I’ll admit that I’m not a huge fan of horse racing, although I will periodically go to the Oaklawn Racetrack in Hot Springs, AR, and watch them run. I did enjoy the horse racing movie SEABISCUIT (2003) when I saw it a decade or so ago, and I always enjoy driving past the beautiful horse farms in Lexington, KY, when I’m on my way to see my wife’s family in West Virginia. This weekend was the Kentucky Derby, and I saw a stat that every horse running is a descendant of the 1973 triple-crown winner, Secretariat. I thought that was pretty cool stuff. I told my wife about it, so we decided to watch the movie SECRETARIAT (2010) this morning.
The film centers on Penny Chenery Tweedy (Diane Lane), a Boulder, CO housewife who takes over the management of her dad’s horse stables in Virginia when his health gets so bad that he can no longer handle it himself. The business is facing a lot of financial problems, and her husband just wants her to sell everything and come on back home. But Penny doesn’t want to sell, especially when the stable acquires a young colt that just may have to the right combination of speed and stamina to become a great racehorse. Wanting to see her horse get a chance to run, she hires eccentric trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich) and the aggressive jockey Ron Turcotte (Otto Thorwarth) in order to give “Secretariat” a chance to reach his potential. And boy does he ever, ultimately becoming the first “Triple Crown” winner in 25 years.
I’ll go ahead and say that I pretty much got exactly what I was expecting with SECRETARIAT. It’s a “feel-good” movie that made me happy at the end. Outside of him being a triple crown winner, I didn’t know much about Secretariat’s story, so it was fun just seeing how dominant he truly was during his legendary run in 1973. And the performances from the leads are very good. Diane Lane is beautiful and convincing as the housewife determined to give every thing she has to make Secretariat a winner. John Malkovich’s eccentric horse trainer is the kind of role he excels in, and he’s both funny and emotionally engaging. I liked Otto Thorwarth and Nelson Ellis as Secretariat’s jockey and groomer, respectively. Each of them had their individual moments to shine. I also wanted to mention how impressive the camerawork is during the racing sequences. For a film like this to be exciting, the races have to be exciting and director Randall Wallace and cinematographer Dean Semler deliver in spades. If I had any complaint about the film, it would probably be the oversimplification of some of the supporting characters. For a film based on a true story, it was odd to see the owner of Secretariat’s primary competition reduced to almost a comic book villain in his behavior. That aside, I enjoyed the film and I’m glad I watched it.
2016’s Deepwater Horizon tells the story of the 2010 explosion that led to the biggest oil spill in American history.
Owned by British Petroleum, the Deepwater Horizon was an oil rig sitting off the coast of Louisiana and Texas. A series of explosions, which were found to be the result cost-cutting and negligence on the part of BP, killed eleven men, injured countless others, and led to an 87-day oil spill that leaked 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of America (or the Gulf of Mexico, as it was known back then. I know, it can be heard to keep track). I can still remember when the disaster happened. It was seen as an early test of the “government-can-fix-anything” philosophy of the Obama era and it pretty much proved the opposite. Private citizens (including Kevin Costner) offered to help and were rebuffed. The governor of Louisiana was criticized for ordering the construction of barrier islands, even though they were more effective than was that the federal government was offering up. The CEO of British Petroleum issued a self-pitying apology. For a generation coming of political age in 2010, witnessing the government’s ineffective attempts to deal with the oil spill was as radicalizing a moment as the COVID lunacy would be for people coming of age in 2020.
In all the chaos surrounding the oil spill, it was often overlooked that 11 people died in the initial explosion. In all the rightful criticism that was directed towards British Petroleum, the heroic efforts of the workers on the Deepwater Horizon, all of whom risked their lives to try to prevent the disaster from getting worse, were also often overlooked. To an extent, Deepwater Horizon corrects that oversight, paying tribute to the men on that rig while also portraying the extent of the environmental disaster caused by BP’s negligence.
The film centers of Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg), two engineers who attempt to warn BP execs like Donald Virdrine (John Malkovich) that cutting costs on safety will inevitably lead to disaster. Russell, Wahlberg, and Malkovich are all ideally cast, with Russell and Wahlberg capturing the spirit of men who try to do their job well and who live their life by the philosophy of not leaving anyone behind. Malkovich is playing a corporate stooge, the man who many people blamed for the disaster. But, to his credit, Malkovich is able to turn Virdrine into a complex character. Virdrine makes terrible mistakes but he never becomes one-dimensional corporate villain. Though Deepwater Horizon is dominated by its special effects and the explosion is an undeniably intense scene, the film doesn’t forget about the human cost of the disaster. Russell, Wahlberg, and Malkovich are supported by good performances from Ethan Suplee, Gina Rodriguez, and Kate Hudson. (Hudson, in particular, deserves a lot of credit for making her thinly-written role into something compelling.) Kurt Russell does such a good job of capturing Jimmy’s quiet confidence and his expertise that, the minute he’s injured by the explosion, the audience knows that Deepwater Horizon is doomed. If even Kurt Russell can’t save the day, what hope is there?
Director Peter Berg specialized in films about ordinary people who found themselves caught up in extraordinary situations. His well-made and earnest films — like Lone Survivor, Patriots Day, and this one — were rarely acclaimed by critics, many of whom seemed to take personal offense at Berg’s unapologetically patriotic and individualistic vision. Personally, I appreciate Berg’s pro-American aesthetic. At a time when we were being told that individuals didn’t matter and that everyone should be content with merely being a cog in a bigger machine, Berg’s films came along to say, “This is what team work actually means.” It’s been five years since Berg’s last film. Hopefully, we will get a new one soon.
White Elephant is not that bad. In fact, for a B-action movie it’s actually pretty good. If nothing else, it featured one of Michael Rooker’s best performances.
It’s important to start out this review by making that clear because I think a lot of people are going to be tempted to judge this film based solely on the fact that this was one of the last films that Bruce Willis made before his family announced that he would be retiring from acting due to health reasons. When the big story was published in the L.A. Times about Willis’s recent struggles and how those struggles led to him accepting countless roles in straight-to-video fare like American Siege, several people who worked on White Elephant were quoted, with many saying that Willis always did his best but that he was definitely not the Willis that they all remembered. The film’s director, action maestro Jesse V. Johnson, publicly stated that he would not make another film with Willis because “the arrangement felt wrong” and that Willis deserved a better end to his career.
And it must be said that Bruce is obviously not himself in White Elephant. As with many of his recent films, Bruce is cast as a villain in this piece. He’s a crime lord named Arnold and he spends the majority of his time taking meetings and giving order to his underlings. Eventually, he does pick up a gun and fire it but there’s very little of the cocky attitude and swaggering charisma that made Bruce Willis into a superstar. He still has the physical presence to play a tough guy. Bruce Willis still looks intimidating and the film uses him sparingly, never allowing us to spend too much time focusing on how different he seems from the Bruce Willis who starred in Die Hard and Pulp Fiction. One never gets the feeling that Bruce is being deliberately exploited in White Elephant, that alone sets it above some of the other recent films that have featured Willis. But, at the same time, Arnold is a fairly generic bad guy.
Fortunately, the majority of the film follows Michael Rooker in the role of a far more interesting criminal. Rooker plays Gabe Tancredi, a former Marine turned hitman. He’s about as ruthless as they come but he still has enough of a code of ethics that he realizes that he can’t kill a police officer named Vanessa (Olga Kurylenko), no matter how much Arnold wants her dead. Ordered to kill her, Gabe instead protects her, which leads to Arnold sending all of his men after them. It leads to several shootouts and explosions as Gabe puts his life at risk to finally do the right thing.
It’s a simple story but it’s told well. Jesse V. Johnson started out as a stuntman and he clearly knows his way around an action scene and the final shootout in genuinely exciting. The film is also helped by Michael Rooker, who brings a good deal of unexpected depth to the role of Gabe. Even though Rooker obviously knew that White Elephant was a B-movie, he still refuses to phone in a single minute of his performance and, instead, he turns Gabe into a surprisingly complex killer. Gabe’s relationships with his agent Glen (John Malkovich), his protegee Carlos (Vadhir Debrez), and Vanessa are all genuinely interesting. I especially liked the early scenes between Rooker and Debrez, in which the two actors wonderfully play off of each other and we get the feeling Carlos is almost like a son to Gabe. Of course, being genre savvy, we know that Carlos is eventually going to be assigned to take Gabe down but, because their friendship seemed so real, we find ourselves dreading that confrontation. White Elephant is a B-movie but, much like last year’s Corrective Measures and Gasoline Alley, it’s a B-movie with a heart.
Earlier today, it was announced that director Wolfgang Petersen had passed away. He was 81 years old and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. Though Petersen started his career making films in his native Germany (and his 1981 film, Das Boot, remains the most Oscar-nominated German film of all time), Petersen eventually relocated to Los Angeles and established himself as a very successful director of thrillers and star-filled action films.
Last month, I watched one of Petersen’s films. First released in 1993, In The Line of Fire stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan. Frank is a veteran member of the Secret Service, still serving at a time when almost all of his colleagues have either retired or died. When we first meet Frank, he and his new partner, Al (Dylan McDermott), are arresting a gang of counterfeiters and Frank (and the then 63 year-old Eastwood) is proving that he can still take down the bad guys.
But is Frank still up to protecting the President? Of the agents that were with President Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963, Frank Horrigan is the last one standing. He’s the only active secret service agent to have lost a president and he’s haunted by what he sees as being his failure to do his job and the feeling that America has never recovered from Kennedy’s death. Also obsessed with Frank’s history is a mysterious man who calls himself Booth. Booth (played by John Malkovich, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance) starts to call Frank. He informs Frank that he’s planning on assassinating the president, who is currently traveling the country as a part of his reelection bid. Booth views Frank as being a worthy adversary and Frank, looking for redemption, requests to be returned to the Presidential Protective Division.
While Frank struggles to keep up with both the President and the younger agents, Booth slowly and methodically puts his plan in motion. He builds his own wooden gun and tries it out on two hunters who are unfortunate enough to stumble across him. Making a heart-breaking impression in a small role, Patrika Darbo plays the bank teller who, unfortunately, comes a bit too close to uncovering Booth’s secret identity. Booth is friendly and sometimes apologetic and he quickly shows that he’s willing to kill anyone. It’s a testament to both the skill of Malkovich’s performance and Petersen’s direction that the audience comes to believe that there’s a better than average chance that Booth will succeed. He just seems to have such a strong belief in himself that the audience knows that he’s either going to kill the President or that he’s going to willingly die trying.
Meanwhile, no one believes in Frank. The White House Chief of Staff (Fred Dalton Thompson, later to serve in the Senate and run for President himself) views Frank as being a nuisance. The head of the detail (Gary Cole) thinks that Frank should be put out to pasture. Only Lilly Raines (Rene Russo), another agent, seems to have much faith in Frank. While Frank is hunting Booth, he falls in love with Lilly and she with him. (Fortunately, even at the age of 63, Eastwood still had enough of his old Dirty Harry charisma that the film’s love story is credible, despite the age difference between him and Russo.) The hunt for Booth reawakens something in Frank. Just as Booth has a psychological need to be pursued and challenged, Frank needs an enemy to which he can re-direct all of his guilt and self-loathing. Frank becomes a stand-in for everyone who fears that, because of one particular incident or tragedy, America will never regain the strength and promise that it once had. (In Frank’s case, that strength is symbolized by his idealized memories of JFK.) Defeating Booth is about more than just saving America. It’s about redeeming history.
It all makes for an very exciting thriller, one in which Eastwood’s taciturn style of acting is perfectly matched with Malkovich’s more cerebral approach. Just as the two characters are challenging each other, Eastwood and Malkovich also seem to challenge each other as actors and it leads to both men giving wonderful performances. Wolfgang Petersen not only does a good job with the action scenes but also with generating some very real suspense. The scene in which Malkovich attempts to assemble his gun under a table is a masterclass in directing and evidence that Petersen had not only watched Hitchcock’s films but learned from them as well.
As directed by Petersen and performed by Malkovich and Eastwood, In The Line of Fire emerges as a film that was more than just an exciting thriller. It was also a mediation on aging, guilt, love, redemption, and the national traumas of the past. It’s a film that stands up to multiple rewatches and as a testament to the talent of the man who directed it.
You know, everyone, the truth of the matter is that you just never know where John Malkovich is going to pop up nowadays. He’s done the serious actor bit and now, he’s enjoying the career of a prestige actor who appears in action and direct-to-video films. And you now what? Good for him!
Seriously, the man deserves to make some of that Christopher Walken/Bruce Willis money.
Here’s John Malkovich in the trailer for The Survivalist!
Ava tells story of Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain), who has a troubled past, a turbulent present, and an uncertain future.
As we learn via a series of still frames during the film’s opening credits, Ava was the valedictorian of her high school class but her bright future was derailed by her own alcoholism. She killed two of her friends while driving drunk and, presumably to avoid prison, she instead went into the army. In the army, she was noted for being an efficient killer while, at the same time, being a bit unstable. She has issues with authority. Well, don’t we all? When she got out of the army, she was recruited by Duke (John Malkovich), who taught her how to be an international assassin!
Unfortunately, since Ava screwed up her last mission and has gotten into the habit of talking to her targets before she kills them, Simon (Colin Farrell) wants her dead. Simon also used to be a student of Duke’s but now he is Duke’s boss or something. It’s all a bit vague and, to be honest, I found myself spending way too much time trying to figure out the corporate structure of whatever group it was that everyone was supposedly working for. Apparently, Duke works for Simon but Simon still has to get Duke’s permission before trying to kill Ava or, failing that, try to kill Duke so that Duke won’t complain about it. Duke spends a lot of time fishing and Simon spends a lot of time with his adorable family. I liked Simon’s house.
Anyway, Ava has returned to Boston, where she’s trying to reconnect with her family. It turns out that teenage Ava discovered that her father was cheating on her mom and that’s what set Ava on her downward spiral. Mom (Geena Davis) is now a hypercritical semi-recluse. Meanwhile, Ava’s sister, Judy (Jess Wexler), is a singer in a band and she’s engaged to Michael (Common, who, for some reason, keeps getting cast in all of these extremely wimpy roles), who just happens to be Ava’s ex-boyfriend. And Michael is a gambling addict who owes a ton of money to Toni (Joan Chen). It’s hinted that Toni and Ava also have a past but then again, everyone in the film has a past with Ava. It’s get a little bit difficult to keep track of it all.
Ava gets off to a bad start by making us sit through one of Ava’s jobs. She kills an accountant but first she asks him a lot questions about why anyone would want him dead because apparently, she’s an ethical assassin. The scene goes on forever and it features Jessica Chastain trying to speak with an Arkansas accent. Things picked up a bit during the opening credits, which was largely made up of still frames from Ava’s past. However, once the credits ended and the film’s actual story got started, things quickly went back downhill.
The main problem with Ava is one of sensibility. Both Jessica Chastain and director Tate Taylor have totally the wrong sensibility for a film like this. Ava is essentially a work of pulp fiction but Chastain takes herself far too seriously to actually bring a sense of fun to the title role. Meanwhile, Tate Taylor directs as if he’s never had a single subversive thought in his life. (In Taylor’s defense, he was a last minute replacement for the film’s original director, Matthew Newton.) Ava is a film that cries out for a star like Gina Carano and a director like John Stockwell, people who have no hesitation about totally digging in and embracing the silliness of it all. Instead, we get Chastain and Taylor trying to give us a semi-realistic look at a woman battling her addictions and trying make peace with her past. Malkovich, Farrell, and Chen all seem to get the fact that Ava should be a fun B-movie, unfortunately, Taylor and Chastain apparently didn’t get the memo. (Of course, Chastain produced the film so maybe it was her co-stars who didn’t get the memo. Who knows?)
Ava commits the sin of taking itself too seriously. Check out John Stockwell’s In The Blood or Phillip Noyce’s Saltinstead.
As far as states go, Arkansas usually doesn’t get much respect. In a country where much of the culture is dominated by city-dwelling secular liberals, Arkansas is a state the remains stubbornly rural, religious, and conservative. If your grandparents were a state, they’d probably look a lot like Arkansas. Arkansas is viewed as being old-fashioned and when it does make the news, it’s usually not for anything that anyone in the state particularly wants to brag about. Democrats will always view Arkansas as being the home of Mike Huckabee. Republicans will never forgive the state for springing the Clintons on the rest of the nation. (Interestingly enough, Mike Huckabee and Bill Clinton both grew up in the same tiny town.) Little Rock has gangs and government corruption. Hot Springs has gamblers looking to hide out from the mob. Fouke has the Boggy Creek Monster while Ft. Smith is best-known for having once been home to the hanging judge, Isaac Parker. You get the idea. When it comes to the way that the rest of the country views the state, it often seems as if poor Arkansas just can’t catch a break.
With all that in mind, I have to say that I really love Arkansas. My paternal grandparents lived in Arkansas and I’ve still got relatives all over the state. Arkansas was one of the many states where my family lived while I was growing up. (The others were — deep breath — Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana.) We would stay in Arkansas for months at a time, depending on how well my mom and dad were getting along at the time. It’s an unpretentious state, one that’s full of friendly, no-nonsense people and beautiful countryside. I have a lot of good memories of Arkansas. It’s always in the back of my mind that, wherever I’m living, I can always just go back to Arkansas and spend the rest of my life living in a small town with my cousins. Of course, I’d probably end up miserable over the lack of movie theaters. Whenever I’m living in the city, I find myself yearning for the simplicity and decency of the country. Whenever I’m in the country, I find myself missing the excitement of the city.
The Natural State (as Arkansas is officially nicknamed) is not only the setting for some of my most cherished memories. It’s also the setting for a film called, appropriately enough, Arkansas. The directorial debut of actor Clark Duke, Arkansas tells the story of four very different men. Kyle Ribb (Liam Hemsworth) is quiet and rather stoic. Swin Horn (Clark Duke) is talkative, eccentric, and perhaps a bit too cocky for his own good. They both work at a national park, where their boss is a veteran ranger named Bright (John Malkovich). Of course, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to notice that neither Kyle nor Ribb really seem to do much work at the park. And, for that matter, Bright certainly does own a big and impressive house for someone who has spent the majority of his life as a ranger….
Kyle, Swin, and Bright are actually drug dealers. They transport drugs all over the southern half of the United States. Kyle and Swin are supervised by Bright. Bright, meanwhile, reports to the mysterious Frog. Kyle and Swin have never actually met Frog and there are rumors that he might not even exist. Of course, the film has already revealed to us that Frog (played by Vince Vaughn) does exist and is a local pawnshop owner.
Kyle narrates the film, informing us that the difference between Southern organized crime and Northern organized crime is that, in the South, it’s not all that organized. As Kyle explains it, the infamous Dixie Mafia is not so much an organization as it’s just a collection of undisciplined lowlifes who have no real integrity or loyalty to anyone else. When you become a drug dealer in the South, you’re a drug dealer for life. There’s no going back if you change your mind. You start out at the bottom of the ladder and, whenever someone above you if either murdered or imprisoned, you get your chance to move up. No one is ever sure who is working for who or who can be trusted. Every order from the boss is examined and re-examined as the two dealers try to figure out whether or not they’ve won the trust of the mysterious Frog.
Unfortunately for Kyle and Swin, a misunderstanding leads to violence and several deaths. With no way to directly communicate with Frog to let him know what exactly happened, Kyle and Swin know that their lives could be in danger. The film follows Kyle and Swin as they prepare for their ultimate meeting with Frog while, at the same time, detailing in flashback how Frog himself eventually came to his position of power. Throughout the entire film, we watch as history repeats itself. As Kyle said, once you’re a drug dealer, you’re a drug dealer for life.
Arkansas is a surprisingly low-key film. Kyle, Swin, Bright, and Frog all manage to be both very laid back and very aggressive at the same time. (Anyone who has spent anytime with a large group of rednecks will understand what I’m talking about.) As a director, Clark Duke is as interested in capturing the rhythms of every day life in Arkansas as he is in orchestrating the inevitable violence that results from all of the film’s betrayals and mistakes and some of the best scenes in the film just feature Kyle and Swin talking about nothing in particular while driving down the interstate. The film’s mix of cheerful goofiness and existential horror will be familiar to anyone who has ever gotten lost on the way to Hot Springs.
Liam Hemsworth and Clark Duke are sympathetic in the lead roles, though Hemsworth’s Southern accent does slip a few times. Swin meets a woman (Eden Brolin) in a grocery store and their subsequent romance manages to be both creepy and touching at the same time. John Malkovich is, as usual, wonderfully eccentric. That said, the film is pretty much dominated by Vince Vaughn, who plays Frog as being both dangerously ruthless and also as someone who understands that his eventual downfall is inevitable. Frog came to power by betraying his boss and, as played by Vaughn, Frog is very much aware that he’s destined to eventually be betrayed as well. Frog has made peace with both his place in the world and the reality of his situation and, in many ways, that makes him an even more dangerous character than he would be otherwise. He has nothing to lose and he knows it.
Obviously, I liked Arkansas, both the state and the movie. It’s an well-done work of Southern pulp.
Early on in the new Netflix film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, there’s a scene in which Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) and her sister, Joanna (Angela Sarafyan) go to a bar. Through some rather heavy-handed dialogue, we learn that Liz has just broken up with her boyfriend, that she has next to zero self-confidence, and that she’s a single mother. She doesn’t think that there’s a man anywhere who would be interested in her. Joanna responds by pointing out that there’s one man who appears to be very interested. In fact, he hasn’t taken his eyes off of Liz since they entered the bar.
That man’s name is Ted (Zac Efron) and, at first, he seems like he’s too good to be true. He’s charming. He’s a law student. He appears to love spending time with Liz’s daughter. He looks like Zac Efron. Perfect, right?
Of course, we know something that Liz doesn’t. We know that Ted is Ted Bundy and that, eventually, he’s going to become one of America’s notorious serial killers, a symbol of evil so potent that, more than 30 years after he was executed by the state of Florida, he continues to get movies made about him.
Because we know who and what Ted is, we spend the first fourth of the movie cringing at everything that makes Liz happy. For instance, Liz is shocked to discover that Ted apparently loves her daughter but we’re just like, “Oh my God, that’s Ted Bundy! GET YOUR DAUGHTER AWAY FROM TED BUNDY!” Liz thinks it’s romantic when Ted makes breakfast for her but we’re just staring at the big kitchen knife in his hand. When Liz and Ted make love, only we notice the blank look on Ted’s face as he looks down at Liz and we find ourselves wondering what’s happening in his mind.
The film is told largely through Liz’s eyes and, with one exception, we never see Bundy actually committing any of his crimes. (That’s a good thing, by the way. We already know who Ted Bundy was and what he did. There’s no need to sensationalize the very real pain that he caused.) Like Liz, we find out about Bundy’s crimes through news reports and arrest records. For instance, when Bundy is arrested for attempted kidnapping in Utah, Liz doesn’t find out about it until a story appears in the local Seattle newspaper. When Liz demands to know why he didn’t tell her what was happening, Bundy gives her a bullshit story about how he’s being framed and how his lawyer is going to get the case thrown out. We know that Ted’s lying but Liz believes him because …. what else is she going to do? Is she going to believe that this perfect man who seems to love both her and her daughter is actually a sociopathic monster?
The film follows Bundy from one trial to another, as he’s charged with crimes across country. It shows how this superficially charming law student became something of a media celebrity. (When a reporter asks him if he’s guilty, Bundy grins and asks if the reporter is referring to a comic book that he stole when he was in the fifth grade.) Bundy escapes. Bundy is arrested. Bundy escapes again. Bundy eventually ends up being tried in Florida, where he revels in the attention. When Liz loses faith in him, Bundy replaces her with an unstable woman named Carole Ann (Kayla Scodelario). However, even while Carole Ann is dutifully delivering statements from Bundy to the press, Bundy is still calling Liz and begging her to believe that he’s innocent and he’ll soon be freed from prison.
Why is it so important to Bundy that Liz believe in him? Is he just entertaining himself by manipulating her or, in his relationship with her, does he see the type of normalcy that he desires but knows he’s incapable of ever achieving? Towards the end of the film, Liz comes close to asking Bundy if he was planning on killing her the first night that they met. She doesn’t and it’s doubtful that Bundy would have given an honest answer but it’s still a question that hangs over every minute of this film (as does Liz’s physical resemblance to the majority of Bundy’s victims).
Though the film may be told from Liz’s point of view, she’s often comes across as just being a meek bystander, watching as the darkness of Ted Bundy envelops her world. The film itself seems to be far more interested in Ted Bundy and his twisted celebrity. Zac Efron plays Bundy as someone who knows how to be charming and who is good enough at imitating human emotions that he’s managed to keep the world from noticing that he’s essentially hollow on the inside. Bundy has gotten so used to acting out a role that, even when he’s on trial for his life, he can’t resist the temptation to turn the courtroom into his own stage. He demands to defend himself and, though he initially proves himself to be a good lawyer, his demands and his questions become progressively more flamboyant and self-destructive. It’s as if he’s gotten so caught up in playing his role that he’s incapable of recognizing the reality of his situation. He performs for the jury, the judge, and the television audience, treating the whole thing as if he’s just a character in a movie. It’s only when he has no choice but to accept that he’s been caught and he’s never going to escape that Bundy finally shows some human emotion. He cries but his tears are only for himself. It’s a chilling performance and Zac Efron deserves every bit of praise that he’s received.
Unfortunately, the film itself doesn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t already know. Director Joe Berlinger is best-known as a documentarian and he talks a “just the facts” approach to the story. We don’t really get any insight into how a monster like Ted Bundy could come to exist. Outside of Efron’s revelatory performance, there’s not much here that couldn’t be found in any of the other films that have been made about Ted Bundy.
(Interestingly enough, as I watched the film, it occurred to me that Ted Bundy was a monster who could have only thrived in a pre-Internet age. For all the books and movies that portray him as being some sort of cunning genius, Bundy actually wasn’t that smart. He approached two of early his victims in a public place and introduce himself as being “Ted,” usually within earshot of a handful of witnesses. He was so brazen that the police even ended up with a sketch that pretty much looked exactly like him. In all probability, the only way that Ted Bundy avoided getting arrested in Seattle was that he moved to Utah, where his crimes were unknown and the sketch wasn’t readily available. Today, of course, that sketch and Ted’s name would be on Twitter and Facebook as soon as they were released by the police. My friend Holly would probably retweet the sketch and say, “Do your thing, twitter!” He would have been identified and arrested in just a matter of time. Instead, Bundy committed his crimes at a time when news traveled slower and law enforcement agencies were not in constant communication with each other.)
The good news is that Extremely Wicked is not, as some feared, a glorification of Ted Bundy. He’s a monster throughout the entire film. Zac Efron proves himself to be a far better actor than anyone’s ever really given him credit for being. It’s a flawed film but, at the very least, it’s also a disturbing reminder that sometimes, darkness hides behind the greatest charm.
A few years ago, Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rene Russo excited film viewers everywhere when they collaborated on Nightcrawler, a portrait of a psychologically damaged man who proves to be quite adept at playing the media game. The combination of Gillroy’s atmospheric direction and satirical script with Gyllenhaal’s wonderfully unhinged lead performance made for an incendiary and prophetic film. Just why exactly Nightcrawler was totally snubbed by the Academy continues to be one of the most perplexing mysteries in recent Oscar history. Despite strong support from the critics, not even Gyllenhaal picked up a nomination.
Dan Gilroy followed Nightcrawler up with Roman Israel, Esq., which was as forgettable as Nightcrawler was memorable but which still managed to accomplish what Nightcrawler didn’t. It received an Oscar nomination for its leading man. One gets the feeling that nomination had more to do with Denzel Washington’s reputation for award-worthy work than for anything that actually happened in the movie. Gyllenhaal went on to give award-worthy performances in films like Southpaw and Stronger but the Academy has continued to snub him. As for Russo, she’s only appeared in three films post-Nightcrawler and none of them were worthy of her talents.
Well, this year, Gyllenhaal, Russo, Gilroy, and Nightcrawler‘s cinematographer, Robert Elswit, have reunited for Velvet Buzzsaw! That’s right, they’ve got the band together again! The film appears to be a mix of horror film and an art world satire. As the film’s plot description puts it: After a series of paintings by an unknown artist are discovered, a supernatural force enacts revenge on those who have allowed their greed to get in the way of art. The trailer would seem to suggest that paintings themselves are coming to life to enact revenge on sell-outs, everywhere. The idea of haunted paintings has been explored by everyone from Oscar Wilde to H.P. Lovecraft to Lucio Fulci and I look forward to seeing what type of spin Gilroy puts on it.
Along with Russo and Gyllenhaal, this film also features John Malkovich. Honestly, I don’t think you can do an art world satire without finding a role for Malkovich. Much as how Bill Paxton simply belonged in Nightcrawler, it seems that Malkovich would just belong in Velvet Buzzsaw.
Velvet Buzzsaw will be playing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and it will be officially released by Netflix on February 1st! I get the feeling that we’re either going to love it or we’re going to hate it. I don’t think there’s going to be much in-between.
As you may know, if you’re one of our longtime readers, I only watch the Super Bowl for one reason. Right now, I know that at least three TSL contributors are happy because the Patriots won. And I know that at least one is upset that the Falcons lost. But me — all I care about are the commercials.
What were the commercials like this year? They weren’t terrible. As tends to happen with Super Bowl commercials, quite a few of them tried way too hard. A lot of people are going to go crazy praising the more political of the commercials. A few commercials attempted to comment on everything that’s going on in this country right now. That’s their right but I always find it amusing when big, faceless corporations spend millions on commercials bragging about how progressive they supposedly are.
That said, it was fairly easy for me to pick my six favorite commercials this year. It was also pretty easy for me to pick my least favorite commercial. Seriously, Febreze, what the Hell?
Here’s my top six. I’m not saying that these commercials would convince me to buy or do anything. But they did amuse me and that’s the important thing!
6) Yellow Tail Wine
I hardly ever drink so I don’t have any idea whether Yellow Tail is a good wine or not. To be honest, I really don’t care. Nothing bores me more than when people start getting all technical and in-depth about wine. The important thing is that the kangaroo is cute.
In fact, he’s almost as cute as the beaver in this 2008 commercial from Australia.
5) Tide
“I know, you’re trending.” This made me laugh out loud.
4) Bai
Christopher Walken and Justin Timberlake need to do more commercials together.
3) Wix.Com
Speaking of pairings that unexpectedly work, I hope that Gal Gadot and Jason Statham will return for this commercial’s sequel.
Finally, for my top two spots, I have to admit that I’ve gone back and forth as to which one of these commercials should come in first and which should come in second. I was even tempted to declare a tie but, in the end, one commercial managed to cling to the top spot.
First, here’s the runner-up:
2) Snickers
This commercial didn’t get much attention in the days leading up to the game. It probably didn’t cost a lot to make. It wasn’t trendy. It wasn’t flashy. It most definitely wasn’t political. But, by highlighting the absurdity of Super Bowl commercials, it nearly won the night. (Plus, it features Adam Driver and who doesn’t love that?)
And finally, my pick for the best commercial of Super Bowl LI…
Through the Shattered Lens 