Documentary Review: Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy (dir by Robert Palumbo)

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s rare that I ever feel like I should apologize for having watched a documentary but that was the feeling I had after watching Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy.

This documentary examined the career and death of actor Matthew Perry, with most of the emphasis being put on Perry’s struggle with addiction. Excerpts were read from his book. Lots of clips were shared from Friends. People in the industry talked about what a charming actor Perry was and they also talked about how hard it is to free oneself from addiction. This is especially true when you’re rich enough to have a bunch of people around you who will literally respond to your every whim and not take a second to ask, “Are you sure?” One of the worst things about celebrity culture is that we tend to root for the worst until it actually happens. When an actor is publicly struggling with addiction or their mental health, it’s treated as entertainment It’s only after that actor dies that we talk about how tragic it was and people hop on social media to talk about how addiction is a disease and no one should be shamed for their struggle.

And that brings me to documentaries like this one. There’s something really hypocritical about these documentaries that take a real life tragedy and turn it into entertainment while pretending to be a tribute or a serious examination of the addiction crisis in America. For instance, this documentary tells you absolutely nothing that you didn’t already know about Matthew Perry and his tragic death and it really doesn’t do a good job of paying tribute to him as an actor either. Those clips from Friends are the same clips that you’ve seen on every other special about the life of Matthew Perry. There’s really no reason for this documentary to exist, other than to appeal to the desire of viewers to learn something sordid about a well-known figure. It’s a documentary that exploits Perry’s death while claiming to mourn it.

And I’m not saying anything that you haven’t already heard or which hasn’t been said by hundred other people. Nearly every review that I’ve read of this documentary says basically the same thing that I just said. It’s exploitive and doesn’t have much to add to our overall understanding of how someone with so much talent and so many fans could also be so self-destructive. And yet, while we all criticize documentaries like this, many of us still watch them. I still watch them. I watched this one. I learned absolutely nothing new and I felt fairly guilty afterwards. Matthew Perry’s death was a tragedy and a cautionary tale and, at the same time, it should take nothing away from the happiness that he brought his fans. He deserved better than this. For that matter, he deserved better than all of the speculative stories that came out after his appearance on the Friends Reunion Special.

But I can’t get self-righteous or too quick to condemn. Because I did watch this. I was bored, I saw that it was streaming, and I watched it. And I’ll probably watch the next trashy celebrity documentary that come out. I won’t feel good about it but I’ll probably do it. I doubt I’ll be alone.

The TSL Grindhouse: The Wild Angels (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“What is it exactly that you want?” a preacher (Frank Maxwell) asks a congregation of leather-clad bikers.

“We want to get loaded!” Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) replies, “And we want to have a good time!”

And have a good time, they proceed to have. Of course, it’s a good time for them. Everyone else who meets the bikers at the center of 1966’s The Wild Angels are horrified by this collection of rebellious and violent outsiders. Sure, Heavenly Blues might actually be a soulful guy who mistakenly believes that he can control the gang’s more excessive tendencies. His girlfriend, Mike (Nancy Sinatra), actually seems rather reserved and conservative when compared to the rest of the gang. But make no mistake about it, the majority of the members of the gang are into violence for its own sake. They are bullies who couldn’t make the football team so, instead, they hopped on a motorcycle and formed their own society. They’re self-styled rebels but what are they rebelling against? What have you got?

I know, I know. That famous line comes from Marlon Brando and it was uttered in The Wild One. Peter Fonda, to put it lightly, was no Marlon Brando and, as directed by Roger Corman, The Wild Angels doesn’t have the societal concerns that lay at the hear of The Wild One. As Corman was often the first to admit, his main concern when it came to making movies was to make money. Corman wasn’t necessarily against message films. He often stated that, as a director, 1962’s The Intruder was the film in which he took the most pride. The Intruder took a firm stand against racism and it let everyone know where Corman stood on when it came to the Civil Rights Movement. It was also one of his few films to lose money. The Wild Angels celebrates rebellion but one gets the feeling that celebration is motivated by the fact that younger filmgoers would be happy to pay to see a movie about a bunch of “youngish” people telling the old folks to shut up and get out of the way. The Wild Angels themselves don’t seem to be motivated by any sort of grand ideology. Heavenly Blues preaches about getting loaded and having a good time and celebrating freedom but he also allows the members of the gang to drape a Nazi flag over a casket. What does Heavenly Blues actually believe in?

Heavenly Blues believes in loyalty to his friends. For all the fights and the orgies and the scenes of motorcycles roaring down country roads, this is ultimately just a film about a guy who wants to give his best friend a decent burial. The Loser (Bruce Dern) dies about halfway through the film and one gets the feeling that he probably would have lived if the gang hadn’t kidnapped him from the hospital. Heavenly Blues wants to give The Loser the type of wild funeral that Blues thinks he would have wanted though I think The Loser probably would have been happier not have been killed by the actions of his idiot friends. Diane Ladd, who was married to Bruce Dern at the time and who has said Laura Dern was conceived during the filming of The Wild Angels, is heart-breaking as The Loser’s girlfriend, Gaysh. Gaysh wants to mourn her boyfriend while the rest of the gang is more concerned with figuring out who her next boyfriend is going to be.

Does Heavenly Blues ever realize that he’s traveling with a bunch of animals? He does but one gets the feeling that he’s accepted his fate. There’s no going back. The past can’t change and the future cannot be controlled so Heavenly Blues is content to live in the present. All he can do is try to give his friend a decent burial while the sirens of cops shriek in the distance.

The Wild Angels was a controversial film when it was first released. It also made a lot of money and led to a whole cycle of outlaw biker films, culminating with Easy Rider. Seen today, it’s a portrait of a society coming apart, with the establishment and the bikers not even willing to stop fighting long enough to allow for a simple burial. It’s definitely a time capsule film, one of those productions that epitomizes an era. There’s not much going on underneath the surface and most of the film’s bikers really are awful people but there is something touching about Blues giving it all up just to try to give his friend a decent burial.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Devil’s Knight (dir by Adam Werth)

Posted on April 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2024’s Devil’s Knight opens in the kingdom of Veroka. A group of thieves all discuss what they’ve stolen over the course of the day. The leader of the thieves is named Orwell. Another thief — played by Daniel Baldwin — is named Camus. The group is joined by as stranger named Sigurd (John Wells), a man who has only one eye. He tells them the story of how he and his friends — The Lost Blades — were hired to vanquish the fearsome Bone Devil….

Yep, it’s one of those type of movies. There’s a lot of sword fights. There’s a lot of monsters. There’s a hint of sorcery, though not as much as you might expect from a movie like this. The thieves are named after philosophers. The huge cast is full of streaming stars and a handful of actors who are known for appearing in just about anything. Kevin Sorbo plays Baldur, the noble head of the king’s guards. Angie Everhart plays the Duchess who speaks French despite living in a mythical kingdom. Eric Roberts shows up as Lord Sussex. He only onscreen for a few minutes, though he does get a few funny lines. Sadly, Roberts doesn’t even get to fight a monster. At least Sorbo gets a big battle scene.

Here’s the thing, though. Taken on its own terms, Devil’s Knight is a lot of fun. You can tell it was made by people who have a genuine love for the sword and sorcery genre and there’s enough intentional humor to keep things interesting. With the exception of some blood splatter, there’s also a definite lack of CGI. The monsters are played by actual actors wearing costumes and under makeup and it’s surprisingly effective. The film’s plot is not always easy to follow. In the tradition of many medeival legends, the film’s story really is just one random incident after another, the majority of which lead to a fight and at least a few deaths. The cast is huge but few of the characters are still alive by the end of the movie. Monsters aren’t something to mess with and I actually appreciated that the film was willing to even kill off the characters who usually survive a film like this. It really did create the feeling that anyone could die if they ran into a monster in a hallway. (Even the stereotypical princess-who-wants-to-be-a-warrior character was taken in a surprising direction.) The film moves quickly with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I enjoyed it.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Shattered Politics: The Front Runner (dir by Jason Reitman)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Based (loosely, I assume) on a true story, 2018’s The Front Runner tells the story of a politician named Gary Hart (played by Hugh Jackman).

The year is 1987 and former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart is preparing to announce that he will be seeking the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the greatest nation of all time, the United States! (YAY!) Hart is widely seen as the front runner, for both the nomination and the general election. He’s got the youth vote sewn up. He’s energetic. He’s supposed to be intelligent. We are told that he is handsome and charismatic. (I say “told” because, in this film, they seem to be informed attributes as Hugh Jackman is given a truly terrible haircut and his performance here is a bit on the dull side.) Hart announced his candidacy while standing in the Rocky Mountains. His wife (Vera Farmiga) is behind him, even if she chooses not to join him on the campaign trail. His campaign manager (J.K. Simmons) is welcoming new and idealistic volunteers to the campaign headquarters and encouraging them to remember that all of the difficulties of the campaign will be worth it after Gary Hart is elected president. As for the press, they’re investigating long-standing rumors that Hart is a womanizer. “Follow me around, you’ll get bored,” Hart says. So, two reporters from the Miami Herald (Bill Burr and Steve Zissis) do just that they catch a young woman named Donna Rice (Sara Paxton) apparently staying over at Gary Hart’s Florida townhouse.

“It’s nobody’s business!” Hart snaps, when asked about his private life and it’s obvious that the film expects us to take Hart’s side. The problem, as Hart’s campaign manager points out, is that a lot of people are volunteering for Hart’s campaign and have sacrificed a lot to help him out and now, if Hart doesn’t figure out some way to deal with the story, it looks like it was all for nothing. Even if Hart didn’t cheat with Rice, he still showed remarkably poor judgment in spending time alone with her in Florida while his wife was back in Colorado. The film argues that the press went overboard pursuing the story and perhaps they did. The press tends to do that and really, no politician has any excuse not to realize that. But, even if we accept the argument that the press acted unethically, that doesn’t exactly exonerate Gary Hart, though this film certainly seems to think that it does. To a certain extent, this film reminded me a bit of James Vanderbilt’s Truth, in which it was assumed we would be so outraged that Cate Blanchett’s Mary Mapes was fired for producing a story about George W. Bush’s time in the National Guard that we would overlook that Mapes and CBS news tried to build a major story around a bunch of obviously forged documents.

(Of course, if Hart had been running today, I doubt the scandal would have ended his campaign. If anything, Donald Trump’s personal scandals seemed to play to his advantage when he ran in 2016 and 2024. To a find a 21st Century equivalent to Hart’s scandal, you’d probably have to go all the way back to John Edwards in 2008. Of course, Edwards was cheating on his wife while she was dying of breast cancer, which makes Edwards a special type of sleaze.)

As for the film itself, director Jason Reitman tries to take a Altmanesque approach, full of overlapping dialogue and deceptively casual camera moments. There are a few moments when Reitman’s approach work. The start of the film, in which the camera glided over hundreds of journalists reporting from outside the 1984 Democratic Convention, was so well-handled that I briefly had hope for the rest of the film. Reitman gets good performances from dependable veterans like J.K. Simmons and Alfred Molina. But, at the heart of the film, there’s a massive blank as Hugh Jackman gives an oddly listless performance as Hart. The film expects us to take it for granted that Gary Hart would have been a good President but there’s nothing about Jackman’s performance to back that up. It’s odd because, typically, Hugh Jackman is one of the most charismatic actors around. But, as Gary Hart, he comes across as being petulant and a bit whiny.

It’s an interesting story but ultimately, The Front Runner doesn’t do it justice.

Last Man Standing (1996, directed by Walter Hill)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

During the 1920s, at the height of prohibition, a mysterious man named John Smith (Bruce Willis) arrives in the dusty town of Jericho. Jericho sits on the border, between Texas and Mexico, and it is the site of a gang war. The Italian mob, led by Fred Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg) and Giorgio Carmote (Michael Imperioli), is trying to move in on the Irish mob, led by Doyle (David Patrick Kelly) and his fearsome gunman, Hickey (Christopher Walken). After the members of the Irish mob destroy his car and leave him stranded in town, Smith offers his services as a gunman to the Italians. Strozzi hires him but it turns out that Smith has his own agenda and soon, he is manipulating both gangs against each other.

Last Man Standing was Walter Hill’s remake of Yojimbo, with Bruce Willis playing an Americanized version of Toshiro Minfune’s wandering ronin. (Hill does the right thing and gives Kurosawa credit for the film’s story.) Now, it should be understood that this is in no way a realistic film. It makes no sense for two Chicago-style gangs to be fighting over a ghost town in Texas. Even when it came to smuggling in liquor during the prohibition era, most of it came over the Canadian border rather than the Texas border. But Walter Hill has always been more about filming the legend than worrying about realism. He’s the ultimate stylist, creating movies the come together to create an American mythology. Last Man Standing is a work of pure style, a combination western/gangster movie that pays tribute to the ultimate samurai film. Gangsters meeting in the desert while tumbleweed rolls past may not make sense but Hill knows a good visual when he sees one and he makes it work. The plot is taken from Yojimbo. The western setting is taken from A Fistful of Dollars. And the gangsters are pure Americana.

Willis, back in his action star heyday, is quick with a gun and a quip and he gets a few scenes that show that, while he may be bad, he’s not as bad as the gangsters in charge of the town. Hill surrounds Willis with a cast of great character actors, including Bruce Dern as the cowardly sheriff and William Sanderson as the owner of the hotel. Though he might not be as well-known as some members of the cast, I especially liked Ken Jenkins as the Texas Ranger who informs Willis that he has ten days to finish up his business before the Rangers come to town and kill whoever is still standing. And then you’ve got Walken, in one of his best villainous roles. Hickey doesn’t show up until pretty late in the movie but we’ve spent so much time hearing about him that we already know he’s the most dangerous man in Texas and Walken gives a performance that lives up to the hype.

Unappreciated when it was first released, Last Man Standing has stood the test of time as one of Walter Hill’s best.

Days of Paranoia: Edmond (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Based on a one-act play by David Mamet, 2005’s Edmond tells the story of Edmond Burke (William H. Macy).

Edmond shares his name (if not the actual spelling) with the philosopher Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke was a strong believer that society had to put value in good manners to survive and that religious and moral institutions played an important role in promoting the idea of people treating each other with respect and decency. Edmund Burke knew what he believes and his writings continue to influence thinks to this day. Edmond Burke, on the other hand, doesn’t know what he believes. He doesn’t know who he wants to be. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel like he’s accomplished anything with his life. “I don’t feel like a man,” he says at one point to a racist bar patron (played by Joe Mantegna) who replies that Edmond needs to get laid.

On a whim, Edmond steps into the shop of a fortune teller (Frances Bay), who flips a few Tarot cards and then tells Edmond that “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.” Edmond takes her words to heart. He starts the night by telling his wife (played by Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon) that he’s leaving their apartment and he won’t be coming back. He goes to the bar, where he discusses his marriage with Mantegna. He goes to a strip club where he’s kicked out after he refuses to pay $100 for a drink. He goes to a peep show where he’s frustrated by the glass between him and the stripper and the stripper’s constant demand that he expose himself. He gets beaten in an alley by three men who were running a three-card monte scam. Edmond’s problem is that he left home without much cash and each encounter leads to him having less and less money. If he can’t pay, no one wants to help him, regardless of how much Edmond argues for a little kindness. He pawns his wedding ring for $120 but apparently, he just turns around and uses that money to buy a knife. An alley-way fight with a pimp leads to Edmond committing his first murder. A one-night stand with a waitress (a heart-breaking Julia Stiles) leads to a second murder after a conversation about whether or not the waitress is actually an actress leads to a sudden burst of violence. Edmond ends up eventually in prison, getting raped by his cellmate (Bookem Woodbine) and being told, “It happens.” Unable to accept that his actions have, in one night, led him from being a businessman to a prisoner, Edmond says, “I’m ready to go home now.” By the end of the film, Edmond realizes that perhaps he is now where he was meant to be.

It’s a disturbing film, all the more so because Edmond is played by the likable William H. Macy and watching Macy go from being a somewhat frustrated but mild-mannered businessman to becoming a blood-drenched, racial slur-shouting murderer is not a pleasant experience. Both the play and the film have generated a lot of controversy due to just how far Edmond goes. I don’t see either production as being an endorsement of Edmond or his actions. Instead, I see Edmond as a portrait of someone who, after a lifetime of being willfully blind to the world around him, ends up embracing all of the ugliness that he suddenly discovers around him. He’s driven mad by discovering, over the course of one night, that the world that is not as kind and well-mannered as he assumed that it was and it all hits him so suddenly that he can’t handle it. He discovers that he’s not special and that the world is largely indifferent to his feelings. He gets overwhelmed and, until he gets his hands on that knife, he feels powerless and emasculated. (The knife is an obvious phallic symbol.) It’s not until the film’s final scene that Edmond truly understands what he’s done and who he has become.

Edmond is not always an easy film to watch. The second murder scene is truly nightmarish, all the more so because the camera remains on Edmond as he’s drenched in blood. This is one of William H. Macy’s best performances and also one of his most disturbing characters. That said, it’s a play and a film that continues to be relevant today. There’s undoubtedly a lot of Edmonds out there.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Beyond The Trophy (dir by Daniel J. Gillin)

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Does this plot sound familiar?

There’s a gang war brewing. An undercover cop is sent into one of the gangs and ends up falling in love. Another cop is involved in the undercover operation but he’s actually working for one of the mob bosses. And then there’s a Russian mob boss who keeps complicating things. The whole thing plays out with a lot of scenes of people pointing guns at each other and randomly shouting before gunfire erupts. No one can trust. There’s plenty of twists. There’s narration from one of the mob bosses. The plot is actually pretty confusing as one person after another turns out to be working for someone else. The whole thing leads to so many betrayals that it almost become comical in its indulgence.

The Departed, you say?

No, this isn’t a Scorsese film. Instead, this is 2012’s Beyond The Trophy, which has a plot that borrows a lot from The Departed. Then again, the film actually borrows a lot from every other mobster film that’s ever been made. Most gangster films aren’t really about the activities of real-life gangsters as much as they’re about recreating the classic film scenes that the director enjoyed while growing up. As a result, we get a few Scorsese-style freeze frames to go along with the narration. We get plenty of Tarantino-style stand-offs. We got the Russian mob because every film has to have the Russian mob nowadays.

We also get Michael Madsen and Eric Roberts. Roberts plays Sgt. Bachman and his role is small. He smiles while barking out orders and he looks after his daughter, another undercover cop named Chastity (Brooke Newton). Roberts doesn’t get to do much and I’m not sure how many big city police departments are run by people with long hair but he’s Eric Roberts. You can’t help but love him. As for Madsen, he narrates in his trademark threatening whisper. Madsen is one of those actors who was born to play tough guys so he’s credible as a mob boss, even if he doesn’t really put much effort into the film. You can usually tell whether or not Madsen is invested in a film by whether or not he bothers to wash his hair. For the most part, his hair look pretty oily in this film.

The majority of the film revolves around Stephen Cloud and Michael Masini as the two cops and they both give credible-enough performances. Because the script is basically just a recreation of scenes from other mob films, neither one really gets a chance to surprise us. The one member of the cast who actually does manage to break free and make an impression is Robert Miano, who makes his Vegas mob boss into a somewhat sympathetic figure.

File this one under standard mafia nonsense.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Insomnia File #69: Candy (dir by Christian Marquand)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep tonight, you can always pass the time by watching the 1968 film, Candy. It’s currently on Tubi.

Based on a satirical novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Candy follows Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin), a naive teenager from middle America as she has a number of increasingly surreal adventures, the majority of which end with her getting sexually assaulted by one of the film’s special guest stars. It’s very much a film of the 60s, in that it’s anti-establishment without actually seeming to know who the establishment is. It opens with a lengthy sequence that appears to be taking place in outer space. It ends with an extended sequence of Candy walking amongst the film’s cast and a bunch of random hippies. Director Christian Marquand appears as himself, directing the film. Yep, this is one of those films where the director and the film crew show up and you’re supposed to be say, “Far out, I didn’t realize I was watching a movie, man.”

The whole thing is a bit of a misfire. The novel was meant to be smut that satirized smut. The film isn’t really clever enough to work on any sort of real satirical level. As was the case with a lot of studio-made “psychedelic” films in the 60s, everything is a bit too obvious and overdone. Casting the Swedish Ewa Aulin as a character who was meant to represent middle America was just one of the film’s missteps. Based on The Graduate, Mike Nichols probably could have made a clever film out of Candy. The French Christian Marquand, a protegee of Roger Vadim’s, can not because he refuses to get out of the film’s way. It’s all jump cuts, flashy cinematography, and attempts to poke fun at American culture by someone who obviously knew nothing about America beyond the jokes told in Paris.

That said, the main reason that anyone would watch this film would be for the collection of guest stars who all show up and try to take advantage of Candy. Richard Burton plays an alcoholic poet named MacPhisto and his appearance goes on for far too long. (Burton, not surprisingly, appears to actually be drunk for the majority of his scenes.) Ringo Star — yes, Ringo Starr — plays a Mexican gardener who assaults Candy after getting turned on by the sight of MacPhisto humping a mannequin. When Emmanuel’s sisters try to attack Candy, she and her parents escape on a military plane that is commanded by Walter Matthau. Landing in New York, Candy’s brain-damaged father (John Astin) is operated on by a brilliant doctor (James Coburn) who later seduces Candy after she faints at a cocktail party. Candy’s uncle (John Astin, again) also tries to seduce Candy, leading to Candy getting lost in New York, meeting a hunchback (Charles Aznavour), and then eventually ending up with a guru (Marlon Brando). Candy’s adventures climax with a particularly sick joke that requires a bit more skill to pull off than this film can afford.

If you’re wondering how all of these famous people ended up in this movie, you have Brando to thank (or blame). Christian Marquand was Brando’s best friend and Marlon even named his son after him. After Brando agreed to appear in the film, the rest of the actors followed. Brando, Burton, and Coburn received a share of the film’s profits and Coburn later said that his entire post-1968 lifestyle was pretty much paid for by Candy. That seems appropriate as, out of all the guest stars, Coburn i the only one who actually gives an interesting performance. Burton is too drunk, Matthau is too embarrassed, Starr is too amateurish, and Brando is too self-amused to really be interesting in the film. Coburn, however, seems to be having a blast, playing his doctor as being a medical cult leader.

Candy is very much a film of 1968. It has some value as a cultural relic. Ultimately, it’s main interest is as an example of how the studios tried (and failed) to latch onto the counterculture zeitgeist.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Story of Mankind
Stag
Love Is A Gun
Nina Takes A Lover
Black Ice
Frogs For Snakes
Fair Game
From The Hip
Born Killers
Eye For An Eye
Summer Catch
Beyond the Law
Spring Broke
Promise
George Wallace
Kill The Messenger
The Suburbans
Only The Strong
Great Expectations
Casual Sex?
Truth
Insomina
Death Do Us Part
A Star is Born
The Winning Season
Rabbit Run
Remember My Name
The Arrangement
Day of the Animals
Still of The Night
Arsenal
Smooth Talk
The Comedian
The Minus Man
Donnie Brasco
Punchline
Evita
Six: The Mark Unleashed
Disclosure
The Spanish Prisoner
Elektra
Revenge
Legend
Cat Run
The Pyramid
Enter the Ninja
Downhill
Malice
Mystery Date
Zola
Ira & Abby
The Next Karate Kid
A Nightmare on Drug Street
Jud
FTA
Exterminators of the Year 3000
Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
The Haunting of Helen Walker
True Spirit
Project Kill
Replica
Rollergator
Hillbillys In A Haunted House
Once Upon A Midnight Scary
Girl Lost
Ghosts Can’t Do It
Heist
Mind, Body & Soul

One-Eyed Jacks (1961, directed by Marlon Brando)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Rio (Marlon Brando), a young outlaw in the Old West, is betrayed by his partner and mentor Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and ends up spending five years in a Mexican prison. When Rio escapes, he gets together a new gang and heads for Monterey, California. He wants to both get his revenge on Longworth and also rob the local bank. Things get complicated when Rio actually confronts Longworth and suddenly realizes that he can’t bring himself just to gun the man down in cold blood. Rio is not as ruthless of an outlaw as he thought he was.

However, Rio then meets and falls in love with Louisa (Pina Pellicer), Longworth’s stepdaughter Longworth is willing to do whatever he has to keep Rio away from Louisa and, when Rio starts to think about going straight in an effort to win Louisa’s love, his new gang turn out to be even less trustworthy than his old partners.

A teenage rebellion film disguised as a western (and it’s not a coincidence that the main bad guy is named Dad), One-Eyed Jacks was Marlon Brando’s only film as a director. The film was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who was working from a script written by a once-in-a-lifetime combination of Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah. Kubrick and Brando worked together to develop the film, with Brando insisting on Karl Malden as Dad. (Kubrick wanted to cast Spencer Tracy.) Ultimately realizing that working on One-Eyed Jacks would mean essentially taking orders from his star, Kubrick stepped down from directing so he could focus on Lolita and Brando took over as director. The film finally went into production in 1958 and would not be released until 1961. Brando’s perfectionism was blamed for the film going massively overbudget and, when it was finally released, One-Eyed Jacks was the first of Brando’s films to lose money. The combined box office failures of One-Eyed Jacks and the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty left Brando in the cinematic wilderness for much of the 60s.

As for the film itself, One-Eyed Jacks takes what should have been a simple story and attempts to turn into an epic. Rio spends a good deal of time brooding and the film seems to brood right along with him. What starts out as a western becomes a forbidden love story as Rio and Louisa fall for each other. Dad Longworth may be an outlaw-turned-sheriff but Malden plays him more as a possessive father who can’t handle that his two stepchildren — Rio and Louisa — are both turning against him and his strict rules. Brando obviously viewed the film as being something bigger than a standard western. Sometimes, his direction works and he does manage to get the epic feel that he was going for. Other times, the film itself seems to be unsure what direction it wants to go in telling its story. This is method directing.

Ultimately, One-Eyed Jacks is an interesting experiment, one that doesn’t really work but which still features Charles Lang’s outstanding cinematography and one of Karl Malden’s best performances. As Brando’s only directorial effort, the film is a curiosity piece, one that will be best enjoyed by western fans who have the patience for something a little different. And, for what it’s worth, based on the film’s visual beauty and the performances that he gets from the cat, I think Brando could have developed into a fine director with a little more experience. However, it was not to be.

Film Review: A Dry White Season (dir by Euzhan Palcy)

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1990, Marlon Brando received his final Academy Award nomination when he was nominated for his supporting performance in 1989’s A Dry White Season.

Brando played Ian McKenzie, a human rights lawyer who lives and work in South Africa at the height of the Apartheid regime. When we first see McKenzie, he’s sitting in his office and complaining about how all the flowers surrounding him have given him a permanent allergy. When Ben Du Toit (Donald Sutherland) explains that he’s trying to learn the truth about why his gardener and his gardener’s son both died in the custody of South Africa’s “special branch,” McKenzie replies that bringing the case would be a waste of time. McKenzie makes several dismissive comments about the case and tells Du Toit that pursing the matter would lead to Du Toit becoming a pariah himself. Only when Du Toit says that he’ll just find another lawyer to pursue the manner does McKenzie agree to take the case. His comments may have seemed callous but they were McKenzie’s way of testing Du Toit’s commitment to actually getting to the truth.

Up until the death of his gardener, Ben Du Toit was someone who blindly believed in the system. A former rugby star and a teacher, Ben grew up in South Africa and is proud to call himself a “true African.” (In one of the film’s best scenes, Ben’s driver, Stanley — played by Zakes Mokae, — informs Ben that being an African in South Africa means not being allowed to vote and having to carry identification papers everywhere with him.) When the gardener’s son is first arrested, Ben repeatedly says, “He must have done something.” When Ben’s gardener is arrested, Ben believes that it’s all just a terrible mistake and that he’ll be released soon. Even after the gardener is killed, Ben initially believes the official story that the death was a suicide. It’s only after Stanley takes Ben to the funeral home and shows him the gardener’s tortured body that Ben finally comes to realize that he was tortured to death by Captain Stolz (Jurgen Prochow).

Still, Ben is naive enough to assume that McKenzie will be able to get some sort of justice. In court, McKenzie easily exposes the flaws in Stolz’s story. When Stolz claims that the dead man’s injuries were the result of the man throwing himself against the bars of his cell, McKenzie mentions that the man’s back was injured and then asks if he was throwing himself backwards. Stolz smirks and says that the man was “an animal.” McKenzie may be a brilliant lawyer but it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s going to lose the case. Stolz is exonerated and the expression on McKenzie’s face is one that indicate that he is not surprised at all.

It’s a small role. Brando gets less than ten minutes of screentime but he makes perfect use of them and shows that, even in the latter half of his career, Brando could still give a good performance when he cared about the material. Both Brando and Susan Sarandon took small roles in this anti-Apartheid drama because they believed in the message. Sarandon’s casting is a bit distracting. She never becomes the journalist she’s playing, instead she just seems like a movie star lending her name to a cause that she believes in. But Brando becomes Ian McKenzie and he expertly reveals the absurd lengths to which the Apartheid government will go to excuse its actions.

The majority of the film deals with Ben Du Toit and his slow-awakening about the truth of the country that he calls home. Upon realizing the truth about the country’s government and its actions, Du Toit declares that he can no longer go back to being who he once was and it costs him his family, his home, and ultimately his life. Donald Sutherland does a wonderful job, portraying Du Toit’s growing understanding of what’s actually happening in South Africa. Wisely, the film doesn’t portray Du Toit as being a saint. It fully understands that Du Toit only started to care about Apartheid when it effected somebody that he knew and fortunately, Stanley is always there to call Du Toit out whenever he starts to forget about his own role in supporting the system that he now opposes. It’s a powerful and heartfelt film, one that is well-known for Brando’s performance but works just as well when Brando is off-screen as well.