Film Review: The Lost City (dir by Adam and Aaron Nee)

Posted on July 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last month, when I finally watched The Lost City, I had two thoughts.

First off, I thought it was a perfectly charming little movie, a well-made and unpretentious film that went out of its way to entertain its audience and which, for the most part succeeded. The film, which features Sandra Bullock as Loretta Sage, a reluctant writer of sex-filled romance/adventure novels, and Channing Tatum as Alan Caprison, an earnest but not terrible bright cover model, strikes just the right balance of adventure and comedy. Bullock and Tatum are charming together. Brad Pitt has a fun cameo as an ultra-macho wilderness guide who is hired to help track down Bullock after she’s kidnapped by a wealthy businessman who wants her to help him track down the fabled crown of fire. Daniel Radcliffe gives a nicely eccentric performance as the villain and, for once in his post-Potter career, actually seems to be having fun with a role. The jungle scenery is lovely to look at. Bullock’s purple sequin jumpsuit is to die for. Tatum shows off his physique. The jokes come fast, the action is exciting, and we get to watch two people fall in love. What more could one ask for?

My other thought is that The Lost City is a film that Sandra Bullock could have made at any point of her career. There’s never been a time when Bullock wouldn’t have been convincing in the role of Loretta Sage. It’s easy to imagine The Lost City coming out in the aughts, starring Sandra Bullock as Loretta and Brendan Fraser as Alan. Or perhaps even in the 90s, with Bullock and Matthew McConaughey as Alan. Much as Top Gun: Maverick does for Tom Cruise, The Lost City serves to remind us that Sandra Bullock is one of the last true film stars, someone who can effortlessly move from genre to genre without losing any of their onscreen charisma in the process. For audiences who have just spent the last two years being told that the world was collapsing and that nothing would ever be the same again, there is something undoubtedly comforting about films like Top Gun: Maverick and The Lost City. They are a reminder that yes, it is permissible, possible, and even necessary to just have a good time.

And have no doubt about it, The Lost City is definitely a good time. From the opening scene (which literally takes us into one of Loretta’s novels) to Loretta’s disastrous book tour to the eventual journey through the jungle, The Lost City is an entertaining film. It’s not a film that asks for much from the audience. There’s no complicated backstory. It’s not necessary to have seen 10 earlier movies and a miniseries to understand everyone’s motivations. There’s no bad CGI to challenge the audience’s willingness to buy into the story. The film gets the job done in a relatively brisk 112 minutes and, at a time when even comedies are regularly running over two hours, it’s hard not to appreciate the efficiency with which The Lost City tells its story. There is a mid-credits scene but it’s actually kind of funny. For once, the promise of a sequel feels likes something for which to look forward.

If you missed The Lost City in theaters, it can currently be viewed on Paramount Plus.

Scenes I Love: James Caan in The Godfather

Posted on July 7, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

James Caan has passed away, at the age of 82. There are a lot of great James Caan performances to choose from and to highlight. For me, though, he’ll always be Sonny Corleone, the temperamental son of the Don who remains oddly likable, even as he cheats on his wife and threatens to kill every other gangster in New York. Sonny is a force of chaos, which ultimately leads to his untimely death. But, at the same time, it also makes him someone who you definitely fighting for you instead of against you.

The scene below is mostly cited for Al Pacino’s quiet intensity as he reveals that he’s truly become a member of the family. While Pacino’s great, Caan’s reaction is just as important.

In the scene below, Sonny discovers that Carol has been beating up Connie so Sonny beats up Carlo. Carlo really deserved it. Now this scene is often cited for featuring one shot where it’s clear that Caan didn’t actually hit Gianni Russo. That’s fair. But still, Caan actually did make contact enough times that Russo ended up with a broken rib. Look past that one shot and you’ll see that, in this scene, Caan clearly shows why Sonny was such a feared figure. Even more importantly, this scene shows how important his family was to Sonny. Who doesn’t want someone who would beat someone up for them?

And finally, in this scene, Sonny tells off the FBI. How can’t you love that? Apparently, the smashing of the camera was something that Caan improvised on the spot.

That said, there was a lot more to Caan’s career than just The Godfather. Watch all of his films. He was one of the greats and perhaps the only celebrity who was actually worth following on twitter. RIP.

Film Review: American Siege (dir by Edward Drake)

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For a few months, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to review American Siege.

On the one hand, I try to review every film that I see, regardless of how bad (or good) it might be. I love movies. I love talking about them. I love writing about them. I love sharing my opinions about them and hearing and reading the opinions of others. That goes for all films, even really bad ones like American Siege.

On the other hand, American Siege is also one of the films that Bruce Willis made shortly before announcing his retirement from acting. Since his retirement was announced, there have been a lot of stories that have suggested that Bruce’s condition led to him accepting a lot of roles that he normally would not have even considered and that Willis was not always fully aware of what was happening on the sets of the films in which he appeared. Regardless of how much of that is true or not, it’s a heart-breaking story and it makes it difficult to watch Willis in a film like American Siege.

In American Siege, Willis plays a sheriff in a small Georgia town. When a group of loud rednecks take a local pharmacist hostage, Willis and his deputies drive out to the man’s house. However, Willis is ordered to stand down by the richest man in town, who is played by Timothy V. Murphy. It turns out that the pharmacist has evidence that links Murphy to an unsolved crime. The rednecks might be loud and stupid and self-destructive but it turns out that they’re not actually the worst people in town.

American Siege is 90 minutes of people shouting at each other and pointing guns out of windows. There’s not much of a story to be found and even the unsolved mystery is a bit of a dud. As was typical of his last few films, Bruce Willis is only on screen for a few minutes and he delivers his lines in a heart-breakingly flat monotone. The rest of the cast is actually okay, even if they do go bit a overboard with the fake Southern accents. The rednecks are convincingly redneck-y and Murphy is convincingly condescending as the rich man who has never had to face any consequences for his actions. But the main reason anyone is going to watch this film is because of Bruce Willis and, sadly, there’s none of the swagger that made Willis in a superstar.

So, why am I reviewing American Siege? Mostly it’s so I can recommend that, if you are really determined to watch one Bruce Willis’s later films, you skip American Siege and watch Gasoline Alley. Gasoline Alley was made by the same director and it also features Bruce Willis but it’s a hundred times better than American Siege and it actually gives Willis a decent role to go out on.

Of course, my ultimate recommendation, as far as all this is concerned, is that you go and rewatch the first three Die Hards. They’re not just for Christmas!

Film Review: Ambulance (dir by Michael Bay)

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ambulance is the ultimate Michael Bay movie.

Obviously, whether or not that’s a good thing for you personally will depend on how you feel about Michael Bay. As a director, Bay specializes in kinetic thrill rides, the type of films where the camera never stops moving, the characters are attractive but shallow, and every plot development is an excuse for another action sequence. Michael Bay is hardly the first, only, or last director to put action and spectacle above characterization and a coherent storyline. However, he might very well be the most shameless about it. Michael Bay’s approach has not made him a favorite of the critics but it has usually proved successful with audiences. Personally, I’ve smirked at a lot of scenes in a lot of Michael Bay films. (I still laugh whenever I remember the slow motion shot of the children playing in front of the faded JFK campaign poster in Armageddon.) But, in this age of self-important filmmakers, it’s hard not to appreciate a director who just wants to have a good time.

And, make no doubt about it, Ambulance is definitely a good time. The film’s plot is simple. Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II rob a bank. When the robbery goes wrong, they hijack an ambulance. In the back of the ambulance is an EMT played by Eliza Gonzalez, who is desperately trying to keep a wounded cop (Jackson White) from dying. Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen also want to make sure that the cop doesn’t die because they know that, if they’re captured, the penalty for being a cop killer is considerably worse than the penalty for being a bad bank robber. With the entire LAPD and the FBI in pursuit, the two men drive the ambulance through Los Angeles, trying to find a way to escape. Essentially, Michael Bay said, “You know how everyone enjoys a chase scene? What if we made the chase scene last for 136 minutes?” And wisely, some people gave him money to do just that.

(Actually, that’s just the way that I like to imagine it. Ambulance is actually a remake of a Danish film and Michael Bay originally passed on the project. But, as they put it in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, print the legend.)

Jake Gyllenhaal may be top-billed but the star of Ambulance is definitely Michael Bay. In many ways, there’s not much about Bay’s direction here that’s different from what he’s been doing since The Rock. The camera moves a lot. The images are sharp and clear. The rapid-fire editing captures the chaos of the action scenes, occasionally at the cost of letting the audience know just who exactly is shooting at who. But what sets apart Ambulance from other Bay films is that Michael Bay finally discovered his greatest collaborator, the drone. Bay’s camera flies across Los Angeles, zooming over buildings and down streets and essentially making the viewer as much a part of the chase as Gyllenhaal and the cops pursuing him. Ambulance moves with so much energy and confidence that it doesn’t matter that it’s a bit too long and that Gyllenhaal’s plan often doesn’t make much sense. Ambulance is a thrill-ride, a film that rewards anyone who is willing to just go with it. It’s an example of what Lucio Fulci called “pure cinema,” where the story itself is not as important as the way the director puts it all together. I enjoyed it. That ambulance barreling through the streets of Los Angeles was the 21st century equivalent of the speeding train that thrilled and terrified audiences during the silent era.

Unfortunately, Ambulance struggled a bit at the box office. I’m a bit confused as to why, other than it wasn’t a part of a franchise or a sequel (like The Batman, Dr. Strange, and Top Gun: Maverick) and it didn’t have the mix of strong reviews and pop cultural cachet that led audiences to make Everything Everywhere All At Once into a hit. Along with reviews that were more interested in criticizing Michael Bay in general as opposed to actually considering whether or not the film itslef worked, Ambulance was damaged by the fact that audiences were still getting used to the idea of leaving their homes for a night out. I get the feeling that a lot of people looked at the commercials for Ambulance and said, “That’s something I can watch at home.” (Admittedly, that’s what I did.) It’s a shame that Michael Bay’s ultimate (and, I would say, best) film is also one of the few to be deemed a box office failure. The film is currently on Peacock. Try to watch it on the biggest screen you can find.

Film Review: The Thing Called Love (dir by Peter Bogdanovich)

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1993 and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, The Thing Called Love takes place in Nashville, the city that, for many people, has come to define Americana.

Of course, for those who actually love movies, it’s difficult to watch any film about Nashville and the country music scene without being reminded of Robert Altman’s American epic, Nashville. Much like Nashville, The Thing Called Love follows a group of wannabes, stars, writers, and performers. However, whereas Robert Altman used the city and its residents as a way to paint an acidic portrait of a nation struggling to find its way in an uncertain new world, The Thing Called Love is far less ambitious.

The Thing Called Love centers around Miranda Presley (Samantha Mathis). Miranda is from New York but she loves country music. She comes to Nashville to try to sell her songs and become a star. Instead, she ends up working as a waitress at the “legendary” Bluebird Cafe. While she waits for her big break, she meets two other aspiring writer/performers, Linda Lu (Sandra Bullock) and Kyle Davidson (Dermot Mulroney). Kyle falls in love with Miranda but Miranda falls in love with and marries James Wright (River Phoenix, brother of Joaquin). Unfortunately, while James is talented, he’s also a bit of a jerk.

The Thing Called Love aired on TCM last year and I can still remember checking out the #TCMParty hashtag on twitter while the film was airing. The majority of the comments were from people who loved TCM and who couldn’t understand why the channel was showing this rather forgettable movie. The answer, of course, is that the film was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and Bogdanovich was one of the patron saints of TCM. Along with being responsible for some genuinely good films (Targets, The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, Saint Jack, Mask, The Cat’s Meow), Bogdanovich was also a very serious student of the history of film. Up until he passed away in January, Bogdanovich was a familiar and welcome sight on TCM. Listening to him talk about John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and especially Orson Welles was always a delight.

Unfortunately, as Bogdanovich himself often admitted, the majority of his later films failed to reach the heights of his earlier work and that’s certainly the case of The Thing Called Love. It’s not so much that The Thing Called Love is bad as it’s just really forgettable. There’s very little about the film that suggests that it was directed by cineaste who was responsible for The Last Picture Show. Samantha Mathis is likable but a bit bland in the role of Miranda while River Phoenix plays James as being such a jerk that you really don’t care about whether or not he finds success. From what I’ve read, Phoenix based his performance on watching Bob Dylan in the documentary Don’t Look Back. Dylan is notably mercurial in that documentary but, it should be noted, that Dylan eventually abandoned that persona once he realized that it was a creative dead end.

To be honest, I think the film would have worked better if Samantha Mathis had switched roles with Sandra Bullock. This was one of Bullock’s first films and she steals every scene in which she appears, giving an energetic and likable performance as someone who never allows herself a single moment of doubt or despair. As opposed to the self-loathing Phoenix and the bland Mathis and Mulroney, Sandra Bullock represents the hope and optimism that Nashville is meant to symbolize. In the end, her performance is the best thing about The Thing Called Love.

Film Review: The Manor (dir by Axelle Croyon)

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2021’s The Manor, Barbara Hershey plays Judith Albright. Once a professional dancer, Judith now works as a dance instructor. Or, at least, she does until she has a sudden stroke at her 70th birthday party. Judith survives the stroke but it’s discovered that she has Parkinson’s disease. Judith decides that it’s time to move into a nursing home. Her grandson, Josh (Nicholas Alexander), disagrees but the rest of Judith’s family thinks that Judith is making the right decision.

At first, the nursing home seems ideal for Judith. The nurses seem to be friendly. The home is actually in a stately old manor and Judith has a nice view of the nearby woods from her room. It’s true that Judith’s roommate seems to think that there’s something sinister happening but Judith (and everyone else) chalks that up to senility. Judith moves into the Manor and even befriends some of the other residents, including Roland (Bruce Davison).

However, it’s not long before Judith starts to suspect that something strange is happening at the Manor. She hears strange noises. There are mysterious deaths. It turns out that not all of the nurses are as friendly as the originally seem. Judith starts to have visions of a strange tree-like creature in her room. When Judith tries to talk to the nursing home’s staff, they dismiss her concerns and condescendingly tell her that she’s just confused. Some of them even threaten her to keep her from making too much trouble. Are they just bad nurses or is there something even worse motivating them? And can Judith discover the Manor’s secret before she becomes the latest victim?

The Manor was the eighth and the last entry in the Welcome to the Blumhouse horror anthology series. Each of the films premiered on Prime, with The Manor dropping on October 8th, 2021. For the most part, the quality of the films featured as a part of Welcome to the Blumhouse were uneven. However, The Manor actually works fairly well. What the film lacks in budget, it makes up for in atmosphere. The nursing home is a truly creepy location and director Axelle Croyon does a good job of creating the feeling that there could be something lurking in every shadow. The scenes were Judith is woken in the night are well-done and the scenes where Judith is told that she is simply confused because she’s elderly are properly infuriating. Barbara Hershey is well-cast as Judith, giving a good performance as someone who is at peace with being in her twilight years but who still isn’t quite ready to give up on life. She is well-matched by Bruce Davison, playing a more ambiguous resident of the nursing home. The ending of The Manor is also a bit unexpected, with Judith making a choice that’s unexpected but which makes sense if you look back over what we’ve learned about her over the course of the film.

In the end, The Manor feels like a modern version of one of those old episodes of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. Yes, the film does teach an important lesson about aging and respecting our elders but, even more importantly, it adds a slightly unexpected twist to give the story a properly macabre conclusion. The Manor is an effective little horror tale and one that gives Barbara Hershey a chance to shine.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Michele Soavi Edition

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 65th birthday to one of our favorite directors, Michele Soavi! In other words, it’s time for….

4 Shots from 4 Michele Soavi Films

Stage Fright (1987, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Renato Tafuri)

The Church (1989, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Renato Tafuri)

The Sect (1991, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Raffaele Mertes)

Dellamorte Dellamore (1994, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Mauro Marchetti)

Scenes I Love: Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer Play Beach Volleyball in Top Gun

Posted on July 3, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tom Cruise is 60 years old today! He doesn’t look a day over 36. Insert your own Dorian Gray joke here.

No matter what else you may want to say about Tom Cruise, you can’t deny that he’s one of the last of the genuine movie stars. He’s been a star in since the 80s, doing things onscreen that you could never imagine some of our younger actors even attempting. And right now, Top Gun: Maverick appears to be unstoppable with audiences and critics. There are many reasons for Maverick‘s popularity but one cannot deny that a lot of it is the fact that Cruise just has that old-fashioned movie star charisma.

Today’s scene that I love comes from the first Top Gun. In this scene, Tom Cruise, Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer, and Rick Rossovich play beach volleyball. The scene kind of comes out of nowhere and there are times when the whole thing comes close to self-parody. (Actually, if we’re going to be honest, it crosses the line into self-parody more than a few times.) But, Cruise and Kilmer manage to save it, like the movie stars they are!

Film Review: The Princess (dir by Le-Van Kiet)

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

An unnamed Princess (Joey King) has been taken prisoner by the evil Julius (Dominic Cooper). Julius wants to take control of the kingdom and the best way to do that is to force the Princess to marry him. The morning of what is planned to be her forced wedding, the Princess wakes up handcuffed and trapped in one of those huge towers that always seem to turn up in movies like this. The Princess takes one look out the window and is confronted by some cartoonish CGI that lets the viewer know that she’s really up high.

Fortunately, this Princess has spent most of her life training to be a warrior. Under the tutelage of Linh (Veronica Ngo) and Khai (Kristofer Kamiyasu), the Princess has learned how to fight and defeat almost any enemy. (“Fight from you heart,” Linh tells her.) As such, the Princess has no fear of breaking her wrist so that she can remove the handcuffs. Soon, she is running through the tower, fighting every man that she comes across.

The first few fight scenes are cool and I appreciated the scene where the Princess shot a man with a crossbow just as he started to yell the C-word because, seriously, you boys have been going overboard with that word lately. Ultimately, though, there’s so many fight scenes that eventually, the viewer can’t help but notice that the fight choreography itself is rather simplistic. The Princess spends a lot of time jumping and spinning around in slow motion. She’s good at sliding across the floor while ducking her head to avoid swinging swords and flying arrows. It’s enjoyable the first few times but, as the film progresses, it all gets a bit repetitive. A huge part of the problem is that none of Julius’s henchmen appear to be particularly competent. They keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again and, as such, it’s not really empowering to watch The Princess defeat them because they’re all so clumsy that it seems anyone could defeat them. Even Julius commits the cardinal sin of talking when he should be fighting. A great hero needs a great villain and unfortunately, The Princess doesn’t provide that. Still, the fight scenes are preferable to any scene that involves dialogue as the script sometimes seems to have been written by an AI programmed to include every cliché possible. On the one hand, the Princess is smashing the patriarchy. On the other hand, good intentions do not make up for clunky dialogue.

To be honest, there’s a certain cynicism at the heart of The Princess that’s a bit off-putting. Written by two men and directed by another, The Princess is so proud of itself for featuring a young woman kicking ass that one has to wonder if the people responsible are seriously not aware that the action girl is one of the leading pop culture clichés of the past 20 years. The main complaint about the action girl trope is that the character is often not given any personality or motivation beyond the fact that she can beat people up and look good while doing it. The Princess doesn’t even bother to give its main character a name. For all the talk about the fate of the kingdom, we never learn how the Princess feels about any of it.

As for the cast, neither Joey King nor Dominic Cooper are well-served by a script that doesn’t offer any sort of real depth to the characters. Both deserve better.

Film Review: Strategic Command (dir by Rick Jacobson)

Posted on July 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1997 film, Strategic Command, Richard Norton plays a terrorist named Carlos …. wait for it …. Gruber. If that last name sounds familiar, that’s because the villain of Die Hard was named Hans Gruber and the bad guy from Die Hard With A Vengeance was named Simon Gruber. Gruber — the number one name in hostage situations!

Anyway, Carlos Gruber and his fellow terrorists steal a chemical called Bromax from the FBI. Bromax is a chemical weapon, one that can be used to kill thousands of people. It’s probably not a good idea for anyone to have Bromax, regardless of whether they are terrorists or the FBI. What’s the point of Bromax, really? It only has evil purposes. Plus, it has a stupid name.

Gruber proceeds to hijack Air Force Two, holding the Vice President (Michael Cavanaugh) and several journalists hostage. Gruber wants his fellow terrorists to be released from prison and he’s prepared to kill the Vice President if he doesn’t get what he wants. Perhaps because Gruber realizes how little the Vice President actually does, Gruber is also willing to spray Bromax over America.

Not wanting to see America get Bromaxed, the President sends an elite force of special op. soldiers after Air Force Two. Captain Rattner (Jsu Garcia, back when he was still using the name Nick Corri) is in charge of the mission and he doesn’t expect there to be any slip-ups. Accompanying Rattner’s men is Rick Harding (Michael Dudikoff!), the inventor of Bromax! Along with not wanting to see Bromax sprayed over America, Harding also wants to save the life of his wife, Michelle (Amanda Wyss, who co-starred with Jsu Garcia in the original Nightmare on Elm Street). Michelle is one of the journalists on the plane.

Strategic Command is stupid, yet strangely likable. It’s impossible not to admire the film’s attempt to be a huge action epic without actually spending any money. As a result, Air Force 2 is a commercial airliner. There’s a surprisingly small number of people involved on both sides of the plot. The viewer might expect the hostage situation to be one of those big, “all hands on deck” emergencies but, instead, the President is content to send 6 people to get the job done. Fortunately, there aren’t that many terrorists either. This is action on a budget.

Adding to the film’s overall strangeness is the miscasting of Michael Dudikoff as a quiet and somewhat nerdy scientist. This is one of those films where the viewer is meant to assume that a character is smart just because he’s wearing glasses. Dudikoff is so miscast that, again, it all becomes strangely likable. He and Richard Norton are so enthusiastic about chewing up the scenery that it’s kind of fun to watch. Also fun to watch is the legitimate great actor Bryan Cranston, cast here as a vain and cowardly anchorman. One gets the feeling that this is probably not a film that Cranston brags about but his performance isn’t bad at all. Every film like this needs to have a self-important reporter who can get humiliated in some fashion and Cranston handles the role like a pro.

Strategic Command is dumb but kind of fun, in the way that many 90s direct-to-video action films tend to be. It’s a good film for when you want to watch something that won’t necessarily require your full attention. In fact, the less thought one gives to what happens in Strategic Command, the better. Watch it for Dudikoff, Norton, and especially the one and only Bryan Cranston!