1997 - FAST CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL, meet four very interesting people

This is film maker Errol Morris at his peak with this incredibility fascinating film about four men and the unusual occupations they have.  Superficially they have nothing in common but the film is so well edited and paced, this documentary begins to interconnect their lives as you watch it.

Dave Hooper is an animal trainer who works with what they call big cats i.e. lions.  He apparently got the bug as a young man and has spent his life performing in a circus with these frankly scary and dangerous wild animals.  His stories of dealing with these lions in the ring are hair raising.

 

George Mendonca is a topiary gardener who is responsible for a large park in Rhode Island called the Green Animals Topiary Garden which has around eighty sculptured trees.  Mendonca kind of stumbled into the job when he married the daughter of the previous gardener.  This is a guy who has devoted his life to making plants and trees look like animals.  He works on these trees with a zen like devotion to trimming them.

Ray Mendez is a man who has devoted his life to studying a creature called the naked mole rat, mammals who live in underground tunnels and have a highly developed social system.  They are apparently resistant to cancer and can live almost without oxygen.  Mendez has built a complex of tunnels in his basement to observe them and he believes they are at times observing him.

 

Rodney Brooks is an MIT scientist who builds robots and studies how they interact with people and the environment.  He observes how they react to moving around as it relates to hand and eye coordination, sound, and vision which he feels also can explain how the human brain functions.

The fact that Errol Morris can take this stuff and make a really compelling film about four such different individuals is really a tribute to his skill as an interviewer.  The film was photographed by Robert Richardson who later in his career was associated with Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese.  Fast Cheap & Out of Control is one of the best films I've seen this year. 

The film was edited by  Karen Schmeer and Shondra Merrill, the running time is 82 minutes.

1997 - ABSOLUTE POWER, a film with an incredibly ludicrous storyline

Clint Eastwood, starred, produced and directed this film.  Ace screenwriter William Goldman wrote the screenplay.  Eastwood put together an excellent cast, Laura Linney, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Judy Davis,  Scott Glenn and in his final role E.G. Marshall.  The production design and the photography are at a high standard.  The end result is one of the most ridiculous films ever made.

While breaking into an upscale mansion in Washington D.C., master thief Luther Whitney played by Clint Eastwood,  just happens to stumble into the love nest of the President of the United States played by Gene Hackman.  Apparently the President likes his sex rough, he beats the crap out of the woman.  In order to defend herself the woman pulls out a letter opener which she stabs the President in the arm with.  This brings in a couple of secret service agents who end up killing her.  Next the President's chief of staff who apparently accompanies him on his little sex binges, decides to cover up the murder.

 

And this is just beginning of a ridiculously convoluted plot which involves master thief Whitney getting a conscience and deciding to bring the President to justice.  At the same time Whitney must protect his estranged daughter played by Laura Linney who just happens to be a prosecuting attorney and also avoid being arrested by a police detective played by Ed Harris. and the plot even gets more zany.

 

This film was based on a popular novel and Columbia Pictures supposedly payed millions of dollars for the movie rights so you can't actually blame Eastwood for turning this novel into a film.  Fault a studio that doesn't know a ridiculous story when it's dropped on top of them like a ton of bricks.  This is one of the most convoluted thrillers I can ever recall seeing and I sat through Funeral in Berlin and The Kremlin Letter.  Another classic example of wasting a good cast and talented Hollywood production people.

The running time is 121 minutes and I can't believe anyone who watched this wanted it to be a second longer.

1997 - THE EDGE, pretty good adventure film

The Edge seems kind of forgotten in the action/adventure film world, it was photographed in Alberta and British Columbia in some spectacular locations.  It has some good actors, Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, L.Q. Jones and model Elle Macpherson.  Most importantly the writer of The Edge is David Mamet a master of tough guy talk and clever plotting.

The Edge is basically a survival tale with an airplane crashing in the Canadian wilderness leaving a billionaire played by Anthony Hopkins, a fashion photographer played by Alec Baldwin and Baldwin's assistant Harold Perrineau, the survivors of the airplane crash.  As the trio attempts to make their way back to civilization they are pursued by a man eating Kodiak bear. It's sort of Jaws in the woods as it were. The twist in this story is that Hopkins is a bookworm who has never been in the wild but has read so many books he is the best prepared to deal with their situation.

 

Mamet also throws in a subplot of Hopkins figuring out that his wife played by Elle Macpherson is having an affair with Baldwin and that Baldwin may be planning to kill him in order to get his wife and  his money.

 

The performances are at a high level particularly Hopkins as the bookworm.  Mention should be made of the trained bear called Bart.  Bart actually has 21 "acting" credits on his IMDB page ranging from this film to stuff like, The Great Outdoors, 12 Monkeys and Legends of the Fall amongst others.  Bart isn't a Kodiak bear, real Kodiak bears have very long claws and no one in their right minds would be performing with one of them.

The Edge was produced by Art Linson who had a track record of making interesting films.  They weren't always commercial successes but they certainly weren't the usual cookie cutter films that Hollywood likes to make.

The running time is 117 minutes.

1997 - LIVE FLESH, an erotic thriller that's actually erotic for a change

Keeping in mind most of these erotic film thrillers that show up on various streaming platforms aren't particularly erotic, Live Flesh is one of the few films in this genre that actually manages to mix eroticism and sex with an interesting story for a change.

The film is basically about the interactions of five characters, a paralyzed former police detective, his wife, his former partner, the partner's wife and the man who was responsible for the bullet that paralyzed the police detective.  The film involves their relationships and interactions from the the time the detective was shot to the present and the consequences of that act.

 

The direction by Almodovar is about as good as you are ever going to see it. His skill with the actors, the camerawork and locations really elevate what is usually a tawdry and mediocre genre of film making into something good .

To reveal more about this film would spoil it.  The film was written by Almodovar and the running time is 103 minutes.

1997 - VOLCANO, the disaster movie lives on in the 1990's

Just when the world thought the disaster movie cycle ended in the 1970's not one but two volcano movies came roaring into the theaters during the 1990's and they were just 7 months apart.  For my money I think Volcano is the more entertaining of the two movies for the chief reason that it has Tommy Lee Jones as the main lead in the film. 

Tommy Lee Jones is the head of the Office of Emergency Management  for Los Angeles, he runs around town barking orders at his loyal assistant played by Don Cheadle who is back at the office monitoring stuff.  Jones is in fine form in this film, he comes off as his usual grouchy self acting like a volcano erupting in downtown Los Angeles is just one more thing he has to put up with that day.  Jones is assisted by Anne Hecht improbably cast as a seismologist who is mostly in the film to provide Jones with facts about about this ridiculous situation.  Jones also has a teenage daughter whose chief role in the film is to get herself in jeopardy so he can rescue her along with the citizens of Los Angeles.

 

Volcano is entertaining in a crowd pleasing action movie kind of way.  If the film gets off track it's when it tries to make a comment on racial harmony which hardly seems like a good time considering Wilshire Blvd is about to be reduced to ashes.  

 

I suspect a lot of the enjoyment of this film is due to watching the city of Los Angeles being burned to a crisp.  Anyway the film was written by Jerome Armstrong and Billy Ray, the running time is 104 minutes.

1997 - THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, surprising still relevent film about politics

 Joe Dante's satire on American politics, the media and just about everything else is 25 years old and the film is surprisingly contemporary considering our present day political climate.

It seems the Governor of Idaho who has been having an affair with a Hispanic news reporter has decided to close his state's borders to any new immigrants.  This prompts a crisis in Washington DC as the President of the United States and his advisors decide to confront the Governor.  Meanwhile a powerful cable news network is manipulating both sides of the crisis in order to secure higher ratings.  The whole situation eventually becomes an armed conflict between the state of Idaho and the Federal government.  While all of this is going on the Governor of Idaho is trying to rekindle his affair with the Hispanic reporter.

This is one of Joe Dante's best films as he skewers both sides of the crisis.  This story allows him to really show his satirical side.  Dante also has an excellent cast in this film.  Beau Bridges is the clueless Governor, Phil Hartman is the ineffectual President.  James Coburn is an advisor to the President who doesn't seem to have much good advice.  Meanwhile at the cable news network, Dan Hedaya is the manipulative news editor.  Dennis Leary is the cynical reporter covering the story and everyone is struggling with how to prevent preempting All My Children during this crisis.

 

The Second Civil War was made for HBO but I doubt they would finance a political satire like this today. Anyway,  the film is a good black comedy.

 

The film was written by Martyn Burke, the running time is 98 minutes.

1997 - MR NICE GUY, non stop action from Jackie Chan

Lots of action and beautiful women with a silly plot to sort of tie it together.  This is Jackie Chan and director Sammo Hung at their peak.

Jackie is a television chef who used to be a cop,  He gets involved with a reporter who has a video tape which incriminates some drug dealers.  Start the action which doesn't let up for 101 minutes.

As usual Jackie does a lot of his own stunts.  The humor is kind of silly also as usual but the action is extremely impressive.

 

Written by Edward Tang and Ma Fibe, but don't go looking for any deep characterization or plotting. The running time is 101 minutes.

1997 - SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL, another disappointing sequel

The critics and public killed this sequel to Speed when it was released.  In reality it's just another action film done in by a very poor script.

Keenau Reeves one of the stars of the original film passed after reading the screenplay. Sandra Bullock signed up again to repeat her character of Annie Porter.  Never let it be said that losing a star from the first film every stopped anyone.  The actor Jason Patric played her new love interest but he's basically playing the Keenau Reeves part again.  

This film was set on a cruise ship which was criticized as being to slow moving, unlike the out of control bus from the first film.  However it seems to me it doesn't hurt to mix it up a bit with a different idea or two.  What the filmmakers should have thought about was a better villain.  It's just the same old brilliant psycho running around causing trouble.

The film does have a very spectacular action stunt piece where they rammed a cruise ship into a mock up of a Caribbean village.  The reported cost of this crazy stunt was $5 million dollars.  Speed 2:  Cruise Control is at best an OK time killer.  It's not really the complete disaster the critics said it was.

The screenplay was by Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson.  Running time 126 minutes.

1997 - THE 2ND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, #7

More from the Christmas clone machine with a few twists.  This one was filmed in Canada with Vancouver subbing for New York City so at least there is snow on the ground.

The cast is not that bad.  Mark Ruffalo who now plays The Hulk in those Marvel movies is the lead.  The Hulk character is either a step up from bad Christmas movies or a step down for Ruffalo.  Mary Stuart Masterson is the female lead.  She's a shoplifter who plays the Aunt to yet another child actress.  Masterson  is trying to raise the kid by making the peculiar parenting choice of teaching her to shoplift.  She gets caught by the Hulk guy and in a very contrived situation has to spend the Christmas holiday with him.  Guess what's going to happen next?

Just more of the same in this movie.  The 2nd Day of Christmas is competently directed by James Frawley who has had a long career directing TV shows and movies.  He directed the first Muppet movie and that funny cult classic The Big Bus.  So at least this thing is well made.

96 Minutes.

1997 - THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

I'm sure Universal Studios tossed a whole lot of money at Steve Spielberg to get him to film this sequel.  He probably never had a choice other than saying yes.

The whole gang is back, Spielberg, the writer David Koepp, John Williams, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough and the computer generated dinosaurs.

As the famous movie reviewer Joe Bob Briggs liked to say "if you are going to make a sequel make a sequel, make the exact same movie as the first one."

For a summer popcorn flick a lot of people sure get eaten by dinosaurs, human life is very cheap in this movie.  This contrasts amusingly with the deliberate portrayal by Spielberg to make the dinosaurs lovable.

Towards the end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park one of these computer dinosaurs runs amok in San Diego.  This is where Spielberg's real heart lies, paying tribute to hack Godzilla director Ishiro Honda.

It's easy to hate this film since it's basically crap, but the reality was they were going to make a sequel to Jurassic Park one way or another.

129 minutes.

1997 - KUNDUN, story of the Dalai Lama is pretty and pretty boring

The life of the Dalai Lama the spiritual and religious leader of Tibet.  Directed by Martin Scorsese a guy who grew up in New York hanging around Italian American gangsters. 

Kundun, is a sincere attempt to tell the story of a holy man caught up in 20th century politics but Scorsese also seems interested in paying tribute to Powell and Pressburger, particularly their film Black Narcissus.  The film looks very pretty and the intention of Scorcese was to tell this story on an epic scale and probably garner some awards.  The film is slow, stately and deliberate in it's pacing.  For the audience this all adds up to boring.

The life of the Dalai Lama appears to be the story of a young man who was not prepared to deal with the Chinese communists and their annexation of Tibet.  The Dalai Lama seems mostly a reactor than a participator in his country's history. 

Kundun should be the story of a spiritual man, but what it comes off as is a film of very pretty pictures which has a guy sitting around on a mat spouting half baked Charlie Chan proverbs.

134 minutes.

1997 - TITANIC, junk the first time still junk 13 years later

How do you spend a Friday night when the family's home sick, you watch Titanic on TBS of course. This was as bad as I remembered it to be when I first saw it in 1997.  I had just purchased my first cell phone and played with it constantly during the film to keep myself entertained.

Even in 1997 the state of the art computer effects looked kind of fake and time has not been very kind to that aspect of this film.  During the climatic sinking scene, DiCaprio and Winslet are acting behind a green screen and lot of the birds eye camera shots of the ship have people who are obviously computer generated.

As a production, it was big and at the time it came out the most expensive film ever made.  The original plan was probably to sell the film as a disaster spectacular.  However, something strange happened, teenage girls responded to the love story aspect and made Titanic a big hit by going to it over and over and over.

The story and dialog are still pretty horrible, James Cameron may be a master of special effects in the film business, but he sure couldn't create interesting situations or believable characters which kind of amazes when you consider the story of the Titanic should have enough built in drama to it.  Cameron's need to juice it up with a romantic triangle with Rose's evil fiance, mighty lame.  Cameron makes him a villain so unbelievably clownishly evil that it manages to make the film sink into even more ridiculous melodrama than actually possible.

The actors do what they can to make this dumb film somewhat credible. Kate Winslet's stupid character of Rose the spoiled rich girl who sees the light must mean that Winslet can act because she  actually  makes her kind of interesting. Leo DiCaprio's Jack, the "good looking man of the world"  isn't much better. but DiCaprio actually manages to bring him to life as well.    

James Cameron directs the film with most of his interest appearing to be in staging creative ways to drown people in freezing water.

I have just never understood the incredible popularity of this film.

194that sinking feeling minutes.

1997 - INSOMNIA, interesting crime drama out of Norway

One of my early Criterion discs I finally got around to watching.  This is one of their bare bones editions with no special features of any kind.  Insomnia is a good film, but it strikes me as hardly worthy of the masterpiece treatment that they are known  for and they probably knew it at the time of the disc's release

The Swedish cop investigating the death of a girl in Norway has to cope with a few problems, like accidentally shooting his partner and then trying to cover it up after the murderer of the girl figures out what is going on.

Stellan Skarsgård plays the cop who is first introduced as being a real professional a cop's cop as they say. 

Further into the film it's clear his really bad case of insomnia isn't exactly a matter of living up in the land of the midnight sun but a guy who has more than a few sexual repression issues to deal with.

This is a well made crime drama and Skaarsgård is a lot more believable in this role then he was in that Meryl Streep contemporary classic, Mama Mia.  That film will hopefully not show up on the Criterion label in the near future.

95 minutes.