Payback

Year 6, Day 97 - 4/7/14 - Movie #1,694

BEFORE: The third film in a Mel Gibson triple-play, and I'm back on the crime beat.

THE PLOT:  Porter is shot by his wife and best friend and is left to die. When he survives he plots revenge.

AFTER:  I'm not going to pretend this film is some kind of ultimate action film - reading up on the trivia about it on IMDB, it appears that the original director, Brian Helgeland, was fired, two days after he won an Oscar for "L.A. Confidential".  Another director was hired to do re-shoots, and due to Mel Gibson's schedule shooting "Lethal Weapon 4", this delayed the release of this film for a year.

If you read between the lines, the firing of the director means that something, somewhere, wasn't working.  And the most likely culprit is the story - meaning that this film in its original form didn't make a whole lot of sense.  Considering all this drama, it's kind of amazing that a semi-coherent film rose from the ashes of the original shoot.  I'm checking out the original plotline now on Wikipedia, and the differences sort of make this the "Blade Runner" of action films - in that one version has a voice-over narration and the other doesn't.  One is also semi-coherent and ends on an up note, and the other sounds like a complete mess and ends more bleakly.  And still, there will always be a select group of people who will favor the Director's Cut. 

I think the biggest hurdle to some people liking this is the fact that the hero doesn't act very heroic.  He hurts a lot of people - they may deserve it, sure, but does that make it right?  Besides, his motives are not always altruistic, seeing that he wants both his take from a robbery, plus of course revenge.

He's not so much a "good guy" as his is the "least bad guy" - and in that sense, Porter reminds me of The Punisher.  Despite the mangling of Marvel's Punisher character in 3 films that range from terrible to O.K., he remains a odd character, a regular guy who lives in the superhero world, and who kills criminals while waging his one-man war on crime.  The rightness or wrongness of his actions is very cloudy, and kind of depends on where you stand on rehabilitation and such.  Certainly he's got his own set of morals, and your mileage may vary. 

In the finale, there's something that I call an "editing cheat".  The shots are organized in a way that gets us to expect a certain result, because of the rule of parallel editing (cross-cutting between two scenes or groups of characters implies that they will soon interact).  However, then the two groups most defiantly do NOT intersect (this same cheat was famously used in "The Silence of the Lambs") and our expectations are defied.  It's funny, parallel editing is sort of mis-named because parallel lines never interact - so maybe THIS should be called parallel editing, when the two different groups of characters do NOT collide with each other.

Also starring Gregg Henry (last seen in "United 93"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Kill Bill Vol. 2"), Maria Bello (last seen in "Permanent Midnight"), David Paymer (last seen in "Mighty Joe Young"), Bill Duke (last seen in "Bird on a Wire"), William Devane (last seen in "The Dark Knight Rises"), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Heaven's Gate"), James Coburn (last seen in "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit"), John Glover (last seen in "The Incredible Shrinking Woman"), Deborah Kara Unger.

RATING:  5 out of 10 alligator bags

The River

Year 6, Day 96 - 4/6/14 - Movie #1,693

BEFORE: We held the NYC premiere of "Cheatin'" (Movie #1,650) last night at the New York Friars Comedy Film Festival, which programmed it as their closing night film.  Most of the crew was there, and we stood up on stage while the director took questions from the nearly-packed audience.  A good time was had by all, and then I heard they awarded the film a special jury prize - that happened while I was out for post-show ramen with my co-workers.

This film doesn't really fit in with the crime theme, but I'm going to shoehorn this one here with the Mel Gibson connection, to get it off the list - I've got no other place to put it.

THE PLOT:  Farming family battles severe storms, a bank threatening to repossess, and other hard times in a battle to save and hold on to their farm.

AFTER: Turns out I don't care much about the plight of the American farmer.  Does that make me a bad person?  This is one of those black + white moralistic tales where the hard-working farmer is always right, and the corporate shills who represent the agricultural conglomerates are always wrong.  Isn't that a vast over-simplification? 

I'm a city guy, what do I know about agriculture?  Maybe a dam would be the best thing for the entire region - it sure would save everyone a lot of time building levees every time the river overflows, right?  And if farming's not bringing in enough money to feed your family, maybe it is time to sell your land and pack it in.  Why is that money less good, just because it comes from a corporation? 

I'm recusing myself because I just don't know enough about farming to comment constructively.  I just suspect the topic is much more complicated than what's simplistically laid out here.

Also starring Sissy Spacek (last seen in "The Help"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Shipping News"), James Tolkan (last seen in "Love and Death")

RATING:  4 out of 10 corncobs

Bird on a Wire

Year 6, Day 95 - 4/5/14 - Movie #1,692

BEFORE: Well, as you might have expected, the end of the Goldie Hawn segment is also the start of the Mel Gibson chain. 

THE PLOT: An old flame discovers her ex-boyfriend from the past is a relocated FBI informant out to stop the bad guys.

AFTER: Like "The Sugarland Express", this comes off like a film that tried to cover up the fact that there's no real story arc by just smashing up a bunch of police cars, which might have worked on the "Dukes of Hazzard" TV show, but I guess I expect more from a film.  But the chase scenes here are of the more stereotypical Hollywood variety, complete with stacks of cardboard boxes for cars to crash into, and wet cement for motorcycle cops to fall in.  The only things missing were the giant plate of glass to break, and the fruit stand to destroy.

The film starts with a series of coincidences - the villain gets out of prison and decides to track down the informant at the same time that the informant is spotted by his old girlfriend while working as a mechanic.  Meanwhile, his FBI contact has just retired, which somehow leaves his cover in jeopardy.  15 years in hiding, and this all comes together in a single weekend?  Sorry, I'm not buying in. 

The reunited lovers go on the run, and time and time again they seem to forget that someone is pursuing them, so they'll do something dumb like use a credit card, or call a friend for help, which reveals their location and keeps the villains one step behind.  What part of "hiding" don't the characters seem to understand? 

The end is just a confusing mess, it's set at a zoo where the informant used to work, which gives him some knowledge of a rain-forest simulator that for some reason is populated by real monkeys and tigers.  How is this even an attraction at the zoo, if human visitors and tigers can come in contact with each other?  That's a pretty dangerous zoo. 

By this time, however, I'd pretty much forgotten why the villains were even chasing the informant in the first place.  Not that it really matters in the long run.

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "The Patriot"), David Carradine (last seen in "Kill Bill, Vol. 2"), Bill Duke, Stephen Tobolowsky (last heard in "The Lorax"), Joan Severance, Jeff Corey (last seen in "Conan the Destroyer"), with a cameo from Clyde Kusatsu.

RATING: 3 out of 10 aliases

The Sugarland Express

Year 6, Day 94 - 4/4/14 - Movie #1,691

BEFORE: Another Goldie Hawn film, and I'm gradually working my way into another crime-related chain. 

THE PLOT:  A woman attempts to reunite her family by helping her husband escape prison and together kidnapping their son. But things don't go as planned when they are forced to take a police hostage on the road.

AFTER: It's an odd little film, it's hard to tell exactly what angle it's coming at its subject matter from at times, alternately championing and condemning the main characters as they mount an often low-speed chase across Texas, pursued/escorted by a cadre of police vehicles.  I'd advise you to keep an eye on this director, but I don't really think his career is going anywhere...

Seriously though, this is Steven Spielberg's first feature, if you don't count TV movies like "Duel", and within 3 years he went on to release both "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", both of which resemble this film not at all.  If I've got any complaint about Spielberg's first feature, it's that it didn't seem to have the good sense to be one of Spielberg's later features.

What I mean to say is, essentially there are only a few different frameworks for movie plots.  For example, "the lead characters have to go from here to there to get this thing" should work just as well whether the characters are crossing Texas to get their son or if they're traveling from Nepal to Cairo to track down the Lost Ark of the Covenant.  But there's a vast difference in how interesting those two trips are, and the types of challenges that arise along the way. 

Turns out this is sort of based on a true event from 1969, when two fugitives kidnapped a public safety trooper and drove across Texas, with a motorcade of about 150 police cars in pursuit.  That event had an ending that was decidedly different, yet essentially the same.

NITPICK POINT: Good to know that all you need to break out of prison in Texas is a plaid shirt and a pair of jeans. 

Also starring William Atherton (last seen in "The Last Samurai", but most famous for being the asshole EPA guy in "Ghostbusters"), Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks (most famous for playing Billy Pilgrim in "Slaughterhouse-Five"), with a cameo from Steve Kanaly.

RATING: 3 out of 10 trading stamps

The Out-of-Towners (1999)

Year 6, Day 93 - 4/3/14 - Movie #1,690

BEFORE: The "Hawn-a-thon" rolls on - don't worry, I'm not going to watch "Overboard".

If I've got any scheduling regret, it has to do with the fact that the new "Captain America" film opens tomorrow, and I failed to take that into consideration.  For that matter, the new "X-Men" film is coming up in May, when I'll be deep into the Hitchcock chain.  But, since I never got around to seeing "Thor: The Dark World", maybe I'll have to catch up on all three before Comic-Con in July.  I certainly don't want a repeat of my "Iron Man 3" experience, alone late at night in Chula Vista.

THE PLOT: The adventures of a couple, Henry and Nancy Clark, vexed by misfortune while in New York City for a job interview.

AFTER: I get a little defensive about my adopted city, New York.  The city so nice that...well, OK, sometimes it's not so nice but it took me in, once upon a time, and continues to support me.  It gives me everything I need, and all it asks in return is that I act responsibly when crossing the street, and that I don't make any sudden moves...

But Hollywood persists in poking fun at it, in films like "Date Night", "The Sitter", this one, and so on.  The city is transformed into a confusing jumble of high-society events and criminal hijinks, which lead to (fictional) marathon crazy nights where everything can happen, and does, laws are broken, people end up in jail, and yet in the morning everything's somehow back to normal and we get ready for the next crazy night. 

I'll start with what the film gets right - non-New Yorkers tend to stand out in this city.  I saw a woman on the subway this week, who was CLEARLY from out of town. She started talking to other subway riders, asking which stations she could transfer to the local train by just going across the platform, since she was already late for her new job, and if it's called the express train, then why is it moving so slowly?  For chrissakes, lady, just sitdown and shaddup!  If you need directions, by all means ask, but after that, our business is concluded - so Good Day!  This relates to the film's "mugger" scene, where the lead characters from Ohio strike up a friendly conversation with the man on the street asking for change.  First mistake - don't make eye contact.  2nd mistake - don't give anyone money.  3rd mistake - don't say anything, except maybe "Sorry..." 

Also right: casting John Cleese.  Cleese practically perfected the "uptight hotel manager capable of having a meltdown" role in his series "Fawlty Towers", and if you haven't seen those amazing 13 gems of episodes, please go do so now, I'll wait.  And he can go from arrogant prick to overly apologetic toady quite quickly, which is exactly what the movie required of him.  If you can get Cleese in your film and convince him to do a funny dance or a silly walk, that's money in the bank.

Now, on with the NITPICK POINTS  #1: The distance from Ohio to New York is quite driveable - my ex was from Cleveland, and I made that trip many times.  If I had 24 hours to get across PA and NJ, I don't think I'd take a plane. Now, the couple here has a son at Ohio State, so perhaps they live in Columbus and not Cleveland, but that's still just a 9-hour drive.  I could more likely believe that they'd drive to NYC to visit their daughter, rather than the excuse given in the film, which is:

NITPICK POINT #2:  Would a NYC ad agency hire a guy from OH as a creative director?  Anything possible, I see ad agency people move across the country all the time, but this is for a NYC tourism campaign.  As the film itself correctly states, they'd be much more likely to hire a CD from another agency in NY, or at least from another big city, assuming the guy has tourism in his portfolio.

NITPICK POINT #3: This city practically wrote the book on acceptance and counter-culture.  Minority rights, gay rights, homeless person rights - and now we put up with hipsters.  Unless the hotel manager is a serial killer, there are very few lifestyles that people in this city would feel the need to hide.  It's a great sight gag to see Cleese expressing his inner diva, but I would think that by now dressing in drag has lost its stigma.

Plus, you can't say that New Yorkers are too open about their lifestyles (the sex-addiction therapy session) AND say that we're too closeted in the same movie.  Maybe I'll let this one slide, since the hotel manager was British, and they're all way too uptight, right?  

The ending feels tacked on - when Henry Clark admits defeat and declares that "New York won", I thought, there's your campaign slogan, "New York #1".  But they went a different way with it, the angle he lands on at the last second ties things up just a little too neatly, saving his job, marriage and lifestyle at the same time.

Also starring Steve Martin (last seen in "Pennies From Heaven"), John Cleese, Mark McKinney (last seen in "A Night at the Roxbury"), Oliver Hudson, with cameos from Cynthia Nixon, Josh Mostel (last seen in "Searching for Bobby Fischer"), Mo Gaffney, Ernie Sabella, Jack McGee (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), and Rudy Giuliani.

RATING: 4 out of 10 traveler's checks (whatever happened to them?)

Butterflies Are Free

Year 6, Day 92 - 4/2/14 - Movie #1,689

BEFORE: Goldie Hawn carries over from "Private Benjamin", she'll be around all week.  Sometimes she'll just do that, just walk right in and settle down, and then good luck getting rid of her...remember "Housesitter"?  Yeah, it's kind of like that.

THE PLOT: A blind man moves into his own apartment against the wishes of his overprotective mother, and befriends the freethinking young woman next door.

AFTER: Sometimes it's easy to spot which films used to be plays - not big musicals, mind you, I mean plays.  If 99% of the action takes place in a small space, like an apartment, and there are no more than 4 major characters, yeah, that used to be a play.  Like "The Odd Couple" - great film, set mostly in Oscar Madison's apartment.

I'm still finding movie "sins" that I need to atone for.  I remember this film from when I was a teen, but I don't think I listened to any of the dialogue, I was mostly interested in the fact that Goldie Hawn walks around in revealing underwear for about half of the film.  Since I didn't have legal access to Playboy at the time, and no one had gotten around to inventing the internet yet, I took my pleasures where I could.  Yes, I raced home after school to watch Lynda Carter as "Wonder Woman", I admit it.

They used to have these little independent TV stations in Boston, Channel 38 and 56 - this was back before either one was a FOX affiliate or part of the CW or whatever.  Both would run movies, Ch. 56 had their "Creature Double Feature" and Ch. 38 had "The Movie Loft", and that's where I learned about 2nd run and 3rd run films.  Occasionally the Movie Loft would program a film like this one, and you have to wonder if they were really interested in screening a sensitive portrayal of a blind man's struggle, or they were aware that a film had something close to nudity in it.

(ASIDE: Once in a while, one of those stations would skirt the censors somehow - The Movie Loft once showed the original "Carrie" unedited, shower scene and all.  And Ch. 56 once screened the 80's sex comedy "My Tutor" with all its boobage intact.  Somebody probably got fired for that, but they made a 14-year old boy very happy...)

Anyway, I'm an adult now and I can watch a film with half-naked people in it and finally pay attention to the plot.  My penance for ogling Goldie Hawn as a youth is to watch this film in a serious manner and finally understand what's going on. 

The filmmaker's goal was probably to get people thinking about what it's like to be blind - but instead I'm wondering how difficult it is for an actor to PLAY blind.  Deaf?  No problem.  Mentally deficient?  Probably a snap, you just slur your words and adopt a blank stare.  But playing blind - you've to be able to look at things and not see them.  Or talk to another actor and not face them directly, that's tough.  Every little thing that you've trained yourself to do, you've got to pick it apart and think about it - how would I approach this task differently if I couldn't see it?

I recently watched "Hollywood Ending", where Woody Allen's character went blind temporarily, and he dealt with the situation by memorizing the layout of the room - of course, he knew how many steps it was to the chair, but if somebody said, "Hey, come sit next to me!" he wouldn't know what to do.  And if somebody moved the trash can, well, there's a chance for physical comedy right there.

This actor not only has to play blind, he has to play a blind character who acts quite normal at first - the other lead doesn't even figure out his disability right away, that's how comfortable he is with it.  But that's a double challenge - playing a blind guy who's adept at getting by and challenges our notion of what it means to have a handicap.  You might wonder why Goldie's parading about his apartment wearing almost nothing, and it doesn't even faze him.  Meanwhile, the actor probably couldn't believe his luck...

I know I said there wouldn't be any relationship stuff around here for a while, but I lied.  This is sort of a romance pic, but with an obvious twist.  Can a ditzy actress get serious about a blind guy, or is it just a casual fling for her?  Can the blind guy keep from falling in love, or is that just part of his nature?  Can they meet somewhere in the middle, or are they just too different?   And what about the conflicts they both have with his mother, who wants him to move back home with her?

Also starring Edward Albert (last seen in "Guarding Tess"), Eileen Heckart (last seen in "The First Wives Club"), Paul Michael Glaser

RATING:  4 out of 10 heads of lettuce

Private Benjamin

Year 6, Day 91 - 4/1/14 - Movie #1,688

BEFORE:  I forgot to mention yesterday that I think I figured out how this project would end.  Note that I didn't say "WHEN", but "HOW". I found two or three films that fit together and form a block that I wouldn't mind ending on - now I just have to get there.

I haven't paid too much attention to April Fool's Day, I guess I've usually been in a chain of shark films or serial killer films and realized too late that it was Comedy Time.  In 2009 my April 1 film was "The Jerk", and that seemed about right.  So let's get back to basics - Goldie Hawn's coming in for a 5-day stint as the resident fool - and I don't mean to disparage here, I think she made a great career out of playing ditzy.

Linking from "Comic Book Villains", Eileen Brennan carries over. 

THE PLOT:  A sheltered young high society woman joins the army on a whim and finds herself in a more difficult situation than she ever expected.

AFTER:  This is one of those 1970's + 80's military films that I never got around to.  It was a bit of a trend, I suppose, but since I'd seen "Stripes", I never felt the need to watch this one.  I don't recall this being a thing, but if you were a directionless slacker in the 1980's, or just in need of some discipline (or comedy) in your life, I guess you just enlisted.

Once Judy Benjamin shows up at camp, falsely expecting some kind of luxury hotel or vacation package, there's the requisite montage of obstacle courses and forced marches, with our heroine failing miserably, unable to swing on a rope over a water hazard or properly scale a wall.  But the whole point of a montage is to show progress - where was the footage of her gradually getting better at these tasks? 

Instead the film relies on a contrivance, the "war games" scenario, to allow her to accidentally succeed, or fail upwards.  It works from a comic standpoint, but less successfully from a character one, where I'd prefer to see the character gain some actual skills, rather than just take advantage of the mistakes that happen to fall in her favor.

I suppose you can track the comedy/military thing back to "M*A*S*H", and perhaps even "The Dirty Dozen" before that, but somehow it got cross-pollinated with the juvenile nature of teen comedies.  It's funny, I think of the notorious shower scene in "M*A*S*H", and even though I was turned on by it when I was a teen, as an adult I can't help but think of it as sexual harassment.  You think about all of the women in the military who are (allegedly) raped or molested by superior officers, and suddenly that's less funny.  I have to credit "Private Benjamin" for calling an officer's clumsy advances on a female underling by the proper term.

Speaking of shower pranks, there is one depicted in this film, where Benjamin puts some substance (blue fabric dye?) in her drill sergeant's showerhead.  I bet a lot of hardware stores in the early 1980's got requests for that "blue stuff" and had to turn teens away.  If you don't know what the substance is properly used for, or what it's called, you shouldn't be allowed to buy it.  A little research tells me this is a variation on an old college prank called the "Chicken Shower", where bouillon cubes are used.  Some people also swear by red Kool-Aid, but don't most people get their shower to the right temperature before stepping into it?  I know I do.

NITPICK POINT: For a spoiled rich woman, Judy Benjamin sure seems to be an expert on plumbing skills, seemingly out of nowhere.  Was that part of basic training?  

There's a weird ending section - where Judy Benjamin opts out of the military, and falls for a philandering Italian man (which seems like it goes without saying), then wonders if she should get married again (what is this, a Woody Allen film?).  I know that many people eventually leave the military and re-enter civilian life, but from a story standpoint, I wonder what was the point of putting a character through basic training and getting her to a respectable position in the army, only to put her back where she started?

Also starring Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Everyone Says I Love You"), Armand Assante (last seen in "Hoffa"), Albert Brooks (last seen in "Out of Sight"), Robert Webber, Craig T. Nelson (last seen in "The Killing Fields"), Mary Kay Place (last seen in "The Big Chill"), Harry Dean Stanton (last heard in "Rango"), Barbara Barrie, Sam Wanamaker, Hal Williams, P.J. Soles, with a cameo from Sally Kirkland.

RATING:  4 out of 10 parachutes