FELON is a movie that caught my attention when I was scrolling through Val Kilmer’s filmography on IMDB. I was looking for a movie and performance that seemed worthy of his talents, and this one stood out to me based on its high rating. It was directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who has helmed several solid Gerard Butler films over the last decade, including ANGEL HAS FALLEN (2019), GREENLAND (2020), and KANDAHAR (2023). I decided to go ahead and check it out on a lazy, and hot, Sunday afternoon in Arkansas.
Stephen Dorff stars as Wade Porter, a man whose life takes a serious turn when he kills a burglar who has broken into his home. He’s sentenced to 3 years in prison for manslaughter and soon learns just how difficult it is to survive in prison. In what may be the best performance of his career, Dorff’s transformation from business-minded family man to brutal, prison survivor is incredible. As hard as he becomes, you never stop seeing the decent man trapped beneath the hardened exterior that prison forces on him. Val Kilmer plays John Smith, a mysterious lifer whose emotional scars and wisdom prove invaluable to Porter’s survival. While Smith may never go down as one of Kilmer’s most well-known characters, he gives an excellent, understated performance that proved he could still command the screen.
After looking through the IMDB profile for FELON, I expected a gritty prison drama with plenty of violence. You do get that, but I was surprised by how much the film affected me emotionally. This movie sets up a scenario that proves how quickly an ordinary guy’s life can be destroyed by one difficult situation, and then how hard it is to hold on to your humanity when your new world is completely built on violence.
Director Waugh is able to keep the stakes high from the very beginning of the film to its end. Porter not only has to fight with all he has to survive behind the walls of the prison, but he also has to do whatever he can to to hold his family together, especially when it looks like his wife Laura (Marisol Nichols) is going to divorce him. There is a lot of violence behind the prison walls, but it feels ugly rather than entertaining, which adds meaning and a layer of depth to the film. I want to shout out Harold Perrineau, who I know from the TV series LOST. He is absolutely chilling as the evil prison lieutenant Jackson, who lost his own humanity years earlier and who now treats inmates as nothing more than pawns in his own ugly game. His performance is especially affecting when coupled with Dorff’s decent character.
Val Kilmer put his name on a lot of movies later in his career that aren’t that great. FELON isn’t a classic, but it’s a very strong film. After enjoying their work together in THUNDERHEART, I really enjoyed seeing Kilmer work again with Sam Shepard, who plays his last remaining friend here. It’s a wonderful bonus for a low budget film from 2008. What stayed with me most, though, is the film’s reminder that justice and fairness aren’t always the same thing. Wade goes to prison wanting to quietly serve his time so he can move on with his life, but he quickly learns that survival often depends on abandoning the ideals that allow him to be a man of integrity in the real world. It’s a somewhat unsettling thought that has stuck with me after the movie ended.
FELON is a film that’s probably never received the attention it deserved, but it’s a good prison drama. Anchored by excellent performances from Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer, it provides an emotionally compelling story that’s well worth a watch. If you’re a fan of Val Kilmer like I am, this one’s a forgotten gem!
THUNDERHEART came out back in 1992, when I was a mere 18-year-old and trying to go to the movies any time I possibly could. I already liked Val Kilmer based on his performances in such diverse films as TOP SECRET (1984), REAL GENIUS (1985), TOP GUN (1986), and WILLOW (1988). I also liked the director Michael Apted, who had directed the underrated Gene Hackman courtroom drama CLASS ACTION the year before. I figured THUNDERHEART would have to at least be pretty good…
Val Kilmer stars as the young FBI agent Ray Levoi, who’s sent to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota to assist veteran agent Frank “Cooch” Coutelle (Sam Shepard) in a murder investigation. You see, Levoi is “part” Indian, so the thought is that his family heritage will at least give him some credibility when dealing with the Indians on the res. At first overly confident and cocky, he begins to change as the investigation uncovers a history of corruption, violence and broken political promises that have had a tragic impact on the people of the reservation. By the film’s thrilling conclusion, Levoi has been forced to question his own identity and decide who his loyalties truly belong to!
I’m a big fan of THUNDERHEART. I really enjoy the arc that Kilmer’s character undergoes in the film. At first, he’s extremely cynical and doesn’t want to have anything to do with being the special “Washington redskin” in the FBI’s murder investigation. When he gets stuck with the job, though, he just wants to get it over with as soon as possible. But as the story moves along and he meets various characters like Walter Crow Horse (Graham Greene), Maggie Eagle Bear (Sheila Tousey) and Grandpa (Ted Think Elk), he begins to see the truth behind their situation. By the end, he’s willing to give up everything to solve the crime and bring those responsible to justice. Kilmer allows this 180-degree turnaround to happen naturally, and I personally believe that this is one of the more underrated performances of his career.
The primary supporting cast deserves a lot of credit as well. Graham Greene brings wisdom and an engaging sense of humor to his character of Walter Crow Horse, the tribal police officer who starts out as a pain in the butt to Levoi prior to becoming a trusted ally. And I’ve always loved Sam Shepard, who plays the grizzled veteran agent Frank Coutelle. He’s completely believable as a man who’s seen it all, maybe a little too much, over the course of his career. The dusty South Dakota landscapes become a character all its own and provide the perfect backdrop to the story. This is a movie that feels authentic instead of like some staged Hollywood production.
I also like that this movie isn’t afraid to take its time with the story, a story that’s based on real events and that feels very relevant to this day. Stop me if you’ve heard any of these themes lately: governmental distrust, cultural identity, justice… THUNDERHEART’s entire storyline is wrapped up in these ideas. If anything, the film seems even more meaningful today than it did in 1992. There are times that Apted may operate with a bit of a heavy hand, but this movie isn’t interested in serving up cardboard villains or easy answers. Rather, we’re treated to an engaging mystery-thriller that never overshadows its characters and eventually rewards us for our patience.
At the end of the day, THUNDERHEART is a film that I highly recommend. It’s not going to blow you away with its action, although there are several exciting sequences. But I do encourage you to give this film your attention and settle in with the plot and the characters. Inside this crime thriller, there’s a strong human story about a man who comes to terms with his identity while gathering the courage to fight for the truth, no matter where that may lead. Although there were a lot of good options, when I read that Val Kilmer had passed away, THUNDERHEART is the film I watched to come to terms with the moment.
“What are you going to do when a dog goes bad on you… bites somebody or hurts somebody? There’s only two things you can do, right? You either chain him up… or put him down. But which do you think is more cruel?” — Ben Russell
Cold in July opens with a jolt of primal terror, the kind that shatters the fragile illusion of safety in one’s own home. It’s the sticky summer of 1989 in small-town East Texas, where Richard Dane, a soft-spoken picture framer embodied with exquisite restraint by Michael C. Hall, stirs from sleep to the creak of floorboards under an intruder’s weight. No time for second thoughts; his hand finds the .38 revolver under the pillow, and in the inky darkness of his living room, he fires. The body hits the carpet with a thud, blood pooling like spilled ink. The local law rolls up, commends him under Castle Doctrine—self-defense sanctified by statute—and hauls the corpse away. But Richard can’t wash away the echo of that shot. Hall captures the everyman’s unraveling with microscopic precision: the thousand-yard stare at family photos, the hesitant touch of his wife Ann’s shoulder, the way he now checks locks twice before bed. He’s no vigilante archetype; he’s a man whose moral compass, once pointed true north, now spins wildly in the aftermath, haunted by the ghost of a kid he never knew.
Into this fragile peace stalks Ben Russell, the dead boy’s father, a parolee fresh from Huntsville’s iron grip, played by Sam Shepard as a specter of weathered fury. Shepard infuses Ben with that laconic Texan menace, eyes like weathered shale, voice gravel ground under boot heels. He doesn’t roar threats; he etches them into Richard’s walls—”YOU TOOK MY BOY”—and reduces Richard’s beloved Cadillac to a smoldering husk in the driveway. Ben’s grief manifests as a slow siege: parked across the street, watching Richard’s young son Jordan pedal his bike, a predator’s patience masking paternal devastation. The sheriff dismisses it; Ben’s alibis are airtight, greased by unseen hands. Richard’s domestic idyll fractures—nights fractured by paranoia, meals choked down in silence, a marriage straining under unspoken blame. Here, director Jim Mickle, adapting Joe R. Lansdale’s novel with co-writer Nick Damici, pivots from chamber-piece tension to a labyrinthine noir, peeling back layers of small-town complacency to expose the rot beneath. The film’s ’80s patina is immersive: wood-paneled walls sweating humidity, CRT screens buzzing with local news, Jeff Grace’s synth pulses throbbing like a migraine.
Enter Jim Bob Luke, Don Johnson’s hurricane in cowboy boots—a private investigator with a cherry-red Cadillac horned like a longhorn bull, Stetson cocked at a defiant angle, and patter slick as spilled bourbon. Johnson channels pure Miami Vice charisma, but earthier, a good-ol’-boy philosopher packing heat and homilies in equal measure. Hired by Richard to shadow Ben, Jim Bob unearths the seismic twist: the corpse in Richard’s living room wasn’t Freddy Russell, Ben’s son. The real Freddy lurks alive, ensnared in a subterranean web of illicit recordings peddled to depraved collectors, tentacles reaching into Dixie Mafia coffers. Those grainy tapes—clandestine glimpses of human extremity, captured in derelict husks of industry—form the film’s shadowy core, a vortex pulling the trio into moral freefall. Mickle evokes the era’s snuff hysteria without exploitation: no money shots of viscera, just the implication of captured agony, faces contorted in private hells, traded like contraband smokes. Freddy’s not victim but architect, his boyish features warped in the flicker of self-made damnation, a progeny turned parasite on society’s underbelly.
This revelation refracts the narrative through fractured prisms of identity and inheritance. Ben’s vendetta, born of purest paternal fire, curdles into horror as he beholds his bloodline’s perversion—proof that nurture’s failures can birth monsters no paternal love can redeem. Shepard’s performance peaks in silent devastation, a father unmade by the reel spinning his failure. Richard, the reluctant catalyst, crosses his own Rubicon; the man who fired in panic now shoulders a rifle into the fray, his arc tracing the corrosion of innocence by complicity. Jim Bob, ever the fulcrum, tempers the descent with levity—quips about hog-tying demons, a portable TV blasting The Three Stooges amid stakeouts—yet his bravado masks a code, a line drawn against the abyss. Their alliance, uneasy as oil and water, embodies the film’s thesis on makeshift brotherhood: strangers forged in crisis, bound by shared outrage against systemic blindness.
Deeper still, the forbidden footage interrogates voyeurism’s seductive poison. Richard’s first encounter with the tapes mirrors our own—initial revulsion yielding to morbid pull, the screen a portal to unfiltered id. Mickle frames it as cultural id, echoing ’70s/’80s panics over bootleg horrors like Faces of Death, where myth blurred into reality, VHS democratizing depravity. The mansion raid—a decaying palace of vice, corridors echoing with muffled cries—confronts not just Freddy but the machinery of consumption: projectors whirring, stacks of cassettes labeled in code, a clientele shielded by badges and bribes. Ben’s Oedipal climax shatters illusions; he doesn’t save his son but euthanizes the illusion, a mercy killing of legacy. Richard emerges scarred, paternal instincts twisted—he shields Jordan not from burglars now, but from the world’s hidden reels. Jim Bob’s fate underscores sacrifice’s cost, his flair extinguished in gunfire’s roar.
Thematically, Cold in July wrestles with manhood’s brittle myths in Reagan-era Americana. Richard starts as domesticated archetype—provider, protector by proxy—only to reclaim agency through blood, a Darwinian baptism. Ben embodies failed patriarchy, his prison-hardened shell cracking to reveal vulnerability’s raw nerve. Jim Bob, the id unbound, revels in machismo yet weeps for the fallen, humanizing the trope. Violence accrues gravity: each trigger pull exacts tolls—Richard’s queasy recoil post-kill, Ben’s hollow victory, the collateral innocents. Mickle’s visual lexicon amplifies this: desaturated palettes chilling the Texas swelter, shadows swallowing faces in interrogation rooms, slow-motion casings arcing like fallen stars. Lansdale’s source infuses pulp authenticity—dialogue taut as barbed wire, twists coiled like rattlers—elevated by Mickle’s restraint, never mistaking style for substance.
Flaws surface in the third act’s escalation: a shootout inferno, bodies stacking amid explosions, tips into excess after the scalpel-precision buildup. Threads like the sheriff’s graft fray loose, accents occasionally drift Yankee-ward, and stylistic nods to Coens or Tarantino flirt with homage overload. Yet these blemishes fade against strengths: a triumvirate of leads in career-best synergy, Grace’s score evoking Carpenterian dread laced with twang, production design nailing ’89 grit from payphone booths to mullet mustaches. Mickle’s sophomore leap post-Stake Land proves mastery of genre alchemy—thriller mechanics serving thematic depth.
Ultimately, Cold in July haunts as meditation on unseen currents: the darkness we film, consume, ignore. It indicts voyeurism’s complicity—Richard’s gaze on the tape mirroring ours—while affirming redemption’s flicker amid ruin. Ben buries not just Freddy but paternal ghosts; Richard fortifies his home anew, vigilant against shadows within. Jim Bob’s ghost lingers in punchlines and principles. In VOD glut, this neo-noir endures, twisty as kudzu vines, resonant as a revolver’s echo. It clings like summer sweat, whispering that some July colds seep bone-deep, thawing never.
There’s a brilliant scene that occurs towards the end of 1983’s The Right Stuff.
It takes place in 1963. The original Mercury astronauts, who have become a symbol of American ingenuity and optimism, are being cheered at a rally in Houston. Vice President Lyndon Johnson (Donald Moffat) stands on a stage and brags about having brought the astronauts to his supporters. One-by-one, the astronauts and their wives wave to the cheering crowd. They’re all there: John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Alan Shephard (Scott Glenn), Wally Schirra (Lance Henrisken), Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), and the always-smiling Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid). The astronauts all look good and they know how to play to the crowd. They were chosen to be and sold as heroes and all of them have delivered.
While the astronauts are celebrated, Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) is at Edwards Air Force Base. Yeager is the pilot who broke the sound barrier and proved that the mythical “demon in the sky,” which was whispered about by pilots as a warning about taking unnecessary risks, was not waiting to destroy every pilot who tried to go too fast or too high. Yeager is considered by many, including Gordon Cooper, to be the best pilot in America. But, because Yeager didn’t have the right image and he had an independent streak, he was not ever considered to become a part of America’s young space program. Yeager, who usually holds his emotions in check, gets in a jet and flies it straight up into the sky, taking the jet to the edge of space. For a few briefs seconds, the blue sky becomes transparent and we can see the stars and the darkness behind the Earth’s atmosphere. At that very moment, Yeager is at the barrier between reality and imagination, the past and the future, the planet and the universe. And watching the film, the viewer is tempted to think that Yeager might actually make it into space finally. It doesn’t happen, of course. Yeager pushes the jet too far. He manages to eject before his plane crashes. He walks away from the cash with the stubborn strut of a western hero. His expression remains stoic but we know he’s proven something to himself. At that moment, the Mercury Astronauts might be the face of America but Yeager is the soul. Both the astronauts and Yeager play an important role in taking America into space. While the astronauts have learned how to take care of each other, even the face of government bureaucracy and a media that, initially, was eager to mock them and the idea of a man ever escaping the Earth’s atmosphere, Chuck Yeager reminds us that America’s greatest strength has always been its independence.
Philip Kaufman’s film about the early days of the space program is full of moments like that. The Right Stuff is a big film. It’s a long film. It’s a chaotic film, one that frequently switches tone from being a modern western to a media satire to reverent recreation of history. Moments of high drama are mixed with often broad humor. Much like Tom Wolfe’s book, on which Kaufman’s film is based, the sprawling story is often critical of the government and the press but it celebrates the people who set speed records and who first went into space. The film opens with Yeager, proving that a man can break the sound barrier. It goes on to the early days of NASA, ending with the final member of the Mercury Seven going into space. In between, the film offers a portrait of America on the verge of the space age. We watch as John Glenn goes from being a clean-cut and eager to please to standing up to both the press and LBJ. Even later, Glenn sees fireflies in space while an aborigines in Australia performs a ceremony for his safety. We watch as Gus Grissom barely survives a serious accident and is only rescued from drowning after this capsule has been secured. The astronauts go from being ridiculed to celebrated and eventually respected, even by Chuck Yeager.
It’s a big film with a huge cast. Along with Sam Shepherd and the actors who play the Mercury Seven, Barbara Hershey, Pamela Reed, Jeff Goldblum, Harry Shearer, Royal Dano, Kim Stanley, Scott Wilson, and William Russ show up in roles both small and large. It can sometimes be a bit of an overwhelming film but it’s one that leaves you feeling proud of the pioneering pilots and the brave astronauts and it leaves you thinking about the wonder of the universe that surrounds our Earth. It’s a strong tribute to the American spirit, the so-called right stuff of the title.
The Right Stuff was nominated for Best Picture but, in the end, it lost to a far more lowkey film, 1983’s Terms of Endearment. Sam Shepard was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Jack Nicholson. Nicolson played an astronaut.
With the 2022 Cannes Film Festival coming to a close in the next few days, I’ve been watching some of the films that previously won the prestigious Palme d’Or. They’re an interesting group of films. Some of them have been forgotten. Some of them are still regarded as classics. Some of them definitely deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Take for the instance that winner of the 1984 Palme d’Or winner, Paris, Texas. This is a film that is well-regarded by cineastes but it definitely deserves to be seen by more people.
Though released in 1984, Paris, Texas opens with an image that will resonate for many viewers today. A dazed man stumbles through the desert while wearing a red baseball cap. Though the cap may not read “Make America Great Again,” the sight of it immediately identifies the owner as being a resident of what is often dismissively referred to as being flyover country, the long stretch of land that sits between the two coasts. Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is lost, both figuratively and literally. After he stumbles into a bar and collapses, he’s taken to a doctor (played by German film director Bernhard Wicki) who discovers that Travis has a phone number on him. When the doctor calls the number, he speaks to Travis’s brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Walt has not seen Travis for three years and the viewer gets the feeling that Walt spent those years assuming that Travis was dead. Walt agrees to travel to West Texas to retrieve his brother and take him back to Los Angeles.
When Walt retrieves his brother, he’s annoyed that Travis refuses to explain where he’s been for the past three years. In fact, for the first fourth of the film, Travis doesn’t say anything. He just stares into space. Finally, when he does speak, it’s to tell Walt that he wants to go to Paris. Walt tells him that going to Paris might have to wait. Travis elaborates that he wants to go to Paris, Texas. He owns an empty parking lot in Paris, Texas.
It takes a while to learn much about Travis’s past. Like many of Wim Wenders’s films, Paris, Texas moves at its own deliberate pace and it features characters who tend to talk around their concerns instead of facing them head-on. What we do eventually learn is that Travis has a son named Hunter (Hunter Black). Travis’s wife, Jane, (played by Natassja Kinski) disappeared first. Travis disappeared afterwards, leaving Walt and his wife (Aurore Clement) to raise his son. At first, when Travis arrives in Los Angeles, he struggles to reconnect with Hunter but eventually, he does. He tries to be a father but, again, he sometimes struggles because, while Travis has a good heart, he’s also out-of-step with the world.
As for Jane, we eventually learn that she’s in Houston. She’s working in a tacky sex club, one where the customers and the strippers are separated by a one-way mirror. The customer can see and talk to the stripper but the stripper can’t see the customers. It’s all about manufactured intimacy. The customer can delude themselves into thinking that the woman is stripping just for him while the woman doesn’t have to see the man who is watching her. There are no emotions to deal with, just the illusion of a connection.
Even as Travis begins to make a life for himself in Los Angeles, he finds himself tempted to return to Houston to search for his wife….
As I said, Paris, Texas is a deliberately paced film. With a running time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, it feels like it’s actually three films linked together. We start with Travis and Walt traveling back to Los Angeles. The second film deals with Travis’s attempts to bond with his son. And the third and most powerful film is about what happens when Travis finally finds Jane. It all comes together to form a deceptively low-key character study of a group of lost souls, all of whom are dealing with the mistakes of the past and hoping for a better future. The film’s most memorable moment comes when Travis delivers a long and heartfelt monologue about his marriage to Jane. Beautifully written by Sam Shephard (who co-wrote the script with L.M. Kit Carson) and wonderfully acted by Harry Dean Stanton, it’s a monologue about regret, guilt, forgiveness, and ultimately being cursed to wander.
Despite the heavy subject matter, Paris, Texas is an undeniably joyful film. In a rare leading role, Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis as someone who is full of regrets but who, at the same time, retains a spark of hope and optimism. Life has beaten him down but he has yet to surrender. Once he reaches Los Angeles and Travis starts to fully come out of his fugue state, there’s a playful energy to Stanton’s performance. The scene where he dresses up as what he thinks a dad should look like is a highlight. For Travis, being a responsible adult starts with putting on a suit and walking his son home from school. Stanton’s excellent performance is matched by good work from Dean Stockwell and, especially, Natassja Kinski.
Visually, the film is all about capturing the beauty and the peculiarity of the landscape of the American southwest. Like many European directors, Wim Wenders seems to be a bit in love with the combination of rugged mountains and commercialized society that one finds while driving through the west. In the scenes in which Stanton wanders through West Texas, the landscape almost seems like it might consume him and, later, in Los Angeles and Houston, the garishness of the city threatens to do the same. Wherever he is, Travis is slightly out-of-place and the viewer can understand why Travis is compelled to keep wandering. At times, it seems like Travis will never fit in anywhere but the fact that he never gives up hope is comforting. In many ways, Travis’s own journey mirrors Stanton’s career in Hollywood. He had the talent of a leading man but the eccentric countenance of a great character actor. He may have never been quite fit in with mainstream Hollywood but he never stopped acting.
The film itself never visits Paris, Texas. Travis just talks about the fact that he owns an empty lot in the town and that he would like to see it. Still, I like to think Travis eventually reached Paris and I like to think that he did something wonderful with that lot.
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.
That appears to be the question at the heart of the 2000 film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s most famous play. In this adaptation, a young Ethan Hawke plays a Hamlet who is no longer a melancholy prince but who is instead a film student with a petulant attitude.
As you probably already guessed, this is one of those modern day adaptations of Shakespeare. Denmark is now a Manhattan-based corporation. Elsinore is a hotel. Hamlet ponders life while wandering around a Blockbuster and, at one point, the ghost of his father stands in front of a Pepsi machine. While Shakespeare’s dialogue remains unchanged, everyone delivers their lives while wearing modern clothing. It’s one of those things that would seem rather brave and experimental if not for the fact that modern day versions of Shakespeare have gone from being daring to being a cliché.
At the film’s start, the former CEO of the Denmark Corporation has mysteriously died and his brother, Claudius (Kyle MacLachlan), has not only taken over the company but he’s also married the widow, Gertrude (Diane Venora). Hamlet comes home from film school, convinced that there has been a murder and his suspicions are eventually confirmed by the ghost of his father (Sam Shepard). Meanwhile, poor Ophelia (Julia Stiles) takes pictures of flowers while her brother, Laertes (Liev Schreiber), glowers in the background. Polonius (Bill Murray) offers up pointless advice while Fortinbras (Casey Affleck) is reimagined as a corporate investor and Rosencrantz (Steve Zahn) wears a hockey jersey. Hamlet spends a lot of time filming himself talking and the Mousetrap is no longer a player but instead an incredibly over-the-top short film that will probably remind you of the killer video from The Ring.
I guess a huge part of this film’s appeal was meant to be that it featured a lot of people who you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being Shakespearean actors. Some of them did a surprisingly good job. For instance, Kyle MacLachlan was wonderully villainous as Claudius and Steve Zahn was the perfect Rosencrantz. Others, like Diane Venora and Liev Schreiber, were adequate without being particularly interesting. But then you get to Bill Murray as Polonius and you start to realize that quirkiness can only take things so far. Murray does a pretty good job handling Shakespeare’s dialogue but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s totally miscast as the misguided and foolish Polonius. One could easily imagine Murray in the role of Osiric. Though it may initially seem a stretch, one could even imagine him playing Claudius. But he’s simply not right for the role of Polonius. Murray’s screen presence is just too naturally snarky for him to be convincing as a character who alternates between being a “tedious, old fool” and an obsequious ass kisser.
Considering that he spends a large deal of the movie wearing a snow cap while wandering around downtown Manhattan, Ethan Hawke does a surprisingly good job as Hamlet. Or, I should say, he does a good job as this film’s version of Hamlet. Here, Hamlet is neither the indecisive avenger nor the Oedipal madman of previous adaptations. Instead, he’s portrayed as being rather petulant and self-absorbed, which doesn’t necessarily go against anything that one might find within Shakespeare’s original text. Hawke’s not necessarily a likable Hamlet but his interpretation is still a credible one.
At one point, while Hamlet thinks about revenge, we see that he’s watching Laurence Olivier’s version of Hamlet on television. There’s Olivier talking to Yorick’s skull while Hawke watches. It’s a scene that is somehow both annoying and amusing at the same time. On the one hand, it feels rather cutesy and more than a little pretentious. At the same time, it’s so over-the-top in its pretension that you can’t help but kind of smile at the sight of it. To me, that scene epitomizes the film as a whole. It’s incredibly silly but it’s so unapologetic that it’s easy to forgive.
As the day draws to a close, I’m going to recommend one final film.
It’s not, by any means, a perfect film. In fact, it’s pretty damn imperfect. It’s a film that occasionally tries too hard to be profound. It’s based on a play and it never quite escapes its theatrical origins. What was undoubtedly exciting on the stage, drags a bit on the screen. It’s a fairly obscure film. I just happened to catch it on This TV a month ago and the main reason that I watched it was because of the cast.
But no matter! I still think you should watch this film if you get a chance.
The name of that film is Fool For Love.
First released in 1985 and based on a play by Sam Shepard, Fool For Love takes place over the course of one long night at a motel in the Southwest. Staying at the motel is May (Kim Basinger), who is hoping to escape from her past. Not eager to allow her to escape is her former lover, Eddie (Sam Shepard). An aging cowboy, Eddie shows up at the motel and tries to convince May to return with him to his ranch. As they argue, clues are dropped to the terrible secret that haunts their past. Martin (Randy Quaid), a buffoonish but well-meaning “gentleman caller,” shows up to take May on a date and finds himself sucked into the drama between her and Eddie.
Meanwhile, on the edge of every scene, there’s the Old Man (Harry Dean Stanton). The Old Man watches Eddie and May and offers up his own frequently sarcastic commentary. It becomes obvious that he not only knows about the secret in their past but that he’s determined that they not get together. Is the Old Man really there or is he just a figment of everyone’s imagination or is he something else all together?
As I said earlier, the film never quite escapes its theatrical origins. As well, while Shepard and Kim Basinger both give authentic and charismatic performance, they don’t quite have the right romantic chemistry to really convince us that Eddie would chase May all the way to that isolated motel. It’s hard not to feel that if May had been played by Shepard’s then-partner Jessica Lange or his Right Stuff co-star, Barbara Hershey, the film would have worked better.
And yet, even if it never comes together as a whole, Fool For Love is a film that should be seen just for its display of individual talent. Of the film’s five main creative forces, only Kim Basinger is still with us. Director Robert Altman died in 2006 while Sam Shepard and Harry Dean Stanton both passed away in 2017. While Randy Quaid is still alive, it’s doubtful he’ll ever again get the type of roles that earlier established him as one of America’s best character actors. Whenever I read another snarky article about Quaid hiding out in Vermont and ranting about the “star whackers,” I can’t help but sadly think about the perfect performances that Quaid used to regularly give in imperfect films like this one.
So, definitely track down Fool For Love. Watch it and pay a little tribute to all of the wonderful talent that we’ve lost over the last 10 or so years. Watch it for Robert Altman’s ability to turn kitsch into art. Watch it for the rugged individualism of Sam Shepard and the once-empathetic eccentricity of Randy Quaid. Watch it for Harry Dean Stanton, the legendary actor who, more than any other performer, seemed to epitomize the southwest and Americana.
Watch it and spare a little thought for all of them.
When it comes to Arkansas, people seem to automatically think of two things. Arkansas is the former home of Bill and Hillary Clinton and it’s also the state that accused three teenage boys of committing horrific acts of murder, largely on the basis of the fact that one of the boys used to dress in black and listen to heavy metal music. Between the state’s largely rural image and repeat showings of Paradise Lost on HBO, Arkansas does not exactly have the best reputation.
Myself, I have a lot of childhood memories of Arkansas. Some of them are good and some of them aren’t so good. My grandmother lived in Fort Smith so, even when my family was living in another state, we would still always find the time to come visit her every summer. As well, I had (and still have) cousins spread out all over the state. Almost every road trip that I’ve ever taken has involved at least a few stops in Arkansas. When I think about Arkansas, I don’t think about the Clintons or Damien Echols. Instead, to me, Arkansas is where I used to get excited whenever I saw we were approaching grandma’s house and where my mom once grabbed me right before I stepped on a snake that was hidden in the high grass that surrounded my cousin’s farm.
As often as I visited Arkansas while I was growing up, I also actually lived there twice. I don’t remember the first time, because I was only two years old at the time, but my family spent 3 months living in Ft. Smith before going back to Texas. Then five years later, we returned to Arkansas and, over the course of 19 months, we lived in Texarkana, Fouke, Van Buren, North Little Rock, and, finally, Ft. Smith once again.
Originally, for Arkansas, I was planning on reviewing The Legend of Boggy Creek, a 1974 psuedo-documentary that deals with a bigfoot-like creature that was said to live near the town of Fouke. It made perfect sense as not only was The Legend of Boggy Creek filmed in Arkansas but it was produced by an Arkansan as well. It remains one of the most financially successful independent films of all time and, because it’s presented as being a documentary, it features authentic Arkansans in the cast. Even more importantly, my family actually lived in Fouke from August of ’93 to May of ’94. I’ve been down to Boggy Creek! (Though, to the best of my memory, the monster never made an appearance while we were living in Fouke.)
But then I thought about it and something occurred to me. The Legend of Boggy Creek is not that good of a movie. I watched it a few weeks ago and, once I got passed the fact that it was filmed in a town that I have vague memories of living in back when I was seven years old, I found the film itself to be almost unbearably dull.
So, instead of unleashing my snark on a 40 year-old exploitation film, I’m going to use this opportunity to recommend another film that was shot in Arkansas. This film, however, was one of the best films of 2013. It’s a film that, if you haven’t watched it yet, you owe it to yourself to see.
It’s a film called Mud.
Directed by Jeff Nichols (who previously gave us the excellent Take Shelter), Mud takes place in the town of DeWitt, Arkansas. Two teenage boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) spend their days going up and down the Arkansas River. Ellis, the more introspective of the two, dreams of escaping his homelife with an abusive father (Ray McKinnon) and a compliant mother (Sarah Paulson). Quietly watching over the two boys is Tom (Sam Shepard), an enigmatic older man who lives across the river from Ellis’s family.
One day, Ellis and Neckbone come across a mysterious man living on a small island. The man’s name is Mud (Matthew McConaughey) and he tells them that he’s waiting for his girlfriend, Juniper (Reese Whitherspoon). Mud explains that he killed a man who once pushed her down a flight of stairs while she was pregnant. Ellis and Neckbone agree to help Mud, secretly supplying him with food and delivering notes from him to Juniper.
However, the father (Joe Don Baker) of the man who Mud killed has arrived in town as well. He’s brought an army of mercenaries with him and, each morning, he gathers them together for a quick prayer and then sends them out to track down and kill Mud…
Mud is a wonderful film, one that is full of visually striking images and excellent performances. (If Dallas Buyers Club hadn’t come out later that same year, Matthew McConaughey could have just as easily been nominated for his charismatic and sympathetic performance here.) Even more importantly, the film is full of authentic local culture and color. If, decades from now, someone asked me what Arkansas was like in the early 21st Century, Mud is the film that I would show them.
Much as how Richard Linklater can capture Texas in a way that a non-Texan never could, Mud is fortunate to have been directed by a native of Arkansas. Watching Mud, it quickly becomes obvious that Jeff Nichols knows and understands Arkansas and, as such, he presents an honest portrait of the state.
Every state should hope to inspire a film as well-made and entertaining as Mud.
Cold in July, which is currently available OnDemand and also playing in select theaters, is a great film.
To a large extent, you’re simply going to have to take my word about that because to give too much away about this twisty and emotionally resonant thriller would be a crime. Quite frankly, I’d rather write a vague review than rob you of the pleasure of discovering this film’s secrets for yourself.
Here’s what I can tell you.
Cold In July takes place in east Texas and, speaking as a Texan, it manages to perfectly capture the odd mix of southern gothic and western stoicism that distinguishes that section of Texas from the rest of the state. Cold in July is one of the best Texas-set films that I’ve ever seen, one that is uniquely Texan and yet still accessible for those viewers who live elsewhere (except maybe for Vermont). Director Jim Mickle and cinematographer Ryan Samul fill Cold In July with hauntingly beautiful images of the landscape, capturing that unique Texas stillness that can be both tranquil and threatening at the same time.
Michael C. Hall plays Richard Dane, an ordinary guy who, at the start of the film, confronts and kills a burglar who has broken into his house. While nearly everyone else in town is impressed by Richard’s actions, Richard is haunted by them. While everyone else tells Richard that he should be proud for standing up against crime, Richard is obsessed with the bloodstains that now decorate his living room wall. Richard grows even more uneasy when the town’s police chief informs him that the burglar’s father has recently been paroled from Huntsville Prison.
When Richard goes to the burglar’s funeral, he meets the quietly menacing Ben Russell (Sam Shepard). Ben reveals that Richard killed his son and then goes on to suggest that maybe, in order to even the score, Ben should now go after Richard’s son. Even after the police agree to protect Richard and his family, it quickly turns out that Ben is a lot more clever than anyone realized…
And that’s all I can tell you about this film’s plot without spoiling the many twists and turns. I can, however, assure you that anything you may be assuming about this film or the relationship between Richard and Ben is probably incorrect. This is a film that starts out like an effective but standard thriller and then, about 30 minutes into the action, the story suddenly goes off in an entirely different direction. The fact that the film manages to pull off such a sudden shift in tone and plot is due to both Mickle’s confident direction and the excellent performances of Hall and Shepard.
I can also tell you that this film features a great and award-worthy supporting performance from Don Johnson. Johnson plays Jim Bob Luke, a flamboyant private detective who also owns a pig farm and drives a red Cadillac with vanity plates that read “RED BTCH.” Johnson brings a jolt of life to the film right when it most needs it. Jim Bob starts out as comic relief but, as the film progresses, Johnson brings a surprising amount of gravitas to the role until finally, Jim Bob is as much the moral center of the story as Tommy Lee Jones was in the thematically similar No Country For Old Men.
Finally, I can tell you that Cold In July is a violent film but it’s not the empty, consequence-free mayhem that you might expect to see in a thriller like this. It’s hard to explain without giving away too much of the plot but I would have to describe it as almost being “violence with heart.” Cold In July may be violent but it’s never mindless and that makes all the difference.
As I said, it’s difficult to review Cold In July because to go into too much detail would run the risk of ruining the film’s many surprises. So, instead, I’ll just say that Cold In July is one of the best films of the year so far.
It’s a film that you, as a lover of cinema, owe it to yourself to see.
Through the Shattered Lens 