Archive for the ‘Drama’ Category
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022
I can’t keep up with as many TV shows as some people do these days, but I have a few, and right now the one I love the most is Reservation Dogs. It’s on FX (and streaming on Hulu) and so far there are only 2 seasons totaling 18 half hour episodes, so it wouldn’t be that hard to catch up on. It centers on a group of teenagers who live on a reservation in Oklahoma, though sometimes it veers off to be more about their elders. It reminds me of my other favorite show, Atlanta, in that it has this A+ ensemble of core characters surrounding straight woman Elora (Devery Jacobs) who are each so hilarious in their own way that whenever it focuses on one of them I start to think that’s my favorite character. They have their funny shit they obsess over and their ways of saying things but maybe the funniest stuff is just their expressions seeing and listening to all the ridiculous things they encounter. (And the truth is my favorite is Willie Jack, played by Paulina Alexis.)
It’s also a really heartfelt and emotional show about friendship while going through shit, so it’s definitely made me cry more than any other show this funny, or maybe any other show. I don’t usually cry at TV shows, but this one gets me, in more ways than one. It’s proof of concept for the power of representation, because it’s reportedly the first ever TV show with all indigenous directors and writers, and it’s about Native life and tradition, and Oklahoma, none of which aligns with my experiences at all. And yet the specificity makes it real, and the problems they’re dealing with are universal. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cody Lightning, Jeri Arredondo, Jon Proudstar, Laura Bailey, MikeRandleman, Richard Ray Whitman, Sterlin Harjo, Tamara Podemski
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, September 28th, 2022
Many of these August ’92 movies I’ve been reviewing have been grueling, but there are some good ones among them, even great ones. To make up for the toil of watching CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY and LITTLE NEMO, August 21, 1992 also brought us Paul Schrader’s LIGHT SLEEPER. It was the filmmaker’s first time writing and directing since 1987s’ LIGHT OF DAY (though he’d directed PATTY HEARST and THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS and written THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST since then). And it’s up there with his best work.
The troubled journal-writing outsider this one centers on is John LeTour (Willem Dafoe, WILD AT HEART), a New York City drug deliverer who’s having a bit of a crisis because his boss Ann (Susan Sarandon following THELMA & LOUISE and a cameo in THE PLAYER) seems pretty serious about starting a cosmetics company and going straight. He’s 40 and this has kept him going in the four years since he kicked drugs and he doesn’t know what he’s gonna do with his life. He has an idea about getting involved in recording music, but I’m not sure how realistic he thinks that is. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Dana Delany, David Clennon, David Spade, drug dealing, Edward Lachman, Jane Adams, Mario Kassar, Mary Beth Hurt, Paul Jabara, Paul Schrader, Sam Rockwell, Susan Sarandon, Victor Garber, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2022
In 1992, several similarly themed movies sailed the ocean blue. It was the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus, and it goes without saying that mainstream audiences go absolutely fuckin ape shit for any movie commemorating a quincentenary. So who could blame producers for knowing for sure there was gonna be some intense Columbus Fever infecting the indigenous population of movie theaters, and wanting to hop aboard that ship? For example, Gaumont put together 1492: THE CONQUEST OF PARADISE, which was directed by the great Ridley Scott, with cinematography by Adrian Biddle (ALIENS) and music by Vangelis.
But that one didn’t come out until October. The one that came out August 21, 1992, causing me to have to watch it, was CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS: THE DISCOVERY. That’s the one produced by the father and son team of Alexander and Ilya Salkind, best known for producing the SUPERMAN movies. And then SUPERGIRL and then SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE and then Alejandro Jodorowsky’s disowned THE RAINBOW THIEF and then this. They had such a terrible time with this one that they quit the business (though Ilya did do one more movie, DANCING FOR MY HAVANA, 23 years later.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Salkind, Benicio Del Toro, Branscombe Richmond, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Georges Corraface, Ilya Salkind, John Glen, Mario Puzo, Marlon Brando, Oliver Cotton, Rachel Ward, Robert Davi, Tom Selleck
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, September 20th, 2022
I’ve been trying to put my finger on the specific vibe I sense in early ‘90s (pre-Tarantino) indie-cinema. We hit on the topic with GAS FOOD LODGING, RUBIN & ED and NIGHT ON EARTH (though the latter is almost too accomplished a version of it to feel like the same category). These are movies that are very different from each other in most respects, but they share a lack of interest in traditional Hollywood storytelling or narrative structure. They’re a little more like dreams, or real life, or poems, or at least meandering novellas than tightly woven tales of adventure. You’re following a story, picking up on themes, wondering what it’s building to, or what it’s saying. But often you have to face that it’s more stream-of-consciousness than that. It’s not about that. It’s more about spending some time with some odd characters, in a specific place, with a distinct tone. What you get out of the experience is up to interpretation.
My instinct is to want a tighter narrative, but there’s something appealing about movies like this too. Some freedom in letting go of any expectation that it’s gonna make itself clear.
I was thinking about it last month on my vacation/Covid isolation in Knoxville, Tennessee. My aunt-in-law showed us writer/director Tom DiCillo’s third film, BOX OF MOONLIGHT (1996), because it was filmed around there. And now, coincidentally, here I am watching his debut, JOHNNY SUEDE, in the final stretch of my summer of ’92 retrospective. It was released August 14, 1992, but DiCillo says on the DVD commentary that it played for a week and a half in New York and then a week and a half in L.A. and that’s it. Somehow we all knew about it when it was on video, though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alison Moir, Brad Pitt, Calvin Levels, Catherine Keener, Link Wray, Nick Cave, Samuel L. Jackson, Tina Louise, Tom DiCillo
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Thursday, August 4th, 2022
“Women are lonely in the ‘90s. It’s our new phase.”
July 10, 1992. Future Grammy-winner “Baby Got Back” had just hit #1 on the Billboard charts, questioning Eurocentric beauty standards in American culture and allowing Seattle’s best known rapper to perform on top of a giant fiberglass ass. In arguably more feminist news, we have our third woman-directed movie of the summer (following POISON IVY and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN).
GAS FOOD LODGING* is another one from IRS Releasing (RUBIN & ED, ONE FALSE MOVE), and it’s the sophomore film from writer/director Alison Anders, whose debut BORDER RADIO (1987) (co-directed with Dean Lent and Kurt Voss) had been nominated for Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. This one’s loosely based on a 1971 young adult novel called Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt by Richard Peck, but it fits pretty well into this period of American indie cinema when Anders’ future FOUR ROOMS neighbor Quentin Tarantino hadn’t arrive yet and directors were more influenced by her former boss Wim Wenders (she was a production assistant on PARIS, TEXAS). It’s about two sisters growing up with their single mother in a mobile home in dusty (fictional) Laramie, New Mexico, and doesn’t try to bullshit you with much more of a hook than that. That’s what Anders is interested in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allison Anders, Brooke Adams, Chris Mulkey, David Lansbury, Donovan Leitch, Fairuza Balk, Ione Skye, IRS Media, J. Mascis, Jacob Vargas, James Brolin, Julie Condra, New Mexico, Richard Peck, Robert Knepper
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (which opened against BOOMERANG on July 1, 1992) is a very nice and pleasing mainstream period sports comedy-drama from director Penny Marshall (JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH). It’s a fictionalized version of one of those true life historical events you hear about and think “Yep, that’s a movie” because it reads so much like a high concept movie pitch: during WWII, when so many American men were sent to fight overseas, some enterprising baseball executives started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to keep the sport in the public eye. Though they endured all manner of sexist indignities (like being forced to wear skirts and pretend to fit various feminine stereotypes) they also were good at what they did and took their shot to show it off.
Geena Davis (FLETCH) and Lori Petty (CADILLAC MAN) star as Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller, small town Oregon sisters who run a dairy and play catcher and pitcher on a softball team. One day a scout named Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz*, THREE AMIGOS) attends a game and wants Dottie to try out for the A.A.G.P.B.L. She’s happy with her life and uninterested, but agrees to go if he’ll give Kit a shot too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Babaloo Mandel, baseball, Bill Pullman, David Strathairn, Geena Davis, Jon Lovitz, Lori Petty, Lowell Ganz, Lynn Cartwright, Madonna, Mark Holton, Penny Marshall, Rosie O'Donnell, Tom Hanks
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Sport | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, May 31st, 2022
Well, the crazy sonofabitches did it. They made a 36-years-later-part-two to TOP GUN. Tony Scott had actually developed a script and scouted locations before he died. Eventually the duty fell upon Joseph Kosinski, who had previously directed Cruise in OBLIVION (2013) and who ushered in the age of legacy sequels with the 2010 smash hit cultural sensation TRON: LEGACY [This review’s factual accuracy is disputed].
I gotta admit that I was unreasonably excited just to hear the electronic beat of Harold Faltermeyer’s TOP GUN anthem over the production company logos – I love that synthesized gong sound – and it’s kind of comical how much they mine that type of nostalgia at the beginning of this movie. The original opening title card, the original theme, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, similar footage of jets landing on an aircraft carrier – is this just gonna be a re-enactment?
Then we reunite with Captain Peter “Pete” “Maverick” “Mav” Mitchell (Tom Cruise, THE MUMMY), fittingly working as an experimental test pilot. He dons his old patch-covered leather jacket and aviators (both kept in places of honor as if he understands their iconographic significance) and rides his motorcycle very fast to the hangar. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher McQuarrie, Ed Harris, Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Joseph Kosinski, Justin Marks, Lady Gaga, legacy sequel, Lyliana Wray, Tom Cruise
Posted in Action, Drama, Reviews | 89 Comments »
Monday, May 30th, 2022
Before TOP GUN: MAVERICK, director Joseph Kosinski did a movie with a few of the same actors that did not receive as much attention. Released in 2017, ONLY THE BRAVE is the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite fire fighter crew in Prescott, Arizona specializing in clearing fire-fueling plants and starting controlled burns to cut off the spread of wildfires. Warning: the story is tragic, and this is a crier. But it’s a great movie.
It’s technically impeccable. As on his previous movies TRON: LEGACY and OBLIVION, Kosinski has Claudio Miranda as his director of photography. Miranda also shot THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON and LIFE OF PI, so obviously he has chops. I don’t know what amount of pyrotechnics vs. cg they use, but many fire scenes are much more convincing than THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (though I liked that movie). It’s a high level of filmmaking craft, but the thrills and adventure and shit are honestly backdrop for a story about people, with uniformly strong performances and very effective characterization in the script adapted by Ken Nolan (BLACK HAWK DOWN and, uh, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT) and Eric Warren Singer (THE INTERNATIONAL, AMERICAN HUSTLE, an episode of Æon Flux) from the GQ article “No Exit” by Sean Flynn. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, based on a magazine article, Dylan Kenin, Eric Warren Singer, firefighters, forest fire, Geoff Stults, Jake Picking, James Badge Dale, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, Joseph Kosinski, Josh Brolin, Ken Nolan, Kenneth Miller, Miles Teller, Natalie Hall, Rachel Singer, Ryan Michael Busch, Scott Foxx, Scott Haze, Taylor Kitsch, Thad Luckinbill
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, May 25th, 2022
“Like Popeye says, ‘I yam what I yam,’ right?”
On May 1, 1992, Fine Line Features released Jim Jarmusch’s NIGHT ON EARTH on a mere 40 screens. By comparison, LEAVING NORMAL was released to 362 screens on the same day, and nobody ever heard of that one. But this was a well marketed limited release – I knew NIGHT ON EARTH existed, and in fact went to see it on one of those 40 screens, specifically the one that was upstairs at Seattle’s Harvard Exit Theatre (1968-2015).
This is Jarmusch’s fifth film. It’s possible I’d seen STRANGER THAN PARADISE and DOWN BY LAW already, but I suspect I rented them after seeing this. (I know I’d never heard of PERMANENT VACATION and saw MYSTERY TRAIN later.) So I may not have realized that by his standards it was kind of commercial: in Winona Ryder (who had BEETLEJUICE, HEATHERS and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS under her belt and was about to do BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA) he had his biggest movie star to date, and despite its simplicity it sure seems to have a bigger budget than his previous films, since it’s filmed on location in four different countries. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anthology, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Beatrice Dalle, Frederick Elmes, Gena Rowlands, Giancarlo Esposito, Isaach De Bankolé, Jay Rabinowitz, Jim Jarmusch, Kari Vaananen, Matti Pellonpaa, Paolo Bonacelli, Roberto Benigni, Rosie Perez, Sakari Kuosmanen, Tom Waits, Tomi Salmela, Winona Ryder
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Thursday, February 24th, 2022
BENNY’S VIDEO (1992) is a disturbing psychological drama about a teenager whose fascination with violent videos blooms into actual sadistic violence. And you know how it always seems like parents have no idea what their little brats are up to? Well, when this kid’s parents find out about it they don’t have what most would consider a healthy or ethical response. The movie is very dry and unnerving, well made, and easy to read as a judgmental statement by someone who’s completely full of hot air – all trademarks of writer/director Michael Haneke’s early work. I don’t mean to diminish his filmography as a whole, which mostly does not deal with this theme of violent media’s connection to real violence. But this is his sophomore film, coming three years after his acclaimed debut THE SEVENTH CONTINENT and five years before the similarly themed FUNNY GAMES.
It opens with real video footage of a pig being killed with a bolt gun. After it dies, the video rewinds and replays in slow motion. As with FUNNY GAMES, I got the feeling Haneke was saying, “Isn’t it disgusting that you sick fucks watch this shit that I put into a film and advertised and encouraged you to watch?” But in the case of FUNNY GAMES, I gotta concede that I would indeed watch violent movies like that on my own accord. I would not have purposely sat down to watch a video of a pig dying. So you definitely don’t have the high ground on this one, professor. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela Winkler, Arno Frisch, Austria, Michael Haneke, Ulrich Muhe, Vienna, violence in media
Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller | 17 Comments »
