In this self-conciously hip and with-it portrait of life in San Francisco at the tail end of the hippie era, Jason Robards plays Matthew South, a veteran B-movie actor who is fed up with everyday life and who is prone to long monologues about how the machines are taking over. (Just imagine how Matthew would feel about the world today.) When Matthew gets into an argument with two people in a park, Anais Appleton (Katharine Ross) comes to his rescue and soon, they’re in the middle of a falling in love montage. Actually, there are several falling in love montages and they’re almost all scored by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. It’s easy listening with a hippie tinge.
Fools follows Matthew and Anais as they wander around San Francisco and have several strange encounters, none of which make much sense. For instance, there’s a scene where two FBI agents suddenly burst into the room and then admit that they’re at the wrong address. Why is that scene there? What does it mean? Later, Matthew and Anais go to a dentist and they listen to a patient try to seduce her psychiatrist (who is played by Mako). Why is that scene there? What does any of it mean? Everywhere that Matthew and Anais go, they see evidence that society is dumb and that the answer to all life’s problems is a love song from Kenny Rogers. Matthew never stops talking and Anais never stops looking pretty (she’s Katharine Ross after all) but neither ever becomes a strong enough character to ground Fools in any sort of reality. It’s a movie that preaches nonconformity while so closely imitating A Thousand Clowns and Petulia that the entire thing feels like plagiarism.
Anais has a husband, an emotionally distant lawyer named David (Scott Hylands). David isn’t prepared to let Anais leave him, no matter how tired she is of their marriage. He hires a detective to follow Anais around. It all leads to an act of violence that doesn’t fit the mood of anything that’s happened before. Cue another falling love montage before the end credits role.
Fools is one of those films that probably would never have been made without the success of Easy Rider. Everyone wanted a piece of the counterculture in 1970 and Fools tries so hard that it’s painful to watch. Of course, neither Matthew nor Anais are really hippies. They do eventually come across some hippies playacting in the street. One of them is played by future David Lynch mainstay Jack Nance so that’s pretty cool. Otherwise, Fools deserves to stay in 1970.
In 1993, a woman named Lorena Bobbitt made national news when she used a kitchen knife to chop off her husband’s penis, which she then tossed into a field, where it was later found and reattached. During Lorena’s trial, both the defense and the prosecution conceded that John Wayne Bobbitt (and what a name, right?) was an abusive and selfish husband who probably deserved a lot worse than just losing his penis for a few hours. Lorena, meanwhile, was portrayed as being a crazed psycho, with many claiming that she was motivated not by years of abuse but instead by jealousy. After spending months at the center of a media freakshow, Lorena was eventually found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. John Wayne Bobbitt was subsequently acquitted on charges that he had raped Lorena the night that she castrated him.
Subsequently, John Wayne Bobbitt held a number of jobs, was charged with more crimes, and had a brief career as an adult film actor. Lorena attempted to stay out of the spotlight, reverted to using her birth name of Gallo, and was only briefly in the news in 1997 when she was arrested for striking her mother.
However, this previous Memorial Day, Lorena Gallo returned to the public eye as the host of I Was Lorena Bobbitt. One of Lifetime’s “ripped from the headlines” features, the film’s format is similar to 2017’s I Am Elizabeth Smart, which featured the real Elizabeth Smart talking about her kidnapping along with dramatized scenes feature Alana Boden in the title role. I Was Lorena Bobbitt features scenes of Lorena (played by Dani Montalvo) both before and after what the film refers to as being “the incident.” We watch as she first meets John Wayne Bobbitt (Luke Humphrey) and how she is initially charmed by the handsome marine just to discover, after their marriage, that he’s actually a porn-addicted, abusive monster. The real Lorena appears on-screen to provide context for what we’ve just seen. For instance, when the movie’s Lorena gives her statement to the police, the real Lorena appears and explains that the reason why the statement was so awkward was because she was still struggling to learn how to express herself in English. The film makes the very good and too often overlooked point that Lorena’s statement was subsequently used to paint her as being a psychopath by reporters who should have understood that not only was Lorena in shock but she was also being forced to describe a very personal experience in a language in which she wasn’t fluent.
Unfortunately, despite those few moments that do provide some valuable context to what really happened that night and afterwards, I Was Lorena Bobbitt is still a bit of a mess. The filmmakers tell the story out of chronological order, mixing in flashbacks with flashforwards and, while I can understand why they made that narrative choice, it doesn’t really add much to the story. In fact, it gets a bit distracting as we try to keep track of where we are in Lorena’s story. Luke Humphrey gives a properly loathsome performance as John and Dani Montalvo gives a good performance as the young Lorena but the actual Lorena is not a particularly compelling narrator. One gets the feeling that the film would have worked better if the real Lorena had stayed off-screen.
In the end, despite its flaws, I Was Lorena Bobbitt deserves credit for examining the real issues underneath a story that feels as if it was tailor-made to appeal to America’s tabloid sensibility. The film shows how Lorena was gaslighted and brainwashed into believing that the abuse she suffered was her fault. It shows how an abuser can be charming when he feels that he needs to be and it also show how Lorena was more vilified for her actions than John was for his. It’s a film with an important message, even if the execution is sometimes lacking.
This Lifetime film had me as soon as I saw the title. Psycho Yoga Instructor? Seriously, is that not the most brilliant title of all time? Apparently, this film was originally called The Perfect Pose and that’s an okay title. I mean, “perfect” is always a good word to use in a title. But you know what’s an even better word to use? Psycho!
Plus, the fact that the title promised not just a psycho but a psycho yoga instructor made me even more excited to see the film. There’s been countless Lifetime film about yoga instructors who ended up getting stalked. But this film’s title shakes things up. This time, it’s the yoga instructor who is the stalker!
Anyway, Psycho Yoga Instructor tells the story of Justine (Ashley Wood). Justine is married to Tom (Brady Smith), who is the type of guy who stays at work late and then, when he gets home, doesn’t even bother to join his wife in bed. Instead, he collapses on the couch, where she inevitably finds him the next morning. Justine is eager to adopt a baby. Tom barely seems to care. Justine is haunted by nightmares in which she’s drowning in the tub and, instead of trying to save her, Tom takes a call from work.
Justine’s best friend, Ginnie (Lily Rains), thinks that Tom is cheating on Justine. She also thinks that Justine should come to her yoga class and ogle the hot yoga instructor, Dominic (Panos Vlahos). Justine is reasonably sure that Tom is not cheating but she still decides that yoga might help her deal with some of her stress.
Dominic, it turns out, is a very good yoga instructor. He’s got wild hair and he spends a lot of time talking about toxins and the barriers that people set up to their own happiness. He takes an interest in Justine and soon, he’s even coming to Justine’s house to give her one-and-one lessons. Justine thinks that Dominic is helping her get in touch with what she really wants out of life. Dominic, meanwhile, spends most of his time staring down Justine’s shirt. Like, seriously, Dom — eyes up!
Tom starts to get jealous and with good reason. Justine is having all sorts of dreams about Dominic and, for the most part, they never end well for Tom. Still, it’s just yoga, right? And Dominic’s not any more quirky than the typical yoga guy, right? Wrong. It turns out that Dominic is more than just a somewhat spacey hot guy. He’s also a …. PSYCHO YOGA INSTRUCTOR!
Admittedly, it does take a while to get around to the psycho part of Psycho Yoga Instructor but I still liked the film. The character of Dominic was so hilariously vapid and Panos Vlahos seemed to be having so much fun smirking and talking about toxins that it was impossible not to enjoy his performance. Justine’s recurring dreams were also well-shot and genuinely creepy. The one where Justine was under water while her husband laughed at her especially got to me. The film was as cheerfully trashy as you would hope that a film with a title like Psycho Yoga Instructor would be. In the end, that’s what really matters.
Neil (Jack Nance … yes, Eraserhead Jack Nance) owns a summer camp where he teaches people how to water ski. Unfortunately, it’s been a while since Neil’s been a success. The camp is old and run down and Neil is just too good-hearted to enforce any discipline on his campers or his counselors. The evil Monica Shavetts (Sarah Douglas) owns the water ski camp on the other side of the lake and she is determined to put Neil out of business. Fortunately, Neil does have one ace up his sleeve. One of his former campers, Ricky Wade (Corey Feldman), has gone to become one of the top water skiers in the world and he has returned to help Neil save the camp!
Meatballs IV covers all the usual summer camp hijinks. The fat kid learns how to believe in himself. The female counselors all appear in topless. There’s a shower scene, of course, and there’s also a lot of humor centering around flatulence. When you’re 11 years old, this movie is pretty cool. Of course, saving the camp means winning a competition against the evil camp. At least Sarah Douglas appears to be relishing her evil role. There is one funny joke where Corey Feldman attempts to hit on a girl by telling her, “I was in Goonies.” I guess even back then, Feldman knew which one of his movies people would actually remember.
Jack Nance is his usual eccentric self in the role of Neil but he doesn’t get to do much. Sadly, it was while he was in upstate New York making this film that his then-wife, Kelly Van Dyke, committed suicide in Los Angeles. Reportedly, Nance had been on the phone consoling her and trying to talk her down. Unfortunately, a lightning storm knocked out the phones in the middle of Nance’s conversation with Kelly and she hung herself immediately afterwards. For many of us, Jack Nance would be the main reason we would sit through something like Meatballs IV but knowing that story makes it difficult to watch him in this film. Both Jack Nance and his wife deserved better.
Meatballs IV started out as a movie called Happy Campers, which was intended to be a low-budget rip-off of the original Meatballs. Then, someone realized that an even better idea than ripping off a successful film would simply be to change your movie’s title and turn it into a sequel. Meatballs IV tells the same basic story as the original Meatballs, with a bunch of plucky outsiders proving themselves over the summer. The main difference is that Meatballs IV has a lot more T&A than the original film and that the first film has Bill Murray as a camp counselor while this one has to settle for Corey Feldman. It’s not that Feldman’s bad in the role, of course. Despite what happened to his career in the 90s and beyond, Corey Feldman has always been capable of giving good performances, even if he often didn’t. (I can’t really blame him. Would you make much of an effort if you were appearing something like Dream A Little Dream 2?) It’s just that Corey Feldman is no Bill Murray. When Ricky first shows up at the camp, he energizes the campers by doing an elaborate dance routine, which he ends by shouting, “Elvis has left the building!” It has the same energy as that episode of The Simpsons where Homer is hired to voice Poochie on Itchy & Scratchy. It feels desperate, like the film is trying too hard to convince us that Ricky Wade is as cool as everyone says he is. If you have to work that hard to convince people that you’re cool, then you’re probably not.
If you’ve watched enough Lifetime films, you know that it’s rarely a good thing when you’re living near a vineyard.
I mean, sure, there’s a certain amount of romance to them. Any single mom who lives in a house near a vineyard is guaranteed to meet at least one handsome stranger. And, of course, living near a vineyard always means that you have a steady supply of wine so that you can have a fun girl’s night with your sassy, sex-obsessed best friend.
But, seriously, bad stuff happens in those vineyards. It seems like people are always getting chased around the vineyards. Often times, spending a night in the vineyards is a good way to get yourself murdered. Even if you somehow manage to survive your night in the vineyards, there’s still a good chance that you’ll end up getting kidnapped and tied up in someone’s wine cellar. Vineyards just aren’t worth the trouble. As if to prove my point, Murder in the Vineyard aired on Lifetime on July 18th. I recorded it on my DVR (which, unlike a vineyard, is always a good place to visit) and then I watched it earlier today.
Murder in the Vineyard starts off on a good note by featuring a murder in a vineyard. Within the first few minutes, the film has already lived up to its name and that’s definitely something that I appreciated. Once we get the first murder out of the way, we met Emma Kirk (Helena Mattsson) and her teenage daughter, Bea (Emma Fuhrmann). Emma has just taken over the family winery and Bea is struggling to fit in at her new school. While Emma reconnects with a childhood love, Bea strikes up a tentative relationship with the school football star.
Unfortunately, not everyone at the school is happy about the idea of Bea showing up out of nowhere and dating one of the most popular guys in the class. The snobby cheerleaders, who we’re told have a history of hazing new students, start to target her. Suddenly, there’s a website that’s devoted exclusively to harassing Bea. Nasty rumors are being spread about her at school. When she goes to a party, someone slips something into her drink. Someone is targeting Bea and, as you might guess from that murder that we saw earlier in the movie, that someone is prepared to go to extremes.
As far as dangerous vineyard movies are concerned, Murder in the Vineyard was a good one. There was enough suspense over who was harassing Bea that the film worked as a mystery and the scenes when Emma reconnects with Luke (Daniel Hall) were enjoyable. Helena Mattsson and Daniel Hall made for a cute couple so you definitely hoped the best for them. Mattsson and Emma Fuhrmann were also believable as mother and daughter and anyone who was overprotected by their mom will be able to relate to some of what Bea goes through. Probably the best thing about the film is that the vineyard was pretty. It was a bit like a Lifetime version ofSideways, in that as much emphasis was put on the beauty of the California landscape as on the plot. If someone’s going to get murdered in your vineyard, it should at least be a pretty one.
Richie (Roger Wilson) is an Arizona farm boy who can play the guitar like a riot and who, after he joins a band called Magic, discovers that success is a hideous bitch goddess.
Thunder Alley was a Cannon production and it features all of the usual rock movie clichés. Though Richie is reluctant to join Magic and leave his family behind, he soon emerges as the most talented member of the band and he starts to overshadow the arrogant lead singer, Skip (Leif Garrett). Donnie (Scott McGinnis), who is Richie’s best friend in the band, gets hooked on cocaine while Richie struggles to resist groupie temptation and remain loyal to his sweet girlfriend, Beth (Jill Schoelen). The band depends on their road manager, Weasel (Clancy Bown), to get them on stage in time and to protect them from dishonest club owners.
As predictable as it may be, Thunder Alley is one of the better films to be distributed by Cannon Films in the 80s, which is saying something when you consider that Thunder Alley doesn’t feature Michael Dudikoff, Chuck Norris, or Charles Bronson. The thing that sets Thunder Alley apart from so many other similar films is that, when you actually see Magic perform and hear their music, you actually believe that the band could be a success. This isn’t one of those films where everyone is feigning enthusiasm for a band that sounds terrible. Instead, Magic actually sounds like a band that could have gone all the way in 1985. The scenes of them going from one cheap motel to another while coming together as a band feel as authentic and real as the scenes of Skip angrily realizing that Richie has replaced him as the face of Magic.
Though he was probably cast because he was one of the stars of Porky’s, Roger Wilson was also an actual musician and he’s credible whenever he’s performing on stage. The same can be said of former teen pop idol Leif Garrett, who plays an actual rock and roller in Thunder Alley and who is surprisingly convincing in the role. Sporting an impressive beard, Clancy Brown is the ideal road manager while Jill Schoelen brings a lot of life to her small role as Richie’s loyal girlfriend.
For a film that is all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, Thunder Alley has an innocent side. Even after he becomes a star and he’s got groupies going crazy every time he steps up to a microphone, Richie’s main concern is making sure that he gets home in time to help his father with the harvest. Thunder Alley not only asks how far you would go to be a star but also suggests that there’s nothing wrong with choosing, instead, to be a loyal boyfriend or a good son. Thunder Alley brings it own earnest approach to all of the usual rock and roll clichés and suggests that, with the right combination of talent and hard work, you can have it all, the farm and the stage.
Of course, it helps if you’ve got Clancy Brown looking out for you.
Mile High Escorts aired on Lifetime on July 19th. Because I was hosting the #ScarySocial live tweet of City of the Living Dead, I missed it but thanks to my DVR, I was able to record it and watch it earlier today. Seriously, will there ever be a better invention than the DVR?
Mile High Escorts tells the story of Lauren (Saxon Sharbino). Lauren is a flight attendant. She gets to fly all over the world and she’s even put in a request to be assigned to the Paris route. How could her life get any better? Well, don’t ever take your happiness for granted because reality soon intrudes on Lauren’s perfect world. The airline announces that they’re going to be cutting back on flights, which means that Lauren and her friend Ashley (Kara Royster) are going to be flying less and also making a lot less money! But Lauren needs that money because her father is on the verge of getting kicked out of his home. And Ashley needs the money because …. well, Hell, who doesn’t need money? (I totally related to Ashley.)
Fortunately, a chance meeting with Hannah (Christina Moore) might be just the solution to Lauren and Ashley’s problems. Hannah owns a private airline and she’s always looking for new flight attendants. Because her airline is exclusively used by wealthy, handsome, and single (if just for the weekend) men, her flight attendants have to be attractive and they have to be friendly. They also have to be willing to spend time with their clients even after the airplane has landed. She offers Lauren a job but Lauren, at first, is reluctant. It sounds too much like an escort service to her, largely because it is. But then Lauren’s hours get cut and her father’s unpaid bills start to pile up and soon, Lauren and Ashley are mile high escorts!
At first, everything seems great but, as we soon discover, the life of a mile high escort is not a simple one. Sure, at first, it’s a lot of fun. All of the passengers are handsome and rich and like to have a good time. Lauren even makes a connection with Thomas (Esteban Benito), who appears to be a rare nice guy. But this is a Lifetime movie so you know the fun can’t last. It turns out that the private airline business is indeed a shady one and someone is murdering mile high escorts. Can Lauren and Ashley figure out what’s going on before they become the next victims?
I absolutely loved Mile High Escorts. This movie had everything that I love about Lifetime movies. The plot was melodramatic and full of scheming and sex. The clothes were to die for. The men were handsome. Christina Moore did a great job keeping you guessing as to Hannah’s motivations and both Saxon Sharbino and Kara Royster were likable in the lead roles. This was a fun Lifetime film. You don’t watch a film like this and worry about whether or not the plot makes total sense. You certainly don’t watch a film like this because you’re hoping for a realistic portrait of what it means to be a mile high escort. You watch a film like this because it’s fun! And Mile High Escorts definitely was.
Max Castle (John Davidson) is a conman who gets arrested in Florida because of a shady real estate deal. The judge releases him into the custody of his older brother, an attorney named Stephen (Robert Castle). Though Max is technically just a paralegal, he secretly helps out his brother’s clients but running elaborate scams on the people who have cheated them. When businessman Lyle Rafferty (Jack Kehoe) embezzles money from his own charity and then lets one of his employees take the fall, Max decides that Rafferty is going to be his next target.
Shell Game was a made-for-TV movie. It’s pretty obvious that it was meant to be the pilot for a weekly series, where I guess Max would have pulled a con on every different evildoer every week. Because the show is more interested in setting up who Max is and why he cons people, there’s not much dramatic tension in Shell Game. Max tricks Rafferty into buying a worthless gold mine and Rafferty falls for every single trick that Max pulls on him. Unfortunately, since Rafferty is such an easy target, there’s no real pay-off to seeing him get conned. It’s not like The Sting, where there were real stakes and dangers involved in Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s pursuit of Robert Shaw’s money. The con is just too easy.
On the plus side, Max’s old partner-in-crime is played by Tom Atkins. Atkins is so believable as a veteran conman with a heart of gold that he probably would have been a better pick for the lead role than the likable but bland John Davidson. The rest of the cast is forgettable.
Would Shell Game have worked as a weekly series? Maybe, especially if Tom Atkins was a part of the regular cast. The idea of a former conman now running scams on other con artists had the potential to be intriguing and Max hints that he was framed by his partners in Florida. I guess a weekly series would have explored that in greater detail. However, it was not to be. This shell game was played once and then forgotten.
A man named Hank (Jeremy Gardner), who owns a pretty nice house out in the country, is holding a shotgun. He’s just shot a hole through his front door. Later, when the sun rises, he’ll walk around his land, carrying his gun and searching for anything that shouldn’t be there. When an unfamiliar car drives down the road, he fires at it.
Hank has a few reasons for being paranoid. He’s convinced that there’s something out there. For the past two weeks, Hank claims that there’s been a monster scratching at the front door. His friends tell him that it’s probably just a bear but Hank swears that it’s not. It’s too big and strong and strange to be a bear. It’s a monster, Hank swears.
Most of his friends assume that Hank is losing it. It probably doesn’t help that Hank started talking about this monster around the same time that his girlfriend Abby (Brea Grant), left him. Hanks claims that he has no idea why Abby left. He assumes that she’s down in Florida with an old boyfriend but he doesn’t know for sure. Whenever anyone suggests that he might want to think about why he and Abby are having problems, Hank steers the conversation back to the monster that he claims is trying to break into the house.
Hank spends his nights waiting for the monster and thinking about Abby. We see flashbacks to his relationship with Abby and what we immediately notice is that they always seem to be happy. In Hank’s memories, we never see them fighting or any hints that there was ever any trouble in their relationship. Yet, no one seems to be surprised that Abby left Hank so, obviously, it was clear to everyone else that Abby wasn’t happy. Are we seeing real memories of Hank and Abby or are we just seeing things the way that Hank has chosen to remember them?
After Midnight is a hybrid of a horror movie and a relationship drama. It’s definitely not a film for everyone. It moves at its own deliberate pace. Some of the dialogue is a bit overwritten and I’m still not really sure how Hank managed to get away with firing a shotgun at a moving car. (The film explains that he’s got a relative on the police force but it still seems like a bit of a stretch.) There’s a very lengthy scene that is just made up of a largely static shot of Abby and Hank talking about their relationship. It’s one of those scene that you’re either going to love or you’re going to hate. Myself, I liked the fact that the film was just as concerned with Abby and Hank as a couple as it was with whatever was hiding in the darkness. It helped that Gardner and Grant were a likable and believable couple. That said, if you’re only watching this film for the horror elements, you’ll probably get annoyed.
However, After Midnight also features what is perhaps one of the greatest jump scares that I’ve ever seen. It occurs towards the end of the film so yes, it does demand a little bit of patience on your part. But that patience will be rewarded! Seriously, I’m not going to spoil it but I will say that I literally fell off my couch in shock when it happened. It was a perfectly executed moment and one that entirely justified that patience required to reach it.
After Midnight is on Prime. It’s not for everyone but I liked it.
As far as states go, Arkansas usually doesn’t get much respect. In a country where much of the culture is dominated by city-dwelling secular liberals, Arkansas is a state the remains stubbornly rural, religious, and conservative. If your grandparents were a state, they’d probably look a lot like Arkansas. Arkansas is viewed as being old-fashioned and when it does make the news, it’s usually not for anything that anyone in the state particularly wants to brag about. Democrats will always view Arkansas as being the home of Mike Huckabee. Republicans will never forgive the state for springing the Clintons on the rest of the nation. (Interestingly enough, Mike Huckabee and Bill Clinton both grew up in the same tiny town.) Little Rock has gangs and government corruption. Hot Springs has gamblers looking to hide out from the mob. Fouke has the Boggy Creek Monster while Ft. Smith is best-known for having once been home to the hanging judge, Isaac Parker. You get the idea. When it comes to the way that the rest of the country views the state, it often seems as if poor Arkansas just can’t catch a break.
With all that in mind, I have to say that I really love Arkansas. My paternal grandparents lived in Arkansas and I’ve still got relatives all over the state. Arkansas was one of the many states where my family lived while I was growing up. (The others were — deep breath — Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana.) We would stay in Arkansas for months at a time, depending on how well my mom and dad were getting along at the time. It’s an unpretentious state, one that’s full of friendly, no-nonsense people and beautiful countryside. I have a lot of good memories of Arkansas. It’s always in the back of my mind that, wherever I’m living, I can always just go back to Arkansas and spend the rest of my life living in a small town with my cousins. Of course, I’d probably end up miserable over the lack of movie theaters. Whenever I’m living in the city, I find myself yearning for the simplicity and decency of the country. Whenever I’m in the country, I find myself missing the excitement of the city.
The Natural State (as Arkansas is officially nicknamed) is not only the setting for some of my most cherished memories. It’s also the setting for a film called, appropriately enough, Arkansas. The directorial debut of actor Clark Duke, Arkansas tells the story of four very different men. Kyle Ribb (Liam Hemsworth) is quiet and rather stoic. Swin Horn (Clark Duke) is talkative, eccentric, and perhaps a bit too cocky for his own good. They both work at a national park, where their boss is a veteran ranger named Bright (John Malkovich). Of course, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to notice that neither Kyle nor Ribb really seem to do much work at the park. And, for that matter, Bright certainly does own a big and impressive house for someone who has spent the majority of his life as a ranger….
Kyle, Swin, and Bright are actually drug dealers. They transport drugs all over the southern half of the United States. Kyle and Swin are supervised by Bright. Bright, meanwhile, reports to the mysterious Frog. Kyle and Swin have never actually met Frog and there are rumors that he might not even exist. Of course, the film has already revealed to us that Frog (played by Vince Vaughn) does exist and is a local pawnshop owner.
Kyle narrates the film, informing us that the difference between Southern organized crime and Northern organized crime is that, in the South, it’s not all that organized. As Kyle explains it, the infamous Dixie Mafia is not so much an organization as it’s just a collection of undisciplined lowlifes who have no real integrity or loyalty to anyone else. When you become a drug dealer in the South, you’re a drug dealer for life. There’s no going back if you change your mind. You start out at the bottom of the ladder and, whenever someone above you if either murdered or imprisoned, you get your chance to move up. No one is ever sure who is working for who or who can be trusted. Every order from the boss is examined and re-examined as the two dealers try to figure out whether or not they’ve won the trust of the mysterious Frog.
Unfortunately for Kyle and Swin, a misunderstanding leads to violence and several deaths. With no way to directly communicate with Frog to let him know what exactly happened, Kyle and Swin know that their lives could be in danger. The film follows Kyle and Swin as they prepare for their ultimate meeting with Frog while, at the same time, detailing in flashback how Frog himself eventually came to his position of power. Throughout the entire film, we watch as history repeats itself. As Kyle said, once you’re a drug dealer, you’re a drug dealer for life.
Arkansas is a surprisingly low-key film. Kyle, Swin, Bright, and Frog all manage to be both very laid back and very aggressive at the same time. (Anyone who has spent anytime with a large group of rednecks will understand what I’m talking about.) As a director, Clark Duke is as interested in capturing the rhythms of every day life in Arkansas as he is in orchestrating the inevitable violence that results from all of the film’s betrayals and mistakes and some of the best scenes in the film just feature Kyle and Swin talking about nothing in particular while driving down the interstate. The film’s mix of cheerful goofiness and existential horror will be familiar to anyone who has ever gotten lost on the way to Hot Springs.
Liam Hemsworth and Clark Duke are sympathetic in the lead roles, though Hemsworth’s Southern accent does slip a few times. Swin meets a woman (Eden Brolin) in a grocery store and their subsequent romance manages to be both creepy and touching at the same time. John Malkovich is, as usual, wonderfully eccentric. That said, the film is pretty much dominated by Vince Vaughn, who plays Frog as being both dangerously ruthless and also as someone who understands that his eventual downfall is inevitable. Frog came to power by betraying his boss and, as played by Vaughn, Frog is very much aware that he’s destined to eventually be betrayed as well. Frog has made peace with both his place in the world and the reality of his situation and, in many ways, that makes him an even more dangerous character than he would be otherwise. He has nothing to lose and he knows it.
Obviously, I liked Arkansas, both the state and the movie. It’s an well-done work of Southern pulp.
What the Hell, 1970?
Through the Shattered Lens 