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Reviews
Harry and Tonto (1974)
70's Gem
I had the good fortune to have recently seen this 70's gem at the 2007 LA Film Fest. There were a lot of cool indie films playing there, like Kabluey and How to Rob a Bank, and Harry and Tonto blended right in. This engrossing story of a pensioner and his cat traveling across the US to visit his kids was a studio picture when it was made, but it would likely be an independent if produced today.
Carney's old man at loose ends performance is the center piece. The characters he meets on the road are often just as fun to watch. I particularly liked Chief Dan George, fresh off of Little Big Man, as the Indian healer Carney meets in a Vegas jail. Arthur Huunicutt, playing a vitamin salesman who gives Carney a lift in Arizona, steals the show. But it's Carney's show, and he deserves his academy award.
Because it's not flashy, there are no gangsters, exorcists or disgruntled police dicks, Harry and Tonto is often overlooked in the 70's DVD bin. It's a great ride, and it has aged well. Check it out.
Showgirls (1995)
Just as bad as everyone says
I'd always avoided this movie because everyone I know, and almost every review I'd read, said it was bad. After reading Eszterhas' fantastic book, Hollywood Animal, I thought it was time to judge for myself.
My friends, and the press, were right on the money. From the very start, this is a laugh-out-loud mess. A lot of the blame falls on Elizabeth Berkley's manically bad performance. She goes from calm to over the top anger without nary a pause or nuance, and it happens in almost every scene she's in. It's a turn worthy of Scarface. She is cute, though.
Without doubt, the real culprits are Eszterhas and Verhoeven, the creative team behind the much better Basic Instinct. Almost nothing in Showgirls works. The tone is sometimes campy, sometimes erotically dark, and sometimes big Hollywood spectacle. If they would have nailed the tone, I think audiences would have liked it, regardless of the bad press. The really strange thing is that even with all nudity, it's not that sexy. Go figure.
Hollywood Animal is a great read, though.
The Steagle (1971)
Wonderful, unknown film
I remember often seeing this movie on local TV stations when I was a kid, and it has remained a favorite. The story of a daydreaming English Prof who goes on an adventure binge when he believes the world is coming to an end raises all the questions about getting older and settling that have been raised before. But the cold war back drop, Benjamin's nerdy, action starved Professor, and the hilarious Chill Wills as the slightly nuts ex-cowboy actor, make this a real gem. The make out scene at the airport is weird and sets up the tone for this wild, funny, occasionally mystifying flick. This should've been an important film, but it's entirely forgotten.
Superman Returns (2006)
Superman does some heavy lifting, but doesn't throw a single punch!
I saw this the Tuesday night it opened, and I was really disappointed. At the time, I had read only the ravest of rave reviews, so I was expecting something really special. Why not? Filmmakers like Sam Raimi have finally figured out how to bring comic book heroes to the big screen. Even the weak entries into the Marvel/DC et al inspired genre, like the Hulk and the Fanatastic Four, have had their inspired moments. But the critics didn't line up for those like they did this colossal miscue.
SR's inspired moment happens early on, when Krypton's greatest son thwarts an airplane disaster. It's his comeback to the world stage after five years of self imposed exile. It involves a lot of heavy lifting, and is the template for almost every damn thing SMan does in the rest of the movie. Something heavy is about to fall, SMan shows up just in time, and moves it somewhere else. UHaul should have been the sponsor for this film. Each time, Singer needle drops the old John Williams' score. After an hour of this repetition, the film becomes a bore. Superman doesn't throw one punch. Which is really an odd filmmaker choice for the greatest of superheroes. All the other superheroes in all those other movies throw punches. Or if they're like Storm or Cyclops, and punches aren't their strong suit, then they lightning, or flames, or laser beams. In this one, Lex Luther throws more punches than SMan.
Singer's vision of SMan as the superhuman dolly wears thin, but could have been a more exciting watch if the threat was better defined. I can't give this plot point away, but the world menace is about the most unexciting, unsexy, uninspired piece of science class slide show bullshit you could imagine. I don't understand how Singer could have thought this wearying danger could crystallize into a fun watch. It's never really explained how this danger effects power sources, but it does. Singer's X-Men bad guys, his Usual Suspects antagonist, are real delights. What happened here? If Superman would have battled evil robots from Krypton, or just about anything else nasty and violent, this would have been so much better.
It doesn't help that we never really get to know this new Superman. Sure, the facts about him are given; he loves Lois, he's a stranger in a strange land, etc. The camera spends so little time on him when it should, you don't get a feel for what's happening in SMan's head. A good example of this is a scene early on when Clark and Jimmy go to a bar. SMan has just got his old job back, he's just learned some important news about Lois, and now we get to settle in with him and see how this new world is making him feel. Except the editor (John Ottman) cuts to everyone BUT SMan. He actually spends more time on the bartender, a cameo role, then on our protagonist. It's not the actor's fault. The old Superman movie spends time on CReeve's. We get to know him. By the end, we like him. But this new SMan is treated like a mannequin, with little time allotted to close-ups. The editing is blender-ific, chop-city madness. It's called storytelling, folks, and you really dropped the ball here. Raimi spends time on Peter Parker's FACE. You know this kid so well by the end. You really care about him. Same is true for the latest Batman. But not here. How do filmmakers this big, with the kind of resources they're given, foul up the basic rule of letting the audience get to know the protagonist? Some filmmakers get so big they forget that they are storytellers first. They make a film or two that is a big disappointment, and then they return to their old form. I hope that's the case here.
Full Contact (1993)
An awesome low-budget movie that I'd never heard of!
This is my new favorite eighties/nineties kickboxing movie. It's clearly a Corman knock-off of earlier brother avenges brother efforts, but it's head and shoulders above most of the crumby video fodder that was being fed to the hungry market at the time.
Jerry Trimble is good as the kickboxing hayseed who comes to LA to find his brother, but Marcus Aurelius steals the show as Pep, the Art of War spouting trainer who befriends Luke. Watching these two train, fight, and of course bond, was surprisingly effective, considering how badly written and acted most of these cheapy fight vehicles were at the time.
This flick is pure comic book fun as Luke and Pep fight their way up the ladder of villainous opponents to the championship-and the truth of Luke's brother's death. Beverly Grey (writer) and Rick Jacobson (director) set up each opponent, so each fight has special meaning. This movie really delivers on the awesome fights. It's non-stop, yet stylistic. Kudos to the editor (Lawrence Maddox) because this thing moves. Jacobson has real flair here, and the final fight, even if you saw it coming, is a blast.
If you know this genre, you'll recognize many of the much used locations from other Corman flicks. But somehow, they're grittier here. Probably made for WAY under a million, this is much better than any of the Don Wilson efforts made for more money. Show this to the kids at USC, because this film is a primer on how to get it done cheap. A gem.
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
MI 3 delivers!
I saw this film in 70mm, and it rocked my socks off. Though pure, unadulterated action, it gives just enough character study, just enough exposition (all the things that, say, National Treasure utterly failed to do), to let me dive deeper in. Tom is fine, he does all the action stuff, he gets to drive the boat, but the real star here is JJ Abrams. This guy brings panache and real story telling skills to this baby. He takes a risk by starting the movie at the near-end and then jumping back to the start, but nothing is as it seems, and the risk pays off as the story stays ahead of you.
My biggest criticism is that Seymour Hoffman isn't given enough to do. I mean, it's Capote, so I just expected him to be used a little more.
Ignore the lame press. See it on the big screen! It delivers.
Zoe (2001)
Wonderful movie
A wonderful movie about two characters crossing paths at just the right moment in their lives. The understated Jenny Seacrest plays Cecilia, a recently divorced Brit driving through America's Southwest to bury her mother's ashes. Vanessa Zima is Zoe, a sweetly innocent teen escaping a troubled home with her two hoodlum friends (Stephi Lineburg, Victoria Davis), on their way to mystical New Mexico. Cecilia ends up giving the teens a ride, and a special bond develops between her and Zoe. Cecilia finds her mom's old desert cabin, along with her mom's native American lover, Red Shirt (Gordon Tootoosis). As Cecilia learns more about her mother, Zoe seeks enlightenment at the Indian burial grounds. The metaphors for death and reawakening are plenty, and I was entranced by the spiritual journeys of these two characters.
Director Deborah Attoinese shows a sure hand as she deftly deals with weighty issues while keeping the characters real. The script, by Attoinese and Amy Dawes, features characters asking themselves some of life's biggest questions, yet it never loses the charm of these characters nor the fun tone of the movie. The performances are all top notch, and Zoe moves at just the right pace. Zoe looks great, and the desert locales beckon. This movie is a hidden treasure, and it deserves to be seen.