October Positivity: Senior Year (dir by Bruce Lood)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1978 and undoubtedly played at dozens of church youth group retreats for years afterwards, Senior Year tells the story of Steve and Angie.

Steve and Angie are both high school seniors. (Hence, the name….) They’re also both Christians. Steve used to be a jock who enjoyed drinking and having a good time. However, over the summer, he decided to give all that up and dedicate his life to Christ. The rest of his classmates aren’t sure how to deal with this. They all wonder what happened to the Steve that they used to know. They’re all worried that this new Steve is going to constantly try to preach to them. Steve confirms their suspicions by constantly trying to preach at them. As he quickly discovers, it can be awkward forcing your beliefs on people, especially when they’re just trying to make it from class to class. Still, the local young minister encourages Steve to keep trying.

Joe has no interest in what Steve is saying. Joe is a jock who doesn’t get all of that Christian stuff and kind of takes it personally the Steve is now religious. Joe decides that he’s going to date a Christian girl, just to upset Steve! Joe’s a real jerk. However, Joe starts to develop real feelings for her. He even trades in his van for a sports car, all in an effort to seem more respectable. Anyway, as things often go in these type of movies, it all leads to a tragedy that leaves one person in wheelchair but which also inspires everyone in the high school to start reading their bible. Steve finally manages to successfully witness to one of his coworkers. At no point does it seem to occur to anyone that maybe there was another way that message could have been spread that didn’t involve paralyzing someone for life.

Senior Year is a pretty typical faith-based high school film. One thing that I’ve noticed about these films is that they always take place in these upper middle class suburban high schools where nearly the entire student body is vehemently anti-Christian. I went to an upper middle class suburban high school and my experience was markedly different. That could just be because I’m from Texas but still, there was an element of paranoia to this film that felt more than a bit forced. It wasn’t enough for Joe to just not be interested in reading the Bible or going to church. No, Joe had to be a full-on sociopath who specifically tried to ruin a girl’s reputation just because she was a Christian. It’s all a bit melodramatic. It also doesn’t help that Steve comes across as everything that Joe claims he is. Despite the film’s intentions, Steve does come across as being preachy and a bit self-righteous. The actor playing him is believably awkward but also kind of creepy. Anyone who has ever had the experience of having a complete stranger start grilling you about your religious beliefs will empathize with those who don’t want to get trapped in a conversation with Steve.

After watching this film, I checked out its imdb page. I found two pieces of trivia. I have no idea if either of these are correct but, for the record, imdb claims that John Travolta was offered the role of the youth minister. That’s possible, I suppose. Though the film was released in 1978, it features a theater marquee advertising Marathon Man and Two-Minute Warning, which both came out in 1976. If the film was shot in 1976 than it was probably in pre-production in 1975. If the film was in pre-production in 1975, it’s totally possible that a relatively unknown John Travolta may have been offered the part. The other piece of trivia is that Kevin Costner appears as an extra during a high school basketball game. Costner was 21 in 1976 and was studying acting in college so, again, its possible. I certainly didn’t see him but, then again, I wasn’t looking.

Anyway, regardless of whether Costner is lurking in the background or not, Senior Year is forgettable. Today, it’s best viewed as being a time capsule of the era in which it was made. I mean, selling a van is a major plot point! This film couldn’t be more 70s if it tried.

I Watched The Field Of Dreams Game

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Dazzling Erin

When I first heard that the Yankees and the White Sox were going to be playing a game in a stadium built next to the field that was used in Field of Dreams, my first thought was that it sounded really corny.

“Is Kevin Costner going to come walking out of the corn field?” I thought.

That’s exactly what happened. At the start of tonight’s game, Kevin Costner emerged from the cornfield surrounding the stadium and walked out to the mound. He was followed by the members of the Yankees and the White Sox. They all emerged from the cornfields and took their positions, just like in the movie.

And it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. I may have thought it was going to be corny and maybe it was but when it actually happened, it was impossible not to get swept up in it. As I watched the players emerge like wandering spirits who had finally found their home and as I listened to the crowd cheer, I thought to myself, “This is what baseball is all about!”

I may have started off with some doubts and neither the White Sox nor the Yankees are my team (I’m an AL West girl) but the Field of Dreams Game was still one of the best games that I’ve ever seen. From the minute the first home run disappeared over the fence and into the cornfield, the Field of Dreams Game captured my imagination and it didn’t let go for the next three and a half hours. This game reminded me of why I fell in love with baseball in the first place. There were no big bands or fancy scoreboard or anything else that we associate with modern sports. Instead, there were just two teams, playing in front of a small but enthusiastic crowd. It was perfect Americana, a present to all of us baseball fans on Baseball Fan Day. After watching this game, I now think every stadium should be redesigned to look like it’s sitting in cornfield. It’s just how baseball was meant to be played!

(Of course, you may have to be a baseball fan to really get it. My sister was in the room when one home run was hit and she interrupted my cheering by making a joke about the Children of the Corn.)

It was a good game too. The White Sox won by one run in the ninth inning. I was cheering for the Yankees but the White Sox played a good game and I can’t complain about their victory.

This was a great game and exactly what I needed tonight! I hope this is an annual event because I can’t wait for the next Field of Dreams Game!

For Love of the Game (1999, dir. by Sam Raimi)

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Dazzling Erin

Last week, the Dodgers won the World Series and brought the 2020 MLB season to a close. For me, it was a disappointing season because the Rangers ended up with the worst record in the American League and came nowhere close to the playoffs. I should be used to that by now but it still hurts every season.

If only we could have had a pitcher like Billy Chapel, who Kevin Costner plays in For Love of the Game. Billy Chapel is a forty year-old veteran who has been playing baseball his entire life and who has spent his entire major league career as a member of the Tigers. Before the start of the team’s final game against the Yankees (the Yankees have already clinched the playoff berth while the Tigers are at the bottom of their division, kind of like my Rangers), Billy is told that the Tigers have been sold and that Billy is going to be traded to the Giants. Will Billy go to San Francisco or will he retire and go to London with the woman he loves, Jane Aubrey (Kelly Preston)?

That’s the decision that Billy is going to have to make. But first, Billy’s going to throw a perfect game against the New York Yankees.

While Billy is pitching the game, he’s also thinking about Jane and having flashbacks to how they first met and fell for each other. Billy loves Jane but he also loves playing baseball and it keeps the two of them apart. Jane doesn’t want to be a baseball groupie and she needs a man who she knows is going to be there for her and her daughter, instead of spending most of the year traveling around the country. Billy, meanwhile, doesn’t want to give up the game that’s defined his life. As Billy throws his perfect game, he has to decide whether or not to keep playing until he can no longer get the ball across the plate or whether to start a new chapter with Jane. Meanwhile, Jane is stuck in an airport, watching Billy play the game of his life.

For Love Of The Game is a good love story but it’s a great baseball movie. I loved the scenes of Billy standing out on the mound, carefully evaluating each batter while blocking out all of the noise around him. (The only villains in this movie are the New Yorkers who won’t stop yelling at Billy during the game.) I enjoyed the interplay between Billy and the catcher (John C. Reilly) and I especially appreciated the way that the movie showed that it takes more than a good pitcher to have a perfect game. It takes teamwork and focus. It’s not just Billy’s perfect game. It’s the entire team’s perfect game.

For Love of the Game may be a romantic drama but it’s also a celebration of everything that makes baseball great. It’s America’s pastime and this movie shows why. Watching Billy Chapel get his perfect game made me look forward to seeing what will happen next year. Who knows? Maybe the Rangers will even shock everyone and make the postseason. If Billy Chapel can throw a perfect game while playing the Yankees in New York City, then anything can happen!

Film Review: Testament (dir by Lynne Littman)

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1983 film, Testament, is about death. It’s about the death of a family, the death of a town, the death of a way of life, and the death of hope.

And you may be saying, “Well, gee, Lisa — that sounds like a really happy movie.”

Well, it’s not meant to be a happy movie. Testament is a painfully grim movie about the end of the world.

The movie takes place in the town of Hamelin, California, which we’re told is 90 minutes away from San Francisco. It’s a nice town, the type of place where everyone knows each other. Mike (Mako) runs the local gas station and cares for his disabled son, Hiroshi (Gerry Murillo). Elderly Henry Abhart (Leon Ames) spends his time on his radio, talking to strangers across the world. Fania (Lilia Skala) offers up piano lessons. Father Hollis (Philip Anglim) looks over the spiritual needs of the parish. It’s a normal town.

The town is home to the Weatherlys. Carol (Jane Alexander) is a stay-at-home mom who does volunteer work and who is directing the school play. Tom (William Devane) is a common sight riding his bicycle through town every morning before heading off to work in San Francisco. They have three children. Mary Liz (Roxanna Zal) is a teenager who is taking piano lessons. Brad (Ross Harris) is always trying to impress his father and is looking forward to his 14th birthday. Scottie (Lukas Haas, in his first film) is the youngest and never goes anywhere without his teddy bear. They’re a normal family living a normal life in a normal town.

And then, one day, everything changes. Scottie is watching Sesame Street when the program is suddenly interrupted by a clearly terrified anchorman who announces that New York has been bombed. The president is about to speak but, before he can, there’s a bright flash of light, an distant explosion, and the entire town loses power.

At first, the people of Hamelin try to remain hopeful. Though Tom works in San Francisco and San Francisco is among the many cities that have apparently been bombed (by who, we never learn), he also left a message on the family’s answer machine, telling them that he was on his way home. Even with Tom missing, Carol continues to insist the he’ll be coming home at any minute.

Tom doesn’t come home.

The rest of the film follows the slow death of the town. Even though the town was not damaged by the blast, the fallout soon hits. Cathy (Rebecca De Mornay) and Phil (Kevin Costner) bury their newborn baby after it falls ill from radiation poisoning. Mike, Henry, and Fania all start to grow physically ill and, in some cases, dementia sets in. Father Hollis goes from being hopeful to being tired and withdrawn as he tries to attend to each and every death. Larry (Mico Olmos), a young boy whose parents have disappeared, briefly moves in with the Wetherly family. He disappears about halfway through the movie and we never learn if he left or if he died. All we know is that no one mentions him or seems to notice that he’s gone.

Over the course of the film, Carol buries two of her children. By the end of the film, her remaining child is starting to show signs of being sick, as is she. Testament, which opened with bright scenes of a happy town, ends in darkness, with only a handful of people left among the living. Even those who are alive are clearly dying and can only speak of the importance of remembering all of it, what they had and what they lost.

Sounds like a really happy film, right? Well, it’s meant to be depressing. It was made at a time when nuclear war was viewed as being not just probable but also inevitable. Testament is a film that portrayed what a lot of people at the time were expecting to see in the future and, as a result, it’s not meant to be a particularly hopeful movie. It’s a film that accomplishes what it set out to do, thanks to a great (and Oscar-nominated) performance from Jane Alexander and Lynne Littman’s low-key direction. Unlike a lot of atomic war films, Testament does not feature any scenes of burning buildings or excessive gore. That actually what makes it even more disturbing. Even after the war, Hamelin still looks like it did beforehand, with the exception that many of the houses are now empty and that all of the residents are slowly dying.

(Would I have reacted as strongly to the film if I hadn’t watched it at a time when many people are afraid to go outside? Perhaps not. But this pandemic has brought extra power to a lot of films that may not have had as much of an impact in 2018.)

Testament is a powerful film, though not necessarily one that I ever want to watch again.

Here’s The Trailer For Let Him Go!

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Let Him Go, Kevin Costner plays a retired sheriff who tries to rescue his grandson from a family that’s living off the grid.

This looks like a typical Costner film. It’s always easy to imagine Kevin Costner as being the pickup driver who pulls up next to you at the gas station and who says, in the most disappointed of tones, “Your back tire is low, did you know that?” As I’ve said in the past, I’ve never been a huge Kevin Costner fan just because he seems like he’d be a pain to live next door to. “When you mowed your yard, you clipped some of my grass, did you know that?” “I was up all night listening to your music. I work in the morning, did you know that?” And so on and so on.

That said, those of you who are into modern day westerns might get a kick out of this film. Here’s the trailer:

An Offer You Can’t Refuse #20: The Untouchables (dir by Brian DePalma)

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Let’s do some good!” Eliot Ness shouts as he and a platoon of Chicago cops raid what they believe is a bootlegger’s warehouse.

That line right there tells you everything that you need to know about the 1987 film, The Untouchables. In real life, Eliot Ness was known to be an honest member of law enforcement (which did make him a bit of a rarity in 1920s Chicago) but he was also considered to be something of a self-promoter, someone who tried to leverage his momentary fame into an unsuccessful political career. In the 50s, after Ness had lost most of his money due to a series of bad investments and his own alcoholism, Ness wrote a book about his efforts to take down Al Capone in Chicago. That book was called The Untouchables and though Ness died of a heart attack shortly before it was published, it still proved popular enough to not only rehabilitate Ness’s heroic image but also to inspire both a television series and the movie that I’m currently reviewing.

None of that is to say that Ness didn’t play a role in Al Capone’s downfall. He did, though it’s since been argued that Ness had little to do with actual tax evasion case that led to Capone going to prison. It’s just that, in real life, Eliot Ness was a complicated human being, one who had his flaws. In The Untouchables, Kevin Costner plays him as a beacon of midwestern integrity, a Gary Cooper-type who has found himself in the very corrupt city of Chicago in the very corrupt decade of the 1920s. The film version of Eliot Ness has no flaws, beyond his naive belief that everyone is as determined to “do some good” as he is.

So, The Untouchables may not be historically accurate but it’s still an entertaining film. It’s less concerned with the reality of Eliot Ness’s life and more about the mythology that has risen up around the roaring 20s. Everything about the film is big and operatic. In the role of Al Capone, Robert De Niro sneers through every scene with the self-satisfaction of a tyrant looking over the kingdom that he’s just conquered. While Costner’s Ness tells everyone to do some good, De Niro’s Capone uses a baseball bat to keep his underlings in line. He goes to the opera and cries until he’s told that one of Ness’s men has been killed. Then a big grin spreads out across his face. It’s not exactly a subtle performance but then again, The Untouchables is not exactly a subtle movie. It’s not designed to be a film that makes you think about whether or not prohibition was a good law. Instead, everything is bigger-than-life. It’s a film that takes place in a dream world that appears to have sprung from mix of old movies and American mythology.

In real life, Ness had ten agents working under him. They were all selected because they were considered to be honest lawmen and they were nicknamed The Untouchables after it was announced to the press that Ness had refused a bribe from one of Capone’s men. In the film, Ness only has three men working underneath him and they’re all recognizable types. Sean Connery won an Oscar for playing Jmmy Malone, the crusty old beat cop who teaches Ness about the Chicago Way. A young and incredibly hot Andy Garcia plays George Stone, the youngest of the Untouchables. Best of all is Charles Martin Smith, cast as Oscar Wallace, a mild-mannered accountant who first suggests that Capone must be cheating on his taxes. There’s a great scene in which the Untouchables intercept a liquor shipment on the Canadian border, all while riding horses. Sitting on the back of his galloping horse and trying not to fall off, both Oscar Wallace and the actor playing him appear to be having the time of their lives. For Oscar (and probably for much of the audience), it’s a fantasy come to life, a chance to “do some good.”

The Untouchables was directed by Brian DePalma and his stylish approach to the material is perfect for the film’s story. DePalma fills the film with references to other movies, some from the gangster genre and some not. (In one of the film’s most famous sequence, DePalma reimagines Battleship Potemkin‘s massacre on The Odessa Steps as a shoot-out between Eliot Ness and Capone’s men.) DePalma’s kinetic style reminds us that The Untouchables is less about history and more about how we imagine history. In reality, Capone was succeeded by Frank Nitti and The Chicago Outfit continued to thrive even in Capone’s absence. In the film, Nitti (played by Billy Drago) brags about killing one of the Untouchables and, as a result, is tossed off the roof of a courthouse by Eliot Ness. It’s not historically accurate but it makes for a crowd-pleasing scene.

Big, operatic, and always entertaining, The Untouchables is an offer that you can’t refuse.

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

3000 Miles to Graceland (2001, directed by Demian Lichtenstein)

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Five thieves show up in Vegas to rob a casino. The casino is also hosting an Elvis convention so the criminals all dress up like Elvis before trying to pull off their heist. Since one of the criminals is played by Kurt Russell and Russell famously played Elvis in a made-for-TV movie, it’s a meta joke. The worst of the criminals is played by Kevin Costner because, in 2001, Costner’s career was dead in the water and he was trying to reinvent himself as some sort of badass character actor.

As a result of a shootout and series of personal betrayals, Russell and Costner are the only two thieves who survive the heist. Kurt Russell ends up taking all of the money for himself and running off with single mother Courteney Cox. (Yes, Cox’s then-husband, David Arquette, does have a small role in the movie.) Costner pursues them, killing anyone who he comes in contact with until it all leads to one final shoot out.

3000 Miles to Graceland is a stupid, stupid movie that was made at the time when every director was still trying to remake Reservoir Dogs and The Usual Suspects. If you need any proof of how bad this movie is, just consider that it is one of the few Kurt Russell films to never develop a cult following. There are people who would jump into the mouth of a volcano if Kurt Russell told them to and even they won’t watch 3000 Miles to Graceland. Even the worst 90s crime films have at least a few people willing to defend them but 3000 Miles to Graceland has been abandoned on the ash heap of crime film history. Despite having a once-in-a-lifetime supporting cast — Christian Slater, Bookeem Woodbine, Kevin Pollack, Jon Lovitz, Howie Long, Ice-T, and even Paul Anka — 3000 Miles to Graceland has never even received a direct-to-video sequel.

Why is 3000 Miles to Graceland so forgettable? The heist storyline has been done to death and this film doesn’t bring anything new to the genre. The only new wrinkle that 3000 Miles to Graceland brings to its familiar story is that the thieves are all dressed like Elvis and that gets old pretty quick. The other problem is that Kevin Costner is miscast as the psycho villain. Michael Madsen could have handled the role. So could Tom Sizemore or Woody Harrelson or just about other actor out there. But Kevin Costner, who first found fame as a sort of modern-day Gary Cooper, never seems comfortable playing a cold-hearted sociopath. He makes up for this discomfort by trying too hard. Comparing his performance here to his more nuanced turn as another criminal in A Perfect World shows just how miscast he was in 3000 Miles To Graceland.

Fortunately, better things were ahead for almost everyone involved in this movie. Kevin Costner has recently returned to playing the type of roles that made him a star to begin with and Kurt Russell has become an American idol. Fortunately, 3000 Miles to Graceland is remembered, if at all, as just an unfortunate detour in their otherwise distinguished careers.

Film Review: Frances (dir by Graeme Clifford)

Posted on April 27, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Frances Farmer is one of the more tragic figures to come out of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

A talented and beautiful actress, Frances Farmer came out to Hollywood in the 30s and quickly developed a reputation for being difficult. She was politically outspoken at a time when stars were expected to either be apolitical or unquestioningly patriotic. She criticized scripts. She argued with directors and studio heads. She had a well-publicized affair with communist playwright Clifford Odets and she also had numerous run-ins with the police. Some say that she was alcoholic. Some say that she was bipolar. Some say that she had a mental collapse as the result of the pressure that her mother put on her to succeed. Frances Farmer ended up in mental institution, where she was subjected to shock therapy. After she was released, her film career was basically over, though she did end up hosting a local television program. She died in 1970, reportedly alone and struggling to make ends meet. In a posthumously published autobiography called Will There Ever Be A Morning?, she wrote that she was beaten, sexually abused, and eventually given a lobotomy while she was institutionalized. Over the years, there’s been a lot of doubt about whether or not Farmer was actually lobotomized but there is no doubt that Farmer was a woman who was ultimately punished for being ahead of her time. Frances Farmer refused to conform to the safe manufactured image that Hollywood prepared for her and, for that, she was nearly destroyed.

The 1983 film, Frances, is a biopic of Frances Farmer, starring Jessica Lange as Frances and Kim Stanley as her domineering mother. It opens with Frances writing a school essay about why she’s an atheist and it ends with her smiling blankly at a television camera, her independent spirit broken by a lobotomy. In between, we watch as Frances goes to Hollywood and has a self-destructive affair with Clifford Odets (played by Jeffrey DeMunn). The infamous moment when Frances was dragged out of a courtroom while screaming at the judge is recreated and Frances’s time in the institution is depicted in Hellish detail.

We also learn about Frances’s relationship with a communist writer named Alvin York (Sam Shepard). It seems like whenever Frances needs to be rescued or just needs someone to talk to, Alvin York pops up. In fact, you could almost argue that York pops up too often. Alvin York was a fictional character, one who was apparently created in order for audiences to have someone to relate to. It’s unfortunate that the film felt that the audience would only be able to relate to Frances if it viewed her life through the eyes of a fictional character because York’s character is a bit of a distraction. Sam Shepard does a good job of playing him and I certainly wasn’t shocked to learn that Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange were romantically involved during the filming of Frances (and for a long time afterwards) because Lange and Shepard do have a very real chemistry. However, from a narrative point of view, Alvin York only works as a character if one accepts that he’s a figment of Frances’s imagination. The film’s insistence that York is an actual person who just happens to show up at every important moment of Frances’s life just doesn’t work.

What does work is Jessica Lange’s performance. Lange is amazing in the role of Frances, whether she’s playing Frances as a hopeful idealist, an out-of-control rebel, or, tragically, as a glass-eyed zombie who has been reduced to appearing on television and assuring audiences that her rebellious days are over. Lange was nominated for Best Actress for Frances. She lost to Meryl Streep for Sophie’s Choice. I’ve seen Sophie’s Choice and Meryl was good but Jessica was better.

Frances was originally offered to David Lynch. He turned the film down so he could work on Dune and instead, the film was directed by Graeme Clifford, who takes a far more straight-forward approach to the material than Lynch would have. Still, Lynch’s interest in Frances Farmer would later lead to him working on stories that centered around a “woman in trouble.” One of those stories became Twin Peaks. Another would become Mulholland Drive.

Insomnia File #42: Revenge (dir by Tony Scott)

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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

Earlier today, If you were having trouble getting to sleep around one in the morning, you could have turned over to TCM and watched the 1990 action film, Revenge.

Revenge is an almost absurdly masculine film about two men who are in love with the same woman and who, as a result, end up trying to kill each other and a lot of other people.

Jay Cochran (Kevin Costner) is a U.S. Navy aviator who, when we first see him, is doing the whole Top Gun thing of flying in a fast jet and making jokes while his navigator worries about dying. Interestingly enough, Top Gun and Revenge were both directed by Tony Scott so perhaps this opening scene was meant to be a self-reference. Well, regardless of intent, it’s a scene that goes on forever. This is Jay’s last flight, as he’s due to retire. We go through an extended retirement party, where everyone has a beer and Jay gives one of those bullshit sentimental speeches that men always give in films like this.

Jay has been invited to estate of Tibbey (Anthony Quinn), who is a Mexican gangster. Tibbey and Jay are apparently old friends, though it’s never quite explained how the youngish Jay knows the not-very-youngish Tibbey. Tibbey is one of those gangster who is incapable of doing anything without first talking about what an amazing journey it’s been, going from poverty to becoming one of the most powerful men in Mexico.

Tibbey apparently wants to play tennis with Jay and take him hunting. Jay decides that he’d rather have an affair with Tibbey’s much younger wife, Miryea (Madeleine Stowe). Miryea is upset that Tibbey doesn’t want to have children because he feels that pregnancy would ruin her body. When Tibbey finds out about the affair, he sends Miryea to a brothel and Jay to the middle of the desert. That’s Tibbey’s revenge!

Except, of course, Jay doesn’t die because he’s Kevin Costner and if he died, the movie would end too quickly. So, Jay fights his way back from the desert, intent on not only finding Miryea but getting his own revenge on Tibbey!

(It’s hard to take a bad guy named Tibbey seriously, even if he is played by Anthony Quinn.)

Revenge goes on for way too long and neither Tibbey nor Jay are really sympathetic enough to be compelling characters. You never really believe in Tibbey and Jay’s friendship, so the whole betrayal and revenge aspect of the film just falls flat. On the plus side, youngish Kevin Costner is not half as annoying as cranky old man Costner. Anthony Quinn was one of the actors who was considered for the role of Don Corleone in The Godfather and, watching him here, you can kind of see him in the role. He would have been a bit of a crude Corleone but Quinn had an undeniably powerful and magnetic screen presence. In Revenge, Quinn chews up and spits out all of the scenery and is not subtle at all but it’s entertaining to watch him because he’s Anthony Quinn.

Anyway, Revenge ends with a tragedy, as these things often do. Anthony Quinn never says, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” and that, to me, is a true missed opportunity.

Previous Insomnia Files:

A Movie A Day #217: Wyatt Earp (1994, directed by Lawrence Kasdan)

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Once upon a time, there were two movies about the legendary Western lawman (or outlaw, depending on who is telling the story) Wyatt Earp. One came out in 1993 and the other came out in 1994.

The 1993 movie was called Tombstone. That is the one that starred Kurt Russell was Wyatt, with Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton in the roles of his brothers and Val Kilmer playing Doc Holliday. Tombstone deals with the circumstances that led to the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. “I’m your huckleberry,” Doc Holliday says right before his gunfight with Michael Biehn’s Johnny Ringo. Tombstone is the movie that everyone remembers.

The 1994 movies was called Wyatt Earp. This was a big budget extravaganza that was directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starred Kevin Costner as Wyatt. Dennis Quaid played Doc Holliday and supporting roles were played by almost everyone who was an active SAG member in 1994. If they were not in Tombstone, they were probably in Wyatt Earp. Gene Hackman, Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, Jeff Fahey, Mark Harmon, Annabeth Gish, Gene Hackman, Bill Pullman, Isabella Rossellini, JoBeth Williams, Mare Winningham, and many others all appeared as supporting characters in the (very) long story of Wyatt Earp’s life.

Of course, Wyatt Earp features the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral but it also deals with every other chapter of Earp’s life, including his multiple marriages, his career as a buffalo hunter, and his time as a gold prospector. With a three-hour running time, there is little about Wyatt Earp’s life that is not included. Unfortunately, with the exception of his time in Tomstone, Wyatt Earp’s life was not that interesting. Neither was Kevin Costner’s performance. Costner tried to channel Gary Cooper in his performance but Cooper would have known better than to have starred in a slowly paced, three-hour movie. The film is so centered around Costner and his all-American persona that, with the exception of Dennis Quaid, the impressive cast is wasted in glorified cameos. Wyatt Earp the movie tries to be an elegy for the old west but neither Wyatt Earp as a character nor Kevin Costner’s performance was strong enough to carry such heavy symbolism. A good western should never be boring and that is a rule that Wyatt Earp breaks from the minute that Costner delivers his first line.

Costner was originally cast in Tombstone, just to leave the project so he could produce his own Wyatt Earp film. As a big, Oscar-winnng star, Costner went as far as to try to have production of Tombstone canceled. Ironically, Tombstone turned out to be the film that everyone remember while Wyatt Earp is the film that most people want to forget.