Category Archives: Film Review

Film Review: The Cardinal (dir by Otto Preminger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1963 film, The Cardinal, opens with an Irish-American priest named Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tyron) being instituted as a cardinal.

In a series of flashbacks, we see everything that led to this moment.  Stephen starts out as an overly ambitious and somewhat didactic priest who, over the years, is taught to be humble by a series of tragedies and mentors.  It’s a sprawling story, one that encompasses the first half of the 20th Century and, as he did with both Exodus and Advice and Consent, Preminger tells his story through the presence of several familiar faces.  Director John Huston plays the cardinal who takes an early interest in Stephen’s career.  Burgess Meredith plays a priest with MS who teaches Stephen about the importance of remaining humble and thankful.  When Stephen is in Europe, Romy Schneider plays the woman for whom he momentarily considers abandoning his vows.  When Stephen is assigned to the American South, Ossie Davis plays the priest and civil rights activist who teaches Stephen about the importance of standing up for those being oppressed.  In the days leading up to World War II, Stephen is sent to Austria to try to keep the local clergy from allying with the invading Nazis.  Stephen also deals with his own family drama, as his sister (Carol Lynley) runs away from home after Stephen counsels her not to marry a good Jewish man named Benny (John Saxon) unless Benny can be convinced the convert to Catholicism.  Later, when his sister becomes pregnant and Stephen is told that she’ll die unless she has an abortion, Stephen is forced to choose between his own feelings and teachings of the Church.  Along the way, performers like Dorothy Gish, Cecil Kellaway, Chill Wills, Raf Vallone, Jill Haworth, Maggie McNamara, Arthur Hunnicut, and Robert Morse all make appearances.

All of the familiar faces in the cast are used to support Tom Tryon and Tryon needs all the support that he can get.  Despite Otto Preminger’s attempts to make Tom Tyron into a star, Tryon eventually retired from acting and found far more success as a writer of the type of fiction that Stephen Fermoyle probably would have condemned as blasphemous.  Tryon gives a stiff and unconvincing performance in The Cardinal.  The entire film depends on Tryon’s ability to get us to like Stephen, even when he’s being self-righteous or when he’s full of self-pity and, unfortunately, Tryon’s stiff performance makes him into the epitome of the type of priest that everyone dreads having to deal with.  Tryon gives such a boring performance that he’s overshadowed by the rest of the cast.  I spent the movie wishing that it would have spent more time with John Saxon and Burgess Meredith, both of whom give interesting and lively performances.

The Cardinal is a long and rather self-important film.  The same can be said of many of Preminger’s films in the 60s but Exodus benefitted from the movie star glamour of Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint and Advice and Consent was saved by an intelligent script.  The Cardinal, on the other hand, is a bit draggy and makes many of the same mistakes that many secular films make when they try to portray Catholicism.  Oddly enough, The Cardinal received more Oscar nominations than either Exodus or Advice and Consent.  Indeed, Preminger was even nominated for Best Director for his rather uninspired work here.  Considering the number of good films for which Preminger was not nominated (Anatomy of a Murder comes to mind), it’s a bit odd that The Cardinal was the film for which he was nominated.  (Of course, in 1944, the Academy got it right by nominating Preminger for his direction of Laura.)  The Cardinal is largely forgettable, though interesting as a type of self-consciously “big” films that the studios were churning out in the 60s in order to compete with television and the counterculture.

Film Review: Exodus (dir by Otto Preminger)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1960 and based on a novel by Leon Uris, Otto Preminger’s Exodous is two films in one.

The first half of the film takes place in Cyprus in the days immediately following World War II.  A young war widow named Kitty (Eva Marie Saint) is sightseeing when she learns of the Karaolos Internment Camp, where the British are interning thousands of Jewish refugees who demand to be allowed to go to the land that will eventually become the State of Israel.  Kitty visits with General Sutherland (Ralph Richardson), who oversees the camp and who is rumored to secretly be Jewish because of his relatively benevolent attitude towards the internees.  Disgusted by the anti-Semitism displayed by many of the British officers (one of whom is played by Kennedy in-law Peter Lawford), Kitty volunteers at the camp and learns about the Holocaust from those who survived it.  She also meets Ari Ben Caanan (Paul Newman), a former officer in the British army.  Ari manages to get control of a cargo ship, one that is renamed Exodus.  Six hundred refugees stage a hunger strike, vowing that they will willingly starve to death rather than be returned to Europe.

The second part of Exodus takes place in what will become the modern State of Israel.  It follows Ari, Kitty, and several of the passengers of the Exodus as they adjust to life and continue to fight for a land of their own, despite the opposition of the British and much of the rest of the world.  Karen (Jill Haworth) is a young woman who searches for her father, a brilliant man who has been driven into a nearly catatonic state by the horrors of the Holocaust.  Dov Landau (Sal Mineo) is an explosives expert who survived Auschwitz as a Sonderkommando and who was repeatedly raped by the guards at the camp.  Dov joins the Irgun, a paramilitary organization that the British consider to be terrorists.  Leading the Irgun is Ari’s uncle, Akiva (David Opatoshu), and Dov soon finds himself being targeted by both the British and the Arabs who, despite the moderating efforts of men like Taha (John Derek, who would later direct Ghosts Can’t Do It), want to violently force the Jews out of the land.

Legend has it that, after a private screening on Exodus, comedian Mort Sahl turned to director Otto Preminger and said, “Otto, let my people go.”  And it’s true that Exodus is a very long film.  Preminger, who started out making film noirs like Laura, spent the latter part of his career making “important” epics and, like many Golden Age directors struggling to compete with television and the 60s counterculture, he tended to make long, star-studded films that dealt with current events and which pushed the envelope just enough to be controversial without actually being radical.  However, I would argue that the three-hour running time of Exodus is justified.  To understand why Ari, Dov, Karen, and the other passengers of the Exodus would rather risk their lives by staying in what will become the State of Israel, one has to understand both what they went through to get there and also the anti-Semitism that they faced even in post-World War II Europe.  If Exodus were made today, it would be a mini-series.  Since it was made in 1960, it was instead a 3-hour film with an intermission.

Exodus holds up relatively well, with the sprawling action anchored by the presence of a cast of familiar faces.  Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint bring a good deal of movie star glamour to scenes that would have otherwise just been dry exposition.  The film’s heart truly belongs to Jill Haworth and Sal Mineo, both of whom bring two life characters who have very differing views of the world.  Karen remains an optimist, one who is convinced that people can live together.  Dov, fueled by his own guilt and anger, has no room for negotiations and compromises.  Mineo received his second and last Oscar nomination for his performance in Exodus, though he lost to Peter Ustinov’s showy turn in Spartacus.  Exodus itself was clearly made with a hope for Oscar glory.  While Exodus did pick up a handful of nominations, it was left out of the five movie Best Picture slate.  The Academy only had room for one historical epic and they went for John Wayne’s The Alamo.  The eventual winner was The Apartment, the best of the nominated films.  (Indeed, even if Exodus had taken the Alamo’s spot, The Apartment would still be the best of the nominees.)  The Oscars aside, Exodus remains a good example of the type of epic filmmaking that once defined the Hollywood studios.

The Art Of War (2000, directed by Christian Duguay)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In The Art of War, Wesley Snipes plays Neil Shaw, an UN operative who is framed for the assassination of a Chinese diplomat and who must uncover the real conspiracy while also proving his innocence.  Proving his innocence means engaging in a lot of conflict while using investigation techniques that were cribbed from the Mission Impossible films.

Featuring a lot of war but not much art, The Art of War has a few good action scenes and an overly convoluted storyline that sometimes makes the film feel like a retread of another film in which Snipes was framed for a crime he did not commit, U.S. Marshals.  It’s hard to take seriously any action hero who works for the United Nations but Wesley Snipes is credible in the action scenes and he could deliver a one-liner with the best of them.  (Of all the bad things you can say about the IRS, the worst is that it put one of our best action stars in prison.  Unforgivable!)  The supporting cast is good, featuring Donald Sutherland, Maury Chaykin, Anne Archer, and Michael Biehn.  The final battle between Snipes and the person who is revealed to be the main villain is exciting but, overall, The Art of War is overlong and overcomplicated.  Neil Shaw is cool but he’s no Blade.

#SundayShorts with WEDLOCK (1991)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Since Sunday is a day of rest for a lot of people, I present #SundayShorts, a weekly mini review of a movie I’ve recently watched.

Master diamond thief Frank Warren (Rutger Hauer) pulls off a big job with the help of his fiancé Noelle (Joan Chen) and his best friend Sam (James Remar). Unfortunately, after the job is finished, Noelle unceremoniously ends her courtship with Frank when she shoots him multiple times because she’s now hooked up with Sam. The next time we see Frank, who somehow survived the close-range shootings, he’s on a bus to a prison called Camp Holliday, which is run by Warden Holliday (Stephen Tobolowsky). Camp Holliday is a high-tech prison where each inmate is gifted a collar containing an explosive device that also happens to be electronically connected to another inmate. As long as the two prisoners are within 100 yards from each other, it’s all good. If they are separated by more than 100 yards, their collars will explode leaving a bloody nub where their head used to be. And since nobody knows who their “wedlock partner” is, trying to escape is not a strong option. One day fellow prisoner Tracy Riggs (Mimi Rogers) comes to Frank and tells him that she’s his wedlock partner. Through a variety of circumstances, the two are able to escape, but they still must maintain their 100-yard proximity as the authorities try to track them down. Meanwhile, Sam and Noelle, and even Warden Holliday, have all teamed up to try to find where Frank stashed the diamonds prior to heading to prison. And what about Tracy, who’s side is she really on?

I didn’t have the Home Box Office channel when I was growing up, so I wasn’t aware of this film until it premiered on home video as “DEADLOCK.” Of course, being a huge fan of Rutger Hauer, I rented it as soon as possible. The key to lower budget, made-for TV movies working will always be tied to three things: an entertaining premise, a game cast, and a director who can put the movie together. I’m happy to report that WEDLOCK has each of these things. Even though we had seen exploding neck collars in prison before in THE RUNNING MAN (1987), I like the way this film ties one prisoner’s fate to another’s. That extra dimension makes for some exciting moments in the film. Rutger Hauer is especially good in WEDLOCK. If any other actor was in the lead, I honestly doubt I would have enjoyed it as much, but with him it becomes a fun movie. And the fact that he’s tied to the beautiful Mimi Rogers for most of the movie makes it that much more fun. The remainder of the cast goes pretty far over the top, but that’s okay because subtle character portrayals are not part of the equation in these types of movies. James Remar and Joan Chen are fun as the initial betrayers and current pursuers, Basil Wallace is effectively evil as a bully and fellow inmate, and Stephen Tobolowsky is his usual fun self as Warden Holliday.  Director Lewis Teague has a pretty nice resume of interesting films leading up to WEDLOCK, including ALLIGATOR (1980), FIGHTING BACK (1982), CUJO (1983), CAT’S EYE (1985), and NAVY SEALS (1990). He does a fine job here, as the movie has many well executed scenes that play out at a nice pace. Overall, I’ve always been a fan of low budget action movies that are done well. This one fits the bill for me.  

Five Fast Facts:

  1. Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen worked on 3 films together, including WEDLOCK. I have a soft spot in my heart for their film THE BLOOD OF HEROES (1989) and recommend it. I thought their other movie, PRECIOUS FIND (1996) was pretty bad. I watched it one time in the 90’s and haven’t watched it since.
  2. WEDLOCK received a Primetime Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Editing for a Miniseries or a Special.”
  3. Even though WEDLOCK was set “in the future,” early in the film we see a movie theater marquee showing the Steven Seagal movie MARKED FOR DEATH (1990). I found that interesting considering that Basil Wallace is a bad guy in WEDLOCK, and he played twin brother bad guys in MARKED FOR DEATH. Danny Trejo also has small parts in both WEDLOCK and MARKED FOR DEATH.
  4. Mimi Rogers starred in another film in 1991 called THE RAPTURE. It’s a thought-provoking film that some people love, and some people hate. I personally found it intriguing, and it features a really strong performance from Rogers.
  5. In 1995, the film DEADLOCK 2 was released. It’s not a sequel as it doesn’t build on the events of the first film or bring back any of the characters, but it is set in a world of exploding prison collars. The film stars Esai Morales and Nia Peeples.  

When I rented the film in the early 90’s, it was called DEADLOCK. I’m sure I owned it on VHS at one point in my life.

Check out the trailer below:

Ghosts of Sundance Past: In The Company Of Men (dir by Neil LaBute)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

1997’s In The Company of Men is a film about two guys playing a series of very viscous jokes.

Howard (Matt Malloy) and Chad (Aaron Eckhart) are two mid-level executives who have been sent to work at a branch office for six weeks.  While Chad is talkative and aggressive, Howard is much more meek and often seems to be in awe of the far more confident Chad.  What the two men have in common is a lot of resentment and bitterness towards women.  Chad suggests that they should both date a woman at the same time and fool her into falling for both of them.  Then, they’ll both dump her at the same time.  Chad has even picked out a victim, Christine (Stacy Edwards), a deaf and introverted co-worker.

That Chad would come up with such a cruel scheme really isn’t a surprise.  From the first minute that we see Chad, we think we can tell what type of person he is.  Because this is a movie, we hold on to hope that Chad will somehow reveal that he’s not as bad as he seems but, in the end, the whole point of the film is that Chad is not only as bad as we initially think he is but he’s actually even worse.  Howard, on the other hand, comes across like a rather mild-mannered guy, the stereotypical nerdy mid-level manager who no one ever notices.  Howard could never come up with a scheme like this on his own but, once Chad suggests it, Howard agrees.  Howard is a natural follower.  He looks at Chad and he sees who he wants to be.  Chad looks at Howard and sees someone who he can easily manipulate.

Chad and Howard set their plan in motion and yes, it is difficult to watch as they both pretend to be falling in love with the sensitive Christine while making cruel fun of her behind her back.  Again, we know that at least one of the men is going to have second thoughts and try to back out of the plan.  We know this because we’re watching a movie.  We spend most of the movie hoping that Chad is going to be the one to find his conscience because Aaron Eckhart is the more charismatic of the two men and Chad is the one with whom Christine seems to be truly falling in love.  Instead, it’s Howard who falls in love with Christine while Chad remains as sociopathic as ever.  By the end of the film, Chad reveals just how manipulative he truly is and Howard discovers that Christine was not the only victim of Chad’s joke.

In The Company Of Men is not an easy film to watch.  The comments that Chad and Howard make are shockingly cruel, though one gets the feeling that they’re probably an accurate reflection of what men like Chad and Howard sound like when they’re in private.  Director Neil LaBute doesn’t make any effort to soften or excuse their misogyny.  It’s a testament to the talents of Eckhart, Malloy, and Edwards that we stick with the film.  In the end, In The Company Of Men is an unsettling portrait of misogyny and toxic masculinity, one that is made all the more disturbing by Aaron Eckhart’s charismatic performance as a truly despicable person.  The film uses Eckhart’s middle-American good looks to subversive effect and, even when he’s playing such a hateful character, there’s something undeniably fascinating about him.  You watch his performance of Chad and you’re almost desperate to find some sort of good inside of him.  It’s not there, though.  That’s what is truly frightening about In The Company Of Men.

As the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, In The Company Of Men won the Filmmaker’s Trophy.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Reds (dir by Warren Beatty)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1981 film Reds, Warren Beatty plays Jack Reed, the radical journalist who, at the turn of the century, wrote one of the first non-fiction books about Russia’s communist revolution and then went on to work as a propagandist for the communists before becoming disillusioned with the new Russian government and then promptly dying at the age of 32.

Diane Keaton plays Louise Bryant, the feminist writer who became Reed’s lover and eventually his wife.  Louise found fame as one of the first female war correspondents but then she also found infamy when she was called before a Congressional committee and accused of being a subversive.

Jack Nicholson plays Eugene O’Neill, the playwright who was a friend of both Reed and Bryant’s and who had a brief affair with Bryant while Reed was off covering labor strikes and the 1916 Democratic Convention.

Lastly, Maureen Stapleton plays Emma Goldman, the anarchist leader who was kicked out of the country after one of her stupid little dumbass followers assassinated President McKinley.  (Seriously, don’t get me started on that little jerk Leon Czolgosz.)

Together …. well, I was going to say that they solve crimes but that joke is perhaps a bit too flippant for a review of Reds.  Reds is a big serious film about the left-wing activists at the turn of the century, one in which the characters move from one labor riot to another and generally live the life of wealthy bohemians.  Reed spends the film promoting communism, just to be terribly disillusioned when the communists actually come to power in Russia.  For a history nerd like me, the film is interesting.  For those who are not quite as obsessed with history, the film is extremely long and the scenes of Reed and Bryant’s domestic dramas often feel a bit predictable, especially when they’re taking place against such a large international tableaux.  At its best, the film is almost a Rorschach test for how the viewer feels about political and labor activists.  Do you look at Jack Reed and Louise Bryant and see two inspiring warriors for the cause or do you see two wealthy people playing at being revolutionaries?

Reds was a film that Warren Beatty spent close to 20 years trying to make, despite the fact that the heads of the Hollywood studios all told him that audiences would never show up for an epic film about a bunch of wealthy communists.  (The heads of the studio turned out to be correct, as the film was critically acclaimed but hardly a success at the box office.)  It was only after the success of the 1978, Beatty-directed best picture nominee Heaven Can Wait that Beatty was finally able to get financing for his dream project.  He ended up directing, producing, and writing the film himself and he cast his friend Jack Nicholson as O’Neill and his then-romantic partner Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant.  (Gene Hackman, Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde co-star, shows up briefly as one of Reed’s editors.)  One left-wing generation’s tribute to an early left-wing generation, Reds is fully a Warren Beatty production and, for his efforts, Beatty was honored with the Oscar for Best Director.  That said, the Reds lost the award for Best Picture to another historical epic, Chariots of Fire.  Chariots of Fire featured no communists and did quite well at the box office.

The film is good but a bit uneven, especially towards the end when we suddenly get scenes of Louise Bryant trudging through Finland as she attempts to make it to Russia to be reunited with Reed.  The film actually works best when it features interviews with people who were actual contemporaries of Reed and Bryant and who share their own memoires of the time.  In fact, the interviews work almost too well.  The “witnesses,” as the film refers to them, paint such a vivid picture of the Reed, Bryant, and turn of the century America that Beatty’s attempt to cinematically recreate history often can’t compete.  One can’t help but feel that Beatty perhaps should have just made a documentary instead of a narrative film.

(Interestingly enough, many of the witnesses were people who were sympathetic to Reed’s politics in at the start of the century but then moved much more to the right as the years passed.  Reed’s friend and college roommate, Hamilton Fish, went on to become a prominent Republican congressman and a prominent critics of FDR.)

That said, Jack Nicholson gives a fantastic performance as Eugene O’Neill, adding some much needed cynicism to the film’s portrayal of Reed and Bryant’s idealism.  Keaton and Beatty sometime both seem to be struggling to escape their own well-worn personas as Bryant and Reed but Beatty does really sell Reed’s eventually disillusionment with Russia and the scene where he finally tells off his Russian handler made me want to cheer.  Fans of great character acting will want to keep an eye out for everyone from Paul Sorvino to William Daniels to Edward Herrmann to M. Emmet Walsh and IanWolfe, all popping up in small roles.

Reds is not a perfect film but, as a lover of history, I enjoyed it.

 

The Challenge (1982, directed by John Frankenheimer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Rick Murphy (Scott Glenn) is a punch-drunk boxer who is hired to return an ancient sword to Japan so that it can be returned to its rightful owner, the honorable Toru (Toshiro Mifune).  Once in Japan, Rick becomes involved in a battle between Toru and his corrupt brother, Hideo (Atsuo Nakamura).  Hideo demands that Rick work as an undercover spy in Toru’s martial arts school or be beheaded.  Rick decides to keep his head and be a spy but he soon finds himself truly wanting to learn the ways of the Bushido.

A martial arts film is the last place most people would expect to find Scott Glenn and considering how miscast Glenn is, that’s understandable.  Scott Glenn feels very out-of-place as both a boxer and a modern-day samurai.  Scott Glenn is a very good actor but the role of Rick Murphy called for someone who could mix comedy with drama and be convincingly desperate.  That’s not Scott Glenn.  Who would have been better in the role?  Tom Berenger was already acting in 1982.  Or maybe even someone like Jan-Michael Vincent.  Vincent was a B-actor but, deep down, The Challenge is a B-movie.

The good thing is that the action often does make up for Glenn’s miscasting.  John Frankenheimer struggled with making the human drama compelling but he knew how to film a good fight.  John Sayles’s script is pulpy without ever being disrespectful to Japanese culture and, as always, Mifune looks like he could battle and defeat the entire world if he wanted to.

One final note: Steven Seagal worked behind-the-scenes on the film but we won’t hold that against it.

Film Review: The Straight Story (by David Lynch)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released in 1999, The Straight Story is one of the greatest films ever made about America.

Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) is an elderly veteran of World War II.  He lives in Iowa, a kind but rather taciturn man who doesn’t have time for doctors and would rather live on his own terms.  That said, when his daughter (Sissy Spacek) finally does manage to drag Alvin to a doctor, he’s told to stop smoking and to start using a walker to get around.  Alvin refuses, though he does start using two canes.  Alvin is an old man.  He’s lived a long time and, in his opinion, he knows best about what he needs to do.

For instance, when Alvin hears that his long-estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton), has had a stroke, Alvin decides that he need to go Wisconsin to see him.  The only problem is that Alvin can barely see and he can’t walk and there’s no way anyone is going to give him a car or even a driver’s license.  His solution is to ride a lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin.

It’s based on a true story and if The Straight Story sounds like a film that will make you cry, it is.  Richard Farnsworth was terminally ill when he was offered the role of Alvin and he accepted because he admired Alvin’s determination to live life his own way.  As portrayed in the film, Alvin is not one to easily betray his emotions.  He grew up as a part of that stoic generation.  He saw his share of violence and death while he was serving during World War II and one gets the feeling that his attitude has always been that, if he could survive that, he can survive anything.  (The closest Alvin gets to becoming openly emotional is when he meets another veteran in a bar and it becomes obvious that the two of them share a bond that, as people who seen and survived war, only they can really understand.)  Farnsworth so completely becomes Alvin Straight that it’s easy to forger that he was a veteran actor who had a long career before starring in The Straight Story.  Alvin may not show much emotion but Farnsworth communicates so much with just the weariness in his eyes and his slow but determined gait that we feel like we know everything about him.

The film follows Alvin on his way to Wisconsin.  Along the way, he meets various people and, for the most part, they’re all good folks.  Even the runaway hitchhiker (Anastasia Webb) turns out to be a kind soul.  When Alvin momentarily loses control of his lawn mower, a group of stranger run out to help him.  They don’t know who he is or why he was riding his lawnmower down the street.  All that matter is that, at that moment, he’s a person who needs help.  The Straight Story celebrates both the beauty and the people of America.  It’s one of the most sincere and life-affirming films ever made, one that contains not a trace of cynicism and which is all the better for it.  And while many people might be shocked to discover that this film was directed by David Lynch, the truth of the matter is that a strong love for America and Americana runs through all of Lynch’s films.  Lynch was an artist who believed that people could surprise you with their kindness and that’s certainly the case with The Straight Story.

The Straight Story was the only one of David Lynch’s films to receive a G-rating.  It was also the only film that Lynch made for Disney.  It’s interesting to look at Lynch’s filmography and see this heartfelt and deeply touching film sitting between Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.  But The Straight Story really does feature David Lynch at his best.  It also reveals him as a filmmaker who could do something unexpected without compromising his signature vision.  There’s a lot of beautiful, Lynchian images in The Straight Story.  But there’s also a lot of heart.

Ghosts of Sundance Past: Longtime Companion (dir by Norman Rene)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently underway in Utah.  For the next few days, I’ll be taking a look at some of the films that have previously won awards at Sundance.

First released in 1990, Longtime Companion was one of the first mainstream feature films to deal with the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

The film follows a group of friends and lovers over the course of ten years.  The film opens with a crowded and joyous 4th of July weekend at Fire Island.  Willy (Campbell Scott) is a personal trainer who has just started a relationship with an entertainment lawyer who, due to his beard, is nicknamed Fuzzy (Stephen Caffrey).  Willy’s best friend is the personable and popular John (Dermot Mulroney).  David (Bruce Davison) and Sean (Mark Lamos) are the elder couple of the group.  Sean writes for a soap opera and one of Fuzzy’s clients, Howard (Patrick Cassidy), has just landed a role on the show.  He’ll be playing a gay character, even though everyone warns him that the role will lead to him getting typecast.  The group’s straight friend is Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker), an antique dealer who lives next door to Howard and who is Fuzzy’s sister.  The film takes it times showing us the friendships and the relationships between these characters, allowing us to get to know them all as individuals.

Even as the group celebrates the 4th, they are talking about an article in the New York Times about the rise of a “gay cancer.”  Some members of the group are concerned but the majority simply shrug it off as another out-there rumor.

The movie moves quickly, from one year to another.  John, the youngest of them, is the first member of the group to die, passing away alone in a hospital room while hooked up to a respirator.  (The sound of the respirator is one of the most haunting parts of the film.)  Sean soon becomes ill and starts to dramatically deteriorate.  It falls to David to take care of Sean and to even ghostwrite his scripts for the soap opera.  Howard’s acting career is sabotaged by rumors that he has AIDS while Willy and Fuzzy tentatively try to have a relationship at time when they’re not even sure how AIDS is transmitted.  At one point, Willy visits a friend in the hospital and then furiously scrubs his skin in case he’s somehow been infected.  When one member of the group passes, his lover is referred to as being his “longtime companion” in the obituary.  Even while dealing with tragedy and feeling as if they’ve been shunned and abandoned to die by the rest of America, the characters are expected to hide the details of the lives and their grief.

It’s a poignant and low-key film, one that was originally made for PBS but then given a theatrical release after production was complete.  Seen today, the film feels like a companion piece to Roger Spottiswoode’s And The Band Played On.  If And The Band Played On dealt with the politics around AIDS and the early struggle to get people to even acknowledge that it existed, Longtime Companion is about the human cost of the epidemic.  The film is wonderfully acted by the talented cast.  Bruce Davison was nominated for an Oscar for his sensitive performance as David.  If not for Joe Pesci’s performance in Goodfellas, it’s easy to imagine that Davison would have won.  The scene where he encourages the comatose Sean to pass on will make you cry.  Interestingly, when David gets sick himself, it happens off-screen as if the filmmakers knew there was no way the audience would have been able to emotionally handle watching David suffer any further.

Longtime Companion played at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Dramatic Audience Award.

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: Platoon (dir by Oliver Stone)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of my favorite scenes from TV’s King of the Hill occurs in an episode in which Hank and Peggy are celebrating their wedding anniversary.  They’ve sent Bobby and Luanne away for the weekend.  They have the house to themselves but, after their anniversary party, Peggy is feeling depressed.  She tells Hank that, for the first time ever, she feels old and she regrets all the dreams that she had that have yet to come true, like inventing and selling her own barbecue sauce.

Trying to cheer her up, Hank says, “C’mon, Peg.  We got the house to ourselves for weekend …. and I rented an R-rated movie!”

Peggy looks up, briefly hopeful that Hank did something romantic.  “What movie?” she asks.

Hank hesitates, glances down at the floor, and says, “Uhmm …. Platoon.”

It’s funny because it’s true.  Just about every man that I know loves Platoon.  First released in 1986 and reportedly based on Oliver Stone’s own experiences as an infantryman in Vietnam, Platoon is often cited as being one of the greatest war films ever made.  Oddly enough, the film has an anti-war and anti-military message but, in my experience, those who love it talk more about the battle scenes than any message that Stone may have been trying to impart about the futility of war.  Pauline Kael once wrote that Oliver Stone had left-wing politics but a right-wing sensibility and I think you can definitely see that in Platoon.  Despite all of the characters talking about how pointless the war is and how much they resent being forced to risk their lives for no apparent purpose, the film’s energy comes from the scenes of Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) stalking through the jungle and, towards the end, losing his mind and giving himself completely over to the adrenaline that comes from being trapped in the middle of a battle.  Throughout the film, we hear Taylor’s rather pedantic thoughts on the military and his fellow soldiers but it’s hard not to notice that his actions and his dialogue are usually far less eloquent.  Taylor may be a rich intellectual (and wow, is Charlie Sheen ever unconvincing when it comes to portraying that part of Taylor’s personality) but when he’s in the jungle, he’s just fighting for survival.

The film’s plot centers around the conflict between two sergeants, the peace-loving Elias (Willem DaFoe) and the war-loving Barnes (Tom Berenger).  Taylor has to decide which one of the two to follow.  The pot-smoking Elias loves his men and goes out of his way to protect them.  The beer-drinking Barnes has a much harsher view of the world but, at the same time, he’s the type of scarred warrior who seems immortal.  One gets the feeling that he’ll never be defeated.  The rest of the platoon is full of familiar faces, with everyone from John C. McGinley to Francesco Quinn to Tony Todd to Forest Whitaker to Johnny Depp to a baby-faced Kevin Dillon showing up.  (Dillon is especially frightening as a psycho who has, for some reason, been nicknamed Bunny.)  The majority of the platoon is dead by the end of the film.  Even with the leadership of Elias and Barnes, the soldiers are stuck in a winless situation.  As Taylor points out, the Americans aren’t just fighting the enemy.  They’re also fighting each other.

Platoon is certainly not my favorite of the film nominated in 1986.  I would have gone with A Room With A View.  (Blue Velvet, which is as influential a film as Platoon, was not even nominated.)  That said, I can’t deny the power of Platoon‘s combat scenes.  Though Stone’s script is didactic and Taylor’s narration is awkwardly deployed throughout the film, Stone’s direction definitely captures the fear and dread of being in a strange place with no idea of whether or not you’re going to survive.  Stone is critical of the military (at one point, an officer calls an air strike on his own men) but seems to love the soldiers, even the ones who have pushed over to the dark side.

Platoon was not the first Best Picture nominee to be made about the Vietnam War.  The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Apocalypse Now were all released first.  But both The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now are surreal epics that seem to take place in a dream world.  Coming Home, which has a script that somehow manages to be even more didactic than Platoon‘s, focuses on the war back home.  Platoon is far more gritty and personal film.  Watching Platoon, you can smell the gunpowder and the napalm and feel the humidity of the jungle.  I can understand why it won, even if I prefer to watch Helena Bonham Carter and Julian Sands fall in love.