Category Archives: Film Review

Cyborg (1989, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The time is the future and the world has seen better days.  As a result of solar flares and war, Earth has been reduced to a barren wasteland where only the strong survive.  Making things even worse is that a plague has broken out and is threatening to wipe out what remains of the world’s population.

A cyborg named Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) has been sent to New York to retrieve the information on how to cure the plague from a computer system.  Now that she has the information, it’s all a matter of safely returning to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.  She’s being pursued by the evil Fender (Vincent Klyn), a pirate who says that he loves the new world and who wants to be the one to decide who does and who does not get the cure.  When a mercenary named Gibson (Jean-Claude Van Damme) offers to protect her on her journey back to Atlanta, Pearl declines.  She says that Gibson is not strong enough to defeat Fender and that she’ll take her chances with the pirates.  (Pragmatically, Pearl says that her allies in Atlanta can kill Fender themselves.)

However, Gibson is not willing to take no for an answer.  Gibson is less concerned with saving humanity and more concerned with avenging the death of his lover, who was murdered by Fender.  Working with Nady (Deborah Richter), another sole survivor of one of Fender’s massacres, Gibson sets out to track down and destroy the pirate.

When Cyborg started, I was really looking forward to watching Jean-Claude Van Damme play a cyborg but it turned out that Van Damme was playing a human.  I thought that Fender might be a cyborg but he’s also just a human.  There’s only one cyborg in this film and she’s often superfluous to the action.  I imagine that this movie was called Cyborg in order to capitalize on the popularity of movies like Terminator and Robocop but Cyborg actually has more in common with the Mad Max films.  Van Damme is a haunted loner, just like Max Rockatansky, while Fender and his crew feel as if they could have stepped out of the Road Warrior.  Even the lengthy scene where Gibson is crucified in the desert feels tailor-made for Mad Max and Mel Gibson’s habit of playing characters who undergo lengthy torture scenes.  (And is it coincidence that Mel Gibson and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s haunted hero both share the same last name?)

Jean-Claude Van Damme, with his pun-worthy name and his reputation for bad behavior off-screen, never got much respect but he was one of the best of the Arnold Schwarzenegger imitators of the 80s and 90s.  He was a genuine athlete and he was a far better actor than someone like Steven Seagal.  When Van Damme was under contract with Cannon Films, he was offered his choice of starring in three films: Delta Force 2, American Ninja 3, and Cyborg.  He chose Cyborg, playing a role that was originally envisioned for Chuck Norris.  As a film, Cyborg will never win any points for originality but the fight scenes are kinetic and exciting and, even more importantly, this is a movie that lets Van Damme be Van Damme.  There are no attempts at character development or any sort of self-aware winking at the audience.  Instead, Van Damme shows up and fights.  Matching Van Damme blow for blow is the imposing Vincent Klyn, whose opening monologue (“I like the death! I like the misery! I like this world!”) is a classic of its own.

Cyborg would be followed by two sequels, which were largely unrelated to the first film.  Jean-Claude Van Damme would not return for either of them.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: All That Jazz (dir by Bob Fosse)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Bye bye life….

Bye bye happiness….

Hello loneliness….

I think I’m going to die….”

So sings Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) at the end of the 1979 film, All That Jazz.  And he’s right!  It’s hardly a spoiler to tell you that All That Jazz ends with Joe Gideon in a body bag.  It’s not just that Gideon spends a good deal of the film flirting with the Angel of the Death (Jessica Lange).  It’s also that, by the time the film ends, we’ve spent a little over two hours watching Joe engage in non-stop self-destruction.  Joe is a director and a choreographer who is so in love with both death and show business that his greatest triumph comes from choreographing his own death.

Joe wakes up every morning, pops a handful of pills, stares at himself in the mirror and says, “It’s showtime!”  He spends his day choreographing a Broadway play.  He spends his nights editing his latest film, a biopic about Lenny Bruce called The Stand-Up.  He’s particularly obsessed with a long monologue that Lenny (played by Cliff Gorman) delivers about the inevitability of death.  When he’s not choreographing or editing, he’s smoking, drinking, and cheating on his girlfriend (Ann Reinking).  It’s obvious that he’s still in love with his ex-wife (Leland Palmer) and that she loves him too but she’s also too smart to allow herself to get fully sucked back into his self-destructive orbit.  He loves his daughter (Erzsébet Földi) and yet still ignores her when she begs him not to die.

Joe and the Angel of Death

When Joe has a heart attack and ends up in the hospital, he doesn’t change his behavior.  Instead, he and the Angel of Death take a look back at his youth, which was spent hanging out in strip clubs and desperately trying to become a star.  Joe Gideon, we see, has always know that he’s going to die early so he’s pushed himself to accomplish everything that he can in what little time he has.

As a result of his drive and his refusal to love anyone but himself, Gideon is widely recognized as being an artistic genius.  However, as O’Connor Flood (Ben Vereen, essentially playing Sammy Davis, Jr.) puts it, “This cat allowed himself to be adored, but not loved. And his success in show business was matched by failure in his personal relationship bag, now – that’s where he really bombed. And he came to believe that show business, work, love, his whole life, even himself and all that jazz, was bullshit. He became numero uno game player – uh, to the point where he didn’t know where the games ended, and the reality began. Like, for this cat, the only reality – is death, man. Ladies and gentlemen, let me lay on you a so-so entertainer, not much of a humanitarian, and this cat was never nobody’s friend. In his final appearance on the great stage of life – uh, you can applaud if you want to – Mr. Joe Gideon!”

Now, of course, Connor doesn’t really say all that.  Gideon just imagines Connor saying that before the two of them launch into the film’s final musical number, Bye Bye Life.  It should be a totally depressing moment but actually, it’s exhilarating to watch.  It’s totally over-the-top, self-indulgent, and equally parts sincere and cynical.  It’s a Bob Fosse production all the way and, as a result, All that Jazz is probably about as fun as a movie about the death of a pathological narcissist can be.  This is a film that will not only leave you thinking about mortality but it will also make you dance.

All That Jazz was Bob Fosse’s next-to-last film (he followed it up with the even darker Star 80) and it’s also his most openly autobiography.  Roy Scheider may be playing Joe Gideon but he’s made-up to look exactly like Bob Fosse.  Like Joe Gideon, Bob Fosse had a heart attack while trying to direct a Broadway show and a film at the same time.  Gideon’s girlfriend is played by Fosse’s real-life girlfriend.  The character of Gideon’s ex-wife is clearly meant to be a stand-in for Gwen Verdon, Fosse’s real-life ex-wife.  When the film’s venal Broadway producers make plans to replace the incapacitated Gideon, Fosse is obviously getting back at some of the producers that he had to deal with while putting together Chicago.  It’s a confessional film, one in which Fosse admits to his faults while also reminding you of his talent.  Thank God for that talent, too.  All that Jazz is self-indulgent but you simply can’t look away.

It helps that Gideon is played by Roy Scheider.  Originally, Scheider’s Jaws co-star Richard Dreyfuss was cast in the role but he left during rehearsals.  Dreyfuss, talented actor that he was, would have been all-wrong for the role of Gideon.  One can imagine a hyperactive Dreyfuss playing Gideon but one can’t imagine actually feeling much sympathy for him.  Scheider, on the other hand, brings a world-weary self-awareness to the role.  He plays Gideon as a man who loves his talent but who hates himself.  Scheider’s Joe Gideon is under no illusions about who he is or how people feel about him.  When Fosse’s own instincts threatens to make the film unbearably pretentious, Scheider’s down-to-Earth screen presence keeps things grounded.

I love All That Jazz.  (Admittedly, a good deal of that love is probably connected to my own dance background.  I’ve known my share of aspiring Joe Gideons, even if none of them had his — or Bob Fosse’s — talent or drive.)  It’s not for everyone, of course.  Any musical that features actual footage of open heart surgery is going to have its detractors.  For the record, Stanley Kubrick called All That Jazz “the best film I think I’ve ever seen.”  It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and it was nominated for Best Picture, though it ultimately lost to the far more conventional Kramer vs. Kramer.

All that Jazz would be the last of Fosse’s film to receive a best picture nomination.  (Fosse directed five features.  3 of them were nominated for Best Picture, with the other two being Cabaret and Lenny.)  8 years after filming his cinematic doppelganger dying during heart surgery, Fosse would die of a heart attack.  Gwen Verdon was at his side.

Grambling’s White Tiger (1981, directed by Georg Stanford Brown)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1968 and Jim Gregory (played by Caitlyn Jenner, back when she was still credited as Bruce) is a hotshot high school quarterback who has just been offered a scholarship to play at Grambling University.  With their star quarterback in his final year, Grambling needs a good backup.  Meanwhile, Jim dreams of playing in the NFL and is excited to play for a program that’s known for producing professional football players.  Grambling’s legendary head coach, Eddie Robinson (Harry Belafonte), is eager for Jim to join the team.

The only problem is that Grambling is a historically black college and Jim Gregory is very much white.  In fact, Jim will not only be the first white player to ever join the Grambling Tigers but he will also be the only white student enrolled at the school.  From the minute that Jim arrives on campus, he discovers that he’s not wanted.  The rest of the team sees him as an interloper and they resent that he took a scholarship that could have gone to a black player.  Meanwhile, the local whites distrust Jim because he’s a student at a black college.

Based on a true story, this is a football film that doesn’t feature much football.  Jim doesn’t get to play in a game until the very end of the season and, even then, he’s only on the field for a few minutes.  He doesn’t win the game or even lead a scoring drive.  Instead of focusing on the usual sports movie clichés, Grambling’s White Tiger instead explores Jim experiencing, for the first time, what it’s like to be a minority.  Jim eventually wins over his teammates through his hard work but he still remains an outsider for the entire film.  When he goes into town, a saleswoman and her boss initially offer him a discount on a pair of boots until they discover that he plays football not for Louisiana Tech but instead for Grambling.  When he first meets the parents of his new girlfriend, he’s told that an interracial relationship will never last and is advised to move on.  When the funeral of Martin Luther King is broadcast on television, all Jim’s teammates walk out of the room one-by-one until Jim is left sitting alone.

In typical made-for-network-TV fashion, Grambling’s White Tiger explores important issues without delving into them too deeply.  (For instance, the fact that Jim’s spot on the team is potentially coming at the expense of a black student is an intriguing issue that is mentioned at the start of the film but never really dwelled upon.)  Harry Belafonte is perfect as the stern but compassionate Coach Robinson while LeVar Burton is likable as the only member of the team to initially welcome Jim.  Jenner, however, is thoroughly miscast and several years too old to play a college freshman.  As an actor, Jenner is stiff and awkward but the true story of Jim Gregory is interesting enough that the film will hold the attention of any football fans in the audience.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Lenny (dir by Bob Fosse)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, it’s true.  Long before the creator of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was even born, Lenny Bruce was a real comedian who was challenging the status quo and going to jail for using words in his routine that were, at the time, considered to be so obscene that they couldn’t even be uttered in public.  Today, of course, we hear those words and they’re so commonplace that we barely even notice.  But, in the 50s and the early 60s, it was not uncommon for Lenny Bruce to get arrested in the middle of his act.  Club owners could literally be fined for allowing Lenny Bruce to perform on their stage.  At the height of his fame, it was a struggle for Lenny to find anyone willing to even consider booking him.

Whether it was his intention or not, Lenny Bruce became one of the first great warriors for the 1st amendment.  It made him famous and a hero to many.  Many people also believe that the pressure of being under constant legal threat led to his death from a drug overdose in 1966.  Lenny Bruce was only 40 years old when he died but he inspired generations of comedians who came after him.  It can be argued that modern comedy started with Lenny Bruce.

Directed by Bob Fosse and based on a play by Julian Barry, 1974’s Lenny takes a look at Lenny Bruce’s life, comedy, legal battles, and eventual death.  As he would later do in the thematically similar Star 80, Fosse takes a mockumentary approach to telling his story.  Clips of Lenny Bruce (played by Dustin Hoffman) performing are mixed in with “interviews” with actors playing the people who knew him while he was alive.  Because the story is told out of chronological order, scenes of a young and enthusiastic Lenny are often immediately followed by scenes of a burned-out and bitter Lenny reading from the transcripts of his trial during his stand-up.  Fosse never forgets to show us the audience listening as Lenny does his act.  Most of them laugh at Bruce’s increasingly outrageous comments but, to his credit, Fosse never hesitates to show us the people who aren’t laughing.  Lenny Bruce, the film tells us, was too honest to ever be universally embraced.

The film doesn’t hesitate to portray Lenny Bruce’s dark side.  For much of the film, Lenny is not exactly a likable character.  Even before his first arrest, Lenny comes across as being a narcissist who is cruelly manipulative of his first wife, stripper Honey Harlow (Valerine Perrine).  As opposed to the somewhat dashing Lenny of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Dustin Hoffman’s Lenny Bruce comes across as someone who you would not necessarily want to be left alone with.  The film’s Lenny is a hero on stage and frequently a hypocrite in his private life but that seems to be the point of the movie.  Lenny argues that one of the reasons why Lenny Bruce could so perfectly call out society for being fucked up was because he was pretty fucked up himself.

As with all of his films, Lenny is as much about Bob Fosse as it is about Lenny Bruce.  As a director, Fosse often seems to be more interested in Bruce’s early days, when he was performing in low-rent strip clubs and trying to impress aging vaudevillians, than in Bruce’s later days as a celebrity.  (The world in which the young Lenny Bruce struggled was a world that Fosse knew well and its aesthetic was one to which he frequently returned in his films and stage productions.)  It’s also easy to see parallels between Lenny’s uneasy relationship with Honey and Bob Fosse’s own legendary partnership with Gwen Verdon.  The film’s grainy black-and-white cinematography captures not only the rough edges of Lenny’s life but also perhaps Fosse’s as well.  Just as Lenny Bruce performed confessional stand-up comedy, Lenny feels like confessional filmmaking.

Of course, it’s not always a pleasant film to watch.  Dustin Hoffman does a very good job of capturing Lenny Bruce’s drive but he doesn’t really have the natural comedic timing necessary to be totally convincing as a stand-up comedian.  (The film sometimes seems to forget that, as much as Lenny Bruce was admired for his first amendment activism, he was also considered to be a very funny stand-up.)  Still, it’s a valuable film to watch.  It’s a document of history, a reminder of a time when you actually could get arrested for saying the “wrong” thing.  Some people would say that we’re returning to those times and it’s easy to imagine that the real Lenny Bruce (as opposed to the idealized version of him) would not be welcome to perform on most college campuses today.  One can only imagine how modern audiences would react to a part of Lenny’s stand-up where he repeats several racial slurs over and over again.  (If Lenny Bruce had lived to get a twitter account, he would be getting cancelled every week.)  Lenny‘s vehement celebration of freedom of speech is probably more relevant in 2020 than it was in even 1974.

Lenny received several Oscar nominations, including best picture.  However, 1974 was also the year of both The Godfather, Part II and Chinatown so Lenny failed to win a single Oscar.

(Interestingly enough, Fosse’s previous film, Cabaret, was also prevented from winning the award for best picture by the first Godfather, though Fosse did win best director over Francis Ford Coppola.  Five years after the release of Lenny, Fosse would make All That Jazz, which was partially based on his own health struggles that he suffered with during the filming Lenny.  In All That Jazz, Cliff Gorman — who starred in the stage production of Lenny — is frequently heard reciting a Lenny Bruce-style monologue about death.  Fosse’s All That Jazz would again compete with a Francis Ford Coppola production at the Oscars.  However, Kramer vs Kramer — starring Lenny‘s Dustin Hoffman — defeated both All That Jazz and Apocalypse Now for the big prize.  22 years later, Chicago, which was based on Fosse’s legendary stage production and which featuring the song that gave All That Jazz it’s name — would itself win best picture.)

The Take (1974, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Lt. Terrence Sneed (Billy Dee Williams), a tough and suave cop from San Francisco, is sent to New Mexico to help Police Chief Berrigan (Eddie Albert) take down the local crime syndicate.  No sooner has Sneed arrived in town than he’s helping to prevent a prison break and killing gangsters.  Berrigan is impressed and explains to Sneed that the local crime boss is Victor Manso (Vic Morrow).  Even though everyone knows that Manso is crooked, the police haven’t ever been able to put together a case that will stand up in court.  Maybe Sneed is the man who can do it.

What Berrigan doesn’t know is that Sneed is a crooked cop, himself.  As soon as Sneed leaves his meeting with Berrigan, he goes over to Manso’s office and collects his money.  Manso assigns Sneed to work with another crooked cop, Captain Dollek (Albert Salmi).  However, it turns out that Sneed has plans of his own.  While still on Manso’s payroll, Sneed starts to put together a case that might finally take Manso down.

The Take is full of good actors in small roles.  If you have ever wanted to see Billy Dee Williams share a scene with Frankie Avalon, The Take is the film for you.  Avalon plays Danny James, a small-time hood who is arrested and interrogated by Sneed.  At first, Danny is cocky and arrogant but, as soon as Sneed removes his jacket and his watch and makes a fist, Danny starts crying and begging Sneed not to beat him.  Danny is soon turned into an informant and then disappears from the movie.  The beautiful model Kathirine Baumann plays Danny’s girlfriend.  While only wearing a towel, she gives Capt. Dollek the finger and looks amazing doing it.  Sorrell Brooke, who later found fame as Boss Hogg on The Dukes of Hazzard, also has a few good scenes as Sneed’s deceptively respectable money launderer.

The Take can be a confusing film to watch because it’s never firmly established just how corrupt Sneed actually is.  Sometimes, Sneed just seems like he’s trying to make a little extra money and then, other times, he comes across as being a full-blown gangster.  Despite being on Manso’s payroll, Sneed seems to be determined to take him down and the film never makes clear why.  Billy Dee Williams is his usual supremely cool self but he seems almost too cool to play a morally ambivalent cop.  More impressive are Vic Morrow and Eddie Albert, who both shamelessly chew the scenery as two leaders on opposite sides of the law.

The Take is often mistakenly referred to as being a blaxploitation film but it’s really just a cop film with a lead actor who happens to be black.  Unlike the best blaxploitation films, there’s no political subtext to be found in the movie.  Sneed could just as easily be a corrupt white detective and, with the exception of one throwaway line, race is never mentioned.  While this is a minor cop film, it features a few good action scenes and, again, it’s your only chance to see two very different pop cultural icons, Billy Dee Williams and Frankie Avalon, acting opposite of each other.  That’s not a bad pay-off for 91 minutes of your life.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: A Star Is Born (dir by Bradley Cooper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Happy birthday, Bradley Cooper!

Bradley Cooper is 45 years old today.  With all the recent talk about how people’s lives have changed over the past decade, let’s take a minute to appreciate just how spectacularly things have gone for Bradley Cooper, career-wise.  Ten years ago, Bradley Cooper was probably best-known for playing the smarmiest member of The Hangover‘s quartet of friends.  Now, Cooper is known for not only being one of the best actors working today but also for making an acclaimed directorial debut with the 2018 Best Picture nominee, A Star Is Born.

Cooper not only directed A Star is Born but he also starred in it.  He played Jackson Maine, a country musician who has been drinking for as long as he can remember.  He used to drink with his father and when his father died, Jackson continued to drink alone.  (At one point, Jackson says that he was a teenager when his father died.)  Managed by his older brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott), Jackson became a star but his career has been in decline for a while.  For all of his talent and for all of his belief that he has something worth saying, Jackson is drinking his life away.  He stumbles from show to show and is often dependent upon Bobby to tell him what he missed while he was blacked out.

When Jackson stumbles into a drag bar and sees Ally (Lady Gaga, making her film debut) singing a song by Edith Piaf, he is immediately captivated by her talent.  Ally, whose father (Andrew Dice Clay) is a limo driver who once aspired to be bigger than Sinatra, is at first weary of Jackson but he wins her over.  After she punches a drunk and he takes her to a grocery store to construct a makeshift cast for her hand, she sings a song that she wrote and Jackson decides to take her on tour.  Soon, they’re in love and, before you know it, they’re married!

Unfortunately, Jackson’s alcoholism threatens both their happiness and their future.  While Ally’s star rises, his continues to dim.  Will Ally sacrifice her career for Jackson or will Jackson sacrifice his life for Ally?

It’s a familiar story, one that’s been told many times.  The first version was 1932’s What Price Hollywood, which featured aspiring actress Constance Bennett falling in love with an alcoholic director played by Lowell Sherman.  In 1937, What Price Hollywood? was unofficially remade as A Star Is Born, with Janet Gaynor as Esther, the actress who falls in love with faded matinee idol, Norman Maine (Fredric March).  The next version came out in 1954 and featured Judy Garland as Esther and James Mason as Norman.  Significantly, the 1954 version added music to the plot, with Judy Garland singing The Man That Got Away.  

In 1976, the story was told a third time.  This version of A Star is Born starred Barbra Streisand as singer Esther Hoffman and Kris Kristofferson as a self-destructive rock star named John Norman Howard.  The 1976 version was terrible, largely because there was zero chemistry between Streisand and Kristofferson.  And yet, one gets the feeling that the 1976 version is the one that had the most influence on the 2018 version.  Not only does Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born make the story about aspiring singers but one gets the feeling that Cooper watched the 1976 version, saw the lack of chemistry between Kristofferson and Streisand, and said, “There’s no way that’s going to happen in my movie!”

Indeed, it’s the chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga that makes the latest version of A Star Is Born so compulsively watchable.  I mean, we already know the story.  From the minute that Jackson and Ally meet for the first time, we know what’s going to happen.  But Cooper and Lady Gaga have got such an amazing chemistry, that it almost doesn’t matter whether the movie surprises us or not.  There’s a scene where Ally says that she’s always been told that her nose is too big and Jackson responds by nonchalantly touching her nose and, with that one simple and very naturalistic gesture, the film convinces us that Jackson and Ally are meant to be together, even if just for a while.  It also makes it all the more upsetting when a drunk and jealous Jackson later uses Ally’s insecurities against her.

(Of course, I should admit that I’ve always been insecure about my own nose so, at that moment, I totally understood what Ally was feeling.)

It’s an unabashedly romantic and sentimental film but it works because, as a director, Cooper brings just enough of an edge to the story.  Cooper, who has been sober since 2004, has been open about his past struggle with alcoholism and, as both an actor and director, he’s smart enough not to romanticize Jackson’s addictions.  In many ways, Jackson Maine is a pain in the ass to be around.  We watch as he goes from being a fun drunk to a sad drunk to a mean drunk, all the while lashing out at anyone who gets too close to him.  At the same time, Cooper also captures the spark of genius and the hints of inner goodness that would explain why he is never totally rejected by those that he’s hurt.  Cooper offers up hints of who Jackson could have been if he hadn’t surrendered to pain and addiction.  We understand why Ally and Bobby stick with him, even if we wouldn’t blame either one of them if they refused to have anything more to do with him.

Lady Gaga, meanwhile, gives a performance is that is down-to-Earth and instantly relatable.  Anyone who has ever been insecure or who has ever felt as if she was being punished for being independent or thinking for herself will understand what Ally’s going through.  At some point, we’ve all been Ally and we’ve all had a Jackson Maine in our lives.  Sadly, these stories rarely have happy endings.

For most of 2018, it was assumed that A Star Is Born would be the film to beat at the Oscars.  While it was eventually nominated for 8 Oscars, Bradley Cooper did not receive a nomination for Best Director.  (Cooper, Lady Gaga, and Sam Elliott were all nominated in the acting categories.)  In the end, Green Book won Best Picture while A Star Is Born only won one award, for Best Original Song.

Of course, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s performance of that song was perhaps the highlight of the entire Oscar ceremony.

That’s the power of good chemistry.

 

 

American Outlaws (2001, directed by Les Mayfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Returning to their hometown in Missouri in the days following the end of the Civil War, former Confederate guerrillas Jesse James (Colin Farrell) and Cole Younger (Scott Caan) are disgusted to discover that the railroad companies are trying to take over everyone’s land.  After Cole’s cousin and Jesse’s mother are killed by railway thugs, Jesse and Cole take revenge by forming the James/Younger Gang and robbing banks.  Soon, the members of the James/Younger Gang become folk heroes and the railroad company resorts to bringing in Alan Pinkerton (Timothy Dalton) to track the outlaws down.  However, even as they try to remain out of the clutches of Pinkerton’s men, there is growing dissension in the ranks of the James/Younger Gang.  Cole feels like Jesse doesn’t respect his opinions while Jesse is falling in love with Zee (Ali Larter) and it’s hard to court a girl when you’re constantly having to hide out from Alan Pinkertson.  Meanwhile, the other members of the gang wonder why their wanted posters never look as good as Jesse’s and Cole’s.

There have been many movies made about the James/Younger Gang and this is certainly one of them.  What sets this telling apart from other versions of this familiar tale is that American Outlaws is the feel-good version of the story.  Bob and Charley Ford are nowhere to be seen in American Outlaws and Jesse James doesn’t get shot in the back while straightening a picture.  This approach misses the point of what makes the legend of Jesse James so memorable in the first place.  Jesse James was the greatest outlaw in the west but he was ultimately taken down by a coward who shot him in the back.  Take out that part of the story and the story loses all of its power.  Jesse James just becomes another outlaw.

In real life, the James/Younger Gang were reportedly a rough group of outlaws who didn’t hesitate when it came to killing.  In American Outlaws, they come across more like a boy band with a side hustle robbing banks.  Jesse is the soulful leader, Cole is the rebel, and the other members of the gang are the interchangeable backup vocalists.  There’s been many good and even great films made about the James/Younger Game.  American Outlaws is not one of them.  For a good movie about the life and times of Jesse James and his associates, I would suggest checking out Walter Hill’s The Long Riders or Andrew Dominik’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (dir by Sidney Franklin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1934 best picture nominee, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, takes place largely in one room.

That room is a bedroom located in a mansion that sits on Wimpole Street in London.  The room is occupied by Elizabeth (Norma Shearer), a sickly woman who has spent years in bed and who is barely able to walk.  She is the eldest of 11 siblings and all of them live in the house together, under the watchful eye of their tyrannical father, Edward (Charles Laughton).  Edward has forbidden any of his children from ever leaving home.  None of them are to get married.  In fact, none of them are to have even a relationship.  Even when he hears that a trip to Italy could actually improve Elizabeth’s health, he sternly forbids her from leaving.  Edward is obsessed with sin.  As he explains it, he was once a sinner himself.  In fact, he was such a sinner that he sometimes lost control of himself.  Now that he’s a father and a widower, Edward deals with his less savory impulses through constant prayer and he’s determined to never allow his children to fall into sin as well.

Despite her father’s attempts to keep her isolated from the outisde world, Elizabeth has managed to find an escape.  She’s a poet and her words have won her admirers from around world.  One of those admirers is another poet, a young man named Robert (Fredric March), who frequently writes her letters about his love of her work.  One day, in the middle of a snowfall, Robert shows up at the house on Wimpole Street and requests to see Elizabeth.  Robert tells her that her poetry has not only inspired him but it has also caused him to fall in love with her.  When Elizabeth explains that she is dying and cannot leave the bedroom, Robert says that she’s going to live forever.  After Robert leaves, Elizabeth manages to stand and, for the first time in years, walks over to the window to watch as he departs.

Sounds like a perfect love story, right?  Well, there’s a problem.  Edward has absolutely no intention of allowing Elizabeth to leave the house, regardless of how much her health improves after her initial meeting with Robert.  He is determined to keep her in that bedroom and, this being a pre-code film, it becomes obvious that there’s more to Edward’s behavior than just being an overprotective father.  Though the dialogue may be euphemistic, Edward’s incestuous desires are plain to see.  It’s there every time that he leers as his daughters while also saying that he’ll be sure to pray for their souls.  It’s there in the film’s final moments, when Edward makes a request that’s so dark and cruel that it will take even a modern audience by surprise.  Charles Laughton played a lot of villains over the course of his long career but Edward is perhaps the most monstrous.

As a film, The Barretts of Wimpole Street is undeniably stagy and it’s a bit overlong as well.  Charles Laughton so dominates the film with menace that he threatens to overshadow not just March and Shearer but also Maureen O’Sullivan, who plays one of Elizabeth’s sisters.  But no matter!  I absolutely love The Barretts of Wimpole Street.  The house is gorgeous, the plot is wonderfully melodramatic, and Shearer and March both have a wonderful chemistry.  You can debate whether or not March and Shearer are credible as poets but, ultimately, what matters more is that they are totally believable as soul mates.  From the minute they first meet, you simply buy them as a couple that is meant to be.  Robert’s earnestness is perfectly matched with Elizabeth’s growing strength and it’s impossible not to cheer at least a little when Elizabeth first manages to walk down a staircase without collapsing.

Of course, as any student of literature should be aware, Robert is Robert Browning and Elizabeth is Elizabeth Barrett.  In real life, Robert Browning did arrange a meeting with Elizabeth after having read her poetry and, as well, it’s been said that Elizabeth’s father did not approve of her relationship with Robert.  It’s also apparently true that Edward actually did disinherit any of his children who married.  As for the other details of Edward’s depiction in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, it’s unknown how close to the truth Laughton’s performance may have been.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a wonderful historical romance.  It was Oscar-nominated for best picture, though it lost to a far different romance, It Happened One Night.

Cinemax Friday: Extramarital (1998, directed by Yael Russcol)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Traci Lords in Extramarital

Having quit her corporate job, Elizabeth (Traci Lords) has taken a position as an intern at We@r Magazine.  (Yes, that’s how it’s spelled.)  She’s not making much money and she and her husband, Eric (Jack Kerrigan), are really struggling to pay the bills.  However, Elizabeth is getting to work for her college mentor, Griffin (Jeff Fahey), and she’s pursuing her dream.  Unlike Eric, who surrendered his fantasies of being a professional photographer, Elizabeth is determined to make it as a writer.

The only problem is that she can’t seem to get anything published.  Griffin tells her that she’s too repressed and that she doesn’t put enough of herself into her stories.  He orders her to “confront your demons and nail your endings.”  Elizabeth gets a chance to do just that when she meets Ann (Maria Diaz).  Ann says that, like Elizabeth, she spent her youth at a Catholic boarding school and she married the first man that she ever had sex with.  However, Ann is now in an open marriage and she says that it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to her.  Intrigued, Elizabeth decides to write a story about Ann.  But, when Ann disappears, Elizabeth fears that she may have been murdered and she decides to track down Ann’s latest lover, Bob (Brian Bloom), herself.

Extramarital is the type of thriller that used to air on Cinemax, late at night, in the 90s.  In fact, it’s such a 90s film that the entire plot hinges on deciphering a garbled message that was left on a broken answering machine.  Like most of the Cinemax thrillers of the era, the plot borrows a lot from Basic Instinct and no one ever does anything intelligent.  (To cite just one example, after Elizabeth discovers the someone is planning to kill her, she calls everyone but the police.)  The film deserves some credit for actually having the guts to cast Traci Lords as someone who is sexually repressed.  Griffin calls her the “Virgin Adulteress,” which probably would have been a better title than Extramarital.

Because of her background in the adult film industry and the fact that even her non-porn roles usually required her to show a lot of skin, Traci Lords never got much respect as an actress but, as she shows here and in her other 90s direct-to-video films, she had more talent than she was given credit for.  Lords seems to really invest herself in the role of Elizabeth and her performance is often the only thing that holds this film together.  Her best moment is when she discovers that she’s been betrayed and she trashes a room while screaming, “Fucking liar!”  Traci could destroy a room with the best of them.

The film’s ending doesn’t make much sense and you’ll figure out who the main villain is just by process of elimination.  That’s one problem with low-budget whodunits.  There usually aren’t enough people in the cast to really keep you guessing.  But Traci Lords is both sexy and sympathetic as Elizabeth and Jeff Fahey gives another memorably weird performance.  As far as late night Cinemax features from the 1990s are concerned, Extramarital delivers exactly what it promises.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Hope and Glory (dir by John Boorman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The world is at war and a child is having the adventure of a lifetime.

That’s the idea behind the 1987 best picture nominee, Hope and Glory.  Taking place at the start of World War II, Hope and Glory shows us the Blitz through the eyes of ten year-old Billy Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards).  The world around Billy is on that is full of destruction, death, and often surreal imagery.  It’s a world where school children wear gas masks and the nights are full of explosions and shaking walls.  In the morning, everyone steps outside to see whose house has been destroyed.

Billy’s father, Clive (David Hayman), joins the army, leaving his wife Grace (Sarah Miles) to look after the Billy, Susie (Gerladine Muir), and their rebellious older sister, Dawn (Sammi Davis).  While Dawn falls in love with a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr) and Grace is tempted to have an affair with her husband’s best friend, Mac (Derrick O’Connor), Billy spends his days exploring the ruins of London and collecting scrap metal.  He and his friends loot bombed-out houses for all that they can find.  When they hear that Pauline’s (Sara Langton) mother was killed in the bombing, they blithely ask her if it’s true.  And while Billy eventually comes to better appreciate the reality of what’s happening around him, the rest of his friends remain cheerfully unconcerned.  “Thank you, Adolf!” one yells to the sky after learning that their school has been bombed.

Hope and Glory is a comedy but it has a very serious core.  Even while we’re watching Billy having his adventures, we’re very aware of what’s happening in the background.  For that matter, so is Billy, even if he doesn’t always immediately understand what he’s seeing or hearing.  Billy may be confused as to why Grace and Dawn have such a strained relationship but, for the observant viewer, the clues are there in every tense line of dialogue, awkward silence, and sidelong glance.  One of the film’s best scenes features Billy pretending to be asleep while listening to Grace and Mac talking about their past together.  As they speak, it becomes obvious that Grace may have married Clive but she’s always loved Mac.  Marrying Clive allowed her to have a family and a home, both of which now seem as if they could all just instantly disappear depending on where the bombs randomly land.  It’s a sweet but rather sad scene, one that’s perfectly played by both Sarah Miles and Derrick O’Connor.

I cried a lot while watching Hope and Glory.  I cried when Clive told his family that he was leaving.  I cried when Billy was forced to confront the reality of war.  I even teared up when Billy, while cheerfully exploring the ruins of a house, caught sight of the house’s former inhabitant watching him with a shell-shocked expression on her face.  But it’s also a very funny film.  About halfway through, Billy’s grandfather (Ian Bannen) shows up and he’s a wonderfully cantankerous and proudly contrary character.  It was also hard not to like little Roger (Nicky Taylor), the pint-sized leader of the gang who swaggers like a mini-James Cagney and delivers his lines with a rat-a-tat combination of innocence and jerkiness.

Not surprisingly, Hope and Glory was autobiographical.  Director John Boorman based this film on his childhood and Hope and Glory is sweetly touching in the way that only a story that comes from the heart can be.  This deeply moving and very funny film was nominated for best picture but it lost to The Last Emperor.