Posted May 18, 09 03:04 PM
"But, I Really Liked It..."
Whenever my friend Adam and I disagree over a movie, his trademark parting shot comes down to this:
"Dude. Rocky V."
Hey, I'll be the first to confess: I liked - at least at the time - a pretty formula film (Although in the face of all of that Razzie Award press, I'm not so quick to take that second toe-dip). Back in the day, I also rallied around the merits of Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988) - keep in mind, I still haven't seen the original – and liked Hollywood's out-on-a-ledge exploration (although the conclusion went vanilla) of Indecent Proposal (1993).
Hey, as a writer, you develop a steel skin. You write what you write and you like what you like. I don't mind differing opinions, as long as someone has a real opinion to back up the differing.
Sometimes, I'm the only one in the theater yucking it up. As fellow ticket buyers head for the exits, I'm proud to remain in my seat, fully engrossed and pleasantly defiant, appreciating a work for being successful in what it's trying to be.
There's so much under-appreciation out there, so many wonderful filmmakers receiving conventional hand slaps for the sheer audacity of taking a chance. From the outset, I defended and defended Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Today – and I'm not taking credit, mind you – it has ascended to the stratosphere of modern classics. The below-mentioned titles aren't playing in that same atmosphere, but they shouldn't be punished, either, for achieving what they set out to do – deliver.
Damien: Omen II (1978). Jaws 2 (1978). Psycho II (1983). These aren't the terrible twos. Sequels traditionally come with a built-in stigma – Roger Ebert defined them as "filmed deals." And revisits to originals popularly held as classics inherit added scrutiny and often-unfair comparison. Remakes, reboots, reimaginings, sequels - no matter how golden the first time, no filmmaker sets out to tarnish any intellectual property's mystique. We're not exactly talking Citizen Kane II: Midnight Slaughter. But if the source material is so compelling, why not – as Creative Exec Adam Levenberg of Vin Diesel's One Race Films once said – further the mythology's universe? The above titles are a well-produced, overly-harped trifecta. William Holden and Lee Grant unknowingly adopt the son of Satan? On the strength of the leads alone, I'm in. This time, show the shark a LOT? Intriguing. Will Norman Bates, after 22 years, pick up the knife? Yeah, who wouldn't be curious?
The Entity (1982) got a terrible rap. Frank De Felitta – who directed that superb Charles Durning TV shocker Dark Night of the Scarecrow -- here skillfully adapts his brow-raising novel about a California woman sexually molested by an invisible demon. That pitch surely sounds like salacious pulp, but the sterling Ron Silver and an incredibly raw Barbara Hershey so marvelously ground the tightope material that we accept its paranormal science what if-ing (although The Entity claims to be based on an actual case).
In 1996, Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes co-starred in an overlooked Tony Scott thriller called The Fan, but I'm focusing on the 1981 suspense movie of the same name. Lauren Bacall plays a Broadway diva targeted by an unstable admirer (Michael Biehn). Maureen Stapleton, James Garner, and Hector Elizondo add further style to the proceedings. Yet the very presence of such stalwarts in a piece that skims on neither class nor certifiable nastiness probably came across as sacrilege to longtime cinephiles. It was a mistake to have Bacall sing (warbling "Hearts, Not Diamonds"), but wasn't it also a mistake for Leonard Maltin to deem the film as "an exploitation cheapie in dress clothes?"
Coming off the award-winning short Public Access and the superb "Who Is Keyser Soze?" campaign of The Usual Suspects, director Bryan Singer adapted a very better-be-careful-about-that Stephen King novella. In Apt Pupil (1998), the late Brad Renfro portrays an unsympathetic teen who suspects then exploits a Nazi-in-hiding neighbor (Ian McKellan). This chilling attraction to, and then resurrection of, the dark war criminal Kurt Dussander becomes a psychological cat and mouse fireplay, slightly muted by a significantly altered final act. An unfortunate incident involving the confusion over underage extras in a naked shower scene brought a veil of controversy to the production, and that's too bad. Apt Pupil is a movie with guts for people who have the stomach for it.
I love Jessica Lange. When she dabbled in the genre with Hush (1998), I was 20 minutes early to buy my ticket for the first screening, opening day. Lange is the horse-breeding matriarch at Kilronan, the plantation home to which son Jonathon Schech brings home fiancée Gwyneth Paltrow. But southern belle Mom knows about rearing offspring, and her designs on her new daughter-in-law's reproductive potential push this creepy domestic thriller firmly into uncomfortable, queasy territory. Nina Foch is Lange's secret-spilling maternal figure, conveniently locked away in a nearby rest home. The bathtub visit scene contains some of the cruelest dialogue I've ever heard as the material ventures further into the deep end of the pool. A report circulated that, for a climatic confrontation scene, Lange's expressions were contorted with CGI. Hush didn't have a good showing at the box office and was largely drubbed by critics. But comfort zones are poor measures of failure. To not be derivative is to succeed, even when only the minority seems to recognize it.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 03:04 PM