Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Conspiracy Theory (1997, directed by Richard Donner)

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Jerry (Mel Gibson) is the taxi driver that most people would dread getting stuck with.  He’s obsessed with conspiracies, ranting and raving as he drives his passengers around New York City.  The moon landing was fake, he says.  The New World Order is real.  Fluoridation in mind control.  Freemasons control the world.  Black helicopters patrol the skies.  Implausibly, Justice Department lawyer Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts) enjoys listening to Jerry’s paranoid monologues but she finds them to be a lot less amusing when they turn out to be true.  Soon, she and Jerry are being pursued by Dr. Jonas (Patrick Stewart), the head of MK-Ultra and the man who bred Jerry to eventually become an assassin.

Conspiracy Theory has a good premise and a great Mel Gibson performance and Patrick Stewart is entertaining as the main bad guy.  Though it really is just a slightly above average 90s action film, Conspiracy Theory is still a movie that seems prophetic.  Many of Jerry’s theories were obscure and not well-known when the movie was first released, nearly 30 years ago.  Today, a lot of them have been popularized by social media and podcasts.  Conspiracies have gone mainstream.  Jerry would love listening to Joe Rogan today.  In fact, Jerry would probably have a podcast of his own.  Because the movie was released in 1997, a lot of the things that Jerry talks about feel quaint and almost old-fashioned when you compare them to what Jerry would be ranting about today.  Compared to today’s anti-vaxxers and 9-11 truthers, Jerry’s fear of the black helicopters seems harmless.  Or, at least, it does until the black helicopters suddenly show up in the middle of a chase scene, nearly invisible in the night sky.

Conspiracy Theory can’t really hold up to Richard Donner’s best films.  There aren’t as many memorable lines as in Lethal Weapon and it never finds the same balance between kitsch and art that Donner was able to find with both The Omen and Superman.  Donner still gets some good moments, like the opening montage where Jerry scares the Hell out of a yuppie passenger played by Alex McArthur.  I wish Conspiracy Theory had followed its premise through to its natural conclusion instead of having Jerry suddenly turn into what was then a typical Mel Gibson action hero.  (Today, of course, it would probably be much easier for audiences to accept the idea of Gibson playing a mentally ill, paranoid conspiracy theorist.)  Overall, though, both the movie and the theories hold your interest.

 

 

The Border (1982, directed by Tony Richardson)

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Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) gets a job with the Texas border patrol and goes from scrounging in a California trailer park to living the high life in a duplex in El Paso.  His wife (Valerie Perrine) is looking forward to spending all the money that he’ll be making as a border agent.  But then Charlie discovers that his bigoted superior (Warren Oates!) and his partner (Harvey Keitel) are running a human smuggling ring.  When the baby of a young Mexican woman (Elpidia Carrillo) is kidnapped and sold to an illegal adoption ring, Charlie is finally forced to take a stand.

The Border seems to be one of Jack Nicholson’s forgotten films and it really can’t compete with some of the other movies that Nicholson was making around the same time.  Compared to films like The Shining, Terms of Endearment, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Border really does feel and look like a poorly paced made-for-TV movie.  British director Tony Richardson doesn’t really seem to know what type of movie he wanted The Border to be or what he wanted to say about immigration.  This is the type neo-Western that Sam Peckinpah could have worked wonders with but Tony Richardson just doesn’t seem to have any feel for the material.

Still, Jack Nicholson is pretty good here, playing the type of weary character that he specialized in during the pre-Batman portion of his career.  I especially liked the scenes that he shared with Valerie Perrine, who gave a good performance as someone who viewed buying a waterbed as being the height of luxury.  Harvey Keitel’s performance sometimes felt too familiar.  He’s played a lot of similar villains but he and Nicholson act well together.

And finally, Warren Oates in this movie, bringing his rough-hewn authenticity to his role.  This was the last of Oates’s films to be released before his premature death.  Blue Thunder and Tough Enough were both released posthumously.  Warren Oates is an actor who was only 52 when he died.  Whenever I see him onscreen, I think of all the great performances he would have given if he had only made it through the 90s.

Anger Management (2003, directed by Peter Segal)

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Dave (Adam Sandler), a timid man who has never gotten over being humiliated when he was a teenager, is sentenced to anger management after a slight argument on a plane is blown out of proportion by a taser-wielding shy marshal.  His therapist is Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), whose techniques only seem to exacerbate Dave’s growing anger.  Among Dr. Rydell’s methods are giving Dave an unstable “anger buddy” named Chuck (John Turturro), ordering Dave to get revenge on the guy (John C. Reilly) who humiliated on his as a teenager, and also encouraging Dave to cheat on his girlfriend Linda (Maria Tomei) with a woman (Heather Graham) that they meet at bar.  Dave goes from timid to angry, Dr. Rydell starts dating Linda, and the whole thing is wrapped up with a totally implausible ending.

The idea of the star of Chinatown and Five Easy Pieces co-starring in an Adam Sandler comedy sounds like it should be exhibit #1 when it comes to talking about the decline of American cinema but I’ve always liked Anger Management.  Casting Jack Nicholson as the seemingly insane Dr. Rydell was an inspired choice and Nicholson gives a real performance in the film as opposed to just coasting on his already-established persona.  Anger Management came out a year after Adam Sandler’s first dramatic film, Punch-Drunk Love, and, even though Anger Management is a raunchy comedy from the start to finish, Sandler’s performance actually finds the reality in Dave’s situation.  Sandler plays Dave as being someone who is sincerely trying his best to get through his court-mandated anger management without losing control.  Nicholson and Sandler make for a surprisingly good team.

Of course, it’s an Adam Sandler comedy so it’s not for everyone.  The humor is often crude and the film’s final twist is so ridiculous that it can actually leave you feeling like you might need anger management.  But Anger Management does show how Jack Nicholson improves anything that he’s involved with and it also shows that Adam Sandler can act when he feels like it.  Anger Management also gave us the meme of Jack Nicholson nodding his approval, meaning the film and the performance will live forever.

The Final Cut (1995, directed by Roger Christian)

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A mad bomber is blowing up large chunks of Seattle and seems to have a vendetta against the city’s bomb squad.  John Pierce (Sam Elliott), a burn-out who used to be the best of the best when it came to defusing bombs, comes out of retirement to help with the investigation.  The only problem is that all of the evidence seems to be pointing at Pierce.  Pierce does his best to prove his innocence while more and more members of the bomb squad get blown up.

The Final Cut has its moments.  The lengthy opening scene features Amanda Plummer and John Hannah as two cocky members of the bomb squad who discover that defusing their latest explosive isn’t going to be as simple as they think it is.  The final 20 minutes takes the film into Saw territory, with an underground lair and a woman who has been turned into a human explosive.  In-between, though, the movie is often slow and Sam Elliott sleepwalks through a role that really demanded the low-budget equivalent of a Lethal Weapon-era Mel Gibson.  (Wings Hauser comes to mind.)  The actual identity of the bomber will be easy for anyone to guess though the bomber’s final fate is actually executed pretty well.

Director Roger Christian is a long-time associate of George Lucas’s and also worked on Alien as a production designer.  That’s probably why the sets, especially that underground lair, look surprisingly good for what was obviously a direct-to-video B-movie.  Five years after The Final Cut, Christian would attain an infamous immortality when he was the director unfortunate enough to be credited as directing Battlefield Earth.  Compared to Battlefield Earth, The Final Cut is damn good movie.

The Last Detail (1973, directed by Hal Ashby)

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Billy “Badass” Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Richard Mulhall (Otis Young) are two Navy lifers stationed in Virginia.  On shore patrol, they’ve been assigned to transport a 18 year-old seaman to a Naval prison in Maine.  The kid has been dishonorably discharged and sentenced to eight years in the brig for trying to steal $40 from a charity box.  (The charity was a favorite of the wife of his commanding officer.)  Buddusky and Mulhall are expecting to find a hardened punk but instead, they end up escorting Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid), a timid teenager who suffers from kleptomania and who doesn’t seem to understand just how bad things are going to be for him for the rest of his life.  Not only is he going to do eight years in the brig, surrounded by hardened criminals, but his dishonorable discharge is going to follow him for the rest of his life.

Resenting having to take Meadows to prison and also feeling that he’s getting a raw deal, Buddusky and Mulhall decide to make a few stops on their way to Maine, so that Larry can enjoy what little time he has left and hopefully lose his virginity before being locked up.  In between brawling with Marines, visiting a brothel (where a young Carol Kane plays one of the prostitutes), and hanging out with a group of hippies (one of whom is played by Gilda Radner), Meadows comes to think of Buddusky and Mulhall as being his best friends.  Unfortunately, for Meadows, both Buddusky and Mulhall have their job to do.

Hal Ashby’s road picture is a character study of three men who are all lifers, even if they don’t realize that.  Both Buddusky and Mulhall hate the Navy but they also can’t relate to anyone who isn’t a member of the service.  Meadows’s entire future has been pre-determined because he tried to steal $40 but he doesn’t realize it until its too late.  When the film came out, it was controversial due to its “colorful” language.  In an interview, screenwriter Robert Towne defended the frequent profanity because, as he put it, when you’re in a situation you hate, “that’s what you do.  You bitch.”  Hal Ashby’s loose direction captures the road trip feel as the three leads reluctantly head to their ultimate destination.

The Last Detail features one of Jack Nicholson’s best performances.  Buddusky is cynical and doesn’t trust anyone other than Mulhall but even he knows that Larry Meadows deserves better than to spend eight years in the brig.  Along with lending his star power to the film and standing by director Hal Ashby when Ashby was arrested for marijuana possession, Nicholson also played a big role in the casting of Randy Quaid as Larry Meadows.  (The other final contender for the role was John Travolta but Nicholson insisted on Quaid).  The 6’5 Quaid towers of Nicholson and Young, making him look as if he could escape any time that he wants.  But Larry is so naive that he doesn’t want to make any trouble for his “friends.”  Though this wasn’t his first film, The Last Detail is the film that made Quaid one of the busiest character actors of the 70s and 80s and it also, at least temporarily, made him a part of the Jack Nicholson stock company.

Both sad and funny, The Last Detail is one of the best films of the 70s and features Jack Nicholson at his most unforgettable.

Physical Evidence (1989, directed by Michael Crichton)

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Ex-cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for the murder of a small-time criminal.  Joe swears that he’s being framed but his public defender, Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell), isn’t sure that she believes him.  While Jenny’s boyfriend (Ted McGinley) makes a fortune trading stocks and Joe’s former mistress (Kay Lenz) tries to keep her mobster boyfriend from finding out about the affair, Jenny tries to outsmart prosecutor James Nicks (Ned Beatty) and Joe tries to find the real killer.

Tubi sent me to this film after I finished up Raw Justice.  When I saw that it was a Burt Reynolds films, I figured that I would take a chance with it but this one turned out to be one of Burt’s lesser films.  Joe Paris feels like he might be distantly related to the cop that Burt played in Sharky’s Machine but Physical Evidence doesn’t have any of that movie’s style or grit.  Burt doesn’t come across like he wants to be in the movie and he and a very miscast Theresa Russell have next to zero chemistry onscreen.  This was Michael Crichton’s last film as a director and he directs in a stolid, made-for-television manner.

Supposedly, this was originally meant to be a sequel to the thriller Jagged Edge, with Glenn Close and Robert Loggia reprising their roles from the earlier film.  When that fell through, the movie was refurbished into Physical Evidence, with Theresa Russell and Burt Reynolds replacing Close and Loggia.  I think the film would have worked with Close and Loggia because, based on Jagged Edge, they were believable as people who had a close relationship and would do anything to help each other.  Burt Reynolds and Theresa Russell come across like they can’t even stand to be in the same room together.  Better get a new lawyer, Burt!  This one seems like she might be planning on framing you herself.

Raw Justice (1994, directed by David Prior)

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When his daughter is strangled, New Orleans Mayor David Stiles (Charles Napier) hires ex-cop-turned-bounty-hunter Mace (David Keith) to keep an eye on the main suspect, Mitch McCullum (Robert Hays).  What the mayor doesn’t know is that his daughter’s murder was ordered by Deputy Mayor Jenkins (Stacy Keach) and now, both Mace and Mitch are being stalked by a crooked cop named Atkins (Leo Rossi).  Also getting involved in this mess is a hooker with a heart of gold named Sarah (Pamela Anderson), who is angry because Mace earlier stole his clothes while trying to get the jump on a bail jumper.  Sarah and Mitch soon fall in love.  Mace is good with a gun and Mitch turns out to know karate (because he watched a lot of Bruce Lee movies growing up) but the film’s high point is when one of the bad guys is taken out with a giant novelty dart.

The plot is dumb and David Keith comes across as being a discount version of Patrick Swayze but this film does give the always likable Robert Hays a good role and fans of Pamela Anderson (and you know who you are) will definitely appreciate at least two scenes in the movie.  Actually, Pamela Anderson isn’t bad in Raw Justice.  She’s mostly there for her looks but she still has a likable and energetic screen presence.  Otherwise, this is a typical low-rent David Prior production, complete with action scenes featuring guns that never run out of bullets (unless it’s convenient for the plot) and a score that is pretty much the same guitar riff over and over again.  It’s not exactly good but it is entertaining if you’re in the right mood.

This film was also released under the title Good Cop Bad Cop, which doesn’t make much sense because neither Keith nor Hays is playing  a cop.

Somewhere In Sonora (1933, directed by Mack V. Wright)

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After stagecoach rodeo racer John Bishop is framed for causing a competitor to have an accident, he’s hauled off to jail.  Fortunately, Bishop’s boss, Bob Leadly (Henry B. Walthall), comes through for Bishop and helps him escape from the jail.  To thank Bob, Bishop heads down to Mexico to search for Bob’s son, Bart (Paul Fix).  The last that Bob heard, Bart was running with an outlaw gang called “The Brotherhood of Death.”  The only way get out of the Brotherhood of Death is to die.

By an amazing coincidence both Bart and Bishop’s girlfriend, Mary (Shirley Palmer), are in the Mexican town of Sonora.  To try to get Bart to return home, Bishop goes undercover and infiltrates the gang.  Once inside, Bishop discovers that gang leader Monte Black (J.P. McGowan) is planning on robbing the silver mine that belongs to Mary’s father.

This is a John Wayne B-western, typical of the poverty row productions that he was making before John Ford cast him as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach and made him into a star.  This one features the usual horse chases and bar fights and John Wayne gives a solid-enough performance in the lead role.  The most interesting thing about it is that, even though it’s a western, it’s set in modern times.  I guess frontier days lasted longer in some parts of the county than in others.

John Wayne’s horse, Duke, appears in this picture and shows again that he was the most talented of all the horse actors in the 30s.  He earned his co-starring credit.

Hellcats of the Navy (1957, directed by Nathan Juran)

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At the height of World War II, Commander Casey Abbott (Ronald Reagan) breaks up with nurse Helen Blair (Nancy Davis, the future first lady) and takes command of a submarine that has been tasked with mapping out Japanese mine fields.  Abbott struggles at first with commanding his submarine.  After a popular diver — and Helen’s new boyfriend — is killed during a mission, much of the crew holds Abbott responsible.  While Abbott is able to win back the respect of the crew, he still struggles with his second-in-command, Don Landon (Arthur Franz).  Landon wants to command his own submarine but when Abbott gives him a negative recommendation, Landon is forced to consider his past actions.  Landon eventually discovers just how difficult it is to be in charge.

Full of stock footage and chintzy special effects, Hellcats of the Navy was the movie that Ronald Reagan considered to be so bad that it led to him retiring from feature films and devoting himself to mastering the emerging medium of television.  Gene Hackman had his Welcome To Mooseport.  Ronald Reagan had his Hellcats of the Navy.  It’s definitely on the cheap and predictable side but, when I watched it earlier today, I discovered it wasn’t as bad as I had heard.  Reagan actually gives a pretty good performance as Abbott and the film does show that even a good commander will make mistakes.  The main problem is that it’s just not a very exciting film and a good deal of the undersea footage was clumsily lifted from other movies.

Hellcats of the Navy was the one movie that co-starred both Ronnie and Nancy and it’s worth watching for curiosity’s sake.  Nancy isn’t in much of the movie and it’s really a role that anyone could have played.  There’s not a lot of romantic chemistry between Ronnie and Nancy, they’re both too reserved for that.  This film still shows the likability and the natural authority that led to Ronald Reagan launching a second career in politics.

Just think, if Hellcats of the Navy had been a better movie, the past 45 years might have been very different.

Knute Rockne, All American (1940, directed by Lloyd Bacon)

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The son of a Norwegian carriage builder who immigrated to the United States in 1892, Knute Rockne (Pat O’Brien) attends Notre Dame, revolutionizes football as both a player and a coach, and leads Notre Dame to upset victory after upset victory.  Other coaches look to Rockne and see how to build and inspire a team and learn the importance of taking chances when the game is on the line.

This rah-rah biopic of real-life coach Knute Rockne elevates the character to near sainthood.  I was surprised that he didn’t heal any sick children or single-handedly end World War I.  Pat O’Brien is just the right age to play Rockne as an aging, veteran coach but the movie also has him playing Rockne as a college student.  It’s strange to see Rockne telling his father that he’s decided to go into coaching and that he hopes he won’t be a disappointment to his family when both the father and the son appear to be the same age.

If there is one thing about this movie that really works, it’s the performance of future President Ronald Reagan as George Gipp, a college baseball player who is recruited to the football team after Rockne sees how far and how high he can kick the ball.  Gipp becomes a surrogate son to Rockne and Ronald Reagan’s innate likability is put to good use.  As an actor in forgettable B-movie, Reagan could seem stiff and uncomfortable but, as George Gipp, he seems surprisingly relaxed and natural.  It’s easy to see why this film temporarily made him a star.  The scene when George Gipp, on his death bed, tells Knute to tell the team to “win one for the Gipper” is a classic tear-jerker moment and Reagan’s image as being the selfless Gipper, the man who was all about inspiring the team at even the worst of moments, served him well when he went into politics.

(It also served the makers of Airplane! well when Leslie Nielsen needed to give Robert Hays an inspiring speech to get Hays back into the cockpit of that plane.  Win one for the Zipper!)

Ronald Reagan’s performance is the only thing about Knute Rockne, All American that has aged well.  The movie made me want to win one for the Gipper.