Tag: Patrick McGoohan

Arthur Hiller’s Silver Streak

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Is this what was considered funny in the 70’s? Because it felt lukewarm, awkward and stretched over a super long runtime to me. Don’t get me wrong I love Gene Wilder with all my heart and Richard Pryor is cool too but if Silver Streak is any kind of barometer as to what their comedic pairing in cinema back then is all about (this is my first one) then, well… meh. Wilder plays a mild mannered businessman on a long distance rail trip who gets unwittingly yanked into all sorts of espionage shenanigans involving a femme fatale (Jill Clayburgh), a malevolent Bond type villain (Patrick McGoohan), a boisterous undercover federal agent (Ned Beatty) and many others aboard the speeding train, all of them looking for some sort of highly incriminating McGuffin object that we never really see. Pryor himself doesn’t even show up until at least halfway through the film playing a rowdy petty thief who is proud of his vocation (“I’m a thief” lol) and sort of forms an uneasy alliance with Wilder to outwit all these competing forces. That sounds like a ton of fun, right? Not so much. It all just comes across as awkward, weirdly paced and WAY too long, this is a brisk 90 minute comedy posing as a two hour big budget thing that just doesn’t have the juice to fill that runtime with enough to keep us occupied. There’s a jarring sequence where Wilder gets done up in blackface, *with* Pryor’s assistance no less, and get coached in jive turkey talk as some harebrained disguise gimmick, but it’s only really in the film as a shtick to serve itself and makes no logical or comedic sense whatsoever. Now I know this was the 70’s and comedy was a lot different back then, and I’m the last one to ruffle my feathers over stuff like that but time period aside it just feels lame, awkward and unnecessary, with both actors making painfully embarrassing asses of themselves. There is one scene that genuinely made me laugh hard, in which a frazzled Wilder frantically tries to explain his predicament to a dozy small town sheriff (Clifton James) who simply cannot wrap his mind around the complexities of a multi-character spy dilemma unfolding in real time. This part is genuinely hilarious and shows some spark but it was the only instance of that for me. The film is packed with recognizable faces including Fred Willard, Scatman Crothers, Ray Walston, Richard Kiel and more, none of whom make very vivid or memorable impressions. This just felt like a misfire to me overall, with two actors who I know to be surefire winners most of the time that just sort of flatline here in oddly conceived skits, a hopelessly cluttered and not particularly engaging caper that just feels like a lot of sitting on a train, running around and then more sitting on the train without much that kept me entertained. Check out the sheriff’s station scene over on YouTube though, it’s a hoot.

-Nate Hill

Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

For such a measured, introspective and anti-Hollywood prison break film, Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz is a fantastically entertaining and unbearably suspenseful thriller. This isn’t a film with action sequences, huge set pieces, scenery chewing wardens, shanks in the shower fight sequences, extreme near misses or anything you’d expect from a studio escape film. The warden (Patrick McGoohan with malfeasance on a low burn) is a terrifyingly strict piece of work to be sure, but he’s curt, to the point and buttoned down. Our hero Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) isn’t a preening rapscallion or rascally rogue but a straightforward, quiet, surprisingly compassionate and determined fellow. The obligatory aggressive inmate (Bruce M. Fischer) he clashes with isn’t some contraband adorned gang chess piece but rather a hulking bruiser who gets right to the point. The escape itself is a dank, claustrophobic trek through corroded crawl-spaces and could be considered anticlimactic of it didn’t feel so darn authentic. Like, this is what it would *really* be like to bust out of that joint of all joints in the curiously tranquil San Francisco harbour and I both admired and greatly enjoyed this film for its down to earth, by the book presentation. That’s not to say it’s dry or boring, despite being remote. Most of the story is told through quick glances, offhand mannerisms and clipped dialogue, but beneath that, if one intuits it out, are carefully placed pockets of psychological depth, wellsprings of human behaviour buried under the blunt aspects that are a wealth to anyone who loves complexities not readily apparent. Just look at Frank’s carefully cultivated relationship with stone-spirited bookkeeper English (Paul Benjamin) and the payoff that comes later, given their subtle interactions. Or examine the cold heartbreak and mental unravelling of Doc (Roberts Blossom) when the warden takes away his painting privileges, an activity that singlehandedly fuels his will to survive behind bars. That sequence cuts deep in a way that’s tough to impart in words. This film treats the day to day life in prison with the same dutiful care and attention to craft as it does the eventual escape and the result is something that feels lived in, mature, effortlessly magnetic and so simple that one might need to do several double tales to soak in the yawning profundities tucked in behind every monosyllabic utterance, every deliberately chosen camera placement, every flick of the eyes towards the prison walls that seem like dimensional barriers and the skies above them, somehow so close and so far. Few Hollywood prison films reach for heights in such a direct way, and succeed in doing so. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Joel Schumacher’s A Time To Kill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Many adaptations of John Grisham’s work have shown up in Hollywood, some great and others not so much, but for my money it doesn’t get any better than Joel Schumacher’s A Time To Kill. There’s something fired up about this story, a heartfelt and desperate aura to the high stakes moral maelstrom that Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey find themselves in here. Jackson is Carl Lee Hailey, husband and father in America’s Deep South who opens up an AK-47 on the two redneck crackers who raped his eight year old daughter and left her for dead on the side of the road. McConaughey is Jake Brigance, the slick attorney hired to defend him who first seeks the limelight, then wishes he didn’t and finally becomes so morally invested in Carl’s case that it begins to unravel both his own life, not to mention stir up racial tensions all over the county.

Was Carl justified in these murders, given the situation? Should he be set free? Will the trial be a fair, civilized event given the fact that he’s a black man from the south in a time where they were not treated justly or as equals? The answer to that third question is definitely not because soon the Klan gets involved, the entire judiciary system itself gets put on trial and the whole state erupts in hot blooded anger over the situation. Jackson is fierce and vulnerable in the role, Never defaulting to the trademark detached, noisy brimstone that has become his thing but letting the hurt and righteous fury emanate from within organically, it’s probably his best work. McConaughey gets the sweaty desperation right and you begin to feel the uncomfortable nature of the situation creeping up on him until before he knows it there’s a burning cross on his lawn and his wife (Ashley Judd) is ready to leave him. Sandra Bullock does fine work as his legal assistants who, being an idealist, works for free because she believes in the cause rather than money or notoriety, the latter of which she receives whether she likes it or not. Kevin Spacey lays on the sleazy attitude as the loudmouth prosecuting lawyer who, naturally, hits below the belt in his tactics. An unbelievable roster of supporting talent shows up including Chris Cooper, Kiefer Sutherland, Brenda Fricker, Oliver Platt, Kurtwood Smith, M. Emmett Walsh, Anthony Heald, Charles Dutton, Raéven Kelly, Patrick McGoohan, Nicky Katt, Doug Hutchison, Beth Grant, Octavia Spencer and Donald Sutherland as a charismatic old alcoholic lawyer who serves as Jake’s mentor and voice of reason.

This film can sort of be used as a barometer to measure moral dilemmas and see through the weak spots of the justice system, of which there are many. Were Carl’s murders justified? I think so, given the heinous nature of the crimes against his daughter. But the ensuing racial turmoil, petty battle of legal wills and outside-the-courtroom power struggle sort of clouds that until the film reaches a barbaric fever pitch of violence and terror, until Jake calmly and directly cuts through all of that and turns the mirror on a whole community with his heartbreaking final address to the jury, after which it’s so dead silent you could hear a pin drop. It’s a bold, fantastic piece of acting from McConaughey and some of his best work also, in a brilliant film.

-Nate Hill

SCANNERS – A REVIEW BY J.D. LAFRANCE

by J.D., posted in Film Review

scanners-01

For a good part of his career, David Cronenberg has been fascinated by secret societies, be it the New Age-y psychotherapist and his patients in The Brood (1979) or the people addicted to an immersive video game in eXistenZ (1999). With Scanners (1981), he explored a small, but growing number of people endowed with mental abilities that allowed them to read other people’s thoughts or literally blow their minds. This is evident in the film’s most iconic scene where a character blows up another’s head. This premise eerily mirrors Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978), but where it was more of a conventional thriller, Scanners incorporated more cerebral ideas as some of Cronenberg’s characters see themselves as the next rung in the evolutionary ladder.

Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack) leads a vagabond lifestyle and is kidnapped and brought to Dr. Paul Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) who works for a mysterious corporation called ConSec. He tells Vale that he is a “scanner”, someone with telepathic abilities and proceeds to teach him how to use his powers. Ruth soon finds himself at odds with Braedon Keller (Lawrence Dane), head of security at ConSec and who is secretly in cahoots with Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), the leader of an underground group of scanners. Ruth sends Vale to infiltrate Revok’s group and the film builds to an inevitable confrontation between the two powerful scanners.

Stephen Lack, who came from a performance artist background, delivers a wonderfully idiosyncratic performance as Vale, a man who is initially uncomfortable in his own skin, but gradually becomes more confident as he learns how to control his abilities. In one of his career-defining roles, Michael Ironside is excellent as the malevolent Revok who sees himself as a Che Guevara-type figure. Lack and Ironside’s contrasting acting styles compliment their adversarial characters nicely.

Scanners was part of a fantastic run of early films that Cronenberg wrote and directed himself as he explored the dark intersection where the science fiction and horror genres converged. The success of this film spawned two lackluster sequels that Cronenberg wisely had no involvement in. Unlike The Fury, Scanners goes into much more detail about how these mental abilities work and how they can be harnessed as evident in a scene where Ruth teaches Vale how to accelerate a man’s heartbeat, almost killing him. Cronenberg goes further than simply pitting good scanners vs. bad, but also touching upon the notion that they may be the next step in human evolution.