Insomnia File #12: Beyond The Law (dir by Larry Ferguson)

Posted on March 4, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were awake at one in the morning, you could have turned on FLIX and watched the 1993 film Beyond The Law.

Now, you may look at the title and think to yourself, “That movie sounds way too generic for anyone to watch.” And, to a certain extent, you’re right. Based, so the narrated epilogue insists, on a true story, Beyond The Law is about a troubled cop who goes undercover and joins a biker gang. After gaining the trust and friendship of the gang’s ruthless leader, the cop struggles to maintain a between order and chaos. Sometimes, he succeeds. Sometimes, he doesn’t. Largely, his success is dependent on whatever the narrative requires at the moment.

It’s totally predictable but, at the same time, it’s hard not to watch. When a film starts with an Indian shaman telling Charlie Sheen that his dark side is going to destroy him, how can you not keep watching?

That’s right … the undercover cop is played by Charlie Sheen. Fortunately, since Beyond the Law was made in 1993, we’re talking about the sexy and dangerous Charlie Sheen who showed up at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and not the sad and bloated Charlie Sheen who co-starred on Two And A Half Men.

Charlie’s a deputy in Arizona who, as a result of his traumatic childhood, has a violent temper. After he gets into a fist fight with another deputy (played by Rip Torn), he is told that he can either quit the force or he can go undercover. He chooses to go undercover. Fortunately, he knows an informant (Leon Rippy) who can teach him how to pass for a biker. The informant’s nickname is Dildo (no, really) but later, we find out that his given name is Virgil. And he’s Charlie’s guide through the Hell of the Arizona underworld, just as another Virgil led Dante through another Hell…

Yes, it’s totally heavy-handed but somehow, it’s appropriate. The title may be generic but, within the first 30 minutes of the film, Beyond the Law gives us Indian wisdom, strange flashbacks, references to Dante, a guy named Dildo, and Charlie Sheen. But that’s not all! Beyond the Law also has Michael Madsen!

Michael Madsen plays Blood, the leader of the biker gang that Charlie has to infiltrate. And he gives a classic Michael Madsen performance, full of random squints, arched eyebrows, menacing pauses in the middle of dialogue, and that famous Michael Madsen half-smirk. Predictable as its plot may be, Beyond The Law is your only chance to see Charlie Sheen and Michael Madsen compete to see who can chew the most scenery. Charlie does his crazy eyes. Madsen does his half-smirk. In the end, I would say that Madsen wins.

Charlie also ends up having a relationship with an photojournalist (Linda Fiorentino). Before going undercover, he gave her a speeding ticket and, when they later meet at a biker gathering, she immediately recognizes him but keeps his secret. She doesn’t really get to do much in the film but I still liked the character because she was tough and she was the only person in the film who could outsmirk Michael Madsen.

Beyond The Law is nothing special but it’s worth watching just for the chance to see Michael Madsen and Charlie Sheen acting opposite each other.

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Insomnia File #10: Eye For An Eye (dir by John Schlesinger)

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were awake at midnight and trying to get some sleep, you could have turned over to ThillerMax and watched the 1996 revenge thriller, Eye For An Eye. However, the film wouldn’t have helped you get to sleep. Eye For An Eye is not a film that you sleep through.

Eye For An Eye opens with Karen McCann (Sally Field) comforting her youngest daughter, Megan (Alexandra Kyle). Megan is terrified of a moth that has flown into her bedroom. “Kill it, mommy, kill it!” Megan shouts. Instead, Karen gently takes the moth in her hand and allows it to escape through an open window. In those first few minutes, the film tells us everything that it feels to be important about Karen. She’s a mother. She lives in a big house in the suburbs. And she wouldn’t kill a moth…

But — the name of the title is Eye For An Eye and that would seem to promise killing so we know that something terrible is going to happen to change Karen’s outlook on life.

And it does! The next afternoon, Karen is stuck in traffic and calls her oldest daughter, 17 year-old Julie (Olivia Burnette). In an extremely harrowing sequence that is pure nightmare fuel, Karen helplessly listens as Julie is raped and murdered.

A white trash deliveryman named Robert Doob is arrested for the crime and we immediately know that he’s guilty. First off, his name is Robert Doob and that’s a serial killer name if I’ve ever heard one. Secondly, he smirks at Karen and her husband (Ed Harris) and, in a particularly cruel moment that was especially upsetting to this former stutterer, he imitates Julie’s stammer. Third, Robert has tattoos and Satanic facial hair. And finally, Robert Doob is played by Keifer Sutherland. And usually, I find Keifer and his growl of a voice to be kinda sexy in a dangerous sorta way but in Eye For An Eye, he was so icky that he just made my skin crawl.

Robert Doob is obviously guilty but an evil liberal judge throws the case out on a technicality. After Karen gets over the shock of seeing justice perverted, she decides to take the law into her own hands. After meeting a professional vigilante (Philip Baker Hall, looking slightly amused no matter how grim he tries to act), Karen decides to learn how to use a gun so that she can get her revenge…

There’s not a single subtle moment in Eye For An Eye but that’s actually the main reason I enjoyed the film. Everything — from the performances to the script to the direction to the music to … well, everything — is completely and totally over-the-top. The symbolism is so heavy-handed and the film is so heavily stacked in favor of vigilante justice that the whole thing becomes oddly fascinating. It may not be a great film but it’s always watchable. It may not be subtle and it may even be borderline irresponsible in its portrayal of the American justice system but who cares? By the end of the movie, I was over whatever real world concerns I may have had about the film’s premise and I was totally cheering Karen on in her quest for vengeance. I imagine I’m not alone in that. Eye For An Eye is the type of film that elitist movie snobs tend to dismiss, even while secretly knowing that it’s actually kinda awesome.

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Insomnia File #9: Born Killers (dir by Morgan J. Freeman)

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were suffering insomnia at around 2:30 this morning, you could have turned over to ActionMax and watched the 2005 film Born Killers.

Now, probably the first thing that you noticed about this film is that the director is named Morgan J. Freeman. That J is there for a reason. In no way is Morgan J. Freeman the director related to Morgan Freeman the actor. Instead, Morgan J. Freeman is a director who has done a few indie films and who will probably never live down the fact that he directed American Psycho II: All-American Girl. According to the imdb, Freeman is also an executive producer on Teen Mom.

In other words, Morgan J. Freeman has been involved with a lot of crap.

However, Born Killers is actually a fairly good film. It’s certainly far better than anything you would expect to see from the director of American Psycho II.

Born Killers tells the story of two brothers, John (Jake Muxworthy) and Michael (Gabriel Mann). John and Michael are both killers. They call other human beings “piggy banks” and they spend all of their time murdering innocent people and then robbing them. For the wild and unpredictable Michael, it’s fun. For the coolly calculating John, it’s strictly business. They’re both sociopaths but, as quickly becomes apparent, Michael is the only one who is having any fun.

Through flashbacks, we discover that Michael and John never really had a chance to be anything other than what they eventually became. From an early age, their father (Tom Sizemore, who is absolutely chilling) taught them how to kill and steal. After their father’s violent death, John and Michael go on their own killing spree.

And everything seems to be going well for them, until John ends up shooting Michael. Why did John kill him? Even though John is narrating the story, he doesn’t seem to be sure. He admits that his memory may be fooling him. He thinks that it might have something to do with a woman named Archer (Kelli Garner), who the brothers reluctantly murdered.

With his brother now dead, John tracks down his half-sister, Gertle (Lauren German). John hasn’t seen Gertle in years and, when he first approaches her, he pretends to be a Mormon missionary. Gertle responds by leading him into her house and, after they have sex, she tells him that she knows that he is her half-brother.

Though John was originally planning on murdering her, he instead finds himself falling in love with her and even feeling that maybe his love for her would redeem him for all of his past crimes. When she tries to warn him that she has issues of her own, John replies that he knows they are meant to be together. He begs her to take a chance on him.

But Gertle, as you’ve probably guessed, has secrets of her own…

At first, I wasn’t expecting much from Born Killers. And, for the first 30 minutes or so, it plays out like your typical serial killer road film. I kept watching because of the performances but I didn’t think much of the story. However, as soon as John tracks down his sister, the entire movie changes direction and it actually starts to catch you off guard. Suddenly, you’re no longer sure just what exactly is going to happen or how it’s going to end. During the final half of the film, Lauren German and Jake Muxworthy give such good and compelling performances that you forget about the shaky first half. Even if the film’s ending is a little bit too twisted for its own good, it’s still an interesting journey.

All in all, Born Killers is not at all bad for a low-budget serial killer film airing on Cinemax at two in the morning!

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Insomnia File No. 8: From the Hip (dir by Bob Clark)

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, if you discovered that you couldn’t get any sleep around two in the morning, you could have turned to Showtime and watched the 1987 film, From The Hip.

In From the Hip, Judd Nelson plays a character named Robin Weathers. Of course, his nickname is Stormy. Robin has just graduated from law school and is working at a prestigious law firm. He’s ambitious, he’s outspoken, and he’s totally frustrated. As his co-workers (played, quite well, by David Alan Grier and Dan Monahan) continually remind him, nobody gets to try a case during their first year out of law school. They advise him to be patient and to wait his turn.

However, a man who is capable of being patient would not be nicknamed Stormy. It just wouldn’t make any sense. So, Stormy Weathers schemes his way into the courtroom. One morning, he intentionally withholds information from the senior partners, going out of his way to keep them from realizing that a trial is scheduled to begin that afternoon. When senior partner Craig Duncan (Darren McGavin) discovers what Stormy has done, he fires him and makes sure that he never get hired at another law firm … oh wait. No, he doesn’t because that would make too much sense. Instead, he allows Stormy to try the case because, at this point, Stormy is the only one who knows anything about it.

The case is a simple assault case that involves two bankers and should be resolved easily but Stormy manages to drag it out for several days and his flamboyant style catches the attention of the media. The other partners in the law firm — who are all old and boring — want to fire Stormy but Stormy’s client says that, if Stormy is fired, he’ll take his business and his money elsewhere. Stormy becomes a minor celebrity but — in a rather clever little twist — it turns out that he and the prosecuting attorney are old friends from law school and they conspired to make each other look good.

Anyway, Stormy is now so famous that he gets assigned to defend a college professor, named Benoit (John Hurt), who has been accused of murder. When it quickly becomes obvious that Benoit is not only guilty but will probably murder again, Stormy is forced to choose between ambition and morality…

When my friend Evelyn and I first started to watch From the Hip last night, I really thought I was going to hate it. The hot pink neon credits screamed, “Bad 80s movie!” and, because I happen to know quite a few lawyers, I tend to be a 100 times more critical of movies about lawyers than I am when it comes to movies about, say, homicidal fishermen.

And, honestly, From The Hip is a heavily flawed film. Judd Nelson is miscast and the scenes with his politically conscious girlfriend (Elizabeth Perkins) are painfully shallow and reek of limousine liberalism. But, if you can get through the weak opening, the film itself is watchable and enjoyable in a dumb sort of way. John Hurt does a great job as a sociopath and, miscast as he may be, it’s still fun to watch Nelson go insane in court.

From The Hip is not a great film but, in its way, it’s an enjoyable little time capsule. Believe it or not, there was a time when Judd Nelson starred in a movies that were actually released in theaters.

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Insomnia File No. 7: Fair Game (dir by Andrew Sipes)

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Tuesday night, if you were suffering from insomnia at midnight, you could have turned over to HBO Signature (commonly listed as HBOSIG) and watched Fair Game, a remarkably mindless action film from 1995.

Originally, my plan was to start this review of Fair Game by telling you, in quite a bit of detail, just how sick I am of the Russian Mafia. Seriously, Russian mobsters have become the default villain for lazy crime films everywhere. And, quite frankly, I’m getting bored with them. I’m bored with how the head Russian mobster is always described as being “former KGB” and is always found sitting in the back room of restaurant, wearing an overcoat and smoking filterless cigarettes. I am bored with how his main henchman is always some big guy with a crew cut and that guy always has a thin sidekick who wears his hair in a pony tail and has a bad mustache. I’m sick of the overexaggerated accents of American and British accents trying to sound Russian and the way they’re always listening to EDM while driving. It’s all so predictable and tedious.

But then I considered that Fair Game was made 20 years ago. Even if the villains are Russian mobsters and even if they are some of the least interesting Russian mobsters in cinema history, it’s totally possible that, when Fair Game, was made, there was still some sort of novelty about the Russian Mafia.

However, even if we give Fair Game a pass on using the cliché of the Russian mob, the villains still weren’t particularly interesting. Kazak (Steven Berkoff) is … well, the film isn’t really that clear on what Kazak’s big plan is but he has a lot of henchmen and they certainly do end up killing a lot of people. Kazak runs his operations off of a yacht that belongs to a Cuban criminal named Emilio (Miguel Sandoval). Emilio is in the process of getting divorced and attorney Kate McQuean (model Cindy Crawford, who made her film debut here and has never played a leading role since) is determined to repossess his boat. So, Kazak decides that the perfect solution would be to murder Kate…

Which makes absolutely no sense. Kazak doesn’t want anyone to discover his operation so he decides to blow up a good portion of Miami, all in pursuit of one person. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Kazak to just blow up the boat and buy a new one?

Anyway, as the film opens, Kate is out jogging when suddenly someone driving by in a car opens fire on her. She ends up getting grazed in the arm, not that it seems to bother her. She wears a bandage for a few scenes but it soon vanishes. Kate is all business so, even after getting shot, she still goes into the office and starts to make plans to repossess that yacht. Personally, if anyone ever shot at me, I would probably be so freaked out that I would never leave the house again.

Now, you may be thinking that Kate was shot because of Kazak but actually, it turns out that the shooting was just a random thing that happened. Apparently, the shooter was trying to shoot someone else and Kate just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, we never find out who actually shot Kate and that really bothered me, as that seems to be kind of a huge plot point to bring up and then refuse to resolve.

Anyway, Kate meets a detective named Max Kirkpatrick (William Baldwin) and, soon, they’re on the run from Kazak’s assassins. The majority of the film is made up of Max and Kate running from one location to another. One thing that really bothered me was that literally everyone that Max and Kate talked to ended up getting killed just a few minutes later. At one point, Kate flirts with a computer service expert to get him to help them out. The scene is played for laughs but then, five minutes later, that same innocent technician guy is being brutally tortured by a bunch of Russians and, though we don’t see it happen, it’s safe to assume that he was eventually murdered by them. And no point do Max or Kate appear to feel any guilt or concern about the number of innocent people who are killed just for associating with them.

Anyway, Fair Game is a completely mindless film that has a rather nasty streak of sadism to it. (I imagine, when this film was released, it probably set a record for close-ups of people getting shot and stabbed in the crotch.) William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford both have perfect bodies and give totally wooden performances, which leads to them having a dimly-lit sex scene that is both physically hot and emotionally cold at the same time.

(I have no idea what entropy at absolute zero means but it sounds like a pretty good description of the chemistry between Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin in Fair Game.)

One good note: Salma Hayek has a small role as Max’s ex-girlfriend. Whenever she shows up in the movie, she starts screaming at everyone. I don’t blame her.

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Insomnia File No. 6: Frogs For Snakes (dir by Amos Poe)

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were suffering from insomnia last night, at around two a.m., you could have turned over to Flix and watched the 1998 film Frogs For Snakes.

And if you were suffering from insomnia, watching Frogs For Snakes would probably have been a good idea because this film is amazingly dull. In fact, I am not sure that I have the words to express to you just how tedious Frogs For Snakes truly was. It may be necessary for me to go back to school and learn how to speak in a dead language in order for me to express the boredom that I felt while watching Frogs For Snakes.

And yes, I realize that I’m talking about an obscure film that was released nearly 20 years ago and it might seem kind of petty to, at this late date, make a big deal about how terrible this film was.

But seriously, Frogs For Snakes was really, really bad. In fact, it was disturbing to think that a film this bad could have actually been made. It was even more disturbing to consider that this film was apparently given a theatrical release and, all these years later, still pops up on cable so that it can proudly display its overwhelming mediocrity.

Now, I’m going to tell you what Frogs For Snakes is about and you’re going to think, “That actually sounds like it might be kind of interesting.” Don’t be fooled! The film may sound interesting but it’s not.

Frogs for Snakes takes place in a stylized, neo-noir version of New York City. Eva Santana (Barbara Hershey) is an aging actress who claims to have quit the business, though it’s clear that it’s more a case of the business quitting her. She talks about leaving New York and raising her son in a better environment. However, until she gets around to leaving, she’s making ends meet by working as a waitress at a diner owned by the kind-hearted Quint (Ian Hart). And, of course, when she’s not waitressing, she’s working as a debt collector for her ex-husband, a loan shark named Al Santana (Robbie Coltrane).

That’s right, this actress has a gun and she uses it frequently. However, because Eva is good at heart, she rarely kills anyone. Instead, she just shoots them in the foot and tells them to pay back their loans while they lay on the floor and scream in agony. (All that agonized screaming got pretty old after a while.)

As for Al, he’s not just a loan shark. He’s a theatrical impressario. He’s planning on putting on a production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. He promises his driver a role in American Buffalo on the condition that the driver assassinate Eva’s new boyfriend (John Leguizamo, of course).

Soon, actors all over New York are literally killing to get a role in Al’s play. Meanwhile, Eva just wants to retire and get out of New York but first, she has to do one last job for Al…

In between all the killing, the characters frequently launch into monologues that have been lifted from other films. John Leguizamo does a Brando imitation. Lisa Marie (Tim Burton’s ex, not yours truly) delivers the cuckoo clock speech from The Third Man. A suggestion for aspiring filmmakers: if you’re going to make a bad film, don’t remind your audience that they could be watching The Third Man instead.

Anyway, the plot sounds interesting but none of the potentially intriguing ideas are explored. I imagine that the film was meant to be a satire of Off-Broadway ruthlessness but ultimately, the film is just another tediously violent indie film from the 90s. This is one of those movies where nobody can do anything without spending an excessive amount of time talking about it beforehand and, when things do turn violent, it’s the worst type of quirky, sadistic, drawn-out, “look how crazy we are” violence.

There’s a scene towards the end of the film where Al shoots a group of people in a bar. This is intercut with clips from the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. As Al leave, he shoots the TV showing Battleship Potemkin and, I have to say, that really annoyed me. Seriously, just as a bad filmmaker should not remind people that they could be watching The Third Man, he shouldn’t invite them to compare his film to Battleship Potemkin unless he’s willing to back up the comparison. When Al shot the TV, I found myself hoping that Sergei Eisenstein would pop up and shoot him.

Frogs for Snakes is one of the worst films that I’ve ever seen. It may, in fact, be the worst but I would need to rewatch Ted 2 before I said that for sure. But, if you have insomnia, Frogs For Snakes will at least put you to sleep.

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Insomnia File No. 5: Black Ice (dir by Neill Fearnley)

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night at 2 a.m., you could have turned over to Indieplex and watched Black Ice, a Canadian thriller from 1992.

Why is the film called Black Ice? Well, that’s a good question. There’s a lot of snow and ice to be seen in the film but absolutely none of it is black. According to the imdb, this film was also released under the title A Passion for Murder. I have to admit that I kind of like A Passion For Murder as a title, simply because it’s so generic and empty that it becomes oddly brilliant. If you were making a parody of the type of movies that Netflix usually lists in the “steamy thriller” category, A Passion For Murder is probably the title that you would come up with.

But, as for this film, it opens as all thrillers from the early 90s must, with a man in a suit meeting his clad-in-black-lingerie mistress in a hotel room. The man in the suit is an up-and-coming senator. His mistress is the mysterious Vanessa (Joanna Pacula). When Vanessa pressures him to leave his wife, the senator gets mad and leaves. Vanessa goes back to her apartment, where she is soon visited by the senator. She and the senator get into a fight. She shoves the senator into a window, which shatters and promptly kills the senator.

Meanwhile, Ben Shorr (Michael Nouri) is barely making a living as a taxi driver. He’s an aspiring writer and, just in case we had any doubts about his intellectual bona fides, he has a pony tail and talks almost nonstop. (Ben also owns a goldfish that he’s named Travis, as in Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle.) Ben is pretty annoying and when he picks up Vanessa, you’re kind of hoping that she’ll end up killing him like she killed the senator.

But no, it turns out that Ben is supposed to be our hero. Vanessa asks Ben to drive her from Detroit to Seattle. And, of course, Ben agrees because … well, there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise.

It turns out that Vanessa is actually a secret agent. She was supposed to seduce and eventually marry the senator. Now that she’s accidentally killed him, her supervisor, Quinn, is determined to kill her. Because this movie was made in Canada, the villainous Quinn is played by Michael Ironside.

The rest of the film is basically Quinn chasing Ben and Vanessa across the northwest. Along the way, Vanessa and Ben fall in love. One huge problem with Black Ice is that the audience knows everything about Vanessa before Ben does. There are a lot of scenes of Ben trying to figure out why Quinn is pursuing Vanessa but, since we already know why, those scenes mostly feel like filler. If Vanessa had been as much of a mystery to the audience as she was to Ben for most of the film’s running time, Black Ice probably would have been a bit more intriguing.

As it is, Black Ice is pretty much a standard, low-budget chase film. Michael Nouri is pretty annoying but Joanna Pacula and Michael Ironside both give good performances. It snows throughout the entire film and there’s a few genuinely impressive shots of the three main characters running across the icy landscape. Otherwise, Black Ice is pretty forgettable but it also doesn’t require much thought, which might make it an appropriate film to watch if you’ve got insomnia.

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Insomnia File No. 4: Nina Takes A Lover (dir by Alan Jacobs)

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep at 2 in the morning, you could have turned over to Starz and watched Nina Takes A Lover, a movie from 1994.

Nina Takes A Lover is such a typical 90s Sundance film that it could have just as easily been called Independent Movie From 1994. Everything that we tend to associate with American independent cinema is present in this film. It’s a relationship drama with moments of quirky comedy. It’s set in the city and no, it doesn’t matter which city. It could be New York or it could be Seattle or it could be Los Angeles or San Francisco. The important thing is that it’s a city on one of the coasts, the type of city where people engage in witty banter while sharing an apple in the park or over cups of coffee at a cozy cafe that was probably replaced by a Starbucks after this film was released. This is the type of film where the characters tell their stories in flashback while being interviewed by a bespectacled journalist. Characters alternate between artificial small talk and sudden statements of portentous wisdom. Of course, all of quirky drama leads up to a sudden twist. I figured out the twist after watching about 10 minutes of the film. Maybe audiences in 1994 were a bit more surprised.

About the only thing that keeps Nina Takes A Lover from being the most stereotypical indie film ever made is the fact that there’s no quirky criminals and nobody spends any time talking about their favorite childhood TV shows. If Nina had only shot someone while taking a lover, this would have been the most indie film ever.

I imagine that I’ve probably made the film sound totally unbearable but I actually enjoyed Nina Takes A Lover. Once I realized and accepted that Nina Takes A Lover wasn’t exactly going to reinvent cinema, I discovered that it was actually a very likable film.

Nina is played by Laura San Giacomo, who owns a shoe store. Nina meets a man in the park. The man (Paul Rhys) has no name and is merely identified as being “Photographer.” (And, of course, he’s British because this is an independent film and, in the world of indie cinema, all ideal lovers are British.) Soon, Nina and Photographer are having a passionate and very physical affair. However, Nina explains that she’s married and her husband will be home in three weeks. Photographer says that he has a wife as well. As Nina and the Photographer talk about love, marriage, and sex, they also try to figure out what they should do when the three weeks are up.

And, of course, it all leads to a twist that you’ve probably already figured out but you know what? It doesn’t matter if the film is predictable because it’s just so likable. Laura San Giacomo and Paul Rhys both give likable performances, they have a lot of chemistry, and the sex scenes are well-done and genuinely erotic. The film may tell a familiar story but it tells it well.

Nina Takes A Lover is a good film to watch when you’ve got insomnia. It won’t put you to sleep but it will definitely make the hours of darkness a little more pleasant.

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Insomnia File No. 3: Love is a Gun (dir by David Hartwell)

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were suffering from insomnia last night, at around 2 in the morning, you could have turned on Showtime and watched Love is a Gun, an odd little thriller from 1994.

How odd is Love Is a Gun? It’s so odd that it stars Eric Roberts. Roberts plays Jack, a photographer with problems. His longtime girlfriend, Isabelle (Eliza Roberts), refuses to forgive him for cheating on her in the past and demands that he put a ring on her finger. (Jack, for his part, has bought a ring but he keeps losing it.) Jack is haunted by a reoccurring dream, in which he sees himself with a gun pointed at his head. Isabelle says that the dream means that Jack needs to give her a ring. Jack says it’s all about deja vu.

Jack gets a job working as a crime scene investigator. He meets a detective who is so crazy that he’s played by R. Lee Ermey. Jack takes pictures of dead bodies. His colleagues make macabre jokes. A local reporter offers to pay Jack for insider information. Ermey asks Jacks to help cover up a crime. Jack has visions of a line of well-dressed detectives shooting at him, firing squad style. Eventually, Jack ends up sitting in a living room, an anonymous body at his feet, and watching a soap opera. The actors on TV repeat dialogue that we’ve heard Jack and Isabelle say earlier in the film. Jack starts to giggle and is soon laughing like a maniac. A detective steps into the living room and asks Jack if he remembered to take a picture of the body in the bathroom. “Oh yeah,” Jack says, “I forgot about that…”

Jack meets a model named Jean (Kelly Preston). He takes pictures of her wearing a bridal gown and occasionally playing dead. He realizes that he’s already seen the exact same pictures that he’s just taken. Somebody left them in his locker at work but the images of Jean faded to black as soon as he looked at them. He asks Jean if this is all an elaborate joke. “Take the shot, Jack,” Jean replies.

Soon, Jean and Jack are having an affair. Jean tells Jack that she has a strange rash. Jack imagines that there’s a hole in Jean’s forehead. A man claiming to be Jean’s husband shows up and wishes Jack luck because his wife is crazy.

Jack goes back to Isabelle. Isabelle demands the ring. Jack freaks out and returns to Jean. Jean says she’s pregnant but then says she isn’t. Jack giggles and then cries. He goes back and forth between the two women, constantly begging for forgiveness as beads of sweat collect on his forehead.

Jack’s watch stops. He tries to get it repaired. An old man yells at him that his watch is cursed and cannot be repaired because it might infect all of the other watches in the man’s shop.

And, after all of that, the movie starts to get really weird…

Love Is A Gun does eventually offer up an explanation as to what’s going on. It doesn’t make a bit of sense but somehow, the total incoherence of it all adds to this low-budget film’s charm. Full of surreal images and intentionally odd dialogue, Love Is A Gun is compulsively watchable.

It also features a genuinely strange performance from Eric Roberts. Roberts goes through the film with this goofy smile on his face, except for the scenes when Jack gets upset. When Jack is upset, Roberts stomps his feet, jumps up and down, yells out every other line of dialogue, and contorts his body in some truly weird ways. When he gets really angry, he grabs can after can of beer and furiously shakes them before opening, causing the beer to drench his face. Eric Roberts’s lead performance is literally one of the oddest things that I have ever seen and it’s worth watching Love Is A Gun just to experience it.

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Insomnia File No. 2: Stag (dir by Gavin Wilding)

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, if you were suffering from insomnia around 2:30 in the morning, you could have turned over to Flix and watched Stag, a dreary film from 1997!

And I know what you’re saying. “Really, Lisa? I could have watched a dreary film! WHY DIDN’T SOMEBODY TELL ME!?” Well, sorry. Your loss. Maybe next time you won’t be so quick to resist the call of insomnia…

Anyway, Stag eventually turns out to be pretty bad but it actually has a pretty good opening. A bunch of rich guys get together in a big house and throw a bachelor party. Whenever one of them first appears on screen, they get a freeze frame that tells us their name and gives us a few biographical facts.

For instance, one coke-snorting character is introduced as “Jon DiCapri: Soap opera star, spokesman for “Stars Against Drugs.” A drunk guy begging for money is identified as “Timan Bernard: Accountant, Author of ‘Ethics in Business.'” The pensive fellow standing by the window and a smoking a cigarette is “Daniel Kane: Gulf war veteran, post traumatic stress disorder,” while the guy running around in a wig and lingerie is “Ed Labenski: Contractor, church treasurer.” My personal favorite of the introductions belonged to the guy with the neck tattoo and the terrible teeth. We’re told that he’s “Pete Weber: Drug dealer, extortionist. Self employed.”

Of course, Pete Weber is also Andrew McCarthy, playing a character who is far removed from the world of Pretty In Pink and St. Elmo’s Fire. And Daniel Kane is actually Kevin Dillon, taking part in the type of misogynistic hi-jinks that would later be celebrated in Entourage. Jon DiCapri is actually William McNamara, who will always be remembered for his memorable death scene in Dario Argento’s Opera. As for Timan Bernard, he’s played by John Henson, who was the host of that terrible Wipeout show that was on the air forever despite the fact that nobody in the world would admit to watching it.

And they’re not the only ones at this bachelor party! The bachelor himself is played by John Stockwell, the director of movies like Cheaters, Crazy/Beautiful and In The Blood. His best friend is played by Mario Van Peebles. Even distinguished character actor Ben Gazzarra is at this bachelor party!

As I said, the film starts out well enough, with the men all acting like idiots and pretty much confirming everything that I’ve always suspected about bachelor parties. But then the strippers show up and there’s a highly improbable accident and soon there are two dead bodies bleeding out on the linoleum floor of John Stockwell’s house. The rest of the movie is pretty much the men yelling at each other and arguing about what they should do. Some fear going to jail. Some want to frame someone else. Some want to cover up the accident. A few suggest calling the police but then Andrew McCarthy rips the landline phone out of the wall and, since this movie was made in the 90s, that is literally all he has to do to keep everyone from contacting the outside world.

Despite some decent performances, the film turned out to be pretty tedious. That said, as I watched it, I found myself wondering how my girlfriends and I would have handled a similar situation. What if we were throwing a bachelorette party and suddenly Magic Mike ended up lying in the middle of the floor with a broken neck? To be honest, I get the feeling we’d probably handle it in roughly the same way as the characters in Stag. We would just be a lot more passive aggressive about it.

“Oh my God, is that guy dead!?”

“I don’t know but that’s what I think Heather said. But it’s all Amy’s fault and … Bitch, everyone says it’s your fault so unless everyone in the entire world is wrong … whatever, Amy.”

“Oh my God, what are we going to do with him?”

“I don’t know but Vanessa said that maybe we should say that he like never showed up at the party and then she said that Jen said that … oh my God, are those new earrings!?”

“Yeah, do you like them!?”

“They’re so pretty! Anyway, Jen said that maybe you should like go bury him somewhere…”

“Oh my God, Jen said I should go bury him!?”

“Well, I didn’t hear for sure but Tina said that she heard Vanessa say that Jen said that you should go bury him…”

“That bitch! I am so going to kick her ass! Oh my God!”

But anyway, the body would eventually get buried. Just not by me.

ANYWAY! What was I talking about?

Right … Stag.

It’s not a very good movie.