Guilty Pleasure No. 80: Point Break (dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some films are so ludicrous and self-aware of their absurdity that you can’t help but love them and that’s certainly the case with 1991’s Point Break.

Consider what Point Break offers us:

First, you’ve got Keanu Reeves playing a former college football star who, after blowing out his knee, ended up joining the FBI. Keanu, who looks like he’s barely out of high school in this film, plays a character with the wonderful name of Johnny Utah. Keanu gives a relaxed performance. You can tell that he’s having fun in this movie and Johnny Utah’s enthusiasm is infectious. Personally, I prefer Johnny Utah to John Wick.

Secondly, you’ve got Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, the ruthless bank robber who is also a surfer. Much like Reeves, Swayze could occasionally be a stiff actor but in this film, you can tell he’s having fun and again, it’s hard not have fun watching him as he spouts his surfer philosophy, jumps out of planes, and dreams of dying while mastering a 50-foot wave. Swayze is so charismatic as Bodhi that you totally buy that Johnny Utah would like him despite all the times that Bodhi tries to kill him.

You’ve got Bodhi’s bank-robbing gang, who call themselves the Ex-Presidents. Bodhi wears a Ronald Reagan mask. Other members of the gang wear LBJ, Nixon, and Carter masks. “I am not a crook!” Nixon says. The wonderful thing about the Ex-Presidents is that they seem to truly enjoy robbing banks. Of course, they also enjoy surfing.

Gary Busey plays a character who is not Gary Busy. Instead, he’s Johnny’s partner. Everyone in the FBI laughs at him when he says the bank robbers are surfers but guess who knows what he’s talking about! Seriously, though, it’s always interesting to see Gary Busey in the years when he was still a somewhat serious actor.

John C. McGinley does the uptight boss thing. Lori Petty is the waitress who teaches Johnny Utah how to surf. The surf footage is beautifully shot. A soaked Johnny give the camera a thumbs-up. Director Kathryn Bigelow keeps the action moving quickly and, just as she did with Near Dark, uses the film’s genre trappings to explore the bond that holds together a group of outsiders.

It’s an over-the-top and cheerfully absurd film and it’s impossible not to love it. I haven’t felt the need to watch the remake. Why would I? The original has everything I need.

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Ghosts of Sundance Past: Living in Oblivion (dir by Tom DiCillo)

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we all know, this year’s Sundance Film Festival started yesterday.

To me, Sundance has always signified the official start of a new cinematic year. Not only is it the first of the major festivals but it’s also when we first learn about some of the films that we’ll be looking forward to seeing all year. It seems like every year, there’s at least one successful (or nearly successful) Oscar campaign that gets it start at Sundance. For instance, it is probable that Past Lives will receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture on Tuesday and its campaign started with how it was received at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

My plan for this year is to spend the last few days of January looking at some of the films that have won awards or otherwise created a splash at previous Sundance Film Festivals.

Like 1995’s Living in Oblivion for example….

Living in Oblivion centers around the filming of an independent movie called, appropriately enough, Living in Oblivion. The film is being directed by Nick Reve (a youngish and, I’ll just say it, hot Steve Buscemi), a filmmaker whose indie cred does not protect him from the difficulties of shooting a movie with next to no budget. His cinematographer is Wolf (Dermot Mulroney), who is talented but pretentious and who is dating the first assistant director, Wanda (Danielle von Zerneck). The film stars Nicole (Catherine Keener), a struggling actress who is best known for appearing in a shower scene in a Richard Gere movie. Also appearing in the movie is Chad Palomino (James LeGros), an up-and-coming star who is appearing in Nick’s film to build up his critical reputation. (He also assumes that Nick is friends with Quentin Tarantino.)

We don’t really learn much about the plot of the film-within-a-film. It appears that Nicole is playing Ellen, a woman who is trying to come to terms with her abusive childhood and her romantic feelings towards her friend, Damien (played by Chad Polomino). The scenes of the film that we see alternate between being insightful, melodramatic, and pretentious. We see Ellen confronting her mother about her abusive childhood but we also see a dream sequence in which Ellen, who is dressed as a bride, attempts to grab an apple from Tito, a person with dwarfism (played, in his film debut, by Peter Dinklage).

To talk too much about the film’s narrative structure would be to spoil one of Living In Oblivion‘s most clever twists. What I can safely say is that, much as with Truffaut’s Day For Night, Living In Oblivion is more concerned with the production than the film that’s being shot. Nick struggles to keep his cool. Nicole struggles with her fear that she’ll always just be known as the “shower girl” and with the difficulty of keeping her performance fresh through multiple retakes. Wolf makes a point of wearing an eyepatch after claiming Wanda injured his eye and turns sullen when Nick says he doesn’t want to shoot a scene with a hand-held. A smoke machine first produces too little smoke and then too much. When Chad does show up on set, he is passive-aggressively tries to change the blocking of one of the film’s most important scenes. As for the dream sequence, it’s threatened when Tito denounces the scene and his role in it as being an indie film cliche. Throughout, director Tom DiCillo contrasts the studied structure of a finished film with the chaotic reality that goes into shooting.

Living In Oblivion is an affectionate satire, one that pokes fun at the indie film scene while also celebrating all of the hard work and different personalities that are involved in making a movie. Steve Buscemi and Catherine Keener give heartfelt performances as two people who understand that every movie could be their last while Dermot Mulroney scores some of the biggest laughs as the self-important Wolf. James LeGros is hilariously shallow and vain as a character who is rumored to be based on one of the biggest movie stars of the past 30 years. (“I want an eyepatch!” Chad declares while looking at Wolf.) Living In Oblivion is a movie that celebrates the beautiful madness of trying to shoot an important film for next to no money in a grubby warehouse. Throughout the film, the film’s crew is forced to compromise but, at the same time, there are also the small and unexpected moments that make it all worth it.

Living In Oblivion‘s witty script deservedly won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Living in Oblivion is a celebration of both cinema and independence.

October True Crime: Zodiac (dir by David Fincher)

Posted on October 31, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was the Zodiac Killer?

That is a question that has haunted journalists, cops, and true crime fans since the late 60s. It is known that the Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969. He targeted young couples, though he is also thought to have murdered on taxi driver as well. What set Zodiac apart from other killers is that he was a prolific letter writer, who sent cards and ciphers to the police and the journalists who were reporting on his crimes. In one of his ciphers, Zodiac claimed that he had killed 37 people. Cartoonist Robert Graysmith later wrote two books about his personal obsession with the case. He estimated that the Zodiac may have been responsible for hundred of murders, up through the 80s. Of course, reading Graysmith’s first Zodiac book, it’s also easy to suspect that Graysmith reached a point where he saw the Zodiac’s hand in every unsolved murder in the San Francisco area. Of all the unidentified serial killers in American history, Zodiac is one that most haunts us. Zodiac was a serial killer who operated in an era when such things were still considered to be uncommon. Much as Jack the Ripper did during the Victorian Age, Zodiac announced the arrival of a new age of evil.

Zodiac wrote about being a film fan and he was probably happy about the fact that he inspired quite a few films. 1971’s The Zodiac Killer came out while Zodiac was still sending letters to the police and cops actually staked out the theaters showing the film just to see if he would show up. Dirty Harry‘s Scorpio Killer was also based on Zodiac, right down to the taunting letters that he sent the mayor and again, one has to wonder if Zodiac ever showed up to watch Clint Eastwood take him down.

And, if Zodiac survived into the 21st Century, one has to wonder if he showed up in the theaters for 2007’s Zodiac.

One of the best true crime films ever made, Zodiac not only recreates the crimes of the Zodiac but it also examines the mental price of obsessing over the one unknown force of evil. Mark Ruffalo plays Dave Toschi, the celebrity cop who nearly sacrificed his professional reputation in his search for the identity of the killer. Jake Gyllenhaal plays cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who spends over a decade searching for the Zodiac’s identity and who loses his wife (Chloe Sevigny) in the process. And Robert Downey, Jr. plays Paul Avery, the crime reporter to whom the Zodiac wrote and who sunk into paranoia and addiction as a result. This is a film that is less about the Zodiac’s crime and more about how this unknown killer seemed to unleash a darkness that would come to envelope first a city and eventually an entire nation.

As one might expect from a film directed by David Fincher, Zodiac plays out like a filmed nightmare with the starkly portrayed murders being all the more disturbing because they often take place outside, where people would think they would be safe. (The second murder is especially terrifying, as it plays out without even the sound of background music to allow us the escape of remembering that it’s only a movie.) Fincher heightens our paranoia but having a different actor play the killer in each scene, reminding us that the Zodiac could literally be anyone. Indeed, one of the scarier things about Zodiac is that, in the course of his investigation, Graysmith meets so many different people who seem like they could be the killer. Even if they aren’t the Zodiac, the viewer is left with the feeling that the world is full of people who are capable of committing the same crimes. The film becomes a journey into the heart of darkness, with the Zodiac becoming both a malevolent force and potentially your next door neighbor. And with the film’s detailed recreation of the 60s and the 70s, the film becomes a portrait of a country on the verge of changing forever with the Zodaic and his crimes representing all the fear waiting in the future.

Again, as one might expect from a Fincher film, it’s a well-acted film, especially by Robert Downey, Jr. Zodiac came out a year before Iron Man, when Downey was still better known for his personal troubles than for his talent. Downey perfect captures his character’s descent into self-destruction, as he goes from being cocky and self-assured to being so paranoid that he’s carrying a gun. (Paul Avery’s actual colleagues have disputed the film’s portrayal of Avery being mentally destroyed by the Zodiac.) Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal also do a good job of portraying Toschi and Graysmith’s growing obsession with the case while Charles Fleischer and John Carroll Lynch both make strong (and creepy) impressions as two men who might (or might not) be the killer.

Though the film was not a success at the box office and it was totally ignored by the Academy, Zodiac has built up a strong reputation in the years since its released. It’s inspired a whole new generation of web sleuths to search for the killer’s identity. Personally, my favored suspect is Robert Ivan Nichols, an enigmatic engineer who abandoned his former life and changed his name to Joseph Newton Chandler III in the 70s and who committed suicide in 2002. I think much like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac’s identity will never be definitely known. There have been many compelling suspects but most of the evidence seems to be circumstantial. (That’s certainly the case when it comes to Nichols.) The Zodiac was thought to be in his 30s or even his early 40s in 1969 so it’s doubtful that he’s still alive today. In all probability, his identity and his motive will forever remain an unsolvable mystery.

A Blast From The Past: Ace Hits The Big Time (dir by Robert C. Thompson)

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Made in 1985 for CBS, Ace Hits The Big Time is a seriously strange little film.

It tells the story of Horace Hobart (Rob Stone, a likable actor), a 16 year-old kid from New Jersey who has just transferred to a new high school in New York. He’s paranoid about going to his new school because it’s supposedly populated by gang members. The school is so notorious for gang activity that the members of the gang even make an appearance on the front page of the paper of record, The New York Freaking Times! Looking at the newspaper makes Horace Hobart so paranoid that he has musical fantasies in which the members of a gang known as the Purple Falcons surround him, start singing, and then beat him up while doing an interpretive dance.

Horace does eventually find the courage to go to his new high school but he insists on calling himself “Ace,” he wears a jacket with a fearsome dragon embroidered on the back of it, and he wears an eye patch because he’s got …. ewwww …. pink eye. (Remember when Bob Costas got pink eye at the Olympics and traumatized thousands of viewers by insisting on going on the air every night and talking about snowboarding while struggling to keep his eye from popping out of its socket? Those were crazy times!) Ace looks so tough that the real Purple Falcons mistake him for being an associate of a notorious New Jersey gang (no, not the Sopranos) and they recruit him to be a member of their gang. Ace is so convincing as a tough guy that a film crew decides to use him and his friends as extras in a movie! (Interestingly, the director is really involved in picking and working with the extras. There’ll be no second unit crap for Ace and the Purple Falcons!) Unfortunately, another gang insists on trying to make the Purple Falcons look bad. Fortunately, Ace is able to defuse the tension by baking a cake. What?

This is like the dorkiest version of West Side Story ever made and I can’t really figure out what the message is supposed to be. On the one hand, Ace is totally paranoid about any sort of gang violence and goes out of his way to try to prevent a gang war. On the other hand, even before Ace shows up and starts quoting John Lennon, neither one of the show’s gangs are particularly violent or even intimidating. The Purple Falcons are pretty much impossible to take seriously because they’re called “the Purple Falcons.” (They all wear purple, as well. I guess some other gang had already claimed all the cool falcon colors.) They really don’t do any sort of “gang” stuff. Instead, they eat a lot of pizza and appear in a movie. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually. With its mix of dorky humor, random dance numbers, and “tough” gang talk, this is one of those old time capsules that simply has to be seen to be believed.

And here it is!

Guilty Pleasure No. 54: Solarbabies (dir by Alan Johnson)

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Solarbabies is a film that has a reputation. And it’s not a good one.

First released in 1986, Solarbabies is one of those post-Mad Max films that takes place in a post-apocalyptic desert society. There are no more trees. There is no more rain. Order is kept by force. The people are oppressed. Outsiders live in desert towns that have names like “Tiretown.” Children are forced to grow up in a combination of a prison and an orphanage. The orphanage’s Warden (played by Charles Durning) mourns for the way the world used to be, before it became a sun-drenched nightmare without plants or water. The fearsome Grock (Richard Jordan) makes sure that all of society’s rules are followed and the viewer knows he’s a bad guy because he wears a leather trench coat even when it’s over a 100 degrees outside. (Grock never sweats. If only the same could be said of the Warden.) The evil Professor Shandray (Sarah Douglas) experiments on living subjects. It’s a grim, grim world.

However, hope arrives in the form of a glowing orb! A ten year-old deaf boy named Daniel (Lukas Haas) finds the orb and, after regaining his ability to hear, he names it Bodhi. When Darstar (Adrian Pasdar) realizes that he can use Bodhi to protect the people of Tiretown, he steals the orb and runs off with it. Determined to retrieve Bodhi, Daniel chases after him

How will Daniel survive in the desert? Well, luckily, he’s not alone! Daniel was a member of the orphanage’s roller hockey team, the Solarbabies. Terra (Jami Gertz), Jason (Jason Patric), Metron (James LeGros), Rabbit (Claude Brooks), and Tug (Peter DeLuise) strap on their skates and roll out into the desert. Pursuing them is Grock and his stormtroopers.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert, an old man named Greentree (Frank Converse) hopes to help the world recover. Greentree looks like a thin version of Santa Claus and he hopes to bring rain and trees back to the Earth. Yes, his name is Greentree. There’s not really much room for subtlety in the world of Solarbabies.

Now, as I said at the beginning of this review, Solarbabies has a reputation. Today, it’s probably best known for being the film that nearly bankrupted Mel Brooks. Yes, that Mel Brooks. When Brooks originally signed on to produce Solarbabies, it was envisioned as being a low-budget sci-fi film that would not have any spectacular special effects. However, Brooks became convinced that Solarbabies had the potential to be a Star Wars-level hit so he increased the budget. He also brought in Alan Johnson to direct the film, despite the fact that Johnson was a choreographer who had only directed one other film and had no experience with science fiction. (Johnson’s previous film had been a remake of To Be Or Not To Be, which starred Brooks and featured Solarbabies’s Charles Durning in a supporting role). At Brooks’s insistence, the film was shot in Spain to save money. Unfortunately, no sooner had Johnson and the film’s cast arrived than Spain was hit by a series of unexpected storms that caused production to shut down. Even when the rain stopped, disagreements between Johnson and the cast delayed the film even further. The footage that was shot satisfied no one, leading to expensive reshoots. In the end, Mel Brooks invested close to $20 million dollars in the film, even taking a second mortgage out on his house. When the film was finally released, it was a critical and box office disaster, though Brooks later said that he did eventually break even after Solarbabies was released on DVD.

So, yes, Solarbabies has a bad reputation and it could be argued that it deserves it. Tonally, the film’s a mess. For a film that appears to have been made for a “family” audience, parts of the film are surprisingly violent Scenes of the Solarbabies playing LaCrosse and cheerfully crossing the desert are mixed with some surprisingly graphic scenes of Grock and Shandray torturing prisoners. Bodhi is a cute and glowing orb who gives Daniel back his hearing and then later brutally kills a lot of bad guys. Jason Patric, Jami Gertz, and Charles Durning all seem to be trying to take the film seriously while Richard Jordan and Sarah Douglas give performances that feel more appropriate for a Hammer horror film. Solarbabies is a bizarre mix of sincerity, sadism, and camp. Nothing about it makes much sense.

And yet….

Listen, I can’t help it. When I watched it last week, I enjoyed Solarbabies. For all of its many and obvious flaws, it’s a hard film not to like. It’s just so thoroughly ludicrous and messy that watching it becomes a rather fascinating viewing experience. It’s hard not to, at the very least, be entertained by the sight of the cast roller skating through the desert. A LaCrosse team battling futuristic Nazis for possession of a glowing orb that can cause rain to fall from a cloudless sky? As far as I’m concerned, it’s impossible not to enjoy that on some level.

Of course, I seem to be in the minority as far as that’s concerned. Alan Johnson never directed another movie after Solarbabies, though he did direct some of those really cool GAP commercials that aired in the early aughts. You know the ones that featured people enthusiastically dancing in khakis? That was him! Those commercials are kind of a guilty pleasure themselves. (Of course, because Mel Brooks nearly didn’t lose his house producing them, they’re not quite as infamous as Solarbabies.) But still, Johnson stared his directorial career by directing Charles Durning to an Oscar nomination in To Be Or Not To Be and he ended it by directing Durning in a box office flop. Well, no matter! I enjoyed Solarbabies and I don’t care who knows it.

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Horror Film Review: Near Dark (dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1987 film Near Dark is the story of two American families.

The Coltons are a family of ranchers living Oklahoma. Loy Colton (Tim Thomerson) is the patriarch, keeping a watchful eye on his children, Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) and Sarah (Marcie Leeds). Caleb is a cowboy and a nice guy, even if he does seem to be a little bit too naive for his own good. After Caleb disappears one night, Loy and Sarah start their own search, traveling across the back roads of the Southwest.

The other family may not share any biological relation to one another but they definitely share blood. They’re a group of outcasts who have found each other and now spend their nights searching for people who can satisfy their hunger. They’re vampires, even though that’s not a word that they tend to use. (In fact, for all the blood-sucking that goes on throughout the film, the term “vampire” is never actually heard.) At night, they’re all-powerful but during the day, even the slightly exposure to the sun can set them on fire.

The patriarch of this family is Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen), a scarred war veteran. Jesse will do anything to protect the members of his family but he expects each of them to pull their weight. At one point, when Jesse is asked how old he is, he says that he fought for the South and that the South lost.

Jesse’s girlfriend is Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), who is just as ruthless as Jesse. Filling the role of oldest son is Severen (Bill Paxton), a cocky gunslinger with a quick smile and cruel sense of humor. Homer (Joshua Miller) appears to be a 12 year-old boy but he’s actually one of the older and more violent members of the family. And then there’s Mae (Jenny Wright), the rebellious daughter.

Mae is the one who first met and bit Caleb. She’s the one who turned Caleb into one of them, though it takes Caleb a while to not only discover but also understand what he’s become. When Caleb tries to escape from Mae and his new family, he becomes violently ill. He can no longer eat human food but, at the same time, he can’t bring himself to hunt. Instead, he’s forced to drink whatever blood Mae can provide for him. Even when Jesse’s group attacks a redneck bar, one cowboy manages to escape, specifically because Caleb cannot bring himself to kill him.

What is Caleb to do? He can’t return to his old family, as much as he may want to. (It doesn’t help that Homer has developed an obsession with Caleb’s sister, Sarah.) At the same time, his new family says that they’re going to kill him unless he starts hunting for blood. They only thing keeping Caleb alive is the fact that Mae likes him and even she’s telling him that he’s going to have to hunt.

Meanwhile, Loy continues his own hunt, the hunt for his son….

Long before she became the first female director to win an Oscar for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow directed this stylish vampire film. Visually, Bigelow emphasizes the emptiness of the Southwestern plains. Looking at the desolate landscape, it’s easy to believe that Jesse and his family could use them to successfully hide from the rest of the world. It’s also just as easy to believe that a well-meaning but not particularly bright young man like Caleb could get lost and not be able to find his way home. Bigelow turns the vampire family into a group of modern-day outlaws, crossing the land in their sun-proofed vehicles and trying to stay one step ahead of modern-day posses made up by concerned families and law enforcement officers who don’t know what they’re getting into.

Even if not for Bigelow’s stylish direction, the film would be a classic for just the cast alone. Henriksen, Paxton, and Goldstein all previously appeared in James Cameron’s Aliens and they have a camaraderie that feels real. In fact, the vampires work so well together that it’s impossible not to kind of admire them. They’ve got it together and, even when faced with an army of police officers determined to make them step out into the sunlight, they don’t lose their sardonic sense of humor. The much missed Bill Paxton’s performance is a hyperactive marvel, both menacing and sexy at the same time. Meanwhile, Jenny Wright and Adrian Pasdar have a likable chemistry as Mae and Caleb while Tim Thomerson makes Loy’s love and concern for his son feel so real that adds an unexpected emotional depth to the overall movie. The script, written by Eric Red and Bigelow, is full of quotable dialogue and the cast takes full advantage of it.

Near Dark is vampire classic and definitely one to watch this Halloween season.

A Movie A Day #88: Where The Day Takes You (1992, directed by Marc Rocco)

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

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. Where The Day Takes You is a movie that has not just one but two connections to Twin Peaks.

Where The Day Takes You is an episodic film about young runaways living on the streets of Los Angeles. Led by 22 year-old King (Dermot Mulroney), who ran away from home when he was 16, the runaways form a surrogate family. While being constantly harassed by both the police and well-meaning social workers, some of the runaways get addicted to drugs while others turn to prostitution in order to survive. Some find love. Some find death. They all go where the day takes you. (Not sure if that was the movie’s tag line but it should have been.)

Where The Day Takes You is a gritty and often tough film, though it’s effectiveness is undercut by a predictable ending and the presence of too many familiar faces in the cast. The runaways are made up of a who’s who of prominent young actors from the 1990s. Balthazar Getty plays King’s second-in-command. Sean Astin plays an obviously doomed drug addict. Alyssa Milano and David Arquette play prostitutes. Ricki Lake and James Le Gros play comedic relief. Will Smith, in his film debut, plays a wheelchair-bound runaway. Christian Slater and Laura San Giacomo show up as social workers while the police are represented by Rachel Ticotin and Adam Baldwin. Everyone gives a good performance but the film would have worked better with unknown actors or even real runaways. No matter how good a performance Sean Astin gives as a heroin addict, he is always going to be Sean Astin and it is always going to be difficult to look at him without saying, “I might not be able to carry the ring but I can carry you!”

The movie’s first Twin Peaks connection is that Lara Flynn Boyle, who played innocent Donna Hayward on Twin Peaks, plays innocent runaway Heather in Where The Day Takes You. The role is cliché but Boyle shows the same charm that she showed while playing Donna.

The movie’s second Twin Peaks connection is more unexpected. Kyle MacLachlan is effectively cast against type as Ted, the drug dealer who keeps most of the runaways hooked on heroin and who is perfectly willing to leave an overdosed junkie in a garbage bin. Ted is about as far from Dale Cooper as you can get.