F.C. Schaefer's Blog, page 12
December 29, 2018
Aquaman is a joke no more; my review.
AQUAMAN is really the DCEU movie we have been waiting for, the one that totally and completely embraces its comic book origins, and gives us what we want, and at the same time, taking a DC character who has been something of joke to some (not me), and firmly establishes him as a genuine bad ass. There is none of the brooding and gloominess that dominated BATMAN V SUPERMAN, or the revisionism of MAN OF STEEL. No, in AQUAMAN we get a super hero who is clearly having a great time being a super hero, and isn’t that what we always wanted. Not only that, but this film is visually striking, with images that look like they jumped right off the page of a comic book.
There are some problems with pacing, but that is to be expected as the film does have a two hour and change running time, and there are some scenes that are pure exposition, but they don’t become the dead weight that plague some other super hero movies. This is not one of those films that spends the first hour on the hero’s origin, and then crams a lot of plot with a super villain into the last 45 minutes. Arthur Curry’s beginnings are sprinkled into the plot, which is basically a brother against brother story with the fate of the Atlantis and the whole world in the balance epic. We learn about the undersea world at the same time as Arthur, the bastard son of royalty who has grown up on the surface world, while blaming himself for the loss of his mother, a Queen who was dragged back to her home against her will. Despite his disdain for the home world of his mother, Arthur must return there and take the throne from his half brother, King Orm, if a war with the surface world is to be avoided. To do that, he will need the help of a McGuffin – the trident of Atlan, the first King of Atlantis, which is hidden away somewhere in the ocean depths. This is cause for an Indiana Jones style quest by Arthur and Mera, an undersea princess who comes to his aide, and of course becomes the love interest. It all leads to a great big LOTR scope battle on the ocean floor between the kingdoms of Atlantis, where Arthur and Orm have their big face off. Along the way, we get the origin of Black Manta, a secondary villain, who comes to hold a very big grudge against Aquaman.
Normally, I am a tough critic when it comes to CGI, and the over reliance on it, but it is used well here, creating a striking looking undersea fantasy world, including some great monstrous creatures, one of which is a Lovecraftian leviathan that guards Atlan’s trident. Setting the action under water has posed a problem in the past, but in AQUAMAN they just roll with it, characters can talk and be heard under water just fine and nobody dwells on the super science of it. We are treated to three great fight scenes, one of which comes early in the film; but my favorite might be battle in Sicily, where Black Manta ambushes Arthur and Mera. These scenes really move and are well staged, but they also have plenty of great hand to hand combat, making them reminiscent of DRAGON BALL Z, as one critic as noted. There is also plenty of humor, as this movie never takes itself too seriously, but never treats the characters as jokes. It really does come off like a great live action Saturday morning cartoon, and for me, that is high praise.
It really helps that Jason Momoa is having a great time in the title role; he brings the needed high energy level necessary to pull it off, along with a lot of physical presence. He was one of the best things in JUSTICE LEAGUE, and Momoa more than rewards our faith in him here. Of course comic book movies succeed or fail on the strength of their villains, and Patrick Wilson more than carries the load as Orm; maybe his motives fall into the trope territory, but Wilson, who has worked for director James Wan four times before, really sells it as the warmongering brother. Too often, actors in these kinds of movies look like they are just there to collect the pay check, that’s not the case this time. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is the perfect Black Manta, a villain most of know from the old cartoon series. They give Amber Heard a red wig to wear as Mera, but that’s just fine with me, as she proves to be a good match for Arthur, even if they give them a little too much “cute” dialogue together. Willem Defoe and Nicole Kidman play characters that have to be de-aged at some points, and that might be distracting. We do get one of the Fetts, Temura Morrison, as Arthur’s human father. Randall Park proves himself to be switch hitter, as he previously played Jimmy Woo in ANT MAN AND THE WASP, and shows up here playing Dr. Stephen Shin, an expert on things Atlantean. And best of all they bring back The Dolph – as in Lundgren, as Mera’s father, one of the Kings of Atlantis, it’s a perfect piece of casting and after re-watching UNIVERSAL SOLDIER again recently, his appearance is a welcome sight. Bonus points for having Roy Orbison on the soundtrack.
Of course, all praise to director James Wan, who clearly gets it; he proves himself to be the master of more than one genre here after directing some of the best horror movies, including SAW, of the past two decades. There are a couple of good scary monsters in AQUAMAN and they show the touch of a horror master. Wan more than justifies the confidence Warner Bros. has placed in him, now don’t let them screw it up and not let him direct the sequel. And maybe let him direct the next Batman movie, or at least the Green Lantern.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
There are some problems with pacing, but that is to be expected as the film does have a two hour and change running time, and there are some scenes that are pure exposition, but they don’t become the dead weight that plague some other super hero movies. This is not one of those films that spends the first hour on the hero’s origin, and then crams a lot of plot with a super villain into the last 45 minutes. Arthur Curry’s beginnings are sprinkled into the plot, which is basically a brother against brother story with the fate of the Atlantis and the whole world in the balance epic. We learn about the undersea world at the same time as Arthur, the bastard son of royalty who has grown up on the surface world, while blaming himself for the loss of his mother, a Queen who was dragged back to her home against her will. Despite his disdain for the home world of his mother, Arthur must return there and take the throne from his half brother, King Orm, if a war with the surface world is to be avoided. To do that, he will need the help of a McGuffin – the trident of Atlan, the first King of Atlantis, which is hidden away somewhere in the ocean depths. This is cause for an Indiana Jones style quest by Arthur and Mera, an undersea princess who comes to his aide, and of course becomes the love interest. It all leads to a great big LOTR scope battle on the ocean floor between the kingdoms of Atlantis, where Arthur and Orm have their big face off. Along the way, we get the origin of Black Manta, a secondary villain, who comes to hold a very big grudge against Aquaman.
Normally, I am a tough critic when it comes to CGI, and the over reliance on it, but it is used well here, creating a striking looking undersea fantasy world, including some great monstrous creatures, one of which is a Lovecraftian leviathan that guards Atlan’s trident. Setting the action under water has posed a problem in the past, but in AQUAMAN they just roll with it, characters can talk and be heard under water just fine and nobody dwells on the super science of it. We are treated to three great fight scenes, one of which comes early in the film; but my favorite might be battle in Sicily, where Black Manta ambushes Arthur and Mera. These scenes really move and are well staged, but they also have plenty of great hand to hand combat, making them reminiscent of DRAGON BALL Z, as one critic as noted. There is also plenty of humor, as this movie never takes itself too seriously, but never treats the characters as jokes. It really does come off like a great live action Saturday morning cartoon, and for me, that is high praise.
It really helps that Jason Momoa is having a great time in the title role; he brings the needed high energy level necessary to pull it off, along with a lot of physical presence. He was one of the best things in JUSTICE LEAGUE, and Momoa more than rewards our faith in him here. Of course comic book movies succeed or fail on the strength of their villains, and Patrick Wilson more than carries the load as Orm; maybe his motives fall into the trope territory, but Wilson, who has worked for director James Wan four times before, really sells it as the warmongering brother. Too often, actors in these kinds of movies look like they are just there to collect the pay check, that’s not the case this time. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is the perfect Black Manta, a villain most of know from the old cartoon series. They give Amber Heard a red wig to wear as Mera, but that’s just fine with me, as she proves to be a good match for Arthur, even if they give them a little too much “cute” dialogue together. Willem Defoe and Nicole Kidman play characters that have to be de-aged at some points, and that might be distracting. We do get one of the Fetts, Temura Morrison, as Arthur’s human father. Randall Park proves himself to be switch hitter, as he previously played Jimmy Woo in ANT MAN AND THE WASP, and shows up here playing Dr. Stephen Shin, an expert on things Atlantean. And best of all they bring back The Dolph – as in Lundgren, as Mera’s father, one of the Kings of Atlantis, it’s a perfect piece of casting and after re-watching UNIVERSAL SOLDIER again recently, his appearance is a welcome sight. Bonus points for having Roy Orbison on the soundtrack.
Of course, all praise to director James Wan, who clearly gets it; he proves himself to be the master of more than one genre here after directing some of the best horror movies, including SAW, of the past two decades. There are a couple of good scary monsters in AQUAMAN and they show the touch of a horror master. Wan more than justifies the confidence Warner Bros. has placed in him, now don’t let them screw it up and not let him direct the sequel. And maybe let him direct the next Batman movie, or at least the Green Lantern.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
December 28, 2018
Too much Tarantino?
For even some of his most avid fans, THE HATEFUL EIGHT, felt like a bridge too far for Quentin Tarantino. And I have to agree up to a point, as the film is certainly overlong, and a truly indulgent homage to Italian Spaghetti westerns of the late 60’s and early 70’s. No writer and director working today has a more devoted fan base than Tarantino, one he has earned fairly, starting with RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION, the latter being the single most influential film of the 90’s, and for many film buffs, the equivalent of a rock show. His subsequent films, with the possible exception of JACKIE BROWN (an Elmore Leonard adaptation), have been greeted with adulation by his ever increasing fan base, captivated by Tarantino’s ability to steal from the best of grindhouse cinema, be it Italian or Japanese or Hong Kong or low budget Hollywood, and make it something uniquely his own, with amble helpings of violence and profanity. I count myself as a big fan, more than happy revisit his bad asses, vengeful Mommas, psychos, and just plain no accounts time and again. Nobody can write dialogue better, and absolutely nobody can stage a big set piece showdown better than Tarantino. But THE HATEFUL EIGHT really begs the question, is too much of a good thing really wonderful.
The plot is a mashup of a paperback western and Agatha Christie, as it most of the action takes place on a stagecoach traveling the Wyoming countryside, and at a way station called Minnie’s Haberdashery, in fact, almost all the action takes place at the latter during a furious snow storm. The film opens with a stagecoach carrying Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, he plays the lawman, John Ruth, and she is his prisoner, Daisy Domergue, a vicious gang leader Ruth is taking to town of Red Rock to hang. On the way they pick up two strangers, Major Marquis Warren, played by Samuel L. Jackson, a bounty hunter who brings them in dead rather than alive, and Walton Goggins, as Chris Mannix, a Confederate veteran, who claims to be on his way to Red Rock to be the new sheriff. The weather turns bad and the stage is forced to ride it out at Minnie’s, where they find four strangers in charge, played by Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Damien Bicher, all of whom, may or may not be who they claim to be. None of them really trust each other, as Ruth suspects that some of Daisy’s gang are going to try and free her, while Northern veteran Warren is wary of Southerners Mannix and and Dern’s General Smithers. Tensions simmer and boil, and the bad side of everyone comes out, and all the characters get a chance to prove just how “hateful” they truly are before they meet their end.
The first instance of Tarantino being indulgent comes in the opening sequence on the stage, which runs nearly a half hour, where introductions are made as the characters, talk, and talk, and talk, and lots and lots and lots of exposition heavy dialogue is exchanged. Even if a lot of it is delivered in great Southern accents by Russell and Goggins, it plays incredibly slow, especially on a second viewing. Even worse is the pause in the middle of the film, which tells its story in “chapters,” where we hit reverse, and it is revealed what happened before the stage arrived, including a bunch of gruesome killings, the introduction of a totally new character, and way more exposition. Nothing is left to the viewer to figure out; everything is foreshadowed to death, and at three hours and change running time, that’s a lot of explaining. And a lot of excess, especially when it comes to the nihilism at the dark center of this story, where everyone lives down to their worst aspects, as at the end, when the racist former Confederate, Mannix, and the black former Union officer, Warren, unite in the their mutual hatred of Daisy Domergue to string her up by a rope, and calmly watch her choke to death, even as they breathe their last. There is always a dark heart at the center of Tarnatino’s films, where even those we root for are sadists who show no mercy, where any and all moral codes are utterly ignored, where vengeance is a religion. But in HATEFUL EIGHT, it is taken so far that even heretofore avid Tarantino supporters like myself, question whether he has not only gone to the well once too often, but dug this particular well way too deep to start with.
Still, speaking strictly as a cinephile, my admiration for Tarantino knows no bounds, for no director working today knows what he wants better, and gets it all right up there on the movie screen. I love how he shot in 70 MM, creating wide vistas even while keeping the action indoors, letting some of the protagonists take center stage in some scenes, reducing others to be merely extras. Nobody sets a mood better, and HATEFUL EIGHT hits the right note in the opening credit sequence set to Ennio Moriconne’s magnificent Oscar winning score, which is more suitable for a horror film than a western, and right off the bat begins to build tension. This is great visual storytelling without uttering a word, and if I complained about too much dialogue, that doesn’t mean it is not worth listening to, as most of the protagonists are revealed to be liars who can’t be trusted, or as in the case of Major Marquis Warren, a very unreliable narrator – see his story about the Lincoln letter or his tale to General Smithers about the fate of the General’s son. There are the little ways characters are revealed, as when Roth’s Mobray drops his proper British accent when he is shot, and reverts to a cockney one. Tarantino has built himself something of a stock company, which now must include Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gives a fearless performance as Daisy, a hate filled bitch, who in the course of the film, is punched in the face, and then has blood, brains and puke splattered across it. Tarantino’s choice of music to punctuate the story is still spot on, here using the long forgotten Roy Orbison tune, “There Won’t be Many Coming Home” perfectly. Even in this overlong movie, the actors clearly got in rhythm with each other, even those like Dern, whose taciturn charater has less to say when compared with the others. I do admire the way Tarantino does not bow to his SJW critics; he makes sure his characters talk as hateful as they act, and how he doesn’t make Jackson’s character, the lone black among a bunch Reconstruction Era whites, into some kind of heroic avenger, he may not be the worst among this eight, but not by much.
And best of all, I enjoy the homage to (or theft from) great film makers of the past; in THE HATEFUL EIGHT we see the clear influence of John Ford’s STAGECOACH, Budd Boetticher’s THE TALL T, and Sergio Corbucci’s THE BIG SILENCE. I wonder if I am the only one who thought the name of the character Jackson plays was a shout to Charles Marquis Warren, the ubiquitous producer of many a TV western, such as RAWHIDE, from back in the day.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
The plot is a mashup of a paperback western and Agatha Christie, as it most of the action takes place on a stagecoach traveling the Wyoming countryside, and at a way station called Minnie’s Haberdashery, in fact, almost all the action takes place at the latter during a furious snow storm. The film opens with a stagecoach carrying Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, he plays the lawman, John Ruth, and she is his prisoner, Daisy Domergue, a vicious gang leader Ruth is taking to town of Red Rock to hang. On the way they pick up two strangers, Major Marquis Warren, played by Samuel L. Jackson, a bounty hunter who brings them in dead rather than alive, and Walton Goggins, as Chris Mannix, a Confederate veteran, who claims to be on his way to Red Rock to be the new sheriff. The weather turns bad and the stage is forced to ride it out at Minnie’s, where they find four strangers in charge, played by Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, and Damien Bicher, all of whom, may or may not be who they claim to be. None of them really trust each other, as Ruth suspects that some of Daisy’s gang are going to try and free her, while Northern veteran Warren is wary of Southerners Mannix and and Dern’s General Smithers. Tensions simmer and boil, and the bad side of everyone comes out, and all the characters get a chance to prove just how “hateful” they truly are before they meet their end.
The first instance of Tarantino being indulgent comes in the opening sequence on the stage, which runs nearly a half hour, where introductions are made as the characters, talk, and talk, and talk, and lots and lots and lots of exposition heavy dialogue is exchanged. Even if a lot of it is delivered in great Southern accents by Russell and Goggins, it plays incredibly slow, especially on a second viewing. Even worse is the pause in the middle of the film, which tells its story in “chapters,” where we hit reverse, and it is revealed what happened before the stage arrived, including a bunch of gruesome killings, the introduction of a totally new character, and way more exposition. Nothing is left to the viewer to figure out; everything is foreshadowed to death, and at three hours and change running time, that’s a lot of explaining. And a lot of excess, especially when it comes to the nihilism at the dark center of this story, where everyone lives down to their worst aspects, as at the end, when the racist former Confederate, Mannix, and the black former Union officer, Warren, unite in the their mutual hatred of Daisy Domergue to string her up by a rope, and calmly watch her choke to death, even as they breathe their last. There is always a dark heart at the center of Tarnatino’s films, where even those we root for are sadists who show no mercy, where any and all moral codes are utterly ignored, where vengeance is a religion. But in HATEFUL EIGHT, it is taken so far that even heretofore avid Tarantino supporters like myself, question whether he has not only gone to the well once too often, but dug this particular well way too deep to start with.
Still, speaking strictly as a cinephile, my admiration for Tarantino knows no bounds, for no director working today knows what he wants better, and gets it all right up there on the movie screen. I love how he shot in 70 MM, creating wide vistas even while keeping the action indoors, letting some of the protagonists take center stage in some scenes, reducing others to be merely extras. Nobody sets a mood better, and HATEFUL EIGHT hits the right note in the opening credit sequence set to Ennio Moriconne’s magnificent Oscar winning score, which is more suitable for a horror film than a western, and right off the bat begins to build tension. This is great visual storytelling without uttering a word, and if I complained about too much dialogue, that doesn’t mean it is not worth listening to, as most of the protagonists are revealed to be liars who can’t be trusted, or as in the case of Major Marquis Warren, a very unreliable narrator – see his story about the Lincoln letter or his tale to General Smithers about the fate of the General’s son. There are the little ways characters are revealed, as when Roth’s Mobray drops his proper British accent when he is shot, and reverts to a cockney one. Tarantino has built himself something of a stock company, which now must include Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gives a fearless performance as Daisy, a hate filled bitch, who in the course of the film, is punched in the face, and then has blood, brains and puke splattered across it. Tarantino’s choice of music to punctuate the story is still spot on, here using the long forgotten Roy Orbison tune, “There Won’t be Many Coming Home” perfectly. Even in this overlong movie, the actors clearly got in rhythm with each other, even those like Dern, whose taciturn charater has less to say when compared with the others. I do admire the way Tarantino does not bow to his SJW critics; he makes sure his characters talk as hateful as they act, and how he doesn’t make Jackson’s character, the lone black among a bunch Reconstruction Era whites, into some kind of heroic avenger, he may not be the worst among this eight, but not by much.
And best of all, I enjoy the homage to (or theft from) great film makers of the past; in THE HATEFUL EIGHT we see the clear influence of John Ford’s STAGECOACH, Budd Boetticher’s THE TALL T, and Sergio Corbucci’s THE BIG SILENCE. I wonder if I am the only one who thought the name of the character Jackson plays was a shout to Charles Marquis Warren, the ubiquitous producer of many a TV western, such as RAWHIDE, from back in the day.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
November 19, 2018
1986's VAMP: An Urban Fairy Tale or a big old piece of 80's cheese.
Two princes go on a journey to find some princesses for a ball, they go to a road house where they’ve been told the princesses can be found, but they meet an evil, blood drinking Queen instead. That’s an urban fairy tale, a premise of a cult movie, and great piece of '80s cheese.
I have heard it stated that over 600 horror films were released in America during the 1980s, sometimes more than two or three a week, and when asked to name their Top Ten list from that decade, few if any horror film fanatics will put 1986’s VAMP on their list. Despite this being a Golden Age for horror, the old school monsters – the werewolves, vampires, and ghosts – made few appearances in that decade. Two werewolf classics, THE HOWLING and AN AMERIAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON came out in 1981, and two fondly remembered films featuring the immortal undead, FRIGHT NIGHT and THE LOST BOYS would come along later in the '80s, but they were often exceptions that proved the rule. After HALLOWEEN, came FRIDAY THE THRITEENTH, and then NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and movie screens were awash with slasher films, while ALIEN kicked off a boom in movies where some very nasty beastie eviscerated unwary humans, resulting in a lot of body horror films. And of course there were flesh eating zombies. But VAMP, which came and went very quickly in July of 1986, is one of genre those mashups that seems to have stuck in the memory of all who did bother to seek it out at the time, making it one of those “bad” movies that when you sit down and think about it, you realize was pretty damn good in its own way, or at the very least, unique.
First of all, this movie is about as '80s as it could get, a real time capsule, from the hair styles, to the clothes, to the music on the soundtrack. The lighting in the night scenes, where everything is drenched in green and red, brings to mind some of the more tacky music videos playing on MTV at the time. The two protagonists, Keith and AJ, a couple of college guys trying to rent some strippers for frat party, are right out of any raunchy teen sex comedy of the era, and for much of the first act, it looks like this is going to be another T&A epic, that is until the guys go to an out of the way club in a very bad part of LA with the intention of hiring a couple of the girls for a few hours. But when AJ slips into one of the backrooms to get it on with one of the performers, the fangs come out, and the movie takes a real turn, basically becoming AFTER HOURS with vampires, as Keith, and waitress Amaretto, desperately attempt to escape the neighborhood alive, only to repeatedly fail and end up right where they started. Meanwhile, AJ has been made a vampire against his will, and their sidekick, Duncan, just wants to get laid.
The second thing that makes VAMP so memorable is the characters, starting with the awesome Grace Jones as Katrina, the owner of the strip club, who appears to have been at it since ancient Egypt (a tip of the hat to Anne Rice?). Jones, an icon of the time, utters not a single word, she doesn’t have to, she does it all with those expressive eyes, and a very wicked cackle. It’s a great example of how not to overdo a Big Bad in a small movie. But VAMP is filled with some great supporting characters, starting with Vic, an old school show biz guy from the '50s who emcees the club. He’s portrayed by Sandy Baron, who would go on to play Jack Klompus on SEINFELD. Vic gets a couple of good scenes and some of the movie’s best lines. There is also Billy Drago, who would go on to play Frank Nitti in THE UNTOUCHABLES, as an albino street gang leader; Drago usually sounded like he was high on something in most of his roles, and this one is no exception. Gedde Watanabe, the infamous Long Duk Dong from SIXTEEN CANDLES, is Duncan, a character best described as “horny Asian geek.” Watanabe is clearly the comic relief, a role he played in most every movie, and if you find this character racially offensive, then this is not your movie. The film is also helped by the likability of the two leads, Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler as fraternity pledges, Keith and AJ. Makepeace is best remembered today for the excellent MY BODYGUARD, and makes for a good every guy lead. Rusler’s has a memorable scene with Makepeace where the newly transformed AJ asks his friend to stake him, this leads to one of the movie’s best jokes whose punch line is “Formica.” Amaretto is played by Deedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister, the resemblance is obvious. It must be said that many of the scenes between the three young leads appear as if they were shot without any rehearsal or a read through ahead of time. That is part of VAMP’s charm. The movie actually made a small profit and the end certainly left open the possibility of a sequel, “Big Vampire on Campus.”
Almost every online review of VAMP mentions its plot similarities to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, and they are clear to see: both movies center on a group of unsuspecting characters who stumble into a strip joint that is a front for a nest of vampires ruled by an evil female. And though it has never been determined if Quentin Tarantino used VAMP as an inspiration, I think horror fans found the premise to be an irresistible one, both in 1986 and ten years later. But what I think cemented VAMP’s reputation with its fans and earned it a true cult following is that somehow it managed to bridge the divide between teen sex comedy and horror and strike the right balance, something RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, another of my favorites, did very well. They don’t make films like this anymore, or even try, the popular culture has become too snarky and Meta, or to some us, just plain mean. The kind of fun Keith and AJ were looking for is now considered sexist and misogynistic by many. That said, and though I tire of seeing classics getting unnecessary remakes and reboots, I would not be averse to seeing a 21st Century remake of this 1986 cult classic. Until that happens we are left with what might strike some as a big piece of '80s cheese, but if it is, then it is Kraft all the way. Who can really hate a movie that ends with Domenico Modugno’s singing “Volare?”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
I have heard it stated that over 600 horror films were released in America during the 1980s, sometimes more than two or three a week, and when asked to name their Top Ten list from that decade, few if any horror film fanatics will put 1986’s VAMP on their list. Despite this being a Golden Age for horror, the old school monsters – the werewolves, vampires, and ghosts – made few appearances in that decade. Two werewolf classics, THE HOWLING and AN AMERIAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON came out in 1981, and two fondly remembered films featuring the immortal undead, FRIGHT NIGHT and THE LOST BOYS would come along later in the '80s, but they were often exceptions that proved the rule. After HALLOWEEN, came FRIDAY THE THRITEENTH, and then NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and movie screens were awash with slasher films, while ALIEN kicked off a boom in movies where some very nasty beastie eviscerated unwary humans, resulting in a lot of body horror films. And of course there were flesh eating zombies. But VAMP, which came and went very quickly in July of 1986, is one of genre those mashups that seems to have stuck in the memory of all who did bother to seek it out at the time, making it one of those “bad” movies that when you sit down and think about it, you realize was pretty damn good in its own way, or at the very least, unique.
First of all, this movie is about as '80s as it could get, a real time capsule, from the hair styles, to the clothes, to the music on the soundtrack. The lighting in the night scenes, where everything is drenched in green and red, brings to mind some of the more tacky music videos playing on MTV at the time. The two protagonists, Keith and AJ, a couple of college guys trying to rent some strippers for frat party, are right out of any raunchy teen sex comedy of the era, and for much of the first act, it looks like this is going to be another T&A epic, that is until the guys go to an out of the way club in a very bad part of LA with the intention of hiring a couple of the girls for a few hours. But when AJ slips into one of the backrooms to get it on with one of the performers, the fangs come out, and the movie takes a real turn, basically becoming AFTER HOURS with vampires, as Keith, and waitress Amaretto, desperately attempt to escape the neighborhood alive, only to repeatedly fail and end up right where they started. Meanwhile, AJ has been made a vampire against his will, and their sidekick, Duncan, just wants to get laid.
The second thing that makes VAMP so memorable is the characters, starting with the awesome Grace Jones as Katrina, the owner of the strip club, who appears to have been at it since ancient Egypt (a tip of the hat to Anne Rice?). Jones, an icon of the time, utters not a single word, she doesn’t have to, she does it all with those expressive eyes, and a very wicked cackle. It’s a great example of how not to overdo a Big Bad in a small movie. But VAMP is filled with some great supporting characters, starting with Vic, an old school show biz guy from the '50s who emcees the club. He’s portrayed by Sandy Baron, who would go on to play Jack Klompus on SEINFELD. Vic gets a couple of good scenes and some of the movie’s best lines. There is also Billy Drago, who would go on to play Frank Nitti in THE UNTOUCHABLES, as an albino street gang leader; Drago usually sounded like he was high on something in most of his roles, and this one is no exception. Gedde Watanabe, the infamous Long Duk Dong from SIXTEEN CANDLES, is Duncan, a character best described as “horny Asian geek.” Watanabe is clearly the comic relief, a role he played in most every movie, and if you find this character racially offensive, then this is not your movie. The film is also helped by the likability of the two leads, Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler as fraternity pledges, Keith and AJ. Makepeace is best remembered today for the excellent MY BODYGUARD, and makes for a good every guy lead. Rusler’s has a memorable scene with Makepeace where the newly transformed AJ asks his friend to stake him, this leads to one of the movie’s best jokes whose punch line is “Formica.” Amaretto is played by Deedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister, the resemblance is obvious. It must be said that many of the scenes between the three young leads appear as if they were shot without any rehearsal or a read through ahead of time. That is part of VAMP’s charm. The movie actually made a small profit and the end certainly left open the possibility of a sequel, “Big Vampire on Campus.”
Almost every online review of VAMP mentions its plot similarities to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, and they are clear to see: both movies center on a group of unsuspecting characters who stumble into a strip joint that is a front for a nest of vampires ruled by an evil female. And though it has never been determined if Quentin Tarantino used VAMP as an inspiration, I think horror fans found the premise to be an irresistible one, both in 1986 and ten years later. But what I think cemented VAMP’s reputation with its fans and earned it a true cult following is that somehow it managed to bridge the divide between teen sex comedy and horror and strike the right balance, something RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, another of my favorites, did very well. They don’t make films like this anymore, or even try, the popular culture has become too snarky and Meta, or to some us, just plain mean. The kind of fun Keith and AJ were looking for is now considered sexist and misogynistic by many. That said, and though I tire of seeing classics getting unnecessary remakes and reboots, I would not be averse to seeing a 21st Century remake of this 1986 cult classic. Until that happens we are left with what might strike some as a big piece of '80s cheese, but if it is, then it is Kraft all the way. Who can really hate a movie that ends with Domenico Modugno’s singing “Volare?”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
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October 25, 2018
The Alternate History race for President in 1964.
In my novel, ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964, I write about the Presidential election that never happened, the one where John F. Kennedy ran for re-election. In my book, it is a battle royale with the President’s enemies doing anything and everything to ensure his defeat, and to be fair, the Kennedy forces respond in kind. As the campaign unfolds, a wealthy Texas oilman is determined to defeat the 35th President by digging up any and all dirt that can be found on JFK, and as we all know now, there was a lot of dirt to dig in back in those days. In the following excerpt, Wade Harbinson, a Texas millionaire, has been offering some big bucks to certain individuals who have knowledge and proof of the Kennedy brothers’ dealings with the Mafia, along with JFK’s very secret and very active sex life in the White House, learns that the Kennedy brothers are putting money on the table themselves, and that he will have to up the ante if he wants to get his hands on the evidence that will seal the political doom of the Kennedy dynasty. To do that, Harbinson goes looking for potential allies with deep pockets.Excerpt:
If I were going to up the ante and compete with Kennedy money, then I would need to bring in some big artillery myself. My first call was to H.L. Hunt, a fellow Texas oilman, and someone truly after my own heart; he hated Kennedy almost as much as he hated Communism and he was most interested in what I had to say. The other was to a mutual associate who would pass a message along to the head of the United Brotherhood of the Teamsters, James R. Hoffa. I have no use for unions and the lowlifes who populate them, but if there was anybody in this great country who hated the Kennedys more than Jimmy Hoffa, I don’t know who they would be.
Mr. Hunt was quite enthusiastic after I described the details of the material Harlow had presented me, but he wanted to see the real thing before he committed any dough. Mr. Jimmy Hoffa was quite cagey at first. I had to go back and forth with some underlings, but with Bobby Kennedy’s justice department trying to send him to the Big House for a long, long stretch, he couldn’t afford to let pass a chance to take down the Kennedy brothers. And after I finally got a face to face meeting in Nashville the week Kennedy got re-nominated, I got an assurance of generous support, no doubt from the Teamsters’ pension fund. I never had a worry that I could get both Hunt and Hoffa to commit; you’re not a success in the oil business in Texas without being a good salesman.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
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September 24, 2018
The Gone series, my favorite YA books.
I am way more than a few years out of the prime demographic for the GONE series, six YA books that has been described as “LORD OF THE FLIES with super powers,” not to mention more than a little of LOST. But as I have said, a good story is a good story, no matter what the genre, and nine years ago, when I glimpsed the first book, GONE, on a table in a Barnes & Noble with a Stephen King reference on the cover, my interest was instantly piqued, and after reading the short synopsis on the back, it immediately went on my must get list for Christmas. I have been a lifelong reader of comic books and a sucker for a story where a sundry group of characters are cut off from civilization and must fend for themselves or unite or perish in the face of an adversary. In the ensuing years, I devoured the first book and its successors – HUNGER, LIES, PLAUGE, and FEAR – and enjoyed each one thoroughly, believing them to be, not only the one of the best YA series I have ever read, but one of the best scifi/fantasy series as well. In this, I have to give all credit to author Michael Grant, who has given us not just another trope ridden teen dystopia, but an epic with great and compelling characters, filled with virtues and flaws, and who undergo interesting arcs. Grant also comes up with a central premise that hooks the reader from the get-go: in the middle of a bright sunny day, every person over the age of 15 simply vanishes in a 20 mile radius from the little southern California beach town of Perdido Beach, leaving the teens and the younger children completely on their own due to an impenetrable barrier that keeps them in and the outside world out. The area within the barrier is dubbed the Fallout Alley Youth Zone or FAYZ for short. Bullies are now free to terrorize without consequence, while others can party day and night, drinking and smoking whatever they want with no worries about parents. What’s more, some kids soon start exhibiting mutant powers – the ability to shoot killing light beams from their hands, telekinesis, super strength, super speed, the ability to heal with a touch – along with mutating animal life, which includes flesh eating parasitic bugs and a pack of super nasty intelligent talking coyotes. Sides are formed, friendships are made, while others are ruptured, enemies square off as guns are drawn and used as the battle for survival begins to stretch into a week, then a month, and then a year. Meanwhile a disembodied evil alien intelligence, who appears to be responsible for the whole state of affairs, sits at the bottom of a mine shaft and plots to escape. Grant does not shy away from the violent aspects of his story; in fact, he wants the reader to be shocked by the image of a child carrying a rifle taller than themselves and using it against other children. Kids die in these, some in terrible ways, and while Grant does not dwell on the gore, you know what is going on; as an author, he clearly trusts his readers, and trusts that the teens whom these books are aimed at can more than handle some strong stuff.
One of the things I really liked about these books is that Grant treads on ground that other YA authors tiptoe around, making it plain that these young characters have sex lives, and that faith is truly important to some of them. There is more than one religious argument, and I like it that the author shows respect for all sides, and allows traumatic events and turns of fate to test the beliefs of believer and skeptic alike without ridiculing either side. And though the cast is multi ethnic, I never had the feeling that Grant had resorted to the kind of box checking diversity that seems so common in pop culture now. Albert and Dekka are black, Sanjit is from India, and Edilio is Hispanic, but their ethnicity is not what makes them stand out, it is their personalities and what they do that makes them so memorable, whether it is Albert’s ability as an entrepreneur that helps keep everyone fed, or Edilio’s courage and leadership when things get tough despite him being an illegal immigrant and the ultimate outsider at the beginning. The strong emphasis on characterization, more than anything else, is what makes the GONE series work and what sticks in the readers mind afterward. Sam, the hero of the books, might be a natural born leader, but is often overwhelmed and pushed to the breaking point; his girlfriend, Astrid, might be a genius, but she can’t figure a way out of the FAYZ; Quinn is Sam’s best friend, but fear and jealously propels him toward an act of betrayal; Orc is the bully who becomes a literal monster and is overcome with regret; Lana can heal with a touch of her hands, but then has to flee the pain of her patients; Cain, Sam’s twin and rival, is a private academy bad boy, and does anything and everything to make himself a king. All of them, and many more, a rise and fall and rise again to the challenges the story throws at them, only the psychopathic sadist, Drake, could be considered an irredeemable bad guy without possibility of redemption. Michael Grant was well past 50 when these books were written, yet he has no problem writing totally believable 21st Century teenagers.
Another secret to the success of the GONE series is Grant’s writing style, for the man knows how to keep things moving while giving us just enough description and background to paint the picture in our minds. Most of his scenes are relatively short, and he masterfully jumps POV’s multiple times in a chapter, but never lets us forget whose eyes through which we are viewing the action. He never confuses the reader or fails to let us know where we are in the story, which constantly shifts locales, no small feat for a writer to pull off. Each book is built around a standalone crisis inside the FAYZ, such as the possibility of starvation in HUNGER, or a deadly flu in PLAGUE, and he sets a clock at the start of each book and lets it tick down chapter by chapter, until the confrontation and resolution at the end – a great way to generate and keep up the suspense. I have taken up the keyboard and written a few novels myself, and published them online, and I am incredibly impressed with the way Grant pulls it all off; he writes a sprawling story with a massive cast of characters and keeps it all together in a way any aspiring writer should want to study.
I must admit that the series finale, titled LIGHT, sat on my shelf a few years, as other book reading projects grabbed my attention. I will also admit to being a little wary, because bringing a great story in for the landing can be very difficult for an author, and extremely frustrating, and potentially disappointing for the patient reader. Simply put, a great premise does not automatically guarantee a perfect resolution, as commercial concerns and reader expectations sometimes lead good writers astray. Grant has done a great job of building up the suspense and dread, and in the Giaiphage (the fusion of alien virus and human DNA) he has created a truly formidable villain. After taking over the body of the infant daughter of Cain and Diana at the end of FEAR, Gaia, as she calls herself, is a growing monstrosity, imbued with all of the mutant powers inside the FAYZ and hell bent on killing every single survivor before freeing itself and spreading destruction to the outside world. At the same time, the outside world can now see inside the barrier, and has gotten an idea of what’s going on in there, and it does not like what it sees, causing us to fear for Sam and the others who have been forced to do terrible things to survive. The adults will never understand is the unspoken dread hanging over the FAYZ. Sam and Cain are forced to work together against Gaia, Drake is reanimated (yet again), and dreams of whipping Astrid to death, Albert has run away to an island, and Quinn can’t find enough fish to keep everyone fed, and it falls to Edilio to try and hold things together in Perdido Beach.
I am happy to say that Michael Grant rose to the challenge he had set for himself and delivered an ending that satisfied; though there is a lot of suffering and death before hand, there is also redemption and sacrifice, and a farewell between two lovers that will surely bring tears to some eyes. I am also glad that Grant lets some of our characters get the fates they have earned, although some favorites do die before it is all wrapped up. If I have any criticism, it would be that Grant may have let this series run one book too many, as a lot of scenes, especially the ones where Sam, Astrid and Edilio are desperately trying to figure out how to confront the impending doom and arguing over what potentially suicidal choice they will have to make. I also applaud him for forthrightly tackling the subject of teen sexuality head on in this book, not shying away from showing safe sex between our heroes, and implying that unprotected sex between the villains is responsible for the birth of a monster. All of this would have been verboten in YA fiction a couple decades ago, and it is a welcome and stark contrast to Stephanie Meyer, who could barely write the words when it came time to acknowledge that Bella and Edward Cullen had consummated their relationship.
After the success of the Harry Potter films, and with Hollywood looking for hot YA properties, there was talk a few years back of a possible movie or TV adaptation of the GONE series. It was sold to Sony in the early 2010’s, but nothing has been green lighted. Though I like the thought of Sam and company being portrayed in a live action show, I think much of the material; especially a literal adaptation of the book, with its violence and gore inflicted by and upon children, is problematic in an era of school mass shootings. It might rub too many sensibilities the wrong way. One problem with a TV series or multiple movies would be that a young cast would rapidly age out of their roles. In an interview, Grant talked of meeting with producers who immediately wanted to make all the kids older than fourteen, more like high school seniors so they can then hire twenty something actors to play kids like they did on THE MAZE RUNNER or just about every teen show on the CW. Seeing the GONE books get the CW treatment is the last thing any fan wants to see, but with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon producing shows right and left, anything could be possible. Shout out to Amber Grey, who did the cover art for the books, thanks to her, we already know what all the principle characters look like.
In the end, it was hard to say goodbye to Sam and Astrid, Cain and Diana, Edilio, Brianna, Quinn, Drake, Lana, Dekka, Albert and all the rest, but as every faithful reader knows by now, Michael Grant has returned to the universe begot by the FAYZE; MONSTERS, published last year, is the first part of a proposed trilogy where the alien virus that created the super teens and monsters of the GONE books has returned. I know what I’m getting for Christmas.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
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August 31, 2018
My thoughts on Stephen King's FINDERS KEEPERS.
In his first novel of the Bill Hodges trilogy, MR. MERCEDES, Stephen King dedicated the book to James M. Cain, in the second novel of the series, titled, FINDERS KEEPERS, the dedication went to John D. MacDonald, two great authors of crime and mystery fiction; and though King clearly admires both men’s work, he is not in their league. But as I stated in my review of MR. MERCEDES, I think King does a fine job channeling Alfred Hitchcock in these books, which are a change of pace for him, and not always to the liking of many of his diehard fans who eat up his horror epics.In FINDERS KEEPERS, the constant reader is given way more information than the characters in the story, but King uses it well to create suspense, as the unsuspecting charge ahead into harm’s way, not knowing what lies in wait for them, but we do. That there is evil lying in wait for the unwary seems to be the subject of the novel. But the true theme of FINDERS KEEPERS is the love of books, or more to the point, the love of a good story and a great character, and how they can get hold of a reader and never let go. In the opening pages, set in 1978, we meet John Rothstein, once one of the most prominent writers of post WWII America, a kind of a cross between John Updike and J.D. Salinger, who walked away from the public spotlight and became a recluse, depriving his multitude of fans any more novels featuring Jimmy Gold, a young man in search of himself in mid century America. But one of those fans, a youth named Morris Bellamy, invades Rothstein’s home, steals the many moleskin notebooks Rothstein has been using for years to hand write the further adventures of his hero, and then kills the author before leaving. In a twist of plot, Bellamy commits rape while in a drunken black out, and goes to prison for life before he can read the notebooks he has carefully buried behind his mother’s house. There they lay for decades, until 2010, when they are discovered by Pete Saubers, a kid whose family has fallen on hard times, and not just from the Great Recession, but also from the fact that Pete’s father was badly injured by Brady Hartsfield when he plowed into that crowd of job seekers at the beginning of MR. MERCEDES; the cash Pete finds in the buried trunk comes in handy after he comes up with an anonymous way to help his financially and emotionally beleaguered parents, but after a few years, the money runs out, and young Pete must find a way to turn the stolen notebooks into a windfall. Meanwhile, Morris Bellamy is paroled, and he comes out of prison meaner and crazier than ever, and the one thing he has thought about every day of his sentence is what he would do when he got out and dug up the buried treasure that only he knows about.
It is obvious from that brief synopsis, that there is a lot of plot, and a lot of twists, more than a few of them improbable, as many reviewers pointed out, so too some of the character motivations, but so what, King works very hard to create a great setup, where young Pete and mean old Morris are put on a collision course, one I could not wait to see play out. This is where King fell down on the job in my view, as the middle part of the book loses some of its momentum; and the plotting is downright clunky at times. The main problem is that the trio of Bill, Holly, and Jerome, who were central to the first book, but in FINDERS KEEPERS, have to be shoe horned into the story mid way, and as much as I liked them the first time around, they often felt like walk-ons in the story of Pete and Morris, which is a shame, because I really liked these characters, more so because their relationship is such an unlikely one. Lots of King’s fans have expressed their dislike of Bill Hodges for reasons I cannot understand, I think it’s great to have a hero who had been around more than a few blocks more than a few times, and is the wiser for it.
Pete Saubers and Morris Bellamy are two faces of the same coin; Pete is the reader who learns to love a story and a character for what it is, and what it means to them, and to find the pleasure and joy of discovering literature that speaks to something deep inside, while Morris is the toxic fan whose love becomes obsession, who wants to possess the creations of others, make them flesh and blood real, but only for themselves, only for an audience of one. And yes, I get it that King is visiting familiar ground again, as it is obvious that Morris Bellamy and Annie Wilkes would find much in common, but only after Annie had washed his cockadoodie dirty mouth out first.
In the end, I will say that FINDERS KEEPERS, along with the other Bill Hodges books, are certainly not in the class of THE STAND or THE SHINING, or even up to the level of 11-22=63, but after finishing this latest book, I do not feel that vague sense of disappointment I felt after finishing DOCTOR SLEEP or REVIVAL. And if his crime fiction does not produce characters enduring as Travis Magee, Philip Marlowe, or even Mildred Pierce, he can still spin an entertaining yarn, and on level, FINDERS KEEPERS is a winner.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
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July 30, 2018
The Hustler: The Great American Movie. My review.
THE HUSTLER is one of the essential American films of the 1960’s, right up there with BONNIE & CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, and THE WILD BUNCH, a cultural touchstone for years after its release with scenes that defined a generation. If its luster has faded in the past few decades, maybe it is because B/W films were not favorites of the MTV generation and the millennials that followed, but I think it is The Great American Movie the way The Great Gatsby is The Great American Novel, in that it is a film that challenges the viewer to consider just what makes a person a success, a failure, and how does one gain the character to become the former and avoid the latter. It is also a damn good piece of film making, filled with subtle touches that vividly bring to life a time and place, and the marginalized culture of the big city pool halls.
Most know the plot, of how cocky young pool hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, comes to New York City to challenge the legendary champ, Minnesota Fats, to a game of straight pool in Fats’ regular haunt. It’s youth challenging experience, and though Fast Eddie may well have the raw talent to beat Fats, he does not have the sense to know when to quit while he is ahead, and Fats utterly humiliates Eddie after a 25 hour marathon series of games, stripping the challenger of $18,000 in winnings and leaving him exhausted and drunk on the floor. It is a hard fall, and as brutal as any suffered by any gladiator in the arena, and the middle part of the film concerns Eddie’s quest to get back on his feet, earn enough money, and take on Fats again. Along the way, he meets, Sarah Packard, a damaged young woman and begins a relationship with her, and ultimately makes an arrangement with Bert Gordon, a sharpie with a fat wallet who is willing to stake Eddie because he knows he has talent, if not character. But while Eddie has a chance at love with Sarah, his real passion is the game, and Bert is determined to protect his investment by getting rid of the competition. It does not end well for Sarah, and the sadly wiser Fast Eddie gets what he wants, a rematch with Fats, and a settling of accounts with Bert. In the end, Eddie Felson is a success, but was the price worth it, that is the question the movie asks and it has been challenging audiences ever since.
More than its weighty themes, THE HUSTLER is a masterpiece of subtle film making, and its centerpiece is Eddie and Fats’ initial clash around the pool table, a sequence that takes up nearly a quarter of the film’s more than two hour running time. The genius of it is that you don’t have to know much about the game to follow what is happening, but it is the interaction between the characters that is what bears watching, as money changes hands, signals are sent, liquor is drunk, and how simply the washing of hands, the putting on of a coat, and the picking up of a pool cue is tantamount to putting on a sword and a shield and going into battle. It is in the way Bert Gordon sits like an Emperor in the Ames pool hall, and how he gets up and moves his chair two inches and then sits back down when a drunken Eddie tells him to move somewhere else. More than that, it is in the scene where Eddie has his thumbs broken after he hustles the wrong crew, thus making him a “cripple” like Sarah, and for the first time, he is dependent on someone else, and they both become better people for it. The picnic scene where Eddie talks to her about his love of the game and the satisfaction he gets just playing it better than anyone is a paean to true success, the kind that comes from within. There is the party in Louisville sequence, where the vapid and empty character of the well to do is made plain by the way they ignore a drunken Sarah as she lies on a bed, rolling her out of the way to retrieve a coat, or the how the homosexuality of the aristocratic Findley is suggested in the statues of satyrs and Greek Gods in his basement.
The heart and soul of THE HUSTLER lies in the casting of the four principles and the career best performances they give. Simply put, this is the film that made Paul Newman a superstar, it happens the moment when he flashes that great Golden Boy smile in the cold open scene. Fast Eddie Felson was a different kind of movie protagonist, the first of the wary anti heroes that would grace America’s movie screen as the 50’s faded into the rear view mirror and the popular culture began to more reflect the tensions in American life. Newman makes being tough and being vulnerable look sexy, and does things with this role that Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, who were considered for the part, could never have done. He was the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar that year, but lost to Maximilian Schell’s performance in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG, he would have to wait a quarter of a century before getting the award, which many consider a consolation Oscar, when he reprised Fast Eddie in Martin Scorsese THE COLOR OF MONEY. I think he should have gotten it the first time around. For those who only know Piper Laurie only as Carrie White’s mother, this movie will be a revelation, her Sarah Packard is Eddie’s true love, a lame woman who clings to her man even as she is losing him; her final scene in the hotel room with Bert, where a vile sexual act is committed, is not to be forgotten. Sarah was a role many big stars of the time would have passed on as inappropriate for their images. Laurie was rewarded with a well deserved Best Actress nomination for taking the risk. This was George C. Scott’s third movie, his Bert Gordon is shrewd and intelligent, but with no moral center whatsoever, he is the Satan of this particular hell, and Scott brings all his skills to the role, with that great voice getting to deliver some equally worthy dialogue; and nobody ever leaned in better than George C. Scott. Jackie Gleason was simply a force of nature, very familiar to audiences in 1961 from his time on TV, especially from THE HONEYMOONERS, but he had spent his many years honing a larger than life persona, and a reputation as a man who enjoyed the finer things in life. All of that is in his portrayal of Minnesota Fats, and it reminds us that this man who’s other great movie role is Buford T. Justice, was one hell of a dramatic actor, if there are any doubts, just watch him in REQUIM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, made the next year. Murray Hamilton, who will forever be Mayor Larry Vaughn from JAWS, is the smarmy Findley; some might remember that he and Myron McCormick, who plays Eddie’s partner, Charlie, were in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS only a few years before. And there is a direct Scorsese connection in that the Raging Bull himself, Jake LaMotta, has a cameo as a bartender.
There are some behind the scenes heroes of THE HUSTLER, starting with the director and screen writer, Robert Rossen, who spent some time in the 50’s away from Hollywood because of the McCarthy blacklisters. A onetime member of the Communist Party, he had appeared before Congressional investigators and named names. Some of this finds its way into the story in the way Fast Eddie must make a deal with the devil in form of Bert in order to do what he loves to do best. Rossen had been something of a pool hustler himself in his younger days, long before finding success as a script writer at Warner Brothers and directing such classics as BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE KING’S MEN. This project was his big comeback and he made the most of it, turning it into his greatest critical and financial success. Sadly, it would be his last one, as he made only one more movie before dying much too soon in 1966. And THE HUSTLER would be nothing without the contribution of pool champion Willie Mosconi, who taught the game to Newman before production started, did some of the trick shots himself with the help of editor Dede Allen, and has a cameo as “Willie,” the man who holds the money at Ames Pool Hall.
Scorsese’s sequel, which came out in 1986, picked up the story of Fast Eddie 25 years later, and though it took its title, THE COLOR OF MONEY, from Walter Tevis’s official follow up novel, the sequel did not use the plot of the book, but instead told the story of an older Fast Eddie, who is drawn back to the game he loves when he meets a talented kid, played by Tom Cruise, who is just as deficient in character as Eddie was at his age. My only complaint about Scorsese’s follow up, is that it had so few call backs to the original film, that many young viewers in the 80’s and later would watch MONEY over and over completely unaware that Fast Eddie had first made his appearance on the scene in 1961; their loss.
And after all these years, THE HUSTLER still speaks to us, especially to those who see it for the first time. Don’t be turned off by the B/W, watch it and meet Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats, Bert Gordon and Sarah Packard. They still have a lot to tell us.
I discuss this movie with James Hancock on his Wrong Reel podcast, which can be found here: https://wrongreel.com/podcast/wr407-f...
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
You can get BIG CRIMSON, my vampire horror series, on Amazon at:
https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
https://amzn.to/3XxjT2m
https://amzn.to/3EHXAQU
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
Most know the plot, of how cocky young pool hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, comes to New York City to challenge the legendary champ, Minnesota Fats, to a game of straight pool in Fats’ regular haunt. It’s youth challenging experience, and though Fast Eddie may well have the raw talent to beat Fats, he does not have the sense to know when to quit while he is ahead, and Fats utterly humiliates Eddie after a 25 hour marathon series of games, stripping the challenger of $18,000 in winnings and leaving him exhausted and drunk on the floor. It is a hard fall, and as brutal as any suffered by any gladiator in the arena, and the middle part of the film concerns Eddie’s quest to get back on his feet, earn enough money, and take on Fats again. Along the way, he meets, Sarah Packard, a damaged young woman and begins a relationship with her, and ultimately makes an arrangement with Bert Gordon, a sharpie with a fat wallet who is willing to stake Eddie because he knows he has talent, if not character. But while Eddie has a chance at love with Sarah, his real passion is the game, and Bert is determined to protect his investment by getting rid of the competition. It does not end well for Sarah, and the sadly wiser Fast Eddie gets what he wants, a rematch with Fats, and a settling of accounts with Bert. In the end, Eddie Felson is a success, but was the price worth it, that is the question the movie asks and it has been challenging audiences ever since.
More than its weighty themes, THE HUSTLER is a masterpiece of subtle film making, and its centerpiece is Eddie and Fats’ initial clash around the pool table, a sequence that takes up nearly a quarter of the film’s more than two hour running time. The genius of it is that you don’t have to know much about the game to follow what is happening, but it is the interaction between the characters that is what bears watching, as money changes hands, signals are sent, liquor is drunk, and how simply the washing of hands, the putting on of a coat, and the picking up of a pool cue is tantamount to putting on a sword and a shield and going into battle. It is in the way Bert Gordon sits like an Emperor in the Ames pool hall, and how he gets up and moves his chair two inches and then sits back down when a drunken Eddie tells him to move somewhere else. More than that, it is in the scene where Eddie has his thumbs broken after he hustles the wrong crew, thus making him a “cripple” like Sarah, and for the first time, he is dependent on someone else, and they both become better people for it. The picnic scene where Eddie talks to her about his love of the game and the satisfaction he gets just playing it better than anyone is a paean to true success, the kind that comes from within. There is the party in Louisville sequence, where the vapid and empty character of the well to do is made plain by the way they ignore a drunken Sarah as she lies on a bed, rolling her out of the way to retrieve a coat, or the how the homosexuality of the aristocratic Findley is suggested in the statues of satyrs and Greek Gods in his basement.
The heart and soul of THE HUSTLER lies in the casting of the four principles and the career best performances they give. Simply put, this is the film that made Paul Newman a superstar, it happens the moment when he flashes that great Golden Boy smile in the cold open scene. Fast Eddie Felson was a different kind of movie protagonist, the first of the wary anti heroes that would grace America’s movie screen as the 50’s faded into the rear view mirror and the popular culture began to more reflect the tensions in American life. Newman makes being tough and being vulnerable look sexy, and does things with this role that Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, who were considered for the part, could never have done. He was the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar that year, but lost to Maximilian Schell’s performance in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG, he would have to wait a quarter of a century before getting the award, which many consider a consolation Oscar, when he reprised Fast Eddie in Martin Scorsese THE COLOR OF MONEY. I think he should have gotten it the first time around. For those who only know Piper Laurie only as Carrie White’s mother, this movie will be a revelation, her Sarah Packard is Eddie’s true love, a lame woman who clings to her man even as she is losing him; her final scene in the hotel room with Bert, where a vile sexual act is committed, is not to be forgotten. Sarah was a role many big stars of the time would have passed on as inappropriate for their images. Laurie was rewarded with a well deserved Best Actress nomination for taking the risk. This was George C. Scott’s third movie, his Bert Gordon is shrewd and intelligent, but with no moral center whatsoever, he is the Satan of this particular hell, and Scott brings all his skills to the role, with that great voice getting to deliver some equally worthy dialogue; and nobody ever leaned in better than George C. Scott. Jackie Gleason was simply a force of nature, very familiar to audiences in 1961 from his time on TV, especially from THE HONEYMOONERS, but he had spent his many years honing a larger than life persona, and a reputation as a man who enjoyed the finer things in life. All of that is in his portrayal of Minnesota Fats, and it reminds us that this man who’s other great movie role is Buford T. Justice, was one hell of a dramatic actor, if there are any doubts, just watch him in REQUIM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, made the next year. Murray Hamilton, who will forever be Mayor Larry Vaughn from JAWS, is the smarmy Findley; some might remember that he and Myron McCormick, who plays Eddie’s partner, Charlie, were in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS only a few years before. And there is a direct Scorsese connection in that the Raging Bull himself, Jake LaMotta, has a cameo as a bartender.
There are some behind the scenes heroes of THE HUSTLER, starting with the director and screen writer, Robert Rossen, who spent some time in the 50’s away from Hollywood because of the McCarthy blacklisters. A onetime member of the Communist Party, he had appeared before Congressional investigators and named names. Some of this finds its way into the story in the way Fast Eddie must make a deal with the devil in form of Bert in order to do what he loves to do best. Rossen had been something of a pool hustler himself in his younger days, long before finding success as a script writer at Warner Brothers and directing such classics as BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE KING’S MEN. This project was his big comeback and he made the most of it, turning it into his greatest critical and financial success. Sadly, it would be his last one, as he made only one more movie before dying much too soon in 1966. And THE HUSTLER would be nothing without the contribution of pool champion Willie Mosconi, who taught the game to Newman before production started, did some of the trick shots himself with the help of editor Dede Allen, and has a cameo as “Willie,” the man who holds the money at Ames Pool Hall.
Scorsese’s sequel, which came out in 1986, picked up the story of Fast Eddie 25 years later, and though it took its title, THE COLOR OF MONEY, from Walter Tevis’s official follow up novel, the sequel did not use the plot of the book, but instead told the story of an older Fast Eddie, who is drawn back to the game he loves when he meets a talented kid, played by Tom Cruise, who is just as deficient in character as Eddie was at his age. My only complaint about Scorsese’s follow up, is that it had so few call backs to the original film, that many young viewers in the 80’s and later would watch MONEY over and over completely unaware that Fast Eddie had first made his appearance on the scene in 1961; their loss.
And after all these years, THE HUSTLER still speaks to us, especially to those who see it for the first time. Don’t be turned off by the B/W, watch it and meet Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats, Bert Gordon and Sarah Packard. They still have a lot to tell us.
I discuss this movie with James Hancock on his Wrong Reel podcast, which can be found here: https://wrongreel.com/podcast/wr407-f...
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
You can get BIG CRIMSON, my vampire horror series, on Amazon at:
https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
https://amzn.to/3XxjT2m
https://amzn.to/3EHXAQU
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
July 13, 2018
CARRION COMFORT: a review.
After first reading THE TERROR, then SUMMER OF NIGHT, and now CARRION COMFORT, I can honestly say that I am a huge Dan Simmons fan. The man writes horror like no one else, and that is because he is able to take the genre and expertly mash it up with others, giving us something truly special. THE TERROR has elements of historical fiction and the best of Jack London in it, while SUMMER OF NIGHT taps into Baby Boomer nostalgia as good as anything Stephen King has written, along with being a great coming of age in a small town story. But CARRION COMFORT is nothing like those first two, making it plain that Simmons is a truly versatile writer, and a master of many subjects.CARRION COMFORT is Simmons’ epic take on vampires, and I do mean epic, as my paperback copy clocks in at 767 pages. There are no fanged bloodsuckers to be found anywhere on those pages, instead, Simmons gives us his own take on them, his creatures of the night have no problem walking in the day, and instead of blood, these are vampires who feed on the minds of others, stealing their thoughts, emotions, and personalities, ultimately hollowing them out completely and taking control of their bodies. This is often portrayed in horrifying detail, although there is little real gore. And like true vampires, they are very long lived, becoming cold and cruel, utterly incapable of empathy on any level. They are among the most truly evil villains I have ever encountered in any piece of fiction, and as all of us horror fans know, if the author gets the bad guys right, half his work is done.
As I noted, CARRION COMFORT is a long book and sprawling book, with a large cast of characters, with the action jumping to multiple locations. Though some reviewers have complained about the length, I am one of those readers who crave the deep dive into character and plot, and as there is a lot of action, and many POV’s from interesting characters, for me, the story never seemed to drag. Simmons begins his novel in a Nazi concentration camp in the waning days of World War II, where a protagonist and antagonist is introduced, and then jumping the story ahead to the year 1980, where the main action takes place as a meeting of a secret society of these mind vampires, or Users, takes a bad turn, resulting in some major carnage, and putting an unlikely trio of heroes on a mission of revenge against an enemy a million times more powerful than themselves. Though the good guys get a lot of space, this is one book where we really get to know the villains well. One of the Users, Melanie Fuller, is given the singular honor of having a first person POV, and the result is that the reader is treated like one of the Users themselves, as Melanie calmly explains herself, and the atrocities she inflicts upon the truly innocent, as though she is confiding in her own kind. It is a great technique to draw us into the story. On the other side, no book could have a better hero than Saul Laski, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi horrors who has never given up on finding the User who tormented him in the camps. We also meet a young black woman determined to avenge her father; a good old boy Southern sheriff who is anything but a caricature; a sleazy Hollywood producer who literally uses women; a deputy director of the FBI who is anything but a public servant; a Washington power broker whose real power is a horrific secret, and then there is the Oberst, a sadist with delusions of grandeur, capable of putting his former Nazi cohorts to shame. There is a rich cast of supporting characters, some good, some bad, some just victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, as this book does have a high body count by the end.
CARRION COMFORT was written in the 80’s, and published in 1989, and one can see some of that decades cultural touchstones in the novel, as it as more shoot outs and action scenes, involving semi and automatic weapons, helicopters, fancy sports cars, and explosions than a Schwarzenegger movie. One character is clearly modeled on some of that decade’s more prominent, and shameless, TV televangelists. Simmons does manage to avoid getting bogged down in info dumps or unnecessarily long scenes where back story is inserted; his writing is cramped with detail – he paints a picture well – but for the most part, you always feel like the story is going somewhere.
Of particular interest to aspiring, or even successful writers, is the introduction Simmons included in my edition, where he relates his early struggles as a writer to get CARRION COMFORT completed while still holding down a job as a school teacher, along with the subsequent battle with an editor at a major publishing house, one that ended with him buying back his own book rather than put up with this person’s abuse anymore. It is no doubt some score settling, but it is also an interesting look at the creative process and the machinations of the publishing business.
CARRION COMFORT is a book that should be read by every lover of good horror fiction, yet I think far too few have ever heard of it, which is a shame. It takes an original approach to an old horror trope, and the best thing I can say about is that you never are sure which way the story is going on any given page. We are always wondering what will happen next, and for me, that is the highest praise I can give a book. It is what makes it such a page turner despite its length. And what a movie it would make in the right hands, I would love to see what David Cronenberg could do with it, or even Steven Spielberg. I’m sure it would turn out better than READY PLAYER ONE. May I suggest Richard Dreyfuss as Saul and Jessica Lange as Melanie.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
July 8, 2018
ANT MAN AND THE WASP: A review.
After the emotional carnage of INFINITY WAR, the MCU needed to allow us fans to catch our breath and decompress, and ANT MAN AND THE WASP allows us to do just that in a movie that is essentially a partial sequel to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. It takes part in that corner of the MCU occupied by Scott Laing, whom we last saw fighting alongside Cap at the Berlin Airport in what might still be my favorite scene in any Marvel movie to date. Missing from that throw down was any mention of Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne, the father and daughter duo who came up with the technology that allowed Scott to become Ant Man in the first place. In the opening act A & W, which has a lot of set up and catching up, we learn just what everyone has been up to and why Scott was MIA in INFINITY WAR.
The plot of ANT MAN AND THE WASP turns on a dangling plot thread from the first Ant Man film, mainly the possibility that Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother, Janet, is still alive in the Quantum Realm (a microverse below the subatomic level), having been presumed lost there many years earlier during a mission with her husband. The three main protagonists, who have become estranged after the events of CIVIL WAR, are now forced by events to reunite on a mission to rescue Janet, but they are soon being pursued by two different sets of villains with two very different agendas with the common goal of obtaining Pym’s technology for their own use. Then there is the FBI, which has had Scott under house arrest, making any involvement by him in any of Pym’s plans very problematic. This sets up a very straight forward narrative, where the heroes have to break into and break out of various tight spots, getting captured at least once along the way, not to mention a number of chase sequences and fight scenes where the CGI gets to shine. This leads to a finale where everything is on the line and multiple characters are in serious peril, both in this world and the Quantum Realm; pretty much your typical Marvel movie.
And that is just fine, as this installment of the MCU keeps the stakes small, sometimes literally, as the world is never in danger, and there is no super Big Bad out to rule or ruin. There is a lot of easy going humor that rises out of character and situation – many laughs are had at the expense of Scott’s problems with his malfunctioning Ant Man suit, leaving him the size of child or a giant at inopportune times. There is the welcome return of Michael Pena as Scott’s ex-con partner in a new security business; Pena takes a part that could have been nothing more than comic relief and does something so much more with it. The action scenes, especially the chases through the streets of San Francisco, are a true highlight as the laws so physics are thrown out the window while speeding vehicles go from normal size to matchbox and back again. This is one of those times where they don’t try to overwhelm us with CGI, unlike INFINITY WAR and DOCTOR STRANGE where you can clearly see where actors spent all day going through their motions in front of a green screen. If the super sized ants are less than realistic, the producers clearly let us know it is all right with a wink to the audience by having a certain sci fi classic from the 50’s be conveniently playing on a TV set in one scene.
If I do have a complaint, it is that A & W lacks a strong villain, as it would have been a great opportunity to showcase Marvel’s ample rogue’s gallery. But The Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen), a former assassin for SHIELD who can phase through solid matter, is given a strong motive for her actions, one directly linked to Hank Pym’s past, which allows the audience to empathize with her. The other villain, a technology thief, is played by Walton Goggins with oily Southern charm, who is more comical than threatening, which is okay, but if you are a Goggins fan, then you know he is capable of so much more.
But the rest of the actors are perfectly cast, starting with the returning Paul Rudd as Scott Laing, a part that allows one of the most charming actors in the business to do what he does best, and in Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne, he gets a partner to expertly play off of in their best scenes. Old pro Michael Douglas returns as Hank Pym, one of the essential characters of the Marvel Universe and in The Avengers history. What is so great in this installment is that Douglas’s Hank is paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Janet, another great Marvel legacy character. Last year saw the return of Michael Keaton to comic book movies in SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING; and it is fitting that this summer sees the best Catwoman ever follow in the steps of the best Batman of them all. Welcome back Michelle Pfeiffer, it has been too long. Speaking of welcome, Laurence Fishbourne turns up as Bill Foster, the Giant Man of that great run of Avengers comics from the 80’s. Randall Park is FBI agent Jimmy Woo, another longtime Marvel character, my only problem is that Park plays him for laughs, a departure from the Jimmy Woo of the comic books.
One of the continuing themes that many might not pick up on is the relationship between fathers and daughters, and the unbreakable bond it forms, whether it is between Scott and his precocious Cassie, Hank and Hope, or the one between Bill Foster and Ava, aka The Ghost.
Of course there is the requisite mid credit scene, and the elephant in the room when it starts is INFINTIY WAR and the consequences of Thanos’s victory; suffice to say that this scene delivers on its promise and leaves Scott in a most precarious situation, one that may be resolved in the next Avengers film; I wonder if a throwaway line about time displacements in the Quantum Realm is a clue to how Scott might be rescued. I thought we might get a scene that also lets us know the fate of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton as well, as he was also absent from INFINITY WAR, but the whereabouts of Hawkeye remains a mystery.
And I do wonder if I was the only one who thought we might get a hint at the existence of the Micronauts when Hank Pym first enters the Quantum Realm, you really have to be old school Marvel to remember them.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
The plot of ANT MAN AND THE WASP turns on a dangling plot thread from the first Ant Man film, mainly the possibility that Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother, Janet, is still alive in the Quantum Realm (a microverse below the subatomic level), having been presumed lost there many years earlier during a mission with her husband. The three main protagonists, who have become estranged after the events of CIVIL WAR, are now forced by events to reunite on a mission to rescue Janet, but they are soon being pursued by two different sets of villains with two very different agendas with the common goal of obtaining Pym’s technology for their own use. Then there is the FBI, which has had Scott under house arrest, making any involvement by him in any of Pym’s plans very problematic. This sets up a very straight forward narrative, where the heroes have to break into and break out of various tight spots, getting captured at least once along the way, not to mention a number of chase sequences and fight scenes where the CGI gets to shine. This leads to a finale where everything is on the line and multiple characters are in serious peril, both in this world and the Quantum Realm; pretty much your typical Marvel movie.
And that is just fine, as this installment of the MCU keeps the stakes small, sometimes literally, as the world is never in danger, and there is no super Big Bad out to rule or ruin. There is a lot of easy going humor that rises out of character and situation – many laughs are had at the expense of Scott’s problems with his malfunctioning Ant Man suit, leaving him the size of child or a giant at inopportune times. There is the welcome return of Michael Pena as Scott’s ex-con partner in a new security business; Pena takes a part that could have been nothing more than comic relief and does something so much more with it. The action scenes, especially the chases through the streets of San Francisco, are a true highlight as the laws so physics are thrown out the window while speeding vehicles go from normal size to matchbox and back again. This is one of those times where they don’t try to overwhelm us with CGI, unlike INFINITY WAR and DOCTOR STRANGE where you can clearly see where actors spent all day going through their motions in front of a green screen. If the super sized ants are less than realistic, the producers clearly let us know it is all right with a wink to the audience by having a certain sci fi classic from the 50’s be conveniently playing on a TV set in one scene.
If I do have a complaint, it is that A & W lacks a strong villain, as it would have been a great opportunity to showcase Marvel’s ample rogue’s gallery. But The Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen), a former assassin for SHIELD who can phase through solid matter, is given a strong motive for her actions, one directly linked to Hank Pym’s past, which allows the audience to empathize with her. The other villain, a technology thief, is played by Walton Goggins with oily Southern charm, who is more comical than threatening, which is okay, but if you are a Goggins fan, then you know he is capable of so much more.
But the rest of the actors are perfectly cast, starting with the returning Paul Rudd as Scott Laing, a part that allows one of the most charming actors in the business to do what he does best, and in Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne, he gets a partner to expertly play off of in their best scenes. Old pro Michael Douglas returns as Hank Pym, one of the essential characters of the Marvel Universe and in The Avengers history. What is so great in this installment is that Douglas’s Hank is paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Janet, another great Marvel legacy character. Last year saw the return of Michael Keaton to comic book movies in SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING; and it is fitting that this summer sees the best Catwoman ever follow in the steps of the best Batman of them all. Welcome back Michelle Pfeiffer, it has been too long. Speaking of welcome, Laurence Fishbourne turns up as Bill Foster, the Giant Man of that great run of Avengers comics from the 80’s. Randall Park is FBI agent Jimmy Woo, another longtime Marvel character, my only problem is that Park plays him for laughs, a departure from the Jimmy Woo of the comic books.
One of the continuing themes that many might not pick up on is the relationship between fathers and daughters, and the unbreakable bond it forms, whether it is between Scott and his precocious Cassie, Hank and Hope, or the one between Bill Foster and Ava, aka The Ghost.
Of course there is the requisite mid credit scene, and the elephant in the room when it starts is INFINTIY WAR and the consequences of Thanos’s victory; suffice to say that this scene delivers on its promise and leaves Scott in a most precarious situation, one that may be resolved in the next Avengers film; I wonder if a throwaway line about time displacements in the Quantum Realm is a clue to how Scott might be rescued. I thought we might get a scene that also lets us know the fate of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton as well, as he was also absent from INFINITY WAR, but the whereabouts of Hawkeye remains a mystery.
And I do wonder if I was the only one who thought we might get a hint at the existence of the Micronauts when Hank Pym first enters the Quantum Realm, you really have to be old school Marvel to remember them.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
June 1, 2018
A look back at CON AIR, and a vanished era.
I recently had the pleasure of listening to Chad Dukes discuss CON AIR on his podcast and it prompted me to get out my own DVD copy and watch it again for the first time in many years and was pleased to discover that it was just as great as the first time I saw it back in the theater in that long ago summer of 1997. But seeing it again made me a little sad, as it is now a stark reminder that the old cliché is very apt in this case: they just don’t make them like this anymore.
Looking back now, it’s clear CON AIR was the high water mark of the Golden Age of the Action Movie, the era that gave us SPEED, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and the first couple of DIE HARD sequels; the kind of films that made Jerry Bruckheimer a fan favorite. These movies were cheerfully over the top in the way good comic books are; filled with great dialog, scenes of mass destruction where every explosion looks like a huge gas tank going up along with tough guys trying to annihilate each other with everything from bullet spewing automatic weapons to wicked looking knives, and if nothing else, their fists. These were movies based on a ridiculous and improbable premise that served as a perfect hook for an easy to please audience yearning for good entertainment.
The hook for CON AIR was Nicholas Cage’s Cameron Poe, a good man who caught a bad break which landed him in a tight situation where he has to be a hero if he wants to get home to his wife and daughter. Poe, a hero of the Persian Gulf War, accidentally kills a drunken lout in a bar fight and inexplicably ends up in Federal Prison; when he finally wins parole, Poe gets a ride home on a prison flight filled with some of the worst criminals ever put in solitary confinement. Things go south in mid air when John Malkovich’s Cyrus Grissom, a brilliant criminal mastermind leads the rest of the very hardened criminal passengers in a successful plan to take over the plane and escape across the border. On the ground, US Marshall, Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, is desperately trying to find a way to get the plane back, the prisoners recaptured and do so despite the incompetent interference of superiors and co-workers. This sets off a convoluted plot filled with narrow escapes just in time, epic confrontations, ambushes, double crosses, and a showdown on the Vegas strip that is wonderfully over the top as Simon West’s script works overtime to top itself.
The big pull for CON AIR has always been the violence, which is excellently staged, not only in the fore mentioned Vegas Strip finale, but especially in the middle section of the film when the plane puts down at the isolated desert airport. But every true fan of the film knows that the movie’s real strength is the performances, which gives some great actors plenty of scenery to chew and spit out. Cage was at the height of his stardom in the mid 90’s, having just won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, and was considered a serious actor at the time; Cameron Poe gave him a great opportunity to use some of his best tricks, starting with an affected Southern accent that is impossible to forget. At first, the laid back Cusack seemed an odd choice for an action blockbuster, but it proved to be a piece of inspired casting as Cusack’s distinct style of cool intensity proved to be perfect fit with the overwrought eye rolling of his co stars.
By some accounts, Malkovich was less than happy with his villain role and the project itself as a whole, if so, it doesn’t show up on the screen; he commits totally to the role of Cyrus the Virus, letting us never forget that his greatest weapon is his super intelligent mind, a mind that bends a plane filled with sadistic criminals to his will by words alone.
Then there are the great acting contributions by Ving Rhames, Nick Chinlund, Danny Trejo, Colm Meaney, the young Dave Chappelle, Kevin Gage, M.C. Gainey, Conrad Goode, Ty Granderson, Rachel Ticotin, Mykelti Williamson, and two great character stars: Don Davis and Dabs Greer. But the icing on the cake is still Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene, the detached serial killer who sits back utterly amused at it all; his conversations with Poe are classic bits, as is Greene’s unnerving “tea party” with the little girl. How great is it that the worst of the worst seems to be the sanest of the lot, and is the only one to actually get away in a great final scene. I consider CON AIR to be a direct descendant of the those great 60’s films, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE GREAT ESCAPE, and THE DIRTY DOZEN, where a bunch of great actors were given roles that played to their strengths and just turned loose on the screen.
Yet watching CON AIR now makes me painfully aware of the passage of time, I agree with those who point out that if it came out today, the ridiculous plot twists and over the top action pieces would be picked apart on social media Friday night of opening weekend while Millennials would no doubt be horrified by some of the crude racial epitaphs thrown back and forth by the inmates. In the post 9/11 era, the action movie would become darker and much more serious, Cameron Poe would be replaced by Jason Bourne and a movie about a plane hijacked by criminals would not be considered fun. Even the villains would change, where in the 90’s, great bad guys like Cyrus the Virus were cousins of Hannibal Lector, while now they are some variation on a terrorist. Though Nicolas Cage had a great summer in 1997, starring in both CON AIR, and that other action classic, FACE OFF, in the years ahead, a series of bombs and bad role choices along with an increasing tendency to over act would turn him into a punch line. The economics of movie making would change so much that a script like CON AIR, with its many speaking parts for many actors, would no longer be green lighted today unless it was a superhero epic like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. And our entertainment would become so somber that in the 21st century, even Superman could barely crack a smile in a two and a half hour movie. Personally, I’d take Cameron Poe over Zach Snyder’s Big Blue any day.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
Looking back now, it’s clear CON AIR was the high water mark of the Golden Age of the Action Movie, the era that gave us SPEED, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and the first couple of DIE HARD sequels; the kind of films that made Jerry Bruckheimer a fan favorite. These movies were cheerfully over the top in the way good comic books are; filled with great dialog, scenes of mass destruction where every explosion looks like a huge gas tank going up along with tough guys trying to annihilate each other with everything from bullet spewing automatic weapons to wicked looking knives, and if nothing else, their fists. These were movies based on a ridiculous and improbable premise that served as a perfect hook for an easy to please audience yearning for good entertainment.
The hook for CON AIR was Nicholas Cage’s Cameron Poe, a good man who caught a bad break which landed him in a tight situation where he has to be a hero if he wants to get home to his wife and daughter. Poe, a hero of the Persian Gulf War, accidentally kills a drunken lout in a bar fight and inexplicably ends up in Federal Prison; when he finally wins parole, Poe gets a ride home on a prison flight filled with some of the worst criminals ever put in solitary confinement. Things go south in mid air when John Malkovich’s Cyrus Grissom, a brilliant criminal mastermind leads the rest of the very hardened criminal passengers in a successful plan to take over the plane and escape across the border. On the ground, US Marshall, Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, is desperately trying to find a way to get the plane back, the prisoners recaptured and do so despite the incompetent interference of superiors and co-workers. This sets off a convoluted plot filled with narrow escapes just in time, epic confrontations, ambushes, double crosses, and a showdown on the Vegas strip that is wonderfully over the top as Simon West’s script works overtime to top itself.
The big pull for CON AIR has always been the violence, which is excellently staged, not only in the fore mentioned Vegas Strip finale, but especially in the middle section of the film when the plane puts down at the isolated desert airport. But every true fan of the film knows that the movie’s real strength is the performances, which gives some great actors plenty of scenery to chew and spit out. Cage was at the height of his stardom in the mid 90’s, having just won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, and was considered a serious actor at the time; Cameron Poe gave him a great opportunity to use some of his best tricks, starting with an affected Southern accent that is impossible to forget. At first, the laid back Cusack seemed an odd choice for an action blockbuster, but it proved to be a piece of inspired casting as Cusack’s distinct style of cool intensity proved to be perfect fit with the overwrought eye rolling of his co stars.
By some accounts, Malkovich was less than happy with his villain role and the project itself as a whole, if so, it doesn’t show up on the screen; he commits totally to the role of Cyrus the Virus, letting us never forget that his greatest weapon is his super intelligent mind, a mind that bends a plane filled with sadistic criminals to his will by words alone.
Then there are the great acting contributions by Ving Rhames, Nick Chinlund, Danny Trejo, Colm Meaney, the young Dave Chappelle, Kevin Gage, M.C. Gainey, Conrad Goode, Ty Granderson, Rachel Ticotin, Mykelti Williamson, and two great character stars: Don Davis and Dabs Greer. But the icing on the cake is still Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene, the detached serial killer who sits back utterly amused at it all; his conversations with Poe are classic bits, as is Greene’s unnerving “tea party” with the little girl. How great is it that the worst of the worst seems to be the sanest of the lot, and is the only one to actually get away in a great final scene. I consider CON AIR to be a direct descendant of the those great 60’s films, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE GREAT ESCAPE, and THE DIRTY DOZEN, where a bunch of great actors were given roles that played to their strengths and just turned loose on the screen.
Yet watching CON AIR now makes me painfully aware of the passage of time, I agree with those who point out that if it came out today, the ridiculous plot twists and over the top action pieces would be picked apart on social media Friday night of opening weekend while Millennials would no doubt be horrified by some of the crude racial epitaphs thrown back and forth by the inmates. In the post 9/11 era, the action movie would become darker and much more serious, Cameron Poe would be replaced by Jason Bourne and a movie about a plane hijacked by criminals would not be considered fun. Even the villains would change, where in the 90’s, great bad guys like Cyrus the Virus were cousins of Hannibal Lector, while now they are some variation on a terrorist. Though Nicolas Cage had a great summer in 1997, starring in both CON AIR, and that other action classic, FACE OFF, in the years ahead, a series of bombs and bad role choices along with an increasing tendency to over act would turn him into a punch line. The economics of movie making would change so much that a script like CON AIR, with its many speaking parts for many actors, would no longer be green lighted today unless it was a superhero epic like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. And our entertainment would become so somber that in the 21st century, even Superman could barely crack a smile in a two and a half hour movie. Personally, I’d take Cameron Poe over Zach Snyder’s Big Blue any day.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
