Tag Archives: Miguel Fernandes

Brad reviews FAMILY OF COPS (1995), starring Charles Bronson!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Legendary actor Charles Bronson ended his five-decade career by starring in a series of made-for-TV movies, FAMILY OF COPS (1995), BREACH OF FAITH: A FAMILY OF COPS II (1997), and FAMILY OF COPS III: UNDER SUSPICION (1999). I was in my mid-twenties as this series played out, and I enjoyed each of the installments. Today, I’m going to take a look at the first in the series.

In FAMILY OF COPS, Charles Bronson stars as Police Inspector Paul Fein. Paul, a widower as we enter this story, leads a family who is heavily involved in law enforcement in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His oldest son Ben (Daniel Baldwin) is a detective on the force. Ben is a family man in a loving marriage with several wild kids. Paul’s younger son Eddie (Sebastian Spence) is a patrol cop. Eddie’s single, has a beautiful girlfriend, and seems to be a nice guy with a well-adjusted life. Paul’s oldest daughter Kate (Barbara Williams) is a local public defender. She seems to be dedicated to her work, not leaving much time for a social life. And then there’s Paul’s youngest daughter Jackie (Angela Featherstone), who has moved out to California and refers to herself as “the family curse.” This story opens with Jackie reluctantly coming back to Milwaukee to attend her dad’s birthday party. All Paul wants for his birthday is for his family to be together. We soon learn that neither Ben or Kate care much for Jackie and her irresponsible life choices. As a matter of fact, the reason she ran off to California in the first place was to get out from under her family’s disapproval. It’s not long after she gets back that the family wishes she would have stayed away. Sneaking out of her sister’s house late at night to drink and party, she meets the prominent local businessman Adam Novacek (Simon MacCorkindale), eventually going to his home and engaging in sexual intercourse. Sadly, the next morning she wakes up to Novacek’s recently deceased corpse, and she’s arrested as the prime suspect in his murder. Convinced of her innocence, Paul, Ben, and Eddie set about trying to clear her name and find the real murderer. Besides Jackie, other suspects begin to emerge, including Novacek’s current wife Anna (Lesley-Anne Down), his former wife Laura (Kate Trotter), who’s now confined to a looney bin, and a local gangster named Frank Rampola (John Vernon), who has a vendetta against Paul for recently busting his grandson. How far will Paul Fein go to protect his family in his search for a killer?!!

FAMILY OF COPS is a perfect example of what I would refer to as entertainment for the “older person crowd,” and I don’t mean this as a put-down in any way as I enjoyed the movie. I just mean that it fits a type of entertainment that was popular in the 80’s and 90’s. These types of shows would depend greatly on the charisma or reputation of a veteran actor or actress, would contain simple production values, and would usually follow formulaic plots. Examples of the types of shows I’m referring to include MURDER, SHE WROTE with Angela Lansbury, MATLOCK with Andy Griffith, DIAGNOSIS MURDER with Dick Van Dyke, and WALKER: TEXAS RANGER with Chuck Norris. A combination of my dad, mom and grandma loved all of these shows. I’m a big fan of MATLOCK myself. In this case, FAMILY OF COPS leans heavily on Charles Bronson’s five decades as a tough guy icon to anchor a somewhat formulaic crime film and family melodrama. The role of Paul Fein fits a 73-year-old Bronson like a glove. He’s still in good physical shape, and the movie gives him a couple of opportunities to punch the shit out of some much younger thugs and henchmen. That was fun for me.

The supporting cast of the film is solid. Daniel Baldwin and Angela Featherstone make the biggest impact. Baldwin is good as the oldest son, a hothead, tough guy on the job who is constantly being humbled at home. Featherstone has the most beautiful eyes, and her rebellious character seems to have a good heart, but she just can’t seem to keep herself out of trouble. Paul Fein’s love for his troubled daughter Jackie is a sweet part of the story and provides something that most of us can relate to. She told me that she “loved Charles,” and I think you can see that in their scenes together. Sebastian Spence and Barbara Williams don’t have a lot to do in this first installment, but their characters will get their own moments to shine in the sequels. I also enjoy seeing John Vernon and Lesley Anne-Down show up in the movie as various persons of interest throughout the story. Bronson and Lesley Anne-Down had recently worked together in DEATH WISH V: THE FACE OF DEATH (1994) and were reportedly good friends in real life. Ted Kotcheff directed FAMILY OF COPS, which I find kind of disappointing. The same guy who directed movies like NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979) and FIRST BLOOD (1982) didn’t bring anything special to the table in this film. I know it’s a modestly budgeted made-for-TV movie, but the best that can be said for the direction is that it’s workmanlike, and you would never suspect that the director had once helmed the original Rambo movie.

Ultimately, I enjoy FAMILY OF COPS because it stars Charles Bronson. Even as an older man, Bronson still dominates a scene, and the ratings success of the movie proved that Bronson still had an audience who wanted to see him on screen. And even though the story isn’t very unique and the central mystery isn’t very exciting, just the fact that Bronson is leading a solid story that includes action, crime, mystery and family melodrama will always provide some moments of joy for his fans like me. This is far from Bronson’s best work, but the old workhorse still knows how to entertain!

TRUE BELIEVER -James Woods & Robert Downey, Jr. take on the system!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’ve been going through my movies and re-watching some of my favorites. A movie that clearly falls into that category is TRUE BELIEVER starring James Woods and Robert Downey, Jr. I became a fan of James Woods around 1988 primarily based on the strength of two action films that he worked on around that time, those being BEST SELLER (1987) and COP (1988). I spent hours combing through the rental selections at our local Hastings Entertainment store and I remember both of these movies being in the “New Release” section at the same time. They’re both hard hitting, violent films, and Woods is especially good in both. Being an obsessive completist, I found myself searching out the prior work of the star for some more good movies. It was during this time that TRUE BELIEVER was released to the theaters in February of 1989. I enjoy courtroom dramas, and knowing the intensity that Woods brings to his films, I had no doubt I would like it.

The story revolves around Eddie Dodd (Woods), an attorney who used to fight for the cause of the little guy, but now mostly finds himself protecting drug dealers from the law. Enter Roger Baron (Downey Jr.), a recent law school graduate who idolizes Dodd, and is now disappointed to see his legal hero reduced to his current cynical state. When a Korean mother comes into the law offices one day and says her son, Shu Kai Kim, has spent 8 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, cynical Dodd doesn’t want to take the case. Young Baron shames him into it though, and soon the two men find themselves taking on the New York District Attorney himself Robert Reynard (Kurtwood Smith) as they try to prove Shu Kai Kim’s innocence and help him taste freedom once more!

Often when people ask me to name my favorite James Woods film, I’ll quickly answer TRUE BELIEVER even though there are many good films to choose from. There are a few reasons for that. First, even though the film is a serious legal thriller with many dark undertones, director Joseph Ruben has given his movie a dark sense of humor. Woods and Downey, Jr. are able to find the humorous elements inherent in their characters and that brings some fun to the otherwise serious proceedings. Second, I really enjoy the story of underdogs taking on the big, bad system. Shu Kai Kim is an underdog who maintains his innocence when all the evidence appears flawlessly stacked against him. Eddie Dodd, the once feared civil rights lawyer who is now a hopeless burnout, is an underdog who appears to be out of his league as he goes up against the most powerful attorney in New York. These underdog story lines give us something to really root for as the story plays out. And finally, the performances are phenomenal from top to bottom. James Woods, an actor known for his electric intensity, is at the top of his game and Kurtwood Smith is a great adversary. Robert Downey, Jr. brings a bright-eyed enthusiasm to the role that compliments the cynical Woods nicely. And Yuji Okumoto as Shu Kai Kim shows us quite a transformation from a man who goes from almost being dead inside as a result of his eight years in prison, to a man who allows a glimmer of hope to seep in for a second chance. I think Okumoto is great in the role. The story takes many twists and turns and I enjoy every moment as it plays out.

TRUE BELIEVER is definitely one of my favorites!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th 1.12 “Faith Healer”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, David Cronenberg directs a story about a cursed glove.

Episode 1.12 “Faith Healer”

(Dir by David Cronenberg, originally aired on February 8th, 1988)

After being absent for the last few episodes, Jack has returned to the antique shop and he’s back just in time to investigate a faith healer named Stewart Fishoff (Miguel Fernandes).

Fishoff started his career as a phony evangelist, one who was exposed by one of Jack’s friends, Jerry Scott (Robert A. Silverman).  However, Fishoff is back and now, it appears that he truly does have the power to heal the sick.  Jack can’t help but notice that Fishoff is now wearing a white glove, one that was purchased from the store.  The glove can take away someone’s illness but then it then passes on that illness to the next person that it touches.  With Micki busy researching the store’s history and Ryan suffering from a cold, Jack pays a visit to Jerry to plot how to get back the glove.

The problem is that Jerry wants the glove for himself and he’s willing to kill not only Fishoff but also Jack to get it.

Faith Healer was directed by David Cronenberg, one of the many prominent Canadian horror filmmakers who directed an episode or two of this show.  Not surprisingly, the episode is full of visually striking images, from Fishoff’s church and the member of his cult to the scenes of suddenly sickened skin erupting and then rotting away.  Indeed, if you watched this episode and somehow missed the directorial credit, you would still be able to guess that it came from the mind of David Cronenberg.  It’s full of moody Cronenbergian images and themes, as the rational skepticism of Jerry goes to war with the faith of Fishoff’s cult and both turn out to be equally destructive.  A good deal of this episode focused on showing how both Fishoff and Jerry were seduced by the cursed glove and its promise of power.  If you’ve ever wondered why everyone on this show is so quick to use the antiques for evil, this episode seems to suggest that the antiques are a bit like a powerful drug.  Once you give in to the temptation, the addiction quickly follows.

This episode was well-acted by both Cronenberg regular Robert A. Silverman and Chris Wiggins.  Silverman turns Jerry into a compelling villain, one who falls victim to the same dark magic that he previously made a career out of debunking.  This episode ends with Jack in a particularly dark place and Chris Wiggins does a great job of capturing Jack’s disillusionment.  As Jack points out, all of his friends are either evil or dead or both!  This episode explores the pain that comes from both owning the antiques and tracking them down.

Next week: Micki and Ryan travel in time to pursue a vampire!

Film Review: Gridlock (dir by Sandor Stern)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jake Gorsky is a tough New York cop who flies a helicopter and who gets results …. HIS WAY! He’s also played by David Hasselhoff and, as a result, you never look at him and really buy the idea that he’s a tough New York cop who gets results …. HIS WAY! Instead, you just assume that he’s the Hoff, cheerfully making his way through yet another silly made-for-TV movie.

In Gridlock, criminals have blown up all of the bridges leading out of Manhattan! The entire borough is gridlocked! Why would they do this? Are they hoping to make a quasi-philosophical statement, like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises? No, of course not. (That, to be honest, didn’t even make sense when Bane did it.) Instead, it’s all a part of a plot to rob the Federal Reserve. How are they going to escape if they’ve blown up all the bridges out of town? That question is never really answered, or if it was, I was too blinded by the Hoffness of it all to notice. I assume that Mr. One (Miguel Ferandes) and Mr. Two (Gotz Otto) have a plan. I assume that there’s also a reason why almost all of the bad guys are bald. For that matter, many members of the police are bald as well. You know who isn’t bald? The Hoff.

Anyway, it turns out that the Hoff’s girlfriend, Michelle (Kathy Ireland), works in the Federal Reserve. She gives tours to tourists who presumably flock to New York to see “where they keep all the money.” Michelle is trapped in the building while the robbery is taking place. It’s up to the Hoff to sneak into the building, rescue Michelle, and prevent the robbery. This leads to a scene where the Hoff uses two bags of nickels to take out some henchmen. Woo hoo!

Of course, while watching this film, you have to wonder how the crooks possibly thought they could get away with robbing the Federal Reserve. I mean, let’s just ignore the fact that they blew up all the bridges out of town. How are you going to launder that much money? We’ve all seen Breaking Bad. We all know Walter White ended up with a pile of money that he essentially could never touch. It’s hard not to feel that it would have been smarter for these crooks to just rob an ordinary bank. It also seems like there should have been a simpler way to commit their crimes than to blow up every bridge in Manhattan. How can these criminals be so smart and so dumb at the same time?

That said, you’re not really watching a film like this for the criminals or even the plot. You’re watching it because it features David Hasselhoff doing his thing. I wouldn’t exactly describe David Hasselhoff as being an actor with a particularly wide range but, when it comes to projecting an odd combination of earnest sincerity and mocking self-awareness, it’s hard to think of anyone who does it better. Much like William Shatner, the Hoff always leaves you wondering whether or not he’s actually in on the joke. Did David Hasselhoff realize he was appearing in a silly Die Hard rip-off (“Die Hard in an office building …. wait a minute, that’s just Die Hard!”) or did he earnestly call his agent and say, “Baywatch isn’t challenging anymore. I want to play a copy who doesn’t always follow the rules!” One gets the feeling that both possibilities are true.

Anyway, Gridlock is a made-for-TV movie from the 90s, which means no blood and no cursing. A lot of guns are fired but hardly anyone gets shot. I’ll give it a 6 out of 10, just for the Hasselhoff of it all.

Horror Film Review: Ghost Story (dir by John Irvin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

ghoststory

A Fred Astaire horror movie!?

Yes, indeed.  Ghost Story is a horror movie and it does indeed star Fred Astaire.  However, Fred doesn’t dance or anything like that in Ghost Story.  This movie was made in 1981 and Fred was 82 years old when he appeared in it.  Fred still gave an energetic and likable performance and, in fact, his performance is one of the few things that really does work in Ghost Story.

Fred Astaire isn’t the only veteran of Hollywood’s Golden Age to appear in Ghost Story.  Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. all appear in the movie as well.  They play four lifelong friends, wealthy men who have formed an informal little club called The Chowder Society.  They gather one a week and tell ghost stories.  Myself, I’m wondering why these four intelligent and accomplished men (one is a lawyer, another a doctor, another a politician, and another is Fred Astaire) couldn’t come up with a better name than Chowder Society.

(But I guess that’s something that people do up north.  Harvard has something called the Hasty Pudding Club, which just sounds amazingly annoying.)

Unfortunately, the members of the Chowder Society have a deep, dark secret.  Way back in the 1930s, the boys listening to too much jazz and they all ended up lusting after the mysterious and beautiful Eva Galli (Alice Krige).  As Astaire explains it, “We killed her, the Chowder Society.”

(Of course, there’s more to the story.  It was more manslaughter than murder but either way, it was pretty much the fault of the Chowder Society.)

And now, decades later, a woman named Alma (Alica Krige, again) has mysteriously appeared.  When she sleeps with David (Craig Wasson), the son of a member of the Chowder Society, David falls out of a window and ends up splattered on the ground below.  David’s twin brother, Don (also played by Craig Wasson), returns to their childhood home and attempts to make peace with his estranged father.

However, now the member of the Chowder Society are starting to die.  One falls off a bridge.  Another has a heart attack in the middle of the night.  Fred Astaire thinks that Eva has come back for revenge.  John Houseman is a little more skeptical…

I pretty much went into Ghost Story with next to no knowledge concerning what the film was about.  I thought the plot desription sounded intriguing.  As a classic film lover, I appreciated that Ghost Story was not only Fred Astaire’s final film but the final film of Douglas and Fairbanks as well.  Before he deleted his account, I had some pleasant interactions with Craig Wasson on Facebook.   I was really hoping that Ghost Story would be a horror classic.

Bleh.

Considering all the talent involved, Ghost Story should have been great but instead, it just fell flat.  Alice Krige is properly enigmatic as both Alma and Galli and really, the entire cast does a pretty good job.  But, with the exception of exactly three scenes, the film itself is never that scary.  (Two of those scary scenes involve a decaying corpse and it’s not that hard to make decay scary.  The other is a fairly intense nightmare sequence.)  Largely due to John Irvin’s detached direction, you never really feel any type of connection with the characters.  I mean, obviously, you don’t want to see the star of Top Hat die a terrible death but that has more to do with the eternal charm of Fred Astaire than anything that happens in Ghost Story.

Add to that, Ghost Story‘s special effects have aged terribly.  There are two scenes in which we watch different characters fall to their death and both times, you can see that little green outline that always used to appear whenever one image was super imposed on another.  It makes it a little hard to take the movie seriously.

Sadly, Ghost Story did not live up to my expectations.  At least Fred Astaire was good…

Shattered Politics #48: The Kidnapping of the President (dir by George Mendeluk)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Kidnapping_of_the_president

Agency was not the only Canadian film to be made about American politics in 1980.  There was also The Kidnapping of the President, a low-budget political thriller that, because it has since slipped into the public domain, can currently be found in a few dozen DVD box sets.  In fact, you may very well own a copy of The Kidnapping of the President without even realizing it!

Don’t worry if you do.  The Kidnapping of the President is a fairly harmless little film.

U.S. President Adam Scott (Hal Holbrook) is visiting Toronto when he gets handcuffed to a South American revolutionary named Roberto Assanti (Miguel Fernandes).  Assanti locks President Scott in an armored car that is wired with explosives and then demands a hundred million in diamonds and two planes.  (Though the film never explicitly states it, I imagine that Assanti was primarily motivated by jealousy over the fact that Che is on a million t-shirts while Assanti remains fairly unknown.)  It’s up to secret service agent Jerry O’Connor (William Shatner) to negotiate with Assanti and rescue the President!  Meanwhile, the ethically compromised Vice President (Van Johnson) is left as acting President in Washington and struggles to keep things calm while his ambitious wife (Ava Gardner) plots for a brighter future.

Overall, the Kidnapping of the President is okay for what it is.  It’s neither exceptionally good nor memorably bad.  It just sort of is.  Hal Holbrook is always well-cast as a President and William Shatner gives a typical Shatner performance, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on how you feel about William Shatner.  And, for that matter, Miguel Fernandes is a properly unlikable villain though he never really seems to have the charisma necessary to make him believable as the dynamic leader that he’s supposed to be.

Probably the most interesting thing about The Kidnapping of the President is that it doesn’t try to pass Montreal off for being a location in the United States.  Instead, the film was not only filmed in but is actually set in Toronto as well.  When Jerry attempts to deal with the local authorities, that means that he ends up talking to a bunch of very polite men in red uniforms.

But what’s strange about this is that the people of Toronto are so excited about the arrival of the President.  You half expect to hear one extra say, “I never thought I’d live long enough to see the day that a leader that I can’t vote for and who has next to nothing to do with my everyday life would come to visit Toronto.”

Don’t get me wrong.  If you follow me on twitter, then you know that I am unashamed to declare my love for all things Canadian.  And obviously, as neighbors, Canada and the United States do have a close relationship.  But would people in Toronto really be that excited to see the President?

If so, I think we really owe the people of Canada an apology for not knowing more about their government.  At the very least, we should definitely invite Stephen Harper over for lunch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqyWEPkdxn4