The Things You Find on Netflix: The Stand at Paxton County (dir by Brett Hedlund)

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Stand at Paxton County, which is currently playing on Netflix, opens with an ominous title card warning us that what we’re about to see is “based on a true story.”

I may be alone in this but I find the term “based on a true story” to be fascinating. It’s signifies that the film that we’re about to watch was inspired by something that actually happened but it’s not actually a recreation of that event. It’s an invitation to watch and to try to figure out how much is true and how much is just a product of a screenwriter’s imagination. “Based on a true story” is a real cinematic tease.

The Stand at Paxton County tells the story of Janna Connelly (Jacqueline Toboni), an army medic who is still haunted by her memories of serving in Afghanistan. When her rancher father, Dell (Michael O’Neill), has a heart attack, Janna returns home to Paxton County, North Dakota. What she discovers is that, after she left home, the ranch fell into disrepair. Dell only has one ranch hand, a seemingly amiable doofus named Brock (Greg Perrow) and it doesn’t appear that Brock’s been doing a very good job.

When Sheriff Bostwick (Christopher McDonald) shows up to do a compliance check on the ranch, he finds a lot of problems. When he returns with a cold-eyed veterinarian named Dr. Morel (Marwa Bernstein), Dell is informed that his ranch is in such disrepair that the sheriff can take away his livestock and essentially put Dell out of business!

How can the sheriff get away with this, Janna asks. Dell explains that, years ago, the voters of the state voted down a proposition that would have given law enforcement the right to confiscate a rancher’s livestock. However, a bunch of unelected lobbyists and left-wing activists went ahead and forced the law through the state legislature! Now, the sheriff can pretty much do whatever he wants and anyone who tries to stand up for their Constitutional rights is subject to harassment and perhaps even murder!

While all of this is going on, Brock vanishes from the ranch. It turns out that Brock is a professional bad employee who goes from ranch to ranch and goes out of his way to mess things up so that the ranchers lose their livestock. The livestock is then sold to the highest bidder or sometimes the sheriff will just keep a horse for himself. With Brock gone, Janna hires sexy Matt (Tyler Jacob Moore) to be the new ranch hand and then sets out to get justice for her father.

I had mixed feelings about The Stand at Paxton County. On the one hand, I’m not a fan of the government regulation in general and I’m always happy to watch a libertarian-themed film. Christopher McDonald’s smug and corrupt sheriff felt like a stand-in for all of the authoritarian-minded politicians and bureaucrats who have recently come out of the woodwork and used the COVID-19 pandemic to increase their own power. (“Hey, it’s Clay Jenkins!” I said as soon as the sheriff showed up.) So, on that level, I enjoyed the film.

Unfortunately, The Stand at Paxton County doesn’t just stick to criticizing the government for overstepping their authority. Instead, it also portrays animal rights activists as being a part of a sinister financial conspiracy and that’s where it lost me. It’s a lot easier to buy into the idea of a corrupt sheriff than it is to imagine the head of the PSCA sitting in a darkened war room and ordering his minions to torment one rancher, all so he can resell the rancher’s livestock. That doesn’t mean that activists should be immune from criticism or that there isn’t a legitimate argument to be made that even well-intentioned regulations are vulnerable to abuse. But the film’s portrayal of its central conspiracy just got a bit too cartoonish to be effective. Once the villains went from being smug to being downright evil, it became impossible to take the movie seriously. If the film had simply stuck to criticizing government overreach instead of imagining a shadowy conspiracy, it would have been a lot more effective.

The Stand at Paxton County has some lovely shots of the North Dakota countryside and Christopher McDonald is a wonderfully smarmy villain. I always appreciate a film that has an anti-authoritarian subtext but The Stand At Paxton County is ultimately dragged down by its own heavy hand.

Most Wanted (1997, directed by David Hogan)

Posted on May 18, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

James Dunn (Keenan Ivory Wayans) is an army sergeant with a talent for getting framed for crimes that he didn’t commit.

During the Gulf War, Dunn’s superior officer orders Dunn to shoot a shepherd boy. Dunn refuses and, when the two men get into a fight over a gun, his commanding officer is accidentally shot and killed. The army refuses to listen to Dunn’s explanation. He’s convinced of murder and sentenced to death. However, while Dunn is on his way to Leavenworth, he is rescued by Col. Casey (Jon Voight). Casey explains that he is giving Dunn a chance to join a super secret vigilante group that targets evil doers. Yes, Dunn will be expected to assassinate people but they’ll all be bad. With no other options available to him, Dunn agrees to work for Casey.

Dunn’s first target is the corrupt owner of a pharmaceutical company (played by Robert Culp) but — surprise — it turns out that the target was actually the First Lady and that the entire plan was to set up Dunn as a patsy! Now a “most wanted” fugitive, Dunn is forced to go on the run with a doctor (Jill Hennessy) who recorded the assassination with a camcorder. (Remember, Most Wanted was made during the days of the landline phones.) With Casey and his second-in-command (played by Wolfgang Bodison) determined to kill him and with only Paul Sorvino (as the head of the FBI) doubting the official story, Dunn has to find a way to reveal the truth.

Though he was subsequently overshadowed by his brothers, Damon and Marlon, Keenan Ivory Wayans was a really big deal in the 90s. As the man behind In Living Color, he proved that black comedians and writers could be just as funny (and, in many cases, funnier) than their white counterparts over at Saturday Night Live. It can be argued Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx, David Alan Grier, and Jennifer Lopez would not have the careers that they have today if not for Keenan Ivory Wayans. (All of them first found fame as members of the In Living Color ensemble, Carrey, Foxx, and Grier as cast members and Lopez as a “fly girl.”) Most Wanted was Wayans attempt to transform himself into an action hero (perhaps not coincidentally, a year before Most Wanted was released, Damon Wayans had a minor hit with Bulletproof).

Keenan Ivory Wayans not only starred in Most Wanted but he also wrote the script and it’s interesting just how straight the action is played. It would be natural to expect Wayans to turn the movie into a spoof but there’s little intentional humor to be found in Most Wanted. Most Wanted takes itself seriously and the end result is an adequate but hardly memorable action movie, with Wayans jumping off of buildings and fighting off the bad guys. The action scenes are well-shot if not particularly imaginative but, unfortunately, Wayans doesn’t really have the screen presence necessary to be a believable action hero. Both the character of James Dunn and Wayans’s performance are just too bland to really be compelling. Far more interesting are Jon Voight and Paul Sorvino, who are both entertainingly hammy in their roles.

There’s one good scene in Most Wanted, where Dunn finds himself being chased by what appears to be the entire population of Los Angeles. Otherwise, this one is adequate but forgettable.

One Tough Bastard (1996, directed by Kurt Wimmer)

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

When the wife and the daughter of John North (Brian “The Boz” Bosworth) are gunned down by a mysterious gunman (Jeff Kober), North refuses to accept that they were just the victims of a robbery gone wrong. Working with a tough street kid (DeJuan Guy) who needs a mentor to show him that violence is not the solution to all of the world’s problem, North sets out to discover the truth and get revenge in the most violent ways possible. What North discovers is that the gunman who killed his family works for a corrupt FBI agent named Karl Slavak (Bruce Payne) and that Slavak is selling guns to a drug lord named Dexter Kane (played by … wait for it … MC HAMMER!)

You would think that any movie featuring M.C. Hammer as a drug lord would be worth seeing but the man who brainwashed a generation into making “U Can’t Touch This” jokes is actually pretty forgettable as Dexter. This movie was made when Hammer had dropped the M.C. from his name and he was trying to reinvent himself as a harder-edged rapper. That reinvention didn’t work because there’s absolutely nothing edgy about M.C. Hammer (much like Will Smith, he was the rapper whose music wouldn’t cause your parents to have an aneurysm) and One Tough Bastard proves it.

Instead, One Tough Bastard is worth seeing because of the epic meeting between two action stars who epitomized everything great about straight-to-video movies in the 90s, Brian Bosworth and Bruce Payne! The Boz may have been a bust as a football player but he was a good action star, delivering one-liners and viscous beat downs with aplomb and, unlike some action stars (*cough* Seagal *cough*), he could play the dramatic scenes without embarrassing himself. With his long hair and his nosering, Bruce Payne may be an unlikely FBI agent but he’s a great villain and he has no fear of shouting almost all of his dialogue. Add in Jeff Kober and you’ve got a dumb but fun movie that’s enlivened by three actors who know how to be convincingly tough on camera.

One Tough Bastard lives up to the promise of its title.

Film Review: The American Dreamer (dir by Lawrence Schiller and L.M. Kit Carson)

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today would have been Dennis Hopper’s 84th birthday, I decided to watch the 1971 documentary, The American Dreamer.

Filmed in 1970, between the success of Easy Rider and the release of Hopper’s infamous follow-up to that film, The Last Movie, The American Dreamer is a cinematic portrait of a very specific time in both Dennis Hopper’s life and American film history. Dennis Hopper was 34 years old at the time The American Dreamer was shot and he was at the top of his career. As a result of the success of Easy Rider, he was regularly touted as being the future of American film. He was a self-styled revolutionary who specialized in spacey yet compelling monologues about how American movies were about to enter into a new age. Eager to try to capture the same audience that had made Easy Rider a success, Universal Pictures gave Dennis Hopper a million dollars and allowed him to take the money to South America, where he used it to film The Last Movie, a film that was designed to show who Hopper truly was as a filmmaker. The American Dreamer was filmed while The Last Movie was in post-production and we do see a few scenes of Hopper editing the film.

That said, Hopper doesn’t really seem to be too interested in talking about the specifics of The Last Movie. He does talk a lot about how he’s leading a revolution that’s going to forever alter the American cultural scene but again, Hopper doesn’t really go into too many specifics when it comes to his artistic vision. He’s more into slogans than details. Fortunately, Hopper was a compelling speaker so he holds your attention regardless of how incoherent his frequent monologues are. The American Dreamer may not convince you that Dennis Hopper was a great director but it does prove that he was a good actor. In this film, he’s acting the role of being an outlaw and a visionary.

As vague as he is about his artistic vision, Hopper gets a bit more specific whenever he’s talking about his love of weed, sex, and guns. In between leading encounter groups with all of the women who are living with him in New Mexico, Hopper brags about being such a considerate love that he’s a “male lesbian.” In another scene, Hopper talks to three giggling girl in a bathtub. He explains that free love is a part of the revolution and that he’s helping people get over their hang-ups. It’s impossible not to cringe as Hopper comes across less like a lovable eccentric and more like one of those cult leaders who ends up living in a compound in Nevada and getting into a stand-off with the government.

Hopper’s a bit more likable when he’s filmed rolling a joint. Watching the film, you can tell that he was a man who truly loved getting stoned and he actually lets down his guard a bit and grins once he’s ready to light up. However, Hopper is probably at his most natural and likable when he’s shooting a gun in the desert. Hopper spends a good deal of the film talking about his love for guns. On the one hand, it’s a bit alarming as Hopper doesn’t exactly come across as being the most stable person on the planet. On the other hand, Hopper appears to be having such a good time that it’s hard not to be happy for him. Hopper explains that, when you’re an outlaw and you’ve living in New Mexico, you have to have guns for your own protection and he makes a pretty good argument. One of the frequent misconceptions about Hopper is that he was a hippie. (This despite the fact that Easy Rider more or less ridiculed the hippies.) The American Dreamer, with its emphasis on individual freedom and the right to protect yourself, shows that, even during the height of the Hollywood counterculture, Hopper’s outlook was essentially libertarian. Watching The American Dreamer, it’s easier to understand how Hopper went from directing Easy Rider to becoming one of the few Republicans in Hollywood. Indeed, whenever the bearded and often unwashed Hopper is seen walking through the desert or firing a gun at a cross, he comes across less like the revolutionary visionary that he’s trying to be and more like an old soul in a new world.

With its frequent use of freeze frames and its intentionally ragged editing, The American Dreamer is very much a film of its era. That’s actually the main appeal of The American Dreamer. It captures a very unique and very specific point of time. It captures an artist during the brief period between his biggest success and his greatest failure and while the film may be frustrating on a narrative level, it’s fascinating as a time capsule. The film is probably more poignant when viewed today than it would have been back in 1971 because, today, we know that The Last Movie bombed and that Hopper’s revolution ended as quickly as it began. It was not Dennis Hopper who determined the future of American film but instead Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Hopper struggled, both professionally and personally, through the rest of the 70s and the early 80s before finally kicking drugs and emerging as not just as an in-demand character actor but also something of a pop cultural icon. Watching The American Dreamer, it’s fascinating to compare the older Hopper — the one who gave witty interviews and who joked about his past excesses — with the pretentious and self-serious Hopper of the early 70s.

Still, The American Dreamer shows that Dennis Hopper was always a compelling figure. It’s impossible not to roll your eyes while watching and listening to the youngish Dennis Hopper but, nonetheless, you do continue to watch and listen.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Bill Paxton Edition

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

Bill Paxton would have been 65 years old today. One of the greatest of the modern character actors, Bill Paxton passed away three years ago and the loss is still felt. Paxton was one of those actors who was often taken for granted but who was capable of bring almost any character to life. He was an exciting actor to watch, not to mention being one of the best actor to ever come out of Ft. Worth, Texas. He is definitely missed.

Today, we pay tribute to the great Bill Paxton with….

4 Shots From 4 Films

Near Dark (1987, dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Pass the Ammo (1988, dir by David Beaird)

A Simple Plan (1998, dir by Sam Raimi)

Frailty (2001, dir by Bill Paxton)

Frame of Mind (2009, directed by Carl T. Evans)

Posted on May 16, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

David Secca (Carl T. Evans, who also directed) is a New York cop who has just transferred to a town in New Jersey. His wife, Jennifer (Arija Bareikis) has a new job as a teacher. One day, while they’re out antiquing, they purchase a box that contains a roll of film. Looking at the film reveals pictures of a dangerous looking man who has a gun and who appears to be standing on the infamous grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas.

Convinced that he’s uncovered new evidence in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Secca carries out his own investigation of the film. He tracks down the woman (Barbara Barrie) who actually shot the film and discovers that she is now 85 and confined to a nursing home. He talks to a skeptical conspiracy theorist (Chris Noth). As Secca investigates, his progress is monitored by people who, after all these years, still don’t want the truth about the Kennedy assassination to get out. As Secca discovers, these people are still willing to kill to protect the conspiracy.

Frame of Mind is an attempt to make a conspiracy thriller that, unfortunately, is done in by its own low budget. It’s difficult to make a conspiracy seem convincing when you don’t really have the money to hire more than a few extras. Probably the most interesting thing about the film is that, despite the low budget, there are a few established actors in the cast. Along with Barrie and Noth, Tony Lo Bianco, Don Harvey, Vincent Curatola, and even KISS’s Peter Criss all have small roles. The strangest cameo of all goes to former New York Mayor David Dinkins, who plays a senator. Being mayor of New York may be a dead end politically (just ask John Lindsay, Rudy Guiliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill De Blasio) but it can still serve as a launching pad for a career in the entertainment industry.

Frame of Mind might hold some interest for JFK assassination hobbyists, though it doesn’t really bring anything new to the able. It’s mostly interesting just to see who shows up in the cast.

“They Might Think I’m A Part Of The Band” Rest in Peace, Fred Willard

Posted on May 16, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Rest in Peace, Fred Willard. The veteran comedian died, in his sleep, last night. He was 86 years old.

It’s hard to think of anyone who was as naturally funny as Fred Willard. Here’s one of my favorite Willard performances, from Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap:

Willard appeared in all of Christopher Guest’s improvised mockumentaries. Here he is, with Catherine O’Hara, in Waiting for Guffman:

He was also in Best of Show, where his commentary on the dog show proved to be one of the film’s highlights:

Fred Willard, R.I.P.

Cinemax Friday: Student Affairs (1987, directed by Chuck Vincent)

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Director Chuck Vincent wasn’t the only director who making hardcore porn in the early 80s but he was one of the few to receive critical acclaim. A director who put as much emphasis on storylines and characterizations as he did on getting the money shots, Vincent was responsible for some of the final films to come out of porn’s so-called Golden Age. His best-known adult film, Roommates, was even given a favorable review in The New York Times.

Vincent was also one of the few porn directors to regularly direct “mainstream” films as well. Of course, Vincent was never hired to direct a big studio film or anything like that. Instead, he directed B-movies, the majority of which were either neo-noirs or dumb sex comedies. Though Vincent was an above average director who had a knack for getting good performances out of unlikely actors, his mainstream films never got as much attention as his pornographic films. (It makes sense when you consider that Vincent was, at the time, the best director working in the porn industry but just one of my many competent directors making B-movies.) One place where Vincent’s B-movies were popular was on late night Cinemax.

Student Affairs is one of Chuck Vincent’s better B-films. It opens with a group of actors auditioning for a dumb teen sex comedy called Student Affairs and then it follows them as they go to a high school and shoot the movie. The film alternates between scenes of the sex comedy that they are filming and scenes of what’s going when the cameras aren’t rolling. The cast is made up of familiar types. There’s a centerfold who is worried that she is going to be washed-up at the age of 20. There’s the intellectual and classically-trained actor who has been typecast as idiot. There’s a vain male model and there’s another starlet who is convinced that she’s going to be a big star someday. The film itself is almost plotless but it’s obvious that Vincent had a lot of affection for both his cast and the characters that they play. When it comes to Student Affairs, both the film and the film-within-the-film are dumb sex comedies with predictable plots but Chuck Vincent’s direction makes this a surprisingly sincere dumb sex comedy. When Rex (Andy Nichols) complains that he’s never going to have the career that he deserves because his physical appearance has typecast him as a dumb jock, both Vincent and the movie take him seriously.

There have been many great films made about the making of movies. Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night comes to mind. So does Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man. Chuck Vincent was neither Truffaut nor Rush and Student Affairs is hardly a great film. But, for a dumb sex comedy that was made for little money, Student Affairs is better than most.

Sadly, Vincent died just five years after the release of Student Affairs. If he had lived longer and directed more films, Vincent and his oeuvre would probably be ripe for rediscovery. Unfortunately, Vincent died just before directors like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez made B-movie cool again.

4 Shots From 4 Films: In Tribute To Joseph Cotten

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The Third Man (1949, directed by Carol Reed)

As you can probably guess from my pen name and my profile pic, Joseph Cotten is one of my favorite actors. Born 115 years ago on this day, Cotten may be best known for his association with Orson Welles but he worked with several great directors over the years. Along with playing Jedediah Leland in Welles’s Citizen Kane, he starred in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Even while his film career was flourishing, Cotten continued to appear on the Broadway stage and, during the early days of television, he frequently appeared on anthology series, the majority of which were broadcast live. Cotten even had a memorable cameo in Michael Cimino’s infamous film, Heaven’s Gate.

In honor of Cotten’s birthday, here are four shots from four of his best films.

4 Shots From 4 Films

Citizen Kane (1941, directed by Orson Welles)

Journey Into Fear (1943, directed by Norman Foster and Orson Welles)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943, directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

Portrait of Jennie (1948, directed by William Dieterle)

Women In Chains (1972, directed by Bernard L. Kowalksi)

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Sandra Parker (Lois Nettleton) is the world’s most dedicated parole officer. After one of her parolees is sent back to prison and then dies under mysterious circumstances, Sandra decides to investigate on her own. For Sandra, this means changing her name to Sally Porter and arranging to be sent to prison on a phony charge. For some reason, Sandra/Sally only tells one other person what she’s doing. The plan is for Sandra to spend two weeks undercover and then her friend, fellow parole officer Helen (Penny Fuller), will reveal the truth to the proper authorities and get Sandra sprung from prison. It doesn’t work out that away, as Helen is killed in the line of duty shortly after Sandra finds herself behind bars.

The prison is run by the tyrannical Claire Tyson (Ida Lupino!), a matron who is more interested in exercising power than in rehabilitation. Claire’s main enforcer is a butch prisoner named Dee Dee (Jessica Walter!!). As soon as she enters the prison, Sandra gets on Tyson’s bad side. Sandra asks too many questions and makes the mistake of demanding that her fellow prisoners be treated humanely. Sandra even demands that a prisoner be given aspirin for a migraine, which is the type insubordination that leads to a stay in solitary. (What’s strange is that, in solitary, Sandra ends up sharing a cell with another prisoner which I would think would defeat the purpose of being in solitary.) With Tyson openly plotting to kill her and the only person who knows where she is dead, Sandra has to figure out a way to escape the prison and reveal the truth about what goes on behind bars.

Compared to most women-in-prison films, Women in Chains is pretty tame. This is a women-in-prison film that you could safely watch with grandma. This one was made for early 70s television, so there’s no nudity, no strong language, and even the required prison riot is restrained. The film asks us to believe that Sandra would not only be stupid enough to only let one person know that she was going undercover but also that a parole officer could somehow walk around the prison without running into any prisoners who she previously dealt with. Obviously, the film’s plot is not its strong point but viewers with an appreciation for camp will undoubtedly enjoy the performances of Ida Lupino and Jessica Walter. They rule that cell block with an iron fist and are entertaining to watch.