My blog where I write about films I enjoy and post interviews I've done with actors and filmmakers. I am a sci-fi fan, an action film nerd, and into both arthouse films and B-movie schlock.
I really enjoyed seeing The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part One today.
The film centers on Katniss' PTSD post-Games and her trying to hold on
to her sanity as she is caught in the middle of the war between the
Capitol and the rebels. It is also about the rebels trying to save and
protect their people using propaganda the way the Capitol would use
propaganda, and having selfish interests at heart even while being the
"good guys." They put Katniss as the "Mockingjay" and hold up her as a symbol to further their cause, but likely would be just as satisfied if she died, a martyr for their cause.
The film was very bleak, but I thought it fit the mood of the story
very well, with a lot of gray and blue tones, and focusing on other
districts and their battles besides Katniss as the narrator.
Acting-wise, everyone did well. The usual cast members put in good to
decent performances. Jennifer Lawrence did well in playing a damaged
teenager with no real power trying to hold onto her interpersonal
relationships because it was the only control she had (Prim, Peeta,
Johanna) while being in a war she didn't want to be a part of. Elizabeth
Banks did really well as Effie, balancing her character between being a
citizen used to her Capitol luxuries and being a sympathetic person
towards Katniss and the rebels' cause. Philip Seymour Hoffman as
Plutarch was on the "good" side, but marketing Katniss' pain to the
masses. Still, I miss Hoffman because of his voice and warmth that he
brought to his roles. And Julianne Moore as Alma Coin was icy and cold
and brittle, but was an interesting character in using Katniss to
further the rebels' cause and possibly becoming another President Snow
in the future.
I know Rambo gets made fun of as an 80's action
movie, but this final scene where Rambo has a breakdown about his
traumas from the Vietnam war and living with the memories for 15 years
was very powerful and moving. I was reminded of it sometimes during the
movie with Katniss dealing with her PTSD while being used as a symbol
for the rebels' cause and being put in fake-looking propaganda videos.
The speech begins at 2:30.
I watched Ricochet, this movie from 1991 starring Denzel Washington
and John Lithgow. It's a dark and messed-up crime thriller. Washington
plays Nick Styles, a rookie cop who shot a killer named Blake (Lithgow)
and put him behind bars. Eight years later, Styles became a big-time cop
and assistant D.A., and Blake has been obsessing over vengeance all
this time. He breaks out of prison, kidnaps Styles, drugs him, and
humiliates him on camera in various ways to ruin his career and
public character. The plot continues as Styles tries to clear his name
and get Blake, who is terrorizing people in order to get to Styles.
The movie was just very gritty. Washington's star was still rising at
this time, as he hadn't become a leading man movie star yet, and his
character is the hero, but also spends part of the movie doped up on
cocaine and heroin, then is still out of it even after he is rescued,
just drinking, disoriented, and slurring his words. It's a very
different performance to see with Washington where he's not playing the
confident hero, but a protagonist who can't speak or see straight and is
losing his mind in trying to beat the killer.
Lithgow was really
good in this. I thought he was hammy as the villain in Cliffhanger, but
excellent as a serial killer in Dexter. Here, he finds a good balance
between playing a psychotic killer and saying cheesy lines (often
menacingly repeating the last words of whatever the hero said on TV)
while not being ridiculous with it.
Ice T was also pretty good in
this movie. He plays Odessa, a big-time drug dealer who was a childhood
friend of Nick's, and acts as support to nab Blake, delivering some of
the best lines of the movie in his uniquely raspy voice.
I
enjoyed watching it, but can see why it's not well-remembered of
Washington's movies. It is more of a B-level crime movie that doesn't
showcase Washington as a typically handsome leading man. And often
times, really violent crime thrillers like this are usually left to air
on cable channels late at night, this gets pretty dark for mainstream
Hollywood movies.
Prancer was one of my favorite Christmas movies when I was a kid, I
don't know how well-remembered it is. It came out in 1989 and was
directed by John D. Hancock, written by Greg Taylor. It's about a little
girl named Jessica who lives on a rural farm with her widower dad and
brother, and she finds an injured reindeer in the woods and is convinced
that it is Prancer, one of Santa's reindeer. She takes care of it in
the barn, and is trying to save it while keeping it a secret from her dad (despite telling her brother, her best friend, the local vet, and a townswoman).
I loved this movie as a kid, and I'm trying to think of why. I liked
that the father (played by Sam Elliott) was gruff and unsentimental. He
loves his kids, but he is a father who doesn't have patience for
immaturity, and is more concerned about saving his farm and getting his
kids to behave, go to school, and do their chores than be soft with
them. I really liked his voice, it felt tough yet comforting at the same
time.
Jessica wasn't annoying, she acted like how a real kid
would act. Curious, inquisitive, smart, pestering adults, and believing
in a mix of fantasy and reality. The actress who played her, Rebecca
Harrell, gave her a lot of heart, she didn't seem like a cutesy movie
kid. I looked her up, and she is an environmental activist who makes
documentaries with her husband about preserving the environment, so
that's pretty cool.
Despite the movie being a holiday film and
with fantasy elements, it felt realistic to me, grounded in ordinary
people living a rural life and just being average. The actors looked
very natural in their roles, and it didn't look like "stars" who looked
too "pretty" for the small town or out of a Hallmark movie. The other
name actors in this movie were Abe Vigoda, Cloris Leachman, and Ariana
Richards before she was famous from Jurassic Park.
Roger Ebert
states it best as to why this is a good little movie, and phrases it
better than I can as to why this movie was special to me as a child:
"The best thing about "Prancer" is that it doesn't insult anyone's
intelligence. Smaller kids will identify with Jessica's fierce resolve
to get Prancer back into action, and older viewers will appreciate the
fact that the movie takes place in an approximation of the real world."
I enjoyed seeing Foxcatcher. It is a true-crime drama
starring Steve Carell as a sociopathic billionaire who coaches and
sponsors an Olympic wrestling team, including brothers played by
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo, who had both won the gold medal in
wrestling in the 1984 Olympic Games.
It was a slow movie, but
well-acted and had this haunting feeling to it, like a sense of dread.
Not because the billionaire ended up murdering one of the brothers in
1996, but because he was such a creep in
his rich palace that it seemed obvious that the brothers shouldn't have
done business with him. They really wanted to win gold in the 1988
Olympics, and his money and state-of-the-art wrestling space was too
good to turn down.
All
three stars did great in this movie. I normally think that Channing
Tatum is really wooden in drama, but he went deep for this role, and was
really good. Steve Carell was very unsettling and intimidating in this
role, rarely raising his voice but being very manipulative and
monstrous. And Mark Ruffalo did well as the mediator, the good guy, the
nice family man who cared about ethics in wrestling. The director,
Bennett Miller, did Capote and Moneyball, so he was able to combine true
crime with a sports movie. I wouldn't be surprised if this story of the
Schultz brothers and John du Pont was an episode of ESPN's 30 For 30
documentary series. I recommend this film if you like true crime stories
and can sit through a lot of quiet scenes.
I watched the Blockbuster Buster's review of Firefly and Serenity,
and remembered that I wrote a review of Serenity in 2010. It is still
one of my favorite science-fiction films ever, and I am re-posting it
here. Since I wrote the review, I did watch Firefly in 2011, and really
enjoyed it, and appreciated the movie much more.
January 26, 2010
Science
fiction has had many interpretations of the future. There’s the future
where the world is controlled by strict eugenics (Gattaca), where people are persecuted for crimes they haven’t committed yet (Minority Report), and the ever-popular dystopian future (Blade Runner, Children of Men, The Road Warrior).
Often the science fiction genre takes itself very seriously, warning
its audience of the dangers of relying on technology, the consequences
of racism, and the inner destruction of humanity. While science fiction
can tackle these issues with intelligence and gravitas, the manner
leaves little space for humor or brevity, which can sour a sci-fi fan
where everything is life and death and nothing in between.
Joss Whedon, the celebrated creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel,
created characters that were intelligent, witty, and unique in a
slightly quirky way, portrayed by actors who, while all physically
attractive, got the oddball outsider sensibility of their characters,
and played it up with grace and humor. Whedon’s characters gave viewers
heroes who weren’t perfect, were personally conflicted, and while
possessing a quick tongue and amazing hand-to-hand combat skills, were
just regular people in extraordinary situations.
In 2002, Whedon created the now cult-classic Firefly, a TV show on Fox about a spaceship crew on the ship Serenity
who had lost a civil war and were now living on the outskirts of
society. It closely resembled a Western, with an Appalachian bluegrass
song as the theme and an outlaw hero in Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a
former sergeant with a Southwestern accent, a long browncoat, and guns
at his holsters. The Serenity crew fights criminals, the combined
U.S./China government known as the Alliance, and the dangerous Reavers,
a cannibalistic group of nomadic humans that have turned savage and
monstrous. The show was unique for its mismatched cast of unusual but
interesting characters, a sense of wry humor, and not being as
heavy-handed as its precursors in sci-fi, as stated in the opening
paragraph.
Unfortunately, due to low ratings, Firefly was
cancelled after one season,despite fans’ attempts to keep the show on
the air. But its cult status grew somuch that, as a gift to the fans and
as a season finale, Whedon wrote and directed the feature film version
of Firefly in 2005, entitled Serenity.
Serenity
works as an introduction to those who did not see the show, detailing
the civil war that happened five hundred years into the future, where
Earth’s resources have been used up, and humanity has moved into living
in space and on other planets. The Alliance controls all of the planets,
yet there is a rogue justice league that operates far from the core
planets, where the Serenity crew survive. Their world is put into
jeopardy when a young girl named River Tam(Summer Glau), who is a pupil
of the Alliance and holds dangerous secrets that she obtains through
psychic abilities, escapes with her brother Simon (Sean Maher) to
Serenity, hiding away from the Alliance, including a dignified but
ruthless agent (Chiwetel Ejiofor). River’s abilities make her a deadly
weapon for the Alliance, and her allegiance to the Serenity crew is
questioned, if she is truly one of them or if she will turn based on her
government programming.
The language of Serenity is very
sharp and smart-alecky, keeping with the Western motif. Both Mal and
Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) are very much like cowboys, quick with a
pistol and a one-liner, men who have seen death and destruction
firsthand. If they’re not being movie heroes, they are tech-savvy
intellectual nerds, in the forms of shy mechanic Kaylee Frye (Jewel
Staite) and pilot Hoban (Alan Tudyk). Zoe (Gina Torres), the first mate
and Hoban’s wife,holds this loyalty and deadly strength, thinking with
her head and following Mal’s orders with “Yes, sir.”
Serenity undoubtly pays homage to its sci-fi predecessors, for their grungy and rough exteriors recall the crew of Alien,
just regular people with intellectual and technical skills who eke out a
living working on a ship. They band together when they fight, laugh
over drinks, and just take it as hard, tough work, like average working
class joes.
Serenity stands out as one of the most
original and interesting sci-fi films to come along, simply because it
has talented and unique actors, compelling characterizations, and a
closer sense of modernity than other sci-fi films overly concerned with
the future and not the present.
I re-watched Blink, this mystery thriller from 1994 that I really liked.
It has a noir vibe with an interesting heroine. The film stars
Madeleine Stowe as a blind woman who is a violinist in an Irish band in
Chicago. She gets new eyes via a donor, and as her eyes are adjusting to
her new sight and the world, in her blurriness she has visions of a
serial killer who is striking, but nobody else sees him. Aidan Quinn is
the cop who is skeptical at first, writing her off as a drunk
lonely woman who can't see anything clearly, but helps her and falls in
love with her. The story was very interesting, and I liked the dry
humor and cynicism that Stowe brought to her character, it made her seem
more real and less like a victim of her circumstance. I enjoyed the
Chicago setting and seeing Aidan Quinn and Laurie Metcalf in the movie,
because I don't see many movies set in Chicago, it's often New York City
or L.A. I do find the movie suspenseful, but really enjoyed the
setting, the acting, and the humorous moments as well. It's just an
interesting B-level noir thriller that I recommend.
I really enjoyed seeing Killer Toon around Halloween at the Museum of the
Moving Image. It is a South Korean horror movie that is a ghost story.
It has a little gore in it, but not excessive. It was about a web comic
artist whose artwork was predicting gruesome murders, and she is the
prime suspect. It was haunting and unsettling, and I loved how the movie
would switch from still comic panels of the action to live action,
illustrating the film like a graphic novel come to life. The film came
out last year and was a huge success in South Korea. I was happy to
watch it as a haunting Halloween treat.
I saw Nightcrawler recently. It was very good, but unsettling and creepy
to watch. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, and is about a drifter named Lou who
videotapes crime scenes and car accidents, tracking them through a
police scanner, and sells the footage to a local TV network. He is a
sociopath who is a confident talker, is a thief, and doesn't have any
remorse or guilt from profiting off of filming gruesome accident scenes
for sleazy news stories.
Gyllenhaal gave another brilliant performance,
playing a sleazy, amoral fast talker, his gaunt face making his eyes
look more open and menacing. I've underestimated Gyllenhaal's
versatility a lot, because of his cute puppy-dog looks and
Hollywood-raised background, but I am continually impressed by his
versatility in films like Zodiac, Source Code, Prisoners, Brokeback
Mountain, End of Watch, and earlier movies like October Sky, Donnie
Darko, and Moonlight Mile.
I looked up the director Dan Gilroy, and am pleased to see that he did
the story adaptation for Real Steel, a movie that seemed silly on paper
(boxing robots) but was much better than I had expected, due to Hugh
Jackman's performance and the father-son story of bonding through
creating a boxing robot.
The other name actors in this movie are
Rene Russo as the news director who compromises journalistic integrity
for higher ratings of gruesome crime scenes, and Bill Paxton as a fellow
videographer of accidents. For Paxton, I thought, "Bill Paxton has gone
from chasing tornadoes to chasing crime scenes."
The film is
really good, but was very uncomfortable to watch, very dark and blunt in
its sleaziness and brutality. I was cringing at various moments in it
for how far Lou would go to get what he wanted for "good video." I still
recommend it, and feel like while Gyllenhaal is often critically
acclaimed, he still seems underrated to me, perhaps thought of as a
"pretty face" despite the risks he takes in his films. Perhaps he will
get a major award that he missed out on when he should've been nominated
for an Academy Award for Prisoners.
I enjoyed seeing John Wick. It doesn't have a complicated
plot, it's a revenge movie about a hitman who comes out of retirement to
kill Russian mobsters that stole his car and killed his puppy, a gift
from his dying wife. Keanu Reeves was awesome in it. He is excellent at
playing stoic and quiet, just stalking across a room taking long strides
as a very tall and lanky man, and just delivering pain to countless
goons and mobster jerkoffs. I know he gets a lot of knocks
for his acting, but this is one of his best movies he's ever done.
There were a couple of scenes with him delivering raw emotion: one full
of pain, the other full of anger, and I was impressed by how deep he dug
into those scenes, it was really great.
The filmmakers are two stuntmen named Chad Stahelski and David Leitch.
Stahelski doubled for Brandon Lee in The Crow and for Keanu Reeves in
the Matrix movies, and is a highly accomplished stunt coordinator
(Serenity, Ninja Assassin, The Expendables). Leitch has doubled for Brad
Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme, and did stunt coordinating for V for
Vendetta and Conan the Barbarian (the 2011 one). The fight scenes in
John Wick are excellent. There are long pans where it's Keanu Reeves
swiftly moving through goons using kung-fu and jujitsu, and the long
shots without jumpy cutaways not only make the fight scenes look more
brutal, but it feels like a breath of fresh air to watch a fight scene
that is not all quick cuts, and full of excellent and beautiful staging
of fight moves. And the fight choreographers took advantage of his long
legs by having him do jujitsu grappling moves and being on the floor a
lot.
The film has some good cameos and supporting roles by known
character actors: Ian McShane as a hotel owner; John Leguizamo as a
chop shop owner; David Patrick Kelly as a "cleaner," Willem Dafoe as
John's best friend; Lance Reddick as a hotel manager, and Dean Winters
as a mob lawyer and the comic relief.
I really like dark movies
and action thrillers, especially when they remind me of gritty movies
from the 80's a la Death Wish, The Punisher, Manhunter, and Maniac Cop. I
recommend John Wick for the fight sequences and Keanu Reeves'
performance.
I watched Airheads recently, and I've seen it several times, but came
to this relevation: Steve Buscemi was pretty much the best actor in the
whole movie. He just dominated every scene he was in, and was a total
scene-stealer from everyone else. I don't know how famous he was in 1994
apart from Reservoir Dogs, but he gave the best performance in the
whole movie. It was like if Mr. Pink joined a scuzzy rock band and was
desperate for attention, and resorted to holding people hostage in order
to get his music heard. Buscemi is a celebrated talent, and directed
one of the best episodes of The Sopranos ("Pine Barrens," where Paulie
and Christopher are lost in the snowy woods), but I didn't realize how
much of a charismatic scene-stealer he was until watching this movie for
the fifth or sixth time. You're awesome, Steve Buscemi.
I really enjoyed this look at the making of Tank Girl (1995) and why
the movie bombed. I saw the movie when I was 12 on video, and really
enjoyed it. I loved the post-apocalyptic cyber-punk look of it; the
weirdness of Tank Girl and Lori Petty acting like a comic book
character; the mutant kangaroos and hearing Ice T's voice coming out of
one of them; the desert setting a la Mad Max; Naomi Watts' performance
as Jet Girl, the Australian shy and nerdy pilot/mechanic; Malcolm McDowell
as the hammy villain; the kickass rock soundtrack that I bought a copy
of soon afterwards (Hole, Belly, L7, Bjork, Joan Jett, Portishead), and
the comic panels and animated sequences that I later found out were only
in there because the movie ran out of money to film action sequences.
I've seen it again as an adult, and while I can see flaws with it (I
can't stand the musical sequence, the plot gets messy in the last third;
Petty can be annoying sometimes), I still like the movie. The movie
failed because of studio intervention to cut scenes and mess around with
the director's work and the movie turned into a big mess.
I looked up the director Rachel Talalay to see what she's doing now,
and she directed two episodes of Doctor Who this year and has done a lot
of TV directing over the past decade. Lori Petty was on Orange is the
New Black season two and directed a decent indie movie called The Poker
House starring Jennifer Lawrence pre-fame. And while I liked Naomi
Watts, I didn't hear of her for several years afterwards, thinking she'd
just be an obscure actor, and was happy when she became an A-list star.
This movie isn't for everyone. It can be really weird and loud, and it
is very 90's, which can be good for being an experimental, risk-taking
movie and also for being really dated and old. If this is your kind of
movie, I suggest checking it out.
Alejandro
González Iñárritu's Birdman was a really interesting film to watch. I
loved how close and personal it felt with the characters' relationships,
showcased through the long continuous takes and close-ups. The editor
deserves an Oscar nomination for putting seamless edits in between
continuous takes to make sequences linked together like one continuous
take. That filmmaking style got me into the story very quickly, and the
cast were all fantastic in this film.
I agree with the
comparisons to JCVD, a movie where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays himself
and gets caught up in a robbery in Brussels (he's a hostage, but the
police and media outside think he's the robber due to a
misunderstanding). Particularly, it does feel similar with the hero
actor making a meta statement about his past roles and his offscreen
life, as well as including an amazing sequence where Van Damme "floats"
above the scene to deliver a long monologue about his life in films, his
challenges and his obstacles, and playing the hero and movie star while
dealing with his insecurities and issues (drugs, women, maintaining his
worth as a person). This scene had me holding my breath throughout all
of it, and it was a surprise to see Van Damme do the best acting of his
career. Not just playing himself, but being emotionally vulnerable and
bare onscreen.
Similarly, Michael Keaton brought that onscreen,
just being open and honest onscreen. I've been thinking in the last
couple of years that he is an underrated actor, someone who fell below
the radar after doing Batman Returns, due to him choosing supporting
roles and largely character actor work, and it's awesome to see him back
in a lead role in a meaningful film.
While I think Edward
Norton is a egocentric dick in real life (from stories I've heard of
him), he always kills it onscreen (I forgot that he's been very good in
quite a lot of movies since the mid-90's) and managed to bring sympathy
to such an obnoxious character.
Emma Stone was wonderful in
this, I love how electric and charismatic she is onscreen, especially in
films like this, Zombieland, and The Amazing Spider-Man. It seemed like
she was being overshadowed by Jennifer Lawrence in the past couple of
years, so I'm happy to see her back to her A-game in this film.
Naomi Watts was also great in this too. She didn't have as much to do as
the other characters, but she's always been a very interesting and
talented actress that takes risks onscreen, and I like seeing her in
whatever she's in.
Another favorite performance of mine in this
was Lindsay Duncan as the theater critic. She was so great at playing a
cold, cynical writer who loved theater so much that she would rip apart
anyone who she felt desecrated the art of it. I loved how she spoke in a
quiet, mannered tone that would cut through anyone's heart. She was in
only a couple of scenes in this movie, but was fantastic, and was one of
the best parts of the film.
This was just a really interesting
movie. I've included the monologue from JCVD because it had similar
filming techniques and themes from Birdman.
The Long Kiss Goodnight is a 1996 action movie starring Geena Davis
and Samuel L. Jackson, was written by Shane Black, and directed by Renny
Harlin. It is both reminiscent of the Christmas settings of previous Shane
Black-written movies (Lethal Weapon),
kidnapping as a plot device in Black’s previous movies (Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy
Scout), and the large action sequences of Renny Harlin’s previous movies (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2, A Nightmare on
Elm Street 4: The Dream Master).T he movie is about an ordinary woman named
Samantha Caine (Davis) who is an amnesiac, and finds out that she was a C.I.A.
assassin named Charly Baltimore, and her former comrades are out looking for
her. She teams up with private detective Mitch Hennessy (Jackson) to
re-discover her past and get even with those who tried to kill her, as well as
prevent a bomb plot from happening. It is an exciting action movie to watch,
with Davis and Jackson playing against type in their respective roles: Davis as
an action heroine, Jackson as a sidekick in need of rescue. Not only are the
action sequences outstanding, but the film takes its time in introducing the
characters, giving their backstory, and letting the audience get to know them
instead of just getting straight into action with no context. It is a lot of
fun to watch, and is a greatly underrated action film.
The film begins with a
credit sequence giving background to Charly Baltimore’s life, with her C.I.A.
file in flashes. But for eight years, due to an accident, she only knows
herself as Samantha Caine, wife, mother, and schoolteacher in a small town in
Pennsylvania. She knows that isn’t who she really is, but it fits her life for
now, and she loves her family.
Mitch Hennessy is a cheap
private detective who cheats, steals, and lies to get results for clients and
make money. He is an ex-con, with fractured relationships with his ex-wife and
son (his ex-wife makes her son return any gifts he receives from Hennessy out
of fear that they are stolen goods), and lives a modest day-to-day life.
But when Samantha
receives a head injury in a car accident, her skills as an assassin are
re-ignited. She can break necks with the ease of turning a screw as she kills
both a deer and a fellow assassin, and, in a particularly fun sequence, she
discovers her knife skills while chopping vegetables with her family. She is
elated, going, “I’m a chef!” and quickly chopping carrots, peppers, onions, and
the like, until she throws a knife at a tomato tossed to her, which pins the
tomato dead center to the wall. The uncomfortable silence is broken by these
three words: “Chefs do that.”
It should be noted that
there are similarities between Charly Baltimore and Jason Bourne. The character
of Jason Bourne appeared in novels by Robert Ludlom, which were published in
between 1980 and 1990. Both Bourne and Baltimore are amnesiacs who find out
they were assassins, and they retained their reflexes with weapons and
hand-to-hand combat as their memory returned of their past lives. There would
have been more comparison had the character of Charly Baltimore been a man, as
was considered by New Line Cinema. The character would have been named Sam
Caine/Charlie Baltimore, and Steven Seagal and Sylvester Stallone were
considered for the role. It was better that the character be a woman, as it is
less usual to see an action heroine in films, and less generic. Also, Brian Cox
appears in both this movie and The Bourne
Identity, playing C.I.A. characters who reveal secrets to the amnesiac
heroes.
The film not only works
because of the fantastic action sequences (a particular stunner involves
Baltimore tied to a water wheel and being held underwater for minutes at a
time), but the sly humor and one-liners that Shane Black injects into his
scripts. Upon learning about her assassin past and defending her current
suburban life, she says, “It’s not a fantasy, I’m in the goddamn PTA!” Mitch Hennessy has a running joke of singing blues riffs to himself to the tune of
Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” singing about stuff he has to do in order to
remember it. And this exchange when Hennessey comes to Baltimore’s defense
during a mugging:
Hennessy: (brandishing a
gun) This ain’t no ham on rye, pal.”
Baltimore:
“What are you doing here?”
Hennessy:
“Saving your life. I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I was thinkin’ up that ‘ham
on rye’ line.”
As Samantha Caine becomes
Charly Baltimore, she becomes colder and tougher, speaking more brusquely, and
is determined to bury Samantha, as if she was a lie, including forgetting about
her husband and daughter. She realizes that she can be both the tough-as-nails
assassin Charly while also being the loving and nurturing wife and mother
Samantha, and that it doesn’t have to be an either/or choice.
While Samuel L. Jackson
is most well-known for playing profane, cocksure, badass heroes, he excels in
playing the sidekick in this movie. He is an ordinary guy who is a crook, but
is in way over his head with the C.I.A. conspiracy plots and assassins and
craziness of it all. Jackson’s performance grounds the movie in reality, as the
audience surrogate, but also as a regular person who is in confusion and
amazement at the insanity going on around him. He is rescued by Baltimore
several times throughout the movie, in an interesting role reversal of heroes
and damsels. Hennessy notes this occurrence in an exchange with Baltimore:
Hennessy:
“Sam, I’ll be waiting for you to come rescue me.”
Baltimore:
“I’ll be just a minute.”
A flaw in this movie is
the casting of Craig Bierko as Baltimore’s ex-flame and a C.I.A. agent named
Timothy who is one of the main villains of the movie. Bierko is just obnoxious
to watch in this movie. He has little to no charisma, and seems less
threatening than the other villains played by David Morse (who only appears in
two scenes, but is a much more convincing villain in that brief amount of time)
and Patrick Malahide. He is a very forgettable villain in this movie, despite
being a professional and emotional tie to Charly. His voice is irritating, his
smug face makes him unbearable, and not in a way of meaning he is a great or
intimidating villain. Rather, his continued presence makes the audience think, “Just
die already.”
Aside from a poor casting
choice for the villain, the rest of The
Long Kiss Goodnight is solid. It has interesting and charismatic heroes,
fantastic action sequences, excellent cinematography, a sly sense of humor, and
is fun to watch all the way through.
After watching the Nostalgia Critic’s review of The Monster Squad, I decided to do my
own review of it. His review was decent, but seemed to miss what made this
movie a B-movie classic. The movie has this rawness to it that came out of a
director’s passion for filmmaking, and taking children seriously as heroes of a
film.
Fred
Dekker, the director and co-writer, grew up loving Universal movie monsters.
Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Werewolf, the Mummy, and the Gill-Man. He
wanted to make a movie that celebrated these creatures. Fred Dekker had
previously written and directed the awesome horror films House and Night of the Creeps.
I haven’t seen House, but Night of the Creeps is both a great
throwback to 1950s horror films and a sardonic 80’s horror comedy with
fourth-wall jokes , references to horror legends (all the characters have the
same last names as famous horror movie directors), a cynical and badass
one-liner-spewing detective (played by the always awesome Tom Atkins), and a
good mix of both danger and dark humor. There was even a joke that gets
recycled in The Monster Squad. “Dead
people don’t just get up and walk away!” followed by a reanimated dead body
lurching down the street.
For The Monster Squad, Dekker co-wrote it
with Shane Black, who would soon hit it big that year of 1987 with writing Lethal Weapon (as well as The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and writing/directing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron
Man 3). The film was cast with kid actors who were locals from L.A. that
had mainly done T.V. shows and commercials, and the adults were familiar
character actors like Stan Shaw, Mary Ellen Trainor, Tom Noonan, and Duncan Regehr.
Most of the behind-the-scenes knowledge that I will include in this review I
learned from watching the movie with the DVD commentary of Fred Dekker and his
then-child actors Andre Gower (Sean), Ryan Lambert (Rudy), and Ashley Bank
(Phoebe), all grown up in the 2007 commentary for the 20th anniversary
two-disc DVD release.
I first
saw this movie when I was between the ages of 5-7 (I am currently 31). My mom
must’ve rented the movie for me, and I really enjoyed it, even if I was too
young to understand everything. Which was probably for the best, given that the
movie has a lot of swearing, violence, sex jokes, and all this adult stuff that
went over my head. I don’t know why my mom rented it, or if my sister or I
requested it, but she got it, and I thought it was awesome. I feel happy that I
got to see it at a really young age, and now it’s being appreciated over 25
years later as a cult classic.
The film
opens up with Van Helsing in the 1800s trying to destroy Dracula and having a
female virgin recite an incantation in German to activate an amulet to send him
into another dimension. But it backfires and Van Helsing, the virgin, and his
crew go into the other dimension.
Cut to
present day, where Sean and his friends go to junior high in Southern
California, and get into typical trouble: in the principal’s office for drawing
monsters during class; swearing under their breath; dealing with bullies like
Wayne from The Wonder Years until
teenage rebel Rudy (who may or may not have killed his dad) defends them; and
talking about their clubhouse crew, the “Monster Squad,” where they discuss
ways to recognize monsters and defeat them.
Dracula
makes his entrance into the movie by stowing away on a plane that is flying a crate
with Frankenstein’s monster in it that Dracula is shipping (unbeknownst to the
pilots), escaping with the crate, and meets with the rest of the monsters in a
swampy area at night, with lightning and fog and the works. The way the
monsters all join one by one with their own slow entrances is a great tribute
to the Universal films of Dekker’s youth, and would get childhood fans of these
movies psyched up.
Both
Duncan Regehr (who would later play Zorro in a 1990s TV show) and Tom Noonan
(who had played a serial killer in Manhunter)
excelled as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Dracula is on a mission to get
the amulet, he is regal but abstains from any kind of seduction or charm, and
he is just cold and without feelings for anyone. He would murder little kids to
get what he wants. Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s monster is a big softie,
sympathetic to children, and is gentle with them.
I enjoy the
touches of Sean’s home life, with his dad as a tired, stressed cop who lights
up a cigarette while having a heart-to-heart chat with his son and teases him
for watching to see Groundhog Dog: Part
12, a typical slasher movie. And the mom is frustrated with her husband
always being out all the time with his job and neglecting family, and are heard
having an intense argument as the kids pretend to be unaware. There’s even a
scene where you see that she had her suitcases packed in the background, as if
there was a deleted scene of her planning to take the kids and leave him
suddenly. It’s those little realistic touches of family strife and potential
divorce in a kids’ movie about fighting monsters that makes it more special to
me, more jaded and raw.
As the monsters are causing havoc around town (a
werewolf killed a coroner; the mummy escaped from the museum), and Sean finding
Van Helsing’s diary through chance, the Monster Squad decide it’s time to fight
back and take their town back. Because the diary is in German, the kids go to a
neighbor they call amongst themselves “Scary German Guy” to translate it for
them. Despite his creepy appearance and his house, which looks in disarray from
the outside, he is kind and accepting of the children, giving them pie in his
doily and lace-filled house, and is on board almost immediately with the plan
to get the amulet to send the monsters away. And there is a good reveal as to
why Scary German Guy is so knowledgeable about monsters.
Dekker said on the commentary that “the key to making
this kind of stuff work is, though it’s ridiculous, play it as though it’s real
and it has this gravity to it.” He is exactly right, and that is very hard to
get in movies that have ridiculous plotlines yet seem totally serious and believable,
and convince the audience that the story is important and worth getting behind.
Frankenstein’s monster meets the kids, and after some
initial fright, the monster joins the team as their supportive against Dracula
and his crew. Through an 80’s movie
montage complete with a synth-pop song, Rudy makes wooden stakes and silver
bullets in shop class; a little boy writes to the military for help using
crayons; the little girl plays with Frankenstein’s monster; etc. The upbeat pop
song is a little out of place in the movie, as it is very poppy and 1980s, but
it’s still a good montage.
The boys enter Dracula’s house to get the amulet, and
this is where the famous “wolfman has nards” scene happens. It’s still funny
and ridiculous that when kids are faced with a werewolf, their first thought is
to kick him in the groin. Even just the fat kid taking a running kick to the
werewolf’s groin makes me laugh. And in 1980s kids’ movie-fashion, they escape
the monsters by pressing a slice of garlic-topped pizza to Dracula’s face and
burning him, but not before getting the amulet. And he retaliates by tossing
dynamite in their tree house and presuming that they are dead, essentially just
attempting to murder several children. He even blows up and kills the cop
partner of Sean’s dad, and for a kids’ movie, that seemed pretty dark to
violently kill the relatively nice comic relief of the movie.
In the climax of the movie, where the kids and the
cops are fighting the monsters, there are so many awesome, badass moments. The
cop dad attempting to kill Dracula by dynamite with the line, “Suck on this,
you son of a bitch”; Horace killing the Gill-Man with a shotgun blast to the
chest and, when called “Fat Kid” by bullies, goes, “My name . . . is Horace!”
and cocks the shotgun; Rudy stalking towards the three brides of Dracula,
saying to the squad, “I’m in the goddamn club, aren’t I?” as he stakes and
shoots arrows into them; “Don’t kick the church, it’s religious!”; “It’s
locked, it’s what it is!”; Sean shoving dynamite into the Werewolf’s pants as
the dad shoves him out the window and the Werewolf exploding in mid-air;“You’re not a virgin, aren’t you?” “Well,
there’s Steve, but he doesn’t count.” “Doesn’t count?!”; the actor playing Rudy
who accidentally said “Bang” before he fires instead of just quietly shooting; Duncan
Regehr really scaring the hell out of the little girl with his freaky eyes and
fangs while choking her and hissing, “Give me the amulet, you bitch!” This
movie did not pull any punches with giving heroic one-liners to children and
having villains try to kill them.
The monsters are defeated, either being killed or
sent to another dimension, including Frankenstein’s monster, and the military
shows up after everything is over. The Patton-esque general goes, “But who are
you?” and the kids answer, “We’re the Monster Squad.” Cue bad rap song over ending
credits.
Unfortunately, this movie bombed at the box office.
It was rated PG-13, and it couldn’t find the right audience. It was too violent
for little kids, and too kiddie for teenagers. It grew in cult popularity over
the next twenty years. Fred Dekker went on to write and direct Tales from the Crypt episodes and Ricochet, starring Denzel Washington,
but suffered when he directed Robocop 3.
Robocop 2 was great, but people said
it was too violent. So while Dekker wanted to make Robocop 3 R-rated as well, as he was going into production with it,
the studio wanted it PG-13 with less violence. The whole production had to be
re-adjusted, and it screwed up the movie, turning it into a total mess and
ruining Dekker’s career. The
last screen credits he has had were writing episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. It is a waste of his talent, and he should
be back making clever and interesting horror movies.
The latest that
I have read is that he and Shane Black are working together again to write a Predator movie. Black, who was in the
original Predator film, said to Collider
that he likes “the idea of expanding and exploring
the existing Predator mythology, rather than hitting the restart button.”
This is promising news, and I’d love to see Fred Dekker get another chance at
the big time. He has the talent for it, plus more cult movie cred for Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad.
So, The Monster Squad is a special movie to me, because I saw it at a
very young age, and it influenced my interests in B-level movie, underrated
films, and appreciating how great a movie can be when the director is allowed
to be fully creative on all levels. I am happy that it is getting the
recognition that it deserves, for it is really one of the best movies of the
1980s ever made, as well as one of the best kids’ movies ever.
Recently
I had some happy memories of when my dad and I would watch movies together. He
really likes character actors and Italian-American actors with grit, so he
would find movies starring John Turturro or Stanley Tucci. I remembered how my
dad would find movies like Unstrung Heroes starring Turturro, a forgotten but
good movie with a touching performance by Michael Richards, or Big Night, a
wonderful comedy about two Italian brothers
(Tucci and Tony Shalhoub) running a restaurant in the 1950s. We watched The
Daytrippers, an indie movie about a Long Island family making a day trip into
NYC, featuring a bunch of 90's indie movie stars (Tucci, Hope Davis, Parker
Posey, Liev Schreiber). We watched The Pope of Greenwich Village, an old crime
drama starring Mickey Rourke. I even saw Rounders when it came out based on his
recommendation because of the leading actors (Matt Damon, Edward Norton,
Turturro, Martin Landeau, John Malkovich). I really like character dramas and
small movies, and feel like I got some of my taste in movies from my dad.
