Film Review: The Woman In The Window (dir by Joe Wright)

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Joe Wright’s The Woman In The Window is a film that was kicked around a bit before it was eventually released.

Based on the best-selling novel by A.J. Finn, The Woman In The Window was filmed in 2018 and was originally set to be released in October of 2019. At the time, there were many who predicted that this would be the film for which Amy Adams would finally win an Oscar. However, after a few poor test screenings, the release of Woman In The Window was pushed back. The film’s producer, the now-infamous Scott Rudin, reportedly brought in Tony Gilory to re-shoot a few scenes. The film was finally set to be released in May of 2020 and, needless to say, it was no longer expected to be an Oscar contender. Then, the pandemic hit and, like so many movies, The Woman In The Window was left in limbo. With its theatrical release canceled, the film was eventually purchased by Netflix. Netflix finally released it in May of this year. With all of the delays and the bad buzz, the critics had plenty of time to sharpen their knives and I don’t think anyone was surprised when the film got scathing reviews.

Though the film was completed long before the lockdowns, The Woman In The Window does feel like a COVID thriller. Anna Fox (played by Amy Adams) is a child psychologist who is afraid to leave her Manhattan brownstone. She has agoraphobia, the result of a personal trauma. She’s not only scared to leave the safety of her apartment but she’s also terrified of anyone else getting inside. She spends her days spying on the neighbors, drinking wine, and watching old movies. Of course, that’s also what many people in the real world spent most of the past year doing. As I watched Anna freak out over some trick or treaters throwing eggs at her door, I was reminded of my neighbor who, a few months ago, nearly had a panic attack because she saw someone walking past her house without a mask. One could argue that the world itself has become agoraphobic.

Despite her housebound status, Anna does still have a few contacts with the outside world. For instance, a psychiatrist (played by Tracy Letts, who also wrote the script) comes by every weekend. She has a tenant named David (Wyatt Russell) who lives in her basement. She regularly has conversations with her husband and her daughter, who she says are both living in another state. And eventually, she meets Ethan (Fred Hechinger), the 15 year-old who has just moved in across the street. When Anna thinks that she’s witnessed Ethan’s father (Gary Oldman) murdering his mother (Julianne Moore), Anna calls the cops. However, when a totally different woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) shows up and claims to be Ethan’s mother, Anna is forced to try to solve the mystery herself.

The Woman In The Window is a disjointed and rather messy film but I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy it. The novel (which I also greatly enjoyed) was told entirely from Anna’s point of view, which means that we saw everything through the eyes of a sometimes unreliable narrator. The novel did such a good job of putting us inside of Anna’s head that it didn’t matter that the story itself was full of improbable coincidences. Director Joe Wright tries to recreate the novel’s uneasiness through garish lighting, crooked camera angles, and abrupt jump cuts. Sometimes, it’s effective (as when Anna tries to leave her apartment in the rain, just to pass out after having a panic attack) and other times, the technique feels a bit too obvious. And then there’s other scenes — like when Anna suddenly sees an overturned car in the middle of her living room — where it becomes brilliantly bizarre. It’s in those scenes, in which the film carefully balances on the line between the surreal and the silly, that Wright seems to be most comfortable as a director. Much as he did with Anna Karenina, Wright fills The Woman In The Window with scenes that suggest that, on some level, the characters are aware that they’re just characters in a B-melodrama.

Indeed, despite being directed by a great filmmaker and featuring a cast of award-winning actors, The Woman In The Window is a B-movie and, when taken on those terms, it’s an entertaining melodrama. Interestingly enough, it actually helps that almost everyone in the film has either been miscast or is too obvious a choice for their role. Gary Oldman is such an on-the-nose choice to play a tyrannical authority figure that it actually makes sense that a film buff like Anna would automatically assume the worst about him. Julianne Moore has even less screen time than Oldman but she makes the most of it, playing yet another one of her talkative characters who doesn’t appear to have the ability to filter her thoughts. It’s the type of role that Moore specializes in and one that she could probably play in her sleep but she and Adams establish a good rapport and the scene that they share is one of the best in the film. Speaking of which, Amy Adams is so incredibly miscast as Anna that you actually find yourself rooting for her to somehow bring the character to life. Amy Adams is one of the few performers who can make being cheerful compelling so it seems like a bit of a waste to cast her as a self-destructive agoraphobe who can’t leave her apartment And yet, much as in Hillbilly Elegy where she was similarly miscast, Adams seems to be trying so hard to make her casting work that you appreciate the effort, even if she doesn’t quite succeed. She’s just so likable that you sympathize with her, even if she isn’t quite right for the role.

(Myself, I pictured Naomi Watts in the role when I read the book.)

As a film, The Woman In The Window shares the book’s flaws. The plot is a bit too heavy on coincidences and we’re asked to believe that Anna, who can’t leave her house without having a panic attack and who is terrified of someone getting into her house without her knowledge, would also invite Ethan to visit her and allow David to live in her basement. As well, it’s hard to watch the movie without wondering which scenes were reshot by Tony Gilroy. (The final scene especially feels out-of-place with what came before it, leading me to suspect that it may have been added in response to those negative test screenings.) But, while the film’s defects are obvious, I still enjoyed it. It may be flawed but it’s hardly the disaster that some have made it out to be.

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Lifetime Film Review: A Date With Danger (dir by Cat Hostick)

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After a messy divorce, Nikki (Lara Jean Chorostecki) is ready for a new beginning! She does what every recently divorced woman in a Lifetime film does ….. she moves to a small town, gets a job in a trendy boutique, and starts dating a handsome man.

At first, it seems like everything’s perfect. The boutique’s owner, Liz (Ispita Paul), is not only Nikki’s boss but soon becomes her best friend and mentor as well. Nikki’s teenager daughter, Brooke (Jaida Grace), befriends Liz’s daughter, Anna (Kayla Hutton). While it is true that Liz’s relationship with her ex-husband, Dan (Matt Wells), is a volatile one, that just gives Liz and Nikki something to bond over. Finally, there’s Gavin (Jamie Spilchuk). Nikki thinks that Gavin is just the perfect man, even though Liz has her doubtts.

Then, one day, Liz vanishes. The police suspect that Dan could be involved but, when they discover that Liz has rewritten her will to leave the boutique to Nikki, they start to suspect that Nikki could somehow be involved as well. Dan seems like the obvious culprit but as Nikki starts to investigate the disappearance on her own, she discovers that everything is not how it seems….

A Date With Danger is a pretty typical Lifetime film. If you’ve ever seen a Lifetime film before, you know who kidnapped Liz and you can probably guess why. Ordinarily, the fact that Lifetime films are kind of predictable is actually one of their strengths. These are movies that you watch so you can yell back at the TV and wonder in amazement whether or not any of the characters have actually watched a movie before. That said, it was hard not to feel that A Date With Danger would have benefitted from a few more characters. When there’s only three suspects and one of them is eliminated by virtue of being the film’s main character, it’s fairly easy to guess who is going to turn out to be the guilty party. A Date With Danger even acknowledges this fact by revealing the identity of Liz’s kidnapper rather early on.

The title’s a bit misleading, as Nikki does go on a date but it’s hardly the center of the film and one never really gets the feeling that she’s in any danger during the date. That said, the title is a good example of Lifetime showmanship. Danger is a word that will always catch your attention. As well, it brings to mind the classic Mother, May I Sleep With Danger? Date With Danger, unfortunately, never reaches the heights of that classic exercise in over the top melodrama and that’s a shame. Indeed, Date With Danger is surprisingly subdued for a Lifetime film. It’s possible, of course, that I’ve been spoiled by all of the recent “Wrong” films as I spent most of Date With Danger wondering when Vivica A. Fox was going to show up and say, “Looks like you went on the wrong date with danger.”

A Date With Danger is a bit too low-key for its own good, never quite embracing the melodrama with the enthusiasm that people like me have come to expect from a Lifetime film. That said, the small town setting looked really nice and Jamie Spilchuk was well-cast as the enigmatic Gavin. Even if it wasn’t particularly memorable by Lifetime standards, A Date With Danger did its job efficiently.

Film Review: Romeo & Juliet (dir by Simon Godwin)

Posted on July 13, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s a shame, really.

Romeo & Juliet, which as you can probably guess is a cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic play about the doomed lovers and the warring families, is one of the best films that I’ve seen this year. Under normal circumstances, I would probably have it listed as the 2nd best film of the year so far, right underneath The Father. Unfortunately, Romeo & Juliet did not receive a theatrical release. Instead, in the United States, it was aired on PBS. Though it was submitted for Emmy consideration, it was unforgivably snubbed when the nominations were announced earlier today.

And that’s a shame because this film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet is one of the best that I’ve seen, one that celebrates the story’s theatrical origins while also working as a wonderful display of cinematic artistry.

The production was filmed over 17 days at London’s Royal National Theater. Because it was filmed at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, there’s no audience. Instead, the film opens with a small company of actors, all dressed in modern clothing, walking through the theater. Director Simon Godwin emphasizes the emptiness of the theater and the almost eerie silence as the actors take their seats around a table and start to recite their lines. We immediately recognize some members of the cast. Jessie Buckley plays Juliet while Josh O’Connor plays the role of Romeo. Adrian Lester is cast as the Prince while Tasmin Grieg plays Lady Capulet. As the actors recite their lines, they stand up and start to move around the theater and, before our eyes, they transform from being actors to being the characters from Shakespeare’s play. Suddenly, we’re no longer watching Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor. Instead, we’re watching Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet.

As the action moves to the stage, Simon Godwin continues to emphasize the eerie emptiness of the theater and the desolate look of the play’s ornate but still rather simple sets. Even with the presence of the actors, the streets of Verona still seem as deserted as the streets of London and every other major city were during the worst days of the pandemic. Watching the story unfold, it’s hard not to feel that Romeo and Juliet aren’t just rebelling against their warring families but they’re also rebelling against the sense of hopelessness that afflicted so many people in 2020. Romeo and Juliet’s refusal to surrender their love takes on an extra poignancy when filmed against the backdrop of the pandemic. At a time when many people were saying that civilization was collapsing and the world was on the verge of ending, Romeo and Juliet refuse to surrender their love. If their world is going to end, it’s going to end on their terms.

As opposed to other cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, this version of Romeo and Juliet does not attempt to hide its theatrical origins. Instead, it embraces them, right down to the obviously fake moon that is lowered from the rafters whenever a scene takes place at night. And yet, the actors give such good performances and Simon Godwin directs with such confidence and skill that the viewer still gets wrapped up in the story. Like all good works of theater, Romeo & Juliet succeeded in convincing the viewer of two contradictory things, that they’re both watching a production in a London theater and that they’re watching the Capulets and the Montagues as they walk through the deserted streets of Verona. This production of Romeo & Juliet is one that celebrate both the power of the stage and the power of cinema. Perhaps most importantly, it celebrates the power of Shakespeare’s classic tale, with the mix of the actor’s modern costuming and Shakespeare’s Elizabethan language reminding us that great art is universal and timeless.

Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor both give compelling performances as the film’s doomed lovers, with Buckley bringing a good deal of inner strength to the role of Juliet while O’Connor wisely underplays the scenes that would tempt a lesser Romeo to go overboard. As opposed to what we often see in lesser productions of this play, Buckley’s Juliet is never foolishly naïve and O’Connor’s Romeo never surrenders to shrill self-pity. Instead, they’re two lovers who know what they’re getting into but who are still willing to take the risk, even at the most bleak of times. When Buckley and O’Connor first show up in the film, walking through that empty theater, they look like themselves, two talented performers in their early 30s. But, as they perform their roles, they transform before our eyes into Romeo and Juliet and it’s thrilling to watch.

One has to applaud the National Theatre for filming this production. One also has to applaud PBS for airing it in the States. But still, how I wish Romeo & Juliet had been given a theatrical release or, at the very least, a Netflix or Prime release! This is a production that I wish more people had seen, a great work of theater, film, and art.

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Lisa Reviews A Palme d’Or Winner: The Son’s Room (dir by Nanni Moretti)

Posted on July 8, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past. As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film. Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to American box office success and Oscar renown. Others, like 2001’s The Son’s Room, may have been snubbed by the Oscars but they went on to great success in their home country. The Son’s Room, for instance, won Italy’s David Di Donatello award for the best film of 2001.

The Son’s Room is a film about a family trying to deal with an unimaginable tragedy. Andrea (Giuseppe Sanfelice) is the 17 year-old son of therapist Giovanni (Nanni Moretti, who also directed) and Paola (Laura Morante). Andrea, it is quickly established, is an almost ideal teenager. He doesn’t resent his parents. He doesn’t get into any sort of major trouble, beyond stealing a valuable fossil as a part of a prank that goes wrong. His parents know that he occasionally gets high but they also understand that it’s no big deal. It’s just a part of being a teenager.

One day, when Giovanni and Andrea have made plans to go jogging, Giovanni gets a call from a patient who has received some troubling news and who needs to see him immediately. Giovanni has to cancel their plans. Andrea instead goes diving with a friend and, in a freak accident, drowns. Giovanni, Paola, and and their daughter Irene (Jasmine Trinca) are left to mourn and to try to find some sort of meaning in Andrea’s death.

The Son’s Room is hardly the first film to be made about the untimely death of a family member. In 1980, Ordinary People won the Oscar for Best Picture for telling a story about a similarly upper class family trying to come to emotional teams with the loss of a brother and a son. What sets The Son’s Room apart from Ordinary People and other similar films is what doesn’t happen. As opposed to what happens in so many other films about families dealing with loss, the death of Andrea does not reveal that his family was secretly dysfunctional. His family doesn’t discover that Andrea was deeply depressed or that his death wasn’t a random accident. Instead, the point of the film is that, even though the family was strong and even though Andrea was happy and had everything to look forward to it, he still died because sometimes, happy people die in freak accidents. It’s not just dysfunctional families that suffer. Even a strong family struggles to deal with grief.

The film follows the family through the stages of grief. At first, the family members fixate on imagining what life would be like if Andrea hadn’t gone swimming that day. They resent Giovanni’s patient, even though the patient couldn’t have known what was going to happen. They try to find someone to blame for Andrea drowning, just to discover that everyone did everything that they were supposed to do. Andrea’s death was random, as death so often is. Then, they’re contacted by a casual acquaintance of Giovanni, a girl named Arianna (Sofia Vigilar) and they’re finally given a chance to find some sort of meaning in what happened.

The Son’s Room is a deeply affecting movie, one that works because it largely eschews the type of melodrama that we’ve come to expect from films like this. The film’s refusal to idealize, blame, or demonize any of its characters makes it a film to which anyone can relate. It’s an honest look at grief but it’s also a film that earns the right to suggest that there’s no need to feel guilty about eventually moving on from sadness. It’s a film that acknowledges that life can be random and scary but it can be pretty wonderful as well.

It’s an effective film, one that was reportedly a popular winner at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where its competition included Shrek, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Piano Teacher, and Mulholland Drive. (Fear not, Mulholland Drive still won the directing award for David Lynch.) 20 years after it was initially released, The Son’s Room holds up well as a look at both grief and the love of a strong family.

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Lisa Reviews a Palme d’Or Winner: Scarecrow (dir by Jerry Schatzberg)

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the 2021 Cannes Film Festival underway in France, I thought this would be a good opportunity to spend the next few days looking at some of the films that have won the Palme d’Or in the past. As of this writing, 100 films have won either the Palme d’Or or an earlier version of the award like the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film. Some of those films — like Parasite, The Tree of Life, The Piano, Pulp Fiction — went on to huge box office success and Oscar renown. Others, like 1973’s Scarecrow, did not.

Scarecrow is an example of a type of film that was very popular in the 70s. It’s a road film, one in which two or more people take a journey across the country and discover something about themselves and, depending upon how ambitious the film was, perhaps something about America as well. Scarecrow centers on two drifters, who just happen to meet on a dusty road while they’re trying to hitch a ride. Max (Gene Hackman, fresh off of winning an Oscar for The French Connection) is an ex-convict with a bad temper and a huge chip on his shoulder. Lion (a young Al Pacino, fresh off of The Godfather) is an ex-sailor who views the world with optimism and who appears to be sweet-natured but simple-minded. To be honest, it’s a little bit hard to believe that the perpetually resentful Max and the always hopeful Lion would ever become friends but they do. They travel around the country, talking about their dreams of opening a car wash together. They meet up with ex-girlfriends and ex-wives. Eventually, they even end up in a prison farm together, where Lion, temporarily estranged from Max, is taken advantage of by a sadistic prisoner named Riley (Richard Lynch).

Scarecrow is an episodic film, one that moves at its own deliberate pace. (If that sounds like a polite way of saying that the film is slow-moving …. well, it is.) Director Jerry Schatzberg was a photographer-turned-director and, as a result, there’s several striking shots of Max and Lion standing against the countryside, waiting for someone to pick them up and give them a ride. Whenever Max and Lion end up in a bar, the scene is always lit perfectly. At the same time, Schatzberg also attempts to give the film a spontaneous, naturalistic feel by letting scenes run longer than one would normally expect. There’s several scenes of Hackman and Pacino just talking while walking down a country road or a city street. On the one hand, you have to appreciate Schatzberg’s attempt to convince us that Max and Lion are just two guys with big dreams, as opposed to two Oscar-nominated actors pretending to be societal drop-outs. On the other hand, Schatzberg’s approach also leads to an interminably long scene of Gene Hackman eating a piece of chicken and if you think that Gene Hackman was the type of actor who wasn’t going to act the Hell out of gnawing on and gesturing with a chicken bone, you obviously haven’t seen many Gene Hackman films.

The main appeal of the film, for most people, will probably be to see Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, two of the top actors of the 70s, acting opposite of each other. Reportedly, both Hackman and Pacino went full method for the film and spent their prep time on the streets of San Francisco, begging for spare change. The end result is a mixed bag. There are a few scenes — like when they first meet or when they’re in prison — in which Hackman and Pacino are believable in their roles and you buy them as two lost souls who were lucky enough to find each other. There are other scenes where they both seem to be competing to see who can chew up the most scenery. Sometimes, Pacino and Hackman are compelling acting opposite each other. Other times, it feels like we’re just watching an Actors’ Studio improv class that someone happened to film. Too often, Hackman and Pacino seem to be so occupied with showing off their technique that the film’s reality seems to get lost under all of the method showiness. In the end, neither one of the film’s stars makes as much of an impression as Richard Lynch, who is genuinely frightening in his small but key role.

Scarecrow is an uneven film, one that is occasionally effective but also a bit too studied for its own good. It wears it influences — Of Mice and Men, Midnight Cowboy, Five Easy Pieces — on its sleeve but it also fails to exceed or match any of those previous works. That said, the film does have its fans. (Schatzberg has been working on a sequel for a while.) Certainly, the 1973 Cannes Jury (headed by none other than Ingrid Bergman) liked it enough to give it the Palme.

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Film Review: The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (dir by Michael Chaves)

Posted on July 4, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1981 and Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, of course!) have just screwed up another exorcism. Only Ed hears as Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor) begs the demon that has possessed 8 year-old David Glatzel (Julian Hilliard) to enter him instead. Unfortunately, Ed also has a heart attack and passes out before he can tell Lorraine what has happened.

The next month, a hollow-eyed Arne is walking down a road. He’s just murdered his sleazy landlord, stabbing the man 22 times. It seems like an open-and-shut case, except for the fact that Arne claims that he was possessed by a demon and that it was the demon who actually committed the crime. At first Arne’s lawyer is planning to go for an insanity plea but then Ed and Lorraine invite her to come have dinner with them and to see their favorite doll, Annabelle. The film immediately cuts to Arne’s visibly shaken lawyer announcing to the court that her client pleads “not guilty by reason of demonic possession.”

It’s a funny scene and I was a little bit surprised to see it because, in the past, The Conjuring films have always been distinguished by how seriously they took themselves. The first two films both unfolded in atmospheres of growing dread, following families that not only had to deal with societal evolution but also with angry spirits. The first two Conjuring films worked not only as horror films but also as period pieces, as stories about changing times. Though Ed and Lorraine were always the main investigators, the first two films devoted as much time to exploring the dynamics of the haunted families as it did to portraying the Warrens.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (or, as we’ll call it in the interest of space, The Conjuring 3) takes a different approach, which I imagine has much to do with Michael Chaves directing the film instead of James Wan. This time, Arne and the possessed family all remain ciphers. We never learn much about who they are or who they were before they met the Warrens. We don’t know what Arne was like before he became possessed and, as such, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in him once he does end up with a demon inside of him.

Instead, the film emphasizes Ed and Lorraine Warren and their work to uncover the occultist who was behind the original possession. Ed worries about Lorraine as she has psychic visions and wanders around yet another dirty basement. Lorraine worries that Ed is going to give himself another heart attack as he hobbles through the woods in search of an evil spirit. Lorraine proves her powers to a skeptical detective. Ed complains that he doesn’t want people treating his wife’s abilities like a carnival sideshow but he still allows himself a slight smile when she selects the correct murder weapon. Of course, at one point, Suspicious Minds is heard on the radio and we briefly flashback to Patrick Wilson singing the song in The Conjuring 2. Once again, the film argues that Ed and Lorraine’s romance, their endless love, makes them uniquely capable of battling the Devil.

The film has its moments, largely because Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are adorable as Ed and Lorraine. At the same time, though, there’s a definite “greatest hits” feel to the third Conjuring film. There’s little about the film that feels truly spontaneous or surprising and most of the scenes feel like reworkings of scenes that worked in the previous two films. As good as Farmiga and Wilson are in their roles (and as much as I appreciate the idea of a Catholic super hero film franchise), Ed and Lorraine work best when they’re relating to and helping other characters. The Conjuring 3 often solely focuses on them and the end result often feels more like an Insidious sequel than a Conjuring film.

The Conjuring 3 is enjoyable enough. It gets the job done, while never reaching the emotional heights of the first two films. It has enough jump scares to be a fun movie to watch on a rainy night but it’s not one that really sticks in your mind after it ends.

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The TSL’s Grindhouse: Omega Doom (dir by Albert Pyun)

Posted on July 2, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Omega Doom! What’s all that about?

Seriously, don’t ask me. I just watched this Albert Pyun-directed, 1996 sci-fi epic and I’m stil a bit confused as to what exactly was actually going on in the movie. This is a movie that opens with a totally blank screen and then, eventually, two red suns appear in the sky. The film takes place in the future, at a time when humans have nearly wiped themselves out of existence through their endless wars and the planet is now controlled by robots and cyborgs. Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) was a cyborg programmed to kill humans until he got shot in the head. Apparently, taking a bullet to his cranium changed Omega’s programming and now….

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s kind of hard to say what exactly it is that Omega does now. We do know that he spends a lot of time walking around because there’s a lot of scenes of him doing just that. Eventually, he stumbles upon the ruins of a town that is now controlled by two warring bands of robots. Before you can say Yojimbo or even A Fistful of Dollars, Omega is playing both sides against each other and …. well, I don’t know what the preferred outcome here is. What is Omega Doom’s motivation? He’s not making any money out of it because robots don’t need money and it’s not like there’s anything left to buy. And he doesn’t seem to be interested in ruling the town himself because it’s kind of a dead end of a town. I mean, there’s dead bodies and robotic parts all over the place. It’s suggested that he might be looking for a secret stash of weapons that can be used to either kill or protect the remaining humans but, at the same time, we don’t ever really see any remaining humans and there’s no reason why Omega would care enough about them to get caught up in a war between robots on their behalf.

So, don’t ask me what’s going on. I guess it really doesn’t matter because it’s not like you watch a film like this for the plot. You watch it for the action! Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of action to be found. There’s a lot of scenes of robots talking about various exciting things that they could, in theory, be doing but no one ever seems to actually get around to doing any of that stuff. Instead, all of the robots stay in their separate sections of the town and wait for everyone else to make the first movie. Eventually, Omega makes a few moves but, even then, they’re not particularly exiting moves. Omega carries a gigantic sword on his back and how I anticipated seeing what he was going to finally do with that sword. Well, it turns out that Omega didn’t do very much with it at all.

Actually, the main reason you’re going to want to watch Omega Doom is because Rutger Hauer plays the title role and Hauer was always cool, even when he was appearing in a less than memorable film. In Omega Doom, Hauer does a passable Clint Eastwood impersonation, delivering his lines with just the right amount of weary condescension. Though you’re never quite sure why Omega is doing anything, Rutger Hauer is always watchable.

And, to be honest, I actually didn’t dislike Omega Doom as much as it may sound like I did. It’s a slow movie and not much happens but, at the same time, I did like the look of the bombed-out city and, though the dialogue was largely forgettable, there was still the occasional line that suggested that Omega Doom had existential ambition, albeit unrealized ones. “God took a vacation,” Omega says at one point and, for a split second, you get a hint of what Omega Doom could have been if it had a bigger budget and a better script. It’s a film that had potential and it’s somewhat fascinating to consider how little of that potential was realized.

Of course, in the end, it all comes down to this: How can you possibly resist Rutger Hauer as a cyborg?

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man (dir by Ruggero Deodato)

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1976 film, Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man, takes place during the Christmas season.

We know this because the film opens with a man dressed like Santa Claus standing on a street corner in Rome and impotently watching as a woman is dragged behind a motorcycle by two men who were attempting to snatch her purse. When she doesn’t let go of her purse, one of the men hops off the motorcycle and proceeds to kick her in the face until she stops moving. Suddenly, two other men — our heroes, as it were — came driving up on a motorcycle of their own. A chase ensues, through the streets of Rome, during which a blind man’s dog is graphically run over. The chase which, it must be said, is very well-shot and directed, lasts for over 10 ten minutes and it ends with the two thieves being executed by, once again, our nominal heroes.

A lot of people are executed over the course of Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man. That’s because Detectives Fred (Marc Porel) and Tony (Ray Lovelock) have been given a license to kill anyone who breaks the law. The film is a bit vague on just how exactly the license works and why, apparently, it’s only been given to Fred and Tony. One major set piece features several dozen cops all waiting outside a house, powerless to get the three criminals within, until Fred and Tony arrive. Fred and Tony, of course, solve the problem by killing everyone. Why couldn’t the other cops have done that? The film doesn’t really make that clear.

Admittedly, Fred and Tony aren’t the first movie cops to get results through unorthodox means. The French Connection was a popular film in the 70s and it inspired a whole genre of Italian rip-offs, of which Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man is a definite example. What sets Fred and Tony apart from cops like Popeye Doyle and Dirty Harry is the amount of joy that Fred and Tony seem to get out of killing people. Early on, they show up at a party and proceed to set all of the cars on fire. They also set two criminals on fire, with Fred doing a happy little dance as the two men go up in flames. It’s disturbing but there’s also a strange integrity to the film’s shameless embrace of violence. Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man doesn’t pretend to be about anything other than satisfying the vigilante fantasies of its audience.

And indeed, it should be considered that Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man was released during the so-called Years of Lead, when a combination of political terrorism and open crime had made violence an almost daily part of Italian life. When you’re living day-to-day with the knowledge that you could be blown up at any minute by the Red Brigade, the Ordine Nero, or the Mafia, I imagine that there would be something appealing about watching two young men who are perfectly willing to just shoot anyone who appears to be up to no-good. It’s easy to imagine that, for audiences in 1976, the random violence of this episodic film mirrored the random violence of everyday life. Though Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man was obviously inspired by The French Connection, it perhaps has more in common with the original Death Wish, with the main difference being that Live Like A Cop’s vigilantes are officially sanctioned.

The film also places a good deal of importance on just how close Tony and Fred are supposed to be. They live together in a ramshackle flat, they apparently spend all of their free time together, and, towards the end of the film, the only thing that keeps the two of them from taking part in a threesome is the sound of someone else being shot. Unfortunately, Ray Lovelock and Marc Porel did not get along in real life and, as a result, there was never a Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man Part II. Live Like A Cop would also be director Ruggero Deodato’s only stab at the polizieschi genre. He went on, of course, to direct Cannibal Holocaust and The House on the Edge of the Park. (Interestingly, Tony and Fred’s relationship is mirrored, to sinister effect, by the relationship between the characters played by David Hess and Giovanni Lombardo Radice in House On The Edge of the Park.) Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man has gone on to become a bit of a cult film and, as offensive as some will find it to be, it’s also so over-the-top in its violence and its celebration of officially sanctioned bad behavior that it becomes rather fascinating to watch. It’s so without shame or apology that it’s hard to look away from it, even though you may want to.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Blue Monkey (dir by William Fruet)

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1987 Blue Monkey

Last night, as I sat down to watch the 1987 Canadian film, Blue Monkey, I found myself singing a song in my head:

How does it feel
When you treat me like you do
And you’ve laid your hands upon me
And told me who you are?

I thought I was mistaken
And I thought I heard your words
Tell me, how do I feel?
Tell me now, how do I feel?

Unfortunately, it turned out that the only thing Blue Monkey had in common with the classic New Order song, Blue Monday, was an enigmatic title. Just as the song never really mentions anything about Monday, Blue Monkey does not feature a single monkey. One minor character does mention having a dream about a monkey but, otherwise, there are no monkeys in the film. Speaking as someone who believes that almost any film can be improved the presence of a monkey, I was disappointed.

(Seriously, Nomadland would have been a hundred times better if Frances McDormand had a pet monkey.)

What Blue Monkey does have is a lot of blue. The characters wear blue shirts and some wear blue uniforms. Another wears a blue hat. The film takes place in a hospital where almost all of the walls are painted blue. Even worse, the majority of the film’s scenes are saturated with blue lighting.

Here’s just two screenshots:

blue-monkey-1987-movie-image-7 Blue-Monkey-1987-movie-William-Fruet-4

Seriously, some scenes were so blue that I was reminded of John Huston’s decision to suffuse Reflections in a Golden Eye with the color gold. Personally, I think Huston made a mistake when he did that with Reflections but I can still understand the reasoning behind the decision and I can see what Huston was attempting to accomplish. The blue in Blue Monkey feels like a distraction, as if someone realized, on the day before shooting, that the title didn’t make any damn sense. “We’ll just make the whole movie blue!”

The problem, of course, is that the film goes so overboard with the blue lighting that it actually becomes difficult to look at the screen for more than a few minutes. I had to keep looking away, specifically because all of those blue flashing lights were starting to make me nauseous and were on the verge of giving me a migraine. At times, the image is so saturated in blue that you literally can’t make out what’s happening in the scene. Of course, once you do figure out what’s happening, you realize that it doesn’t matter.

Blue Monkey takes place in a hospital. A handyman has been having convulsions after pricking his finger on a plant that came from a mysterious island. Perhaps that’s because a mutant larvae is now using his body for a host. The larvae eventually develops into a giant grasshopper — NOT A MONKEY! — who stalks around the hospital and kills a few people. The Canadian government is threatening to blow up the hospital unless something is done about the blue grasshopper.

It’s a Canadian exploitation film but Michael Ironside isn’t in it so it somehow feels incomplete. That said, John Vernon plays a greedy hospital administrator and it’s fun to watch him get irritated with everyone. A very young Sarah Polley has an early role as an annoying child. There’s actually several children in this film and you’ll want to throw something at the screen whenever they show up, that’s just the type of film this is. (Some of my fellow movie-watching friends were actually upset that the children survived that film. I wouldn’t go that far but I still found myself hoping John Vernon would tell them all to shut up and let the adults handle things.) Susan Anspach plays a doctor, showing that anyone can go from Five Easy Pieces to Canadian exploitation. The film’s nominal star is Steve Railsback, playing a cop who comes to the hospital to check on his wounded partner and who ends up on grasshopper duty. Steve Railsback has apparently said that he’s embarrassed to have appeared in this film. Consider some of the other films that Steve Railsback has appeared in and then reread that sentence.

In the end, Blue Monkey doesn’t add up too much. There’s no Michael Ironside. There’s no monkeys. There’s just a lot of blue.

Film Review: Rad (dir by Hal Needham)

Posted on June 19, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film, Rad, tells the story of Christopher “Cru” Jones (Bill Allen). Cru lives in a small, kind of ugly town in middle America. Cru has a job delivering newspapers so, every morning, he rides around town on a bicycle and he throws rolled-up copies of USA Today at people. He throws the papers fairly aggressively and doesn’t seem to have much concern about riding his bike through backyards or using his bike to jump over (or sometimes, onto) cars. And yet, no one can stay mad at Cru because he has a plucky, can-do attitude and he can do all sorts of tricks on his bicycle.

Cru has a decision to make. He can either go to college or he can compete in a bicycle race. If he goes to college, he might actually be able to get a career and actually have a future. If he wins the bicycle race, he’ll get a car and $100,000. His mother (Talia Shire) feels that Cru should go to college. Cru, however, says that his gut is telling him to enter the race….

Hey, Cru, your gut is lying to you! Seriously, I’m all for Cru competing and showing off how good he is at a rather mundane and kind of boring sport but college is college. There’s a scene early on in the film where one of Cru’s classmates is talking about all the schools to which he’s applied. “UCLA, Princeton, SMU, Harvard….” Cru rides by and laughs but, 35 years later, who do you think currently has the nicer house?

Of course, despite his willingness to give up his future for $100,000 and a new car, it turns out that Cru might not even be able to compete. The race’s evil sponsor (Jack Weston) is determined to make sure that his tea, wins the race and he keeps changing the rules to prevent Cru from being able to enter. He demands that Cru find an official sponsor so Cru starts his own business. He then demands that the business be worth at least $50,000! Cru doesn’t have that type of money but — wait a minute — is that Ray Waltson, playing an eccentric businessman!? Maybe he’s got $50,000!

Still, does Cru have the confidence necessary to enter the race and beat the best in the country? Don’t worry, Cru’s little sister designs a t-shirt that reads, “Cru is Rad!” Seriously, just try to beat that encouragement!

Anyway, you may be thinking that Rad sounds like it’s a pretty silly movie and it is. Having now watched Rad, BMX Bandits, and Quicksilver, I am ready to announce that, in the 80s, there was absolutely no way to make BMX racing cinematic. At the end of the movie, Cru performs a series of tricks while the end credits role and, instead of being impressed, you just notice how much Cru is struggling to maintain his balance. Neither Bill Allen nor Bart Conner (who plays Cru’s main rival) have much screen presence and the whole film just looks and feels cheap.

And yet….

To be honest, it’s difficult to really dislike Rad. For all of its many flaws, it’s all just so damn sincere. Cru just wants to win that race so badly that it’s hard not to root for him and it is kind of touching to see the way the entire town rallies around him. While the lead racers may have been blandly portrayed, Talia Shire, Jack Weston, Ray Waltson, and Lori Loughlin all turn in effective performances. In fact, you could probably argue that Talia Shire is almost too good in her role. She so effectively portrays the anguish of a mother watching her son throw his future away that you really do find yourself worrying about what’s going to happen to Cru when he’s older and he can’t get a job because he blew off college. (I’m going to guess that Talia Shire’s presence in this film is due to the fact that it was produced by her late husband, Jack Schwartzman.)

Rad is sincere and unpretentious and rather silly. Like a lot of 80s movies, it’s got a good soundtrack. It especially makes good use of the song Send Me An Angel. There’s also an out-of-nowhere scene where Cru and Lori Loughlin do a series of impromptu freestyle bike tricks on the middle of a dance floor and it’s just surreal enough to be memorable.

Rad is a simple but inoffensive tribute to throwing your life away.