Tag: Faye Dunaway

Exploring the Nic Cage B Grade Cinematic Universe with Nate: Inconceivable

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Inconceivable eh. Anytime I see that title I just think of the little dude from The Princess Bride barking out that word. Anyways this was, for the most part, a rotten turkey of a film. I read in the trivia that Lindsay Lohan was attached to star at one point and had to drop out, but her presence would have elevated this thing nicely, because this Nicky Whelan girl they casted in her stead is a dud, no charisma whatsoever. And then there’s the script… this is supposed to be some kind of “Hand that Rocked The Cradle” shoutout where a supposedly battered wife (Whelan) escapes to a new life, befriends a wealthy couple (Nic Cage and Gina Gershon) and becomes their surrogate mother when they can’t properly have kids, until she becomes creepy and is suspected of sinister ulterior motives. But it plays like a bland, lackadaisical Hallmark-lite thriller where nothing much of anything happens and man I was bored to fucking tears. Cage is relaxed, unflappable and just ruffled enough to pass off as a distraught father when he needs to be. Whelan looks like a wax figure with vague mannerisms but I just didn’t buy that this random chick could befriend, infiltrate, gaslight and royally destroy this family, like it just didn’t seem plausible. A fossilized Faye Dunaway shows up as Cage’s suspicious mother, the only person to have doubts about this stranger in their midst but of course no one listens to her pleas of reason. The only person to give a terrific, fully formed performance is Gina Gershon who is always amazing. She makes the wife character sympathetic, believable and almost saves the story, plus it’s a reunion of sorts for her and Cage after Face/Off back in the day which was nice to see. As a thriller though this just strikes out hard, and it’s leading lady doesn’t have the talent or magnetism to carry a HomeSense commercial, let alone a feature film. Lazily plotted, weirdly paced, unpleasant and uninspired. Two Cages out of five, and one of those is solely thanks to Gershon.

-Nate Hill

Irvin Kershner’s Eyes Of Laura Mars

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Irvin Kershner’s Eyes Of Laura Mars is one bizarre film. Overall it really does not work, like it stands obstinately in WTF territory with its arms crossed, refusing to let either it’s a talented cast, lavish production design or unusual premise spur it on to greatness, despite the fact that parts of it work in fits and starts. From a screenplay by none other than John Carpenter, Faye Dunaway stars as Laura Mars, a controversial fashion photographer whose work has attracted the attention of a serial killer that starts staging their crimes after the photos she takes. Stranger still, every time our murderer goes for a move, she is suddenly tuned in to what he’s doing via his eyes, as if a clairvoyant. What a concept, right? Well I bet Carpenter had a few things to say about how they butchered his idea, they should have just given him creative control over the thing. Dunaway is a fantastic actress, she has a stately Sigourney Weaver vibe and her eyes are soulful fissures that do lend themselves to a story this intense, but she can’t do much with her role, as Laura’s ultimate culminated worth is a glorified scream queen. Anywho, the murders get the attention of police detective Tommy Lee Jones, and let me tell you I didn’t think he was ever this young. I’m aware that this was 1978, but to me Jones is one of those sagely actors like Morgan Freeman or Sam Elliott who seems to have always been old and just sprung out of the ground already wise, weathered n’ weary. The horror elements clash with a ridiculously hokey romance subplot between him and Dunaway that barrels in from farthest left field, feels artificially paced and undeveloped, an insult to both the intelligence of the audience and the integrity of Dunaway’s character, but I spied notoriously loopy producer Jon Peter’s name in the credits so maybe he had something to do with that. They would have been better off spending more time developing the pleasant camaraderie between Laura and her lovable entourage, which is one aspect that really works. The supporting cast/list of suspects also includes an awkward Raul Julia as Laura’s ex husband, her flamboyant agent (Rene Auberjonois) and a fantastic, scene stealing Brad Dourif in an early career role as her scrappy limo driver assistant. It sucks because the film has beautiful production design; Laura’s photography has an elaborate, provocative edge, the New York fashion scene and street-side elements are captured neatly and her ornate bedroom looks like a spaceship that Kubrick designed, but all that verdant personality is wasted on a story that’s so silly it hurts. Nothing is satisfactorily wrapped up, and the final twist is so lame that I couldn’t figure out if it was because that outcome hadn’t really been done before 1978 all that much and I’m just too young or simply because it was laaaaaame in itself. There’s a jittery score by Artie Kane that works and echoes stuff like Bernard Hermann, so there’s that I guess, plus game performances by Dunaway, Auberjonois and Dourif, but their effort really deserved better. This goes nowhere, and what’s worse, takes its sweet time getting there.

-Nate Hill

20,000 Leagues of Cinema and Literature: An Interview with C. Courtney Joyner by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Film Review

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C. Courtney Joyner is a successful writer/director/novelist. He was a zombie in a Romero movie, he hangs out with L.Q. Jones and Tim Thomerson, he was once roommates with Renny Harlin and made the breakfasts while Harlin got the girls. It makes me think of Steve Coogan’s line from Ruby Sparks, “how do I go back in time and be him.”

Truth is we are the same in many instances. We’re just on different sides of the globe and one of us is in the big leagues while the other is at the scratch and sniff end of the business. But we both love movies and fantastic adventures. We both wrote to the filmmakers we loved long before the director became celebrity. We both longed for more info from behind the scenes – long before such material was in abundance.

He grew up in Pittsburgh, the son of a doctor and a reporter. He came of age in the glory days of monster movies and adventure fiction. Then he headed west and after college it wasn’t long before his writing caught the attention of producers and thus a career was spawned.

Spending those early years working with Charles Band and his company, Empire, Joyner was prolific, and soon the writer became a director. All the while he was working on a dream project, a work we all have in us, that he was fighting to bring into the light.

It was a love of Jules Verne and the “what if” type scenario that gave birth to the early version of the story that would become his current masterwork Nemo Rising; a long-awaited sequel, if you will, to 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

His story would go through several incarnations before finally reaching the form into which it has now solidified. Swirling around him were big blockbuster versions which never quite surfaced. Names like Fincher and Singer and stars like Will Smith were linked to these big dollar deals.

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Unfortunately even Joyner’s long-form TV version came close, but didn’t get handed a cigar. So at a friend’s insistence he wrote the book and his publisher, in spite of the property being linked at that time to a screen version that fell apart, agreed to still put the book out.

Thus Joyner’s Nemo has risen and at last we can, for now, revel in it’s existence. I believe it is only a matter of time before it shall acquire enough interest – and the new major playing field – the field of series television may yet be the staging ground for Courtney’s long-suffering tribute to the genius of Verne and the thrilling enigma of a character known as Captain Nemo.

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Long have I waited to chat with him and it was well worth the wait. So, here now I present my interview with the man that director Richard Lester (The Three Musketeers, Robin and Marion, Superman II)  once mistook for a girl that was eagerly interested in film.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . . C. Courtney Joyner.

 

Charles Bukowski’s Barfly

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Charles Bukowski’s Barfly requires a specific thing of it’s audience: emphatically try to observe a very particular brand of life, that of the binge drinking drifter in 1970’s LA basin area. If you can do this, it’s a brilliant piece of work to enjoy, and if you can’t, it’ll be an abrasively off-putting slog to sit through. I fell smartly into the former category as the subject matter came.. vaguely close to hitting home, and because it’s just a fantastic movie in itself. Mickey Rourke was at the top of game during the 80’s, and this is one glowing gem of a role for him, one that shows a vulnerable, less macho dipped side of the man no less. Playing a restless, shambling gutter-snipe named Henry Chinaski, he careens through the film consuming any booze he can get his hands on, barely maintaining already dysfunctional relationships and haunting his derelict apartment, as well as that of a fellow rummy he meets in the form of excellent Faye Dunaway, looking equal parts haggard and angelic until we’re not sure what we’re looking at. Chinaski is of course supposed to be Bukowski himself, as the film and it’s fiery script are autobiographical in nature, based on the willfully misanthropic writer’s hazy adventures in backwoods Hollywood during that era. Approached by a publisher (beautiful, articulate Alice Krige, who replaced Helen Hunt) with stars in her eyes for the man and his work, Chinaski gets a taste of life on the other side of the tracks, albeit briefly, an interlude he describes as ‘a cage with golden bars.’ The dives along those strips are his home right to the core, and he’s proud of it. The film is episodic, elliptical and open ended, a glimpse through the window of what it must be like for these people for a time, as the camera lovingly follows them about their ways for a while like a fly on the wall, then loses interest, buzzes off and leaves them in peace without rhyme, reason or resolution, unless of course your sensibilities jive with the meandering, barely sculpted story structure, which I loved. The film has little interest in aesthetics or pleasantries either, showing ugly, mottled alcoholics and layabouts who fill the frames around Rourke and Dunaway like brittle garden gnomes adorning the bar, a far cry from the fresh, powdered faces we’re used to in Hollywood. “Don’t you hate people?” Dunaway laments to him in one scene. “No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around..” he croons back. It’s that kind of stinging poetry that gives this film, and Bukowski’s career, such lasting weight. Not to be missed.

-Nate Hill

PTS Presents The Gary Young Special Episode 2: CHINATOWN, LA CONFIDENTIAL and TRUE DETECTIVE

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Podcast

For our second episode in the Gary Young Series, we sat down and discussed Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN, Curtis Hanson’s LA CONFIDENTIAL and both of those films influences on the second season of TRUE DETECTIVE.  We had a blast, hope you guys enjoy!

Episode 7: With Very Special Guest GARY YOUNG. Sidney Lumet’s THE OFFENCE, MAD MEN, HARRY BROWN and top five Sean Connery and Faye Dunaway

by Frank Mengarelli, posted in Podcast

Featured on Episode 7 is a very special guest, Gary Young writer of HARRY BROWN starring Michael Caine.  We also discuss MAD MEN, Sidney Lumet’s THE OFFENCE and top five performances of Sean Connery and Faye Dunaway.

Enjoy!