Tag Archives: Movie A Day

A Movie A Day #215: Crossplot (1969, directed by Alvin Rakoff)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In swinging London, Roger Moore is ordered by Bernard Lee to track down a model  who is connected to an international conspiracy.

If you think that sounds like a James Bond movie, you’re close.  In Crossplot, which was released four years before Roger Moore took over the role of 007 in Live and Let Die, Moore plays Gary Fenn and Bernard Lee is Mr. Chilmore.  Gary is a playboy and an advertising executive while Mr. Chilmore is his latest client.  Mr. Chilmore has ordered Gary to find a model who can serve as the new “Miss Swing,” but actually, the bad guys are using Gary to try track down a beautiful Hungarian named Marla Kugash (Claudie Lange).  Kugash, the ex-girlfriend of a radical political activist, has knowledge about a conspiracy to assassinate a visiting African president.  It leads to car chases, shoot outs, and a wedding that is ruined when Gary and Marla take refuge in a church.

Crossplot was an obvious attempt to cash in on the popularity of the James Bond films.  At the time that Crossplot came out, Moore was best known for playing The Saint on television.  Crossplot was the first film that Moore made after signing a three-movie contract with United Artists and, had the film been a success, Moore would have returned in the role of Gary Fenn and it is totally possible that he would not have been available to step into Sean Connery’s shoes when Connery announced that he was finished with the role of James Bond.

However, Crossplot was not a success and it is easy to see why.  The plot was overly convoluted and it’s emphasis on “swinging” London (complete with wacky hippies) probably made Crossplot seem dated before it was even released.  It is interesting today mostly as Moore’s “audition” for the role of Bond.  Moore gives a very Bondish performance, complete with arched eyebrows and one liners.  Moore is the best thing about the movie but it is also interesting to see Bernard Lee playing a character far less savory than M.  This was also one of the many 60s Bond rip-offs to feature the beautiful Claudie Lange.  Lange, who would have made a great Bond girl if she’d been given the opportunity, retired from acting in 1973, the same year that Moore appeared in Live and Let Die.

A Movie A Day #214: Urban Justice (2007, directed by Don E. FauntLeRoy)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Steven Seagal returns and this time, he’s out for justice!  Urban justice!

After his son, a beloved Los Angeles cop, is assassinated, Simon Ballister (Seagal, of course) comes out of retirement to get revenge.  Retirement from what?  Like most of Seagal’s characters, Simon has a deadly and legendary past.  Nearly everyone who meets him says something like, “So, you’re Simon.”  Everyone wants Simon Ballister to do something for them.  El Chivo (Danny Trejo!) wants Simon to help defeat his rival, Armand Tucker (Eddie Griffin).  Armand Tucker wants to be Scarface.  Simon just wants revenge.

Much like Elvis, Steven Seagal’s career can be divided into a thin and a fat period.  Thin Steven Seagal was all over movie screens in the 90s, making up for the fact that he could not act by convincingly beating people up.  Fat Steven Seagal appears almost exclusively in direct-to-video productions.  He does everything that Thin Seagal did but he sweats a lot more while doing it.  Unfortunately, Fat Seagal is an even worse actor than Thin Seagal.  Since Fat Seagal produces almost all of his own films, there is no one around to say, “Let’s cut away from Steve during this speech, he looks stupid.”

Urban Justice is peak Fat Seagal.  It actually features more fights than the typical Fat Seagal movie but they are all edited in such a way that it is obvious that most of the blows were delivered by a stuntman while Seagal undoubtedly stood in a corner, trying to catch his breath. Since Urban Justice features Seagal in what is supposed to be the ghetto, he calls everyone that he meets, “motherfucker.”  Fat Seagal has the same Clint Eastwood-style rasp that he had when he was Thin Seagal but he still sound stupid whenever he says, “I want the motherfucker who killed my son.”

Eddie Griffin is pretty good as Armand Tucker.  I don’t know if Eddie improvised all of his dialogue but it certainly seems like he did.  All of the movie’s best lines belong to Eddie Griffin.  Just one example: “Man, fuck Santa Claus!  He never gave me shit!  That’s why I sell dope!”  As for Danny Trejo, he doesn’t do much but he’s Danny Trejo.

Personally, looking over the career of Steven Seagal, I think he made a mistake by trying to be an action hero.  It is hard to think of any other actor with as unlikable a screen presence as Steven Seagal.  If Steve had made his career playing villains, he would probably still have a good career going.  People would gladly play money to see Steven Seagal get blown up at the end of a Jason Bourne sequel.  Instead, he insisted on playing the hero and his career is now made up of appearing in direct-to-video movies and threatening to run for governor of Arizona.

To quote Clint Eastwood, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

A Movie A Day #213: Illegally Yours (1988, directed by Peter Bogdanovich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This is really bad.

Richard Dice (Rob Lowe, wearing glasses and running around like a speed freak) is a loser who lives at home with his mother (Jessica James), his younger brother (Ira Heiden), and his mother’s boyfriend (Harry Carey, Jr.).  When he gets called for jury duty, Richard thinks that he will be able to easily get out of it but then he discovers that the defendant is someone from his part, even if she does not remember a thing about him.  Ever since the first grade, Richard has been in love with Molly (Colleen Camp) and now she is on trial for murder.  Richard lies about knowing who she is and gets selected for the jury.  When it starts to look like Molly might be convicted, Richard starts to investigate the murder himself.  His investigation leads him to two teenage blackmail victims (played by Kim Myers and Bodganovich’s future wife, Louise Stratten) and a tape of the murder being committed.  Illegally Yours attempts to be a screwball comedy but it just comes across as being frantic, with Lowe especially going overboard.  The actors all speak quickly but that can not disguise how lame most of the dialogue is.  The movie also comes with a clunky narration, a sure sign of post production desperation.

Made at a time when Peter Bogdanovich was mired in an expensive lawsuit over changes made to his previous film, Mask, Bogdanovich has said that he solely did Illegally Yours because he needed the money.  Bogdanovich has accurately described Illegally Yours as being the worst film that he ever directed.  Coming from the director of At Long Last Love, Nickelodeon, and Texasville, that is saying something.

A Movie A Day #212: Fuzz (1972, directed by Richard A. Colla)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Detective Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) has just been given her new assignment and she is about to find out that there is never a dull day in the 87th Precinct.  How could there be when the precinct’s top detectives are played by Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, and Jack Weston?  Or when Boston’s top criminal mastermind is played by Yul Brynner?  There is always something happening in the 8th Precinct.  Someone is stealing stuff from the precinct house.  Someone else is attacking the city’s homeless.  Even worse, Brynner is assassinating public officials and will not stop until he is paid a hefty ransom!

Based on the famous 87th Precinct novels that Evan Hunter wrote under the name Ed McBain, Fuzz has more in common with Robert Altman’s MASH than The French Connection.  (Skerritt and Bert Remsen, who plays a policeman in Fuzz, were both members of Altman’s stock company.)  Much like Altman’s best-regarded films, Fuzz is an ensemble piece, one that mixes comedy with tragedy and which features several different storylines playing out at once.  Scenes of homeless men being set on fire are mixed with scenes of Reynolds and Weston going undercover as nuns.  (Of course, Burt does not shave his mustache.)  Since it was written by Hunter, the film’s script comes close to duplicating the feel of the 87th Precinct novels.  Unfortunately, Richard A. Colla was a television director and Fuzz feels more like an extended episode of Police Story or Hill Street Blues than a movie.  Unlike Altman’s best films, Fuzz‘s constantly shifting tone and the mix of comedy and drama often feels awkward.  Fortunately, Fuzz does feature good performances from Reynolds, Westin, Skerritt, and Brynner, along with a great 70s score from Dave Grusin.  Raquel Welch is never believable as cop but she’s Raquel Welch so who cares?

A Movie A Day #211: Deja Vu (1985, directed by Anthony B. Richmond)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Damn, son.  I’ve seen some bad movies before but Deja Vu is something else altogether.

Around the mid-80s, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus decided to prove that Cannon Films was capable of doing more than making movies about Chuck Norris refighting the war in Vietnam.  Golan and Globus had already made money, now they wanted respect.  Teaming up with respected directors (Robert Altman directed an adaptation of Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love for them) and casting actors who had slightly more range than Chuck Norris or Reb Brown, Cannon tried to go the prestige route.  Some of the Cannon’s quality movies actually were good movies.  The same year that Deja Vu came out, Cannon’s Runaway Train scored several Oscar nominations.  However, Deja Vu is a far more representative example of a Cannon prestige film.  It may have had higher production values than Missing in Action but it was still a Golan/Globus production through and through.

Nigel Terry (best known for playing King Arthur in John Boorman’s Excalibur) plays Michael, a screenwriter who views a documentary about a famous and tragic ballerina and is shocked to discover that she looks just like his actress fiancée.  (Both roles are played by Jaclyn Smith.)  Michael is even more shocked when it turns out that he looks exactly like the ballerina’s husband.  Convinced that his girlfriend is the reincarnation of the ballerina, Michael researches her life and murder.  Meanwhile, his fiancée starts to act strangely.

Deja Vu starts out a merely mediocre, slowly paced and miscast.  (There is no chemistry whatsoever between Nigel Terry and Jaclyn Smith.)  But then Shelley Winters shows up, playing a Russian psychic named Olga Nabokova. As soon as Winters started to deliver her lines in one of the least convincing Russian accents that I have ever heard, Deja Vu made the leap from being merely bad to being a cinematic trainwreck.  While Terry and Smith sleepwalk through their roles, Winters and, later, Claire Bloom (cast as the ballerina’s mother) chew up every piece of scenery that they can get their hands on.  Though the plot may be so predictable that it will cause viewers to have deja vu of their own, it must be said that, eventually, Deja Vu becomes so bad and misjudged that it is impossible to look away.  Golan and Globus may have had Oscars in their eyes when they decided to produce this prestige pic but instead, they won the laughter of anyone who comes across it on TV.

 

A Movie A Day #210: Who’s Harry Crumb? (1989, directed by Pat Flaherty)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Who’s Harry Crumb?

He is a private detective, the latest in a long line of gumshoes.  While Harry’s father and his grandfather may have been great detectives, Harry is about as incompetent as can be.  He is a self-styled master of disguise but not much else.  He is employed at Crumb & Crumb Detective Agency, solely because of his family background.  When the head of the agency, Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones), engineers the kidnapping of a millionaire’s daughter, he gives the case to Harry because he knows Harry will never be able to solve it.

Who’s Harry Crumb?

He is John Candy, the much beloved and much missed comedic actor from Canada.  As anyone who has ever seen an old episode of SCTV knows, John Candy could be one of the funniest men alive but Hollywood rarely knew what to do with him.  Other than the movies that he made with John Hughes, Candy was always stuck in either supporting roles or in bad comedies.  In Art Linson’s A Pound of Flesh, veteran film producer Linson writes that, because of Candy’s size, some Paramount executives wanted to cast him as Al Capone in The Untouchables.  That is something that I would have enjoyed seeing.  Instead, some actor named Robert De Niro got that role and Candy ended up making movies like Who’s Harry Crumb?

Who’s Harry Crumb? tries to be a mix of comedy and mystery but, due to a weak script and uncertain direction, it does not really succeed as either.  John Candy delivers a few laughs because he was a naturally funny actor but, as a character, Harry Crumb is not that interesting.  Instead, the film is stolen by Annie Potts, playing a duplicitous femme fatale.  Potts and Candy previously came close to working together in the original Ghostbusters.  (Candy pulled out of the role of Louis Tully so that he could play Tom Hanks’s brother in Splash.  He was replaced by his SCTV co-star, Rick Moranis.)  The rest of the cast seems bored and uninterested in what they are doing.  Even Jeffrey Jones, usually so reliable in smarmy bad guy roles, seems bored.

John Candy died just 5 years after the release of Who’s Harry Crumb?, leaving behind two intriguing dream projects, one a biopic of Fatty Arbuckle and another an adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces.  Sadly, Hollywood never really figured out what to do with this talented comedian.

 

A Movie A Day #209: Assassination (1987, directed by Peter R. Hunt)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Charles Bronson, man.

Long before Clint Eastwood starred in In The Line of Fire, Charles Bronson played an over the hill secret service agent in Assassination.  Having just returned to active service after a six month leave of absence, Jay Killian (Charles Bronson), thinks that he is going to be assigned back to the presidential detail.  Instead, he is given the job that no one wants.  Jay is assigned to protect the first lady, Lara Craig (Jill Ireland, Bronson’s real-life wife).

Lara is a handful.  Every one tells Killian that she is “even worse than Nancy.”  (This running joke probably played better in 1987.  If Assassination had been released ten years later, Lara would have been described as being “even worse than Hillary.”)  Lara does not like being told what she can and cannot do. When she refuses to follow Killian’s orders not to ride in a convertible, she ends up getting a black eye when a motorcycle crashes and Killian instinctively throws her to the floor.  Lara may not like Killian but when, she is targeted by a notorious terrorist (Erik Stern), she will have to learn to trust him.  Her life depends on it, especially when it becomes clear that the order to have her killed is coming from inside the White House.  It turns out that the President has been impotent for years.  That may not have troubled Lara before but now Killian is showing her that a real man looks like Charles Bronson.  A divorced president will never be reelected.  A widowed president, on the other hand…

Assassination was one of the last films that Bronson made for Cannon.  It’s never as wild as Murphy’s Law, Kinjite, or many of Bronson’s other Cannon films but it is always interesting to watch Bronson acting opposite of Ireland.  Bronson famously did not get along with many people but he loved Ireland and that was something that always came through in the 15 movies that they made together.  Whenever Bronson and Ireland acted opposite each other, Bronson actually seemed to be enjoying himself.  And while it may be subdued when compared to his other Cannon films, Assassination provides just enough scenes of Bronson being Bronson.

Who other than Bronson could tell his much younger girlfriend that, because of her, he might “die of terminal orgasm?”

Who other than Bronson could drive around a motorcycle with machine gun turrets and execute a jump that would put his old co-star Steve McQueen to shame?

Who other than Bronson could use a bazooka to kill one man and then smile about it?

Charles Bronson, man.  No offense to Bruce Willis, who will be trying to step into Bronson’s gigantic shoes with the upcoming Death Wish remake, but nobody did it better than Bronson.

 

A Movie A Day #208: War Party (1988, directed by Franc Roddam)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On the hundredth year anniversary of a battle between the U.S. Calvary and the Blackfeet Indians, the residents of small Montana town decide to reenact the battle and hopefully bring in some tourist dollars.  The white mayor (Bill McKinny) and the sheriff (Jerry Hardin) both think that it is a great idea.  Even the local Indian leader, Ben Cowkiller (Dennis Banks, in real-life a founder and leader of the American Indian Movement), thinks that it will be a worthwhile for the Indians to participate.  The Calvary’s guns will be full of blanks.  The Indians will play dead.  However, as the result of a bar brawl the previous night, one of the local rednecks, Calvin Morrisey (Kevyn Major Howard), shows up with a gun full of bullets.  After he shoots one of the Indians, Calvin ends up with a tomahawk buried in his head.  Three Indian teenagers, Warren (Tim Sampson), Skitty (Kevin Dillon), and Sonny (Billy Wirth), flee into the wilderness.  Thirsty for revenge, a white posse heads off in pursuit.

War Party is an underrated and surprisingly violent movie.   Franc Roddam brings the same sensitivity to his portrayal of alienated Indians that he brought to portraying alienated Mods in Quadrophenia.  Though, at first, Kevin Dillon seems miscast as an Indian, he, Wirth, and Sampson all give good performances, as does Dennis Banks.  The movie is often stolen by M. Emmett Walsh and Rodney A. Grant, playing renowned trackers who are brought in to help the posse chase down the three youths.  That Grant’s character is a member of the Crow adds a whole extra layer of meaning to his role. Even though the setup often feels contrived and heavy-handed and anyone watching should be able to easily guess how the movie is going to end, War Party still packs a punch.

A Movie A Day #207: Every Breath (1994, directed by Steve Bing)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jimmy (Judd Nelson) is an actor, best known for yelling in a toothpaste commercial.  However, Jimmy is a serious actor and his perfectionist attitude makes it difficult for him to even find work in commercials.  When a wealthy but impotent arms dealer named Richard (Patrick Bachau) offers to pay to watch Jimmy have sex with Richard’s wife, Lauren (Joanna Pacula), Jimmy agrees.  When Jimmy meets Lauren at a party, he introduces himself.  She walks away.  He introduces himself again.  She slaps him.  He follows her to a lesbian bar and ends up getting beaten up outside.  After all of that, he finally gets invited to accompany Lauren back to her mansion.  Suddenly, Richard emerges from the shadows, holding a gun.  He fires at Jimmy.  Jimmy screams but then discovers that the gun was full of blanks.  He has been the victim of an elaborate game, one that Richard and Lauren play every night with a constantly changing cast of victims.

At first, Jimmy is upset and humiliated.  He returns home to his clueless girlfriend (Camille Cooper) and tries to sleep it off.  But he can’t stop thinking about Lauren.  The next day, he returns to Richard and Lauren’s mansion and soon finds himself being dragged back into their games.  What Jimmy does not know is that Richard doesn’t just enjoy humiliating people.  He also likes to kill them.

Every Breath was the first and only movie to be directed by Hollywood real estate mogul, film producer, and political donor Steve Bing.  There are enough weird camera angles, dream sequences, and monologues about love and morality that it is obvious that Bing was going for something more artistic than the typical Judd Nelson direct-to-video production.  For a first time director, Bing’s direction is slick but not slick enough to make up for large plot holes and a lot of half-baked philosophical dialogue.  For all of its pretensions towards being something more, Every Breath is a typical 90s neo-noir with little to distinguish it from something like In The Cold of the Night or Body Chemistry.  As Lauren, Joanna Pacula is sultry and sexy while Patrick Bachau does a good job playing a junior grade Marquis de Sade.  As for Judd, he’s Judd Nelson, which means scenes like this:

Whenever I watch a Judd Nelson movie, I wonder what Burt Reynolds, Judd’s co-star from Shattered If Your Kid’s On Drugs, would think.

On the one hand, Every Breath is a pretentious movie about three unlikable people.

On the other hand, Joanna Pacula.

 

A Movie A Day #206: Conflict of Interest (1993, directed by Gary Davis)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Conflict of Interest is a by-the-numbers direct-to-video movie about a tough cop named Mickey who is obsessed with taking down a drug dealer and club owner named Gideon.  Mickey is a widower.  Years ago, his wife was gunned down in front of him and his son.  His son is now a teenager with a motorcycle and a mullet.  Gideon hires Mickey’s son to work at one of his clubs and then frames him for murder.  Even though his superiors order him to back off, Mickey is determined to clear his son’s name.

Why should you watch Conflict of Interest?  How about this:

That’s Judd Nelson, going heavy on the sideburns and eyeliner in the role of Gideon.  I am not sure if this movie was filmed before or after the famous “puffy shirt” episode of Seinfeld.

Judd chews up and spits out every piece of scenery that he can get his hands on.  Matching Judd step-for-step is Alyssa Milano, who plays Eve.  She falls in love with Mickey’s son, even though she is already a member of Gideon’s harem.

Mickey is played by Christopher McDonald, who gets a rare lead role in Conflict of Interest.  McDonald may not be a household name but he is one of the great Hey, It’s That Guy actors.  Usually, he plays smarmy businessmen and game show hosts.  He’s a surprisingly good action hero in Conflict of Interest, though his mustache cannot begin to compete with Judd’s sideburns.

About as dumb as dumb can be, Conflict of Interest is enjoyably ridiculous.  Conflict of Interest may have been made in 1993 but it is an 80s film all the way through, the type of movie where almost every chase ends with someone’s car exploding.  Even Gideon’s nightclubs are “heavy metal clubs,” which are populated by people who would not have been out of place in Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

And then there’s the Judd power stare:

As we saw in Shattered If Your Kid’s On Drugs, the Judd power stare has the Burt Reynolds seal of approval: