Icarus File No. 34: Carrie (dir by Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel, Axelle Carolyn, Kyra Sedgwick, Hiromi Katana)

Posted on October 11, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If I had to choose two words to describe Mike Flanagan’s “reimagining” of Carrie, they would probably be “fan fiction.”

In fact, it’s sometimes humorous just how obviously this miniseries is a work of fan fiction. Carrie White (blandly played by Summer Howell) may be a bullied and sheltered girl with telekinetic powers, but now she has a best friend, Emaline (an equally bland Thalia Dudek, who looks less like a 2026 teenager and more like the bassist in a 1990s riot grrrl band), who also has a power and always has the best advice and the snarkiest comebacks! What would Carrie do without her best friend Emaline? And while Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan) is still present as an overprotective and paranoid force in Carrie’s life, there’s now another maternal figure named Adelaide (Kate Siegel) who exists to talk about how those with secret powers are always being held down by a society that’s just not capable of accepting how important they are. Adelaide opens each episode with a monologue that feels like it was written by a 2017 college freshman who has just watched Linda Sarsour on YouTube. Watching the miniseries, one gets the feeling that Flanagan and his writers really wanted to make a show called Emaline and Adelaide and decided to graft them onto Carrie.

Ever since this miniseries was announced, there’s been a lot of talk about how Flanagan has updated the story. In this case, that means there’s an emphasis on phones and social media, as if teenagers couldn’t find a way to hurt each other even before technology caught up with them. In fact, social media is pretty much to blame for everything that happened. The audience is meant to violently roll their eyes at Margaret White for believing in conspiracy theories and religion while, at the same time, accepting a portrayal of the dangers of social media that makes Aaron Sorkin look even-handed and calm. One gets the feeling that if this show had been made just a few years earlier, it would have found a way to blame Margaret White and Chris Hargensen for the January 6th riots. There is a riot in the sixth episode, but it just involves all of the students doing a massive walkout to protest Chris Hargensen’s secret Instagram account. “Death to Hargensen!” the students chant, and it briefly seems like maybe Flanagan is going to make a bigger point about how the bullies can become the bullied, but ultimately, this is too much of a work of fan fiction to delve too deeply into anything that complex. It’s also too much of a work of the streaming era to introduce an idea that can’t be neatly summed up in 15 seconds.

Yes, this is a new version of Carrie. If King’s novel and De Palma’s film gave us a Carrie White who was never happy until that one prom night and who lashed out after that happiness was stolen from her, the Mike Flanagan miniseries gives us a Carrie who becomes the most popular girl in school even before prom night. No longer does Tommy (Joel Oulette) ask Carrie to prom as a favor to his guilt-ridden girlfriend, Sue Snell (Siena Agudong). Instead, he asks Carrie as a friend. Carrie’s no longer sheltered and shy. Instead, she’s somewhat smug and annoying. She sneaks out of the house many times before prom night. She goes to a party. She goes to the junkyard and curses like a sailor while showing off her powers. Her best friend Emaline is impressed. What would Carrie do without her best friend, Emaline? Of course, by changing all of this, Flanagan robs the story of all of its emotional power. This is probably the first version of Carrie where I’ve actually found myself getting annoyed with Carrie as a character. Towards the end of the miniseries, she just becomes so smug and self-righteous, like the girl at school who used to sweetly pull you aside to tell you that your skirt was too short. This is a version of the story that lets Carrie off the hook. Emaline is the one who suggests that she use her powers to get revenge. Adelaide and her dumbass cult are the ones who accidentally set fire to the school. Carrie dances in the street with Emaline and, for a few seconds, you actually find yourself wishing for the calming hand of Ryan Murphy.

Yes, I know that Stephen King has endorsed Mike Flanagan’s changes. That doesn’t mean that I have to. The fact of the matter is that Stephen King has consistently shown that he will endorse just about anything, and it’s also been a while since King has written anything that can match the power of his earlier work. There’s a world of difference between the youngish and struggling writer who originally wrote Carrie and the wealthy boomer who is now probably better known for his angry tweets than his more recent literary output. As well, it’s obvious that King likes Flanagan. Flanagan is the ultimate fan. And yet, considering that Flanagan’s best film, Hush, was also his simplest, one can’t help but feel that Flanagan would do well to stop adapting his heroes and maybe just try to focus on creating unapologetic suspense.

It’s the curse of elevated horror. Right now, the critics who hate entertaining horror love slow-moving elevated horror. They go on and on about the subtext, as if there wasn’t subtext to be found in the horror movies that were made in the past. The truth of the matter is that the subtext is usually the least interesting thing about these films and series. Making a film or a show that is critical of capitalism and religion is hardly the radical act that the critics seem to think it is. There’s nothing particularly interesting or special to be found between the lines when it comes to this version of Carrie. Indeed, for all the time and effort that the series puts into villainizing Margaret White and Chris Hargensen, they’re ultimately the most interesting characters because Samantha Sloyan and Alison Thornton are the only two performers who are allowed to break free from the show’s rigid ideological structure. (Samantha Sloyan especially deserves a lot of credit for finding a hint of reality in her portrayal of Margaret.) Chris and Margaret are compelling because they’re the only characters who don’t just parrot the accepted lines and the accepted thinking. They’re the only characters who seem to have a life and an outlook that was formed by something other than the demands of the show. We’re meant to shake our heads when Margaret becomes an online celebrity with a podcast, but instead, we’re interested and almost happy for her because Margaret is actually doing something unexpected and making an effort to take actual control of her life. It’s hard not to feel that this version of Margaret White deserved a better ending than what the show gave her. In the end, Margaret feels less like a villain and more like a victim of the show’s writers and their own feelings about religion and politics. (One wonders if the writers realize that their show ultimately makes the case that all of the tragedy could have been avoided if the government had simply stayed out of it and just allowed Margaret to continue to homeschool her daughter.) If previous versions of Carrie seemed to be designed to appeal to shy outsiders, this version of Carrie is designed to compliment self-styled victims who don’t have the self-awareness necessary to realize that they are now the bullies.

In the end, Carrie feels like a forgotten Showtime series from 2018 and, if it had been made by anyone other than Mike Flanagan, no one would care.

Previous Icarus Files:

Brad reviews PHENOMENON (1996), starring John Travolta!

Posted on July 11, 2026 by Bradley Crain

Born in 1973, I missed the first John Travolta phenomenon. I wasn’t even five years old when movies like SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE were released. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved John Travolta as a kid. I remember watching GREASE at my cousins’ house when I was around ten, and we all loved it. Probably the movie I loved the most is Brian De Palma’s BLOW OUT from 1981. Fox 16 out of Little Rock loved to play that movie, and I thought it was so great. It was the mid-80’s when I was watching it, so his best work had been several years before.

From the mid-80’s to the early 90’s, I was obsessed with renting videos at our local rental shops. Do y’all remember the crap that Travolta was putting out then… TWO OF A KIND (1983), PERFECT (1985), THE EXPERTS (1989), CHAINS OF GOLD (1990), etc? I remember wanting to watch RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II at the movies when I was kid, and the theater in Conway, Arkansas was playing 2 movies: RAMBO and PERFECT. My mom insisted on PERFECT. So there we were, Dad, Mom, my older brother, me, and my younger sister in the theater watching PERFECT. It was an R-rated film, and Mom walked us out less than half an hour into the movie due to some guy putting his head under a woman’s skirt. I still remember the other patrons laughing at us as we walked out. This moment is burned into my psyche. Travolta did work on the hit LOOK WHO’S TALKING movies, but at the time, he got no credit because these were talking baby movies. It almost seemed like Travolta’s career had become something of a joke from the time I was a grade schooler all the way into my college years. I still loved him, but any time his name came up, the conversation was always about his good movies that were made years earlier contrasted against the crap he was in now.

And then Tarantino’s PULP FICTION was released in 1994, he was absolutely incredible, and I was all about phase 2 of the John Travolta phenomenon. I watched just about everything he did over the next five years at the movie theater. During this remarkable stretch, I saw him in GET SHORTY, BROKEN ARROW, PHENOMENON, FACE/OFF, and many others. I revisited PHENOMENON again this week, and it took me back to that time when a 22 year old college student was rediscovering what a talented actor Travolta could be with the right material.

George Malley (Travolta) is a likable “Everyman” who works as a mechanic in a small town in Northern California. On his 37th birthday, a mysterious flash of light knocks him over and changes everything. Suddenly he’s the smartest guy in town, and he can even move things with his mind. At first, his abilities amaze his friends and neighbors, but they soon begin to be afraid of him because they don’t understand him. George doesn’t understand why he’s so smart all of a sudden, but he’s falling in love with Lace (Kyra Sedgwick) anyway. The ultimate “answer” is somewhat realistic, and ultimately quite moving.

Director Jon Turteltaub (WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, NATIONAL TREASURE) does a good job by focusing on George and his friends rather than the supernatural “mystery elements” of the plot. We may not understand exactly why George has these extraordinary abilities, but they mostly remain a backdrop in a story about love, friendship, and mortality. The film asks a simple question: How would we react if someone we’ve known all our lives is suddenly one of the most amazing people on earth? If you follow much social media these days, we know the answer. How often do we see people get torn down as soon as they show any exceptional ability? We even see this in our own families, and we see it in this movie as well. Watching the film 30 years later, that fact really sticks out to me.

I’ve been a fan of PHENOMENON for three decades specifically because I love John Travolta’s performance in the movie. He’s just so likable, so when things start to go bad for him, we’re disappointed as well. He plays George as a man whose growing genius makes him want to help people even more. He’s so sincere that we never stop pulling for him, which is a true testament to Travolta’s incredible work. Kyra Sedgwick is amazing as well. As a mother and having been hurt before, her character takes her time letting George into her life, but once she does she goes all in. I love it. Forest Whitaker, Robert Duvall, and Jeffrey DeMunn all have outstanding moments that make the small-town community feel real. Their friendships specifically help provide an emotional strength that most films don’t have.

PHENOMENON isn’t a perfect film, as it’s probably a little too long, and it may linger a little too much on vague “science.” However, it is a film that’s most interested in showing us a character who uses the gifts he’s been given to make life better for those around him while he can. It’s a timeless idea that gives PHENOMENON a power that has only grown stronger with time. It’s also a reminder that John Travolta has a magnetic screen presence. Beneath all of his charisma is an actor capable of tremendous warmth and vulnerability. At the end of the day, those are the kinds of characters we end up really caring about.

Icarus File No. 21: Reach Me (dir by John Herzfeld)

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2011 film, Reach Me, opens with a rapper named E-Ruption (Nelly) appearing on a morning show and talking about how, while he was serving a prison sentence, he read a self-help book called Reach Me. It asked him to consider whether or not his childhood self would be happy with his adult self. The book was written by a mysterious man named Teddy Raymond. No one knows who this Teddy Raymond is. He’s never appeared in public. People film themselves reading the book online and then upload to YouTube as a way of sharing Teddy’s wisdom. I honestly can think of nothing more annoying and boring than watching someone else read a self-help book but whatever. I live in Texas. The movie takes place in California.

Tabloid editor Gerald (Sylvester Stallone) takes a break from action painting to order one of his reporters, Roger King (Kevin Connolly), to track down Teddy Raymond. Roger wants to write the great American novel. He doesn’t care about self-help. He meets Teddy’s associates, Wilson (Terry Crews) and Kate (Lauren Cohan) and Wilson talks about how Teddy magically cured Kate’s stutter. Roger then wanders around the beach, asking random people, “Teddy Raymond? Are you Teddy Raymond?” Oh look! There’s a guy named Teddy (Tom Berenger) who reluctantly cures Roger of his smoking addiction by ordering Roger to yell at the ocean …. over and over and over again.

Collette (Kyra Segdwick) has just been released from prison. Reading Teddy’s book has inspired her to try to become a fashion designer. Collette’s daughter, Eve (Elizabeth Henstridge), is an aspiring actress who was earlier groped by a sleazy star named Keating (Cary Elwes). Collette and Eve literally crash their car into a car being driven by Wolfie (Thomas Jane), a sociopathic undercover cop who enjoys killing people and who goes to confession after every shooting. (At the start of the movie, he guns down Danny Trejo.) The alcoholic priest, Father Paul (Danny Aiello), refuses to hear any more of his confessions.

Meanwhile, wannabe mob boss Frank (Tom Sizemore) is upset because another mob boss, Aldo (Kelsey Grammer), doesn’t treat him with any respect. Frank sends two of his hitmen, Thumper (David O’Hara) and Dominic (Omari Hardwick), to kill a man who owes him money and to also shoot the man’s dog. Thumper has been reading Teddy Raymond’s book and doesn’t want to shoot the dog. Dominic realizes that his heart isn’t into the mob life so, taking the book’s message to heart, he calls Frank and says, “My heart’s not in it.”

(Don’t try that with any real mobsters.)

Eventually, all of the characters do come together. They don’t exactly come together in a plausible manner but they do all end up at the same location so let’s give the film credit for that. Let’s also give this film credit for leaving me seriously confused. I have no idea whether this film was meant to a parody or a celebration of the self-help industry. At first, I suspected that it meant to be a parody because all of Teddy Raymond’s advice was painfully shallow and the type of basic crap that anyone could come up with. I actually found myself losing respect for the people who claimed that Teddy had changed their lives. But at the movie progressed, I realized that I was supposed to take Teddy and his advice seriously. This was a film that I guess was meant to have something to say but who knows what exactly that was.

That said — hey, everyone’s in this movie! Director John Herzfeld was a former college roommate of Sylvester Stallone’s and, once Stallone agreed to appear, that apparently convinced a lot of other “name” actors to take the risk as well. There’s a lot of talent in this film but little of it is used correctly. Kelsey Grammer as an Italian mobster instead of the editor? Sylvester Stallone as the editor instead of the Italian mobster? Thomas Jane as a sociopath who has a girlfriend by the end of the movie, one who smiles and tells him, “Try not to shoot anyone?” Kyra Sedgwick as an ex-con? These are all good actors but just about everyone, with the exception of the much-missed Danny Aiello, is miscast.

It’s a true Icarus File. It was a just a little more self-aware, this would have been a Guilty Pleasure. But, in the end, self-help cannot help itself.

Previous Icarus Files:

Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Born On The Fourth of July (dir by Oliver Stone)

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1989, having already won an Oscar for recreating his Vietnam experiences in Platoon, director Oliver Stone returned to the war with Born On The Fourth Of July.

Based on the memoir of anti-war activist Ron Kovic, Born on the Fourth of July stars Tom Cruise as Kovic. When we first meet Kovic, he’s growing up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s. He’s a clean-cut kid from a nice family. He’s on the school wrestling team and he’s got a lot of friends. When he was just 15, he heard John F. Kennedy telling people to ask what they can do for their country and he was inspired. He decided he wanted to join the Marines, despite the fact that his father (Raymond J. Barry) was still haunted by the combat that he saw in World War II. (In one of the film’s better scenes, a young Kovic notices that the elderly veterans marching in the Independence Day parade still flinch whenever they hear a firecracker.) He enlists in the Marines after listening to a patriotic speech from a recruiter (played by Tom Berenger). Ron runs through the rain to attend his prom and has one dance with Donna (Kyra Sedgwick), on whom he’s always had a crush. There’s nothing subtle about the way that Stone portrays Kovic’s childhood. In fact, one might argue that it’s a bit too idealized. But Stone knows what he’s doing. The wholesomenss of Kovic’s childhood leaves neither him nor the viewer prepared for what’s going to happen in Vietnam.

Vietnam turns out not to be the grand and patriotic adventure that Kovic thought it would be. After Sgt. Kovic accidentally shoots one of his own men in a firefight, he is ordered to keep quiet about the incident. After he is wounded and paralyzed in another firefight, Kovic ends up in a Hellish VA hospital, surrounded by men who will never fully recover from their mental and physical wounds. Kovic is eventually returns home in wheelchair. The film then follows Kovic as he goes from defending the war in Vietnam to eventually turning against both the war and the government. At one point, he ends up with a group of disabled vets in Mexico and there’s a memorable scene where he and another paraplegic (Willem Dafoe) attempt to fight despite having fallen out of their chairs. Eventually, Kovic returns to America and turns his anger into activism.

There’s nothing subtle about Born On The Fourth Of July. It’s a loud and angry film and Oliver Stone directs with a heavy-hand. Like a lot of Stone’s films, it overwhelms the viewer on a first viewing and it’s only during subsequent viewings that one becomes aware of just how manipulative the film is. Tom Cruise gives a good performance as Ron Kovic but his transformation into a long-haired, profane drunk still feels as if it happens a bit too abruptly. A good deal of the film centers on Kovic’s guilt about accidentally killing one of his men but the scene where he goes to the soldier’s family and asks them for forgiveness didn’t quite work for me. If anything, Kovic came across as being rather self-centered as he robs the man’s mother and father of the belief that their son had at least died heroically in combat as opposed to having been shot by his own sergeant. Did Kovic’s need to absolve himself really give him the right to cause this family more pain? Born on the Fourth Of July is an effective work of agitprop. On the first viewing, you’ll want to join Kovic in denouncing the military and demanding peace. On the second viewing, you’ll still sympathize with Kovic while also realizing that he really owes both his mother and father an apology for taking out his anger on them. By the third viewing, you’ll be kind of like, “Wow, I feel bad for this guy but he’s still kind of a jerk.” That said, when it comes to making an effective political film, Adam McKay could definitely take some lessons from Oliver Stone. Born On The Fourth of July is at its best when it simply captures the feeling of living in turmoil and discovering that the world is not as simple a place as you once believed. As idealized as the film’s presentation of Kovic’s childhood may be, anyone who has ever felt nostalgia for an earlier and simpler world will be able to relate.

Oliver Stone won his second Best Director Oscar for Born On The Fourth Of July. The film itself lost Best Picture to far more genteel version of the past, Driving Miss Daisy.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.12 “Phil the Shill”

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

The Vice Squad goes after Phil Collins!

Episode 2.11 “Phil the Shill”

(Dir by John Nicolella, originally aired on December 13th, 1985)

Switek and Zito call in sick so that they can go to the taping of a silly game show called Rat Race. While Zito sits in the audience, Switek answers trivia questions about Elvis and competes in an obstacle course race with his spacey opponent (Emo Phillips). Hosting the show is the very effusive and very British Phil Mayhew (Phil Collins).

As we already know, Switek knows everything about Elvis. And he’s in better shape than Emo Phillips so, when it comes time for the obstacle course, he reaches and hits his buzzer first. But Switek’s buzzer doesn’t go off. Emo’s buzzer works and Emo proceeds to robotically recite a complex string of Elvis trivia.

To his horror, Switek realizes that the quiz show was fixed!

Switek and Zito decide that they want to take down Phil and reveal his con artist ways. Unfortunately, for them, the rest of the Squad doesn’t care. Crockett, in particular, is annoyed that Switek pretended to be sick to get a night off of work. However, it then turns out that Phil has hooked up with Sarah MacPhail (Kyra Sedgwick), the girlfriend and business partner of Tony Rivers (Michael Margotta), a drug dealer that Crockett has spent months trying to set up.

It’s time to call in Izzy and have him pretend to be an interior decorator so that Phil can be tricked into throwing a party that can be attended by …. SONNY BURNETT AND RICO COOPER! Listen, I know I mention that a lot but I just can’t let it go …. how are Sonny and Rico able to maintain their undercover identities when they’re constantly arresting major drug dealers and taking part in DEA busts? How come it never occurs to the criminals that dealer Sonny Burnett might have something in common with cop Sonny Crockett? Does no one ever notice that Sonny Burnett drives the same car and wears the same white suit as Sonny Crockett?

This was a bit of an odd episode. It was obviously written so that Phil Collins (whose In The Air Tonight set the mood for the entire series) could play Phil Mayhew. And while Phil Collins does not appear to have been an actor of amazing range, he still does a good job as the weaselly Phil Mayhew. The Phil scenes are played for humor while the scenes with Tony Rivers definitely are not. Tony is a violent sociopath who casually kills several people over the course of the episode. Scenes of Switek pouting about the game show feel awkward when combined with scenes of Tony machine gunning two drug dealers. Collins does a good job within his range and Michael Margotta is an energetic villain. However, the best performance in this episode actually comes from Kyra Sedgwick, who does a great job as someone who eventually turns out to be just as ruthless and dangerous her boyfriend.

This is a fast-paced and energetic episode, one that moves quickly enough that the viewer doesn’t really have time to consider the oddness of Phil Mayhew getting involved with the same drug dealer that Crockett happens to be investigating. Personally, I’m always happy when the members of the supporting cast get to do something more than just stand in the background. Switek and Zito are a good team.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Story of a Girl (dir by Kyra Sedgwick)

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 163 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on February 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only have a month to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded Story of a Girl off of Lifetime on July 23rd, 2017!)

Michael (Kevin Bacon) owns a pizza place in a small town. He’s just hired 16 year-old Deanna Lambert (Ryann Shane) to work for him over summer. Deanna shows up for her first day of work. Deanna apologizes for being late. Michael points out that he has no costumers so it doesn’t matter. Michael then introduces Deanna to his other employee, Tommy (Tyler Johnston). Deanna looks shocked. Tommy looks shocked.

“You two know each other?” Michael asks.

“In the biblical sense,” Tommy replies.

And so it goes from there…

Seriously, what was I doing on July 23rd that kept me from watching Story of a Girl? Was I watching a shark movie on SyFy? I do remember that Story of a Girl was very aggressively advertised in the days leading up to its premiere and I did actually mean to watch it. I’ve read the Sara Zarr penned book on which it was based and the commercials made it look fairly good. Add to that, it was directed by Kyra Sedgwick and co-starred Kevin Bacon and they seem like such a nice couple that I was naturally hoping it would be a good movie.

Three years ago, a sex video featuring 13 year-old Deanna and 17 year-old Tommy went viral. While Tommy (who, as Michael points out, was committing a felony) suffers not a single bit for taking advantage of his best friend’s younger sister, Deanna is branded a slut and sent into social exile. Her father, Ray (Jon Tenney), refuses to forgive her. Tensions at home are exasperated by the presence of Deanna’s brother, Darren (Iain Belcher), his girlfriend, Stacey (Sosie Bacon), and their baby. Darren and Stacey are planning on moving into a place of their own and Deanna is planning on going with them.

Though it may not be obvious from that plot description, Story a Girl is not a typical Lifetime film. It takes place in a thoroughly blue-collar milieu and the Lamberts live in perhaps the ugliest, most cluttered house that I’ve ever seen. Between that house and Ray acting like an asshole 24/7, it’s easy to understand why Deanna wants to get away from these people. The problem, however, is that, after only a few minutes, most viewers will be desperate to get out of there as well. And, unlike Deanna, viewers actually have a way of doing that. They can just change the channel. The film does have a good and important message but the characters are all so off-putting that a good deal of the audience probably won’t stick around to hear it.

Story of a Girl is a disappointingly superficial film. The Juno influence is obvious but Story of a Girl never comes to life in the same way that Juno did. Kevin Bacon is solid as Michael and Ryann Shane does a passable Ellen Page impersonation but everyone else is trapped in a film that’s long on plot but short on depth. I really wanted to like Story of a Girl but I just didn’t.

Film Review: Cop Car (dir by Jon Watts)

Posted on August 29, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cop Car opens with two young boys, Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) walking through a field. Over the course of the film, we really don’t learn that much about either Travis or Harrison. They speak in the tones and accent of childhood and the trailer park. They’re just two ordinary kids, who appear to be bored out of their mind and who can blame them because it appears that they live out in the middle of nowhere.

And then, suddenly, their boredom ends.

They comes across a deserted cop car sitting in the middle of the wilderness. After a successive number of dares, they end up inside of the car. And then, they discover that the keys are still in the car as well. Soon, Harrison and Travis are taking turns driving the car, roaring down the highway, nearly running an irate motorist (Camryn Manheim) off the road and basically having a great time.

What the kids don’t know is that the cop car belonged to Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon), a grim-faced lawman who isn’t going to allow two little kids to make a fool out of him. Even while Harrison and Travis are playing around in the car, Kretzer is pursuing them. Along the way, Kretzer is reduced to stealing a truck, gets stopped for speeding, and basically sacrifices any ounce of personal dignity that he may have. Along the way, cars crash and cows are nearly run over.

And it all sounds like the making of a comedy, doesn’t it? Just from reading the plot description, you might be justified in thinking that Cop Car is a white trash version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Well, make no mistake. Cop Car has its funny moments but it is definitely not a comedy. Sheriff Kretzer may occasionally be a bit of a bumbling adversary but he is no Principal Rooney. Instead, Kretzer is a vicious and effective killer.

The reason Kretzer was away from his car is that he was busy burying a body in the woods. And what the kids don’t realize, at first, is that there’s another body in the trunk of the car. Kretzer is determined to get back his cop car and he’s willing to kill the boys to do it. Even worse, Kretzer’s badge and uniform give him both the ability and the authority to do so.

There’s one particularly effective scene where Harrison and Travis playing with the weapons that Kretzer left in the car is juxtaposed with Kretzer pouring a baggie of cocaine into a toilet. But, at the same time, I almost wish that the whole drug dealing subplot had been left out of the film. When we first meet Kretzer, he’s scary precisely because his motives are unknowable. He’s an authoritarian with a badge, and a bad mustache. The more specific the film gets about Kretzer’s motivations, the less interesting he becomes. Imagine if Kretzer has simply been an unstoppable force of wounded machismo, motivated by nothing more than his belief that his law is the only law that matters. By making Kretzer a criminal as well as a cop, Cop Car dilutes its otherwise strong critique of the pro-authoritarian strain that currently runs through American culture.

As a thriller and chase film, Cop Car works pretty well, though the first half is significantly better than the second. (The second half gets a little bogged down with the man in the trunk.) Director Jon Watts keeps the film moving at a good pace and he shows that he knows how to generate suspense. There’s a lengthy and narratively risky scene where Kretzer repeatedly tries and fails to pick a lock but the scene pays off in the end and Watts deserves some credit for having faith in the patience of his audience.

But really, Cop Car works largely because Kevin Bacon has become a national treasure. It’s always fun to watch him throw himself into playing off-center roles like Sheriff Kretzer. Bacon is smart enough to play up Kretzer’s stupidity without ever downplaying his dangerous and cunning nature. It’s a great performance in a pretty good film.

Film Review: Man on a Ledge (dir. Asger Leth)

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The newly released film Man on a Ledge is about a man (played by Sam Worthington) who checks into a hotel room in New York City and then climbs out on a ledge and threatens to jump off unless a specific hostage negotiator is brought in to talk him off the ledge. We quickly discover that Worthington isn’t just a depressed jumper. Instead, he’s got a really lengthy and overly complicated back story. It turns out that he’s a former detective who used to moonlight for a venture capitalist and then one day, he was accused of stealing a priceless diamond and destroying it. This resulted in him getting sentenced to 25 years in prison but when his father is reported to have died, Worthington is released from jail for a day so he can attend the funeral. So, Worthington escapes and then ends up out on a ledge as part of a massively complicated plan to prove his innocence. His name, by the way, is Nick because people named Alvin are never the stars of action movies.

Meanwhile, the cop that Nick demands to speak with is a hardened, veteran hostage negotiator and she’s played by Elizabeth Banks. Yes, you read that correctly. Anyway, Nick asks for her because he knows that the last guy she tried to talk out of jumping apparently jumped off a bridge. Since Banks failed her last time out, her efforts to talk Nick off the ledge are cautiously observed by another detective, this one played by Edward Burns. Banks is totally and completely miscast here and she has next to no chemistry with Sam Worthington. However, she does have really good chemistry with Edward Burns. Seriously, they would make a really cute couple and I would buy any issue of Us Weekly that had them on the cover.

Meanwhile, the guy that Nick is accused of stealing from just happens to be in a building across the street where he’s conducting some sort of generically evil business deal. He’s a painfully thin, almost sickly man and, whenever he was on screen, I found myself wondering how his head managed to stay balanced on his body. At first, I thought maybe it was the Red Skull waiting for the sequel to Capt. America to start filming. However, on closer inspection, he turned out to be respected character actor Ed Harris. In this film, Harris plays a ruthless capitalist who would have gone bankrupt if not for the insurance money he got as a result of Nick supposedly destroying that diamond. Anyway, Harris appears to be enjoying playing a bad guy and he’s so over-the-top in his evil that you don’t really mind that he’s another one of those “I-should-kill-you-now-but-first-we-talk” type of villains.

Meanwhile, there’s two other people who are taking advantage of all the chaos caused by the man on the ledge to break into Harris’s building. They’re played by Jamie Bell (who looks a lot like Casey Affleck in this film) and telenova veteran Genesis Rodriguez. As you watch Bell and Rodriguez sliding down heating ducts and scaling elevator shafts, you can’t help but marvel at just how overly complicated everyone is making things. Still, Bell and Rodriguez have a lot of chemistry and they’re fun to watch.

Meanwhile, NYC television reporter (played by Kyra Sedgwick) is running around the streets of New York, asking random bystanders how they feel about the prospect of Nick jumping. Apparently, she is an old enemy of Elizabeth Banks’ though that whole plot line is dropped as soon as its brought up. Still, the audience in my theater chuckled when Sedgwick dramatically rolled her r’s while introducing herself as “Suzie Morales.”

Meanwhile, there’s a bearded guy watching Nick up on the roof and he suddenly decides to go all Occupy Wall Street on the movie’s ass and starts shouting, “Attica! Attica!” before then blaming it all on the 1%. Unfortunately, he doesn’t put on Guy Fawkes mask at any point during all of this.

Meanwhile, the entire city of New York is obsessed with the man on the ledge and, if nothing else, they all end up acting exactly the way that people who have never been to New York City (like me) assume that people in New York act. By that, I mean all the extras are all like, “Yo, Paulie! There’s some man on a ledge! Stop breaking my balls!”

Meanwhile, there’s one final twist to the film’s plot that I can’t share without spoiling the film. So, I’ll just say that it involved someone working at the hotel and I figured out the twist about 3 minutes after this character first appeared. This is one of those twists that if you can’t figure out on your own then you need to hang your head in shame. Seriously.

This film packs a lot of plot into 90 minutes of screen time and, not surprisingly, the end result is a bit of a mess. This is one of those films where every single character attempts to solve his or her problems in the most needlessly complicated and implausible way possible. Still, almost despite myself, I enjoyed Man on a Ledge. It’s just all so silly and stupid that it becomes oddly likable. The film also has two nicely done chase scenes and some of the scenes where Nick attempts to manuever about on the ledge made me go, “Agck!”

Seriously, I don’t do heights.

Review: Gamer (dir. by Neveldine/Taylor)

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Arleigh

No one will ever mistake the writer-director duo of Neveldine/Taylor (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) as the next Coen Brothers, but they definitely have made their mark in creating entertaining films which some have called exploitative, pandering to the lowest common denominator and exercises in excess. Maybe these critics are right, but they also seem to view the films by these two filmmakers through the narrow-minded lens of their elistist and so-called cineaste sensibilities. They won’t be the next Coen Brothers but they’re way ahead of other so-called filmmaker duos such as The Spierig Brothers (Undead and the pretentious and awful Daybreakers) or The Strause Brothers (AvP: Requiem and the awful Skyline). They came onto the scene with their cult classic action thrillers Crank and it’s sequel, Crank: High Voltage.

Their third film took the gaming influences so inherent in their first two films (which for all intents and purpose were video games that happened to be film) and went the next step. Gamer is all about a near-future world where two games with on-line social media foundations have become the rage of the entertainment world. One is a game called “Society” that looks to be the nightmare evolution of privacy advocates everywhere to the on-line virtual world Second Life and The Sims. It is the other game in this film which makes up the foundation of the film’s plot. “Slayers” takes the ultra-popular multiplayer on-line experiences of games such as Call of Duty and HALO to the next level by allowing gamers to actually control real people (inmates sentenced to death) to act as their avatars in a real-life battlefield arena with real weapons and real deaths.

These games which have become the obsession of hundreds of millions of people worldwide are the brainchild of the film’s antagonist. Michael C. Hall plays the creator of these games and his performance looks to combine the sociopathic charm of his Dexter character with that of Steve Jobs is the latter was openly honest about his douchebag tendencies. Playing his opposite is the character of Kable who happens to be the reigning champion of the game Slayers and who knows a secret that could tear down the billion-dollar empire created by Castle. Gerard Butler plays the desperate but very capable inmate Kable who just wants to survive past the final match and earn his freedom thus return to his wife and young daughter on the outside.

Gamer posits the question of how far are we willing to go to experience realism in our games and entertainment. With the game Society people pay to be able to control other people in a social setting (albeit in a controlled area). These so-called avatars will do anything and everything their real-life controllers tell them to do. In the film these avatars get paid to become virtual slaves and with most people signing up for the job being the socially desperate. Their situation is not so dissimilar from the condemned inmates who populate the game Slayers. The film hits the audience with a sledgehammer that these virtual entertainments have become popular worldwide because people have stopped looking at these “volunteers” as real people. Morality has been replaced by the need for instant gratification by way of these virtual on-line systems.

The film doesn’t make any apologies for the heavyhanded delivery of it’s message and also doesn’t skimp on the entertainment side of the equation. Neveldine/Taylor have shown that they have a certain flair for creating visual chaos and action on the screen. Their unique visual style does look like something out of a video game especially those from hyperrealistic shooters such as Call of Duty and its ilk. The filmmakers have always accomplished the high-quality visual look of their films despite the low to modest budget given to them by the studios they’re working for. Gamer is no exception and the film benefits from the decision by these two filmmakers to continue working with the Red One digital cameras thus allowing them to add in the visual effects right into the shot scenes the very same day of shooting.

It’s this very style of hi-tech guerrilla filmmaking which makes Neveldine/Taylor this current era’s Cormans. Unlike most low-budget filmmakers they don’t use the size of their budget to dictate how their films turn out visually, aurally and narratively. The first two this film succeeds in ways that makes an audience think the film was higher budgeted than it really was. The third would depend on the viewer whether the film succeeds or not. For those who seem intent on viewing every film as if they were made to be worthy of high awards and accolades would probably dismiss and hate this piece of exploitation cinema. Gamer succeeds in a narrative sense because it delivers on the promise of telling a story about a world where free will has been seconded to control in the need of a population in search of a the next virtual playground. It’s a heady premise that has been explored in past films such as the Matrix Trilogy and another film similar to this one which came out weeks later in Surrogates.

Gamer doesn’t have the philosophical and existential sermoning in combination with futuristic action sequences as the Wachowski Brothers’ trilogy, but it does have the same visceral action DNa as those three films and also more entertaining than the Bruce Willis vehicle Surrogates. This film will appeal to the very people who it condemns as sheep to the rising tide of on-line control in entertainment, but then that’s what all exploitation films tend to do best. Cater to the very people it uses as examples of what’s wrong in society and build an entertaining film around them and what they represent.

The film’s cast revolves around Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall and the roles they play. Whether its Amber Valletta playing Kable’s desperate wife who has sold herself to become a controllable avatar in Society to try and earn enough to get her young daughter back or to Logan Lerman playing the role of Simon the gamer who controls Kable during the Slayer matches. They all do enough with their roles to keep their characters from becoming less than one-notes. Again, for some having a film with characters that are quite basic and one-note might make for a bad film, but when put into context of the story being told they’re quite good and needed to become motivators for Butler’s character.

In the end, Neveldine/Taylor have made a modern day exploitation and grindhouse film in Gamer without having to resort to the visual tricks used in the Rodriguez/Tarantino grindhouse homage film Grindhouse. A film doesn’t need to have film scratches, overexposed film stock, scratchy audio track or missing film reels to be grindhouse. It just have to espouse the very nature of the films which made up the kind of films which became prime example of grindhouse/exploitation cinema. Gamer won’t win any awards, but I suspect that more people who saw it were entertained by it’s blatant, in-your-face entertainment than would normally admit to it. It’s a film that has cult status and guilty pleasure written all over it.

Plus, this film is definitely worth at least a curiosity viewing if just to see the musical number performed by Michael C. Hall at the climactic sequence near the end of the film. I don’t think any film has ever combined gratuitous violence, musical dance numbers using bloodied death row inmates and Michael C. Hall singing Frank Sinatra’s “Ive Got You Under My Skin“. That sequence alone is worth a rental or Netflix Instant streaming.