Furious on Film 05.03.06: Issue 40

Posted by Arnold Furious on 05.03.2006

The column that doesn’t smell like ass

The aim of this ongoing column was simple. I've been watching films for a long, long time but along the way I've somehow found myself watching some absolute crap on a regular basis. I've seen every episode of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween. Is there any real need for that? Should I have seen Catwoman? Broken Lizard's Club Dread? Independence Day? I'm appalled at my own decisions. So I'm now on a crusade to try and be more adult about my film watching. It's time to spread my wings and watch a wider range of films. The biggest problem I've encountered when taking on this challenge is my choices of viewing material aren't always at the level I'd hope for. There are times when I abandon my high and mighty campaign and instead watch whatever my brain decides I need. This can happen at any time but I'll still try to keep up a turnover of films that are challenging in some way.

Amazing to think that Furious on Film has now been running for over a year. When I started out writing it I kind of half expected my general inability to stick to a weekly column of any real size to be a hindrance to attempting this undertaking. However the fact that I have deadlines, weekly, has really pushed me to deliver. It's somewhat gotten in the way of my tape reviewing schedule but has also forced me to watch films that I would never have seen otherwise. Onto #40 then. Back in 40 Caligula, the Roman Emperor if you recall from last week, had a shot at invading Britain after his failed campaign in Germany and failed even more so at this more ambitious military action. Caligula wasn't exactly sane at this point though. He declared himself to be a god and made his horse a senator. To say this didn't go down well is somewhat of an understatement. The writing was on the wall. Meanwhile Christianity had already spread to Egypt. Exciting times. In movies the number 40 pops up quite a bit. Just recently I reviewed the 40 Year Old Virgin. In 2002 Josh Hartnett starred in 40 Days and 40 Nights. I skipped that one. Of course in Aladdin you have the 40 thieves. In Demolition Man Simon Phoenix had been dreaming about killing Sly Stallone's character for 40 years. Dan Ackroyd had the breasts of a 40 year old Silvia Wiss shown to him in Dragnet. According to Lloyd and Harry there are no jobs in LA unless you want to work for 40 hours a week (Dumb and Dumber). 40,000 is how many dollars go missing in Psycho. Whilst in Pulp Fiction 40 minutes is how long they have to get out of the house before Bonnie gets back. In the Shawshank Redemption the Morgan Freeman character "Red" was incarcerated for 40 years. Also spanning 40 years was Perry White's career in newspapers by the time he hired Clark Kent in Superman. 40, ladies and germs.

Warning – could well contain minor spoilers throughout. Films are rated on a ***** scale. This week we have…

Blow Out, HG Wells' War of the Worlds, Poolhall Junkies, Pieces of April, Stray Dog

Blow Out (1981)

EXPECTATIONS – Blow Out comes from esteemed director Brian De Palma. By this point he'd already made Carrie and would go on to make Scarface his next project. He went on to make such great films as the Untouchables, Casualties of War and Carlito's Way. Unfortunately he's also made Bonfire of the Vanities, Mission Impossible and Snake Eyes. Also Mission to Mars but I'm still not sure if I like or dislike that film. I think I like it, but I'm really not sure. Basically De Palma is extremely hit or miss. So this could happily go one way or miserably go the other. The cast is encouraging. It's a John Travolta flick coming off Grease and Saturday Night Fever when he was still reasonably hot and way prior to his dead spell during the 80's. The cast also boasts Robocop's Nancy Allen, 3rd Rock star John Lithgow and Dennis Franz.

PLOT – Jack Terry (Travolta) is a sound man in the budget film industry. One night he's out recording some sounds in the woods when he hears and records a car crash. The car ends up in a river and Jack dives in to pull out the passenger, a girl named Sally (Allen). It turns out that the guy driving was on course to become future president of the United States and this little affair with Sally was somewhat unwelcome in most circles. Jack finds himself involved in some pretty dense conspiracy theory as a videotape of the evening's events appears in the press courtesy of Manny Karp (Franz). While his character is somewhat murky it's nothing compared to Burke (Lithgow) who is trying to create a cover story to give him the excuse to kill Sally off and tie up a loose end.

OPINION – Blow Out is very similar to another conspiracy theory movie in Francis Ford Coppolla's "The Conversation". Although Blow Out doesn't have the weighty acting skills of Gene Hackman it actually comes off as a far more entertaining film. There aren't such major flaws in the plot for example. While that's mainly because Blow Out is far more simplistic it's also because Blow Out has a strong grip on its supporting roles and clearly defines all the characters. Even if the clear definition is sometimes that the character is somewhat shady and is using some form of motivation that we, the viewer, aren't privy to. It's also set against some rather interesting local and political developments that allow us a glimpse into the world the storyline is taking place in (much like in Alan Moore's book Watchmen). This gives the characters an actual world to play off as well as each other. This proves to be vital in understanding the decisions these characters end up making. De Palma's direction helps too as he chooses to use such effects as split screen to keep action going in more than one location at the same time. This has recently been very successful in the TV show 24. In Blow Out it helps the plot move along at speed. Unfortunately the script somewhat comes to pieces during the culmination of the storyline. Several of the characters make very poor decisions. Stupid, I'd say. Nancy Allen's Sally in particular comes off as incredibly stupid at times. Way beyond what would be acceptable for a suspension of disbelief. I know she's supposed to be naïve and an airhead with dubious moral fibre but nonetheless she really does put herself in a few ridiculous spots of her own creation. Especially towards the films climax. The actual ending is superb and continues the conspiracy theory that's been rolling on throughout the film. While The Conversation had an unsatisfying ending the solution to the problem in Blow Out is amusing in its uniqueness. No big swerve or plot twist is needed just the simple forward progression of solving a problem that was present throughout. Jack learned he couldn't alter the world but that he was good at his job. This is one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite films and with good reason.

BEST BIT – "Now THAT, is a good scream".

RATING - ***1/2. For me Blow Out is an easy film to digest. That's often been a complaint about De Palma. That he dumbs down films and makes them more widely approachable. I don't see that as a complaint. Sometimes it's nice to have a film that doesn't require much thought but at the same time has a nice storyline. Yeah, this borrows heavily from Blow Up but does so in a way to make it available to a wider audience. I'm not into criticising that. This is well worth a look.

HG Wells' War of the Worlds (2005)

EXPECTATIONS – Most people reading this are thinking two things. 1. Didn't that Furious chap already review War of the Worlds (*** FoF #24). 2. Where did that HG Wells' bit come from? I don't remember that on the poster. Well it turns out Steven Spielberg wasn't the only guy to do a version of War of the Worlds in 2005. This version comes from a director called David Michael Latt. This is his 7th film. I've not heard of the other six and unless you watch a lot of shitty movies you've probably never heard of the others either. Not one of his films has yet garnered positive reviews. He does have C. Thomas Howell and Jake Busey in this flick though. That has to be worth something? Right? Seeing as Spielberg had a War of the Worlds film coming out Latt was able to convince himself to part with $1M to make this. He then filmed it in 2 weeks, tacked on some cheap looking special effects and lined up a release date. But no cinemas had any interest in taking it.

PLOT – George Herbert (Howell) is driving to his job as an astrologist when continued disturbances in the night sky cause his car to stop working. Soon he finds himself caught up in an alien invasion. Much like in War of the Worlds he determines that finding his family is more important than anything else and makes a bee-line to Washington DC where he knows his wife and son are going to meet him at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Along the way he encounters several wacky characters.

OPINION – There are more than a few problems with this version of War of the Worlds. The most obvious one is a lack of money. The special effects are not special in any way, shape or form. They look like something has dropped out of a computer game into the film. You can probably put this down to a lack of budget. But if they knew they had no budget why would they expose that with a series of attempted dramatic visuals? Let's face it, the War of the Worlds script is where they needed to focus. And at times they do try. But the biggest problem is the lack of money. The only effective effects shots are the ones shot at night or the remains of DC as shown at the end of the movie. That was good enough without showing the full on alien shots. There are some terrific shots of gas and glimpses of something unpleasant through an alleyway that would have been vastly more effective if that was the limit of the effects. Sadly Latt and his crew get overly ambitious and the result is poor. In terms of script this is actually pretty good compared to Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The writing is far, far better than the bigger budget version. But then it has to be. Without the script the film is nothing. In the acting stakes Latt got lucky by having C. Thomas Howell. He really gives it his all and busts his ass to make the movie as convincing as possible whether he's weeping over his fallen brother or reacting to the caricature army man that Jake Busey ejaculates onto the screen Howell is the centre of attention. It's just a pity he has nothing to back him up. He's surrounded by bad actors. Rhett Giles, for example, is bloody awful showing the acting range that made him a star in Australian soap opera Home & Away. His character Pastor Victor has the majority of the serious dialogue away from Howell as he gets to ramble about the rapture and how God has deserted him. It'd be powerful stuff if he didn't suck. The actual script behind it is good stuff. The delivery is horrific. If I was Latt I would have been screaming from behind the camera for Giles to stop butchering my words. He was probably more concerned about how much money this flick was costing to make and how he was going to create the special effects he felt the film needed. As it stands he'd have been better off focusing on the script and getting actors who could do more with the words. The rest of the cast are pretty bad too but luckily don't have the responsibility of Giles. Not even Andy Lauer who plays the other travelling companion of Howell's main character. The absolute worst performance in this film comes from Jake Busey though. His turn as Lt Samuelson is one of the worst performances I've seen in years. Uneven, lacking in confidence, hammy and just all round dreadful. Busey has fallen a long way since he was coming through in the late 90's. With the exception of playing a serial killer in Identity in 2003 he's done nothing of any note in the past 5 years. He can play lunatics and nothing else. But then having Gary Busey as a father probably doesn't help with mental stability.

BEST BIT – "It smells like ass" claims one of the first people to the first crash site. Whether she's talking about the crashed alien space craft of the film, I'm not sure.

RATING – DUD. This film smells like ass. C.Thomas Howell did his best and the script wasn't bad but the short sighted direction and the severe lack of specialness in the special effects just kills it for me. Kills it utterly dead to the point of dud as I feel the crappy aspects of the film leave it completely exposed. Avoid this.

Poolhall Junkies (2002)

EXPECTATIONS – There's been a minor buzz around Poolhall Junkies at 411 for a while now. Leonard Hayhurst and Brandon Ratliff have both championed the film albeit in small doses and anything Leonard pimps has to be worth a look see. The film stars and was directed by Mars Callahan. His intended follow up is What Love Is starring Cuba Gooding Jr and an assortment of other reasonably big names. Poolhall Junkies boasts an impressive cast itself including Christopher Walken, Chazz Palminteri and Rod Steiger in his final film. Also on board are Alison Eastwood and Rick Schroder from NYPD Blue.

PLOT – Johnny Doyle (Mars Callahan himself) is a pool wizard who ended up as a hustler instead of a professional thanks to the choices of his mentor and father figure Joe (Palminteri). His girlfriend Tara (Eastwood) hates him playing pool but to a lot of the local kids he's a hero. He also has the respect of Tara's uncle, himself a pool player and the local pool hall owner. These played respectively by Christopher Walken and Rod Steiger. Meanwhile his younger brother Danny (Michael Rosenblaum – you think he might be Jewish?) is well on his way to becoming a hustler himself although he's far more talented at playing the guitar. When Johnny isn't hanging out with his girlfriend he's looking for ways to get out of his lifestyle.

OPINION – It's a very smart script. There are obvious comparisons to the Hustler (1961) because of all the antics and hustles being played out. The film is taint amount to a series of hustles with either Johnny, Danny, Joe or Tara's Uncle Mike (Walken) looking to get an advantage over someone else. Johnny is somewhat more regretful of his behaviour than the others, which sets him up as the hero. Eventually the set up pits Johnny against his former mentor Joe who has now recruited #13 in the country pool player Brad (Schroder) in an epic showdown. This is where the film finally gets where it's going. The biggest problem with Poolhall Junkies is there is just too much filler on the way to getting where it's going. It's great to watch Christopher Walken play his part and do some trick shots and Palminteri is good as ever but Danny and his friends absorb a huge chunk of screen time. Their back and forth banter is rather reminiscent of the guys in Swingers only these guys are only kids so the intellectual depth of conversation is remarkably shallow. It's a pity they opted for that direction. I'd have happily watched more of Chico (Glenn Plummer) or gotten some background on Brad. The camaraderie is nice but considering we also get the whole romance situation between Johnny and Tara it gives us two slow directions to get the plot going. It needed a better balance between the hustling and plot. The balance of the finished article is much wider spread, which makes it hard to really get into the plot. Especially when it's not a really serious film. It doesn't need to spread itself so thin. Anyway, back to the film's conclusion and there's an assorted cast of characters witnessing a major pool game and they're all exchanging banter backward and forward and when it's Chazz Palminteri and Christopher Walken that's a very good thing. Right before the shoot out though it's all set up by a nervous Johnny being pumped up by Uncle Mike. It's all about Christopher Walken. It's also the best part of the film.

BEST BIT – "You watch those nature documentaries on the cable? You see the one about lions? You got this lion. He's the king of the jungle, huge mane out to here. He's laying under a tree, in the middle of Africa. He's so big, it's so hot. He doesn't want to move. Now the little lions come, they start messing with him. Biting his tail, biting his ears. He doesn't do anything. The lioness, she starts messing with him. Coming over, making trouble. Still nothing. Now the other animals, they notice this. They start to move in. The jackals; hyenas. They're barking at him, laughing at him. They nip his toes, and eat the food that's in his domain. They do this, then they get closer and closer, bolder and bolder. Till one day, that lion gets up and tears the shit out of everybody. Runs like the wind, eats everything in his path. Cause every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals, who he is".

RATING - ***3/4. Quite a satisfying little film. Mars Callahan is probably a name to watch out for if he comes up with interesting little concepts like this every few years. Don't go in expecting something meaningful to emerge but if you go in expecting discussions over the unused "17,000 miles of vaginal canal in the United States" then you'll probably get about the right level. I enjoyed it.

Pieces of April (2003)

EXPECTATIONS – Peter Hedges is quite the surprise package of modern cinema. He first came into prominence around Hollywood for being the guy who wrote What's Eating Gilbert Grape? Which is a pretty serious film with realistic approaches and a somewhat light-hearted vibe to heavy content. Although he didn't direct it, that was entirely his brainchild from conception to screenplay. Since then he's written Map of the World and About a Boy. I've seen neither and will never watch About a Boy because it's a Hugh Grant movie but the signs are there that's he's more than capable of producing a script. Pieces of April is his first trip behind the camera. What he does have is a great cast. Katie Holmes, Oliver Platt and Patricia Clarkson is a cast I'd take for a first film. Especially with the subject matter at hand. Platt and Clarkson are under rated as performers and Holmes can bust out a decent performance if the script suits her.

PLOT – April (Holmes) is cooking Thanksgiving dinner for her entire family who are driving out to meet her boyfriend for the first time and experience her life in the big city first hand. While this seems pretty simple it's further complicated by the family having incredibly low expectations of April because of her failures in the past. Her ex-boyfriend is a drug dealer, she's constantly pissed her mother off for years and the rest of the family have problems with her too. But that's not all. Her mother Joy (Clarkson) is dying of cancer. Not only is this the first time April is cooking for her family and trying to make amends for years of being a shit to them but it's her very last chance to bond with her mother. If she can't get it right then Joy will go to the grave hating her own daughter.

OPINION – I went into Pieces of April not knowing what to expect. There's no doubt it's a film that requires patience. I don't always have that. There are a number of films that although I've watched to their conclusion they've lost me during the duration and my attention has roamed. Keeping my attention is tricky. But Pieces of April did that much to my disbelief. It's not a chick flick but there are elements of female interest. Half of the entire film is Katie Holmes struggling to cook. I'm not sure this is something that everyone can relate to but then there's the underlying theme of why she's trying so hard. It probably doesn't help that April is a complete bitch. She finds it almost impossible to keep her snide remarks to herself and is almost universally hated by her neighbours. This makes it tricky when she can't cook the dinner without them. First her oven breaks down then she realises her preparation for the meal is entirely inadequate. During all of this her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) is off trying to find a suit so he can impress his girlfriend's family. Unfortunately for him some guy called Tyrone is looking for him and a good suit on Thanksgiving is hard to locate. So he misses the problematic day that April is having. But that's not the best part. All of this runs alongside the trip to the meal of April's family. Joy and her husband Jim (Oliver Platt) are joined by their two teenage children. The irritating and overconfident Beth (Alison Pill) who's trying desperately hard to gain her mother's approval and Timmy (John Gallagher Jr) who has recently taken up photography in order to record the final dying days as Joy experiences them. Also in the car is Grandma Dottie (Alice Drummond – Ray Finkel's mother in Ace Ventura) who has a somewhat fragile mind but knows her daughter very well. The conversations between the people in the car during the journey make the entire film worthwhile. For all of April's bumbling mistakes are paired up with five people expecting her to fail but hoping that she doesn't. And it's Joy that hopes most of all. Patricia Clarkson is fantastic. Joy makes one sarcastic and malicious remark after another and almost all of them get let go because she's dying. But every time she realises what she's doing there's a tinge of regret in her eyes. She's trying to hold back her anger and frustration with the cancer but she can't do it. What it comes down to is whether Joy can face April one last time. Whether she still has enough belief in her cancer riddled body that April can come through just once. Belief that's been sapped away by the pain of cancer and her memories of April's failings in the past.

BEST BIT – Joy arrives at April's apartment. It's lump in throat time. Will all the preparation have paid off? Can Joy accept her daughter for who she is and forgive her failings? It's handled in such majestic fashion that Peter Hedges comes off as a veteran film maker for the choices he makes.

RATING - ****. It's a simple story and at times it feels like it's going nowhere. I half expected the film to be half build up and half family troubles over a meal. It's not. It's all build up for five minutes of absolute heart wrenching drama. It's a thing of beauty. I read one comment related to this film that someone switched it off after 15 minutes because it was so boring. Wow, did they ever miss out. This is why I stick with every film no matter how bad because you just don't know how the film will play out. I personally loved the multitude of slow character builds to create the end scenes. Patricia Clarkson is brilliant in this. Having seen the Station Agent last week I'm now staggered as to how she's never won an Oscar or been given a major role in a major film. She's even better in this than Station Agent and was rightfully Oscar nominated for the performance. But got fucked over at the ceremony when they decided that Rene Zellwegger's caricature performance in that piece of shit Cold Mountain was better. The Academy eh? When will they learn?

Stray Dog (1949)

EXPECTATIONS – There are three names associated with this film that should tell you pretty much all you need to know. Akira Kurosawa. Toshiro Mifune. Takashi Shimura. I'm there. Kurosawa had been involved in film for some time by the late 40's. He got his start as a third unit director in 1936. He then spent five years on 25 films learning his craft before debuting in 1943 with Judo Saga. He'd already piloted nine films before Stray Dog including 1948's Drunken Angel when he first paired up Mifune & Shimura. This was a year before Rashomon.

PLOT – Detective Murakami (Mifune) has his gun stolen while riding on a bus. He's so distraught over the incident that he almost resigns and diverts all his energies into ensuring the gun is returned to him before someone is harmed by it's presence on the streets. As he gets closer to the truth he teams up with Detective Sato (Shimura) who wisely guides him in the right direction and gives him the benefit of his years of experience. Not only as a policeman but as a person. While Murakami is uptight and officious the more experienced Sato is somewhat laid back and given to making common sense decisions. The search for the gun leads to showgirl Harumi who herself has some big decisions to make about her life.

OPINION – Set against the scorching heat of a Tokyo summer Stray Dog is a stifling film noir. The initial premise of a lost gun seems a little weak but Murakami's need to stop that gun from hurting anyone leads to a manic search and a nice story concerning police work. A little like Kurosawa did in High and Low. The focus is as much on the methods of deduction as it is a mystery. Much like in Ikiru the early story is told in narrative over the top of Murakami's day where he lost the gun. Much like in Ikiru I found this to be pretty annoying but the detective novel nature of the narration sort of adds to the experience. Later, when Kurosawa drops the narration in favour of just using shots with no dialogue for when Murakami searches the city and pretends to be a low life to find a contact, the lack of explanation make the scenes a little hard to digest. My roaming brain disappeared for a few minutes at a time during these lengthy establishing scenes with no dialogue. When I drifted back into it I found the storyline had progressed ever so slightly without the use of words. Murakami's guilt over the missing weapon drives the plot on. He won't rest until he's gotten it back. This gives the noir a sense of urgency that wouldn't be there without his overwhelming moral code. Even Sato is a little overcome at how strongly Murakami feels responsible. It seems all the advice in the world won't change the way that Murakami feels. The mentor relationship is often key to Kurosawa movies but this is the most obvious use of it that I've seen, Red Beard aside. Sato is deliberately set up as the man to keep Murakami from falling apart. Without Sato's gentle advice Murakami would go completely nuts and probably break the law in order to get his gun back. Sato is a calming influence but even he can't battle Murakami's drive and desire, which is essential in the speed of the gun's recovery. With the exception of a few long scenes minus dialogue that take a long time to get where they're going this is masterful storytelling.

BEST BIT – "Bullets are not foul balls" preaches Sato as Murakami looks to nab a suspect in the gun theft at a baseball game.

RATING - ****. This being Kurosawa this is great but a little bit more selective editing could have sped the plot along to a more frantic pace to match Mifune's energetic performance. Every time Kurosawa spends too long on something, like the baseball game, it seems to be merely to stall the inevitable. Instead of being on the edge of my seat my mind was drifting. So the execution couldn't have been quite right. He lingered a little too often. This was a flaw that got corrected with time. Later Kurosawa movies, even 10 years on from this, don't suffer from it at all.

ELSEWHERE –

Cris Murphy has a hand injury. Get well soon dude.

Top 5 guilty pleasure movies I couldn't do this. I just don't feel guilty about the films I watch. I'll call a spade, a spade. The entire point of Furious on Film was to open my eyes to new experiences. That doesn't mean I resent the years spent watching low-brow movies. For years my favourite movie was the Blues Brothers before Goodfellas claimed the crown in the early 90's. I love Robocop, Transformers: The Movie and the Bill & Ted flicks. But am I guilty about any of that? Not guilty your honour! In my introduction it says "I'm appalled by my own decisions". That's because I've seen a lot more crap than I should have. I'm not proud of that but I'll never deny liking a movie just because it's not cool. Anyway, I didn't do it but read it anyway.

Leonard Hayhurst has Ask 411 Movies. That's where the Poolhall Junkies tip came from and you'd better believe there's more to it than that. Oh and Roger Rabbit prequel? I'm all over that like a motherfucker. They can still make that!

George H. Sirois tackles Mean Girls in Scene Anatomy. I even spelled his name right this week!

Oh, and O'Dog is back.

And finally pimpage for new guy Julian Williams and his wacky top ten. As far as stupid angles go though there should be far more WCW. Where's Lost in Cleveland? Where's the Shockmaster? I'll let you off this time. Noob.

NEXT – From Stray Dog to Rainy Dog as I continue Takashi Miike's trilogy that started with Shinjuku Triad Society. Then finish it up with Ley Lines. That's next week along with more in Furious on Film #41. Well its next week if the bank holiday doesn't fuck up the rental service again.