Tag: Jeff Goldblum

THE ROBERT ALTMAN FILES: BEYOND THERAPY (1987)

by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

Beyond Therapy is bad. And I don’t mean that it’s a weaker Robert Altman effort or that it’s bad of kind. I mean to say that it’s a bad movie that I could scarcely dislike more even if it had been written and directed by Henry Jaglom, a major/minor talent I love and cherish as much as I do getting paper cuts on my balls. Whatever pleasant vibes may radiate off of the film’s innocuous and airy promotional artwork that hints at a comedy of manners among a star-studded cast is a goddamn pack of rotten lies.

The last in Altman’s feature adaptations of stage plays, Beyond Therapy is a story about, I think, sexual fluidity, self-acceptance, and the (disproven) utter worthlessness of therapy. I say “I think” not because I don’t know; it’s just that Altman’s busy style and overlapping dialogue does a grave disservice to the film and it barely registers as anything other than a cacophonous vortex of shouting, goofy accents, performative emoting, and Julie Hagerty.

Disguising itself as a polyamorous and pansexual Woody Allen comedy, Robert Altman’s Beyond Therapy avoids amusing like the plague in favor of buying unfunny by the barrel and spraying the whole movie with it. Adapted from co-writer Christopher Durang’s off-Broadway play, Beyond Therapy concerns itself with Bruce (Jeff Goldblum) a bisexual who meets Prudence (Julie Hagerty) after she answers a magazine ad Bruce has placed much to the chagrin of his live-in boyfriend, Bob (Christopher Guest) and his mother (Geneviève Page). Most of this chaos plays out in a French restaurant in which mirrored deceptions and partner swapping seems to be happening on the margins and also in the offices of Charlotte (Glenda Jackson) and Stuart (Tom Conti), two therapists who treat Bruce and Prudence, respectively, and, coincidentally, sneak off to have sex with each other at twenty after the hour.

Beyond Therapy feels like it’s being helpful as this kind of subject matter (in America, at least) was something that, in 1987, was still mostly assigned to very serious dramas and was considered pretty provocative but, alas, it’s ultimately too confused to work retrospectively. I mean, the idea that Jeff Goldblum’s fluidity somehow throws the world off of its sexual axis is borderline insulting, even for a farce such as this. In fact, this is a film in which the whole idea of bisexuality is a foreign one; as if it resides in a world governed by its extremes. If it’s trying to state the fact that most everyone lies somewhere between the polar extremes on the sexual spectrum (which in 1987 would have been classified more as an “argument”), it’s not doing it in a particularly good or charming way. And where the film ends on a positive and healthy note where everyone more or less celebrates their most honest and open sexual desires replete with straight and gay couplings (and at least one ménage a trois), Altman wheezes his way to the finish line feeling far too out of shape to even attempt to get into the mix, let alone direct it.

One of the problems with Beyond Therapy is the film’s frenetic pace which flattens out any real enjoyment of it. The cramped set of the French restaurant overstuffed with peripheral characters feels so constricted that Altman’s usually graceful choreography is off by two beats as visual gags don’t register and anything that might come off as clever is completely crushed and has the life choked out of it. Altman loved the French and it’s not difficult to understand why given their undying love for him and his work. But his comedies with French twists feel cold in a way that, if you’re not on Altman’s specific wavelength about the French and French culture, it’ll all seem like inside baseball and hard to gauge. What I do know is that much of it is not funny. And, on the whole, Beyond Therapy feels more like a French farce about sexually neurotic New Yorkers than it does an American film dealing with sexual hang-ups. I guess that tracks since this film was shot in Paris masquerading as New York.

This is a situation in which I think 90% of the cast is wonderful, just not when they’re occupying the same screen space with this material. Jeff Goldblum is very good as he delivers his usual dexterous brand of frazzle but Christopher Guest is utterly wonderful, providing the prototype for Zack Galifianakis’s twin brother Seth from Between Two Ferns. Julie Hagerty, on the other hand, is a ball of nervous energy who, despite being incredible in Lost in America and Airplane, is forced to play a character who is mostly shrill, unappealing, and doesn’t get enough water thrown on her during the course of the film. Glenda Jackson is great but she’s lost in the material which does her a great disservice, and Tom Conti is mildly amusing as the malapropism-prone therapist who actually revels in his tendency to ejaculate prematurely and who feels that sex that lasts longer than five minutes is unnatural.

If not for his bit in the opera-omnibus Aria (which, frankly, is just ok), 1987 would have represented Altman’s career nadir. He retreated back into the world of television and would not be seen in the cinemas again for another five years. Of course, he would continue to deliver masterworks on the small screen and his comeback in the multiplexes would prove to be one of the most confounding, against-the-odds stories in Hollywood history. But those triumphs should be shared for another day and should get no closer than five thousand yards of Beyond Therapy, a film only preferable to A Perfect Couple due to the sense that, at the conclusion of the former, everyone is moving in a healthier direction and is doing so with a complete lack of live performances from Keepin’ ‘Em Off the Streets.

(C) Copyright 2021, Patrick Crain

THE ROBERT ALTMAN FILES: NASHVILLE (1975)

by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

The Paramount logo appears in black and white and in a state of mismanaged distress. This is quickly followed by a calm pre-title credit countdown; Three, the studio… two, the producers… one, the director. Then, the blast off occurs with a voice that booms “NOW AFTER YEARS IN THE MAKING…” revealing a commercial for the film’s soundtrack album that will also operate as the film’s opening credit sequence. Welcome to Nashville, Tennessee in 1975, a reflection of an America that could be marketed just like a K-Tel record. Years in the making but here for your enjoyment “in stereophonic sound and without commercial interruption.”

Robert Altman’s Nashville is ground zero for reflecting America’s unhealthy appetite for mixing celebrity and politics and it savagely and meticulously lays bare the ugly mechanisms that fuel both enterprises and also our collective and insatiable obsessions with them. It’s about a post-war, post-Eisenhower America being left behind as a perverted geek show of wrong-headed populism, shameless grifters, and shallow entertainment tightens its grip on a nation that has been so beaten down and disillusioned that a earnest yet moronic song like “200 Years,” an anthem that marvels at America’s ability to withstand trials and tribulations long enough to last two whole centuries, can be mistakenly presented as a chest-bursting piece of patriotism instead of the hilariously stupid self-own that it is.

Nashville is the story of a few days in the life of twenty-four people in the titular city in which there are two defining events afoot. One of them is the re-emergence of country artist Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely), the undisputed but fragile queen of Nashville who’s been convalescing after a recent “flaming baton” incident. The other is the organization of a political rally for Hal Phillip Walker, presidential candidate for the populist, third-party “Replacement Party,” and winner of enough recent primaries to make the political establishment sweat. Through these two events, which will eventually thread together, we follow a whole host of country stars, political advance men, groupies, journalists, bored husbands, their even more bored wives, rock stars, hangers-on, has-beens, never-weres, kooks, and earnest fans. There’s a lot of information that floats at the viewer like an unstoppable current but Altman, with the help of a framework screenplay by Joan Tewkesbury, links all of these characters together with an uncanny skill and a uniquely American eye.

Up until 1975, there had not been a film quite like Nashville. Sure, star-studded films in the vein of Grand Hotel had been produced and were crowd-pleasing successes, but even those felt more like omnibus tales and less like a grand tapestry in which there truly is no lead character. Nashville was the first film to spread its giant cast comfortably across the widescreen canvas while also making them feel as they were part of something that was bubbling with vitality and was recognizably and organically alive. And in fact, Nashville exists in a space where real stars such as Elliott Gould and Julie Christie appear alongside characters portrayed by actors with whom they’ve worked before. Additional life is given to the film in the way it integrates likewise authentic locations like the Grand Old Opry (replete with a real GOO audience) being utilized for the actors to authentically perform songs that they wrote and brought to the project themselves. While the greatest example of this form of Altman commitment likely goes to the mock presidential campaign that crossed paths with very real ones in Altman’s Tanner ‘88 (which, not coincidentally, featured Michael Murphy as the central visible political figure), Nashville was the first to truly make an Altman production the kind of all-in communal effort he’d been tinkering with since McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

In the spirit of how our lives actually unfold, Nashville is a big movie built of little things. Broad gags such as the freeway pileup at the beginning and the climactic ending aren’t subtle nor are they hard to forget but the heart of the film is found in its small, fleeting passages such as the moment where Barbara Jean’s manipulative, boorish husband/manager, Barnett (Allen Garfield) blows her a kiss as she hits an emotionally terse high note while struggling to get through a musical set without a meltdown. It’s a film that recognizes the hurt on Mary’s (Cristina Rains) face when the vacuous Opal From the BBC (Geraldine Chaplin) announces that she, too, has slept with Tom (Keith Carradine), Mary’s musical partner to whom she’s truly in love despite being married to Bill (Allan Nicholls), the third in their musical trio. It’s a film that makes no judgements in understanding the delta between the feelings of frustration felt by Delbert Reece (Ned Beatty) and the joy felt by his wife, Linnea (Lilly Tomlin), while listening to their deaf son’s story about swimming class. It’s a film that picks up on the absolute contempt, punctuated by camera-ready smiles, that floods the face of Connie White (Karen Black) as she waits in the wings at the Grand Old Opry to fill in for Barbara Jean, a woman she positively hates. Finally, it’s a film that documents the sometimes ugly birth of stardom as it allows Barbara Harris’s unlikely and wonderfully ragged Albuquerque, a total hot mess of bleached hair, torn stockings, mismatched outfits, and wild dreams of becoming a “country western singer and or a star,” to triumphantly rise above tragedy, fully embodying American’s broken soul.

Nashville is also very good at both covering all of its bases and existing on a wavelength of recognizable ebbs and flows. It’s not satisfied with Gene Triplett’s (Michael Murphy) smug disdain for the people of Nashville as he tries to schmooze each and every star or half star into the Walker rally; it’s satisfied when it gets to show his utter shamelessness, following him into the hotel room of Tom and Mary where he attempts to rook them into the same show by dismissing the appeal of the country music artists he’s worked to put on the bill as being limited to dumb shitkickers. It’s not satisfied by showing us Barbara Jean virtually being draped in an American flag while performing “One, I Love You”; it’s satisfied when, earlier in the film, the tragically untalented Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) gets booed off the stage at a smoker for performing the same song. It’s not satisfied to show self-absorbed Tom treating every single woman that moves through his hotel room like absolute garbage and with reckless abandon; it’s satisfied when Linnea returns the favor by coldly and wordlessly reminding him that she’s past a point in her life where her feelings can be manipulated by a casual fling, even by him.

Nashville was the last time Altman keenly anticipated the culture and, in fact, the film’s ending became a reference point when Mark David Chapman assassinated John Lennon five years after the film’s release. But created in the haze between Richard Nixon’s resignation and the ascension of Jimmy Carter, Altman found the most fertile possible ground for the ascendancy of the campaign of a sleazy idiot like Hal Phillip Walker. For all the ink spilled on the prophetic nature of Sidney Lumet’s brilliant Network, released the following year, the bone-headed populism at the root of Hal Phillip Walker’s campaign has had longer legs with American culture. After all, not by coincidence, Altman would find the depths of the Reagan years to be the perfect time to recast Hal Phillip Walker as a (still unseen by the audience) right-wing television talking head in his unnecessarily maligned O.C. and Stiggs. The chord of Hal Phillip Walker and how it would likely eat America from the inside out was something that must have troubled and disgusted Altman to such a degree that, after Nashville, Altman ceased reporting on the culture and, in a manner of fashion, tried to do more to influence it (to diminishing returns) with specific elements found in A Perfect Couple, Quintet, and HealtH.

Nashville caused quite stir when it was released and it was uniformly detested by the Nashville community. Of course, this should be expected as, outside the coasts, most every place in America which feels like it’s keeping her memory pure has an almost insatiable desire to appear as unblemished as one of Tom Wolfe’s freshly-pressed suits. But what did Nashville reveal that was so objectionable? That, despite their cornpone humility, folks in the south can be just as petty, uninformed, and judgmental as those in New York or Los Angeles? That reductive, simple-minded country weepies like “For the Sake of the Children” could actually be hits? That there exists a ruthless power structure within the bowels of show business, regardless of what region of the country one finds themselves? That black country entertainers like Tommy Brown (Timothy Brown) have to often grit their teeth and accept the transactional relationship they have with their majority-white milieu? That boredom and infidelity occur in spades, even in places where seemingly everyone goes to church on Sunday morning, even if that house of worship is a hospital chapel? If Nashville, the city, was so bent out of shape at the content explored in Nashville, the film, then they simply revealed that the flame put to their hypocrisy was justified. Just as, in an effort to move forward, Shelley Duvall’s Keechie resigned herself to repeating the untruth that the father of her child died of consumption in Thieves Like Us, perhaps Nashville (and America as a whole) keeps its engine humming along on the fuel of an untenable false narrative about itself that is two parts hubris and one part tomfoolery, lacking any ability or desire to take account of itself.

In 2017, I was asked to list my top ten films of all time and I chose Nashville as number two (for the record, Peter Yates’s Breaking Away will never not be number one). At that time, I talked about how the election of Donald Trump evoked the memories of the end of the film and how America was basically conditioned to just sing and move on after catastrophic events without proper acknowledgment or collective reflection. Since that time, we’ve lived through a pandemic in which the former president couldn’t have cared less that half a million Americans died on his watch. We also saw a deadly insurrection in Washington D.C. at the behest of that same president. With the help of performative politicians who traffic in shallow patriotism with low-rent celebrities, the disreputable, right-wing media has created a cultural situation in which logic is untoward and facts are verboten, preparing us for a future that is as terrifying as it is unpredictable. But in our relative, localized comfort, we still continue to do the same thing as Haven Hamilton does at the end of Nashville; bloodied and bruised, we will call everything to order and give the microphone to someone… anyone… who will hopefully distract us from the pain and the damage. Up until now, this formula has always worked though, as sure as I’m sitting here writing this, one day it won’t. But, until that day, “It Don’t Worry Me” won’t be just a song in this film, it’ll stand as our glib, alternative-national anthem.

America the doomed, the damndest thing you ever saw.

THE ROBERT ALTMAN FILES: CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974)

by Patrick Crain, posted in Film Review

“You know, I know, rent means dough,

Landlord goin’ kick us in the cold, cold snow.

Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown,

What you goin’ do when the rent comes round?”

-Harry Von Tilden

“Pal… I’m gonna win!!!”

So says George Segal’s Bill Denny as he’s being flattened by the pressures of his overdue gambling debts, his irritated bookie, and being stuck in the unenviable position of having run out of personal items to sell for gambling money. It should also be said that he’s been on one hell of an impressive losing streak over the past couple of weeks. But, still, gripped by the kind of desperation that occurs when there are no options left, he says that he’s going to win a high rolling poker match in Reno as if it’s an absolute certainty. Given his circumstances, what the hell else is he going to say?

Robert Altman’s California Split is a film that understands that specific kind of desperation better than any movie I’ve ever seen. It also has a lot to say about dysfunction, camaraderie, semi-homoerotic male bonding, codependency, ennui, danger, disappointment, and, finally, the empty feeling one has after going jowls-deep into the depths of your own mania. For a small movie about two lost souls who luck out to find each other and enjoy a few eventful weeks together, California Split, one of Altman’s very best efforts, is alive in a way other films can only dream of being.

After randomly being seated at the same table at an L.A. poker club and then escaping the wrath of a fellow player who might as well wear a cape that says “sore loser,” Bill and Charlie Waters (Elliott Gould, never cooler than he is here) connect again in a nearby bar where Charlie’s infectious and quick witted assessments on basketball wagers win Bill over. Soon, they’re drunkenly staring over a graveyard of empty beer glasses and making low-stakes, bullshit bets as to whether or not they can name all seven dwarfs in their present condition. The evening ends with them getting beaten up, robbed of their winnings, arrested, and then, in the hazy, early morning hours, bailed out of jail by Gould’s call girl roommates (Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles, both unforgettable and fantastic) which then leads to a fruitful, winning partnership.

There are many things going on under the surface but there truly is a sly romantic comedy at the heart of California Split. Sure it’s not very conventional but I’m not sure what other subgenre creates the kind of unfettered joy Bill and Charlie feel when they’re around each other. There are times that George Segal is smiling so widely, you can see all of his back teeth and fear that somehow the top half of his head may become unhooked from his lower jaw. As the movie rolls along, their relationship ebbs and flows as winning and losing streaks exchange hands leading to a temporary separation, a reconciliation, and one last big dance before finally breaking up. The film is set during the Christmas season but it’s not something the audience would notice given Altman’s insistence on keeping the two protagonists cloistered in the details of their own world and blinded by their mutual, raw enthusiasm for action and each other’s company.

The film immediately frames Elliott Gould’s flashy Charlie in stark contrast to George Segal’s more buttoned-down Bill. They come off as two very different guys but, in the granular, they really aren’t all that different. Charlie may seem like the wise guy motormouth who is careening toward disaster but it’s actually Bill who is on the path to rack and ruin. Charlie is just already there; a smooth-talking loser who takes life one day at a time and doesn’t even pretend to give a hang about a day job. He bets like a chaos agent and doesn’t seem to care whether he wins or loses. Bill, on the other hand, still keeps an office in the startup magazine for which he works though it’s not clear if he’s paid for writing, which we never see him do, or avoiding his boss (an impossibly young Jeff Goldblum), at which he’s more adept. And though it’s not explicitly telegraphed, the audience gets the sense that Bill’s failed marriage is probably still within view in the rear view mirror and that a reconciliation wouldn’t necessarily be completely out of the question.

But the screenplay by Joseph Walsh (who turns up as Sparkie, Bill’s bookie whose patience has finally run out) is less interested in the well-worn path of personal redemption when it comes its characters as, a recovering gambling addict himself, Walsh understands that the joys of the compulsive gambler are small, fleeting, and infrequent. After Bill runs a streak that nets $84,000, he goes into a semi-trance and shakily rids every pocket of its gambling chips as if he’s vomiting after a particularly impressive bender. Exhausted, he holds his head in his hands as the life is drained out of him. Even winning is painful and empty. “Don’t mean a fuckin’ thing, does it?” Charlie observes.

While he had churned out a few masterpieces in the previous four years, California Split cemented Robert Altman as one of his generation’s most observational filmmakers. Standing the tallest in a class that included Paul Mazursky, Jonathan Demme, and Hal Ashby, Altman reveled in the details and quirky inhabitants that (still) make America unique and special. Early in the film, the audience is treated to a mini-drama that erupts between a bottomless go-go dancer and her gambling addicted girlfriend which ends with the dancer having to borrow against her earnings just to get the girlfriend out of the bar. It’s a small moment that occurs courtesy of Altman’s penchant for overlapping dialogue and roaming camera but it comes alive and makes three-dimensional people out of who would be nothing more than glorified extras living on the edge of the frame in a lesser filmmaker’s work. Altman argues for an America being a country of Mom and Apple Pie as long as we understand that Mom is a hooker named Barbara who compulsively reads the TV Guide to unwind and Apple Pie is Froot Loops (or Lucky Charms, your choice) and beer. It’s an America of gambling superstitions, all night brothels, and Friday night prize fights. It’s an America choking on a cloud of cigarette smoke in tiny rooms with poor ventilation, watered down drinks at the racetrack, and lonely people perfumed in Shalimar. In short, it’s not Norman Rockwell’s America but, instead, an America that actually exists.

At the end of the film, Bill and Charlie go their separate ways with the former saying “I gotta go home.” But Charlie can see Bill even when Bill refuses to see himself. Charlie knows Bill doesn’t live anywhere outside the action and that he’s only pretending that he does. For there was probably a time in his life that Charlie admitted that he, too, had to go home only to realize that, sadly, he was already home. All of this is unspoken, by the way. It’s just that California Split is that rarity of a movie where the dialogue tells us plenty but the characters’ actions tell us more.

“I never touched a legend before.” : Remembering Nightbreed with Nicholas Vince by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

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Seems to me NIGHTBREED had been out for a while before I made a point of sitting down to watch it. I’d seen the trailer a bunch of times, been curious, but it wasn’t until I read the illustrated screenplay that I admit to really becoming hell bent on checking it out.1411764498435

It is at once a phantasmagoria, a dark fantasy, a love story – a rich, self-contained world that seemed on the verge. But, as I would discover, the powers that be didn’t receive from Clive Barker what they were hoping for. He had produced for them two Hellraiser pictures, thus they made the mistake of assuming they were set to receive yet another study in fear. Especially with a title like, Nightbreed. Hence you have the reason for the fractured state of the movie and all the subsequent releases and restorations – the producers attempting to fashion the movie into something it was never meant to be.

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What you ultimately take away from Barker’s monster-piece is the feeling of wanting more – and not just a re-cut of the existing elements. I suppose that’s why the idea of a Nightbreed series, I feel, would work better than another motion picture. There is so much to mine, so many characters – along with my favorite, Kinski (played by my guest Nicholas Vince), that I would love to see make a return.

So, kick back and enjoy our discussion on all things concerned with the tribes of the moon. “God’s an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live.”

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BEFORE YOU GO, CHECK THIS OUT…

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FOR MORE INFO: https://www.facebook.com/HailThePopcornKing/

Cats & Dogs

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

In my household the felines and canines seem to abide harmoniously, but in the hectic alternate reality of Warner Bros’ Cats & Dogs, such is not the case. This is one silly ass movie whose special effects time has not been kind to, but I still kind of partly dig it anyways. Jeff Goldblum plays one of his terminally awkward dudes, a scientist who is on the verge of curing dog allergies in humans, and the ruling body of the cat nation, spearheaded by Sean Hayes persnickety Mr. Tinkles, keeps sending in spies to steal the formula. The dog faction, lead by Charlton Heston’s grizzled General, send in operatives of their own to counter the attacks, including Alec Baldwin’s veteran Butch and an excitable Beagle rookie (Tobey Maguire). The filmmakers used a chaotic blend of real live animals, jerky animatronics and barely passable CGI to bring the whole spectacle to life, but they can be given somewhat of a pass as it was the early 2000’s. I did get a kick out of parachuting ninja Siamese cats, a Russian specialist sent in to infiltrate Goldblum’s household and the variety of voice actors including Joe Pantoliano, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jon Lovitz and Susan Sarandon. Something has to be said for the borderline psychotic nursemaid (Miriam Margoyles) who preens over the villainous Mr. Tinkles like the matron from hell, these scenes do come alive and induce chuckles, but for the most part this is kind of a lame, dated flick.

-Nate Hill

David Cronenberg’s The Fly

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s taken me years to finally get around to David Cronenberg’s The Fly, but I’m glad I did as it’s a terrifically slimy gore-palooza boasting practical effects that are on par with classics like John Carpenter’s The Thing and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. Cronenberg is known as the prince of body horror, and has carved out a now legendary swath of schlock-tacular horror films (many of which I’m unfortunately not caught up on), but his nightmarish visions almost always have a brain in their heads or something to say about media, psychology, biology or the way things work. In The Fly he takes a look at the universal human fear of disease and decay, a collective primordial disgust that Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis fuel their performances with. Goldblum is Seth Brundle, a brilliant but terminally awkward scientist who has developed a functioning teleportation device. Well almost, as he has trouble sending anything alive through it, and it has a habit of turning monkeys inside out. One night he drunkenly sends himself through, unaware that a tiny little stowaway has come for the ride. The computer gets confused, combines their DNA at a molecular level and, viola! Jeff Goldblum starts literally turning into a giant fly, and trust me when Cronenberg is at the helm of such a premise, no expense is spared on gallons of vile corrosive goo and repulsive glistening prosthetics, so don’t order in Pizza Hut if you have this one on in the living room. Geena Davis is effective as the journalist that falls in love with him and has to bear witness to the grotesque transformation, but unfortunately the film isn’t long enough to work as a romance, choosing instead to put the horror front and centre, which is where it’s strongest aspect lies. Goldblum is great as the twitchy doctor, and uses his physicality brilliantly once the metamorphosis begins, giving his lanky frame a staccato, animalistic rhythm that suits the character well. The effects are dazzling, if retro gore is your thing, a whole party bag of slime, pus and deformity that stands as a showcase for the FX team. I like Cronenberg’s horrors, or at least the ones I’ve seen, because no matter how schlocky they get, he never veers it totally into the sandbox and forgets his themes, he always seems in complete control of the nuttiness, following a specific recipe that doesn’t derail anything and that probably why he has become such a pedigree name in the genre. The film could have been a tad longer and a bit more fleshed out in places, but still serves as a slick, well drawn shocker that has not surprisingly stood the test of time.

-Nate Hill

Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs might be the guy’s best film so far, it’s miraculous on all levels. Now, I’m someone who previously wasn’t really an Anderson fan and had to warm up to his aesthetic as the movies came down the pipeline. With Life Aquatic and Tennenbaums I was left a little cold, a little meh. It took Moonrise Kingdom for me to be like “Ok.. this is pretty good,” by the time Grand Budapest rolled in I went “fuck yeah this is great,” and Dogs pretty much had me flipping over the moon. Much of the appreciation I have is for the breathtakingly detailed, tactile and textured stop motion animation technique employed here, a dazzling bag of tricks that brings a parallel dimension version of Japan to painstaking life, and fuels the story of one young boy (Koyu Rankin) looking for his beloved dog Spots (Liev Schreiber). The boy’s power mad Uncle (Kunichi Nomura) is the Mayor of Nagasaki Town, where dogs have been prohibited and banished to gargantuan Trash Island, where they live a savage, poverty ridden existence. The doggos here are voiced by an incredible cast of eclectic actors, which is par for the Anderson course. Bryan Cranston steals the show as Chief, a moody mongrel with violent tendencies who consciously contemplates why he is the way he is and has a beautiful arc. Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Anjelica Huston, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Fisher Stevens, Bob Balaban, Tilda Swinton and more round out the rest of the puppers, each with their own distinct furry idiosyncrasies to offer. The message here is obvious and plays a bit too much into the state of current affairs when it should have been content to be a fictitious romp, but all is well. Anderson & Co. have also whipped up a supremely elaborate script that is as full of stimulating details of language and interactions as is the visual palette. This is a rollicking adventure, a tail of friendship, a deadpan screwball comedy, a satirical sideshow and a gorgeous work of visual art rolled into one unclassifiable piece of ingenuity.

-Nate Hill

Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Roger Ebert made it clear that Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie doesn’t even make it into his most hated canon of flicks (a hard enclosure to gain access to as the guy was a pretty fair critic right to the end). A small part of me sees the exasperation in a guy who took his cinema seriously. But most of me, especially the parts that enjoy humour so off the wall and bizarre that I’d be labelled just as far on the spectrum as the two demented wunderkinds behind this ninety minute freak show, loves it. You have to be a special kind of deranged to enjoy Tim and Eric’s brand of humour; the words abstract, surreal and extremely bizarre come to mind, but that doesn’t begin to cover the maniacal parade they’ve whipped up here. One thing does fascinate me though: since the very beginning when they first got their show rolling (Great Job!), they have been a magnet for some of the most prominent and prolific talent in Hollywood’s comedy arena, scoring cameos from the likes of Will Ferrell, Jeff Goldblum, John C. Reilly and more. That tells me that a lot more folks than you might think have an innate affinity for this extreme brand of shock humour and madness than would care to admit, and that when it comes down to it, humans organically produce their own humour in this weird, abstract fashion that’s much more natural than most scripted, constructed comedy we see in film. The humour here is so far into the stratosphere of weirdness that it understandably made a lot of folks uncomfortable, but that just makes the whole thing funnier. The ‘plot’ is just a series of running gags loosely connected by Tim & Eric owing a billion dollars to the Schlaaaaang Corporation (run by William Atherton and Robert Loggia in one of his last movie roles). They skip town and decide to take up Will Ferrell on his offer to be caretakers of a giant dilapidated shopping mall, after a few back to back viewings of Top Gun. The mall is host to a whole array of weirdos and insane people including slightly retarded Taquito (John C. Reilly), snarky sword salesman Allen Bishopman (Will Forte), a man who sells used toilet paper, Bob Ross, a bunch of hobos, oh and a wolf too, among others. Don’t expect it to make much sense, that’s not the Tim and Eric way. Just expect to be shocked, disgusted, disoriented, appalled, and if you’re tuned into the right frequency, to laugh your ass off. Their outright deliberation in pushing boundaries of taste and coherency no doubt had people running from the theatre and demanding money back in droves, but as Mia Wallace iconically put it, don’t be a 🔲. The real endurance test is when Ray Wise (Twin Peak’s Leland Palmer) shows up as a nutso self help guru whose brand of treatment (Shrim!) really goes to some gag-worthy places. Other notable cameos include Jeff Goldblum as (wait for it) ‘Chef Goldblum’, Johnny Depp, Zach Galifianakis, Mark Cuban and Bob Odenkirk. It’s a weird world, and in a genre that routinely isn’t weird enough, plays it safe and sticks to the often bland script, we need guys like Tim and Eric to shake shit up, open their bag of tricks and assault audiences with their very specific, certifiable brand of comedy. Buckle up.

-Nate Hill

“Roadblocks won’t stop somethin’ that can’t be stopped.” : Remembering The Wraith with Mike Marvin by Kent Hill

by Kent Hill, posted in Interviews

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The Wraith was like many a glorious find back in the day at my local video store. The cover had a holographic shimmer to it – a strange robot-like character standing in front of some bad-ass, customized car that looked as though it would be more comfortable zipping through the galaxy rather than flying at break-neck speeds along the long stretches and cactus-lined roads of Arizona.

Yes sir, that cover held the promise of sci-fi mysticism combined with heat-thumping vehicular action to rival the Road Warrior.

Oddly enough, Dr. George’s post-apocalyptic action-adventure was the template for Mike Marvin’s Cult Classic. When the man who started out making skiing films came to Hollywood and saw an opportunity to fuse High Plains Drifter with Mad Max 2, one would assume it was a concept any studio would be happy to throw their weight behind.

But, then as now, the movie business can be treacherous, and Marvin’s experiences making The Wraith were far from pleasant. As a matter a fact, they were a nightmare. Plagued by unscrupulous producers, a tragic death while filming – along with all the other perils of production – it is a wonder that this certified 80’s classic ever made to to the screen.

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Lucky for us, however, thanks must go, in no small part, to a string of wonderful performers, a dedicated crew and a talented director at the helm, The Wraith survives as a one of a kind mash-up of genres that has endured and is, for this film writer at least, yet to be equaled.

This interview was conducted before I was able to sample Mike’s great and candid commentary on the Region 1 DVD release of the film. And while some of what he relayed to me you will find on that release, the truly glorious thing that I experienced was to hear these insights, plus a couple that were not covered in that commentary track, first hand from this journeyman warhorse of a film-maker.

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So seek out the The Wraith, those of you who have not yet experienced it. Let this interview, hopefully tantalize your interest to learn more about this incredible film that really was both ahead of its time, a product of its time and most assuredly one of a kind…

Ladies and Gentlemen…Mike Marvin.

 

 

Auggie Rose aka Beyond Suspicion

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

I’ve always had issues with Auggie Rose, a creepy, bizarre Jeff Goldblum vehicle released under the far less ambiguous title ‘Beyond Suspicion’ on DVD. Misguided is kind of the word for the script they’ve taken on here, it’s a story that tries to say something about self identity and loneliness but just sort of makes you feel mounting uneasiness and not in the good way. The actions of Goldblum’s protagonist are pretty uncomfortable and unconscionable, which probably isn’t what they were going for, but there you go. He plays a boring insurance salesman who lives the kind of bland, grey life you’d expect someone in that profession to live, until recently paroled ex-con Auggie Rose (a short lived Kim Coates) happens to die in his arms. The man had been keeping up long and intimate pen pal communication via letters with a girl (Anne Heche), who he’s never met, and Goldblum finds one of these letters on him. So what does he do? Instead of finding her and telling her the sad news like a normal guy would, he assumes Auggie’s identity and picks up with her where the letters left off, which is so wrong in so many different ways, man. Worse, he’s got a girlfriend of his own (Nancy Travis) who he hides all this from, until it goes so far that the police get involved and the whole thing snowballs into an unhealthy, self destructive, damaging turn of events. Even *worse* is the ending, which I won’t spoil except to say it’s the biggest cop out this side of War Of The Worlds and is a story beat that is as forced and artificial as Phil Hartman’s million dollar smile. If you’re going to make a movie as terminally dark as this, don’t try and cloak it in a would be ‘happy resolution’ because ‘audiences won’t like it’. Don’t worry, they’re not going to like it anyways, because it’s just bad, but at least go the mile it takes to end the story in a place as warped as it’s inciting incident suggests. It’s far better to see how choices and actions like this lead to grim consequences, not to give the impression that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel after being so selfish and creepy towards others. Gah. It’s a shame that Goldblum agreed to do this because he’s an inherently likeable guy onscreen and comes off as weird, this kind of borderline sociopath character needs an actor like Kevin Spacey, who just carries a vague creep factor with him by default, (especially these days). There’s a collection of supporting talent including Timothy Olyphant, Richard T. Jones, Max Perlich, Jack Kehler, J.E. Freeman and Nick Chinlund, but they’re mostly given humdrum, not especially noteworthy roles. Coupled with the troubling story arc, it’s just a pretty drably mounted production anyways, and doesn’t serve to excite or provoke reactions other than to disturb the audience, and like I said before, not in any kind of good way. Yuck.

-Nate Hill