Category Archives: Film Review

Police Academy (1984, directed by Hugh Wilson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

God help us, it has come to this.  After a month and a half being locked down, Lisa and I watched the first two Police Academy movies last night.

The first Police Academy takes place in an unnamed city that appears to be in California.  Due to a shortage of officers, the mayor has announced that the police academy will now accept anyone who wants to apply, regardless of their physical or mental condition.  Naturally, this leads to a collection of misfits applying.  Martinet Lt. Harris (G.W. Bailey) is determined to force all of them to drop out of the academy and he has a point because I wouldn’t trust Michael Winslow’s human sound effects guy to investigate any crimes that were committed in my neighborhood.  What’s he going to do?  Make silly noises while I’m trying to figure out who stole my car?

The leader of the recruits is Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg).  Mahoney is being forced to attend the academy because otherwise, he’ll have to go to jail for disturbing the peace.  Police Academy is a film that asks you to believe that a character played by Steve Guttenberg has not only frequently been in trouble with the law but would also make a good cop. Guttenberg doesn’t really do a bad job as Mahoney.  He’s a likable actor, even if his filmography has more duds than hits.  But he’s still miscast in a role that demands someone like Bill Murray, who could be both tough and funny.

The other recruits include Bubba Smith as Hightower and David Graf as the insane gun nut, Tackleberry.  Kim Cattrall is the rich girl who wants to be a cop and who falls in love with Mahoney.  George Gaynes is Commandant Lassard, who is out-of-it but not as out-of-it as he would be in the sequels.

You have to wonder how many parents, in the late 80s and early 90s, allowed their children to rent the R-rated Police Academy from the local video store without realizing the the first Police Academy is considerably more raunchy than the later sequels.  How did mom and dad react when they walked into the room and discovered their children watching Georgina Spelvin giving George Gaynes a blow job from underneath a podium?  Or how about the scene where recruit George Martin (Andrew Rubin) is spied having a threesome in the girl’s dorm?  The first Police Academy film is definitely made from the same mold as Animal House, Caddyshack, and Stripes.  It’s just not as funny as any of those films.

However, it is funnier than every Police Academy film that followed it.  There’s enough solid laughs to make the first Police Academy fun in a stupid way.  For instance, just about every scene involving accident-prone Cadet Fackler (Bruce Mahler) was funny.  Bubba Smith gets a lot of laughs just by being Bubba Smith in a stupid movie.  It’s also hard not to love it when Cadet Hooks (Marion Ramsey) yelled, “Don’t move, Dirtbag!”  Hell, I even laughed at the sound effects guy once or twice.

All of the Police Academy films are now on Netflix.  Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.

Cinemax Friday: Dangerous Indiscretion (1995, directed by Richard Kletter)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jim Lomax (C. Thomas Howell) is an up-and-coming advertising executive who, one night, picks up the sultry Caroline Everett (Joan Severance) in a grocery store.  What starts out as a one night stand between two attractive people who both buy their own groceries turns into a full-fledged affair with Caroline asking Jim, “Who are you?” after they sleep together and Jim struggling to define his own identity.

Unfortunately, Caroline is married to Roger Everett (Malcolm McDowell), a wealthy and ruthless businessmen who likes to quote the Art of War.  Unlike Jim, Roger knows who he is and what he believes.  He’s an evil businessman who enjoys destroying other people and who gets a kick out of fooling the world into thinking that he’s actually a compassionate philanthropist.  When Roger finds out that Caroline has been cheating on him, he sets out to destroy both her and Jim.  Because Roger is an arrogant bastard, he not only plots to ruin Jim’s life but he brags about it too.  He tells Jim that he’s going to make his life unbearable and he also says tells him that there’s not a thing that he can do to stop him.  It’s not as if Jim has ever read Suz Tzu and, largely due to the commercials that have been produced by Jim’s own firm, the public sees Roger as being a benevolent and sympathetic figure.  Jim and Caroline will have to team up to figure out a way to reveal Roger for being the monster that he is.

The main problem with Dangerous Indiscretion is that it asks us to accept the idea that C. Thomas Howell could be an equal opponent to Malcolm McDowell.  Howell was one of the better actors to regularly appear in straight-to-video and Skinemax films but he’s till no Malcolm McDowell.  As played by McDowell, Roger comes across as someone who eats his enemies for breakfast while Jim is just a callow ad exec who looks like the star of The Outsiders.  It’s Caligula vs. Soul Man and there’s not much debate about who would win that match-up in the real world.  It’s unfortunate that McDowell, who played a variety of different characters at the beginning of his career, later got typecast in purely villainous roles but he’s still charismatic enough as Roger that you know there’s no way that Jim and Caroline could ever outsmart him.  Whenever Jim and Caroline do pull one over him, it doesn’t feel right.

Fortunately, Dangerous Indiscretion is better directed than the average straight-to-video neo-noir and, even if they are outclassed by McDowell, both C. Thomas Howell and Joan Severance give good enough performances that you don’t get bored when they’re on-screen.  (This was actually the second erotic thriller that Howell made with Severance and it’s a definite step-up from Payback.)  As previously stated, McDowell’s the perfect villain.  By the proud standards of late night 90s Cinemax, Dangerous Indiscretion is an entertaining film with a great bad guy.

His Name Was King (1971, directed by Giancarlo Romitelli)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

During the dying days of the old west, John Marley (Richard Harrison) is the bounty hunter that they call King.  When King is hired to bring in the Benson brothers, who are thought to the head of a smuggling ring, he kills one of the brothers.  The gang takes revenge by tracking down and killing King’s brother and then raping his brother’s wife.  Now, King is the one who wants revenge.

Fortunately, the Sheriff, Brian Foster (Klaus Kinski), is an old friend of King’s and seems to be willing to give him the freedom necessary to get his vengeance.  What King doesn’t know is that Foster himself is the head of the smuggling ring and he has plans of his own.

His Name Was King is a short Spaghetti Western.  The version that I saw, which was poorly dubbed into English, only had a running time of 75 minutes.  Since most sources state that His Name Was King has a 90-minute running time, I can only assume that 15 minutes must have been edited out for the American release.  This was often done when Spaghetti Westerns were released in the U.S.  Unfortunately, it makes the plot to His Name Was King feel incoherent and I’m going to guess that the poor editing job is why Klaus Kinski was only in a few minutes of the version that I saw.  It’s unfortunate because, with Richard Harrison sleepwalking through his role, Kinski’s sinister turn was the best thing in the film.

His Name Was King does have a wonderful score from Luis Bacalov but it’s otherwise, in its edited form at least, for Spaghetti Western completists only.

God’s Gun (1976, directed by Gianfranco Parolini)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

During the dying days of the old west, outlaw Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) ride into the town of Juno City and try to take things over.  Because the sheriff (Richard Boone, who reportedly walked off the film before shooting was complete) is old and ineffectual, it falls to the town priest, Father John (Lee Van Cleef), to chase them off.  Father John is hardly your typical priest.  He’s a former gunfighter who, even though he no longer carries a weapon, still knows how to throw a punch.  Though he manages to put Sam and the gang behind bars, they are all eventually released.  The first thing they do is gun down Father John in front of his own church.

A mute child, Johnny O’Hara (Leif Garrett), flees town to track down Father John’s twin brother, Lewis (also played by Lee Van Cleef).  What Johnny doesn’t know is that Sam, who years ago raped Johnny’s mother (played by Sybil Danning), might actually be his father.  When Johnny finds Lewis, he finally manages to communicate what’s happened.  Lewis and Johnny head back to town so Lewis can get his vengeance  The only catch is that Lewis promised his brother that he would no longer carry a gun so he’s going to have to use his wits to get his revenge.

God’s Gun is a strange film.  It was one of the last of Spaghetti westerns but, though the director was Italian, it was filmed in Israel and it was produced by none other than Menahem Golan.  Golan brings the same producing aesthetic to God’s Gun that he later brought to many Cannon films — a few recognizable veteran actors (Jack Palance, Lee Van Cleef), an up-and-coming star (Leif Garrett), an international sex symbol (Sybil Danning), and a spin on a popular genre.  Like many of Golan’s films, the plot is occasionally incoherent and the entire production feels cheap and rushed but, at the same time, it’s hard to resist the mix of Van Cleef, Palance, and Danning.

Adding to the film’s strange feel is that every actor is dubbed, even the ones with trademark voices like Jack Palance and Lee Van Cleef.  Palance sneers throughout the entire film and could be giving a good performance but every time he starts to speak, you hear a voice that is clearly not Jack Palance’s and it makes it hard to get into the story.  There’s also an annoying squawking sound effect that explodes on the film’s soundtrack whenever someone is shot or whenever Lewis makes an appearance.

It’s not all a loss, though.  The Israeli desert is an effective Western backdrop and there are a few good camera shots.  When Lee Van Cleef and Jack Palance have their final confrontation, the picture starts to spin around and it’s pretty cool.  Finally, if you’re a Van Cleef fan, this is a rare chance to see him playing a traditional hero.  Because he’s dubbed, it’s hard to judge Van Cleef’s dual performances but this film does show that he could do more than just be a smirking killer.  He’s actually a pretty convincing priest.  Who would have guessed?

Day of Anger (1967, directed by Tonino Valerii)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

During the dying days of the Old West, Clifton, Arizona is a prosperous frontier town.  The leaders of the town are wealthy and well-connected and the saloon has a strictly enforced policy when it comes to only allowing in the right people.  Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef), the mysterious man who rides into town one day, is considered to be one of the right people.  Scott (Giuliano Gemma) is not.  Because he was born out of wedlock, Scott is looked down upon by the townspeople.  He makes a pitiful living sweeping the streets and doing odd jobs, all while trying to save up enough money to buy himself a gun.

Talby, who has his own reasons for hating the people of Clifton, takes Scott with him into the saloon.  After Scott sees Talby gun down a local roughneck, Scott begs Talby to teach him how to be a gunslinger like him.  Talby reluctantly takes Scott under his wing and teaches him how to be a real outlaw.  Scott also learns that the town of Clifton was founded by money that stolen during a robbery that Talby originally planned.  Talby now wants his money and his revenge.  Working with Scott as his enforcer, Talby takes over the town of Clifton.

At first, Scott has everything that he ever wanted.  The people who once mocked him now respect him as the second-fasted shot in town.  But when Scott’s former boss, Murph (Walter Rilla), reveals that Talby is not as benevolent a mentor as Scott thought he was, the student and teacher turn on each other.

Day of Anger is one of many Spaghetti westerns that featured an older gunslinger taking a younger one under his tutelage.  Lee Van Cleef is so confident and sure himself that it’s easy to see why Scott would idolize him.  Talby is an interesting character because, as ruthless and cold-blooded as he is, he does seem to sincerely like and care about Scott.  They’re both outsiders and they’ve both been screwed over by the town of Clifton and the movie hints that the aging Talby sees the man who he once was when he looks at Scott.  When Talby offers up one final lesson to Scott and tells him that once a man starts killing, he can never stop, Van Cleef says it with downbeat resignation, as if he realizes that Scott is now the one who will have to live his entire life alone, trusting no one, and always listening for the sound of a gun being cocked in the shadows.  Scott finally gets his gun but now he has to decide whether it was worth losing his humanity and Gemma does a good job playing his character’s arc.  Add to that an excellent score from Riz Ortolani and you’ve got a truly superior Spaghetti western.

One final note: Director Tonio Valerii would later be credited for directing another film about an aging gunfighter and his protegee, though there are rumors that the film itself was actually directed by its producer, Sergio Leone.  Starring Terrence Hill and Henry Fond, the entertaining My Name is Nobody re-imagines Day of Anger as a comedy.

Now They Call Him Sacramento (1972, directed by Alfonso Balcázar)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Sacramento (Michael Forest) is an amiable and laid back Western outlaw who can barely ride his horse and who drifts from town to town.  When he arrives at a local saloon, he meets Big Jim (Fred Harrison) who ridicules Sacramento for only ordering a glass of milk.  What Big Jim doesn’t know is that the milk is Sacramento’s house.  After Sacramento returns, accepts a whiskey-drinking challenge, and proceeds to drink Big Jim under the table, an unlikely partnership is born.

Since it’s the old west and there’s nothing better to do, Sacramento, Big Jim, and Big Jim’s father, Old Tequila (Luigi Bonos), hold up a train and get away with a fortune.  By doing so, they thwart the schemes of an evil banker was planning on robbing the train himself in order to prevent the money from getting to a town of women who the banker wants to evict.  With the banker’s men pursuing them, Sacramento, Big Jim, and Tequila all end up in the town where Sacramento falls in love with the town’s mayor, Jenny McKinley (Malisa Longo).

Now They Call Him Sacramento is an amiable Spanish-made Spaghetti western.  It’s a comedy, one that was obviously based on the very popular series of Italian films that starred Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.  Michael Forest plays the Hill role while Fred Harrison steps into the typical Spencer part.  While Forest and Harrison may not have as strong of a humorous chemistry as Hill and Spencer, they’re still likable in their roles and Forest, in particular, scores just enough laughs to keep the movie entertaining.  (Just watch him trying to get on his horse.)  Now They Call Him Sacramento may be predictable but, like it’s title character, it’s an amiable and likable comedy and the climatic fight scene — in which a fistfight escalates into the entire town has been destroyed — is a minor classic.

The Great Adventure (1975, directed by Gianfranco Baldanello)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

During the Gold Rush, a young boy named Jim Chambers (Fernando E. Romero) rescues a German shepherd from a bear trap.  Jim’s father doesn’t want Jim to adopt the dog but then he gets killed by Indians so what is he going to do about it?  Traveling with two trappers who are also brothers (played by Manuel de Blas and Remo De Angelis), Jim, his sister, Mary (Elisabetta Virgili), and the dog move to the nearby town of Dawson City.

Jim and Mary want to take over the town’s newspaper, which was originally founded by their family.  However, both the newspaper and the town have been taken over by an evil gambler named William Bates (Jack Palance).  Bates may be willing to let the children run the paper but only if they allow him to take their dog.  Meanwhile, one of the trappers falls in love with the local saloon keeper, Sonia Kendall (Joan Collins).

Though The Great Adventure is set in Alaska and tells a typical Western story, it’s an Italian film through-and-through.  Jack Palance and Joan Collins may be top-billed but the movie itself is dominated by actors speaking in poorly dubbed English.  This was one of several films based on White Fang that was released in the 70s and, like many of them, it’s an uneasy hybrid of a treacly family film and a violent western.  On the one hand, it’s a film about two children and their dog trying to publish a newspaper and, on the other hand, Jack Palance kills people in cold blood.  The film is so badly edited to be almost impossible to follow but I’m an unapologetic Jack Palance fan and I almost always enjoy any film that lets Palance do his thing.  Unfortunately, The Great Adventure didn’t have as much Palance as I was expecting and Joan Collins is beautiful but hampered by the film’s G-rating.  (For an actress who was affectionately nicknamed The Great British Open, Collins is always a strange presence in a family film.)  At least the dog was a good actor.  He eventually abandons his newfound family so that he can rejoin a wild dog pack in the wilderness and he probably made the right decision.  He looks very happy at the end of the movie.

That’s The Way Of The World (1975, directed by Sig Shore)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Welcome to the down and dirty world of the music industry in the 1970s.

Coleman Buckmaster (Harvey Keitel) is a record producer who is known as the “Golden Ear,” because of his success at discovering new talent.  Coleman is the son of a jazz pianist (to whom he brings a birthday present of cocaine) and he is convinced that consumers are not as dumb as music execs assume that they are.  He believes that his latest group, known simply as The Group (but played by Earth, Wind, & Fire), have what it takes to become a big success despite not having a conventionally commercial image.

Coleman’s boss, Carlton James (Ed Nelson), disagrees.  Carlton orders Coleman to spend less time working with The Group and to instead devote his energy to producing a single for a new band called The Pages.  Led by Franklyn Page (Bert Parks), the Pages present themselves as being a clean-cut and wholesome family band.  Carlton is sure that their innocuous style and feel-good harmonies are going to be “the sound of the 70s.”  Coleman disagrees but he tries to balance working with both groups.  While he tries to make The Group into a success, he also tries to find something worthwhile in The Pages’ new single, “Joy Joy Joy.”  Complicating matters is that, against his better instincts, Coleman has fallen into a relationship with Velour Page (Cynthia Bostick), who is not as innocent as the band’s image makers makes her out to be.

Written by journalist Robert Lipsyte and directed by producer Sig Shore (he did Superfly), That’s The Way Of The World is an interesting look at what was going on behind the scenes of the music industry in the 70s.  It’s not the first film to suggest that the recording industry was run by unethical and corrupt record labels (nor would it be the last) but it feels authentic in a way that a lot of other music industry films don’t.  That’s The Way Of The World emphasizes just how manufactured most popular music is.  Insisting on trying to do something different, as the Group does, will only lead to you being snubbed by the industry.  Play ball and record music that means nothing — like the Pages — and you’ll become a star overnight.  Having a hit has less to do with the work you put into it and more with how many people your label is willing to pay off.  As one exec puts it, getting your record played on the radio (in those days before YouTube and Soundcloud) means resorting “payola, layola, and drugola.”  Harvey Keitel performs his role with his trademark intensity and Bert Parks is brilliantly cast as the thoroughly fake Franklyn Page.

Today, The Way Of The World is best-known for its soundtrack, which was also one of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s best-selling albums.  Though the film was a bomb at the box office, the album was not.  The Group may have struggled to get anyone to listen but Earth, Wind, and Fire became the first black group to top both the Billboard album and singles charts.

Beware The Pages

The Things You Find On Netflix: Sergio (dir by Greg Barker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sergio, which dropped on Netflix last Friday, is a biopic of the Brazilian diplomat, Sérgio Vieira de Mello.  Sergio spent 34 years as a diplomat with the United Nations, going to some of the most dangerous places in the world and trying to negotiate with people who were determined to kill one another.  Sergio was so respected within the UN that he was seen as a likely candidate for Secretary-General.  Instead, in 2003, Sergio was killed in a terrorist attack while he was in Baghdad, observing the American occupation of Iraq.

Starring Wagner Moura in the title role, Sergio opens with Sergio arriving in Baghdad.  For the majority of the film, he’s buried in the rubble of his blown-up office, thinking about his past life while an American soldier (played, with quiet authority, by Garret Dillahunt) tries to dig him and his assistant, Gil (Brian F. O’Byrne) out.  Through the use of flashbacks, we watch as Sergio negotiates peace in East Timor and argues against the occupation of the Iraq.  We also watch as he meets and falls in love with Carolina (Ana de Armas), pursuing a passionate affair with her despite being married.

Sergio is a rather staid biopic.  If you’re expecting to see an Adam McKay-style screed about international diplomacy and American war crimes, that is not what this film is and we should be happy for that because, seriously, have you tried to watch The Big Short or Vice lately?  Instead, Sergio is more like a Jay Roach film without the attempts at humor.  It’s a blandly liberal biopic that is conventionally structured and a bit too convinced that the audience is going to automatically agree with its points.  Indeed, one of the film’s most glaring flaws is that it assumes that we’re all as enamored with the UN as it is.  Instead of making a case for why the UN should be taken seriously, Sergio just assumes that it is.

The other big problem with the film is that it’s just boring.  There’s nothing interesting about the film’s structure and, as portrayed in the rather bland script, both Sergio and Carolina come across as being ciphers.  We’re constantly told that Sergio is charismatic and controversial but we really don’t see much evidence of it.  The film itself doesn’t seem to know what made Sergio tick but what’s even worse is that it doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in finding out.  There’s not much interest in digging into Sergio’s mind or his motives,  The film forgets that you can portray someone as a hero and celebrate their accomplishments without necessarily idealizing them.  With the exception of one or two scenes (and there is an effective moment where one of Sergio’s assistants does call him out for putting everyone’s life in danger by refusing to accept protection from the U.S. army), Sergio is portrayed in such an idealized that he comes across as being a bit dull.  Wagner Moura is an appealing actor but there’s no depth to his performance.  Meanwhile, Ana de Armas is reduced to playing the stock girlfriend with a social conscience role.

All that said, I almost feel guilty about not liking Sergio.  The film was made with good intentions but good intentions don’t necessarily translate to compelling storytelling.

 

Cinemax Friday: Blast (1997, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Blast opens with a title card telling us that what we’re about to see is based on a true story except that it’s not.  In the days leading up to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the FBI thwarted many potential terrorist plots.  Only one of the plots was a domestic terror plot.  Blast is the story of what would have happened if that plot had not been disrupted.

(What about Eric Rudolph and the Olympic Park bombing?  That’s not mentioned, probably because this film went into production before the Atlanta Olympics actually began.)

Omodo (Andrew Divoff of Wishmaster fame) is a terrorist who does evil things because he’s evil.  He and his group have taken the American Olympic swim team and their coach, Diane Colton (Kimberly Warren), hostage in an Atlanta gym.  They’re demanding money and an opportunity to escape.  The police (led by Tim Thomerson) don’t know what to do.  The FBI (represented by Rutger Hauer with braided hair) are not much help either.  Fortunately, the gym’s janitor, Jack Bryant (Linden Ashby), is a former Olympic gymnast who is a master of Tae Kwon Do!  Jack also happens to be Diane’s ex-husband!

Blast comes from us the time when every action movie was a blatant rip-off of Die Hard and we were all cool with that because Die Hard was so awesome that it deserved to be remade a thousand times.  Blast is more of the usual.  Jack sneaks around the facility, defuses bombs, and picks the terrorists off.  Omodo kills two hostages in cold blood.  Shannon Elizabeth of American Pie fame plays one of the hostages but she doesn’t get many lines beyond, “Help us!”  Why does Rutger Hauer have his hair in braids?  Because he was Rutger Hauer and everyone was probably so happy to have him on set for a few hours that they were willing to let him do whatever he wanted to do with his hair.  Rutger Hauer only gets about five minutes of screentime but he makes the most of them.

Lindsen Ashby is convincing in the fight scenes but I think the movie would have been better if he had just been an ordinary janitor, instead of a Tae Kwon Do supstar who has fallen on hard times.  That would have added some suspense to the story because, as it is, Jack is so obviously superior to his opponents that there’s never really any question as to whether or not he’s going to succeed.  Andrew Divoff is a good actor but his villain isn’t given any good lines and the people working for him are all pretty bland.  One of the best things about the first three Die Hard films was that the villains were just as interesting as the hero but the same cannot be said for Blast.

Blast is forgettable but still, five minutes of Rutger Hauer is better than no Rutger Hauer at all.