Tag Archives: Kevin Bacon

Film Review: Patriots Day (dir by Peter Berg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On April 15th, 2013, a terrible crime was committed.

Two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, bombed the Boston Marathon.  I can remember the exact moment when I looked up at the television and I saw the footage of the bomb going off as a group of runners ran across the finish line.  Instinctively, I found myself hoping that the explosion looked worse than it actually was and that no one had been seriously injured.  However, I was then flooded with images of people running in fear while other lay injured and bleeding on the ground.  A photograph of  man who had lost his both his legs was seared into my mind, the nightmarish image of those exposed and shattered bones coming to represent the pure evil that was unleashed on that day.

At first, there was a lot of speculation about who was responsible for the bombing.  Despite the fact that it had all the earmarks of an al-Qaeda operation, many people on the news insisted that the bomb had been set by their favorite boogeymen, the right-wing militias.  (The initial theory was that it was a tax day protest, which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.)  Three days after the bombing, the first photographs of the Tsarnaev Brothers were released.  Looking at the security footage of Tamerlan placing a bomb on the ground right next to a child who was subsequently killed in the blast, I started to rethink my opposition to the death penalty.

Boston was shut down until the Tsarnaev brothers were tracked down and, along with hating the Tsarnaevs, I found myself fearing that the search for them would normalize the idea of suspending civil liberties.  Tamerlan was gunned down in a fight with police and hopefully, he felt each bullet.  Dzokhar was captured after he attempted to hide in a homeowner’s boat while whining like a little bitch.  Dzokhar is one of three people on the Federal Death Row.  He also has a truly creepy fan club online, though they haven’t been as active as they were in the past.

2016’s Patriots Day is about that tragic day and the subsequent manhunt for the Tsarnaev brothers.  This is another one of Peter Berg’s films about professional, no-nonsense men who have a job to do and who do it well.  Mark Wahlberg plays a cop.  Kevin Bacon plays the FBI agent who heads up the investigation.  John Goodman plays the Boston police commission while Michael Beach makes an appearance as Deval Patrick, the then-governor of Massachusetts who ran a bizarrely overlooked presidential campaign in 2020.  Just as he did with Deepwater Horizon, Berg emphasizes the human cost of the tragedy along with the official efforts to track down the men responsible.  The ensemble comes together impressively, recreating those scary few days and also paying tribute to a city that refused to allow itself to be defeated.  Patriots Day follows the common, blue collar citizens of Boston as they deal with a horrific act of evil.  Even though we all know how the story turned out, the film manages to create a decent amount of suspense as the authorities search for the Tsarnaevs.  As for the brothers themselves, the film portrays them as being initially cocky and eventually pathetic.  To the film’s credit, it doesn’t ask us to consider things from the point of view of the terrorists.  There’s no moral relativism here.  The film knows who deserves to be heard.

Patriots Day is a tribute to the first responders and the citizens of Boston who refused to allow the Tsarnaevs to win.  With so many people now making excuses for terrorism, Patriots Day is a powerful reminder of the human cost of such actions.  The Tsarnaevs through they were striking a blow for their ideology.  Instead, they just reminded us how strong people can be.

 

PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and our family’s traditions.

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I love Thanksgiving because I love spending time with my family. My Mom is one of 15 kids from a large Catholic family in central Arkansas, so this is the time of year that I get to see a big part of that extended family. A lot of people are spread out across the state and country so we don’t get to see everyone at Thanksgiving, but we do get to see a lot of people. We go to my aunt Jo Ellen’s house, and I get to hang out with a bunch of my aunts, uncles and cousins. We’ll have a giant feast from a potluck of items we’ve grown to love over the years…Aunt Jo Ellen’s turkey and dressing, Mom’s candied yams, Aunt Connie’s deviled eggs, the giant table of desserts, etc. Our family is all about traditions, and this is the time of year we share those with each other. I just love it! 

One of our movie-watching traditions is watching PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES together. And we do it every year. We still laugh at all the right parts…Kevin Bacon getting Steve Martin’s cab thanks to a mysteriously large trunk on the curb, John Candy reading The Canadian Mounted, Doobie’s Taxiola, “Those Aren’t Pillows,” Owen’s strange facial expressions and throat noises, “a couple of balls and an extra set of fingers,” the runway crossing, the car rental counter meltdown, “you’re going the wrong way,” the hotel destruction getaway, and the indestructible car radio. Odds are many of you are smiling as you read this quick summary of some of my favorite parts. We’ll watch the movie together while we’re settling in back at Dad and Mom’s house after a wonderful Thanksgiving lunch. It’s a guarantee that Dad will be snoring at some point. 

As much as I love to eat, to me, Thanksgiving is all about spending time with the ones I love. We’ll tell a lot of the same stories that we’ve told many times over the years, and we’ll laugh at them all over again. We’ll truly enjoy our time together. Our family is not perfect, and we don’t always see eye to eye on everything, but we love each other and that is more important than just about anything else. That’s a Crain family tradition passed down from my parents. One of the best things about PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES is that there are times when the laughs die completely down, and that’s when the movie reveals its heart. The same can be said for my family, and that’s something I’m truly thankful for.

Mia Goth and Ti West take us to 1985 in the MaXXXine Trailer!

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The X trilogy kind of snuck up on everyone. The end of March 2022’s “X” gave us a sneak peek at Pearl, which ended up releasing later in theatres that same year. Now, director Ti West and actress Mia Goth are closing the loop with MaXXXine, which arrives in theatres this summer.

MaXXXine is a direct sequel to X, with our heroine still wanting to be a major star after the events of the first film. Though she may not realize it, Maxine has a lot in common with Pearl, and those elements may put her into some dark circles.

MaXXXine also stars Kevin Bacon, Halsey, Bobby Cannavale, Elizabeth Debicki, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Michelle Monaghan.

Diner (1982, directed by Barry Levinson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Which member of the Diner gang would you be?

I think that is the question that everyone, or at least every guy, asks themselves after watching Barry Levinson’s debut film.  Most would probably want to say that they’re Boogie (Mickey Rourke), because he’s cool, all the ladies love him, and he makes creative use of a popcorn box at the movies.  Some would probably say that they want to be Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) because he’s smart and sarcastic.  No one wants to be Billy (Tim Daly) or Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), even though we would all want to be their friend.

The truth is that most of us would probably be Shrevie (Daniel Stern), the just-married one who is discovering that being an adult means working an unglamorous job and discovering the rest of the world doesn’t care about your taste in music.  The luckiest of us might be Modell (Paul Reiser), the funny one who doesn’t get a story but who makes a lot of jokes.

Diner was one of the first great hang-out movies.  There is no plot, at least not in the traditional sense.  Instead, it’s about a group of long-time friends who live in Baltimore in 1959.  They grew up together.  They went to high school together.  They’ve been hanging out at the same diner for as long as they can all remember.  And now, they’re at the point in their lives where the world expects them to act like adults and accept all the responsibility that goes along with that.  It’s a film that celebrates their friendship while also acknowledging that some of them are using that friendship as an excuse to not grow up.  They escape into trivia and movies, with one minor character reciting Sweet Smell of Success by memory.  Fenwick drinks.  Boogie gambles.  Even Billy, who doesn’t even live in Baltimore anymore, reverts to his old ways as soon as he returns for Eddie’s wedding and ends up sucker punching someone because of an old high school incident.

The preparations for Eddie’s wedding gives the film what structure it has.  Eddie is marrying the unseen Elyse, assuming she can pass his demanding quiz about the Baltimore Colts.  (That may sound unfair but if you’re from Baltimore, you’ll understand.)  While Eddie gets ready for his wedding, Shrevie’s marriage to Beth (Ellen Barkin) seems to be falling apart and she finds herself tempted to cheat with Boogie, who has his own problems with a local bookie.  Meanwhile, Billy learns that his girlfriend (Kathryn Dowling) is pregnant.

The film is about friendship and the friendships between the men feel real.  Levinson held off on shooting the largely improvised diner scenes until the end of the film, by which time all of the actors had developed their own idiosyncratic relationships with each other.  The heart of Diner is to be found in scenes like the one where Modell tries to ask for someone else’s sandwich without actually coming out and asking for it.  The dialogue in that scene and so many others has the ring of age-old friendship.  Though the film makes it easy to see why Mickey Rourke and Kevin Bacon become movie stars while Tim Daly has spent most of his career on television, the entire cast is still perfect in their roles.  It’s about as strong as an ensemble as you could ever hope to see.  They become the characters and watching the movie, it’s impossible not to see yourself and your friends in their performances.

Barry Levinson has gone on to direct many more films but for me, Diner will always be the best.

 

6 Actors Who I Hope Will Win An Oscar Soon

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

We talk a lot about which performers and directors have been snubbed at Oscar time.

For movie lovers, that’s an important subject. We all know that great actors like Peter O’Toole, Cary Grant, Albert Finney, and far too many others all went to their graves with several nominations but not a single competitive Oscar to their name. Just four years ago, Kirk Douglas died at the age of 103 without having ever won a competitive Oscar.  We always talk about how certain actors are overdue for their first Oscar but sometimes we forget that being overdue doesn’t always translate into an eventual win. Sometimes, it translates into people watching a movie on TCM and saying, “How did that person never win an Oscar in their lifetime?”

With that in mind, here are 6 actors who I sincerely hope will have won their first Oscar by the time that 2034 rolls around:

  1. Brendan Gleeson

Brendan Gleeson is a perennial on these lists but I going to keep including him until he gets the Oscar that he deserves.  Last year, he finally received his first nomination but he didn’t win.  Hopefully, right this minute, he’s considering the role that will finally bring him some Oscar glory.

2. Kevin Bacon

Kevin Bacon is another perennial on this list.  He’s a good actor, he seems to be a likable guy, and I have never met a single person who doesn’t have some sort of affection for him.  However, Kevin Bacon has never won an Oscar.  In fact, he’s never even been nominated!  Bacon is one of those actors who people tend to take for granted.  Hopefully, over the next ten years, he’ll become the first Friday the 13th counselor to win an Oscar.

3. Paul Giamatti

I nearly didn’t include Giamatti on this list because he is nominated tonight and, though Cillian Murphy is currently the favorite, there’s still a chance that Giamatti could pull off an upset.  But Giamatti is such a talent that, until he does actually win, there really wasn’t any way I couldn’t include him.  Giamatti has the unique talent to be able to generate sympathy for otherwise extremely off-putting characters.  He may not win tonight but he will win eventually.

4. Eric Roberts

Come on, you knew he was going to show up on this list.  Eric Roberts has had a long career, one that has definitely had its ups-and-downs.  However, he’s never stopped working and his willingness to appear in everything from major studio productions to cheap softcore thrillers to faith-based films has made him a bit of a beloved cultural institution.  Roberts has always had the talent to earn an Oscar.  He probably should have won for Star 80.  Here’s hoping for a film that does for him what The Wrestler did for Mickey Rourke.

5. Harrison Ford

He’s not getting any younger and he only has ONE Oscar nomination to his name.  Get on it, Hollywood!

6. Ryan Reynolds

You just know the acceptance speech would be one for the ages.

Axel Foley heads back West in the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F Teaser!

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Personally, I think we’ve milked the Nostalgia Train for all it’s worth, but if audiences are looking forward to it, maybe it’s a good thing. I forgot there was a third entry in the Beverly Hills Cop films, but then recalled it was the one with George Lucas in it. While we’re not sure why Detroit’s Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is returning to Beverly Hills, it’s good to see that most of his friends are there to greet him. It looks like they brought in Judge Reinhold, Paul Reiser, John Aston and even Bronson Pinchot along for the ride. New additions appear to be both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Kevin Bacon.

The film is due out next March.

Horror Film Review: You Should Have Left (dir by David Koepp)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh, the high hopes I had for You Should Have Left.

Not only was this horror film reuniting one of my favorite actors with the man who directed him in one of his best performances but it also featured what appeared to be the perfect casting of Amanda Seyfried as Kevin Bacon’s daughter.  When I heard that the film featured Bacon trying to protect his family from an evil spirit, I was totally ready to watch a film that would feature ghosts trying to grab Amanda while Kevin yelled, “Leave me daughter alone!”

Of course, then I found out that Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried were not playing father and daughter.  They were playing husband and wife.  And listen, I love Kevin Bacon.  I think he’s a great actor and he seems like a nice guy and I always appreciate the fact that he’s willing to make fun of himself and his up-and-down career.  But seriously, Kevin Bacon is 28 years older than Amanda Seyfried and hearing that they would not only be playing husband and wife but that they would also be playing the parents of a young girl …. well, I wasn’t expecting much.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t attempt to ignore the age difference between Bacon and Seyfried.  This isn’t like one of those films where Michael Douglas is married to someone who just graduated from high school and everyone just shrugs it off as if there isn’t anything weird about it.  Instead, the age difference is a major plot point of the movie.  Kevin Bacon plays Theo, a retired, wealthy banker.  Amanda Seyfried plays Susanna, an actress.  From the start of the film, Theo obviously feels insecure about whether or not his much younger wife loves him.  When he has trouble gaining access to a film set where she’s acting, he gets a bit paranoid.  When he finds out that she was filming a love scene, he gets even more paranoid.  Throughout the film, Theo worries that Susanna is gong to leave him for a younger man.

Meanwhile, Susanna struggles with how to explain to their daughter why no one likes Theo.  It turns out that Susanna is Theo’s second wife.  Theo’s first wife drowned in a bathtub.  Theo was accused of murdering her but he was subsequently acquitted.  As Susanna explains what happened, it becomes a bit obvious that she has her own doubts about her husband and his innocence.

When they receive an invitation to stay at a house in Wales, both Theo and Susanna assume that the other one arranged it.  Actually, neither one of them arranged it!  Still, it’s a really nice house and it seems like the perfect place for them to repair their strained marriage and work on their trust issues …. except for the fact that there’s obviously somebody or something inside the house with them!

Now, really, You Should Have Left should have worked.  As I said before, I like Kevin Bacon and I think Amanda Seyfried is a far better actress than she’s actually given credit for being.  Add to that, You Should Have Left was directed by David Koepp, who previously directed Bacon in Stir of Echoes.  Remember how good that movie was?  And yet, while You Should Have Left has a few creepy moments, it ultimately falls flat.  What happened?

I think some of the problem is that, regardless of how much you may like the actors playing them, nether Theo nor Suzanna is a particularly compelling character.  Theo, in particular, keeps a meditation journal.  Stir of Echoes Kevin Bacon would have kicked the ass of You Should Have Left Kevin Bacon.  Seriously, the minute you break out the meditation journal, that’s the minute I stop taking you seriously as a protagonist.  The film also cheated a bit when it came to the issue of whether or not Theo murdered his wife.  Instead of saying yes or no, the film tried to keep things ambiguous and it just didn’t feel right.

In the end, the film just didn’t work.  The pacing was off.  The visual style was bland.  For all the build-up, there was nothing particularly interesting about the house’s secret.  For all the talent involved, the film just fell flat.

It happens.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Kevin Bacon Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today is the birthday of everyone’s favorite, hard-working character actor, Kevin Bacon!  And that means that it’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Films

Friday the 13th (1980, dir by Sean S. Cunningham)

Quicksilver (1986, dir by Thomas Michael Donnelly)

JFK (1991, dir by Oliver Stone)

X-Men: First Class (2011, dir by Matthew Vaughn)

 

Criminal Law (1988, directed by Matin Campbell)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Gary Oldman is Ben Chase, a hotshot defense attorney who graduated from Harvard and now practices law in Boston.  That means that he gets to have a Boston accent and you know how much Gary Oldman loves playing a role with an accent.  Ben also has a pompadour because Gary Oldman always has something weird going on with his hair in almost every film he appears in.

Ben’s latest client is Martin Thiel (Kevin Bacon), a sociopathic rich kid who has been accused of murder.  Even though Ben thinks that Martin is probably guilty, he still gets Martin off the hook.  As soon as Martin get his acquittal, he starts murdering again.  Ben feels responsible so he decides that what he needs to do is trick Martin into implicating himself.  However, Martin knows what Ben is planning so, instead, he decides to frame Ben for the murders.  Somehow, it all links back to Martin’s feelings about abortion.  I guess Martin is against abortion or maybe he’s for it.  It was hard to keep track.  I watched the movie and I’m still not sure I followed everything that I saw.  It’s not that the plot is diabolically clever.  It’s just that it’s so incoherent that not a single plot point logically follows from another.

The film experiments with suggesting that there’s some sort of deeper connection between Martin and Ben.  Martin is obsessed with Ben and when Ben is in bed with his girlfriend, he briefly imagines that she’s turned into Martin and has a good old-fashioned freak out as a result.  It doesn’t make any sense.  First off, you have to believe that Ben can’t tell the difference between Kevin Bacon and his girlfriend.  Secondly, you have to then accept that Ben — a HARVARD GRADUATE — is so stupid that he would actually believe that his girlfriend had suddenly transformed into Kevin Bacon and must now be strangled.

Criminal Law is a film that you may be tempted to watch because of the pairing of Kevin Bacon and Gary Oldman but you’d be better off just watching JFK again.  They’re both great actors and and it’s always interesting to see them cast against type but neither one of them is particularly good in Criminal Law.  They’re let down by a script that doesn’t allow either one to create a consistent character.  Sometimes, Martin is a soulless attorney and other times, he’s a panicky social justice crusader.  Sometimes, Kevin Bacon is a clever sociopath and, other times, he’s just your typical mindless movie slasher.

On the plus side, Joe Don Baker is in this mess, playing a cop.  Joe Don Baker has played so many cops in so many bad movies that I wonder if he’s ever been tempted to try to arrest someone in real life.  In Criminal Law, he’s not given much to do but it doesn’t matter.  He’s Joe Don Baker!