Retro Review: Con Air

 So tomorrow is the fifteenth anniversary of Con Air entering our lives. I assume that everybody felt the impact of Con Air the same way I did, but if you've forgotten the film (we can't all be 30 years old this year, Blade Runner), let's take a look back down memory lane...

 Con Air was a spin-off of the Jerry Bruckheimer / Michael Bay team up in the 90s that started with Bad Boys in 1995, kicked things up a notch with The Rock in 1996, and then reached its maximum peak with Armageddon, a movie that I'm not especially fond of. Con Air is tied more to the Bruckheimer side of things, as he would also produce Enemy of the State in 1998 before striking gold five years later with Disney and Pirates of the Caribbean. Wait.. where was I? Oh right, before getting tangled up with the people Jerry Bruckheimer was producing with at the Mouse, I was trying to make the point that there was a run of stylized action movies known for excessive "hero" shots, cartoonish plots, big explosions, and lots of actors you wouldn't expect to see yelling at each other. Oh, and the big soundtrack tie-in song: for Con Air, it was "How Do I Live" performed by Trisha Yearwood (after a version by Leeann Rimes was replaced).

 After being reborn as an "action" star in The Rock, Nicolas Cage plays Cameron Poe in Con Air, an Army Ranger coming home to see his wife Tricia (Monica Potter), who is pregnant with his baby. While celebrating his return at a local bar, Poe runs afoul of some one dimensional assholes who decide to assault him outside in the parking lot, and he doesn't really fight back until one of them pulls a knife, and in an act of self defense he kills the guy. Mind you, self defense. Nevertheless, his lawyer recommends he pleads guilty, the judge rejects that because Poe's skills make him a "deadly weapon" who is not subject to normal laws. Because Poe can respond with "lethal force," he is given a 7-10 year prison sentence instead of a reduced judgement. So yeah, it's important to understand this is the logic that sets up Con Air.

 Because it's only going to get crazier, when Poe gets out of prison he ends up flying back home on a plane with the worst of the worst, two of which - mastermind Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich) and Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames) - have planned an execute a jailbreak in mid-flight. They release the other prisoners and hold the guards hostage. Now in order to get home, Poe not only has to stop Cyrus and Diamond Dog, but also needs to find insulin for his cellmate Mike "Baby-O" O'Dell (Mykelti Williamson) in order to save his life.

 I'm not going to pretend that Con Air is a "good" movie by most conventional definitions. It includes an exaggerated version of Cage's H.I. McDunnough southern accent, what I sincerely hope was a wig, and includes a number of great (read: ridiculous) lines, few as memorable as "Why couldn't you just put the bunny back in the box?" But it isn't just Cage being Cage or Malkovich and Rhames chewing scenery that makes Con Air memorable. There's also the rest of the cast, an impressively loaded lineup in retrospect.

 So in addition to Sailor Ripley, Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont, Bubba Gump, and Marcellus Wallace, Con Air also features Danny Trejo (Machete), M.C. Gainey (Lost), Colm Meaney (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Dave Chappelle (Half Baked), Nick Chindlund (The Chronicles of Riddick), Rachel Ticotin (Total Recall), and Steve Buscemi (Fargo) as Garland 'The Marietta Mangler' Greene, a Hannibal Lecter-esque serial killer that even Cyrus and Diamond Dog are nervous around. Oh, and John Cusack. How could I forget John Cusack, who plays U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin, the only person on the ground trying to help Poe bring down the plane safely, even as Meaney's Duncan Malloy is busting his balls and driving a car with a license plate that says this:

  Well, it is a very silly, bombastic action movie that they don't really make any more. In fact, I can't think of a modern action film to compare Con Air to, because it's more coherent than a Transformers movie and takes itself more seriously than something like Drive Angry, yet not as seriously as a Bourne movie, for example. It's not tongue in cheek, but things are so over the top at times that you have to sit back and laugh at the absurdity. There's a long setup involving whether or not Garland Greene is going to kill again, so during a brief period when the plane is landed, he ends up sitting down with a little girl. We all dread what should happen, but as the plane is flying off (to "Sweet Home Alabama" if I remember correctly), the little girl waves at the plane from the ground. Awww.

 Con Air was directed by Simon West, who went on to make Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The General's Daughter, and the remake of When a Stranger Calls. More recently, he made that kind-of remake of The Mechanic with Jason Statham that still gets the Blogorium traffic because nobody knows what the bodyguard's "World Championship" ring is for. In fact, I bet it's on the right side of the page right now under the frequently visited links. While I didn't care for Tomb Raider and didn't see the other two, I liked The Mechanic all right and enjoyed Con Air. Hell, I still enjoy Con Air, even if it is stupid as all get out. Hopefully he brings some of that absurdity to The Expendables 2 later this summer.

 One final sidenote: when I went to see Con Air in the theatre, I was 18 but the friend I went to see it with wasn't. I don't know if other states do this, but the one I live in takes the "under 17" part of the R rating to mean "including 17" so you can only see R-rated movies if you're 18 or accompanied by an adult. I don't remember how he got in - maybe he lied about forgetting his ID - but we did manage to see it.

Retro Review: The Big Lebowski

 It's true, gang - the Cap'n has never reviewed The Big Lebowski in any incarnation of the Blogorium. I mention it all of the time, and have talked about seeing the film and its impact on teenage Cap'n (seven years of trouble!), but it's never had a proper review here. Since the film arrives on Blu-Ray today, it seems only fair that I finally assess the movie that went from being the Coen brother's follow-up to Fargo into a genuine cult phenomenon in its own right.

 Jeff Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is better known as The Dude, a free spirit bumming around in Los Angeles circa 1991. The Dude likes to smoke a little pot, drink White Russians, and bowl with league partners Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and Donny Kerabatsos (Steve Buscemi). Their only concern is advancing during round robin tournaments until two thugs (Phillip Moon and Mark Pellegrino) break into The Dude's apartment and pee on his rug. They work for Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), and Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) owes Treehorn money. The only problem for The Dude is that he's not married. Bunny is married to Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston) - the "Big Lebowski" from the title - and when The Dude tries to replace his rug, he's drawn into a kidnapping plot involving nihilists (Peter Stormare, Flea, Torsten Voges, and Aimee Mann), rival private detectives (Jon Polito), Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore) and missing toes. Can The Dude abide all of this?

 Die-hard Lebowski fans already know I left two key components out of the film: The Stranger (Sam Elliot), and Jesus (John Turturro). I also didn't mention Saddam Hussein, the Busby Berkeley-inspired dream sequences, Lebowski's butler Brandt (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Smokey (Jimmie Dale Gilmore), Walter's show dog, Maude's friend Knox Harrington (David Thewlis), Autobahn, Logjammin', Larry Sellers (Jesse Flanagan), The Dude's landlord Marty (Jack Kehler) or his performance art. Or half a dozen other memorable moments from The Big Lebowski.

 I also haven't covered how imminently quotable The Big Lebowski is, from "8 year olds, Dude" to "that, and a pair of testicles" to "shut the fuck up, Donny" or  "this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" or "you are entering a world of pain" to "you don't fuck with the Jesus man!" I'm sure I left out your favorite quote, but that's okay. The Big Lebowski has something for everyone - it's a distillation of Raymond Chandler concepts dropped into a laid back comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen. The funny thing is that The Big Lebowski wasn't always The Big Lebowski.

 The first time I saw The Big Lebowski, it was nearly as an afterthought - I had seen the trailer, which gives you no idea whatsoever the movie was about:



 See what I mean? The spots running on television didn't exactly inspire confidence, either:



 Critical responses were mixed, from the amiable but slightly dismissive Roger Ebert to conflicted pans from Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Todd McCarthy. The general impression I had as The Big Lebowski made it to theatres was "well, it's no 'Fargo'" and foolishly I waited. It took a good friend of mine to talk me into seeing The Big Lebowski ("you MUST see this movie") as it was winding down a run at the $1.50 theatre. In 1998, it wasn't the movie it is now; The Big Lebowski was a film seem by a small audience of devoted fans who went gaga for the off-kilter tone and loopy characters. The Dude was a hero to many, and over the next ten years, the cult grew.

 So too did the film's reputation - on VHS and DVD, The Big Lebowski became the film to share with friends, the great part movie. Before long there were Lebowski Fests, and eventually it wasn't odd to see t-shirts, bumper stickers, and posters devoted to The Dude. Hell, I have a "The Dude Abides" bumper magnet that's slowly fading from legibility on my car, and if you've seen any of the "photo" posts I do from time to time, you know I love to use that picture of Jeff Bridges dressed as The Dude while wearing his Tron helmet. I am unabashedly a fan of The Big Lebowski, but have never felt like a part of the Lebowski "cult" - I just loved the movie and so did everybody I knew. It never occurred to me to think of Lebowski like people regard The Rocky Horror Picture show, but that is kind of what happened. It's almost inconceivable now that people didn't want to see The Big Lebowski, so I'm glad that's flipped almost all the way around.

Retro Review: Trees Lounge

This October, fifteen years will have passed since the first time I saw Trees Lounge, a movie I'm constantly surprised to find people have never heard of, let alone seen. I can understand that John and Jane Multiplex might not be aware of a 1996 indie film written, directed, and starring Steve Buscemi, but even most indie-heads seem to have totally missed the film. It's possible that the popularity of Trainspotting overshadowed Trees Lounge, but then again I might just link the two together because I saw them both around the same time at the same place. With the number of Steve Buscemi fans continuing to rise in the wake of Boardwalk Empire, maybe it's time to look back at his first (and arguably best) directorial effort.

Tommy Basilio (Buscemi) is a functioning alcoholic that can't seem to do anything right but drink. He loses his job as a mechanic for "borrowing" money from the register and losing all of it at Atlantic City, and his ex-girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) is with his boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia). Tommy spends most of his time in Trees Lounge, a neighborhood dive bar populated by (barely) functioning alcoholics, where he entertains the locals and charms newcomers with his drinking games. When Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel), an ice cream truck driver, has a stroke and dies during his route, Tommy takes over driving, although he's hardly a worthy successor. Tommy does strike up a friendship with Debbie (Chloë Sevigny), Theresa's teenaged niece. Their relationship irks Debbie's father, Jerry (Daniel Baldwin), and is only compounded when Tommy takes it too far. Can he turn his life around, or is Tommy Basilio destined to become another slouching barfly?


 I wish I could remember how or why I knew that Trees Lounge existed in 11th grade: it was so early into the age of the internet that I can't imagine that it came from that direction. There's an off chance I saw a review in the local newspaper (which is, curiously enough, the only reason I knew Donnie Darko existed five years later), and I do know that I was on a serious Buscemi kick, having finished most of his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion (another movie that deserves to be better known than it is).

 Regardless of where I found out about Trees Lounge, I know exactly where I saw it: The Studio. I mention The Studio quite a bit; whenever I wax nostalgic about the concept of "grindhouse" theatres, that shoebox duplex of movies that weren't big enough for The Rialto and were too commercially unfriendly for The Colony (and believe it or not, there was a time when you could see Trainspotting with next to no one in The Studio, when people hadn't seen it and wouldn't for years). I saw Trees Lounge with a new-ish friend that transferred to the high school the Cap'n went to, one who shared an interest in "art house" cinema. Nobody else seemed that interested, and I guess that's been the story of Trees Lounge to this day.

 It really is a shame, because there's a lot to like about Trees Lounge: Buscemi's writing, directing, and particularly acting chops all serve the low-key story well, and he surrounds himself with great actors in smaller roles: Carol Kane, Seymour Cassel, Mimi Rogers, Debi Mazar, Michael Imperioli, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Boone Junior, and a brief appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, playing against the "type" he'd been cultivating while working with Tarantino. It's a film of small moments, of characters that hover in and out of the story, where the story is less important than the players.

 While I described the plot very nearly in full, Trees Lounge is more interested than your average "sad sack" alcoholic movie, even if it infrequently rises above a tone somewhere between downbeat and depressing. Buscemi is able to keep the character study engrossing because Tommy is such a likable loser; as an audience, we understand why people have trouble completely giving up on him, even though he seems to be incapable of keeping a good thing going. There's an easygoing charm in his performance, one that might surprise people used to Buscemi's twitchier, chatty performances in films like Fargo and Reservoir Dogs.

 Speaking of Reservoir Dogs, there's a moment early in the film where Tommy is driving around town, and he passes a familiar sight to fans of Tarantino's debut:

In the commentary for the long out-of-print "special edition," Buscemi insists that this was a coincidence and not intended to be a visual reference to the opening credits sequence from Reservoir Dogs. While I take him at his word, it struck us immediately in 1996 and continues to be a pretty big coincidence if you ask me.

 The out-of-print disc is, unfortunately, the only way to see Trees Lounge in widescreen, because when Lionsgate picked up the rights, they dumped the transfer and all of its extras for a pan-and-scan disc at a bargain bin price. The only upside to this was that when I finally - after years of unsuccessfully searching - found the first DVD, instead of paying $25, I only had to pay $7.99 since the updated retail price was lost on a bored employee at Coconuts. It may seem silly to have been so excited, but every now and then one feels that way when a movie goes overlooked for so long. Considering that it's better than subsequent Buscemi directorial efforts (Animal Factory, Lonesome Jim, and Interview), I'm hoping this review turns some of you on to a better slice of understated independent cinema. Think of it as proto-mumblecore, if that's what you're into.

Lost Reviews

I found these the other day while I was cleaning out files. I wrote all of them for a radio show I was working on five years ago, and looking at the reviews, I can't imagine why most of them were abandoned. Oh wait, yes I can. You try reading them out loud.

A Dirty Shame2004
Directed by John Waters

Highly touted prior to its release as the first opening NC-17 film to be advertised on television, most people missed A Dirty Shame during a brief theatrical run, and it was largely forgotten. What a shame, because John Waters most recent effort accomplishes something many thought impossible; A Dirty Shame walks the tightrope between his older, more graphic fare (Desperate Living and Pink Flamingos) and his more recent “harmless” films (Hairspray, Cry Baby, and Pecker).

Tracey Ullman heads up the film as the uptight Sylvia Stickles, a woman who is so embarrassed by sexuality that she locks her daughter Ursula Udders (played by Selma Blair) in her room to conceal her outrageously augmented mammaries. Sylvia’s world is turned upside down, however, when she’s struck on the head and becomes a ravenous sexual lunatic, with the guidance of Ray Ray Perkins (played by Johnny Knoxville with all the swagger of a young Elvis Presley.) Ray Ray introduces Sylvia to the underground culture of sexual fetishism in Baltimore, and reveals that she is the prophet sent to them who will usher in the next level of carnal experience.

While it sounds awfully filthy, A Dirty Shame is actually quite funny, and doesn’t dwell on fetishism (which includes dressing up like a baby, smearing food on yourself, or the “bears”) but plays with the notion that sex is unnatural. The film is largely inoffensive, with the exception of a scene where Sylvia picks up a bottle of water using her you know what in a nursing home, but even that is more in the spirit of fun and less about shock value.

Waters peppers the cast with great character actors, including Chris Isaak, the aforementioned Ullman, Blair, and Knoxville, but also uses his regular troupe, among them Patricia Hearst, Mink Stole, and Jean Hill, plus an eleventh hour surprise cameo from a certain Bay Watch veteran.

A Dirty Shame is nothing to be embarrassed about watching; if you’re so inclined, I’m sure there’s a lot you can learn about in this movie, and at 87 minutes it hardly overstays it’s welcome, and anyway, it’s a hoot. A warning to hankie grabbers: the film’s NC-17 rating exists for the same reason Clerks initially got it, which is to say there’s a lot of talk but not much action.

*note – for those not inclined to be seen renting a movie rated NC-17, an R rated cut exists, but director Waters admits it’s entirely made of alternate scenes and is utterly harmless, and therefore maybe too tame.

Primer
2004
Directed by Shane Carruth

What a first glance appears to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of abusing science, Primer is actually the sort of brain-bending science fiction that rewards multiple viewings, and you won’t mind because a) it’s only 77 minutes long, and b) the film grows richer and richer with each reveal.

The film begins in earnest with four engineers trying to get their company up and running with something new and revolutionary to the scientific community. As time passes on, two of them slip out of the picture, and the remaining fellows make a radical discovery; they’ve found a way to transport matter six hour backwards in time. They continue to experiment, and then one of them presents the other with a larger surprise: he’s created one that a person can fit in.

At first they use it to make a small fortune using stock market numbers, and then their plan begins to spiral out of control when their ambition exceeds their conscience. What makes Primer work is that we’re treated to science fiction in a realistic way: none of this seems too implausible or outside the realm of what could happen, and the ensuing chaos and unraveling of layers may be confusing at first, but the more you pay attention to, the more fascinating this film is.

First time director Shane Carruth made Primer on a practically non-existent budget, shooting digitally with available light and casting himself and his friends, and while the low budget is on display insofar as film quality, the movie itself gains a grainy realism that would ring hollow in a major studio production.

This is certainly worth picking up and watching once, and if you like it or just wondered “what the hell happened?” give another sit through. You won’t regret it.

Trees Lounge
1996
Directed by Steve Buscemi

A movie lost in the shuffle of the indie revolution, Steve Buscemi’s directorial debut is a confident, laid back look at a man who has nothing worth living for. Consider Trees Lounge as a counterpart to Buscemi’s role in Ghost World, but imagine that instead of spending his money on arcane jazz records, he went over and over again to wean himself of the teat of the local bar. Every town has one; the watering hole where the same faces sit day in and day out, slightly drunk and ready to tell you about the good ole days.

Trees Lounge is the name of the bar in this particular corner of celluloid America, and Buscemi (who also wrote the film) plays Tommy, a local boy who never grew up. His girlfriend left him for his old boss, and he spends most of his time drifting about in the hours between opening and last call. Eventually, he gets a job as an ice cream truck man, and meets a much younger girl (played by Chloe Sevigny, fresh off her role in Kids) and one thing leads to another, but without such dire consequences. After all, this is a man with little ambition, and the outcomes are as muted as his outlook on life.

This is not to say Trees Lounge is boring; quite the opposite. The film is an amusing dramedy about being adrift and getting ahold of your life, but as opposed to most coming of age stories, this one happens to be about being in your late thirties. Buscemi fills the bar and surrounding town with plenty of familiar character actors, including Seymour Cassel, Mark Boone Junior, Anthony LaPaglia, Debi Mazar, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Don’t go in expecting anything flashy, but Trees Lounge is a fine character study from a character actor who knows what he’s doing.

Coffee and Cigarettes
2004
Director Jim Jarmusch
It isn't difficult to digest this movie. In fact, the title alone tells you everything that can be expected. Jim Jarmusch takes small groups of people (for most of the vingettes, two) and provides them cigarettes and, well, coffee. However, let me clarify something here. This isn't improvised, or at least, most of the conversations aren't. Too many little phrases and moments echo each other to be an accident (in particular, keep an eye out for musicians who double as doctors, nikolai tesla, and the shady nature of celebrity.) While Coffee and Cigarettes is slight, the segments are never too long to grate, and the really good ones make up for the lesser bits.

To wit:

-Cate Blanchett is a standout playing herself and her cousin, as are Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan in the same beat.

-The White Stripes discuss Jack's Tesla coil while Cinque Lee looks on (Lee, having appeared in an earlier segment with his sister Joie and Steve Buscemi)

-Iggy Pop and Tom Waits test each other and discover the diner's jukebox doesn't play either one of them.

-Bill Rice and Taylor Mead muse about the late seventies and champagne
and, in what's probably the most heard about segment, The RZA and The GZA offer Bill Murray helpful tips of losing that smokers cough (they also refer to him exclusively as "Bill Murray".)

See what I mean? There's really not a lot after the movie ends, but it's a pleasant hour and a half, and even if the Tom Waits / Iggy Pop scene goes on for far too long, and Roberto Benigni is almost impossible to understand in his scene with Steven Wright, well, it's entertaining enough. Jarmusch fans should enjoy it well enough, and it may appeal to other cinephiles.

Garden State
2003
Director Zach Braff

If there's one problem with Garden State, it's that the movie is too easy to love. This, understandably, is a minor problem, but waiting a few days between watching it and writing this tone my love of the film considerably.

Don't get it twisted, this is a great movie. Zach Braff put together something truly magic here: We're not just talking Wes Anderson's The Graduate (which, incidentally, is Rushmore), but at the same time, comparisons to Anderson are well made. Braff has a great eye of frame composition. Every shot is full of eye catching detail. And he's got a natural chemistry that makes him easy to relate to.

Admittedly, this isn't the most original idea for a movie, but you really don't mind seeing a movie about finding yourself and true love in the midst of tragedy because of how magnetic the cast is. Along with Braff, Ian Holm brings a subdued, nervous performance of a man who just doesn't understand his son, the always reliable Peter Sarsgard plays the affable loser that wants nothing more to smooth things over so well you tend to forget just how good he is at it. Then there's the revelation: Natalie Portman. I'd been so used to seeing her go half-assed in Star Wars that I forgot that this was the same Natalie Portman that blew everyone away in Leon. She's a force of nature in Garden State, but it's a testament to her talent that she never takes it over the top. This is the type of character that'd tempt some to go way past believable, but you never feel like she isn't a real person (even if that real person is a chronic liar who suffers from siezures. Speaking of which, kudos to Braff for avoiding the easy dramatic device of the free spirit heroine being dragged back to earth with a tragic seizure scene)

Garden State works because everyone involved wants it to, and where most movies would drag or take the easy route, things work so very well because we're invested in the characters.

* I should take a moment to talk about the music. My friend scoffed at my interest in Garden State, calling it "an advertisment for how awesome indie rock is" which, from the tv ads for the soundtrack, isn't that far off base. However, the movie, despite using indie rock as an almost excluse soundtrack, only directly draws attention to the music once. I think it's not as obtrusive as some might expect it to be (think of it as a more subdued version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Graduate" soundtrack)

DiG!

Ondi Timoner’s documentary about The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre was a seven year labour of love, telling the tale of two bands on the rise; one of who makes it to (relative) success, and the other who implodes. The great joy in watching the film is seeing how each band approaches their rises and falls, and what it takes to stay alive inside the belly of the record company beast. While Warhols singer Courtney Taylor narrates the film, equal time is given to the Dandys and Anton Newcombe, the brilliant but unstable leader of the Jonestown Massacre. The bands pick at each other, are envious, and get together every now and then to play (or in one case, to crash the other band’s house for a photo shoot) but it’s not necessary to like The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre to enjoy the film. Better still, the dvd contains separate commentary tracks for each band, so we can hear their reaction to the film, how they’re portrayed, and how they saw things as 1996 turned into 2002.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Director Miranda July moves from the world of short films to full length with this confident slice of life dramadey. Well, let’s take a step back, eh? July, who appears in the film, made a film that is at times evocative of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Mary Harron, Sofia Coppola, and Terry Zwigoff, with the themes of a Todd Solondz movie. Yes, that is possible, and Me and You and Everyone We Know is a declaration of emerging talent wrapped up in the overlapping stories of a Short Cuts or Magnolia. A warning to the sensitive: this film deals with burgeoning adolescent sexuality, but not in a perverted way, per se.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Z Channel was a pay cable station based out of California in the late seventies and early eighties, but it’s what Z Channel and its founder Jerry Harvey were about that makes it so important. Z Channel preceded HBO in a number of ways, but more importantly, Harvey was interested in showing movies that didn’t get a fair shake in theaters; films he loved personally and wanted to share with the world. Z Channel was the first cable station to show movies the way they were shot, in widescreen, and in blocks with similar films for marathons. Directors like Robert Altman, David Cronenberg, and Jim Jarmusch saw their films alongside movies like The Magnificent Ambersons, Heaven’s Gate, and Once Upon a Time in America, premiering for the first time in its original director’s cut. Harvey had a passion for films, and the people interviewed in this film rave about him, the least of which is Quentin Tarantino, who lived outside Z Channel’s broadcast range and only saw it through bootlegged tapes. Harvey’s life was cut short in the mid-eighties when his mental problems drove him to suicide, but the impact of Z Channel on what we know as home video cannot be overlooked, and A Magnificent Obsession is a great way to see that.

The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber is a bit like Donnie Darko, but with the sensibilities of I Heart Huckabees. There’s our hero who lives in a semi-permanent prescription stupor, his clueless parents and their clueless friends, and then there’s The Chumscrubber, and omnipresent video game, tv, and comic book character who wanders through post apocalyptic suburbia with his severed head at his side. To tell you any more would take away the fun of seeing it for yourself, but don’t expect another Donnie Darko. Just something distantly related.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Stephen Hopkins cut his teeth in Hollywood making sequels to popular sci-fi and horror movies (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5, Predator 2) but in 2004 he made something quite different for HBO, something that, while critically recognized, never got the attention it deserved, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Based on the book of the same name, Geoffery Rush is Peter Sellers, whoever that is. The film gives us Sellers as a man without any identity of his own, partly the reason he was such a renowned character actor, because he slipped into the roles fully. Jealous to the point of acting childish, Sellers was a fascinating mess of a man and the movie covers his personal and professional life in a way many were never aware of. That and it’s damned good, too. Rush is fantastic as Sellers, who plays the movie as though he’s directing his own life story (and playing all the parts), and there are fine turns by John Lithgow, Stephen Fry, Emily Watson, Charlize Theron, and Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick. A fine post modern biopic in the vein of American Splendor, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a must view.

The Machinist

Brad Anderson’s curious blend of the worlds of David Fincher and David Lynch may be best known for Christian Bale’s stunning weight loss, but it’s a hallucinatory trip down the dark corridors of the mind that keep us watching. Bale, who dropped down to 117 pounds, plays Trevor Reznik, a machinist who hasn’t slept for a year and is haunted by ominous visions of something he may or may not have done. As his sense of reality begins to unravel, he reaches out to the only people he knows, a waitress (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) and a hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who may know him better than he knows himself. If the ending lacks the punch it should have, then at least the journey there was effective enough.

The Jacket

Steven Sodebergh and George Clooney’s production company turned to short filmmaker John Maybury to direct their first major feature, a strange blend of Jacob’s Ladder and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Adrien Brody is a Desert Storm veteran who’s suffering more than a little brain damage from being shot in the head twice, and when the man he’s hitchhiking with kills a police officer, he can’t remember what happened. Assigned to the care of Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), Jack Starks is subjected to a horrific series of tests in a mental facility, the worst of which involves being put into a straight jacket and locked in a morgue container under the influence of heavy medication. Starks awakens to find himself in the future, and by accident comes across a young woman (Keira Knightley) whose mother he helped out in 1990. When Starks discovers his death is imminent, his mission is a race against time to find out how he dies and if he can stop it. The Jacket benefits greatly from Maybury’s vision as a director: much of the film’s transitions have a Brakhage like feeling, and he has a fine eye and a great cast to sell the premise.

Wet Hot American Summer

Somewhere between when The State ended it’s run and when Stella began airing on Comedy Central, the central members got together and made a movie about summer camp in the 1980’s. Their bizarre sendup, written by Michael Showalter and directed by David Wain, has all the flourishes of the summer camp film genre, but filtered in such a strange way that we’re almost not sure if it’s funny the first time through. It is. Wet Hot American Summer is the only kind of movie we could expect from The State, a comedy troupe so devoted to the bizarre that it’s no wonder the show didn’t last. In addition to the half of the state that isn’t in Reno 911, Wet Hot American Summer also stars Paul Rudd, Janeane Garafalo, David Hyde Pierce, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, and Christopher Meloni (also known as the guy who looks like Elias Koteas). Don’t be surprised if you find yourself watching it and saying “hey! It’s that guy” more than once, even if you aren’t sure if you like it. Watch it a couple of times and let it sink in.

The Most Dangerous Game

While King Kong was wrapping up shooting and before effects work went underway, RKO decided to put the standing jungle sets to good use and make another movie they could release before Kong, using much of the same cast, crew, and even the same director. Based on Richard Connell’s story of the same name, The Most Dangerous Game is the tale of a trophy hunter who survives a boat capsizing and finds himself of an island owned by the mysterious Count Zaroff, who also enjoys hunting, but in a very different way. Starring Joel McRea, Leslie Banks, and Kong’s Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong, the film is a lean 63 minutes, but never runs out of steam. Do yourself a favor and hunt this one down.



Heavenly Creatures

Peter Jackson’s first foray outside the world of horror comedy was the true story of Juliet Hulme, who brutally killed her mother with the help of her best friend Pauline Parker. Though it sounds right up his alley, Heavenly Creatures is more of a drama with the hint of fantasy than an outright suspense film (the murder itself happens at the very end of the film). The movie proper deals with the growing relationship between the shy Hulme (Melanie Lynskey), and the outgoing Parker (Kate Winslet, in her big screen debut), much to the horror of their parents. Jackson displays an adeptness with the young actresses heretofore unseen in his earlier films, and brings the fantasy elements of their dream world (involving butterflies, castles, and clay knights) to the screen in a way that doesn’t feel hokey. Heavenly Creatures was the first indication to many that Jackson had much more in him than Zombie films, but it never got the audience it deserved.

F for Fake

Orson Welles’ free form film essay on the art of sleight of hand, be it magic, forgery, or film illusion is a wild ride that benefits from watching with a skeptic’s eye. While it seems Welles is pointing the camera at Elmyir, a master art forger, perhaps he’s looking at the man’s biographer, who also wrote a biography of Howard Hughes that turned out to be utter fiction. Or perhaps he’s pointing the camera towards his companion Oja Kodar, and her sordid tale involving Pablo Picasso. Maybe he’s pointing at himself and his critics, who chided him for never finishing his films. Maybe. Watch it for yourself and decided, and while you’re checking out Criterion’s first class dvd of F for Fake, put in disc two and watch Orson Welles: One Man Band, a feature length documentary about a number of films Welles began, but for one reason or another, never completed. The master is at work in F for Fake, so go see what he’s up to.