Category: Marc’s Reviews

A SIMPLE PLAN

By Marc S. Sanders

“Three can keep a secret if two are dead.”  – Benjamin Franklin, pictured on the one-hundred-dollar bill

A murder of crows is made especially prominent at the beginning of this dark, wintry fable from director Sam Raimi and writer Scott B Smith, based off of his novel, A Simple Plan.  

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve Day, Hank, his brother Jacob and Leon get swerved off a slippery Minnesota road while riding in a beat-up pickup truck. They come upon a crashed airplane buried under a blanket of snow in the woods.  Besides the pecking crows feasting on the corpse of a dead pilot, they uncover a duffle bag with over four million dollars; tons of bales of strapped hundred-dollar bills.  What should they do? Report the discovery to the police or secretly keep it to divide among themselves?

Hank (Bill Paxton) is the educated sensible member of the trio.  Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) is his dim-witted brother.  Leon (Brent Briscoe) is Jacob’s loudmouth drinking buddy.  After much debate, the men agree that Hank will hold on to the money until springtime.  By then, if no one is looking for the loot, then it surely can be shared among them.  

Easier said than done.

This is one of Bill Paxton’s best roles, not only because he’s a fine actor, but his character is constructed beautifully with one internal conflict after another.  He carries an appearance of a doting husband to his pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda, who I wish never retired from acting) and he’s well-liked by the folks of this town.  He’s also a protective brother to Jacob.   However, money changes people and hypocrisy and plotting turn this good man corrupt.

Billy Bob Thornton is brilliant in an Oscar nominated role. It’s not easy to portray the sweet dumb guy when your career has demonstrated how insightful you are as a winning screenwriter and actor (Sling Blade).  Jacob looks “lived in” within this sleepy town with a pair of broken eyeglasses, an old parka and boots.  He’s the troublemaker and the sheriff knows this schlub can’t take care of himself.  As Hank changes one way over the course of the film, Jacob literally transitions in a completely opposite direction of character.  Both approach their tests of ethics and morality differently, and it’s fair to say that a gift of simple logic and sensibility can be more of a curse rather than a blessing.

Bridget Fonda operates like a conniving Lady MacBeth as Hank’s wife Sarah.  She’s adorable and sweet as the happy couple await the delivery of their first child any day now.  What good fortune to come upon this money to help with living a lifetime of comfort and joy.  Sarah knows this is all going to work out, but what’s important is that Hank covers his tracks while also being especially cautious of Leon and Jacob’s reputation for carelessness.  Sarah has an answer for everything and a proactive approach to handle this surprise windfall.

Yet, the luck of one man is the demise of another, and another and maybe even another.  

A Simple Plan is anything but.  Too many people know what is discovered.  Even the inconvenience of snow-covered plains work against any kind of airtight solution.  Snow leaves tracks.  What if someone lets a simple, but curious, word slip?  What if someone wants his share sooner than agreed upon?  What if someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time? 

Scott B Smith changes the tune of his script over and over.  First, it questions the morality of man.  Later, it traverses into crime and cover up.  After that, A Simple Plan hinges upon survival while questioning a series of costs.

Because most of the characters in this small Minnesota town are blue collar and not formally educated, you might believe they lack the intuition to properly guard themselves or the ones they hold dear.  On the surface, this is a friendly community, and everyone bears a facade of innocence with Happy New Year greetings. Actually, desperation only enhances the thinking abilities of these people to do the most twisted of acts to protect what they consider their rightful, personal entitlement.  

Each act of extreme behavior seems justified in the eyes of Hank, Jacob, Sarah and Leon. I mean this is four million dollars we are talking about here.  Try to see it their way, and you’ll know what I mean.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN

By Marc S. Sanders

Benoit Blanc is back with a new mystery to solve in Wake Up Dead Man.  With three films, all directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion), Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective now belongs in the ranks of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.  He’s a pleasure to watch with a smirk on your face.  Ironically, he doesn’t make his entrance until at least a third of the picture is complete.

Josh O’Connor is Father Jud Duplenticy who first reveals a wide berth of exposition ahead of the murder mystery that awaits us.  He’s a catholic priest who works hard to contain his temper that might resort to raising his fists.  He’s been assigned as the assistant minister to a church in a small New England town where everyone knows one another, especially repulsive Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).

Whodunit mysteries should never be spoiled.  I certainly wouldn’t imply how this film wraps up.  I also do not want to reveal who the victim(s) is/are.  I urge you to see Wake Up The Dead Man because this puzzler of a story is as gleeful as the title itself.

Like the Agatha Christie film adaptations from the 1970s, Rian Johnson does his best to provide a lineup of suspects with celebrity familiarity including Brolin, O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Thomas Hayden Church, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner and a standout performance from Glenn Close who steals much of the film away from the rest of the cast.  After seven nominations spanning over forty years, give her the Oscar already.  She’s eerie and needling, spooky and fun.  As Detective Blanc continues his investigation, a character tells him this all seems like something straight out of Scooby Doo.  Glenn Close, donned in black with an elderly bleached facade certainly feels like she’d come in contact with the animated pup and those meddling kids.

Rian Johnson writes with that classic narrative that Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle adopted, only it’s modernized.  The director of The Last Jedi even throws in a Star Wars reference and the joke soars.  The writer/director crafted this script as an invitation for hair raising merriment with his design.  If you can’t be a part of a mystery dinner theater party, he ensures that you can participate in this one.

An old church, priests who curse, habitually pleasure themselves and confess to an abundance of sins, a gothic tomb, a dark basement with a repulsive bathtub, a bar with a photograph of clues, startling entrances, unconventional dialogue and a quizzical murder weapon function like page turning literature.  Even better is to understand how impossible the first murder can be under the limitations of a locked door mystery.  How can someone be killed right in front of our eyes when no one else is in room?  The answers await and thankfully the revelations are not far-fetched.

Wake Up Dead Man is a fun time at the movies.  It’s coming to Netflix on December 12, 2025.  Nevertheless, I encourage you to go your local cinema.  The crowd we saw it with was responding consistently with us, and that only enhances the experience.

TAPAWINGO

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s amusing to say that Jon Heder (Napolean Dynamite) becomes a bodyguard in Tapawingo.  He plays a weirdo who headlines a cast of familiar faces, who also portray weirdos.  Yet, come what may, he is in fact a bodyguard named Nate Skoog (a weirdo with a weirdo’s name) who lives with his mom (Amanda Bearse) and her boyfriend (John Ratzenberger).  By day, he works in the mailroom for Amalgamated Insurance.  Nate has not hit the ranks of earning a shirt that bears the company name.  His boss gives him hope though as he assigns Nate the lofty responsibility of picking up his nerdy son, Oswalt (Sawyer Williams), from school.  Nate uses his dune buggy to handle the task.

The city of Tapawingo is notorious for its family of bullies known as the Tarwaters.  Nate is given a warning.  He’s to stop giving Oswalt rides to his tutoring sessions for their sister Gretchen (Kim Matula).  Let me be clear.  Young teen Oswalt tutors Gretchen, a twenty-something tough chick, dressed in black who moves with an attitude and a strut.  When Nate witnesses two Tarwater heavies beating up on Oswalt, he runs into action with his own technique of martial arts. Suddenly, he becomes protective of the kid.  It doesn’t help that Nate’s dune buggy runs over Gretchen’s Doberman.  Well, the Tarwaters move up the food chain and bring in their bruiser brother Stoney (Billy Zane) to make sure their policy stays in line.

Tapawingo is proudly oddball, strange, stupid, silly, slapsticky and really, really, out there.  Following the surprise response of the cult hit Napolean Dynamite Jon Heder moved into more mainstream fair and became a marquee name of sorts.  It’s fortunate he returns to his roots.  He’s on a very short list of comedians who could pull off this material.  Tapawingo is funny.  Very funny at times.  The blessing is that it does not overstay its welcome because of the stupidity of it all; how the actors portray the characters, how writer/director Dylan K Narang shoots his setups and close ups and how the absurdity of the script never stops to think.  Comedy like this only has so much fuel to drive a certain distance.  This gonzo kind of writing that lacks any kind of insight or symbolism operates like another kind of Abbott & Costello routine.  Eventually, you’ll want to move on.  In the moment, it’s a lot of fun though.

Jon Heder invents his own kind of character brand with a stoned kind of look on his face.  Nate Skoog doesn’t so much move.  Rather, the world around this nincompoop circulates around him.  With his buddy Will Luna (Jay Pichardo, playing a different flavor of weird with a Rambo wardrobe on his bearded scrawny physique) these dorks spend their time answering ads to serve as hired mercenaries.  They are marksmen at launching firework sparklers from a distance. Believe me when I say though that Nate and Will are the poster boys for gun prevention.  Maybe even butter knife prevention if there is such a thing.  Otherwise, they are playing bingo at the rec center or maybe wrestling by way of whatever they think wrestling should be.  A pair of overweight, goateed twins (George and Paul Psarras) demonstrate what the contact sport should look like in the foreground. 

Even Gina Gershon invests herself by hiding her signature glamour.  Caked in colorful makeup with a hairsprayed zig zag formation of dirty blond locks, I did not even recognize the actress who made big splashes in movies like Bound, Face/Off and Showgirls.  Her character’s name is Dot and I’d love to know if she took inspiration from Pee Wee Herman’s girlfriend, Dottie, in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.  Dot resides in the background of Nate’s meandering life.  She’s seductive…I guess.  It’s another oddball within Nate’s world where stimuli is not so much a priority.  Nevertheless, Gershon is hysterical in a clownish, buffoon like role.

Billy Zane is the villain of this silly picture.  Bald, clean shaven, husky and dressed in black, I don’t think the guy has more than ten lines.  It’s his presence that says it all as he sits behind the wheel of an emerald, green Mustang.  I’m glad he’s here.  He headlined Waltzing With Brando (which I loved), while Heder played the supporting role.  Now the pair switch positions.  Newman and Redford, Lemmon and Matthau, Zane and Heder.  It works.  By appearance, method, and physique, these guys are so unlikely to work together, and yet that generates inventive comedy.

Tapawingo operates like one of those B-movie 1980s comedies (Better Off Dead, Real Genius) that you’d rent when The Goonies or Gremlins was checked out at the video store.  It carries no charm.  No sensitivity.  No romance.  The adventure is pratfallish and deliberately lethargic.  It’s strength comes from its characters that leap out of a comic book or a Saturday morning cartoon.  Jon Heder’s approach to live action animation is a winner.  He’ll make you bust a gut.  He doesn’t have to say a word.  Simply a close up of him staring into a void will generate the laughs. 

The brains lie in the bravery to do something as zany as Tapawingo.  Go into it with an open mind.  Better yet, take your thinking cap off and just observe.  It’s a lot of fun.

Oh yeah.  The soundtrack is killer with the help of Pat Benatar and Quiet Riot.

WICKED FOR GOOD

By Marc S. Sanders

Wicked For Good is a crowning achievement in fantasy and musical wonder.  It soars across a wide expanse of never-ending settings within the wonderful world of Oz and delivers a series of messages to walk away with.  Try not to think about Wicked the next time you turn on CNN or FOX News.

Jon M Chu directs again after Wicked Part One.  Both films were actually shot as one large project but then divided.  I was suspect when I heard this was how the Broadway musical was going to be done for film.  Was there that much material, interesting enough for two full-length movies?  With a pair of new numbers drafted by original composition writer Stephen Schwartz, the answer is a profound yes.  This may be Act II of the musical but it does operate as a sequel. The new film leaps in time from when our host of characters were young students at Shiz Academy.  All are adults now with respective responsibilities and therefore they’ve grown and changed.  Sadly, but wisely, the film moves in directions that are parallel to many current events happening today. 

The wise animals of Oz are being oppressed.  The first film hinted that animals should be seen not heard.  The second part of the story executes that mantra all too realistically as they lose their power of speech and are destined not to be free but rather caged like in internment camps.  Those that have not been taken are performing mass exodus under the newly constructed yellow brick road. 

Untrue propaganda sweeps through Oz as Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) uses the false influence of The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) to unite the kingdom into believing the empathetic green skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is the Wicked Witch of The West, on mission of terror.  Citizens of Munchkinland and the Emerald City believe the lies and live in fear of her presence.  Glinda (Ariana Grande), decked in beautiful pinks with a sparkly wand and a convenient flying bubble craft, serves as a poster girl for hope with the illusion of having enchanting powers to protect.  Elphaba’s sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) succeeds as the governor of Oz following the death of the girls’ father.  Nessarose has grown coldhearted, particularly to her one true love Bok (Ethan Slater), who by decree must remain held captive under her authority.  He’s literally forbidden to immigrate by train. These are not the students of Shiz that we grew up with. 

I hate to use Wicked For Good as a metaphor for political purposes, but that’s exactly where my mind went to, and I’m grateful for it.  I believe there is much wrong occurring each day in the United States and throughout the world. I’m at least thankful that artistry like cinema and stage prevents us from burying our heads in the sand.  Conveniently, there’s a triggering and emotionally engaging storyline to hold on to.

Wicked was spawned off of L Frank Baum’s classic fairy tales. Part of the fun is seeing how these new stories are threaded towards his classic story of a girl from Kansas who arrives in Oz and befriends three unusual charmers while on her journey to meet The Wizard.  I’d argue that more people are familiar with the classic Warner Brothers film from 1939 than Baum’s series of books, and this Universal picture seems to adhere to the original production especially.  Elpheba delivers a new song called “There’s No Place Like Home” that’s woven beautifully into the picture.  Glinda sings about “The Girl In The Bubble” to emulate her personal conflict with how she is meant to serve.  Classic lines like “I’m off to see The Wizard” are provided.  Hints at a lion (voiced by Coleman Domingo) being fearful, along with a character’s heart becoming too small are referenced with weighty importance.  Another character is asked if he’s lost his mind.  It’s satisfying how original the Wicked properties are while being comfortably familiar.

The cast is sensational.  Cynthia Erivo is a wonderful performer who hides in her role with an American accent and her Broadway voice to belt.  She performs so convincingly that it becomes easy to look past the green skin and watch the woman who is challenged.  Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum have those unusual appearances and distinct personalities that serve a fantasy world like Oz.  Marissa Bode demonstrates tremendous strength as the disabled character who probably traverses through the biggest change of the whole cast.  Ariana Grande is a terrific actor and a lovely singer.  As I noted about the prior film, her Glinda is not my favorite, though.  The three others I saw on stage performed with a bubblier delivery and did not rely so much on Grande’s hair flip.  Jonathan Bailey is a dashing and charming hero, carved out for the prince of fantasy.  Ethan Slater’s Bok suffers through unwinnable oppression, and thus his character is more tragic this time.  It’s crushing to see, but his performance is completely relatable.

I watched the first film as a refresher ahead of seeing For Good and it occurs to me how triumphant these films are.  This whole story could have been contained in a ninety-minute Disney blueprint.  Yet, Jon M Chu, along with Stephen Schwartz want to entertain the audience through the narrative. So, it will stop where we are reading the movie, allowing us ample time to witness the world around us and what these characters of fantasy endure.  It’s odd sometimes to see the street toughs of West Side Story break into song as they are trying to knife one another in the streets.  In Wicked, it is never strange to see a witch or a munchkin or a prince break out into harmony to express their happiness, anger, sadness or wickedness.  The music and vocalizing build the vivid textures of the sets into grander designs. 

I can be told what happens next in the further adventures of Elphaba and Glinda and just move to the next chapter until they live happily ever after.  It’s better if the characters take their time to share as many thoughts and emotions as they can through song, dance, visual effects and action.  That’s what sets musicals apart from other fares of drama and comedy.

The Wicked films, and more importantly the musical, will remain timeless as much as Star Wars, Star Trek and Harry Potter.  They will never be dated.  They will only capture the hearts, laughs, tears and harmony of further generations to come decked in their favorite shades of green and pink.

THE RUNNING MAN (2025)

By Marc S. Sanders

Everything you see in the remake of The Running Man belongs.  So why doesn’t any of it work?  I think director Edgar Wright needs to have his feet held to the fire.  He made this movie with his eyes closed and his ears muffed.

Like the Stephen King (or under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman) story and the original 1987 picture with Arnold Schwarzenegger, a violent game show called “The Running Man” occupies the airwaves in a dystopian future.  Modifications from the first film are done to separate this picture from that one.  In the last film, contestants were violent criminals on the run to win freedom from incarceration.  Here, anybody can try out to win the cash prize of a billion dollars.  I’m not sure which is more faithful to King’s novella.  

Ben Richards (a name which always gets me thinking of The Fantastic Four; Ben Grimm, Reed Richards) is played by Glen Powell with a handsome athletic build but not the muscular physique of Schwarzenegger.  Powell looks more like an Everyman who auditions for one of this future’s various twisted game shows, hoping to win cash prizes that will rescue his wife and sick baby girl from poverty.  He never intended to get thrust into the ultra-violent “Running Man” though.  The object is to outlast and survive for thirty days while sadistic headhunters attempt to find him and deliver a gruesome televised slaughter.  The producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), foresees a ratings bonanza with Richards as his most wanted runner.

Glen Powell needs to enhance his career with his sudden popularity.  Between this film, Twisters and Top Gun: Maverick he is playing pick-up sticks on resurrected franchises, and he ends up being completely unmemorable and uninviting.  Other than a square chin, there’s nothing special about this guy and I never once felt empathy for his role here.  He does not convey fear or anger or humor like a Bruce Willis, a Tom Cruise or even an Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He’s boring.  Edgar Wright’s script with Michael Bacall does not help the actor either as The Running Man is neither quirky or offbeat like a dystopian action picture or a standard Edgar Wright piece (Scott Pilgrim Vs The World) should promise.

The most exciting ingredient is Coleman Domingo, one of my favorite actors working today.  He is so magnetic in anything he does that I can practically guarantee whatever pizzazz he brings as the larger-than-life game show host, Bobby T (Yes!  That’s his name!), carries no impact.  This script gives him nothing to do other than wear a purple sports jacket while belting out “WELCOME TO THE RUNNING MAN!!!”  If he was simply given all of Richard Dawson’s dialogue from the first film, Domingo could have elevated this drippy picture into something engaging and fun.

Lee Pace (The Lord Of The Rings) is fully masked until the third act and has little dialogue as he’s the hero’s main hunter.  Why waste such a charismatic actor?  He’s dressed in black with a black mask.  What’s fun about that? Josh Brolin sits behind a desk as the puppet master producer.  He plays his part like Josh Brolin on a press tour stop on The Today Show.  He’s really not acting at all.

It’s an eye-opening surprise to see Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) make an early appearance as another game show host for a different show.  This should offer magnificent promise.  Brilliant casting for an over-the-top comic performer.  I was waiting for Hayes and Domingo to get into a sparring match of egos for attention in this television world.  You know what happens, though? Sean Hayes is never seen again following his appearance ten minutes after the film begins.  Another overlooked waste of talent.

William H Macy is a good character actor for this kind of film.  Too bad he’s also given little to do other than to tell the hero to go see the guy played by Michael Cera.  Why not cut out the middle man and let Ben Richards just deal with Macy’s character? The Running Man is far from the leaner film it could have been.

Some of the action scenes in this violent tale work, and some don’t.  When Ben Richards catches up with Cera’s character, a run/hide shoot out in a two-story house plays like a video game with bannisters that come apart and rapid machine gun fire.  It’s edited quite well.  Later though, there’s a battle that occurs in the cockpit of a jumbo jet.  Gravity is disabled while gunfire and fisticuffs are at play and everything shakes and bounces so much that it’s hard to tell who gets the gun and who is shooting who.  This looks like the filmmakers were pressed against a deadline and just didn’t clean up or tighten the scene into something coherent.  I just stopped trying to focus on the film and waited for the scene to end with another escape by the dashing Ben Richards.

This screenplay feels like it was made up on the fly.  Glen Campbell is awarded several scenes to speechify melodramatic gargle.  Is there a noble cause that we are to learn about from The Running Man? Just as the third act is about to start, he hitches a ride with a young girl who we have never seen before.  Nor has she been referenced anywhere thus far.  Yet, she’s got something to say with some kind of cause on her mind as well.  This nameless sidekick takes over the movie for the next twenty minutes and then parachutes into open sky never to be seen again.  What was the point of this detour? Moreover, what the hell was she ever talking about?

This Running Man had all the ingredients to work with a stellar collection of fine actors who were up for the task of wit and satire amid ridiculous violence and totalitarianism.  With Edgar Wright at the helm, the new Running Man could have been a harkening back to Paul Verhoven’s ultra-violent tales of gonzo media silliness found in his movies like Robocop, Starship Troopers and Total Recall.

Sadly, Glen Powell is uninteresting, and the more amazing talents of the supporting cast were handed lackluster and witless material.  

The Running Man marches at a speed of sluggishness.  Better to turn off the TV and read Carrie or Misery.

CHRISTY

By Marc S. Sanders

Boxing movies are nothing new.  The best ones depict the fighter surviving personal battles outside of the ring.  That was likely true with the fictional Rocky Balboa.  It might have also been what kept Jake LaMotta alive well beyond his demons.  It’s definitely a fair argument for Christy Martin, the first boxing champion to bring the sport into the mainstream for females.

Her story comes to the big screen with an astonishing Oscar caliber performance from Sydney Sweeney.  I saw Christy a week ago and I cannot stop thinking about it.  The material within this biography from writer/director David Michôd is entirely familiar.  Still, the character of Christy and what she endures is worthy of a movie.

Beginning in 1989, eighteen-year-old Christy Salters haphazardly begins her climb up the ranks with small time underground fights in her Virginia hometown.  She’s not educated and she’s not embarrassed about being in a relationship with her girlfriend.  Her bible loving mother Joyce (Merritt Weaver in an authentic, all too real and villainous role) says otherwise. She’d take her daughter to the local minister to draw the gay out of her if the girl wouldn’t rebel with a temper inflamed by F-bombs.

Christy is summoned for higher stakes fights in Texas.  She wins that one and then is connected with Jim Martin (Ben Foster) who witnesses one hard swing from the girl in a sparring match. He commits his entire life to being her coach.  Ask Jim and he’ll say he made Christy what she becomes, a near undefeated champion adorned in signature pink and on the cover of Sports Illustrated – a first for a female boxer.  The film reminds the audience that Jim’s perspective is hardly true.  This jerk nearly screws up Christy’s chances of getting a lucrative contract with Don King (Chad L Coleman) which included pre-fights ahead of Mike Tyson’s Vegas appearances in the ring.  If only Jim’s laziness and procrastination were his worst qualities, though.

Christy becomes an emotional challenge to watch as it progresses. David Michôd’s film burrows into the dark underbelly of athletic success. Once Jim and Christy are married, a limited lifestyle cages the young phenomenon with the husband/coach’s monstrous tendencies.  The torment that victimizes this woman is beyond compare as she must succumb to demonizing sex slavery for his twisted, intoxicating yearnings, as well as for anyone he collects money from who ready to engage in brawls with her, in dirty hotel rooms.  Working in her corner at the fights, Jim does not protect Christy against opponents that she is clearly no match for.

Christy is physically abused and mentally tortured by Jim, and maybe by other intimidating powers like Don King.  Chad L Coleman delivers a brilliant and familiar persona to King.  The boxer is also financially getting ripped off, despite opening a Florida gym in her name with Jim listed before her on the front door.  

It’s astonishing to see how much peace Christy can find in a boxing ring alone against an opponent.  At home, she can only acquiesce to what’s demanded or forced upon her.  There’s no fight at home.  Only surrender.

I had recently seen Sydney Sweeney host Saturday Night Live.  It was one of many terrible episodes in the show’s history because the writers only catered to Sweeney’s youthful glamour and looks.  There was a skit taking place in a Hooter’s restaurant where her character was collecting the biggest tips based upon how she filled out the signature uniform.  It was lousy, unaware and insensitive writing.  Actors like Anne Hathaway or Natalie Portman were never treated this way on the program. None of the skits gave Sweeney something unique and worthy of what she’s capable of.

In Christy, with a white trash twang, and a puffed up brunette curly hair style (later it becomes blond corn rows), Sydney Sweeney is doing what Meryl Streep would have committed to in a physically taxing role like this.  Sweeney demonstrates a focused young girl going after what she wants even if it means she has to make up for her husband’s shortcomings as a negotiator.  He’ll beat the shit out of her, but Christy Martin matures as Michôd’s film progresses with intense training moments and riveting fight scenes that have Sweeney in action.  

Ben Foster is that committed actor who never looks the same in two different roles.  I didn’t even recognize the former Disney kid until I saw his name in the end credits.  Outdated polyester clothing and track suits from the 1990s do not hide that paunch, ugly belly.  Christy’s winning purses of prize money cannot conceal his bleach blond combover or his trashy southern accent.  Yet, he is nothing but noticeable when he is on screen.  Foster is the worst kind of cad with a terrifying grip on his wife and her career.  A terrible eyesore within the presence of the film.  Jim Martin is none too bright, but he knows how to hold a wrenching grasp and he’s entirely frightening.

Merritt Weaver is the quiet antagonist.  Unlike Foster’s character, the mind games that Joyce plays on her daughter are not so intentional as they are natural.  This mother refuses to see beyond the expected dominance of a man to uphold a catholic home, devoid of sinful lesbian practices.  It’s awful when a mother will side with a daughter’s abusive husband. Weaver’s portrayal of Christy’s bible committed mother demands to be hated.  

Ahead of seeing this film, I knew nothing about Christy Martin.  So, when a shocking moment occurs in the third act, my jaw dropped at the direction of the scene.  An action occurs and Michôd’s camera seems frozen in position as a character paces in and out of the room.  Then the character returns and commits a much uglier act.  Then the back-and-forth pace continues with a harrowing stare down before exiting to take a shower.  I know Christy is just a movie.  Yet, I cannot recall the last time I felt so helpless as a witness to what I was observing. I wanted step into the screen and lend aid. I only hope that when the film comes out in digital format, some insight is provided into how Sydney Sweeney and Ben Foster circumvented around their clashes of characters.  All of it feels too real.

Sydney Sweeney is also convincing as the battering boxer.  Like most films that cover sports, there are typical training and fighting montages here.  Sweeney is not afraid to behave ugly for the showmanship needed to be in an elite ring.  There’s one expression she delivers in a blink/miss wide shot lens after she knocks out an opponent.  It feels so organic as a bloodied Sydney Sweeney outstretched with her gloved fists, prances around the ring, gives a shoulder shrug and sticks her tongue out.  This actress knew exactly how to play this character, soaked in sweat with blood streaking out of her mouth and nose absent of any kind of humility that would show weakness in a champion fighter.

I am afraid though.  Christy is currently not the box office titan it deserves to be and come awards time, I’m certain Sweeney, Foster, Coleman and Weaver will be wrongfully overlooked.  Sydney Sweeney, a producer on the film, was asked what her reaction is to the sluggish financial returns.  Best she could, she replied by saying not all films are made for the money.  Some need to be made for the art.  I’ll go a step further and declare that Christy serves as an advocate for awareness of domestic violence and prevention.  Amazingly though, this film executes astounding triumphs for those underdogs who have next to nothing.

Christy is one of the best films of the year.  

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER

By Marc S. Sanders

Because Clint Eastwood’s career of acting roles is thematically the strong, silent type, it’s easy to appreciate that in one film he may be The Man With No Name, while in another picture he’s simply The Stranger.  In the second film he directed, High Plains Drifter, he’s an intimidating force riding on horseback into the lakeside town of Lago.  

He may enter the saloon for a beer and a bottle and then cross the street to the barber for a shave and a bath, but you likely do not want to ever involve yourself with him.  He is also horrifically unkind to one of the few women in these parts.  Let’s just say it ain’t no roll in the hay.  This Stranger is a scary dude in a black hat.

The townsmen recognize a convenience in this man’s arrival though.  He’s demonstrated what he is capable of and therefore he appears to be the one qualified to kill three outlaws who were just released from prison with vengeance on their minds as they make a return to Lago.

There’s a hint of supernatural play in High Plains Drifter.  The Stranger recalls a harsh night when the local Marshall had been whipped to death by the townsfolk.  Could the Marshall be the Stranger?  Perhaps.  The victimized Marshall is portrayed by Eastwood’s long time stunt double and occasional director Buddy Van Horn (Pink Cadillac, The Dead Pool).  While that bloody slaughter occurred, the townsfolk simply watched with no offer to help.  For a while, High Plains Drifter was rumored to have been inspired by a real-life rape from the mid-1960s which ultimately led to the need for calling 911 in the event of an emergency.  Art imitates life even in the Old West.

The Stranger agrees to help the town prepare for the outlaws’ violent return, but like a fantasy character he makes special requests of his own including reassigning the sheriff’s badge to the town dwarf, plus taking whatever merchandise he wants from the mercantile and occupying the two best rooms in the hotel.  Also, he gives instructions to load up on a large supply of red paint.  Is the town of Lago getting what they bargained for or are they dwindling into a worse fate? Could be a deal with the devil or as Jewish mysticism might imply, the town of Lago might be inheriting a gollum.

Clint Eastwood salutes his prior directors that prepped him to become an esteemed filmmaker.  Don Siegel’s (Dirty Harry) and Sergio Leone’s (The Dollars spaghetti westerns) names are engraved on tombstones within the nearby cemetery built for the set.  Eastwood adopts some of their famed techniques while not setting himself apart from what those influencers accomplished.  He was still finding his footing behind the camera. High Plains Drifter is just a tale of revenge with recognizable set ups found within typical Hollywood westerns.  

Visually, the film starts out mysteriously with The Stranger’s arrival out of a sun soaked desert boil.  The photography looks deliberately grainy before the modern twenty-first century film restoration appears. Not a word of dialogue is uttered until after the picture has run for over seven minutes.  

Lago becomes a town with a new kind of identity later in the film as mandated by the script.  This is where Eastwood finds opportunity to do things with his western that his earlier pictures had not offered yet.  A bloody, hellish war is expected.

High Plains Drifter traverses in different directions while primarily staying in this one small town and you may wonder what this storyline has to do with that storyline.  Well, the commonality of its various parts is The Stranger’s arrival.  

You’ll may question who this unnamed man truly was by the time film ends.  Maybe it was not a man at all.  There are moments included by Eastwood’s direction to question what precisely occurred.  

Is High Plains Drifter a western or is it a ghost story? Like me, perhaps you’ll uncover moments that support either argument.

THE MUMMY (2017)

By Marc S. Sanders

The Universal logo comes up with that familiar music across the blue globe. Then it goes in reverse and turns black and gold to introduce a new franchise known as the Dark Universe.  This is the first installment.  The problem is of all the famed monsters in the studio’s library, they probably shouldn’t have started with The Mummy.  Brendan Fraser’s attachment to this mythical Egyptian horror is still widely accepted, and Tom Cruise is no Brendan Fraser.

This reinvention begins much like the 1999 film by telling of a Pharoh’s daughter who believed she was the sole heir to the kingdom.  Yet, betrayal happens and the beautiful princess is mummified into eternity, buried deep under the desert and laid with vengeance on her mind.  Elsewhere, another tomb is discovered under the streets of London. Could there be a connection? A dagger with a red stone might have the answers.

Jump to present day and Tom Cruise is back with another character who can run very fast.  He is Nick Morton and with his partner he clumsily runs and jumps over rooftops in the Egyptian desert while closely evading military air strikes from above.  Why the military is dropping bombs is apparently irrelevant.  Tom Cruise just needs something to run away from.

A massive crater opens up and the pair along an expert archeologist named Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) come upon a tomb.   Nick mistakenly frees the Egyptian princess buried within and they transport her, still contained in her coffin, back to London aboard a cargo plane.  Only now Nick is seeing visions of what once was and becoming familiarized with an ancient language with which he had no prior knowledge.  Nick has been chosen.

When you place Tom Cruise on board a military cargo plane, what do you think happens? It doesn’t have to be called Mission: Impossible to be a seemingly impossible mission. The crashing airplane sequence is impressive, not the best, but I’ve seen this stuff already. I’ve seen this stuff already with Tom Cruise. I do not need to see it again. 

The Mummy cannot decide what it wants to be.  It has some good ideas but just when I think I’m watching another Brendan Fraser swashbuckler with a monster, Tom Cruise must pound it over my head that this is a stunt filled trajectory.  

Russell Crowe is a mysterious character offering voiceover narration during a prologue. He later reveals his identity to Nick.  I will not spoil who he turns out to be.  Let’s just say it is likely you heard of this guy.  It’s hard to believe that Nick has not, and Mr. Cruise does not play dumb very well. This man has an interesting laboratory that contains relics and possessions that belonged to other well-known cinematic monsters.  Frankly, this picture should have exclusively belonged to Crowe’s character who comes off very dynamic and fresh while setting up a whole – forgive the pun – universe for a long line of films to come.  

Alas, Tom Cruise sets the stage.  He’s okay in the role, but between his temptation to be Ethan Hunt while adopting a Robert Downey Jr sarcasm and the imperfect Brendan Fraser/Indiana Jones hero, it all gets muddied. I just didn’t like this guy.  Cruise delivers what each chapter of the script demands of him and none of it is consistent. Near the end of the film during the final battle, Cruise offers up a one liner that comes nowhere near as close to what Downey, Fraser or even Arnold Schwarzenegger could have accomplished.

The only clarity I find in the visual effects is that they look rushed for final print towards a summer blockbuster release.  The Mummy Princess (Sofia Boutella) unleashes her monster minions to pursue Nick and Jenny while they are escaping in a clumsy looking ambulance.  As the creatures attack the top and both sides of the vehicle they are shaken off, thrown into trees, or run over.  They all look like monster vomit accompanied by loud hissing to startle your hearing.  

This iteration of The Mummy is partly assembled by the guys who made the Transformers movies where the robots look like metallic throw up mush.  Guys like Robert Orci and Alexander Kurtzman, the director, are poor artisans at the sci-fi/adventure/horror genre.  They know how to helm movies like this about as well as I do.  I don’t know shit, but I do know the visuals here are pure junk while being an enormous step back from the Fraser films of twenty-five years ago.  

The Mummy ends like the Marvel movies with the hanging threads of what we should expect.  I’m game!  Only, don’t do it like this.  Anything but this, please.  

Sadly, as quick as the Dark Universe got started it all got canceled.  This film was poorly received and did not generate the box office bonanza the studio was counting on.  I recall a fascinating publicity photo that assembled Cruise, Crowe, Boutella, along with Javier Bardem, and Johnny Depp. All were publicized to occupy upcoming installments of this new franchise.  The potential was so strong to see the likes of The Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Wolfman, Dracula and Jeckyl/Hyde sharing the screen together.  This could have been the antithesis to The Avengers and Justice League with gags of gore to delight audiences.

I swear when I saw that Dark Universe logo at the beginning, I was ready to love this movie.  I really was.  Unfortunately, The Mummy works hard to be a Tom Cruise actioner with his preserved thirty something looks adhered to an assortment of unfinished and indecipherable special effects.  Its script from David Koepp (Jurassic Park) is exhaustingly incoherent.  

The Mummy was a long-term investment by a million-dollar corporation.  It’s too bad the wealth went into junk bonds though. I urge Universal to try again. There is something to be made here, and it cannot get worse than this.

GET OUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Consider this for a second.  You’re an African American thirty year old who has recently begun a promising relationship with an affectionate, loving Caucasian woman.  As she attempts to ease your apprehension about meeting her parents for the first time she tells you her dad would have voted for Obama if he could have run for a third term.  When you arrive at their upstate home, one of the first things dad tells you is that if he could, he would have voted for Obama for a third time.  Exactly why is that so important to say?  From her?  And later from him?  Why is it necessary for an audience to hear the statement twice within a span of less than fifteen minutes? While it should sound assuring, it feels anything but trusting.  That’s how smart Jordan Peele’s debut horror/thriller is.  He has a way of delivering two different perspectives with one simple statement.

In Get Out, Daniel Kaluuya is Chris.  His girlfriend is Rose played by Allison Williams.  These actors are a perfect pair on screen but that’s about all I want to share with you considering their relationship.  

Chris is meeting Allison’s family at their home for their weekend.  It’s a beautiful, quaint estate off the beaten path from any intrusive neighbors.  Burrowed within the woods, this is a place to escape the stresses of city life.  Just like with any horror film though, the characters do not know they are operating inside a horror film.  The audience always does, and the best filmmakers find those frequent moments to get their viewers to squirm in their seat, tuck their knees under their chin, clench the butt cheeks maybe and say, “Don’t do that!,” “Don’t go in there,!” or maybe they’ll urge you to “GET OUT!!!!”

Nevertheless, the storyteller finds it important to bring up Barack Obama on more than one occasion???? 

Before they even get out of the car, the landscaper, a black gentleman, seems curious to Chris.  Friendly handshakes and welcoming hugs on the porch segue into the furnished home and there’s the maid, a black woman, who is as intriguing as the first black person to be seen.  Wouldn’t you know it but over lunch, you learn that tomorrow there’s the annual party gathering of friends.  Oh my gosh, was that this weekend?  

Jordan Peele doesn’t turn on the creepy music you may expect.  He relies on his visuals and while you are being as observant as Chris, you just might be alarmed and less sensible than he is.  That credit goes to Kaluuya, giving a reserved, contained performance.  This guy does not look like a hero in the least because he has instincts but seems to never look for a fight or a debate or the need to set an example.  An unexpected stop on the drive over demonstrates where Chris stands in a topsy turvy world of political divides in the twenty first century.  He just wants to make life easy.  So, he also will not make waves when that groundskeeper runs directly at him in the middle of the night.  This is just too freaky, but Chris tells us to just get through the weekend.

Rose’s brother seems like a weirdo from a Judd Apatow comedy, but he’s not being a clown.  Dad (Bradley Whitford) is a successful surgeon always ready with a relaxing tone and an open hug.  Mom (Catherine Keener) has done well as a psychiatrist performing hypnosis on her patients.  Yet, a late-night encounter with her leaves Chris feeling uneasy. Visually, it’s disturbing when he reflects on what he thinks he experienced with her.  However, he tries to give the family the benefit of the doubt especially when he shares his concerns with Rose.  Allison Williams is quite good with being convincingly dismissive.  I trust her, and I like her too. 

Then there’s the party the next day.  All the guests, primarily white, arrive exactly at the same time in a convoy of tinted black sedans and SUVs.  Chris doesn’t hide himself despite feeling awkward, and he doesn’t initiate the odd conversations with these middle age WASPs, but he politely keeps engaged with them.  Ironically, the strangest conversation he experiences is when he approaches a fellow black guest who is oddly dressed inconsistently compared to everyone else while his demeanor looks like he’s in a trance.

For comedic effect, Jordan Peele incorporates a best friend for Chris to confide in with opportune cell phone calls.  Lil Rey Howery is Rod and I can say, unequivocally, he is the best endorsement for the TSA. I do not recall seeing Howery in other films of late, but this actor deserves a long career for making a big splash in Peele’s busy picture.  Get Out would never be as inventive if Howery’s role is edited out.  Rod is the only other guy who, from a distance, can tell something is not right, here.

Get Out closes on an airtight ending.  Explanations for everything that is questionable is provided.  Yet, on both occasions that I’ve watched the movie, I think about it long after it’s over.  It takes some of the best elements you might uncover from The Twilight Zone, plus what you might have seen in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and builds new ideas off of those circumstances.  

It is especially fun to read the IMDb trivia about the film to uncover a wealth of appropriate symbolism that does not jump directly at you.   You’ll appreciate how clever Jordan Peele is as a writer.  Froot Loops without milk in a bowl says much about a character.  Another character is engorged with the antler of a taxidermic deer head.  One character scrapes cotton stuffing out of an armchair.  Jordan Peele approaches his scary fiction with an educated eye.  

This movie is inventive.  Its horror does not seem redundant and thankfully the monsters are not vampires and zombies all over again.  There are new tactics at play.  There are fresh approaches to victimize the heroes, and there are creative ways to surprise the audience.  

Get Out is amazing the first time you watch the film.  On a second viewing, Jordan Peele’s story works like a class experiment in social standards while it still has fun by keeping you in triggering suspense.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES

By Marc S. Sanders

Fantasy of the supernatural or science fiction work best when the writer can teach the reader or the viewer how its foreign worlds work and how the characters who occupy the environments function and live.  Anne Rice had her own interpretation about how creatures of the afterlife live by night.  Her vampires possessed theatricalities.  Some were charming and sophisticated, and relished how they lived immortally while satisfying a hunger for the blood of living humans.  Some struggled with the discomfort that comes from being a remorseful bloodsucker.  The first of Anne Rice’s series of vampire novels, Interview With The Vampire, runs a very wide gamut of perceptions.  By the end of the film adaptation, directed by Neil Jordan, I’ve earned quite an education.  (Frankly, Rice’s novel was tediously slow moving and bored me to tears.)

In present day San Francisco, a young man (Christian Slater) sets up his tape deck to record a conversation with a soft spoken pale faced man in a dark suit with a neat ponytail in place.  This mysterious person is Louis, played by Brad Pitt.  His story begins two hundred years earlier, in New Orleans, back to the day when he was incepted into an immortal life as a vampire. His agent of delivery is the devil-may- care and mischievous Lestat, one of Tom Cruise’s most surprising and unusual portrayals.  He gives a brilliant performance that’s as far a cry from his lawyer roles or his Maverick and Ethan Hunt heroes as possible.  

Lestat is eager to guide Louis into the benefits of vampire life.  Louis, having already been depressed following the loss of his wife and daughter during childbirth, cannot grow comfortable with Lestat’s insatiable appetite to feast on aristocratic figures or plantation slave servants.  This is not a match made in heaven and their chemistry as a couple is tested. Louis would rather miserably feast on chickens and rats, while Lestat grows frustrated by unsuccessfully swaying his partner to taste the sweet nectar of blood dripping from the wrist of a lovely young lass.  Lestat turns towards a grander extreme to maintain his embrace of the morose Louis.

Through deception, the men welcome an eleven-year-old “daughter” into their underworld.  Her name is Claudia, played Kirsten Dunst in her introductory role.  I still believe this is her best performance, worthy of an Oscar.  The life of a vampire is delightful to the child, the same as Lestat perceives it.  However, as the decades move on, with changes in fashions and industry quickly developing, so does Claudia’s understanding.  Her body never matures, destined to always remain within the shell of a preteen child, and thus she commiserates with Louis.

It appears like I’ve summarized Anne Rice’s entire story, but I have not even come close.  Interview With The Vampire is to gothic horror the same way The Godfather is to mafia gangster life.  Both communities victimize people of an innocent world, but their members are expected to follow codes of decorum and respect.  The conflict lies in living as a bloodsucking vampire or a criminal gangster.  When a peer interferes or does not cooperate, then the individuals of these respected worlds become violent unto each other.    The viewer/reader observe how their patterns of behavior all play out and how one action or policy generates one response after another.  These films are high ranked authorities on their subject matters.

Louis explains to his interviewer how Bram Stoker’s celebration of vampires is dreamed up escapist fiction, though coffins and the avoidance of sunlight are absolute necessities to carry on.  Just like any person, vampires want to live happily, but life gets in the way and that can be frustrating on any number of different levels.  

Neil Jordan’s film is a marvelous exploration into the mindset of being a vampire.  Tom Cruise perfectly exudes Lestat as a vampire ready to joyously live with sin while he savors and lives a life of eroticism and material wealth.  A child like Claudia sees the attraction of being spoiled and spoiling herself, and she cannot get enough consumption of blood. Eventually though, her mentality outgrows what becomes redundantly mundane.  Louis is relatable like many people.  He is unhappy living the life he was born into.  Lestat grows aggravated with his family’s resistance to partake of what he relishes.  There is an extensive range of emotions on display with Interview With A Vampire. To be a vampire can be a privilege or a curse. It all depends on who you interview.

The look of this film is astonishing.  I know it was shot within New Orleans, Paris and San Francisco locations.  However, I can easily recognize some sound stage locales, and I have no complaints.  The art designs from Dante Ferretti are thoughtfully crafted with lantern lit, rain-soaked cobblestone streets of the seventeenth century to mucky, moonlit swamps.  Horse drawn carriages transporting abundances of coffins serve a purpose of humor and narrative as character misdeeds are routinely committed by Louis, Claudia and especially the trickster Lestat.  The furnishings of the aristocracy are embracing too.  It’s a remarkably convincing step back in time.  

The periodic costume wear by Sandy Powell completes the settings with colorful, silk garments, white ruffled shirt sleeves and buckled shoes for both the men and women as well as for Kirsten Dunst and some cherub cheeked children who come into play.  Everything looks so rich. The whole picture feels like stepping into one of those late-night ghost walking tours I’ve taken in small southern towns like Savannah and St Augustine.  Every scene, even when the film jumps to late twentieth century, is immersive.  

Anne Rice’s screenplay adaptation tells so much within two hours.  She allows time for the characters to sail to Europe seeking out others like them.  The second half of the film teaches us more about what it means to uphold oneself as a vampire.  

Neil Jordan sometimes delivers his film like a how-to documentary because you are consistently learning new details, not so much about plot but about a people you are not as familiar with. Often, the film segues into theatrical play as you might expect from Phantom Of The Opera.  It’s no wonder since eventually Anne Rice puts us in touch with the cabal known as Theatres des Vampires. Stephen Rea and Antonio Banderas get to take center stage within a literal theater where the facade of behaving like a vampire can be executed beyond the suspicions of a – ahem- live audience.  

Rice and Jordan get playful while also performing with horrific familiarity.  The bites on the neck are known to many of us for drinking blood.  Did you also realize that a vampire can drink from a crystal wine glass? There’s an elegance to how the actors’ characters consume the blood of humans.  Cruise and Pitt begin by going in for a passionate kiss, either on the neck or the weightless wrist of a victim.  Lestat is more aggressive. Louis caresses his meals on the rare occasion he dines. Claudia gives a puppy love bite. Cruise especially finds new and titillating ways to dine with each new feast.  Both actors are deliciously homoerotic, but on different parental planes with their child. Their love/hate relationship operates like Shakespearean stage work. That’s why I really take to Neil Jordan and Dante Ferretti’s choice of soundstages.  

I’ve become so bored with zombies and vampires.  How many iterations must be churned out of the same kind of monster.  This year’s horror hit, Sinners, was superb until it stopped being eye opening with surprise.  It eventually became the same old thing and offered nothing new to show me in its final blood-shedding act.  

Interview With The Vampire is one of the best vampire films though.  The film never ceases to speak directly to its audience.  The settings describe how life is lived.  The characters grapple with both internal and external struggles.  

It’s one shortcoming is that Anne Rice, Neil Jordan and cast/crew did not follow up with the author’s subsequent tales.  The subtitle, The Vampire Chronicles, seemed to promise an extension of this universe. I know of other Anne Rice film adaptations that chose not to continue on from what was done here, and the execution was terribly poor and disappointing.  There’s a biographical intelligence to Neil Jordan’s film that many films of all genres lack.

Anne Rice’s first film adaptation set the standard on vampire culture, and I have trouble thinking of anything since its release that closely matches it.  

Interview With The Vampire is the only one with a blood curdling bite.