A wily, labyrinthine political satire that is saved from being over the top by the brilliant performances of its cast. The movie takes the paranoid storytelling style of the Cold War thriller, but applies it to American domestic politics instead. It is very much like "Three Days of the Condor" in that respect. However, "Winter Kills" has a much more sophisticated point of view on American politics than the latter film, and does a great job of showing how the interconnected corruptions of family, culture, technology and politics all intersect in the most surprising, and horrifying ways. The movie was way ahead of its time in this respect, and is just as relevant to day as it was when it was made - perhaps more so.
Reviews
7 Reviews
100 Mile Rule
(2002)
Farther Than you Think
14 July 2004
This is one of those movies where the quality of the acting is far above the material itself. Michael McKean and David Thornton are joys to watch. Also, though the plot is derivative, it is very knowing about business trips and sales people, and if you've ever been on a business trip, you'll find yourself laughing and nodding at many points. The movie never seemed false or strained, just a little weak at the very end. Up to that point, it's an above average investigation of salesmen gone bad. It's a bit like "Very Bad Things" only played more for comedy than for dark drama. Jake Weber, though British, does a very good job playing an American, something that cannot be said of many of his countrymen.
Wonderland
(2003)
The Dark Side of Boogie Nights
5 October 2003
This is very focused film. It brings you into the lives of its characters, and the events that engulfed them, in a very direct way. The story of the Wonderland murders is told in Rashomon style, where you see the same event several times, from the points of view of different characters. This is handled very well, as the repetition is never boring.
Lots of great acting in this film. Lisa Kudrow heads the list, and steals every scene she is in. She plays Holmes' bitter, long suffering wife with understated brilliance. Though her scenes are brief, she communicates their whole history together without having to tell it.
At first I thought Kilmer was just reprising his patented doper-loser shtick (see The Salton Sea and The Doors), but as the movie progressed I saw he had thought a lot about Holmes' character, and his performance is actually very well suited to Holmes. He's very good at conveying Holme's infantile mommy complex, and his incomprehension that a woman wouldn't do instantly anything he wanted to done.
You probably wont' recognize Dermot Mulroney (from The Practice), playing thug Lind, but it's him. He's very scary and very good. A nice expansion of his repertoire.
The only problem with the movie is that it focuses with such intensity on the event of the murders themselves and the events leading up to it, that it provides no context for anything. There is no larger story at all. In this sense it is kind of claustrophobic. More importantly, the movie doesn't give you any reason to care about the events it describes, or the people they befell. At the end of the movie, it's hard not to say, "That was nice, but so what?" They should have spent a little more time building more of a scaffold around the events, so that they would have more intrinsic power and interest.
What the filmmakers did they did very well. They just left out one important thing, the absence of which keeps this film from being great.
Lots of great acting in this film. Lisa Kudrow heads the list, and steals every scene she is in. She plays Holmes' bitter, long suffering wife with understated brilliance. Though her scenes are brief, she communicates their whole history together without having to tell it.
At first I thought Kilmer was just reprising his patented doper-loser shtick (see The Salton Sea and The Doors), but as the movie progressed I saw he had thought a lot about Holmes' character, and his performance is actually very well suited to Holmes. He's very good at conveying Holme's infantile mommy complex, and his incomprehension that a woman wouldn't do instantly anything he wanted to done.
You probably wont' recognize Dermot Mulroney (from The Practice), playing thug Lind, but it's him. He's very scary and very good. A nice expansion of his repertoire.
The only problem with the movie is that it focuses with such intensity on the event of the murders themselves and the events leading up to it, that it provides no context for anything. There is no larger story at all. In this sense it is kind of claustrophobic. More importantly, the movie doesn't give you any reason to care about the events it describes, or the people they befell. At the end of the movie, it's hard not to say, "That was nice, but so what?" They should have spent a little more time building more of a scaffold around the events, so that they would have more intrinsic power and interest.
What the filmmakers did they did very well. They just left out one important thing, the absence of which keeps this film from being great.
Underworld
(2003)
Dark Shadows
20 September 2003
What a huge disappointment! This film had so much potential, yet squandered every bit of it. The movie, instead of being a spine-tingling horror-adventure ride, is instead a ponderous, painful machine that grinds down everything in its wake, including the viewer. Everything about the movie is assaultive, including the overbearing sound-design. This is one of those movies where one of the actors scratching his ass sounds like a nuclear bomb going off. Even the production design, on which clearly millions has been lavished, misfires. Instead of being evocative and powerful, the sets wind up looking like relics from some 80s Bauhaus video. I kept expecting Peter Murphy to show up and start singing.
The film has no sense of rhythm, pacing or tone, and is utterly clueless about how to build and sustain suspense. The director thinks you create suspense by having lots of people firing lots and lots of bullets at each other all the time. The film begins at a fever pitch, and because of this has nowhere to go. All the characters are pumped up on adrenaline all the time, all they do is scream at each other all the time or hysterically fire bullets at each other. It's totally boring after five minutes. And the film inadvertently makes both groups seem pretty dumb. I mean here you have to societies of immortals, with limitless time and money on their hands, with the wisdom of the ages theirs to command, and they can only think to fight each other in the most primitive way imaginable. I would expect more from such creatures. Blade's depiction of vampires was superior in every respect.
There is something of a plot which every once in a while peeks through the mindless carnage, but no one has cared enough about it to make it intelligible. There are major continuity gaps that are surprising in such a large production. For example, the film makes no attempt to define where the action is taking place. There is no sense of place at all. Most of the actors speak with British accents. The physical setting is clearly Budapest (at least that's what I gather from all the signs in Hungarian). Yet one of the main characters works at a hospital where everyone is American. OK, so what is going on here? The movie never bothers to explain. It has to hurry to the next scene of people screaming and shooting at each other in low-light situations.
But the biggest problem with the movie is that its makers never seemed to understand the central problem they would have to overcome in realizing the film's premise. Vampires and Werewolves become scary and ghoulish when they are fighting humans, because, in relation to them, they are fundamentally other, fundamentally different. This is why vampire and werewolf movies are so popular. Yet when vampires and werewolves fight each other, they cancel out each other's weirdness, the otherness and terror of each nullifies the otherness and terror of other. Which is why, even though we are looking at vampires fighting werewolves, they primarily fight one another with human weapons, in a human way: guns and guns and more guns. There is nothing supernatural or horrific about how they relate to each other at all. This makes the premise of the movie utterly mundane and without interest. What is the point of having supernatural creatures battle each other, if they just wind up looking like human gangs fighing? No point at all. Which is my point.
Clearly there will be a sequel. I hope they get someone on board who understands the kind of movie they are trying to make.
The film has no sense of rhythm, pacing or tone, and is utterly clueless about how to build and sustain suspense. The director thinks you create suspense by having lots of people firing lots and lots of bullets at each other all the time. The film begins at a fever pitch, and because of this has nowhere to go. All the characters are pumped up on adrenaline all the time, all they do is scream at each other all the time or hysterically fire bullets at each other. It's totally boring after five minutes. And the film inadvertently makes both groups seem pretty dumb. I mean here you have to societies of immortals, with limitless time and money on their hands, with the wisdom of the ages theirs to command, and they can only think to fight each other in the most primitive way imaginable. I would expect more from such creatures. Blade's depiction of vampires was superior in every respect.
There is something of a plot which every once in a while peeks through the mindless carnage, but no one has cared enough about it to make it intelligible. There are major continuity gaps that are surprising in such a large production. For example, the film makes no attempt to define where the action is taking place. There is no sense of place at all. Most of the actors speak with British accents. The physical setting is clearly Budapest (at least that's what I gather from all the signs in Hungarian). Yet one of the main characters works at a hospital where everyone is American. OK, so what is going on here? The movie never bothers to explain. It has to hurry to the next scene of people screaming and shooting at each other in low-light situations.
But the biggest problem with the movie is that its makers never seemed to understand the central problem they would have to overcome in realizing the film's premise. Vampires and Werewolves become scary and ghoulish when they are fighting humans, because, in relation to them, they are fundamentally other, fundamentally different. This is why vampire and werewolf movies are so popular. Yet when vampires and werewolves fight each other, they cancel out each other's weirdness, the otherness and terror of each nullifies the otherness and terror of other. Which is why, even though we are looking at vampires fighting werewolves, they primarily fight one another with human weapons, in a human way: guns and guns and more guns. There is nothing supernatural or horrific about how they relate to each other at all. This makes the premise of the movie utterly mundane and without interest. What is the point of having supernatural creatures battle each other, if they just wind up looking like human gangs fighing? No point at all. Which is my point.
Clearly there will be a sequel. I hope they get someone on board who understands the kind of movie they are trying to make.
Predator 2
(1990)
Better than the original
24 August 2003
This movie is an underrated gem. It's much better than the first "Predator", though that movie was just fine. The script is first class, with a constantly evolving story line that brings you along with it all the way to the end, keeping you guessing and offering surprises that are nevertheless logical developments of the initial premise. This movie is an excellent example of how to make a movie that basically consists of a monster killing people every five minutes without having it seem boring or repetitive. The secret is that the context of the killings changes like a chameleon. Technical credits are top notch as well. It would help if there were at least one actor in the mix that had some life in him or her, but it's a credit to the inventiveness of the film that it can survive this deficit. Predator II updates and revives the old-style matinee sci-fi from the 30s, and does it with style, panache and intelligence. The DVD is great as well, so go buy it!
Punch-Drunk Love
(2002)
Star Vehicle
3 November 2002
I have been a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, so I viewed Punch-Drunk Love with great anticipation. What a shock I had! It is easily one of the worst movies of the year. A collection of fragments and shards of themes that never coalesce; unintegrated character sketches that just seem flat and shallow, and plot threads that dribble away to nothing. Moreover, the movie has the most annoying sound design of any movie I've seen in a long time. Really, the film is like a Mad TV parody of Paul Thomas Anderson's style.
Indeed, the sole purpose of the movie seemed to be to prove that Adam Sandler could be a dramatic actor. Now that PTA has demonstrated this, I hope he'll get back to making good movies again. This one's definitely a miss at the theater. Wait till it comes out on DVD and then make your own decision.
Indeed, the sole purpose of the movie seemed to be to prove that Adam Sandler could be a dramatic actor. Now that PTA has demonstrated this, I hope he'll get back to making good movies again. This one's definitely a miss at the theater. Wait till it comes out on DVD and then make your own decision.
CQ
(2001)
Barbarella Meets Travels of Sullivan
17 June 2002
I found this movie to be extremely well designed and put together. It's one of the few films where the production design alone is a reason to see the movie. Coppola and Dean Touvalaris perfectly capture the ambience of schlock Euro-scifi of the late 60s, and their real achievement is that this never registers as camp. This film could so easily have descended into parody, but it never does. Because at its heart its a rather sincere story about how an artist becomes an artist by abandoning his preconceptions of what that means. Think Travels of Sullivan all over again.
The story is varied and interesting, with many different locations and personalities. The actors are all top notch, including Angela Lindvall, who really has the most difficult role, since her character is supposed to be an empty ditz on film, yet a love object off screen. She does a very good job.
And biggest surprise of all: BIlly Zane actually acts! Who knew?
The one failing of the film is the lack of emotional resonance between its main characters. Davies as the young film maker is too unemotional, too much of a cipher to everyone around him. Yet we are supposed to identify with his passion for LIndvall and for filmmaking. But it's a passion that never makes a convincing appearance. The most affecting emotional moment in the film is a meeting he has with his father (Dean Stockwell) at Orly, a scene that is both touching and serene. Too bad none of that bled over into his scenes with Lindvall.
This is a movie to be savored by adults, not kids or even people in their 20s. So settle back and enjoy!
The story is varied and interesting, with many different locations and personalities. The actors are all top notch, including Angela Lindvall, who really has the most difficult role, since her character is supposed to be an empty ditz on film, yet a love object off screen. She does a very good job.
And biggest surprise of all: BIlly Zane actually acts! Who knew?
The one failing of the film is the lack of emotional resonance between its main characters. Davies as the young film maker is too unemotional, too much of a cipher to everyone around him. Yet we are supposed to identify with his passion for LIndvall and for filmmaking. But it's a passion that never makes a convincing appearance. The most affecting emotional moment in the film is a meeting he has with his father (Dean Stockwell) at Orly, a scene that is both touching and serene. Too bad none of that bled over into his scenes with Lindvall.
This is a movie to be savored by adults, not kids or even people in their 20s. So settle back and enjoy!
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