During the closing days of the old west, the evil Holden (Sancho Garcia) guns down retired outlaw, Tobey Naylor (Waylon Jennings). Tobey’s son, Bryce (Chad Willett), is determined to get revenge so he teams up with three members of Tobey’s old gang, Lee Walker (Willie Nelson), Jesse Ray Torrance (Kris Kristofferson), and Sheriff Dalton (Travis Tritt). They ride into Mexico, searching for one final shootout. Along the way, they befriend the locals, find time to rebuild a burned-out church, and bicker like aging gunslingers in a Larry McMurtry novel. Chad Willett and Willie Nelson also find time to fall in love with local women because, obviously, the entire film can’t just be gunfights and church-building.
Outlaw Justice is a standard western, which is distinguished only by the casting of the pioneers of outlaw country music as actual outlaws. Since this was made during the Lonesome Dove-Unforgiven era of westerns, there’s some talk about how Lee and Jesse Ray are past their prime but otherwise, it’s an angle that largely left unexplored. Of the singers, Kris Kristoffeson and Travis Tritt are probably the best actors but Willie Nelson seems to be having the most fun. (Nelson has enough natural charisma that he can get away with a lot.) If you’re a fan of westerns who doesn’t demand too much from the movie you’re watching, Outlaw Justice will probably be entertaining enough. Otherwise, it’s pretty forgettable.
As we all know, this year’s Sundance Film Festival started last week on Thursday.
To me, Sundance has always signified the official start of a new cinematic year. Not only is it the first of the major festivals but it’s also when we first learn about the films that we’ll be looking forward to seeing all year. It seems like every year, there’s at least one successful (or nearly successful) Oscar campaign that gets it start at Sundance. This year, for instance, people are already intrigued by Zola, Minari, Shirley, and Ironbark and it’s almost entirely due to how those films have been received at Sundance.
My initial plan for this year was to spend the last few days of January looking at some of the films that have won awards or otherwise created a splash at previous Sundance Film Festivals. I was planning on starting last Thursday but then I came down with a terrible cold, from which I’m still recovering.
So, instead, I’m starting today. It happens. In the past, I would have beaten myself up over not starting on time but, if I’ve learned anything from my 10 years of writing for TSL, it’s that sometimes you just have to accept that life can be unpredictable. Sometimes, you just have to embrace the mystery.
Anyway, to start things off, I want to take a look at one of my favorite films from last year, Brittany Runs A Marathon.
When we first meet Brittany Forgler (Jillian Bell), she is a 28 year-old New Yorker who works at a theater. She’s single. She’s funny. She’s irresponsible. She usually either drunk or hungover. In many ways, she’s the ideal friend. You wouldn’t necessarily want her to be your best friend, of course. But she’s still someone who seems like she’d be the perfect member of a group, in that she can make a joke but, at the same time, she doesn’t have much of a life so you don’t have to worry about her attracting attention away from you. Add to that, Brittany has an Adderall prescription, which she tends to abuse. (It happens.) Everyone loves someone who can provide them easy access to prescription medication.
In fact, it’s while she’s trying to get her prescription updated that Brittany is given some very serious news. Her doctors informs her that she’s not very healthy. She’s overweight and rarely gets any exercise. Her doctor tells her that she needs to change that. And since Brittany can’t afford to be a member of even the cheapest of gyms, it seems like the only option left is to start running.
In public.
In New York City.
Now, you can probably guess from the title that Brittany eventually comes to love running and decides that she wants to run in the New York marathon. And you can probably guess that, about halfway through the movie, Brittany faces a crisis that causes her to consider just giving up. As far as the running is concerned, this is a likable but occasionally predictable film.
Fortunately, Brittany Runs A Marathon is about more than just running. It’s about growing up and taking responsibility for your life but it’s also about loving who you are, regardless of who that might be. What makes this film so special is that Brittany doesn’t automatically become an Olympic class runner. Nor does her life magically come together just because she manages to complete a 5k. Instead, what makes this film so special is that it’s about Brittany finding her own happiness and accepting who she is. When Brittany struggles, it’s impossible not to feel for her. When Brittany succeeds, it’s impossible not to cheer.
It helps that this is also a terrifically funny film. The dialogue is sharp and witty and Jillian Bell is one of those actresses who can make even the simplest of lines hilarious. (She can also make them heart-breaking when she needs to.) While Brittany is running, she’s also working as a pet sitter. When she discovers that another pet sitter, Jern (Utkarsh Ambudkar), is essentially squatting in their employer’s house while she’s out of town, Brittany ends up moving in with him. Everyone tells Brittany that she’s eventually going to end up sleeping with Jern. Brittany says it will never happen. Jern says it will never happen. We know it will happen because Bell and Ambudkhar have such a wonderful chemistry. They’re like a 21st century version of Tracy and Hepburn.
I wasn’t expecting much from Brittany Runs A Marathon but it’s a good film, a funny comedy with a good heart and serious points to make. Not surprisingly, it was also loved at Sundance, where it won the Audience Award.
John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, of course) is back!
He’s in his 70s now. He talks a little slower. He moves a little stiffly. He wakes up every morning and takes a hundred different pills. He says that he has finally given up his anger but, deep down, he’s still the same Rambo who blew up the town of Hope, Washington before becoming an international problem solver. He still likes to dig underground tunnels and make weapons. When he’s not doing that, he and Maria Beltran (Adriana Barraza) run his father’s old horse ranch in Arizona.
When Maria’s granddaughter, Gabriela (Yvette Monreal), sneaks down into Mexico to search for her biological father, Rambo goes after her. When he discovers that Gabriela has been kidnapped and drugged by a Mexican cartel, Rambo announces that he’s going to rescue her and get revenge, even if it means blowing up the entire southwest to do it.
There’s a scene in Last Blood where Rambo literally rips a man’s heart out of his chest and holds it in front of his face while he dies. That’s pretty cool and doubly impressive when you consider that Rambo’s not that young anymore. I’m 40 years younger than Rambo and I can’t do that. Other than that, though, Last Blood is a disappointment. The cartel makes for a forgettable group of villains and too much of the plot depends on otherwise intelligent people suddenly doing something stupid. The Rambo films have never been known for their carefully constructed storylines but, even by the standards of the previous films in the series, Last Blood feels as if it was hastily slapped together.
The main problem, though, is that John Rambo doesn’t feel like Rambo. There are references to the time that Rambo spent in Vietnam and Rambo does use several VC-style booby traps to take out most of his enemies but otherwise, Sylvester Stallone might as well have just been playing John Smith. I spent the whole movie waiting for Rambo to at least say something along the lines of, “A friend of mine from Nam — his name was Sam Trautman — taught me this,” but instead, the previous Rambo films go largely unacknowledged until the end credits, during which we see some scenes from our hero’s past adventures. If you’re going to make a Rambo film, it should feature a story that could only happen to Rambo and a problem that only he can solve. Last Blood felt like it had more in common with Taken than Rambo.
Rambo’s had a good run but, on the basis of Last Blood, I think it may be time to let the character enjoy his retirement in peace. He’s earned it.
From 1942 to 1944, a teenage girl named Anne Frank lived in hiding.
She and her family lived in what was sometimes called The Secret Annex, three stories of concealed rooms that were hidden behind a bookcase in an Amsterdam factory. At first, it was just Anne, her older sister Margot, and their parents. Eventually, they were joined by another family and eventually a dentist, with whom Anne did not get along. Life was not easy in the concealed space and tempers often flared. As the months passed, Anne had a romance-of-sorts with Peter, the teenage son of the other family, but she wondered if she truly felt anything for him or if it was just because they were stuck together. Anne looked forward to someday returning to school and seeing all of her old friends, again. However, she knew that she could not leave the Annex until the Nazis had finally been forced out of the Netherlands. She and the other occupants had to remain in hiding and they had to remain perfectly quiet eight hours a day because they were Jewish. If they were discovered, they would be sent to the camps. So, they waited and Anne kept a diary.
Tragically, the Nazis did eventually discover the Secret Annex. Of the 8 occupants, only Anne Frank’s father, Otto, would survive the war. The rest died in various concentration camps. Anne Frank’s mother starved to death in Auschwitz. Her older sister, Margot, was 19 when she fell from her bunk and, because she was in such a weakened state, was killed by the shock. Anne Frank, it is believed, died a few days after Margot. She died at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, one of the 17,000 prisoners to succumb to Typhus. Before she died, Anne Frank spoke with two former schoolmates who were also being held at Bergen-Belsen. She told them that she had believed her entire family was dead and that she no longer had any desire to go on living.
However, Otto Frank did survive and, at the end of the war, he returned to the Secret Annex. That’s where he discovered Anne’s diary. After editing it (a process that Anne, who aspired to be a journalist, had already started doing shortly before she was arrested), Otto arranged for the publication of the diary. The Diary of A Young Girl (or, as it was titled in some countries, The Diary of Anne Frank) was a bestseller and has remained one ever since it was first published. Along with being recognized as being one of the most important books ever written, it’s also been adapted for both stage and screen.
The first such screen adaptation was in 1959. It was directed by George Stevens and it starred 20 year-old Millie Perkins as Anne. (Perkins bore a great resemblance to Audrey Hepburn, who was reportedly Otto Frank’s preferred choice for the role. Hepburn turned him down, saying she would have been honored to have played the role but believed that she was too old to believable as a 14 year-old.) Joseph Schildkraut played Otto while Diane Baker played Margot and Gusti Huber played Edith Frank. The Van Daans were played by Shelley Winters and Lou Jacobi while Richard Beymer played their son (and Anne’s tentative boyfriend), Peter. Ed Wynn, who was best known as a comedian, played the role of Albert Dussell, the dentist to whom Anne took a dislike. (The surviving family of Fritz Pfeffer — who was renamed Dussell in Anne’s diary — objected to the way he was portrayed in both the book and the film.)
As a film, it has its flaws. George Stevens specialized in big productions but that was perhaps not the proper approach to take to an intimate film about a teenage girl coming-of-age under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Because this was a 20th Century Fox production from the 50s, The Diary of Anne Frank was filmed in Cinemascope, which made the annex itself look bigger than it should. Scenes that should feel claustrophobic often merely come across as being cluttered.
But, in the end, the story is so powerful and so important that it doesn’t matter. Though the Annex was recreated on a Hollywood sound stage, the exteriors were actually filmed in Amsterdam. When we see the outside of the factory where the Frank family lived, we are seeing the actual factory. When we see repeated shots of the uniformed Nazi police patrolling the streets at night, we know that we’re seeing the actual view that Anne Frank undoubtedly saw many a night from the Annex. And because we know the story, we begin the film knowing how it’s going to end and that adds an even greater weight to each and every scene. It’s impossible not to relate to Anne’s hopes for the future and it’s just as impossible to not mourn that Anne never lived to see that future.
Stevens originally planned for the film to end with a scene of Anne at Bergen-Belsen. To their discredit, 20th Century Fox removed the scene after preview audiences complained that it was too upsetting. People should be upset while watching (or, for that matter, reading) The Diary of Anne Frank. Even today, there are people who still seem to struggle with acknowledging the enormous evil that was perpetrated by the Nazis and their allies. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find people who, when they don’t outright deny that it happened, try to minimize the Holocaust. It’s a disgusting thing. There was recently a viral video, which was released by NowThis that featured a student at George Washington University saying, “What’s going to happen if there’s another Holocaust? Well, we’re seeing what’s happening. We’re seeing people die at the border for lack of medical care. That’s how Anne Frank died. She didn’t die in a concentration camp, she died from typhus.” NowThis later said that the student meant to say that Anne Frank “didn’t die from a concentration camp, she died from typhus,” and you really have to wonder just how fucking stupid someone has to be to think that 1) that’s somehow an improvement on what was originally said and 2) that typhus and the concentration camp were not essentially the same thing. Even if one accepts that the student misspoke, it would seem that her main complaint was the the concentration camp didn’t have proper medical care, as opposed to the fact that it was specifically created to imprison and kill Jewish people. It’s an astounding combination of ignorance and antisemitism. NowThis later edited her comments out of the video, which again seems to miss the point of why people were upset in the first place. Instead of just saying, “Hey, this idiot is a Holocaust denier and, regardless of whether she hates Trump as much as we do, we want nothing to do with her,” NowThis instead said, “Well, if that comment offends you, we’ll take it out and you won’t have to hear it.” To me, that’s why The Diary of Anne Frank is still important and why it should still be read and watched and studied. There are too many ignorant people and craven, weak-willed organizations out there for us to turn our backs on teaching history.
The Diary Anne Frank was nominated for best picture of the year. While Shelley Winters won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the Best Picture Oscar went to Ben-Hur. Interestingly enough, Ben-Hur’s director, William Wyler, was originally interested in directing The Diary Anne Frank before George Stevens was brought on board.
1. The Souvenir
2. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
3. Uncut Gems
4. Luce
5. The Irishman
6. Parasite
7. The Lighthouse
8. Crawl
9. Dragged Across Concrete
10. Doletmite Is My Name
11. Avengers: Endgame
12. 1917
13. Joker
14. The Two Popes
15. The Aeronauts
16. Hustlers
17. The Report
18. Brittany Runs A Marathon
19. Rocketman
20. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
21. Apollo 11
22. I Lost My Body
23. The Farewell
24. Us
25. Midsommar
26. Spider-Man: Far From Home
When a group of Christian missionaries needs someone to guide them into Burma so that they can provide medical supply to the oppressed Karen people, they approach John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). The missionaries think that Rambo is just an American living in Thailand who makes a meager living as a snake catcher and a boat guide. Because we’ve seen the previous Rambo films, we know that John Rambo is actually a Vietnam vet who, after destroying the town of Hope, Washington, was recruited by the government to rescue POWs in Vietnam and fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
At first, Rambo tells the missionaries that it’s foolish for them to go anywhere near Burma and that he wants nothing to do with them. It’s only when Sarah Miller (Julie Benz) asks him personally that Rambo agrees to ferry the missionaries up the Salween River. Rambo isn’t doing it for the missionaries. He’s doing it to protect Sarah.
Unfortunately, on the way to the village, Rambo is forced to kill a group of pirates and he is rejected by the pacifist missionaries and, after he drops them off at the village, they order him to leave. However, after the village is attacked and Sarah is taken prisoner by the Burmese military, Rambo returns. This time, he’s with a group of younger mercenaries who, like the missionaries before them, don’t know what Rambo is capable of doing. Rambo soon proves that he might not be as young as used to be but he’s still just as deadly.
During the final 11 minutes of this movie, Rambo kills over a hundred people but fortunately, they’re all bad. It’s excessively violent and gory and it’s also totally awesome. When you go to see a Rambo movie, you’re not expecting to see Shakespeare. You’re expecting to see Rambo blow away the bad guys and, on that front, this film definitely delivers. Even more than the previous films in the series, Rambo is up front about what happens when someone gets shot by a machine gun or blown up by a bomb. It’s not pretty picture. The violence is so gruesome that Rambo could almost pass for an antiwar film if the people that Rambo blows up weren’t all portrayed as being almost cartoonishly evil.
Rambo is also upfront about what that type of violence would do to a man’s psyche. This film features one of Stallone’s best performances. Eschewing the comic book heroism of the 2nd and 3rd films in the franchise, Rambo reminds us that, when first introduced in First Blood, John Rambo was portrayed as being a seriously damaged and bitter man, someone who hated what the war had done to him and who felt that he no longer had a home in the normal world. Stallone was 62 when he starred in Rambo and he surrendered enough of his vanity to actually allow himself to look and sometimes act his age. In this film, Rambo may start out as bitter but he finally accepts that his pain doesn’t have to define his life. “Live for nothing or die for something,” Rambo says, a line that has subsequently been picked up by the real life Karen National Liberation Army in Burma.
Of the four sequels to the original First Blood, Rambo is the best. It has the biggest action sequences, the best Stallone performance, and it alerted people to very real atrocities being carried out against the Karen people. Coming out shortly after Rocky Balboa, Rambo was one of the films that reminded audiences that Sylvester Stallone still had it. Rambo was a box office success and, 11 years after its release, it was followed by Last Blood. I’ll be reviewing that one tomorrow.
“These straight-to-video, schlocky films I was getting were giving me an ulcer, basically because I was the only one on the set that cared about anything… Between that and my biological clock, I decided to give it all away.”
— Linda Kozlowksi, on why she retired from acting
When Linda Kozlowski talked about the “shlocky films” that soured her on acting, Backstreet Justice was probably high on the list. Kozlowski may have found fame co-starring with her then-husband Paul Hogan in the Crocodile Dundee films but, in Backstreet Justice, there’s neither an Australian nor a sense of humor to be found.
Kozlowski plays Keri Finnegan, a tough and streetwise private investigator in Philadelphia. Her late father was a policeman who was accused of corruption while her mentor (Hector Elizondo) is the district attorney. Most of the cops hate Keri, especially Captain Giarusso (Paul Sorvino). The one exception is her lover, Nick Donovan (John Shea).
The residents of Philadelphia’s worst neighborhood have hired Keri to protect them. For the past two years, a murderer has lurked among them. With the police showing no interest in solving the crimes, the neighborhood turns to Keri. Keri’s investigation leads her to believe that the murders are being carried out be corrupt cops but Keri isn’t prepared for just how far up the corruption goes.
For a straight-to-video film, Backstreet Justice has a surprisingly good cast, with Paul Sorvino, Hector Elizondo, John Shea, Tammy Grimes, and Viveca Lindfors all appearing in supporting roles. Linda Kozlowski holds her own opposite her better-known co-stars and is believable in the film’s many action scenes. The movie has a good sense of urban squalor and captures the desperation of people living in a dying neighborhood. The main problem with the film is that the central mystery is never that interesting and the solution is one that most people will see coming from miles away. For all the violence and scenes of people chasing each other, Backstreet Justice is still a boring movie.
With the exception of one surprisingly explicit sex scene, Backstreet Justice could easily pass for a made-for-TV film or a pilot for a Keri Finnegan television series. Instead, it was just another straight-to-video thriller and another reason for the talented Linda Kozlowski to leave acting behind. Her final film appearance was in 2001’s Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.
Omy Clark (Ele Keats) is an aspiring journalist who wants to work with the world famous videographer, Flynn Dailey (Brian Wimmer). When she shows up at Flynn’s studio and marvels at how much power the filmed image can wield, Flynn blows her off. While Flynn is busy ignoring Omy, Lily Miller (Sandahl Bergman) drops by and tries to hire Flynn to film her and her husband, Raymond (Terry O’Quinn), making love. When Flynn heads out to the Miller residence, Omy tags along as an uninvited guest. She happens to have a tiny camera that she stole from her best friend, Joule (Corey Feldman, sporting a beard and a beret). Omy plants the camera in Lily’s bedroom. Later, when Flynn, Omy, and Joule all return to the Miller house to retrieve the tiny camera, they discover that Lily has been murdered and that Raymond is a communist war criminal who fled East Germany following the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Lipstick Camera has an intriguing premise and, even in 1994, it was trying to say something about media manipulation and what is today referred to as being “fake news.” You could say that it was a film that was ahead of its time. You could also say that it’s a complete mess or that it’s an erotic thriller that is neither erotic nor thrilling and you would be just as correct. The main problem with the film is that almost every plot development is set in motion by Omy being either extremely self-absorbed or extremely stupid. When she’s not manipulating Joule (who is not too secretly in love with her), she’s stalking Flynn and carelessly losing an expensive camera that didn’t even belong to her in the first place. And she, of course, is meant to be our hero!
In the 90s, former teen idol Corey Feldman was one of the mainstays of late night Cinemax. Even during his Cinemax years, Feldman would occasionally give a good performance. Lipstick Camera was not one of those occasions. In Lipstick Camera, Feldman wears a beard and a beret and spends a lot of time in a room that’s full of computer monitors and TV screens and that’s the extent of his characterization. He does get a dramatic death scene, in which Joule appears to be determined to stave off the grim reaper by giving a monologue of Shakespearean proportions but otherwise, this is Corey Feldman at his worst. Faring slightly better is Terry O’Quinn, who, at least, gets to deliver his lines in a light German accent.
With its focus on the media and communist war criminals, Lipstick Camera is an example of a direct-to-video film that tried to be about something more than just sex and murder. (Though, this being a DTV film, there is one brief sex scene that takes place in front of a TV that’s showing a video of a fireplace.) Unfortunately, nobody involved seems to know what that something was supposed to be.
During the closing days of the old west, the evil Holden (Sancho Garcia) guns down retired outlaw, Tobey Naylor (Waylon Jennings). Tobey’s son, Bryce (Chad Willett), is determined to get revenge so he teams up with three members of Tobey’s old gang, Lee Walker (Willie Nelson), Jesse Ray Torrance (Kris Kristofferson), and Sheriff Dalton (Travis Tritt). They ride into Mexico, searching for one final shootout. Along the way, they befriend the locals, find time to rebuild a burned-out church, and bicker like aging gunslingers in a Larry McMurtry novel. Chad Willett and Willie Nelson also find time to fall in love with local women because, obviously, the entire film can’t just be gunfights and church-building.
Through the Shattered Lens 