack are stuffed in the trunk of her car as they make a hasty retreat. Trapped in such a small, confined space Jack and Karen have nothing to do but engage in idle chitchat. Even though they are on completely opposite sides of the law there’s a spark, an initial attraction that blossoms into something more as the film progresses and their paths inevitably cross again.

Out of Sight is based on the book of the same name by Elmore Leonard. He had wanted to do a bank robber story for a long time. Several years ago, he saw “a picture in the Detroit News of an attractive young woman who was a Federal Marshal standing in front of the Federal Courthouse in Miami. She held a shotgun which was resting on her cocked hip and as soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a book.” Danny DeVito bought the rights to a previous Leonard book Get Shorty for his production company Jersey Films. After the success of that film, he bought the rights to Out of Sight.

The film came to George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh at a time when both of their careers had reached a critical junction. Clooney was coming off the commercial and critical train wreck known as Batman and Robin (1997). Soderbergh had completely shunned the mainstream with the one-two punch of Gray’s Anatomy (1996) and Schizopolis (1996). Both men were looking for a hit that would put them back on the map. Soderbergh had already made two films for Universal and one of its executives, Casey Silver, offered him Out of Sight with Clooney attached. Soderbergh was close to making another project and was going to pass but Silver told him, “These things aren’t going to line up very often, you should pay attention.”

Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Frank achieve a perfect mix with Out of Sight. The film’s pace moves with effortless ease and self-confidence. They know when to slow things down and savor the moment as well. As Frank proved with his excellent screenplay for Get Shorty (1995), he perfectly understands Leonard’s distinctive cadence and the speech patterns of his characters. Cinematic adaptations of books are almost always inferior because so much has to be cut out or changed to fit into a two-hour film. However, Leonard’s books are tailor-made for movie adaptations because they are very visual and almost entirely dialogue and character-driven — ideal for the screenplay format. Out of Sight is one of those rare movies that is actually better than the book.

Soderbergh and his cameraman, Elliot Davis (White Oleander), paint their film with a specific color code. The bright colors of the Florida scenes — especially the prison sequences with vibrant blue and the bright yellow prison uniforms worn by various characters — provide a nice contrast to the second half of the film, which consists mainly of a gun-metal blue color scheme. The Detroit scenes have a cold, metallic feel to them and this really comes out. David Holmes’ catchy R&B score comes in and instantly transports the viewer into this world. He mixes in his own brand of funky electronica with old school tunes from the likes of the Isley brothers and Willie Bobo. From the atmospheric noises in the background to Holmes’ superb trip hop beats, this is a great sounding film.

After a string of so-so films, George Clooney finally found the right project that suited his particular talents with Out of Sight. With his movie star good looks and suave charm, he is perfectly cast as the smooth talking criminal. This may be his finest performance to date. For Clooney what attracted him to this role was the chance to play a character that evoked his cinematic heroes of the past. “When I was growing up the heroes for me were the bankrobbers — you know, the Cagneys and the Bogarts, Steve McQueen and all those guys, the guys who were kind of bad and you still rooted for them. And when I read this, I thought, This guy is robbing a bank but you really want him to get away with it.” Clooney’s style of acting is perfect for this role as he plays Foley with the right amount of laid-back charm. This is typified by his character’s introduction — the most pleasant, non-violent bank robbery ever committed to film. Clooney has such a likable screen presence that you want to see his character succeed.

Conversely, Jennifer Lopez is his perfect foil as a smart, tough law enforcement officer who can’t help but fall in love with this charismatic criminal. She is a very attractive woman but not above wielding a shotgun to apprehend a fugitive. There is a genuine chemistry between the two actors that makes their romance work. And it is this relationship that gives Out of Sight its depth. There is more to this film than snappy banter and a hip soundtrack. Incredibly, Sandra Bullock was originally considered to play Karen Sisco opposite Clooney, however Soderbergh said, “What happened was I spent some time with [Clooney and Bullock] – and they actually did have a great chemistry. But it was for the wrong movie. They really should do a movie together, but it was not Elmore Leonard energy.” Someone must’ve listened as the two ended up acting opposite each other years later in Gravity (2013).

A killer cast supports the two lead actors. Steve Zahn, an underrated character actor, is perfect as Glen, a stoner screw-up who looks up to Jack but is a royal pain in the ass. Dennis Farina plays Karen’s laid-back dad who buys his daughter a handgun for her birthday and just wants to see her married to a lawyer or a doctor. Albert Brooks is Richard Ripley, a bumbling white-collar criminal type who is in way over his head and sports a truly awful toupee. Don Cheadle plays “Snoopy” Miller, a tough guy-wannabe that is a classic schoolyard bully. Rounding this cast out is Ving Rhames, Jack’s tough, God-fearing partner in crime who always has his friend’s back.

Despite its lackluster performance at the box office, Out of Sight received widespread critical praise. It was clearly a career turning point for both Clooney and Soderbergh. The actor said in an interview that “Out of Sight was the first time where I had a say, and it was the first good screenplay that I’d read where I just went, ‘That’s it.’ And even though it didn’t do really well box office-wise — we sort of tanked again — it was a really good film.” Clooney went on to success with O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Ocean’s Eleven (2001). Soderbergh saw Out of Sight as “a very conscious decision on my part to try and climb my way out of the arthouse ghetto which can be as much of a trap as making blockbuster films. And I was very aware that at that point in my career, half the business was off limits to me.” The film’s critical reaction gave Soderbergh a foothold in Hollywood that led to the commercial success of Erin Brockovich (1999) and Oscar gold with Traffic (2000).

Out of Sight is a film about making choices and taking chances despite the sometimes inevitable, painful consequences. It is also an entertaining look at a collection of colorful characters and the exciting world they inhabit. This is a smart, sexy and wonderfully stylish crime thriller that was ignored by audiences (due to lousy advertising and an even worse release date) but garnered strong critical reaction (winding up on many Best Of lists that year). Fortunately, Out of Sight has been re-discovered on home video and recognized as one of the best Elmore Leonard adaptations ever put to film.

JOHN HILLCOAT’S TRIPLE 9 — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

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Triple 9 is my kind of movie. But I expected that. This is a John Hillcoat film. Hillocat has only made movies that I have loved. The Proposition, The Road, Lawless, and now this nasty, 70’s-flavored cop film that has streaks of Lumet while possessing an aggressively stylish and modern aesthetic hand. Matt Cook’s hard boiled screenplay involving corrupt cops, heists gone awry, and shifting allegiances surprises all throughout, unexpectedly killing off characters with blunt force, made even more impactful by Hillcoat’s always incredible sense of grim fatalism. There’s zero fat on the narrative yet the story is still full bodied. The star studded cast all clearly had a blast playing in this scuzzy milieu, with Kate Winslet as a Russian-Jewish gangster stealing the entire picture from an appropirately glum and intense Casey Affleck and an extremely riled up Chiwetel Ejiofor. Aaron Paul does drugged-out despondency better than anyone, Anthony Mackie goes hardcore, and Clifton Collins Jr., yet again, delivers a robust and extremely memorable supporting performance, totally dominating the screen and adding yet another terrific character to his rogue’s gallery. Oh wait, and then there’s Woody Harrelson, completely OWNING the film every time he appears, bringing a sense of humor to the otherwise heavy subject matter. Theresa Palmer, it must be said, has a stunning backside. And Michael K. Williams gets the cameo of the year. Triple 9 is also brimming with fantastic car chases and ear-ringing shootouts that explode with dangerous intent. The throbbing muscial score by Atticus Ross is a perfect match for the purposefully ragged cinematography and editing, creating brilliant chaos that still remains coherent. And then there’s the last shot, which, for my money, is an instant classic for this type of material. If you love violent cop films with hardened, unrepentant characters who aren’t easy to root for, if you yearn for more R-rated genre entries like this that harken back to the old days, then go out and see Triple 9.

MICHAEL MANN’S THIEF — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

thief.jpg

A Jerry Bruckheimer production. A film by Michael Mann. Damn, does that sound pretty sweet. It’s interesting to note how very different these two creative forces would become over the years, but their 1981 collaboration cemented two very distinctive stylistic talents who would pave the way all throughout the decade for other filmmakers who would become obsessed by their explosive action elements and urban nocturnal elegance. James Caan delivered one of his greatest performances in this gritty yet slick neo-noir which Mann based on the 1975 novel The Home Invaders by Frank Hohimer, who in actuality was real-life criminal John Seybold. Tuesday Weld co-starred as Caan’s girlfriend, with an amazing supporting cast including Willie Nelson, James Belushi, Robert Prosky, Dennis Farina, and Tom Signorelli peppering the film with lively, extremely memorable moments. This was Mann’s auspicious feature film debut after time spent on docs and TV programs, displaying a sensationally strong grasp of filmmaking technique and intent, with some of his now-obsessive visual traits firmly in place from the start.

The scene in the coffee shop between Caan and Weld is an all-timer, one of the single best moments of acting in Caan’s career, and further serves to demonstrate just how forceful and commanding he was as a leading man, while being able to convey his own special brand of sympathy. And one gets the sense that, while totally acting as its own great piece of storytelling, Mann was warming up and setting the stage for bigger, more epic pieces of filmmaking, while establishing his love for hardened, morally ambiguous protagonists who straddle both sides of the law while displaying an intense concentration on their job by following a meticulous set of personal and professional codes. These have been the recurring themes in Mann’s work that has stretched from the near operatic (Heat) to the grounded docudrama (The Insider) to the quasi-experimental studio thriller (Collateral) to the expressive and impressionistic genre treatise (Miami Vice). William Peterson made his feature debut in a very small part. After debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, Thief would slip in and out of theaters mostly unnoticed, despite receiving strong reviews from critics. Tangerine Dream’s hypnotic score only amplifies Mann’s uncanny sense of atmosphere and mise-en-scene.

Penthouse North: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Penthouse North is a vicious little 90’s inspired slice of thriller fun, which sadly seems to have gained zero marketing and promotion, so unless it catches your eye on US Netflix or Shaw On Demand (which is where I watched it), you’ll prolly never even know you missed it. It’s nothing groundbreaking, and sometimes is very predictable, but as I found myself calling plot twists on the dime, and figuring out story beats before they happened, I didn’t find myself frustrated or feeling cheated out. I got a burst of nostalgia for the 80’s/90’s time period when these type of thrillers were in full bloom. Michelle Monaghan throws herself into the role of Sara, an ex-war photojournalist who was blinded in an incident. She lives in an ornate NYC penthouse with her boyfriend now, only just beginning to adjust to her new condition and emerge from reclusiveness. On New Year’s Eve, that auspicious time of year that buzzes with possibility, trouble comes knocking in the form of homicidal criminals in search of something hidden within the apartment. We are then treated to the archetypal game of cat and mouse as she fights tooth and nail for her survival. The film benefits greatly from a frenzied performance from Michael Keaton as Hollander, the lead criminal and a real piece of work. Keaton rarely plays in the bad guy arena (check out Pacific Heights for a more restrained yet equally dastardly turn), but he’s got a reptilian ferocity that’s equally scary and amusing, sometimes both at once. His Hollander is a royal prick, and oodles of fun to watch. Mark Mancini composes a solid score of jangly apprehension, and the film makes great use of its setting, with several clammy moments that didn’t sit well with my fear of heights. Good stuff. 

RON SHELTON’S COBB — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review

cobb

Except for a handful of people, everyone hated Cobb when it was released in 1994. It got savaged by almost every critic and it died a very quick death at the box office, grossing less than $2 million domestic. My dad took me to see it when it played at a local college campus theater during its second run (Trinity College in Hartford, which is still equipped with 70mm projection), and I’ve long been fascinated by its dark edges, its morally compromised center, and its stubborn refusal to play it safe for the biopic genre. Some filmmakers might have tried to soften Ty Cobb’s life story for the sake of potential audience sympathy and empathy, but not writer/director Ron Shelton — he’s too smart for those type of cheap tricks. By almost all accounts, Cobb was a racist, a drunkard, a drug addict, a wife beater, a general all-around asshole who also happened to be one of the greatest baseball players ever to pick up a glove and bat, a man with a ferocious desire to win at all costs, with a dangerous sense of reserve and purpose that outright scared other human beings. Shelton’s rather brilliant creative decision to totally limit the baseball action (you quickly glimpse Cobb on field in a few flashbacks and highlight footage) allowed for a more introspective narrative, thus taking the game out of the man, but never the sense of sport or competition.

Robert Wuhl, as Cobb’s autobiographer Al Stump, and Lolita Davidovich were both excellent in vivid supporting turns, while the production benefited enormously from Russell Boyd’s burnished and elegant lensing and the lived-in production design by Amin Ganz and Scott Ritenour. And then there’s Jones as Cobb, giving one of his greatest performances, unafraid to be unrepentantly nasty, and going for the emotional jugular in almost every single sequence. His fiery back and forth with Wuhl remains volatile all throughout the angry screenplay, providing a unique sense of awkward camaraderie and legendary reverence between subject and author.

Shelton had an absolutely tremendous run of sports films in the 80’s and 90’s, with the classic baseball comedy Bull Durham, the crowd-pleasing yet still subversive blockbuster White Men Can’t Jump, the challenging and unforgiving Cobb, the utterly lovely Tin Cup, and the underrated Play it to the Bone (which would make for a great double feature with Michael Ritchie’s unfairly neglected Diggstown), before moving into the cop genre in the 90’s and 2000’s with the superb Dark Blue, the humorous Hollywood Homicide, and scripting duties on Michael Bay’s at times hallucinatory Bad Boys 2. The Paul Newman political comedy Blaze is a fun and curious offering that found release in 1989. Roger Ebert’s personally conflicted review of Cobb is one of the most interesting pieces that he ever wrote, and is worth checking out.

EDWARD ZWICK’S PAWN SACRIFICE — A REVIEW BY NICK CLEMENT

by nlclement, posted in Film Review
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Pawn Sacrifice is a down-the-middle Hollywood biopic of infamous chess sensation Bobby Fisher. Squarely directed by Edward Zwick (whose Civil War epic Glory remains his career highlight), the film is content to be solid at almost every turn without the desire to go beyond the expected. It’s confidently crafted, very well acted by Tobey Maguire as Fisher and Liev Schreiber as his arch nemesis Boris Spassky (who are surrounded by deep and classy supporting cast), and is helped by the swift editing of Steven Rosenblum who keeps the pace moving without feeling rushed. The production design is evocative of the cold war setting, and Maguire’s descent into madness is certainly communicated well by the choices in Bradford Young’s smooth cinematography, the sharp use of sound, and Maguire’s innate ability as an actor to burrow deep into a character’s inner turmoil. But the film never went beyond the traditional, and considering how legitimately messed up Fisher was as a human being, the narrative might’ve been structured in a different fashion to allow for an even more introspective approach to the material.  Granted, the story they chose to tell narrowly focused on the intense rivalry between Fisher and Spassky, but still, I was hoping for something a bit larger in emotional and narrative scope. Considering the screenwriting talent involved (Steven Knight, Stephen J. Rivele, and Christopher Wilkinson), one might have expected something more robust and distinctive. The various chess matches are routinely staged, lacking directorial zest that might’ve spiced up the action; Zwick seemed curiously removed from this film to a certain extent, never bringing the panache from something like Defiance or Blood Diamond or the exuberance from his underrated romantic dramedy Love and Other Drugs. Pawn Sacrifice is a comfortable Saturday night movie, undemanding yet entertaining, but might’ve been more rewarding had it wanted to really get down and dirty.

 

Deadpool – A Review by Josh Hains

by Josh Hains, posted in Film Review

deadpool_ver6_xxlg Whoever said Deadpool was going to suck probably only heard about the movie within the last year and would rather watch X-Men Apocalypse…ew. They’ve probably never read a Deadpool comic book in their life, and had no idea who he is until the hugely popular marketing campaign kicked into full swing. They probably didn’t like that either and made that very clear on IMDb. And they probably have absolutely no appreciation for Ryan Reynolds. But of course, they can’t always be right. Deadpool is kickass!

Deadpool is light on its feet, hilarious, action packed, and accessible, but also rude, crude, violent, sexy, and not for everyone! Also, the main character isn’t green or animated, which means his chances of appearing in the next Avengers movie are slim to none, which is great because Hollywood tried sanitizing him once before and that was a bitch to get through. Deadpool speaks his mind loud and clear regardless of who is listening via voiceover or right into the camera breaking like 16 walls with a verbal diarrhea-like spontaneity that is much appreciated given how boring narration tends to be these days. It’s also 100% authentic to the character of Wade Wilson aka Deadpool aka The Merc With A Mouth, and his personality and mannerisms, the narrative style of his comics, his schizophrenia propelled fourth wall breaks, and the coarse, crude, profane and violent fun fans have come to expect from this parody of the Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke DC Comics character.

He’s as much of an anti-hero as Daredevil, but with a wicked sense of humour and comic timing that lands him the woman of his dreams, Vanessa, who sees our anti-hero Wade Wilson for the crudely mannered tough guy with a heart full of unicorns and Wham! for who he really is. But just when things get good and Wade gets laid constantly with his new lover, his life takes a giant shit on his shoulders and gives him cancer in his lungs, liver, brain, and prostate. All things he can live without. Some sketchy dude that looks like he should stay 500 yards away from schools offers Wade a cure and super human abilities, so Wade leaves Vanessa behind to become a super something. Unlike Daredevil however, after weeks of grueling experimentation, his eyesight is still intact along with his sense of humour and garrulous ramblings, his cancer completely gone, but his skin is all Freddy Krueger. Wade dubs himself Deadpool after a gambling racket his buddy Weasel runs, and with the assistance of Weasel, Blind Al (a crude old lady that let’s Wade crash at her place during his time of need), X-Men characters Colossus (a shiny CGI hero) and the moody Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Wade sets out to kill the guy who made his face look like an avocado had sex with an older, more disgusting avocado…the British bad guy Ajax and his sidekick Angel Dust, a less angry Rosie O’Donnell.

Along the way, bullets fly, blood spills and swords separate limbs and heads from bodies, all while Wade cracks jokes every other minute and breaks the fourth wall more times than he shoots people (count it if you don’t believe me), none of which is a bad thing! Deadpool is a load of furiously funny, blood soaked fun, right from the first milliseconds of the film until the end of the post credits sequence. It’s not the first R rated comic book movie, it surely won’t be the last, and it doesn’t have a huge budget or a Zack Snyder in the director’s chair. But it has a lot of heart, a great deal of humour, and some wicked bloody action, all of which have helped push the film into record breaking infamy. As a meta comic book film, Deadpool makes similarly themed comic book movies like Kickass look like the cheap wannabes they’ve always been, and does so with balls and attitude to spare.

Cue the music!

 

 

 

TWIN PEAKS POWERCAST No. 4: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN NEFF

by tfuglei, posted in Film Review, Podcast

Blue Bob

When David Lynch set about making a home studio in the late 1990s, he liked the work studio engineer John Neff did in designing it so much that he hired him to run it.  Thus began a partnership that lasted over two albums, three films, a website and a one-off concert in Paris for the ages.  Nate and Tim had the pleasure of picking the talented and generous Mr. Neff’s brain for loads of anecdotes about working with Lynch, projects that almost came to pass, the origins of some of Lynch’s most challenging work, and more.  Truly a David Lynch insider, this is essential listening for any fan of this enigmatic genius.