There’s a giant lizard rampaging through New York, the result of a mutation that happened as a result of being exposed to radiation. The military tries to stop the lizard but it turns out that stopping a giant lizard is not that easy. Scientists try to understand the lizard and how it came to be a destructive giant. The media breathlessly reports from the scene as two wisecracking cameramen do their best to record every second of the mayhem. The reporters call this lizard …. GODZILLA!
But is it Godzilla?
No, it’s not. Oh, it may be called Godzilla. And the movie itself may be called Godzilla. But the creature at the center of the 1998 American film Godzilla is definitely not Godzilla.
Godzilla was released with a great deal of fanfare in 1998, with commercials and toys and a lot of hype. Diddy, back when he was still calling himself Puff Daddy, recorded a song for the soundtrack and upset thousands of Led Zeppelin fans like my Dad who found themselves having to deal with kids who thought Kashmir was called Follow Me. (Diddy singing, “Follow me?” AGCK! How cringey is that!?) But, like many of the film of Roland Emmerich, it’s been almost totally forgotten in the years since.
And why not? It’s a forgettable film. It’s the epitome of an assembly-line action blockbuster, the type of thing that Roland Emmerich is known for. There’s comic relief, in the form of Hank Azaria. There’s a nerdy scientist hero in the form of Matthew Broderick. Broderick’s scientist has an ex-wife and yes, Godzilla’s invasion of New York gives them a chance to get back together. There’s a mysterious Frenchman who is played, somewhat inevitably, by Jean Reno. The Mayor of New York is a fat guy named Ebert (Michael Lerner) and he has an assistant named Gene (Lorry Goldman) and they get a lot of screentime because Emmerich wanted to make fun of two films critics who didn’t care much for his work. In fact, the Mayor and his assistant get so much screentime that it distracts from the rest of the film. Emmerich was directing a multi-million dollar reboot of a beloved franchise and he was more concerned with a petty feud.
He certainly wasn’t concerned with Godzilla. Personally, I like the giant lizard and one of the only effective moments in the film is when the lizard discovers that its children have been killed by the military. But that lizard is not Godzilla and the fact that Emmerich made a Godzilla film without Godzilla indicates that he didn’t really care about the monster or its fans. This film has no love for its source material and that’s a shame. The Godzilla films are fun! And the fact that the majority of the ones made up until the release of this film looked kind of cheap and featured a Godzilla who was obviously a man in a rubber suit only added to the fun. There’s not much fun to be found in this version of Godzilla. The movie looks great without ever making much of an impression.
And you know what? Having gotten this review out of the way, I’m ready to get back to reviewing the true Godzilla films. They may not have cost as much as Emmerich’s film but they’ve got heart.
Despite finally getting his burial with honors at the end of Maniac Cop 2, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) returns for one last outing. Raised from the dead by a voodoo houngan (Julius Harris), Cordell invades a hospital to seek vengeance for a comatose policewoman named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Baker). In a coma due to the wounds she received while thwarting a convenience store robbery, Katie is being framed by unscrupulous reporters and attorneys who claim that Katie was a bad cop who killed a clerk in cold blood. Cordell sees Katie as being a fellow victim of anti-cop bias and he is not going to let anyone treat her with disrespect, which is something that two doctors (Robert Forster and Doug Savant) are unfortunate enough to discover. Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and Dr. Susan Lowery (Caitlin Dulany) try to figure out how to bring peace to the souls of both Cordell and Katie.
As opposed to the first two films, Maniac Cop III had a troubled production. Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen wanted to set the film in a Harlem hospital and bring in an African-American detective to investigate Cordell’s activities. The film’s Japanese producers insisted that Robert Davi return as the lead, even though the script’s lead character had little in common with the way Sean McKinney was portrayed in Maniac Cop 2. Larry Cohen then refused to do any rewrites on the script unless he was paid more. William Lustig filmed what he could and ended up with a 51-minute movie. Extra scenes were directed by one of the film’s producers and the film was also padded out with outtakes from Maniac Cop 2.
The film is disjointed and there’s too much time devoted to Jackie Earle Haley playing a character who has much in common Leo Rossi’s serial killer from the second film. (Haley’s performance is fine but the character feels superfluous). But the movie’s hospital setting leads to some interesting kill scenes and Z’Dar and Davi both give good performances as two different types of maniac cops. The supporting cast is full of good character actors like Haley, Forster, Savant, Julius Harris, Bobby Di Cicco, and Paul Gleason. Despite the film’s flaws, Maniac Cop III is a solid ending for the trilogy.
This month, since the site is currently reviewing every episode of Twin Peaks, each entry in Move A Day is going to have a Twin Peaks connection. Paint In Black was directed by Tim Hunter, who directed three episodes of Twin Peaks, including the one that I reviewed earlier today.
Jonathan Dunbar (Rick Rossovich) should have it all. He is an acclaimed sculptor but he’s being cheated financially by his dealer and sometimes girlfriend, Marion Easton (Sally Kirkland). Things start to look up for Jonathan after he has a minor traffic accident with Gina (Julie Carmen). Not only are he and Gina immediately attracted to each other but it turns out that Gina is the daughter of Daniel Lambert (Martin Landau), who owns the most prestigious art gallery in Santa Barbara. It appears that Jonathan is finally going to get the big show that he has always dreamed of, but only if he can escape from Marion’s management.
One night, Jonathan helps out a man who was apparently mugged outside of an art gallery. The man, Eric (Doug Savant), says that he’s an art collector and that he is a big fan of Jonathan’s work. When Jonathan opens up about his problems with Marion, Eric decides to return Jonathan’s favor by killing Marion and anyone else who he feels is standing in the way of Jonathan’s success. Because of the way that Eric artistically stages the murders, the police suspect that Jonathan is the murderer.
Depending on the source, Paint It Black’s original director was either fired or walked off the project and Tim Hunter was brought in to hastily take his place. According to Hunter, he spent the production “shooting all day and rewriting all night.” Paint it Black is a standard late 80s, direct to video thriller but it is interesting as a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. Hunter taught a class on Hitchcock at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Paint it Black is full of shout outs to the master of suspense. Marion’s murder is staged similarly to a murder in Frenzy. There are frequent close-ups of scissors, a reference to Dial M For Murder. Probably the most obvious homage is the character of Eric, who appears to be based on Robert Walker, Jr’s character from Strangers on a Train.
Rick Rossovich was best known for playing cops, firemen, and soldiers in movies like Top Gun, Navy SEALS, and Roxanne. He’s not bad in Paint it Black but he is still not the most convincing artistic genius. Doug Savant and Sally Kirkland were better cast and more enjoyable to watch. In fact, Kirkland is killed off too early. The movie loses a lot of its spark once she is gone.
Paint It Black may not live up to being named after one of the best songs that the Rolling Stones ever recorded but Tim Hunter took unpromising material and shaped it into something that is far more watchable than anyone might expect.
I realize that is a big claim to make. Birdemic, after all, is known for not only being one of the worst but also for being one of the most inept films ever made. It’s a film that regularly appears on lists of the worst films ever made and, unlike the always entertaining The Room, Birdemic actually deserves the honor.
So, when you compare a movie to Birdemic, it’s kind of a big deal.
However, having now sat through April Rain on multiple occasions, I can say that April Rain totally deserves the comparison.
Imagine if your local community theater decided to put on a low-budget, theatrical adaptation of 24, with the director’s son playing Jack Bauer and a retired accountant playing the main villain and you might have some idea of what it’s like to watch April Rain.
The film opens with endless overhead shots of Los Angeles while stirring “epic” music plays in the background. The movie uses these overhead shots in much the same way that Tommy Wiseau used the Golden Gate Bridge in The Room. Whenever the scene needs to change, we get an aimless overhead shot of Los Angeles that rarely seems to have much to do with either the scene we just viewed or the one that we’re about to watch. At first, it amused me to notice how many buildings had helicopter landing pads but then I realized that I was just looking at the same buildings over and over again.
After we spend a while looking down on Los Angeles, we are immediately thrown into the middle of the action as six men have a fierce gun battle outside of a warehouse. And by gun battle, I mean that each man stands about four feet away from the other, shoots a gun, and somehow manages to miss just as often as they hit. It’s during this scene that we learn two important things about April Rain:
1) Nobody in this film dies without flailing around for a few minutes before hand.
2) Anyone firing a gun will be shown in slow motion.
As for why everyone is shooting at each other, it all comes down to weapons. The group in the warehouse has a few crates full of weapons. The people attacking the warehouse want the weapons so that they can sell them to a terrorist cell.
The people attacking the warehouse, incidentally, a members of the Russian mob. I figured this out because they had names like Nikolai and Dimitri and not because any of them actually had a Russian accent or, in any other way, came across as being Russian.
Which is not to say that they don’t have accents. Their boss, Kotov (Adrian L. Tutor), definitely has an accent. Actually, he has several and they change from scene-to-scene. Sometimes, he sounds like he’s from Italy and then other times he sounds like he’s from Scotland…
Anyway, when we first meet Kotov, he’s running around in circles in his suburban front yard while his two youngest daughters chase after him. He’s wearing a dark blue apron that reads, in bright red letters, “World’s Greatest Dad.”
The face of the Russian Mafia
His oldest daughter, Katrina (Brittany Beery), would probably disagree with that. She’s got a crush on the newest member of the mob, Alex (Ryan Guzman). When Kotov drags Katrina to church, she gets out of it by saying, “I’m getting my period, dad!” and doing a massive eye roll. (Interestingly enough, I used to do the exact same thing to get out of going to Mass. Never underestimate the importance of the eye roll.) What makes this scene especially memorable are the extras sitting on the pew directly behind Kotov and his family. When Katrina explains why she has to leave church, they gasp and look like they’re about to faint from the shock. They do this despite the fact that Katrina and Kotov are whispering and that their voices would undoubtedly have been drowned out by the church organ that is played throughout the entire scene. Perhaps, at one point, the filmmakers were planning on including a subplot that hinged on super hearing…
ANYWAY — and watching April Rain is one of those films that will inspire you to say “anyway” quite a lot — it turns out that Alex has a secret of his own. He’s not really a Russian mobster! No, he’s a member of an elite division of the — well, to be honest, I’m not sure which agency he works for. However, I do know that it’s top secret because it’s housed in a huge warehouse and everyone spends a lot of time talking about how it’s all top secret.
Along with Alex, the team includes:
1) Sikes (Luke Goss), who is I guess is supposed to be in charge. He’s a taciturn but fair man who is first seen disciplining his teenage son. (“I can do what I want!” his son shouts, “In your face, old man!”) Sikes spends a lot of time shouting things like, “I WANT HIM ALIVE!” just before then shooting a bad guy in the head. (Incidentally, in April Rain, getting shot in the head means that a small splotch of red paint appears on your forehead.)
2) Rita (Miranda Frigon), who I liked because she’s a redheaded administrative assistant, just like me! At one point, Rita gets a phone call from someone outside of the agency. Sikes tells her that he needs her to be 100%. Rita agrees. The phone call is never mentioned again.
3) Kenny (Doug Savant), who doesn’t really have much of a personality.
4) Thomas (Vincent Spano), who is Kenny’s best friend and who, as a part of his job, is currently sleeping with Hellen (Anne Leighton) who works for Kotov. At one point, Thomas’s wife (Hillary Tuck) shows up and points a gun at him and screams at him for cheating on her. An exasperated Thomas yells back, “I work my ass off and you show up here and make me look like an ass in front of Kenny!” And the scene goes on and on from there…
And finally,
5) Hillary Miller (Ming-Na Wen!) is apparently Sikes’s superior. Thomas refers to her as being the Wicked Witch of West Los Angeles. “She flies around on her broomstick with a strap-on and a jar of vaseline,” he informs Alex. Ming-Na gets top billing but she’s actually only in a few minutes of the film and she spends most of that time yelling and glaring. It’s almost as if she’s daring you to ask her how she ended up in a movie like April Rain.
Ming-Na dares you to ask her what she’s doing in April Rain.
ANYWAY — Kotov has been supplying terrorist leader Tariq (Deniz Akdeniz) with guns and Vespa motor scooters and you better believe that we eventually do get a chase scene where the bad guy is fleeing on a Vespa. (And you also better believe that almost the entire chase scene is filmed in slow motion.)
Before launching his terrorist scheme, Tariq becomes an American citizen. The oath of citizenship is delivered by a judge who actually shows up on a Sunday to do so. “It’s the least I can do, after all the work you’ve done on my house,” the judge helpfully explains. Of course, as Tariq and the Judge enter the courthouse, the camera lingers on a security guard who views both of them with clear suspicion.
Upon returning to his apartment, Tariq and his family celebrate his new citizenship. Then, his two neighbors arrives to congratulate him. These two neighbors — well, they simply have to be seen and heard to be believed. “Share the wealth!” one of them proclaims, “then maybe everyone won’t want to kill us…” Another one drinks a toast to “education and the redistribution of wealth,” which I guess is the film’s way of letting us know that the only thing needed for the Tariqs of the world to succeed is for them to live next door to stereotypical California liberals.
What’s especially interesting about this film is that, for all the time devoted to the Judge, the security guard, and those two neighbors, none of them are all that important to the plot. In fact, after their initial scenes, neither the judge nor the security guard are ever seen again. As for the two neighbors, they’re kicked out of the apartment after Tariq is visited by Yusef, a jihadi who is also a pizza deliveryman…
(Just about every film has a few red herrings but few take it to the extreme of April Rain, a movie in which just about everyone in the cast is a red herring.)
Everyone’s either a red herring or a redhead or both.
Much like Birdemic, The Room, and Troll 2,April Rain is such a uniquely bad film that it becomes oddly fascinating. You watch and, with each moment, you can not help but wonder how much worse the film can get. And, with each passing moment, you discover that it can get a lot worse.
You want a cast that alternates between catatonic underplaying and histrionic overacting? April Rain hasgot you covered. (In defense of the cast, it’s not that any of them are bad actors as much as the script doesn’t leave them much choice. For instance, I thought Brittany Beery did the best that anyone possibly could with her role. The same can be said of Ryan Guzman and Luke Goss. As for Ming-Na — well, I imagine she probably just wanted to get her scenes over with.)
You want action scenes that essentially look like a bunch of kids making finger guns and going, “Bang! Bang!” at each other? April Rain is the film to see.
Do you want random scenes that come out of nowhere, make you go, “What the Hell?,” and are then promptly forgotten about in the movie’s grand narrative scheme? April Rain will not disappoint.
Do you want pages and pages of dialogue that add up to nothing more than empty verbosity? Might I suggest watching April Rain?
Do you want to see a movie that’s so bad that it’s good? Well, I’d suggest watching The Room and then Troll 2 and then Birdemic. But once you’ve got those three out of the way, definitely give April Rain a try!
This month, since the site is currently reviewing every episode of Twin Peaks, each entry in Move A Day is going to have a Twin Peaks connection. Paint In Black was directed by Tim Hunter, who directed three episodes of Twin Peaks,
Through the Shattered Lens 