I know, I know, I have been away from posting my normal movie previews and reviews for a while, that is my fault!
But I’ll be back to posting my normal movie previews/reviews soon!
Until then here are some things you can look forward to me previewing and reviewing:
A Perfect Host
Alien OutBreak
Covenant
And last, but not least, You might have been…
Hope you all enjoyed my tour through my movie screeners I get to watch this month!
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.
You know the story that’s told in this 1936 film already, don’t you?
In the city of Verona, Romeo Montague (Leslie Howard) has fallen in love with Juliet Capulet (Norma Shearer). Normally, this would be cause for celebration because, as we all know, love is a wonderful thing. However, the House of Capulet and the House of Montague have long been rivals. When we first meet them all, they’re in the process of having a brawl in the middle of the street. There’s no way that Lord Capulet (C. Aubrey Smith) will ever accept the idea of Juliet marrying a Montague, especially when he’s already decided that she is to marry Paris (Ralph Forbes). Things get even more complicated with Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt (Basil Rathbone), kills Romeo’s best friend, Mercutio (John Barrymore). Romeo then kills Tybalt and things only grow more tragic from there.
It’s hard to keep track of the number of films that have been made out of William Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers and tragedy. The plot is so universally known that “Romeo and Juliet” has become shorthand for any story of lovers who come from different social sects. Personally, I’ve always felt that Romeo and Juliet was less about love and more about how the rivalry between the Montagues and the Capulets forces the young lovers into making hasty decisions. If not for Lord Capulet throwing a fit over his daughter’s new boyfriend, she and Romeo probably would have split up after a month or two. Seriously, I’ve lost track of how many losers I went out with in high school just because my family told me that I shouldn’t.
Producer Irving Thalberg spent five years trying to get MGM’s Louis B. Mayer to agree to greenlight a film version of Romeo and Juliet. Mayer thought that most audiences felt that Shakespeare was above them and that they wouldn’t spend money to see an adaptation of one of his plays. Thalberg, on the other hand, thought that the story would be a perfect opportunity to highlight the talents of his wife, Norma Shearer. It was only after Warner Bros. produced a financially successful version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that Mayer gave Romeo and Juliet the go ahead.
Of course, by the time the film went into production, Norma Shearer was 34 years old and a little bit too mature to be playing one of the most famous teenagers in literary history. Perhaps seeking to make Shearer seem younger, Thalberg cast 43 year-old Leslie Howard as Romeo, 44 year-old Basil Rathbone as Tybalt, and 54 year-old John Barrymore as Mercutio, (In Barrymore’s defense, to me, Mercutio always has come across as being Verona’s equivalent of the guy who goes to college for ten years and then keeps hanging out on the campus even after dropping out.)
In short, this is the middle-aged Romeo and Juliet and, despite all of the good actors in the cast, it’s impossible not to notice. There were few Golden Age actors who fell in love with the authenticity of Leslie Howard and Basil Rathbone is a wonderfully arrogant and sinister Tybalt. Norma Shearer occasionally struggles with some of the Shakespearean dialogue but, for the most part, she does a good job of making Juliet’s emotions feel credible. As for Barrymore — well, he’s John Barrymore. He’s flamboyant, theatrical, and a lot of fun to watch if not always totally convincing as anything other than a veteran stage actor hamming it up. The film is gorgeous to look at and George Cukor embraces the melodrama without going overboard. But, everyone in the movie is just too old and it does prove to be a bit distracting. A heart-broken teenager screaming out, “I am fortune’s fool!” is emotionally powerful. A 43 year-old man doing the same thing is just not as effective.
Despite being a box office failure (it turned out that Mayer was right about Depression-era audiences considering Shakespeare to be too “arty”), Romeo and Juliet was nominated for Best Picture of the year, the second Shakespearean adaptation to be so honored. However, the award that year went to another big production, The Great Ziegfeld.
Burned-out writer Jake Bridges (William L. Petersen, a year or two before CSI) comes home one day to discover his wife in bed with another man. Jake, who is already suffering from an epic case of writer’s block, goes to Atlantic City and tries to drink his troubles away. When the bitter Jake gets into a bar fight, he’s saved by Frankie (Michael Wincott). Frankie takes Jake back to his house, where Jake meets Frankie’s girlfriend, Melissa (Diane Lane). Jake also discovers that Frankie works as a debt collector for a local mob boss, Lange (Michael Byrne).
Frankie and Jake strike up an unexpected friendship. Jake wants to experience what it’s like to be a real tough guy. Frankie wants to improve his vocabulary. Frankie agrees to take Jake with him when he makes his collections on the condition that Jake recommend a book to him. Soon, Jake is pretending to be a gangster and Frankie is reading Moby Dick. Frankie shows Jake how to be intimidating. Jake explains the symbolism of Ahab’s quest to Frankie. They become good friends, with the only possible complication being that Jake is falling in love with Melissa.
For a low-budget neonoir that, as far as I know, never even got a theatrical release before being released to video, Gunshy is surprisingly good. The plot may sometimes be predictable but Petersen and especially Wincott give good performances and they both play off of each other well. Diane Lane is undeniably sexy but also bring a fierce intelligence and a sense of wounded dignity to the role of Melissa. This is a love triangle where you want things to work out for all three of the people involved. The rest of the cast is full of familiar faces. Keep an eye out for everyone from R. Lee Ermey to Meat Loaf. Director Jeff Celantano keeps the story moving and proves himself to be adept at balancing scenes of violence with scenes where Frankie and Jake simply discuss their differing views of the world.
An unjustly obscure film, Gunshy is a 90s film that deserves to be rediscovered.
Delfina, a precocious ten year-old, desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, the only available donor is Rudy Salazar (Danny Trejo), a sociopath who is currently sitting on Death Row. (We’re told that Rudy is the only possible donor because both he and Delfina are “half-Mexican, half-Greek.” I’m not a medical expert but I imagine there’s probably more to finding a donor than just that. And, even if it was that simple, surely Rudy and Delfina are not the only two people of Mexican-Greek ancestry living in Los Angeles.) Lydia Cantrell (Sofia Shinas), who works for the governor, arranges for Rudy’s death sentence to be commuted to life in prison in return for him donating his marrow. At the hospital, Rudy stages a violent escape and soon, he and his old gang are on a rampage.
It falls to renegade Detective Quin Quinlan (C. Thomas Howell) to track down Rudy and bring his rampage to an end. The only catch is that Rudy has to be captured alive because Delfina still needs that transplant. Complicating matters is that Quinlan really enjoys shooting the bad guys.
If the plot of Dilemma sounds familiar, you may be one of the handful of people who remember an old Michael Keaton/Andy Garcia film called Desperate Measures. Desperate Measures may have had the same plot as Dilemma (along with a bigger budget and bigger stars in the cast) but it didn’t have Danny Trejo. Trejo appears without his trademark mustache and he really plays up the idea that Rudy Salazar is one evil dude. Rudy’s so evil that he even laughs at shooting people in the back. When a member of his gang is wounded in a shootout and begs, “Don’t leave me, dawg!,” Rudy takes one look at him and says, “You’re of no use to me.” Only Danny Trejo can make a line that work. With the rest of the cast not making much of an effort one way or the other, Danny Trejo is the best thing about Dilemma and one of two reasons to watch the movie. The other reason is to watch in amazement as both the police and the criminals fire thousand of bullets at each other without ever having to stop and reload their guns. Luckily, they’re all terrible shots who only have good aim when its convenient for the plot.
There’s no dilemma about skipping this one.
The 1972 film Sounder follows the Morgans, a family of black sharecroppers living in 1930s Louisiana.
When we first see Nathan Lee Morgan (Paul Winfield) and his young son, David Lee (Kevin Hooks), they’re hunting. Accompanying them is their loyal dog, Sounder. As they hunt, two things become very obvious. Number one, David Lee is a good father who is doing his best to provide for his family under the most difficult circumstances possible. Number two, the family is desperately poor. When Nathan finally gives in to temptation and steals a ham to feed his family, the local Sheriff (James Best) shows up at the farmhouse the next day and arrests him. Nathan is taken away to prison and one of the deputies even shoots Sounder.
Fortunately, Sounder survives and so do the Morgans. Under the stern but loving leadership of their mother, Rebecca (Cicely Tyson), the Morgan children manage to bring in the season’s crops. Unfortunately, having to work out in the fields doesn’t leave much time for David Lee to get an education. When he does go to school, he and the other students listen as a middle-aged, white teacher reads to them from Huckleberry FInn.
After the wounded Sounder finally returns to the Morgan family and recovers from his wounds, David Lee decides that he wants to go to the prison and see his father. Unfortunately, the sheriff refuses to even tell the family where Nathan has been incarcerated. None of the white authority figures in town care that the Morgans are struggling or that they’ve managed to bring in the crops themselves. None of them cares or seems to even understand that David Lee is missing his father. The sheriff presents himself as being a reasonable man and is never heard to the use the n-word. Instead, he and every other white person in town refers to David Lee as being “boy,” diminishing everything that he’s done since his father was arrested.
David Lee finally figures out the location of a prison that might (or might not) currently be housing his father. It’s several miles away. Accompanied by Sounder, David Lee sets out to make the long journey to the prison. Along the way, he discovers another school and a far more empathetic teacher named Camille (Janet MacLachlan). David Lee is forced to make a decision that will effect not only his future but also the future of his family.
Sounder is a heartfelt film. It’s a film that’s less interested in telling a story with a traditional beginning and end as opposed to just sharing scenes of everyday life. In this case, it’s the life of family that manages to survive despite it often seeming as if the entire world is arrayed against them. The film was based on a book that pretty much centered around the dog. The movie, on the other hand, is more about the family and, despite the fact that the film is still named after him, the dog is pretty much superfluous to the plot. That said, Sounder still plays an important role because, just as Sounder survives being shot at and remains loyal to the people that he loves, the Morgans survive whatever adversity is tossed at them. Watching the film, the viewer is very much aware that life is never going to be easy for the Morgans but, at the same time, it’s impossible not take some comfort in the fact that they have each other. Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson both give strong performances as the resilient Nathan Lee and Rebecca and the entire film is the type of movie that’ll inspire tears even as it inspires happiness.
At the Oscars, Sounder was nominated for Best Picture, where it provided a gentle contrast to the other nominees, Cabaret, Deliverance, The Emigrants, and The Godfather. Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, making 1972 the first year in which black performers were nominated in both of the lead categories. (It was also the first year in which more than one black actress was nominated for Best Actress as Tyson ended up competing with Lady Sings The Blues‘s Diana Ross.) In the end, Tyson lost to Cabaret‘s Liza Minnelli while Winfield lost to The Godfather‘s Marlon Brando. And, of course, The Godfather also went on to deservedly win the award for Best Picture.
Today is not only Jim Jarmusch’s birthday. It’s also Linda Blair’s!
Now, of course, the first film that probably comes to mind when you hear the name “Linda Blair” is The Exorcist and that makes sense. After all, it’s probably the best film in which Blair ever appeared. Blair even received an Oscar nomination for playing the demonically possessed Regan MacNeil and for convincingly vomiting all over Jason Miller and Max von Sydow. If not for the fact that Mercedes McCambridge provided the voice of the demon, Blair probably would have won that Oscar as well. Instead, the Oscar went to Tatum O’Neal.
Blair’s gone on to have an active career, though none of her subsequent films ever proven to be as popular with critics or audiences as The Exorcist. In fact, the majority of her films have been received rather dismissively by the critics. Of course, Blair’s subsequent films haven’t exactly been in the type of genres that are usually embraced by the critics. Instead, Linda Blair appeared in several women-in-prison films. She also appeared in several vigilante films, including Savage Streets. She did several low-budget horror movies, like the classic Hell Night. Blair also appeared in two bad-but-kind-of-fun sequels, Airport 1975 and Exorcist II: The Heretic. (Airport 1975 features Linda Blair as the most perky seriously ill person ever. Exorcist II, of course, featured Blair trying to keep a street face.)
And here’s the thing — the movies may have occasionally been bad but Linda Blair always kicked ass. In fact, she often literally did just that. At her best, Blair was the type of exploitation heroine who would kick the bad guy in the balls and then taunt him for crying about it afterwards. And good for her!
Now admittedly, today’s scene of the day does not feature Linda Blair kicking anyone or exacting violent revenge on the patriarchy. But no matter. The 1979 film Roller Boogie is a lot of fun, precisely because it’s a mix of disco, roller skating, and the mob. Linda Blair and Jim Bray have to protect their favorite skating rink from the mafia. They also have to win the annual Boogie contest. Needless to say, that’s a lot to deal with but if anyone can handle it, it’s Linda Blair.
“It’s love on wheels!” the posters proclaimed, presumably because Skatetown U.S.A. was already using, “It’s the greatest story that ever rolled.” Roller Boogie is a thoroughly silly movie and, not surprisingly, it’s also a very 70s movie. Every single moment of the film screams out, “1979!” You know how Saturday Night Fever used the disco scene as the backdrop for a rather melancholy story about a young person struggling to grow up and become a better person? Well, Roller Boogie‘s not like that at all but it does feature a lot of disco and a lot of skating and how can you go wrong with that?
Anyway, here is today’s scene that I love. Here are Linda Blair and Jim Bray competing for the top prize in Roller Boogie!
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!
Happy birthday, Jim Jarmusch!
4 Shots From 4 Jim Jarmusch Films
Permanent Vacation (1980, dir by Jim Jarmusch)
Stranger Than Paradise (1984, dir by Jim Jarmusch)
The Limits of Control (2009, dir by Jim Jarmusch)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013, dir by Jim Jarmusch)
Let me begin by writing that I love watching Netflix and I REALLY love livetweeting with Lisa and the rest of the Shattered Lens staff. We can coordinate times well and it’s easy to sync up. This time, I was given the movie choosing authority and perhaps it will be my last. I heard that The Perfection was a bit gory, but I figured come on, this is Shattered Lens- we Rocktober the October over here with our Horrorthon! When I saw that Steven Weber was in it, I felt like ok, this is going to be like a Tales From the Crypt experience. Well……….not so much.
The Perfection has trashy components to it and some cheaply built sets and the director REALLY wants you to know that they splurged and actually filmed in China! The best way to describe The Perfection is as an unaware, pretentious, and boring episode of Tales From the Crypt. It had the victim goes to victimizer TFTC theme and the over the top gore, but it was always trying to be serious and important when it was just an overly long TFTC episode without any humor.
The plot is pretty straight-forward: Charlotte is a prodigy Cellist who left her art to care for her dying mother for ten-years. When she tries to return to her life, she finds that a younger classmate Lizzy has attained the Cello fame that she sought. She sees her old Mentor Anton (Steven Weber) and Charlotte is now the clear has-been. Charlotte executes a plan to destroy Lizzy forever. Charlotte meets Lizzy, seduces Lizzy, drugs Lizzy, and convinces Lizzy to chop her hand off. Yep, another Hollywood girl meets girl, girl drugs girl, girl gets girl to chop her hand off story. The Perfection was actually the original script for Love Actually. The “To Me You Are Perfect” scene was just going to be Andrew Lincoln throwing severed hands at people – “To Me you are a perfect…Target” *throws hand at Juliet*.
Just when you think this movie will be a fun version of Black Swan it takes a turn for the dumb, gross. Yes, I get that this was made by a post-Weinstein Miramax and it was showing how fame could encourage and condone horrible behavior, but it was done with so much exposition that it really caused the film to jerk from long explanations to gore and long explanations to gore and long explanations to trying a Subway Cold Cut Combo – even terrible movies get hungry.
I’m not sure if I should spoil this piece of trash or not. It’s really not worth your time. Instead of watching this film you could eat a sandwich, do your taxes, plot revenge. However, it is nice to see that Steven Weber is still working – there’s that.
In New York City, two men have been murdered in the same ritualistic way. Both of the men were accused rapists who beat the system, getting their charges dismissed due to legal technicalities. When detectives Tom Chaney (Jeff Fahey) and Rod Lambeau (Carl Marotte) discover that assistant D.A. Katy Wesson (Marlee Matlin) was the prosecutor on both of the dead men’s cases, she becomes their number one suspect. However, Chaney has his doubt about her guilt, especially after he goes on a few dates and starts sleeping with her. Katy is an enigma with a traumatic childhood and penchant for picking up men in nightclubs but is she a murderer? Other suspects include a creepy artist named Josh (Charles Powell), who also works as the deaf Katy’s interpreter, and Katy’s overdramatic mother (Monique Mercure).
That a direct-to-video thriller from 1999 would be a rip-off of Basic Instinct is not a shock. Almost every thriller released between 1992 and 2000 was at least partially cloned from Basic Instinct. What sets When Justice Fails apart is that it’s probably the only Basic Instinct clone to actually feature it’s two main characters discussing the ending of Basic Instinct post-coitus. (For the record, Chaney thinks that the final shot means that Sharon Stone was the murderer while Katy says that the ice pick showed that the director was playing a joke on the audience.) I guess When Justice Fails deserves some credit for being willing to so directly acknowledge the film that inspired it but, when you’re a mediocre film, you probably don’t want to intentionally remind audiences that they could be watching something better.
When Justice Fails actually gets off to a good start, with Jeff Fahey playing another one of his driven loners and Marlee Matlin really committing to the role of the film’s femme fatale. The movie even manages to avoid the usual awkwardness that comes from having a hearing character repeating everything that a deaf character either signs or writes down. The early scenes have a Law & Order feel to them, with Chaney and Lambeau interviewing witnesses on the busy streets of New York and also talking to a world-weary coroner. It would have been a surprise if Stephen Hill had suddenly shown up and said, “Your case is weak and this trial could drag on through election day. Make him an offer. Man 1. Depraved indifference.”
Unfortunately, once Chaney sleeps with Katy, the movie becomes increasingly implausible and goes downhill. There just aren’t enough suspects to generate any suspense over who the murderer is ultimately going to turn out to be. The surprise at the end is only a surprise because it didn’t occur to Chaney to run a routine background check on one of his suspects, something that I would think most cops would do at the start of a murder investigation. Marlee Matlin is a terrific actress who is always interesting to watch but When Justice Fails ultimately fails to be very memorable.
