Any Given Sunday – 3.5 stars

September 19, 2012
3 stars, 90s, Drama
1 Comment

There is no more overrated talent in Hollywood than Oliver Stone.  His career is supported by the twin pillars of excess and machismo, encased in a childish political ideology that reveres Chavez and Castro but reviles Bush.  Three of his films – U Turn, Alexander and W – are mind-numbingly awful, The Doors ends up, like its protagonist, a bloated mess, and even some of his more solid films (Platoon, Wall Street) age very poorly with the simplicity of their characters and binary nature of their struggles.  Born on the Fourth of July has its moments, but it’s propelled by Tom Cruise’s sweat glands more than anything else.  JFK and Nixon are better, but they are no more than historical cartoons and do not wear well with time either.  And why Stone is lauded for the abattoir that is Natural Born Killers has always escaped me.

So, where can a garish, shallow auteur obsessed with manhood and devoid of nuance find his milieu?  Professional football.

Al Pacino is the coach of the Miami Sharks, world-weary and past his glory (in Any Given Sunday, you win Pantheons, not Super Bowls, and Pacino has won 3).  His mentor, the team owner, is dead, and the franchise is now run by the owner’s daughter, Cameron Diaz.  His star quarterback, Dennis Quaid, is breaking down, and after a mid-season injury, Pacino must rely on a selfish, gifted third stringer (Jamie Foxx).  Pacino must teach Foxx how to run the team, to leeeaaaaaddddddd, and in the end, how to become a better man.  As he does it, a whirlwind of images (Lebaron, Lombardi, Tittle, Unitas) whoosh by, and then there is lightning and thunder claps.  It’s pretty heady and kind of exciting if you don’t dwell on how stupid this all is.

Stone doesn’t give you much time to dwell because the picture moves like a freight train even while capably handling numerous subplots.  There’s the star linebacker (Lawrence Taylor, who does a fine job), literally one hit away from paralysis, yet one tackle away from a $1 million bonus.  There are the team doctors (James Woods and Matthew Modine) who square off because Woods lets the players play with dangerous injuries and Modine objects.  There is Quaid and his driven wife (Lauren Holly) who will not give up her throne as the quarterback queen, even slapping Quaid when he suggests he might have to retire because of injury.  LL Cool J is a the selfish RB, all about “getting mine” and Aaron Eckhart is the whiz kid offensive coordinator, stunted under the old school style of Pacino.

We get games in monsoons, whiz-bang on field collisions, gruesome injuries, frenzied and ferocious linemen, hot Miami chicks galore, perfect spirals, and more.  There is also a hell of a pep talk by Pacino, alternately absurd and inspiring–  

Beyond the speeches, there are nice exchanges in the script, such as this one between Foxx, who is just starting to show his chops, and Pacino, where Foxx explains the other side of the schmaltzy, “no I in TEAM” crapola

FOXX:  You can feed the press that whole sacrifice and glory-of-the-game crap.  But I been there.  I seen a long line of coaches… with that same old bullshit halftime speech … You know it’s bullshit
because it’s about the money. The TV contracts, fat-cat boosters in the skyboxes.  Coaches trying to up their salaries.  You looking for the next black stud to take it to the top 10. Get you in a bowl game.  It’s the same way in the pros.  Except in the pros, the field hands get paid.

PACINO:  Don’t play that race card on me, kid.  25 years I work with men of your color.

FOXX:  Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s placism. Brother has to know his place.  Right, boss?

PACINO:  I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You don’t trust anybody because of what happened in college? You knew the rules.  You were the one that broke them.

FOXX:  How did I break them? How? I lost a million-dollar signing bonus because I took a $300 suit
from a booster to go to a wedding.  What’s a brother supposed to do in college? He ain’t got money.
He wants to go out on a date. Wants to get some nice clothes.  Everybody had their hands out but it was me they suspended. I dropped six rounds in the draft because of that. The coaches labeled me: “He’s trouble. He don’t wanna play ball.” You talk about sacrifice. I sacrificed $10 million because dumb rednecks like the coach in San Diego made me a cornerback because I got quick feet.  He separated my shoulder tackling 250-pound motherfuckers. I don’t do that!  I was a great football player.  But nobody let my shoulder heal, and they traded me out of there.

PACINO:  You go ahead. Blame everybody but yourself.

FOXX:  Whatever.

PACINO: Because that’s what a leader’s about. Sacrifice.  The times he’s gotta sacrifice because he’s gotta lead by example. Not by fear and not by self-pity.

FOXX: Who you think you’re talking to? Half my career is over and you want me on the bench.

So, I like this film very much, and I like it even more every time I see, which never happens with Oliver Stone flicks.  That does not, however, mean it is a good film.  

For example, Oliver Stone cannot write women who aren’t whores or connivers, but at least here, he concedes the point and just makes Diaz a mannish ballbreaker.  Her character is the most macho one in the film, which is not a good thing.

Stone also could not or would not get the rights to use actual NFL franchises/logos.  I’m sure the cost was prohibitive or perhaps the NFL didn’t really want its brand tarnished.  But if you’re going to make up teams, the Dallas Knights need to have uniforms a little less ridiculous than this:

   

 “I shall tackle thee, m’lady”.

Stone also casts himself as a sports announcer so he can say “Holy Cow!” or “What a play!”  But Stone does not have “the voice” and he sounds like he’s eating sunflower seeds.  It’s not as bad as Spike Lee playing a reporter in Summer of Sam but it is pretty bad.

The theme is also oppressive.  Men and lost fathers are everywhere.  Foxx is fatherless, Pacino lost his in WWII, Quaid is a little boy in Pacino’s hands, Diaz was the son her father never had.  All of this is served in one big syrupy ladle.

Last, in the final game, a dude’s eyeball is knocked out of his head.  Come on.

Roadhouse – 5 stars

September 18, 2012
5 stars, 80s, Classic, Drama
Leave a comment

Image result for Roadhouse

A small town is run by the ruthless Ben Gazarra, who shakes down the local businesses to support his decadent lifestyle.  He lives in the gaudiest mansion, and he is surrounded by a thick, loyal squad of yokel goons.  He also has a few 80s trashy blondes in his coterie, like Julie Michaels–

Image result for Roadhouse Julie Michaels

Interesting note on Julie.  Roadhouse was her debut.  In her subsequent roles, these were the names of her characters:  Naran Anie, Professor, Professor (uncredited), Accident Victim, Accident Victim (uncredited), Sandy, Mom, French Patron (uncredited), California Blonde, California Blonde (uncredited), Pedestrian, Female Bar Patron #2, Barrista, Fashion Show Patron, Florist, Slutty Woman, Female Fan, Julie Mermaid mother, Harem Girl (uncredited), Groupie (uncredited), Female Club Goer, Maggie, Woman on Bike, Laundry Wife, Marilyn Monroe #2, Catherine Moore, Caitlin’s Sister, Frat Girl, Woman (uncredited), Vampire, Jane (uncredited), Catherine, Tami, Sillicate UC, Cage Dancer, Agent Elizabeth Marcus, Susan, Irene, Waitress, Waitress (uncredited), Amy Cutler, Freight Train, Susie Q, Cinnamon.

I digress.

One business won’t knuckle under to Gazarra – The Double Deuce.  Instead, bar owner Kevin Tighe calls in a zen master bouncer with a degree in philosophy (not joking – the script references that the professional bouncer has a degree in philosophy from NYU). That bouncer is Dalton (Patrick Swayze) who stands up to Gazarra, calls in a bouncer compadre (Sam Elliott), cleans up the bar and the town and says all of the following:

“Pain don’t hurt.”

“Nobody ever wins a fight.”

“My way… or the highway.”

“All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.”

“Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee and he’ll drop like a stone.”

“You’re too stupid to have a good time.”

“It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

Roadhouse also features Kelly Lynch, the emergency room physician who patches Dalton up.

The year this picture came out, she was in Drugstore Cowboy. I wonder which film she is most proud of?  Regardless, I’ve had stitches like 5 times and there’s never a Kelly Lynch at the emergency room.  Ever.

By now, Roadhouse has become a cult classic, but when I saw it, I knew it was something special taken at face value, no sniggering. To this day, I can’t stop watching it.  It’s an awful film, and the inquiry should end there, but there is such earnestness in the effort that at 2 am, having just had 5 beers and a half bag of gummy bears, when Swayze says

“I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.”

I’m like, “Hell, yea. Dalton. That’s some heavvy ass shi**!”

And now, every punch in the face in the movie!

Hoosiers – 4.5 stars

September 17, 2012
4 stars, 80s, Drama, Historical
Leave a comment

I’m not much for sports hokum.  The elegiac bunk of The Natural, Field of Dreams, or even Any Given Sunday reveals more about the filmmakers’ insecurities than the game being played and the characters who play it.  But even I am not immune from hokum anchored by Gene Hackman and based on the true story of the 1954 Indiana state high school basketball champions from tiny Milan.

Hackman is the new coach with a dark past, bringing a fundamental style of play and stubborn ways to a cloistered small town that does not want him.  Barbara Hershey is the teacher leery of his influence.  Their conversations about what constitutes success are smartly written (she loathes the small town, plans the escape of her students and views Hackman’s” hoop dreams” as an anchor keeping young men from getting out).  Dennis Hopper is the alcoholic assistant coach, redeemed in the eyes of his player son as the team battles adversity.  David beats Goliath, and the music swells along with the heart.

The performances are all strong, and the casting of the fresh-faced team is perfect. The boys, town and milieu feel 1950s, as does the play, and the boys can play.  One only needs to watch the overrated White Men Can’t Jump to realize the foolishness of casting non-players; Woody Harrelson is passable, Wesley Snipes ludicrous.  The film is also chock full of inspiring and exciting vignettes as the boys march forward to victory. 

Hackman is commanding, in his sparring with Hershey, when he confronts the team’s star player, who is in the middle of a 1950s version of a holdout, and in his handling of the overbearing townsfolk.  I also like his simple, homespun speeches:

Ah, Bobby Knight.  

This one is better:

There are a few problems.  The love affair between Hershey and Hackman seems both improbable and awkward.  I no more want to see him kiss a younger woman than Tommy Lee Jones.  The score is also very 80s, stirring but techno infused.  But it’s still one of the better sports films made.

The Last Days of Disco – 4.5 Stars

September 11, 2012
4 stars, 90s, Comedy
Leave a comment

Whit Stillman films are similar to Woody Allen films if you dispense with the angst and replace older urban New York Jews with younger urban New York prep school/deb type WASPs.  Also, toss out the whole “big notion” premises of death, morality and faith and replace them with passing fashion, pop culture, and functional philosophy.  And since Stillman does fewer films than Allen, listening to the witticisms of attractive scions of varying degrees of wealth as they contemplate their navels is neither grating or played out.

Stillman directed two prior films, Metropolitan and Barcelona, the former dealing with New York City private high school kids and the latter taking two of those characters and transplanting them to liberal, carnal Spain.  If you’ve seen Metropolitan and Barcelona, this is similar in tone, content and style.  However, this one is a bit more fun loving and free, as it chronicles the fall of disco in New York City through the eyes of several fresh out of college young urban professionals (though the moniker of “yuppie” is hotly debated) who negotiate their first jobs (publishing house, advertising, prosecutor’s office, environmental law firm) during the day and cruise the disco at night.  It’s also a little more personal.  Even though Stillman has a usual ensemble cast, which thankfully includes the brilliant Chris Eigeman, in this film, Chloë Sevigny is our primary guide and with her we suffer the perils and awkwardness of casual sex for an intellectual frump in the 80s.  It is painful indeed to watch her seduction tecnhiques, which includes a breathless, “There’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.”     

As in all Stillman films, the conversations that meld college bull sessions and comparative literature courses are the gems, such as this back-and-forth on Lady and the Tramp. 

Rules of Engagement – 3.75 stars

September 10, 2012
00s, 3 stars, Drama, War
Leave a comment

William Friedkin is apparently “back” with his black crime picture Killer Joe, but he never really went away.  I suppose what critics mean about Friedkin’s return is that he’s “back” in his 1970s The Exorcist and  The French Connection form, the one-two punch of Friedkin’s career.  These films are nothing to sneeze at, the former being the greatest high-brow scare flick ever made, the latter number 93 on AFI’s top 100, but since those halcyon days, Friedkin suffered his Heaven’s Gate (Sorcerer); helmed some off-kilter duds (Deal of the Century, a black comedy about arms dealers with Chevy Chase (?)) and Bug (here’s the IMDB set-up so you can run quick to your Netflix queue — “An unhinged war veteran holes up with a lonely woman in a spooky Oklahoma motel room. The line between reality and delusion is blurred as they discover a bug infestation”); and delivered a gripping, underappreciated crime picture that utilized the musical stylings of Wang Chung for the score (To Live and Die in LA).

Rules of Engagement, an effective, thoughtful, political potboiler about a Marine officer (Samuel L. Jackson) tasked with protecting an American embassy under siege in Yemen.  In extricating embassy staff, the ambassador (Ben Kingsley) and the ambassador’s family, Jackson gives the order for his men to fire into a crowd that includes women and children.  For that act, he is brought up for court martial and must rely on his Vietnam pal (Tommy Lee Jones) who is squaring off against a tough, determined prosecutor (Guy Pearce).  The shooting is recapitulated from various vantage points, the characters compellingly provide their assessment of what happened (of particular note, Blair Underwood, who was probably too good looking to be a bigger star, is excellent as part of the Marine contingent), and political skulduggery is uncovered.

The picture moves fast, alternating between flashbacks of the shooting, courtroom drama and a sojourn back to ‘Nam.  It is also topical and adult, reluctant to direct us to any pat conclusion (Stephen Gaghan wrote it, and followed it up with the Academy Award winning Traffic and the Academy Award nominated Syriana).  Jackson and Jones are not exactly breaking new ground here, but they are very good actors who know what to do with the material.  Finally, with the exception of Kingsley (whose imperiousness and cowardice are cartoonish), all the characters feel real.  Roger Ebert disliked the film, noting, “At the end we have a film that attacks its central issue from all sides and has a collision in the middle.”  That’s exactly true, and it is the movie’s strongest attribute.  There is no assured resolution of many of the issues it raises, but the story at the center holds you to the point where you can come to your own conclusions.  The political shenanigans at the end feel very tacked-on, but otherwise, this is a strong movie.

Of course, anything less than a full filmic indictment of the Jackson character was enough to send some reviewers into apoplexy.  Hence, Michael Atkinson from The Village Voice: “William Friedkin‘s bathetic flag-fucker Rules of Engagement is as dogged and concise an apologia for using militarist might to control civilians as any City Hall publicists could ever concoct . . . . Who’s talking this neo-con psycho-talk, exactly”?   Given that, as noted, Gaghan wrote it and was pilloried later by the right for his allegedly lefty take in Syriana, consider Atkinson’s broadside a strong recommendation indeed

Payback – 1 star

September 10, 2012
00s, 1 star, 2011, Crime/Mystery
Leave a comment

I’ve had the misfortune of watching this movie twice (I endured it because I remembered a better film).  Mel Gibson had his own cut, which was better than that of director Brian Helgeland (screenwriter for LA Confidential), though still pretty bad. The picture is a loose remake of John Boorman’s 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle Point Blank. The story is uncomplicated. A crook (Gibson) pulls of a heist, is double-crossed by his girlfriend and partner and left for dead. He does not die, but returns, to collect his share of the money. It turns out his partner used that share to buy his way back into “the Syndicate,” so Gibson works his way up the chain, killing folks up a higher level of authority until he gets to the top. The original was arty, tough and noir, and Marvin’s anger convincingly propelled the simplistic plot, which culminated in a cool shoot-out in then-abandoned Alcatraz.

Gibson’s version exchanges San Francisco for Chicago, tough for brutal, and noir for ostensibly hip (which, as defined by Gibson, is taking every opportunity to smack women and crunch bones). While Gibson throws in a touch of humor in the plot, his performance is leaden. He emulates Robocop and The Terminator, not Marvin.

Gibson’s version ends better (he uses a kidnap of the top Syndicate man’s son to get at him, while Helgeland settles for a lame shoot-out on a Chicago train platform), but it’s a pointless endeavor. The only redeeming qualities are some wry performances as criminal lowlifes by Gregg Henry, James Coburn, William Devane, John Glover, David Paymer and Lucy Liu.

 

It ain’t nearly enough.

What Lies Beneath – 3.75 stars

September 9, 2012
00s, 3 stars, Scary
3 Comments

What Lies Beneath Was All Wrong. What Lies Beneath is the type of film… | by Brett Seegmiller | Brett Seegmiller | Medium

Robert Zemeckis’ ghost story is both an homage to Hitchcock and a vehicle for the director’s visual audacity (or, if you’re harder on Zemeckis, gimmickry). There’s little new in this old-fashioned haunted house tale, but what is presented is solid and entertaining.

A beautiful, vulnerable Michele Pfeiffer lives with her researcher/scholar husband (Harrison Ford) in a New England college town, their home a picturesque waterfront exemplar from Architectural Digest.  Pfeiffer has just dropped her only child off at college and is in the midst of an empty nest crisis.  Worse, she’s recovering from a car accident a year prior and she believes her new neighbors’ marital woes have escalated to the husband killing the wife (she even believes she sees the husband disposing of the body, much as Jimmy Stewart saw Raymond Burr covering up his foul deed in Rear Window).  What better to harass this fragile woman than a spirit attempting to communicate with her?

Zemeckis does a nice job of interweaving a few plot lines, and he produces some genuinely creepy moments.  But the film has flaws.  First, Zemeckis so distrusts the audience’s ability to follow the plot he over-lingers to focus our attention on a fact or clue.   So, in his work, Ford is working with a drug that immobilizes while the subject maintains consciousness. I wonder if that will come into play later?  Second, Hitchcockian is one thing, but a replica is quite another. By the end of the film, the score is a mash of Bernard Hermann and the tribute so unrelenting, Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety comes to mind.  The movie is also overlong, piling reveal scenes on top of each other, replacing tension with exhaustion.

The virtues, however, outweigh the negatives.  The film mostly moves briskly, there are genuine scares, and the characters, while a tad humorless, are engaging.  Pfeiffer is an effective mix of emotional fragility and upper class angst, and Ford is a surprisingly sympathetic villain.  Indeed, Pfeiffer comes off as spoiled and becomes so unstable, you find yourself siding with the seemingly reasonable Ford, who fairly suggests his wife is punishing him in a passive aggressive manner with all the ghost nonsense.

Solid.

Bernie – 4 stars

September 7, 2012
2012, 4 stars, Comedy, Crime/Mystery
Leave a comment

marjorie nugent

Richard Linklater offers the story of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), a gay mortician who companions a significantly older woman, Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) and then, in a fit of rage and exasperation at her domineering ways,  shoots her in the back and stuffs her in a freezer, pretending she is still alive (not ala’ Norman Bates).  Tiede is the town Robin Hood, the town being Carthage, Texas, and in many ways, Carthage is the star of the film.  Linklater uses very few professional actors, instead interspersing the dramatic narrative with interviews of real-life Carthage citizens, almost all of whom are squarely on the side of Tiede, and almost all of whom are hilarious.  To them, Nugent was a nasty, wicked old wretch and Bernie Tiede was the man who bought you a nice gift, sang the beautiful song that escorted a loved one to the hereafter, directed the town play or just gave you a nice wave everyday.  And he was driven to it.

Of course, in the presentation, Linklater neglects a few ugly details of the real life Tiede (not all of the vast sums he spent of Nugent’s wealth went to charity), but it appears the basic premise is true – Tiede was well-loved and Nugent well-hated (her own nephew observed, “‘Bernie’s not the first one who thought about killing her.  He’s just the first one who went through with it”).

Black is mesmerizing as Tiede, hilarious, hapless and harried, but uncontainably sweet and just a  little guilty (even before the murder).  MacLaine is effective as an old witch and Matthew McConaghey is amusing as the dogged D.A.  But the stars are the real people of Carthage, who Linklater neither mocks or mythologizes, wisely letting them be.

My only criticism is the choice to make Tiede so sympathetic.  Black does a great job in keeping him from being saccharine, with occasional flashes of guilty pleasure at his newly found wealth, but Linklater keeps away from any real dark heart, opting for a feel-good film.  Which is fine, but I think it could have remained feel-good and still been a little more revealing.

The Expendables – 0 stars

September 3, 2012
0 stars, 2010, Action/Disaster
Leave a comment

My boy read that The Expendables 2 had gotten decent reviews, we both appreciate a good shoot ’em up, and The Expendables was available streaming on Netflix.  We made it about 30 minutes in to this star-studded, macho story of a group of mercenaries bound together by brawn, honor, anabolic steroids, and in some cases (leader Sylvester Stallone, rival Arnold Schwarzennegger, and tattoo artist/operation facilitator Mickey Rourke), plastic surgery. 

We couldn’t understand Stallone, Rourke or Schwarzenegger half the time, the action was unimaginative, and the banter was either painful (Randy Coutre of the UFC is given lines instead of grunts, and the results are not pretty) or uncomfortably homoerotic.  This not-safe-for-work clip begs the question – are these guys gonna’ fight or kiss?

But what do we know?  Domestic and foreign, it grossed a quarter of a billion dollars.