Tuesday, January 29, 2013

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Director: John Carpenter                                   Writer: Michael De Luca
Film Score: John Carpenter                               Cinematography: Gary B. Kibbe
Starring: Sam Neill, Jürgen Prochnow, Julie Carmen and John Glover

John Carpenter’s career as a director has been all over the map, and not in a good way. From the perfection of The Thing, and the near perfection of Escape from New York to the abysmal remake of Village of the Damned and the subject of this post, In the Mouth of Madness. Everything about this film is bad, from the deceptive title, the poor script, the ho-hum special effects and the terrible directing--it takes a pretty terrible director to make Sam Neill look bad on screen, but that’s exactly what Carpenter does.

The story involves a reclusive author who has yet to deliver his new horror novel to the publisher. In walks insurance investigator Sam Neill to make good on the publisher’s investment in advertising and promotion. Neill starts by reading the author’s previous books and begins to hallucinate that he is part of the stories. He gets an idea from the covers of the books, but before he can chase it down, chief editor Charlton Heston teams him up with Julie Carmen and the two set out to find the author at a small town that is not on any map . . . with predicable results. The problem with hallucination films (Videodrome comes to mind) is that the hallucinations within hallucinations become tedious after a short time, to the point where soon nothing is a surprise.

The title, I’m convinced, is a direct reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. This is unfortunate, as that is what led me to watch the film in the first place, and of course the story has absolutely nothing to do with Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos. But by far the biggest problem with the film is Carpenter’s directing. The script has Sam Neill as a know-it-all who makes inappropriate jokes and refuses to even acknowledge the possible supernatural implications of his hallucinations. Instead of what could have been, a slow realization of the truth of his situation, and the accompanying horror that goes along with it--something like Dead Calm--the script is just a series of jack-in-the-box surprises that make no sense at all until the final twenty minutes of the film. But by then it’s too late.

The reason I lay the blame on Carpenter’s shoulders is that he has written scripts for nearly all of his films and either he worked with the screenwriter and wanted it this way, or didn't change what was bad. Either way, he should have known better. All of the actors, except for Carmen, come off as cartoonish and one-dimensional, and Jürgen Prochnow is completely wasted by only having him appear at the end of the film. Why so many fans have called this a summation of the horror genre, or the ultimate horror film, is beyond me. There is almost nothing horrifying about it. When, as a fan, I see potential in almost every scene and it is ruined in every instance . . . that is the real horror. And in that respect In the Mouth of Madness is a supreme disappointment.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Magnolia (1999)

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson                   Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Film Score: Jon Brion                                   Cinematography: Robert Elswit
Starring: Julianne Moore, William H. Macey, John C. Reilly and Tom Cruise

This is the kind of movie that makes me despair. Critics love it, though I don’t know why, because it smacks to me of the same kind of pretentious, self-indulgence that you find in modern literature these days. Mercifully, Magnolia was snubbed at the Oscars that year. The thing is, when you come right down to it, the substance of this film is no different than the vacuous plots and characters that you find in the big-budget action movies. The only difference is, instead of fists and blood, we have anger issues and profanity. Who wants to watch that? I sure don’t. And if I ever do, I can watch Jerry Springer for free.

What Anderson is attempting to do, I suspect, is to illuminate what it means to be a man and a woman and a child in our modern society, what it means to be human. But he undercuts his meaning with a prologue that emphasizes some connection between the disparate stories, when that doesn’t really seem to be the point. By far the biggest problem, however, is that he drowns the entire production in faux sentiment. Just because people cry, doesn’t mean you’re seeing real emotion. Just because they’re screaming the f-word with every other breath, doesn’t mean they’re being profound. In fact, the emphasis on profanity to punctuate every heightened emotion only does the opposite and dumbs the whole thing down. And add to that the “drama” of death. Josef Stalin said that when one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic. Well, Magnolia is a statistic.

None of the actors really looks comfortable (i.e. real) probably because there’s no plot, just a spewing forth of raw emotion. Each has a character, but no real purpose within the film except to eventually cross paths. I could tell you who they all are, but that’s all there is to them and so there wouldn’t be much point in watching the film. By far the worse choice of casting is Julianne Moore, who has about as much emotional expression as a trick-or-treater wearing a rubber mask. She cries, but she doesn’t shed a tear. She twists her mouth into agony, but then it flops back immediately to boredom. I half expect to see her reading her lines off cue cards at any moment. It’s that bad. And that’s saying something, considering how bad Tom Cruise is. It’s like watching a really bad acting class with an equally bad director shouting at the actors to, “Emote! Emote!”

Jon Brion’s score, as well as the rest of the soundtrack, is engineered louder than the dialogue, which I guess is supposed to be edgy, but just winds up being annoying. Then there’s the song that every character sings along with as the camera skips around to the various story lines. The whole exercise is simply forced and unconvincing in its entirety. About the only entertaining scene in the entire film is when it starts raining frogs (yep, that’s not a typo). The film, I’m sure, is trying to be new, different, avant garde, but in the end Magnolia winds up being a three-hour train wreck. We watch it not because we like it, but because we can’t believe how horrific it is. The only thing missing is a voice-over crying out, “Oh, the humanity!”

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Director: Christopher Nolan                          Writers: Jonathan & Christopher Nolan
Film Score: Hans Zimmer                            Cinematography: Wally Pfister
Starring: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman

I have real trouble with the most recent Batman series, mostly because it lacks . . . well, everything. You name it, story, character, suspense, emotion, there is absolutely nothing there. Christopher Nolan's most recent entry, The Dark Knight Rises is simply a series of violent action scenes separated by lengthy sequences of tedious plot development that is utterly uninteresting. In writing about the previous entry in the series, New Yorker reviewer David Denby summed up the situation perfectly: “Individual sequences in The Dark Knight have a shocking power, but if you look at the movie closely, or even casually, the narrative dissolves. The sequencing doesn’t make any sense in time or space, [and] the movie depends on such cheap devices as ticking time bombs, characters in disguise substituting for one another, and people seemingly dead springing back to life.”

Granted, the film is based on a comic book character, but does that mean that a multi-million dollar production can’t aspire to something greater? Is there any reason that we can’t watch characters that we actually care about? Christian Bale was ridiculed mercilessly at the beginning of the series for his nearly unintelligible Batman voice, and it’s no better here. He appears to be going through the motions from the beginning to the end, so wearied by the whole thing that we can’t help thinking, “who cares?” Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman is repugnant from the start, not only betraying Batman but showing no remorse that she did so. The fact that he puts his trust in her at the end only leaves us shaking our heads thinking that Albert was right. Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Modine are wasted, as their characters are two-dimensional at best. Which is more than you can say for the one-dimensional villain, half Darth Vader half Hannibal Lecter but without an ounce of believability.

Of course, the entire series has been a huge, blockbuster bonanza for all concerned, but at what cost? Is that all we’re going to get from films in the future, big-budget action pictures devoid of anything remotely resembling meaningful human experience? It would seem so. And yet, there are still far more important films at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century than there has been literature. And that’s important. As film pulls away from literature in terms of its importance for us in the future, it’s vital that we understand what films are bad and why--even if they are popular--so that we don’t inadvertently lose sight of everything that’s still good. The Dark Knight Rises is a bad film, confirmation of which will come at Oscar time. So, at least for now, I’m confident that we haven’t completely obliterated art with commerce.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Director: Tom McTiernan                        Writer: Leslie Dixon & Kurt Wimmer
Film Score: Bill Conte                            Cinematography: Tom Priestley Jr.
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison

The remake of The Thomas Crown Affair is long on style, and short on substance. While the star potential of the cast almost surely seemed like a guaranteed hit, the emotional center of the piece relies too heavily on the relationship between Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, and for some reason it just never jells. The fault is certainly not with the two actors. Brosnan was brilliant in his turn as 007 and even better in the caper film After the Sunset. And Russo was much more compelling in Clint Eastwood’s In The Line of Fire and brilliant in Get Shorty. The script seems more than adequate, which leaves the fault, then, squarely on the direction (or lack of it) by Tom McTierman.

McTiernan is mostly associated with action/adventure, manning the helm of the first two episodes in the Die Hard franchise, a couple of Sean Connery films, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Predator, and that is no doubt where the real problem lies. The characters in The Thomas Crown Affair are just too overdone, too over the top to make the love story believable. The story centers on the theft of a Monet by the super rich Brosnan. While the police, headed by the always dependable Dennis Leary, are stuck, Russo’s insurance investigator comes in and essentially takes over the case, unrestrained by police procedures or civil rights. And while her brash personality works in that aspect, it strains credulity to imagine that she would let her guard down enough to fall for Brosnan in the end.

The caper itself is ingenious, and works well, and if that had been the central focus of the film, as with something like The Score, it might have been okay. But the romance is the real heart of the movie, as it was in the original 1968 version with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, and for that reason it doesn’t quite manage to work. There’s a nice cameo by Faye Dunaway in the remake, though it also seems shoehorned in and jarring rather than growing out of the plot in an organic way, as it was in something like Against All Odds, a remake of Out of The Past in which Jane Greer played the mother of the character she played in the earlier film.

In the end it’s a miss, and something that’s not really worth seeking out. There are much better films with both Russo and Brosnan that showcase their talents and emotional range to much greater effect than The Thomas Crown Affair.

Monday, January 7, 2013

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Director: John Frankenheimer                       Writer: George Axelrod
Film Score: David Amram                             Cinematography: Lionel Lindon
Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury

In my review of Round Midnight, I talked about how films from the 80s seemed dated, but that’s nothing compared to films from the 60s. If I had to say why I would probably attribute it to the film itself. Films from the 60s have a crisper, live look, similar to what video taped television had the past few decades, or digital film has now. Without the softening effect of previous film stock the sets and consumes look more artificial, cleaner, less real. And, like the 80s, the clothing and hairstyles from the 60s seem more of an aberration that even those from the 70s.

The Manchurian Candidate is no exception. It has that cheap, spare look that you get in black and white television from the period. A continuation of the Communist paranoia that appears in films like Stalag 17 and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it concerns a plot by Soviet and Chinese agents to brainwash American soldiers captured during the Korean War and turn them loose as killing machines back in the United States, with no memories or remorse. So far, so good, until the members of the unit who had been brainwashed begin remembering what had actually happened to them.

I suppose you had to be alive at the time to see someone like Frank Sinatra as a serious actor instead of the caricature of himself that he became in his later years (can anyone forget Joe Piscopo singing “Ebony and Ivory” with Eddie Murphy?). The usual cast of sixties character actors (who would later become 70s sit-com character actors) is onboard, James Gregory, Henry Silva, Lloyd Corrigan, John McGiver and the like. Janet Leigh, fresh out of her success in Hitchcock’s Psycho, makes an improbably love interest for Sinatra, while Angela Lansbury has probably one of her best roles, as the scheming mother of Laurence Harvey, the primary soldier who was brainwashed. But the film really only starts to pick up with the appearance of Leslie Parrish who is absolutely stunning in her brief role as Harvey’s pre-war girlfriend.

Is The Manchurian Candidate a bad movie? On the whole . . . yes. It’s certainly nowhere near the brilliance of other 60s films like The Hustler, or The Great Escape. Sinatra is just as bad here as he was in From Here to Eternity and from a distance of sixty years looking back the whole thing looks like any ordinary TV drama of the day. Particularly overdrawn and cliché are the Soviet agent and the Chinese doctor who, never mind the fact that they appear to be working together in complete harmony, really undermine the believability of their scheme by their overblown characterizations. Still, the ending is satisfying and, although the drama was diluted, it finishes strong and is worth watching

Sunday, January 6, 2013

The Insider (1999)

Director: Michael Mann                                         Writer: Eric Roth & Michael Mann
Film Score: Pieter Bourke & Lisa Gerrard               Cinematography: Dante Spinotti
Starring: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plumer and Diane Venora

The Insider is a film that mystifies me. Though, in retrospect I can see why, and I’ll try to explain it. First, let me just say, the only thing to recommend in this film at all is Al Pacino. He’s great, and I enjoyed his performance tremendously. How then, could he have been completely overlooked at awards time and snubbed by the Oscars, and at the same time could Russell Crowe, whose performance was bizarre at best, get nominated for best actor? Critic David Denby said his Jeffrey Wigand was “the last genuine protagonist in a big movie . . .” and yet Wigand's role, to me at least, hardly seems to qualify. Whether or not he’ll tell is almost anticlimactic. The real conflict in the film is with CBS and Pacino.

The story, based on an article by Marie Brenner, is about big tobacco insider Jeffrey Wigand, a scientist who worked on chemical manipulation of tobacco to make the nicotine more readily absorbed into the blood stream. The conflict is over his interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes, and how CBS caved in to pressure from the tobacco company who threatened lawsuits and possible takeover of the company, and left Wigand hanging out to dry in the process. I remember seeing the original 60 Minutes piece at the time, and even then there was an element of “so what?” Everyone knew what the tobacco companies were doing, so it was no secret. The fact that finally someone from inside was finally talking was confirmation, but hardly a revelation.

Having recently re-watched Michael Mann’s Manhunter and having been profoundly disappointed--more of which I’ll write about later--I can see his hand all over this film. Wigand is simply an unstable version of Will Graham, and Crowe’s performance suffers mightily because of how reminiscent his role is to John Nash in A Beautiful Mind--we half-expect Al Pacino to be a figment of his imagination. The unfortunate use of Diane Venora is even worse, as apparently all she knows how to do in a film is cry. Christopher Plummer is his usually dependable self, but his Mike Wallace comes off as a waffler, and in the end we’re glad that Pacino’s Lowell Bergman leaves him.

I don’t find anything particularly wrong with Mann and Eric Roth’s script; in fact there are some powerful scenes. One in particular is when Wigand is in Alabama to give a deposition in a case the state is making against big tobacco. Bruce McGill is great as the attorney who shouts down the tobacco lawyer and says what we would all like to say to companies who abuse science in order to lie to us. (For more about that, there’s a great book entitled, Merchants of Doubt that goes into great detail.) But in the end, that’s not enough. The force of the piece is undercut by Crowe’s direction. He comes off as unstable and unlikable, even as his life is falling apart around him for doing the right thing. What we’re left with, then, is Pacino, great as ever, but not enough to carry an entire film . . . not The Insider anyway.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

War Horse (2011)

Director: Steven Spielberg                        Writers: Lee Hall & Richard Curtis
Film Score: John Williams                        Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Emily Watson and David Kross

War Horse is an odd little film. At first I was excited to learn it was set during the First World War, as I have studied extensively about World War I and there are precious few good films about it. The Lost Battalion is about the best, but that’s already twelve years old. And with Steven Spielberg at the helm I was delighted. But then I learned that the story was from a children’s book by Michael Morpurgo and as soon as I began watching it the film reminded me of a cross between Babe and The Black Stallion.

Normally Spielberg is a maestro, waving his baton and tugging at our emotions like an expert conductor, telling us when to cry and then making it happen. But in War Horse his attempts fall flat, and from my perspective the problem is really the source material. There is just too much deus ex machina to allow for emotional investment. It’s like an equine Apocalypto. And in that sense the story is too pat, too predictable for the empathy that Spielberg is trying to elicit. As a result, the story of the horse, Joey, is more frustrating than anything else, especially when he is given near-human understanding in some situations but not in others. Spielberg’s at his best during the war scenes, but that doesn’t happen until halfway through the film and by then it’s too late. And at the end of the film he tries for a Gone With the Wind type orange sky silhouette scene, but by then, that’s too late too.

I’ll tell you right now that I’m not an animal person, but that shouldn’t matter. I absolutely loved Never Cry Wolf and Hidalgo, films where animals were central to the plot, but did not depend on them for the emotional impact of the story. I think that’s always been a problem for me. But the worst part about the film is being left imagining what could have been done with the premise, a rewrite that focused on the horse himself, in a natural way that allowed the viewer to empathize with Joey as the protagonist instead of the people around him, following him as he navigated a war that took the lives of countless horses in addition to people. Now THAT would have been a great World War I story.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies (2012)

Director: Richard Schenkman                       Writer: Richard Schenkman
Film Score: Chris Ridenhour                         Cinematography: Tim Gill
Starring: Bill Oberst, Jr., Ken Igleheart, Rhianna Van Helton and Josh Sinyard

On the cover of Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies there is a disclaimer warning that the film is in no way related to or associated with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. That’s for sure. The two films could not be more different in nearly every category, and in every category there is only one differentiation: Vampires goooooood, Zombies baaaaaaaad. Obviously the film was slapped together to capitalize on the success of Vampire Hunter, and it worked. Because of how good the former film was a lot of people, myself included, decided to take a look at the later, with disappointing results.

How bad is it? Let me count the ways. First, the acting. It’s bad. Ed Wood bad. Most of these people have no business in front of a camera, with the possible exception of Bill Oberst, Jr., as Lincoln. He manages to be about the only convincing character in the film. Second, the script. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The actors appear to be incredibly frightened of monsters who barely move and are easy to spot. If they sat and talked about the whole thing for five minutes, they could have figured all of this out and saved us from having to watch the rest of this awful film. Third, the set. Shot almost entirely on the site of an old civil war fort that is so clean it doesn’t look as if anyone fought there for . . . oh, a hundred and fifty years. Four, five, and six: special effects (of which there are none), makeup (which looks ridiculous on the zombies), and anachronisms (Teddy Roosevelt appears as a kid, though he wouldn’t be born until three years after Lincoln’s death).

It’s one thing to make a cheap film because of a limited budged. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society does it all the time. But they make GREAT movies. So that’s no excuse. House of the Wolf Man was a bad film as well, but at least you felt they really wanted to do a good job. Asylum has been making low-budget horror flicks for several years now and they have a cult following. But what gets under my skin about Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies is the obvious attempt to make money off of a superior film by copying the concept and releasing it simultaneously with the better film in order to fool unsuspecting movie watchers. If you liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and you’re thinking about renting this one, do yourself a favor . . . don’t.

What's a BAD Movie?


I don't set out to watch bad films. I'm not a bliever in the "so bad it's good" school of entertaimnet. As the great Huey Lewis once said, "Sometimes bad is bad." Unfortunately, it happens. One day I was watching an Albert Brooks film I'd never seen before. Now, Brooks is one of my favorite comedic talents. I love his films, but this one wasn't very good. When I finished, my wife asked me what I was going to say about it on my regular film blog and I replied, "I'll never write about this film." Later, however, I started thinking that that was too bad, because I like writing about films, even the bad ones. And since I watch a lot of movies, it stands to reason that there will be some I don't like. So, to fulfill my need to write about even the bad movies, this blog was born.

Now you won't find the newest teenage idiot movie, and you won't find the most recent cartoon remake, or comic book hero fantasy, or slasher movie, or action-adventure films on this site for the simple reason that I don't watch those things. And besides, you already know they're bad. So, what constitutes a bad film in my opinion? One that doesn't deliver on a promise. The films I watch, I watch because I expect them to be good. When they let me down, those are the films you'll read about here. And you may find a few unexpected names, popular films, even academy award winning films, that I think are bad. It doesn't mean I'm necessarily right, and you may not agree, but as much as possible I attempt to explain my rationale and try to make a compelling case for why the film doesn't work for me. With any luck, it just might save you from being as disappointed as I was.

As always, I hope you'll join me in the conversation.
E.B. Neslowe