John Griesemer – Through the Shattered Lens

During a flight from Los Angeles to Boston, ten passengers fall asleep and then wake up to discover the plane is otherwise deserted. Conveniently, one of the passengers (David Morse) is also a pilot and he’s able to fly the plane to Bangor airport, which is as deserted as Graham Platner’s campaign office. As the other passengers try to figure out where they are and what’s going on, bond trader Craig (Bronson Pinchot) worries about the Langoliers, monsters that chase lazy people. Craig’s father told him about the Langoliers and sure enough, it turns out that they’re real and they’re eating time.

There have been a lot of really bad movies made out of the work of Stephen King and this might be the worst. It was actually made for television and it aired over two nights in May of 1995. I can remember everyone watching it and, even among the generally easy-to-please crowd that I went to school with, everyone agreed it was pretty bad. Do you have a friend who claims that Stephen King can do no wrong? Show them all three hours of The Langoliers, which sticks pretty closely to King’s original novella.

The premise isn’t really that bad. It’s the type of thing that shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits used to work wonders with. The problem is that the movie drags on for a punishing 180 minutes and Bronson Pinchot is the only member of the cast who really shows much energy. In fact, Pinchot shows almost too much energy. I get that Pinchot was trying to show everyone that he wasn’t Serge and he wasn’t Cousin Balki, but his performance as Craig is so Type A that it’s tiring to watch. The movie also suffers because eventually the Langoliers show up and they look like a bunch of demonic Pac-Men.

Sometimes, a picture says a thousand words:

I know that some people now say that The Langoliers is underrated or it’s “so bad that it’s good.” Don’t buy it. Instead, watch one of Tom Holland’s genuinely good horror films, like the original Child’s Play or Fright Night. Don’t subject yourself to this.

Released in 2000, Boiler Room tells the story of Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi).

Seth is only 19 years old. He’s the son of a federal judge and he’s also a college dropout. Seth is making a pretty good living for himself, running a casino out of a house near the campus. One night, a handsome 20something named Greg Weinstein (Nicky Katt) stops by and tells Seth that he could be making an even better living for himself as a broker at J.T. Marlin.

Located somewhere in Long Island, J.T. Marlin is a brokerage firm that is dominated by loud and young men. Overseen by the ruthless Jim Young (Ben Affleck, doing the glorified cameo thing), J.T. Marlin is a place where everyone owns an expensive car, an expensive watch, and where everyone brags about how much money they’ve made. The insults and slurs fly from desk to desk, as they tend to do whenever a bunch of wealthy, highly competitive guys get together. J.T. is seduced by the atmosphere, even as he watches some broker breaks down due to the pressure. He becomes friends with Chris Varick (Vin Diesel) and falls for receptionist Abbie Halpert (Nia Long), who just happens to be Greg’s ex-girlfriend. Eventually, Seth gets good at his job. Unfortunately, it turns out that his job is centered around tricking people into investing in a pyramid scheme and eventually, one of Seth’s clients, Harry (Taylor Nichols), ends up broke and without his family. The guilt-stricken Seth realizes that he has a conscience.

Like a lot of these type of movies, Boiler Room is at its best when it starts, when it’s all about tough talk, rude jokes, and obsessive competition amongst a bunch of well-dressed good-looking guys. Nicky Katt and Vin Diesel are so much fun to listen to that it’s hard not to regret that the entire film wasn’t just about them. Things become significantly less interesting once the FBI shows up and Seth decides to become a snitch. For the most part, no one like a snitch, even if they’re motivated by the purest of intentions. To make a snitch likable, he has to be a truly compelling character, like Henry Hill in Goodfellas. For the most part, audiences prefer anti-heroes who go down with the ship as opposed to the rats who jump into the first lifeboat they see. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort agrees to wear a wire but then slips his business partner a note, warning him. That’s one of the reasons why The Wolf of Wall Street is still a classic while Boiler Room has been largely forgotten. As a character, Seth just isn’t compelling enough to pull off the snitch act. Nor does he really seem clever enough to pull off what he does at the end of the film.

That said, I do enjoy Boiler Room. It’s largely due to the cast. Nicky Katt, Vin Diesel, Scott Caan, Giovanni Ribisi, they were all young, energetic, and eager to show off what they could do. While their characters competed to see who could make the most money, the actors competed to see who could steal the most scenes. The film is ultimately only so-so but that cast is unforgettable.