4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Len wishes a happy 80th birthday to the man and the legend, Danny Trejo! Trejo’s journey from being a gang member to an ex-con to a drug counselor to a pop cultural institution is an inspiring one, all the more so because Danny Trejo is so candid about both his past struggles and his present successes.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Danny Trejo Films
Runaway Train (1985, dir by Andrei Konchalovsky, DP: Alan Hume)
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987, dir by J. Lee Thompson, DP: Gideon Porath)
Heat (1995, dir by Michael Mann, DP: Dante Spinotti)
Machete Kills (2013, dir by Robert Rodriguez, DP: Robert Rodriguez)
Johansen (Dolph Lundgren) is a San Diego cop who remains on the force despite the fact that most of his old friends and former partners have retired. When he’s filmed beating up a Mexican man on the highway, he becomes the latest target of the Defund The Police movement. It doesn’t matter that the man was a human trafficker who was driving truck full of kidnapped women. Johansen has become an embarrassment.
Normally, you would think this would lead to Johansen being fired or, at the very least, suspended. Instead, his bosses decide to send him to Mexico to escort two prisoners back to the United States. Rosa (Christina Villa) and Leticia (Daniela Soto-Brenner) are two sex workers who witnessed the murder of a group of DEA agents. Their testimony could be key to identifying the killers. Despite his friend and former partner, Brynner (Kelsey Grammer), telling him that he should just retire rather than allow the police department to continually push him around, Johansen heads down to Mexico.
It turns out that bringing the women back to the United States is not going to be easy. A roadside ambush leaves Leticia dead and Johansen severely wounded. Though Rosa’s initial instinct is to abandon Johansen in the desert, she eventually takes him to the home of her cousin, a police officer named Miguel (Rocko Reyes). As Johansen recovers, he discovers that the people who want Rosa dead are not going to give up and that he cannot trust anyone.
Let’s give some credit where credit is due. Dolph Lundgren knows how to direct an efficient B-movie. He has an adequate visual eye, he makes good use of the arid desert setting, and he gets believable performances out of the majority of his cast. Christina Villa especially does a good job as the tough but ultimately kind-hearted Rosa. The movie has a bit more going on underneath the surface than the typical B-action film. Johansen is forced to reconsider his own prejudices while the film’s villains argue that they were forced into their actions by a society that refuses to take care of those who are expected to risk their lives to protect the status quo. It’s not a dumb movie, though it does feature a lot of characters doing rather dumb things and the big twist demands that the viewer accept one too many coincidences.
Lundgren not only directed but co-wrote the script. Apparently, he first came up with the idea of the film in 2006. Interestingly, it’s obvious that the film went into production when Defund The Police was still a strong and powerful political movement and the film itself ultimately suggests that the police should be, if not defunded, at least massively reformed. Of course, by the time the film was released in January, the Defund movement was considerably less powerful and was being blamed for the sharp increase in crime across the nation. Chants of “Defund the police” have been replaced by cries of “Fund the police, for the love of God!” That’s the danger which trying to make a film with a political subtext in an age with a 24-hour news cycle. What was popular when a film goes into production will often be a spent force by the time the film actually gets released.
As for Wanted Man, it’s an efficient B-movie that gets the job done. If nothing else, the sight of Dolph Lundgren and Kelsey Grammer playing best friends is just weird enough to keep things watchable.
Steve Godfrey (Charles Starrett) is in trouble again. He has been accused of stealing another payroll and the only man who can clear his name has just been murdered. Steve thinks that he is being set up by outlaws who want to take control of the dead man’s ranch, which is now owned by Mary Ann Jarvis (Adele Roberts).
Luckily, Steve’s old friend, Smiley Burnette, is working as a cook at the Jarvis Ranch. When Smiley isn’t singing songs with the Colorado Hillbillies, he tries to help Steve clear his name. He explains that Mary Ann Jarvis won’t listen to Steve but maybe she’ll listen to Steve’s alter ego, The Durango Kid!
Durango rides again in this movie, though, the majority of the hour runtime is made up of Smiley Burnette singing songs and making jokes. Smiley Burnette is not for everyone. I enjoy the broad humor he brought to these films but I can understand why others might not. Whenever Smiley sings a song, it does bring the action to a halt but that’s true of every Durango Kid film. If you’re a fan of the series, you either like Smiley or you can at least tolerate him. Smiley does do more than just sing in this movie. He also throws black pepper in the eyes of one of the bad guys.
Even with all of the attention paid to Smiley, The Desert Horseman delivers all of the expected horse chases and gunfights. The story is a little more interesting than usual. Steve has been framed for not one but two crimes that he didn’t commit and that adds some urgency to the proceedings. Charles Starrett, as always, is a believable western hero and he takes the role seriously.
On this date in 1905, the great actor Joseph Cotten was born in Petersburg, Virginia. A longtime friend and collaborator of Orson Welles, Cotten was one of the most dependable leading men of the 40s and 50s, an actor with the charisma of star and the talent of an artist.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 masterpiece, Shadow of a Doubt, and it features Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Wright plays Charlie. Cotten plays her beloved uncle, who is also named Charlie and who might very well be a serial killer. In this scene, Uncle Charlie drags his niece to a seedy bar, where he confesses that, as she earlier deduced, he is a suspect in a murder investigation. With a mixture of charm and intimidating, Charlie tries to convince his niece to keep his secret to herself.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to English director and editor, John Glen! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 John Glen Films
For Your Eyes Only (1981, dir by John Glen, DP: Alan Hume)
Octopussy (1983, dir by John Glen, DP: Alan Hume)
A View To A Kill (1985, dir by John Glen, DP: Alan Hume)
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992, dir by John Glen, DP: Alec Mills)
Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) is a paramedic in New York City. Haunted by the fact that her mother died while giving birth to her while looking for a special spider in Peru (and I cannot believe that I just wrote that), Cassie struggles with showing her emotions and opening up to people. In fact, her only friend appears to be her fellow paramedic, Ben Parker (Adam Scott). Ben’s sister-in-law is pregnant and Cassie tells him, “You’ll be a great uncle, Ben.”
After a near-death experience, Cassie discovers that she has the ability to see into the future. She also discovers that a strange man named Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) wants to kill three teenage girls, Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Julia (Sydney Sweeney). Cassie does what anyone would do. She kidnaps the three girls to keep them safe and then hops on a plane to Peru to find out how Ezekiel is connected to her mother’s death.
Madame Web is the latest entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Because Sony has the rights to Spider-Man, all of the MCU films featuring Spider-Man have been co-productions with Columbia Pictures and have been distributed by Sony. With Spider-Man emerging as one of the few characters to remain a strong box office draw for Marvel, Columbia has produced a series of Spider-Man-adjacent films that feature characters who have appeared in Spider-Man-related media. While Marvel and Disney have Tom Holland swinging his way through New York, Sony has to settle for Adam Scott and Dakota Johnson in an ambulance.
I always assume that the folks at Marvel and Disney probably groan a little whenever they hear that a new Sony film is coming out. The MCU Spider-Man films have been consistently strong, with all three of them proving popular with both audiences and critics. The Sony Spider-Man films, on the other hand, often seem like throwbacks to the bad old days of the early aughts, when most comic book films were still cheap and kind of embarrassing. Madame Web doesn’t do much to change this perception. In fact, the film is even set in 2003, complete with a Blockbuster Video store prominently featured in one scene, Britney Spears’s Toxic playing in a roadside diner, and a totally random reference to American Idol. (What’s funny is that the jokey reference to American Idol would really only work if the show were no longer on the air but actually, it’s still airing on CBS. No one ever seems to notice anymore but it’s still there. If the movie really had any guts, it would have had Dakota Johnson says that she was going home to watch Paradise Hotel.)
Slow-paced and featuring some of the most awkward line readings this side of a community theater production of Bus Stop,Madame Web is not a particularly engaging film. After a truly abysmal prologue set in Peru, the film spends about half-an-hour giving us a tour of Cassie’s not particularly interesting life as a tough New York paramedic before finally getting started on the main story. And even then, the film leaves the viewer feeling cheated because none of three girls — who we are told are all destined to become super heroes — actually become super powered over the course of the film. The film basically says, “They’re all going to be Spiderwoman …. BUT NOT TODAY!” The problem with that approach is that it’s hard not to feel that the only interesting thing about the three girls is that they’re eventually going to have super powers. Without the powers, they’re just kind of boring. Cassie is the only one who has a super power but being able to see three minutes into the future isn’t that much of a power. Dakota Johnson and the rest of the cast all seem to be bored out of their minds and who can blame them?
The main problem with Madame Web is that it’s just not much fun. The best super hero films are fun to watch. That goes for the Marvel films, the DC films, and even the Sony films. (Admit it, the first Venom was kind of fun.) Even with The Dark Knight films, Christopher Nolan understood that the villains had to be flamboyant to make up for Christian Bale’s rather dour Batman. In this film, we’re never quite sure what Ezekiel wants or even who he is. He’s just a random evil guy and not a particularly memorable one. Madame Web does make some attempts at humor but the sitcom-style jokes are negated by Dakota Johnson’s flat delivery. (Oddly enough, sitcom veteran Adam Scott is stuck playing a serious character.) Overall, there’s an overwhelming blandness to Madame Web. It doesn’t engage,. It doesn’t thrill. It doesn’t make you cheer or even jeer. It’s just kind of there.
The film sets up a sequel but, judging from how the film did at the box office and how not even the film’s cast has pretended to be happy with how the film turned out, I’d expect to see Morbius 2 before another installment of Madame Web.
Produced by Roger Corman and made for a budget of only a million dollars, the very first film version of The Fantastic Four is best known for having never been released. Stan Lee always claimed that the film was never meant to be released and that it was only made so that German producer Bernd Eichinger could hold onto the rights for the characters. Eichinger has always said that he wanted to release the flm and it was Avi Arad, the future founder of Marvel Studios, who asked him not to because he felt a low-budget B-movie would damage the Marvel brand. Arad has said that Eichinger is telling the truth and considering the reception that Albert Pyun’s Captain America received, I can understand why Arad was concerned.
Though the film was never officially released, bootleg copies are out there. I’ve seen the movie a few times and I watched it again last night. Watching it, I was reminded that The Fantastic Four is not as bad as people say.
It’s an origin story. Reed Richards (Alex Hyde-White) flies into space with his girlfriend Sue (Rebecca Staab), her annoying kid brother Johnny (Jay Underwood), and Reed’s best friend Ben (Michael Bailey Smith). Cosmic comet rays lead to them developing super powers. Reed can stretch. Johnny can burst into flame. Sue can turn invisible. Ben turns into a creature with orange, rocky skin. On Earth, they battle both the evil Doctor Doom (Joseph Culp) and the Jeweler (Ian Trigger) for possession of a powerful diamond.
The low budget is obvious and the script isn’t great, with the Jeweler being a truly unimpressive villain. (Unlike Doctor Doom, the Jeweler was created specifically for this movie.) But the movie still has more genuine heart than the future big-budget Fantastic Four films. Alex Hyde-White plays Reed as being brilliant but self-absorbed. Sue is a thankless role but Rebecca Staab does her best. Jay Underwood is annoying as Johnny but Johnny was annoying in the comic books as well. This version of The Fantastic Four is the only movie, so far, to capture and stay true to the spirit of the characters.
This is especially true when it comes Michael Bailey Smith’s performance as Ben Grimm. More than either Jamie Bell or Michael Chiklis, Smith realistically portrays Ben’s bitterness over knowing that he will never be able to return to his former life. Of all the film versions of the Fantastic Four, this is the only one that adequately captures both the look and the personality of The Thing. He become a real person and not just an actor in a rubber suit. This movie is also the only one, so far, to really do a decent job of portraying Dr. Doom’s megalomania. It’s interesting that the film that Marvel didn’t want released is the one that stays true to the original comic book.
The Fantastic Four will be joining the MCU in 2025. Ironically, considering that Marvel Comics started with the Fantastic Four, they’ll be among the last of the major characters to get an MCU film. There’s hope that the new Fantastic Four will reverse the MCU’s declining fortunes. I’ve been skeptical ever since I heard the Silver Surfer was going to be played by Julia Garner but hopefully, I’ll be wrong. Galactus is one of the great Marvel villains and I hope the new Fantastic Four will do him justice. When people are watching the massively hyped, big budget, CGI-heavy version of The Fantastic Four, I hope at least some will remember the low-budget version that could barely afford a single special effect and I hope they’ll remember that it wasn’t that bad.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to director Robert Zemeckis!
Today’s scene that I love comes from Zemeckis’s 1980 comedy, Used Cars! In this scene, used car salesman Gerrit Graham interrupts a televised presidential address so that he can demonstrate the best way to deal with inflation.
(Of course, he does the demonstration at a rival used car lot.)
Jack Warden watches as his cars blow up while Graham’s boss (Kurt Russell) tries to keep his business partner (Deborah Harmon) from noticing what is happening on the television.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite American directors, the one and only Sofia Coppola! In honor of this day, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Sofia Coppola Films
The Virgin Suicides (1999, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Edward Lachman)
Lost In Translation (2003, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Lance Acord)
Marie Antoinette (2006, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Lance Acord)
Somewhere (2010, dir by Sofia Coppola, DP: Harris Savides)
The Cannes Film Festival opens today. One of the most anticipated films on this year’s program is Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, a long-time passion project from Coppola that the studios apparently judged to be unsellable.
I have to admit that, from what I heard about the film, I was a bit skeptical about it. But, earlier today, I saw the trailer and I’ll just say that it won me over. The visuals, the humor, the fact that Coppola seems to be aware that his film is vision is a bit over the top, all of them fill me with a new-found hope for this film.
Through the Shattered Lens 