Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

The Domino Principle (1977, directed by Stanley Kramer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) loyally served his country as a part of a “search and destroy” team in Vietnam but when he returned home, he discovered that America didn’t appreciate his sacrifice.  When he was convicted of murdering his wife’s abusive first husband, he was tossed in prison.  But now, two mysterious men (Richard Widmark and Edward Albert) have offered Tucker a chance to escape from prison and reunite with his wife (Candice Bergen) in Costa Rica.  The only catch is that they also expect Tucker to do a job for “the Organization” and assassinate an unidentified target.  As Tucker discovers, The Organization has been watching and manipulating him entire life, setting him up for this very moment.  Every small event in Tucker’s life led to another event that eventually sent him to both the war and to prison.  It’s almost like a game of dominos.  And we have a title!

The Domino Principle gets off to a good start, with a black-and-white montage of actual assassinations and then an opening credit sequence that features someone placing dominos over pictures of Roy Tucker at different ages.  (I am guessing that actual childhood photos of Gene Hackman were used because even the baby pictures feature the Hackman squint.)  However, the scene immediately following the credits features Gene Hackman and Mickey Rooney as cellmates and the film never really recovers.  Though they were both talented actors, Gene Hackman and Mickey Rooney don’t seem as if they belong on the same planet together, let alone sharing a prison cell in a grim and downbeat political thriller.  Hackman is his usual surly self, while Mickey seems like he’s going to try to get the entire prison to put on a show.  The film tries to do some unexpected things with Mickey’s character but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s Mickey Rooney and he just doesn’t belong here.

As for the rest of The Domino Principle, it’s slow and ponderous.  Best known for earnest social issue films like The Defiant Ones and Guess Whos’ Coming To Dinner, Stanley Kramer is the wrong director for a film that aspires to duplicate the conspiracy-themed atmosphere of other 70s thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor.  For all the time that film takes to build to its obvious conclusion, Kramer doesn’t even bother to identify who Tucker is supposed to kill or why the Organization wants him dead.  Though he seems like he should be a good choice for the lead role, Gene Hackman goes through the movie on autopilot.  Perhaps he was overwhelmed to be sharing a prison cell with Mickey Rooney or to be playing the husband of Candice Bergen, who the film unsuccessfully attempts to deglamorize.

Sadly, this would be one of Kramer’s last films.  He followed it up with The Runner Stumbles, which starred Dick Van Dyke (!) as a conflicted priest, and then went into semi-retirement.  (A few attempts to return to directing failed.)  Kramer spent his twilight years writing about movies for The Seattle Times.  Before his death in 2001, he also published a very entertaining autobiography, A Mad Mad Mad Mad World: A Life in Hollywood, which I recommend to anyone interested in the history of Hollywood.

Cliffhanger (1993, directed by Renny Harlin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Sylvester Stallone is Gabe, a mountain climber who also works as a rescue ranger.  Michael Rooker is Hal, Gabe’s colleague and former best friend.  Hal blames Gabe for the death of his girlfriend, Sarah.  Gabe also blames himself and is planning on getting out of the rescue game.  But before Gabe can quit, he’s got one last mission to perform.  Qualen (John Lithgow) is a psychotic former spy who has masterminded a multi-million dollar robbery.  A plane crash leads to the loot getting scattered in the mountains.  Qualen takes Hal and Gabe prisoner and tries to force them to help him track down the money.

Cliffhanger was made during one of the slower periods of Stallone’s career.  He had temporarily retired the roles of both Rocky Balboa and John Rambo and, as an action star, he was being overshadowed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Stallone had tried to reinvent himself as a comedic actor, with the result being Stop!  Or My Mom Will Shoot!  The former Oscar nominee was now only winning Razzies and he was running the risk of becoming better known for his messy divorce from Brigitte Nielsen than for his recent films.  Things weren’t looking good for Stallone but, fortunately, the box office success of Cliffhanger revived his career.

Seen today, Cliffhanger holds up well as an undemanding but enjoyable action film.  It’s a very much a film of its time, complete with John Lithgow hamming it up as a British villain and Northern Exposure’s Janine Turner playing Stallone’s loyal, helicopter-owning girlfriend.  Stallone’s best films are the ones where he is willing to surrender his ego and he does that in Cliffhanger.  It may be a Stallone film but the best lines go to Michael Rooker and the true stars of the film are the mountains and the scenes of Stallone and Rooker trying to climb them.  With Cliffhanger, Stallone was smart enough to stay out of the way and just trust that the image of him dangling above the Rockies would bring in the audience.  It was a smart decision.  Though Cliffhanger is often overshadowed by Stallone’s other 1993 hit, Demolition Man, it’s still an entertaining film in its own right.

Cliffhanger was directed by Renny Harlin, the Finnish action specialist whose promising career would subsequently take a hit and never really recover from directing Cutthroat Island.  Mountain climbing and Renny Harlin just seem to go together and Cliffhanger is one of his better films.  Here’s hope that, just as Stallone has done many times in the past, Renny Harlin will eventually his comeback as a director.

Harry Brown (2009, directed by Daniel Barber)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today, we wish a happy 89th birthday to Michael Caine!

For longer than I’ve been alive, Michael Caine has been a star.  He’s one of the last surviving icons of the British cultural invasion of the 1960s, a venerable actor who went from being Alfie to being Carter to being Scrooge to being Alfred Pennywise without missing a step.  In many ways, he was the cockney Jack Nicholson, a working class actor with his own very identifiable style who still managed to play a wide variety of different characters.  Like Nicholson, there have been frequent reports that Caine has retired from acting and, if anyone has earned the right to enjoy their retirement, it’s Michael Caine.  Caine himself has said that he doesn’t ever see himself fully retiring from acting and he’s already proven that, even in his twilight years, he’s still as capable of giving a good performance as he was when he first started acting.

Take Harry Brown, for example.

Michael Caine was 76 when he played the title role in this violent British thriller.  Harry is a former Royal Marine who, now elderly and suffering from emphysema, lives on a London council estate that has been taken over by a gang of violent drug dealers.  The nearby underpass is so dangerous that even Harry is scared to walk under it.  Because Harry has to take an alternate route to the hospital to avoid all of the gangs, his wife dies without Harry being at her side.  When his only friend is then killed while trying to stand up to the dealers, Harry snaps.  Harry starts tracking down and killing the dealers and the gang members who have made retirement so unbearable for him.  Detective Frampton (Emily Mortimer) suspects that Harry is the vigilante but, before she can move to stop him, both she and Harry are targeted by the local drug lord, who turns out to be someone who Harry never suspected.

Harry Brown is really just an updated version of Death Wish, set in London instead of New York.  It has its share of good action scenes and director Daniel Barber does a good job making London look like the worst place on Earth but, ultimately, it’s as predictable and heavy-handed as any of the films Michael Winner made with Charles Bronson.  What makes Harry Brown special is not the script but instead the presence of Michael Caine, giving one of his best and most heartfelt performances and making the movie work, even when the story tries to sabotage him.  Caine brings an appropriate amount of righteous fury to the role but he also plays the role with a lot of heart.  Harry would much rather be enjoying his twilight years in peace but he feels that he was one last mission to pursue.  He would rather die protecting his friends and his neighbors than live his life in fear.  Harry also knows that, because he’s old, everyone underestimates him.  That’s a mistake that he uses to his advantage.

Harry Brown is like many Michael Caine films in that the main reason to watch it is because it’s a Michael Caine film.  At the time he made the film, he said that he expected Harry Brown would be his last lead role.  It wasn’t.  Just like Harry Brown, Michael Caine still has more to show the world.

Band of the Hand (1986, directed by Paul Michael Glaser)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This place is Florida.  The time is the 80s.  Five juvenile delinquents have been given a chance to earn their freedom.  All they have to do is go down to the Everglades and train with Indian Joe (Stephen Lang), a no-nonsense Vietnam veteran who is determined to teach them not only survival sills but also how to work together as a team.  But Joe is interested in more than just reforming a group of youthful troublemakers.  He wants to turn them into a crime-fighting team who can help clean up the most dangerous neighborhood in Miami.  When Joe and delinquents move into and refurbish a previously condemned building, they get the attention of both the local drug kingpin (James Remar) and his main enforcer (Laurence Fishburne).

Band of the Hand is very much a film of its time, not only in its fashion and music choices but also in its full-on embrace of the war on drugs and the idea that the best way to clean up the streets is for vigilantes to do it on their own.  The film was produced by Michael Mann and, as directed by former Starsky and Hutch star Paul Michael Glaser, the film has the look of an episode of Miami Vice.  That might be because the film itself was originally meant to be a pilot for a television show.  When the networks passed on it, it was released to theaters instead and advertised as being “from the maker of Miami Vice.”    The movie never escapes its television origins.  Things start strong in the Everglades, with Lang proving himself to be a master of glowering and the young delinquents struggling to not only survive Lang’s training but also resist the temptation to kill each other.  It’s less interesting once the action moves to Miami and it becomes Death Wish 3 without the blood or Charles Bronson.  The scenes with the young men goofing around are an awkward fit with the scenes of Remar and Fishburne terrorizing the neighborhood.

Band of the Hand is still worth watching if you want to see some familiar faces early in their careers.  John Cameron Mitchell and Leon both score early roles as two of the delinquents-turned-crime fighters and Lauren Holly plays the romantic interest who is inevitably ends up with the bag guys.  James Remar was always a good villain and Laurence Fishburne channels both his previous performance in Death Wish II and his future performance in King of New York.  It’s a good cast, even if no one really breaks free from the production’s television origins.

The idea of creating a show about a special unit of young crime fighters who battle drug pushers was one that Mann didn’t abandon.  The final episode of Miami Vice was essentially an unsold pilot that followed many of the same plot beats as Band Of the Hand.  (It also didn’t lead to a television series, though some might argue that 21 Jump Street took the same idea and ran with it.)  As for director Paul Michael Glaser, he would later do a much better job with The Running Man.

Running For His Life: The Lawrence Phillips Story (2016, directed by Ross Greenburg)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Lawrence Phillips could have been one of the greatest professional football running backs of all time but he couldn’t outrun his demons.

Phillips was a great high school and college player.  He led the University of Nebraska to victory in the 1995 Orange Bowl and the 1996 Fiesta Bowl.  But even when he was playing under the legendary coach Tom Osborne at Nebraska, there were signs of the issues that would eventually end his professional career.  In 1995, he was arrested for breaking into an apartment, grabbing his ex-girlfriend, dragging her down three flights of stairs by her hair and then smashing her head into a mailbox.  At first, he was suspended from playing football but he was eventually reinstated by Coach Osborne.  At the time, Osborne said that football was perhaps the only thing in Phillips’s life that could keep him on track.

The assault may have kept Phillips from winning the Heisman Trophy that he had been widely considered a favorite to receive but it didn’t keep him out of the NFL.  In the 1996 Draft, the Rams selected him as the 6th overall pick.  Phillips proved himself to be a talented running back but his life off the field continued to be erratic.  When he showed up drunk for a pre-game practice, Phillips was cut from the team.

Phillips went to Miami, where he played two games for the Dolphins before he was arrested and charged with assaulting a woman in a nightclub.  Again cut from the team, Phillips eventually ended up in NFL Europe, where he set records and proved that he could still play.  Returning to America in 1999, Phillips was signed by the 49ers but he was cut after refusing to practice and missing a block that led to quarterback Steve Young suffering a season (and career) ending concussion.

With no future in the NFL, Phillips signed with the Arena Football League but was cut when he failed to show up for practice.  He then went to Canada, where he had one good season with Montreal Alouettes before again getting cut after being charged with a sexual assault.  The last team he played for was the Calgary Stampede.  He was cut for arguing with the coach.

Phillips was 30 years old and washed up as an athlete.  After his then-girlfriend tried to break-up with him, he grab her by the throat and nearly strangled her.  A few days later, while driving around Los Angeles, he spotted three teenagers playing a pick-up football game.  He joined their game but, after he became convinced one of them had stolen some money from him, Phillips ran the teen over with his car.  Convicted of both domestic abuse and attempted murder, Phillips was sentenced to a total of 31 years in prison.

In prison, he originally kept his head down, refused to join any of the prison gangs, and stayed out of trouble.  But, in 2015, Phillips’s cellmate was found strangled to death in their cell.  Phillips claimed that he had accidentally killed him in self-defense.  Charged with murder and facing the death penalty, Lawrence Phillips was found hanging in his cell.  The official ruling was suicide.

What happened to Lawrence Phillips?  How did he go from being one of the best players in the game to being an inmate in the California penal system?  That’s the question that’s considered by the documentary, Running For His Life.  Featuring interviews with his friends, coaches, teammates, and one of his victims, Running For His Life follows Phillips from his abusive childhood to his final days in prison.  Almost everyone who is interviewed describes Phillips as being outwardly intelligent, friendly, and talented, except for when he was angry.  That was when the other Lawrence would come out.  Most of the people interviewed still seem to be shocked that Phillips’s life derailed the way that it did.  Tom Osborne comes across as being particularly troubled that he wasn’t able to do more to help Phillips overcome his demons.  The majority of the people interviewed say that Phillips’s problems were the result of growing up in group homes and spending his childhood being abused by the people who were supposed to be looking out for him.

It’s a compelling argument but Running For His Life could have used a greater variety of voices.  Almost everyone who is interviewed was a friend of Phillips’s and, even though they acknowledge his crimes, it still seems that they are sometimes too quick to make excuses for him.  Many of the women who he victimized were not interviewed and, as a result, the documentary feels incomplete.  His victims deserved more than just a cursory mention.  It may be a tragedy that Lawrence Phillips never lived up to his potential but the far greater tragedy is that so many people were hurt by his actions.

Music Video of the Day: Addams Groove by MC Hammer (1991, directed by Rupert Wainwright)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

As far as videos about Christina Ricci chopping off MC Hammer’s head are concerned, this is probably the best.

Addams Groove was the theme song for 1991’s The Addams Family.  The video opens with MC Hammer losing his head but it turns out that not even decapitation can silence Hammer.  Hammer eventually ends up fighting with Raul Julia over Anjelica Huston, proving that anything was possible in the 90s.  It’s easy to laugh at a video like this today but, back in 1991, videos like this were a big deal and it was a rare for any film to be released with an accompanying music video.  This song was MC Hammer’s last top ten hit in the United States.  It also received a Razzie nomination for Worst Song of the Year.

Though the film was the directorial debut of Barry Sonnenfeld, this video was directed by Rupert Wainwright, who was responsible for directing most of MC Hammer’s videos.  He also did the video for N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton.  Wainwright would eventually go on to direct Stigmata and the remake of The Fog.

Enjoy!

Game Review: Locked Door VI: It Takes Two (2022, Cody Gaisser)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You’re back in the most boring room that you’ve ever seen, once again trying to figure out how to get Bob to give you the key so you can open the wooden door and get the trophy.

Locked Door VI continues on the path set by the other Locked Door games.  You are once again in the same strange location and Bob and Rex are with you.  Some new rooms have been added and there are new puzzles to solve.  After playing the first five versions of this game, I was feeling pretty cocky dealing with the first set of puzzles so imagine my surprise when I went to the place where I usually found the apple and I instead found an ingot waiting for me.  You’ll have to explore all of the new rooms in order to discover what to do with that ingot and even after that, the puzzles aren’t done. It’s getting more complicated to unlock that door.  Bob is no help.  Rex is a good companion, though.

I’m enjoying the Locked Door games, though there are still too many instances where you have to play guess the verb.  In that way, the Locked Door games feel like a first draft and I think people who haven’t played a lot of Interactive Fiction will probably lose patience, especially when they’re trying to figure out how to unlock the safe.  But the idea of each game adding to the previous game has turned out to be much more interesting than I was originally expecting so I will be playing Locked Door VII next week.

Play Locked Door VI.

Music Video of the Day: The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe (1997, directed by Mark Neale)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

For the life of me, I cannot remember what made me think Everything Zen by Bush was the worst song of the 90s while this song exists.

I guess I forced The Freshmen out of my head, despite the fact that it was inescapable in 1997.  When the song came out, everyone assumed that it was about a rape that was followed by a suicide but the The Verve Pipe’s lead singer later said that the song was inspired by his girlfriend getting an abortion when they were younger and that the lyrics about Valium were poetic license.  (The amount of valium mentioned in the song would not be fatal.)  Abortion is a serious subject matter and there’s been a lot of good songs written about that very topic.  Of course, this derivative dirge isn’t exactly one of them.

A quick google search revealed that there are a lot of people who are under the impression that the “I can’t be held responsible” line is meant to be taken literally.  Though I’m not a fan of the song, I will say that I don’t think we’re necessarily meant to agree with the all of the lyrics.  I think that the “Can’t be held responsible,” is just something the song’s narrator is telling himself as a way to deal with his guilt.  That this fairly obvious point was missed by both critics and fans says more about them than it does the song.

This video is pure 90s angst, from the room with the one light bulb to the band slowly appearing behind the lead singer.  Angst was big in the 90s, though there was eventually enough of an angst backlash that it led to the era of the boy bands and pop queens.  Still, those of us who grew up in the 90s can’t be held responsible.  We won’t be held responsible.  People listened in the first place.

Enjoy!

The TV Set (2006, directed by Jake Kasdan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Mike Klein (David Duchovny) is a scriptwriter who suffers from chronic backpain and whose wife (Justine Bateman) is pregnant.  Mike has developed an autobiographical TV dramedy about a young man trying to come to terms with the suicide of his brother.  He’s sold it to one of the networks but, when he tries to shoot the pilot, he watches as his original concept is continually compromised and diluted by Lenny (Sigourney Weaver), the president of the network.  After rejecting Mike’s choice for the lead role because the actor had a beard, Lenny forces him to cast Zack Harper (Fran Kranz), a mugging young actor who lets pre-stardom go to his head.  Lenny continues to change Mike’s concept until he can barely even recognize his pilot.  Will Mike be able to retain his vision or will network TV continue to be dominated by shows like Slut Wars?

Occasionally, you’ll see a film that was obviously made by a writer/director who was obviously looking to settle some old scores with the studio execs that he had to deal with in the past.  Christopher Guest’s first film as a director was The Big Picture, a sharp and clever satire with Kevin Bacon as a film student who discovers there’s little he won’t compromise on to get his film made.  Before Guest’s film, Blake Edwards lost a fortune making a film called S.O.B. because he wanted to get back at the people who he blamed for ruining Darling Lili.  Continuing the tradition of those films but moving the action to the networks, The TV Set was directed by Jake Kasdan, the son of Lawrence Kasdan.  Jake worked on a number of TV shows with Judd Apatow (most famously, Freaks and Geeks) and The TV Set feels like his chance to get revenge on any number of real-life studio execs.  It’s an insider’s view of what’s wrong with television but sometimes it becomes such an insider’s view that it becomes hard to relate to Mike and or really care about his show, which sounded pretty bad even before the network suits got involved.  Too often, it feels like the movie itself is more about settling personal grudges than saying anything about the state of television.

The TV Set has got a large cast, some of whom manage to create an interesting character despite Kasdan’s overstuffed script.  I especially liked Judy Greer, who played Mike’s always-positive agent.  I got the feeling that we were supposed to be as annoyed with Greer’s character as Mike often was but Greer gives such an energetic performance that it’s impossible to dislike her, no matter how far she went in her attempts to always put a positive spin on the bad news coming from the set of Mike’s pilot.  I also like Fran Kranz and Lindsay Sloane, who played the two actors forced on Mike by the studio.  Indeed, probably one of the film’s biggest problems is that all of the characters that we’re supposed to find annoying are played such likable actors that it’s hard to really sympathize with Mike when he starts complaining about them.  David Duchovny sleepwalks through the role of Mike but he’s not helped by a script that can never seem to decide if Mike’s supposed to be a visionary or just a hopeless naïve victim of the industry.

The TV Set, which was made a few years before the start of the streaming revolution, ends with a warning that television will soon be full of shows like Slut Wars and there won’t be any room for artists like Mike Klein.  The TV Set wasn’t wrong but what it failed to predict was that there would soon be other platforms on which the Mike Kleins of the word could broadcast their shows.