Tag Archives: Daniel Stern

Horror Film Review: C.H.U.D. (dir by Douglas Cheek)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s something living under the streets of New York City.

That’s the basic idea behind 1984’s C.H.U.D., a film that opens with an upper class woman and her little dog being dragged into the sewers by a creature the reaches out of a manhole.  People are disappearing all over the city but the authorities obviously aren’t revealing everything that they know.  Even after the wife of NYPD Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) disappears, the city government doesn’t seem to be too eager to dig into what exactly is happening.

Instead, it falls to two activists.  Photographer George Cooper (John Heard) specializes in taking picture of the homeless, especially the one who live underground in the New York subways.  He’s like a well-groomed version of Larry Clark, I guess.  Social activist A.J. “The Reverend” Shepherd (Daniel Stern) runs a homeless shelter and is convinced that something is preying on the most vulnerable citizens of New York.  When the police won’t do their job, George and the Reverend step up!

So, what’s living in the sewers?  Could it be that there actually are cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers out there?  Everyone in New York City has heard the legends but, much like stories of the alligators in the Chicago sewers, most people chose not to believe them.  Or could the disappearance have something to do with the cannisters labeled Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal that are being left in the sewers by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?  Wilson (George Martin) of the NRC says that they would never purposefully mutate the people living underground but Wilson works for the government so who in their right mind is going to trust him?

C.H.U.D. is a horror film with a social conscience.  It’s very much an 80s films because, while you have Shepherd running around and attacking everyone for not taking care of the most vulnerable members of society, the true villain is ultimately revealed to be the members of a regulatory agency.  Instead of finding a safe way to get rid of their nuclear waste, they just found a sneaky way to abandon it all in New York and obviously, they assumed no one would care because …. well, it’s New York.  Everyone in the country knows that New York City isn’t safe so who is going to notice a few underground monsters, right?

The idea behind C.H.U.D. has a lot of potential but the execution is a bit lackluster.  For every good C.H.U.D. kill, there’s long passages where the story drags.  Considering that Heard spent most of his career typecast as the type of authority figure who would dump nuclear waste under New York City, it’s actually kind of interesting to see him playing a sympathetic role here.  Daniel Stern, on the other hand, is miscast and rather hyperactive as Shepherd.  You really do want someone to tell him to calm down for a few minutes.  Watching C.H.U.D., one gets the feeling that it’s a film with an identity crisis.  Is it a horror film, an action flick, a work of social commentary, or a dark comedy?  There’s no reason why it can’t be all four but C.H.U.D. just never really comes together.  It ultimately feels more like a mix of several different films instead of being a film made with one clear and coherent vision.

In the end, Death Line remains the film to see about underground cannibals.

HOME ALONE, the Christmas spirit & celebrating my Mom’s birthday! 🎉🎂

Posted on by Bradley Crain

This weekend our family has been celebrating my Mom’s birthday together at our family cabin. One thing about hanging out with Mom in November is you know you’re going to be watching Christmas movies. It may be on the Hallmark channel or it may be one of her countless DVD’s or Blu rays of Christmas classics, but you’re going to be getting in the Christmas spirit. Last night we watched HOME ALONE.

The story is well known. A family is going on a Christmas vacation in Paris. In all the craziness created by a fluke power outage, 8 year old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is accidentally left home alone while the rest of the family gets on a plane to France. Meanwhile, a pair of house robbers (Joe Pesci & Daniel Stern) plan on hitting homes in the neighborhood on Christmas Eve. Kevin not only survives with his parents gone, he thrives, and he makes the robbers wish they’d never stumbled into his neighborhood. With that said, he does learn some valuable lessons along the way, and he realizes that he does love and miss his family. 

What can you say about Macaulay Culkin in HOME ALONE?!! He owns the movie. It’s one of the great child performances in the movies.  Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern are funny as the robbers, with young Kevin putting them through hell. I still cringe in pain at times as the two step on ornaments, get burned and are physically assaulted, all thanks to Kevin’s assorted collection of tricks & booby traps. There’s also a plot line with Kevin’s scary neighbor that leads to a touching conclusion. And finally, as we celebrate Mom’s birthday, I can’t help but be touched by the reunion at the end between Kevin and his mom (Catherine O’Hara). No matter how much they can get on each other’s nerves, the truth is that they both love each other with all of their hearts. It’s a special feeling when you have a mom who loves you. That’s one thing Kevin and I have in common. And we love them back. 

HOME ALONE is highly recommended!

Diner (1982, directed by Barry Levinson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Which member of the Diner gang would you be?

I think that is the question that everyone, or at least every guy, asks themselves after watching Barry Levinson’s debut film.  Most would probably want to say that they’re Boogie (Mickey Rourke), because he’s cool, all the ladies love him, and he makes creative use of a popcorn box at the movies.  Some would probably say that they want to be Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) because he’s smart and sarcastic.  No one wants to be Billy (Tim Daly) or Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), even though we would all want to be their friend.

The truth is that most of us would probably be Shrevie (Daniel Stern), the just-married one who is discovering that being an adult means working an unglamorous job and discovering the rest of the world doesn’t care about your taste in music.  The luckiest of us might be Modell (Paul Reiser), the funny one who doesn’t get a story but who makes a lot of jokes.

Diner was one of the first great hang-out movies.  There is no plot, at least not in the traditional sense.  Instead, it’s about a group of long-time friends who live in Baltimore in 1959.  They grew up together.  They went to high school together.  They’ve been hanging out at the same diner for as long as they can all remember.  And now, they’re at the point in their lives where the world expects them to act like adults and accept all the responsibility that goes along with that.  It’s a film that celebrates their friendship while also acknowledging that some of them are using that friendship as an excuse to not grow up.  They escape into trivia and movies, with one minor character reciting Sweet Smell of Success by memory.  Fenwick drinks.  Boogie gambles.  Even Billy, who doesn’t even live in Baltimore anymore, reverts to his old ways as soon as he returns for Eddie’s wedding and ends up sucker punching someone because of an old high school incident.

The preparations for Eddie’s wedding gives the film what structure it has.  Eddie is marrying the unseen Elyse, assuming she can pass his demanding quiz about the Baltimore Colts.  (That may sound unfair but if you’re from Baltimore, you’ll understand.)  While Eddie gets ready for his wedding, Shrevie’s marriage to Beth (Ellen Barkin) seems to be falling apart and she finds herself tempted to cheat with Boogie, who has his own problems with a local bookie.  Meanwhile, Billy learns that his girlfriend (Kathryn Dowling) is pregnant.

The film is about friendship and the friendships between the men feel real.  Levinson held off on shooting the largely improvised diner scenes until the end of the film, by which time all of the actors had developed their own idiosyncratic relationships with each other.  The heart of Diner is to be found in scenes like the one where Modell tries to ask for someone else’s sandwich without actually coming out and asking for it.  The dialogue in that scene and so many others has the ring of age-old friendship.  Though the film makes it easy to see why Mickey Rourke and Kevin Bacon become movie stars while Tim Daly has spent most of his career on television, the entire cast is still perfect in their roles.  It’s about as strong as an ensemble as you could ever hope to see.  They become the characters and watching the movie, it’s impossible not to see yourself and your friends in their performances.

Barry Levinson has gone on to direct many more films but for me, Diner will always be the best.

 

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Gun 1.1 “The Shot”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Gun, an anthology series that ran on ABC for six week in 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Produced by filmmaker Robert Altman, Gun was an anthology series that followed one gun from person-to-person.  Each week would feature a new cast and a new story.  The show itself didn’t catch on but, because of Altman’s prestige, is still managed to attract some prominent and interesting guest stars during it’s 6-episode run.

The first episode, for instance, brings the gun together with Daniel Stern, Ed Begley, Jr., and model Kathy Ireland.

Episode 1.1 “The Shot”

(Dir by James Foley, originally aired on April 12th, 1997)

The first episode of Gun opens with an unnamed dumbass purchasing a pearl-handed, .45 semi-automatic pistol.  When he takes it home, his kids are impressed but his wife threatens to kick him out if he ever fires the gun in the house.  Next thing you know, the dumbass is pretending to be Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and pointing the gun at the television.  The final shoot-out from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly leads to the TV getting shot.  The dumbass returns the gun.  Later, that night, someone breaks into the gun store and steals the gun.

Who stole it?  It turns out that it was just a guy who spends his time holding up convenience stores.  Unfortunately, his next attempt at a convenience store robbery does not go well, largely due to one aggravated customer.  Harvey Hochfelder (Daniel Stern) is already in an agitated state before the robbery even begins.  He just wants to leave Los Angeles for Virginia but, before he can leave, he had to stop off at the slowest convenience store in L.A.  Harvey loses it as soon as he realizes that the robbery is going to mean his escape to Virginia is going to be even further delayed.  When Harvey’s wife (Kathy Baker) enters the store, the robber is startled into first shooting at Harvey and then dropping the gun.  The robber runs outside and tries to steal Harvey’s car, with Harvey’s son and dog in the back seat.  Harvey grabs the gun and chases the robber down.  The robber crashes the car and Harvey holds him at gun point until the police arrive.

Harvey becomes a celebrity.  He even appears on the cover Newsweek, with the simple headline, “American Hero.”  Hollywood wants to make a made-for-TV movie about what happened in the convenience store, with Harvey playing himself and Kathy Ireland playing his wife.

Unfortunately, the friends of the robber are not happy that Harvey “fingered our homie” (yes, that’s actual dialogue) and they decide that they want to get revenge on Harvey.  When they force his car off the road and then pull guns of their own on him, Harvey diffuses the situation by offering them roles the movie.  Everyone wants to be a star!

Finally, the day of filming has arrived.  Under the guidance of the film’s director (Ed Begley, Jr.), Harvey prepares to climb into bed with a lingerie-clad Kathy Ireland….

Suddenly, Harvey is back in the convenience store, getting shot multiple times by the robber and expiring as a security camera records his final moments.  His entire time as a Hollywood star was just a dying fantasy which, honestly, was kind of obvious just by how cartoonish all of the Hollywood scenes were.

Well, as far as first episodes are concerned this was really, really …. bad.  Anthology shows are always a bit hit-and-miss and this episode was definitely almost all miss and no hit.  As good a character actor as he may be, Daniel Stern overacts to such an extent in this episode that it’s difficult to really have much sympathy for Harvey and the episode’s final twist largely fell flat.

The first episode of Gun is an almost entire …. dare I say it? …. misfire.

Blue Thunder (1983, directed by John Badham)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) is a Vietnam vet-turned-cop who pilots a police helicopter for the LAPD.  Every night, he and his partner, Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern) fly over Los Angeles, helping to keep the peace and peeping on anyone undressing in a high-rise apartment.

Murphy is selected to serve as the test pilot for what is described as being the world’s most advanced military helicopter, Blue Thunder.  Blue Thunder is so advanced that the pilot can control the gun turrets just by turning his head and it’s also been supplied with the latest state of the art surveillance equipment.  The pilot of a Blue Thunder can literally spy on anyone while listening to and recording their conversations.  With the Olympics coming up, the city of Los Angeles wants to test out the Blue Thunder as a way to control the crowds and prevent crime during the Games.

Murphy may be impressed by the helicopter but he has his reservations about the program.  He immediately sees that Blue Thunder could be a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.  Those wrong hands would belong to Col. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), who was Blue Thunder’s first pilot and also Murphy’s commanding officer during Vietnam.  Murphy is still haunted by the atrocities that he saw committed by Cochrane during the war.

When it turns out that Murphy was right to be suspicious of Cochrane’s intentions, the movie turns into an exciting aerial chase above Los Angeles, with Murphy in Blue Thunder, trying to outrun F-16s, heat-seeking missiles, and eventually Cochrane, who enters the chase in a Blue Thunder of his own.

I’m always surprised that Blue Thunder doesn’t have a bigger following than it does.  It’s an action classic, with a gritty performance from Roy Scheider, a villainous performance from Malcolm McDowell, and comedic relief from the always reliable Daniel Stern.  Even Warren Oates is in the movie, playing Murphy’s LAPD commander!  The script actually does have something relevant to say about the militarization of America’s police forces (and it feels downright prophetic today) and the chase scenes are all the more exciting because they were filmed in the era before CGI and have an authenticity to them that is missing from most modern action films.

Blue Thunder is a perfect example of the “don’t do this really cool thing” style of action film.  The Blue Thunder helicopter is described as being a danger to everyone in the country and the movie even ends with a note saying that real-life Blue Thunders are currently being designed.  But I don’t think anyone who has ever watched this film has thought, “I hope they stopped making those helicopters.”  Instead, this movie makes you want to have a Blue Thunder of your very own.  They’re so cool, who wouldn’t want to fly one of those things?

A Movie A Day #287: Leviathan (1989, directed by George Pan Cosmatos)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A group of miners are sent into a dangerous environment by an evil corporation.  When they explore an abandoned ship, they unknowingly bring a hostile creature onto their own vessel.  One of the crewman is killed when the creature mutates inside of his body.  The rest of the crew includes a scientist, one strong woman, one woman who cries, and a strong, silent captain.

Sound familiar?

No, it’s not Alien.  

Instead, it’s Leviathan, which could best be described as being Alien underwater with a dash of The Thing tossed in.  The main difference between Leviathan and the films that inspired it is that people are still watching Alien and The Thing while Leviathan is one of the most forgettable films that I have ever seen.  Peter Weller is the captain.  Richard Crenna is the scientist.  Amanda Pays has the Ripley role and Ernie Hudson fills in for Yaphet Kotto.  Daniel Stern plays Sixpack, who turns into a monster after he drinks contaminated Russian vodka.  (It happens to the best of us.)  Meg Foster, with her translucent eyes, represents the corporation.

That’s a good cast and the script was written by David Peoples (who also wrote Blade Runner, Unforgiven, and 12 Monkeys) and Jeb Stuart (who wrote Die Hard and The Fugitive).  The above average special effects were designed by Stan Winston.  Why, with all of these talented people involved in the production, is Leviathan so by the numbers and forgettable?  It probably had something to do with the presence of George Pan Cosmatos in the directing chair.  Cosmatos is also credited with directing Rambo: First Blood II, Cobra, and Tombstone.  The first two films starred Sylvester Stallone, who was known for directing all of his 80s films in every way but name only and everyone knows that Kurt Russell was in charge on Tombstone.

If you want to see Alien underwater done right, watch Deepstar Six.

Back to School Part II #12: Breaking Away (dir by Peter Yates)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Has Indiana changed much since 1979?

I ask because I just watched Breaking Away, a 1979 nominee for best picture.  Breaking Away was shot on location in Bloomington, Indiana and on the campus of Indiana University.  And though the film doesn’t go out of its way to idealize either the state, the town, or the university –in fact, the title refers to the desire of several characters to break away from their life in Bloomington — it still manages to make Indiana look like the nicest place on Earth.  Add to that, Indiana University is home to the Eskenazi Museum of Art, which I will someday visit.

Breaking Away is actually a film about a lot of things: it’s a comedy, it’s a quasi-love story, it’s bittersweet coming-of-age story, it’s a sports film, and it’s a sweet, good-natured film that made me cry.  At the heart of the film is Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher), who has just graduated from high school and whose cheerful and eccentric exterior hides the fact that he appears to have no real future.  Dave is obsessed with bicycle racing and idolizes that the Italian cycling team.  In fact, he idolizes them so much that he decides to be Italian.  He rides around Bloomington, greeting people with a merry “Ciao!”  At home, he listens to opera and renames the family cat “Fellini.”  While his mother (Barbara Barrie) is understanding, his father (Paul Dooley) cannot understand what’s happening to his son.  Of course, Dave doesn’t truly believe that he’s Italian.  He just desperately wants to be something other than who he is.

And who is Dave?  He’s a citizen of Bloomington, a town that is divided between the upper class students at Indiana University and the blue-collar townies.  The students call Dave and his friends “cutters,” because the only real industry in town is working in the quarry, cutting stone.  The students look down on the cutters and the cutters resent the students.

Dave has three close friends, all of whom were big in high school and who are now facing an uncertain future of anonymity.  Cyril (Daniel Stern) is the funny and quirky one, the former basketball player who talks about how he would like to be a cartoon character.  Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley) is usually easy-going but loses his temper whenever anyone mentions that he’s short.  (At one point, Moocher’s boss orders him to, “Punch the time clock, Shortie!”  Moocher literally does just that.)  And finally, there’s Mike (Dennis Quaid).  Mike is their leader, a former high school quarterback who idolizes the Marlboro Man and who knows that he’s destined to spend the rest of his life in Bloomington, going from “20 year-old Mike” to “mean old man Mike.”

When Dave meets a student named Katherine (Robyn Douglass), he pretends to be an Italian exchange student and, soon, he’s serenading her on the lawn of her sorority house.  That doesn’t make Katherine’s boyfriend, Rod (Hart Bochner), happy.  Rod and his friends beat up Cyril, which leads to another fight at a bowling alley.  (Cyril, for his part, gets his finger stuck in a bowling ball.)  Seeking to broker some sort of peace and understanding between the students and the town, the university president (played by John Ryan, who was the real-life President of Indiana University at the time) announces that the cutters will be invited to take part in the annual Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University.

And you can probably guess how the race turns out.  It’s a feel-good sports film so you already know who is going to win and that he’s going to have to win after initially falling behind and sacrificing a big lead.  You know all that but it doesn’t matter.  Breaking Away is such a sweet and well-acted movie that it still brought tears to my eyes even if the ending didn’t surprise me.

And really, the film does have a few surprises.  For one thing, Rod turns out to be not as bad a guy as you initially think he’s going to be.  Over the course of the film, he gets two small reaction shots, both of which hint that he’s not as much of a jerk as he often appears to be.  It’s a minor detail and it’s easy to miss but what’s important that it’s there and it’s one of the many small details that makes Breaking Away feel alive.  After watching the movie, I feel like I could go to Bloomington and still find all these character hanging out at the quarry.

There’s another scene that I want to mention.  This is the scene that made me cry.  Dave and his father walk around the university and his dad talks about how he and the fathers of all of Dave’s friends helped to cut the stone that was used to build campus.  His dad admits that, even though he helped to build it, he’s never felt comfortable on the campus and then tells his son that he doesn’t have to be a cutter.  And it’s such a heartfelt scene and so beautifully performed by Paul Dooley and Dennis Christopher that I started to cry.  Perfectly acted, perfectly directed, and perfectly written, what a great scene!  Fantastico!, as Dave might say.

I loved Breaking Away and I bet you would to.

Breaking Away