7/9/14: Horse Waits, Tom Tries

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'80s films, Amber Bauer, Bill Pullman, cinema, Cold Feet, comedies, cowboys, double-crosses, estranged siblings, film reviews, films, greed, horses, Jeff Bridges, Kathleen York, Keith Carradine, Movies, odd movies, psycho killers, Rip Torn, Robert Dornhelm, Sally Kirkland, stolen jewels, Tom Waits

Tom Waits is such a weird, cool, enigmatic bad-ass of a dude that whenever he shows up in movies, he usually steals them right away from the rest of the cast. Like a thief in the night, Waits slips in, does that thing he does (acting? living? just being?) and slips out, leaving nothing but bare walls and floors in his wake. He’s truly an amazing actor in that, like similar odd-job Crispin Glover, he so readily becomes whatever character he’s portraying: it’s always impossible to tell where the character ends and Tom begins, which makes each and every performance both thrilling and a little terrifying. Needless to say, Waits’ by turns hilarious and frightening performance in Robert Dornhelm’s weird ’80s oddity, Cold Feet (1989), is not only the best, most interesting performance in that film but probably one of the best, weirdest performances of that whole year.

Monte (Keith Carradine), Maureen (Sally Kirkland) and Kenny (Tom Waits) are three small-time crooks with a big-time plan: they’ve stolen a small fortune in emeralds and had the bright idea to have them surgically implanted in a horse. After wack-a-doodle Kenny unceremoniously blows away the crooked vet who performs the surgery, the trio make their escape, hitting the high road and handily by-passing law enforcement.

Trouble comes to paradise when Monte double-crosses his partners (even more grievous since he was actually engaged to Maureen, who appears to be as loose-screwed as Kenny is) and hightails it for his square brother’s horse ranch. Monte hasn’t seen brother Buck (Bill Pullman) and his wife, Laura (Kathleen York), in quite some time but they didn’t exactly part on the best of terms: Monte is desperate, however, and really does want to save Infidel (the horse) from getting gutted by the increasingly ruthless Kenny. Monte also wants to reconnect with his estranged 9-year-old daughter, Rosemary (Amber Bauer), who’s just back from a “survival school.”What better place to hide a horse than a horse ranch, he figures?

As Kenny and Maureen haul ass across the country in a stolen motor home, Monte tries to convince his suspicious brother that the reasons for his surprise visit have more to do with familial love than ulterior motives. Laura would love to see Buck and Monte become close again but is this too little too late? Once the local sheriff (Rip Torn) gets involved, you just know that the whole thing is gonna get awful crazy awful quick. There’s no fury like a woman scorned, however, and Maureen is going to make sure to get her pound of flesh, come hell or high water. And Kenny? Well, he just wants to keep eating them Turkish dates, man!

Similar to the Crispin Glover-starring oddity Twister (oddly enough, also 1989), Cold Feet is about 10 pounds of weird in a 5-pound sack. The movie is all over the place, an almost complete mess tonally: it’s a light-hearted comedy right up to the point where Kenny blows somebody away in cold-blood, then goes into slapstick territory before becoming a “brothers-in-crisis” drama, a crime thriller and a romance. The whole thing is shot through with a garish, neon ’80s sensibility which is completely jarring when juxtaposed with the numerous nods to Westerns and rural living: call it the “Rhinestone (1984) factor” but there’s something about the neon-’80s and cowboys that just don’t go together.

Acting-wise, you’ve got a pretty mixed bag: Pullman plays it dead-serious, Carradine hams it up, Kirkland plays it like a dinner-theater version of Madea stoned on nitrous, Rip Torn is Rip Torn and Waits is, as can be expected, suitably amazing. It’s no surprise that Kenny ends up being not only the most interesting character in the film but, despite his obvious insanity, the most relatable character: he’s not interested in any games, he doesn’t have any agendas…he just is, dammit, and to hell with any of you squares who tell him otherwise! Whether he’s doing bizarre calisthenics in a moving car, reminding Maureen that sex with radium miners will make her ass glow, eating Turkish dates by the bagful or surviving the kind of shit that would kill the Terminator, Kenny is, quite simply, the man and Waits is absolutely magnificent. Despite any other issues with the film (and boy are there issues), folks could be forgiven for stopping by just to check out Kenny: Waits’ performance really is that much fun and he gets a sizeable chunk of celluloid dedicated to him.

Another highlight for me, albeit a fleeting one, was a pretty superb cameo from Jeff Bridges as a grinning, shithead bartender with a, itchy trigger finger: even for his few moments of screen-time, it’s painfully obvious how equally bad-ass Bridges is. I can’t help but feel that a true Tom Waits/Jeff Bridges collaboration might blow the planet off its axis, ushering in a new ice age…we should probably never find out.

Without a doubt, Cold Feet is definitely a curiosity. Director Dornhelm (still working today) has mostly stayed in the realm of television, so I’m guessing that this didn’t end up being a springboard to bigger and better things. The film never achieves anything approaching a consistent tone or sense of purpose but is still filled with some truly great moments: Sheriff Rip Torn scamming new boots…pretty much anything involving Maureen and Kenny’s cross-country ride…absolutely anything involving Tom Waits. There’s an awful lot of dead space going around, however, and the main storyline about Buck and Monte’s reconciliation is pretty long in the tooth. The film also has a tendency to slip into really silly slapstick (Maureen’s fight with Rosemary’s teacher is really stupid) which sits uncomfortably next to Kenny’s moments of actual violence.

Cold Feet is a weird bird but I’m pretty confident that at least some viewers out there will be able to get on its frequency. While the film is messy, silly and frequently nonsensical, it’s also quite a bit of fun and features one hell of an awesome performance from Tom Waits. If you’re a fan of Waits, this should be a must-see. For everyone else, however, this may just be one of those ’80s curios that passes you by. I would really think hard about it, though: after all, you wouldn’t wanna piss off Kenny, would you?

3/20/14: When Jackasses Attack

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arrogance, based on a book, based on a true story, celebrities, celebrity, celebrity journalist, cinema, comedies, Danny Huston, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, fish-out-of-water, Gillian Anderson, gossip rags, Hollywood, Hollywood satire, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Jeff Bridges, journalism, Kirsten Dunst, magazines, Megan Fox, Mother Teresa biopic, Movies, New York City, obnoxious people, Robert B. Weide, Sidney Young, SImon Pegg, Sophie Maes, Toby Young, unlikable protagonist, workplace comedies

As a modern society, we’ve become pretty obsessed with celebrities and the private lives of these glitterati. In a classic case of “the grass always looks greener,” it’s very inviting to look over the elegantly wrought-iron fences, past the armed security and straight into the beating heart of the American dream. This, of course, is a steaming load of horse pucky: the grass is greener because it’s Astroturf and the beautiful people look a lot like everyone else do first thing in the morning. This, of course, hasn’t stopped an entire cottage industry of gossip shows, tabloids and paparazzi from springing up to document every celebrity faux pas, grocery store visit, nose job and million-dollar deal under the sun. While it often seems that these purveyors of celebrity “news” are jaded outsiders looking to blow holes in the rhinestone-bedazzled Hindenburg that Hollywood often resembles, the Simon Pegg-starring How to Lose Friends and Alienate People posits a slightly different theory: these paparazzi are just as obsessed, envious and in love with these folks as everyone else is supposed to be.

Based on Toby Young book about his real-life experiences, HTLFAAP introduces us to the character of Sidney Young (Simon Pegg). As a boy, Sidney was obsessed with the idea that all celebrities lived together in some sort of Shangri-La…a 24/7 Copacabana where the drinks were always comped, the makeup was always immaculate and the people were all cool as ice. If he could just get there, he reasoned, he would be one truly happy young boy. As the opening voice-over lets us know, however, “celebrity journalist” is as close as he’s gotten to this imagined paradise. As he sits with starlet-of-the-moment Sophie Maes (Megan Fox) at an award show, one Best Actress award away from some promised pity sex, Sidney reflects back on the events that led him to this particular moment in time. The flashback takes us into our movie proper: one part workplace comedy, one part Hollywood satire, one part old-fashioned romance.

We see Sidney as a scrappy, ultra-combative tabloid journalist, prone to celebrity attack pieces and raging against the machine of the big corporate fluff rags. He ends up on the radar of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), a gossip-rag magnate, after he crashes one of his exclusive A-list Hollywood parties. Sidney reminds Clayton of himself, at that age and economic level, so he does the only thing that a respectable gossip-mag baron would do in a situation like this: he puts Sidney on the payroll. This puts Sidney into direct contact with your usual rogues’ gallery of assorted oddball characters: Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston), Sidney’s slimy boss; Alison (Kirsten Dunst), the prickly co-worker that would never, in a million years, fall for a jerk like Sidney; fame-hungry starlet Sophie Maes, her little dog Cuba and reptilian agent Eleanor (Gillian Anderson); and colossal jackass/director Vincent Lepak (Max Minghella).

As Sidney navigates these treacherous, shark-filled waters, he finds himself falling for Alison (natch), although she has a mysterious absentee boyfriend that makes getting together seem a little impossible. There also seems to be some interest from Sophie, although she seems more than willing to do absolutely anything that would push her career one step closer to the big time. Sidney’s old rebel spirit begins to fight back as he’s asked to do a puff piece on Lepak, a black-hole of vapidity so dense that nothing can escape his crushing stupidity. When Sidney rebels, it seems like the only thing holding him back is himself: as Harding told him earlier, he’s standing in the first room and is fully capable of getting to the last room…if he wants it bad enough. Sidney must reconcile his own core values with his lifelong desire to fit in with the “cool kids,” all while trying to figure out just what, exactly, he really wants to do with his life.

My biggest beef with HTLFAAP is that the film ends up being so schizophrenic. On the one hand, it wants to be a snarky, razor-sharp satire on the inherent ridiculousness of Hollywood, complete with an epic Mother Teresa biopic starring Megan Fox. On the other hand, the film wants to be one of those ubiquitous workplace dramadies where co-workers conspire against each other, ideas are stolen, comeuppances are had by all and a quirky parade of characters engage in utterly quirky behavior. On the third hand, the movie wants to be an old-fashioned romance, one of those Cary Grant-starrers where the guy and gal don’t see eye to eye, you see, until they do, at which point they fall madly in love with each other and live happily ever after. As you can see, there’s about one hand too many here. This is a big reason why the film ends up being a bit of a tonal mess: one moment, it’s a frantic, ultra-high-strung slapstick comedy, the next moment, it’s a stereotypical “indie comedy,” with Juno-esque dialogue and sardonic voice-over. The film also gets serious, from time to time, mostly to remind us that Sidney is constantly in danger of losing his core values.

For my money, the most tired aspect of the film (and the one that I would have cut first) would have to be the hackneyed romantic angle. The romance steals the focus of the film almost entirely, especially by the final third, where Sidney is madly rushing about trying to win the hand of Alison. In fact, the final denouement has virtually nothing to do with any of the celebrity-chasing that came before, breaking everything down to that time-honored (and ultra-trite) notion that all you really do need is love. How nice. Were there some actual chemistry between Pegg and Dunst, the romance might carry a little bit more weight. As it stands, however, it felt very much like “Character A must like Character B”-level plotting and never felt authentic.

What worked? The film seemed to wring the most success from the celeb-mocking stuff (the Mother Teresa gag is, quite simply, one of the funniest jokes I’ve seen in quite some time) and the performances were pretty sturdy. It’s always nice to see The Dude in something but I kinda wish Bridges had been given more to do than bluster and offer the occasional bit of sage advise. Pegg did a decent job playing a shithead character but this kind of smug, self-absorbed nitwit is starting to seem like old hat for ol’ Simon: it would be nice to see him branch out a little. Ditto for Dunst, who’s been on this kind of autopilot for his last few roles. She’s a great actress but, too often, she’s just required to be withering. Huston and Anderson are great in some meaty supporting roles: Anderson, in particular, is a blast to watch and neatly wrestles the film away whenever she’s on-screen.

At the end of the day, is How to Lose Friends and Alienate People worth a watch? It really depends on your expectations. If you’re a Simon Pegg fan, you could probably do worse (like Mission Impossible III) but you could certainly do better (see a Fantastic Fear of Everything, instead). I’m not familiar with the original book, or the person it was based on, so I can’t really vouch as to the authenticity of either, at least as represented here. My personal take is that Sidney comes across as a self-absorbed douchebag but, then again, what do I know? I do know that the romantic aspect drags the film down, however, and that it would have been a lot better had it been a lot shorter and tighter. I also know that, despite my intense dislike of Megan Fox, I would pay very good money to see her play Mother Teresa in that promised biopic: I kinda wish the filmmakers had given us an hour of that instead of two hours of this.

2/10/14: The Dude Slums It

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'80s action films, 8 Million Ways to Die, Andy Garcia, Angel Moldonado, auteur theory, B-movies, bad films, bad movies, based on a book, Being There, cinema, David Lee Henry, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Hal Ashby, Harold and Maude, Jeff Bridges, Jesus Quintana, Matt Scudder, Movies, Oliver Stone, Randy Brooks, Rosanna Arquette, The Big Lebowski, To Live and Die in L.A., William Friedkin, Z-movies

Sometimes, it’s easy to figure out why a film turns out bad. It can feature a hack director (Uwe, despite your vicious left hook, I’m looking right at you), an obnoxious “star” (anything with Tom Green) or a terrible script (take your pick): it might even feature all of those, like some form of noxious cinematic goulash. Sometimes, however, it can be a little more difficult to peg why a film turns out less successfully than intended or even (worst case scenario) why said film fails completely. A film can seem to have everything going for it or, at the very least, enough to at least be an enjoyable romp, yet still wildly miss the mark and flail around like an octopus in tap-shoes. Such is the case with 8 Million Ways to Die, an empty-headed ’80s actioner starring Jeff “The Dude” Bridges and directed by Hal Asby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There). You’d think that their combined pedigrees would amount to something at least marginally entertaining: you would be quite wrong, indeed.

Plot-wise, 8 Million Ways to Die resembles quite a few other action films, both from the ’80s and beyond. Matt Scudder (Bridges) is a former alcoholic/ex-cop who gets approached by a mysterious woman (Alexandra Paul) at an AA meeting. It turns out that she’s a hooker and wants Matt’s help in leaving her pimp, Chance (Randy Brooks). Since nothing is ever as easy as it first seems, poor Matt is soon involved with a kooky drug-dealer named Angel (a very young Andy Garcia in one of his first feature films) and his “girlfriend” Sarah (Rosanna Arquette). Along the way, Matt must avenge Sunny’s death (for some reason), bring her killers to justice and woo Sarah before they’re all killed by the completely unbalanced Angel.

In many ways, 8 Million Ways to Die resembles a brain-dead re-do of William Friedkin’s far-superior To Live and Die in L.A., a film which came out a mere six months prior. The film is filled with all of the studied cool, washed-out pastels, garish neon and cheesy synths of Friedkin’s film but everything seems to fall flat in 8 Million Ways to Die. Even Bridges, always one of the most reliably interesting actors in the business, seems both bored and bemused by the chaos around him.

Bridges is reliably good, if tuned-out, but he’s completely surrounded by a crowd of actors going for broke in ways that seem to indicate there was some sort of over-acting competition going on behind-the-scenes. Obvious winner? Andy Garcia as the absolutely ludicrous Angel Moldonado. He chews up so much scenery that I’m surprised he didn’t gain 100 pounds on-set. With his ridiculously tiny, greasy ponytail, childishly foul mouth and blinding white suits, Angel seems to be the spiritual forefather for John Turturro’s Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski. Imagine “the Jesus” as a James Bond villain and you have some idea of the sheer stupidity on display here. Toss in a performance by Arquette that could best be described as “probably high” and a jaw-clenching shoutathon from Randy Brooks as Chance, the nicest pimp on the silver screen and the whole things seems like a particularly bad dinner-theater production that Bridges somehow stumbled into.

Thus far, we have a few potentially toxic ingredients in this little stew: over-the-top, unlikable acting; a stereotypically cheesy score; absolutely dated mise en scene; a Scooby Doo level of mystery-solving that involves finding the cat ring that matches a pair of cat earrings. Where the film really begins to distinguish itself, however, is with its abysmally terrible script. Not only is the film needlessly confusing (I found myself needing to draw a chart of the various characters’ relationships until I realized that this was more work than the filmmakers point into their project and I tore it up in disgust) but the sense of cause-and-effect is broken, to say the least. Characters act in whatever manner seems handy to the story, at the moment, with no regards to how anything actually fits together. There was so much random activity going on that it seemed both silly and insulting to even attempt to tie it into a traditional “private eye” framework: with a story this nonsensical, what’s there to investigate and solve?

With a bad script, of course, comes some bad dialogue and 8 Million Ways to Die gives us some real howlers. Bridges explains the film’s title and needlessly ties the movie into The Naked City when he states that, “In this city, there are eight million ways to die.” Awesome. Sunny hits on Matt by telling him that “The street light makes my pussy hair glow in the dark,” a line which she delivers in precisely the same manner as one might give directions to a stranger on the street. The big “climax” of the film involves a stand-off between Angel and his gang, Matt and Chance and predominantly involves the cast yelling, “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!” for the better part of 10 minutes. Ironically, this actually counts as some of the best, canniest writing in the entire film. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jeff Bridges and Andy Garcia yell “Fuck you” at each other like they were cycling through emotions in an actors’ workshop. Now show me confusion…good! Show me boredom…excellent! Now pretend that you’re hungry…fantastic!

As I mentioned earlier, 8 Million Ways to Die seems to be a pretty curious failure. There’s a great director (Ashby’s Being There and Harold and Maude are cinematic staples) and a good cast: what went wrong? In this case, if I may pop on my deerstalker and play detective, I thing I might know where to lay at least a little of the blame. When one examines the credits, one notices that 8 Million Ways to Die is adapted from the book of the same name by a couple of screenwriters: Oliver Stone and David Lee Henry. Stone should be familiar to just about anyone but David Lee Henry is actually the more illuminating of the two: Henry, you see, is also the genius scribe behind Charles Bronson’s The Evil That Men Do (easily one of Chuck’s worst, meanest films), Patrick Swayze’s Road House and Steven Seagal’s Out For Justice.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the auteur behind Harold and Maude and Being There, two of the wittiest, liveliest comedies ever made, once directed a dumb ’80s action film starring Jeff Bridges and written by the lunkhead who brought us Out For Justice. Was there ever any way this thing could have been a contender?