Category: Marc’s Reviews

DOCTOR SLEEP

By Marc S. Sanders

I never yearned for a sequel to The Shining.  Yet, color me surprised at how well I took to Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s return to psychic Danny Torrance and the haunting baggage he carries as a middle-aged adult in Doctor Sleep.  This is a time jump sequel that is nearly forty years in the future.

The film version of this story had a tricky challenge.  King notoriously despised Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic adaptation of The Shining. Several important details were not consistent between his book and the movie.  So, what was Flanagan to do?  Well, he got his blessing from the author to move ahead as a sequel to Kubrick’s interpretation because he also ensured that he would not veer too far away from how the novel was edited.  The director reasoned with King that more people are familiar with Kubrick’s product than what’s in King’s pages. Mike Flanagan found the right balance to please not only Stephen King, but also the respective fans of the novels and Kubrick’s unforgettable film.

Danny is played by Ewan McGregor.  He’s often reflecting on his childhood following his survival from his stay at the haunted Overlook Hotel in the snowy mountains of Colorado, where his delirious and murderous father terrorized him and his mother Wendy with an axe.  Now Danny is making efforts to recover from alcoholism as he takes a job as a hospice orderly in a small New Hampshire town.  It keeps him isolated while the ugly hauntings that he shines on stay contained in his mental lockboxes.  He also uses his gift to allow patients to peacefully carry over to the other side.   Danny becomes known as Doctor Sleep.

Elsewhere in the country there is a traveling cabal of people who devour the energies off of young children with similar shining abilities like Danny.  This small cult is known as The True Knot and their leader is the charming Rosie The Hat (Rebecca Ferguson).  The presence of one very special child is Abra (Kyliegh Curran).  Flanagan gets very creative in showing how Rosie, Abra and Danny locate and communicate with one another from faraway points.  Rosie’s technique is reminiscent of an amusing sequence in The Big Lebowski, though as you might expect the mood is altogether different in Doctor Sleep.  

Doctor Sleep is a longer picture than it needed to be.  The exposition goes on for quite a while where three separate stories are proceeding, and it becomes cumbersome to see how the dots are connected.  Yet, the movie eventually finds its way as things become more simplified.  Flanagan works some action scenes and neat visuals into the picture, but he does not neglect Stephen King’s penchant for nauseating and grotesque horror either.  Normally, I feign at seeing victimized children in deadly peril for the sake of escapist entertainment.  Here, it is repulsive on more than one occasion, but the moments serve the story and enhance the motives of the villains.  

The payoff of the film is the third act where this adaptation relies on much of Kubrick’s treatment of The Shining.  As the book was entirely different with its ending, Flanagan had to take a chance with some creative liberties.  Amazingly, his efforts score very well.  I’m not the biggest fan of Stanley Kubrick’s film (read my review on this site), but I had to cheer as more developments gradually unfolded.  There’s much to explore through the eyes of Ewan McGregor as Danny.

Mike Flanagan’s craftsmanship with a cast of supporting actors, including Henry Thomas (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) assuming Jack Nicholson’s role, are quite uncanny and lend to the argument to not depend on AI or “de-aging” visuals to recapture what once was.  Carl Lumbly effectively takes over for Scatman Caruthers and Alexandra Essoe does a very good pick up from Shelley Duvall’s performance as Wendy – a little flighty, melancholy and zany. The little ticks and inflections in these newly cast actors are mimicked quite well without going over the top.

Set pieces etched into anyone’s subconscious who has seen The Shining are impressively recreated by Flanagan’s team, from stained walls, big curtains and chandeliers to that very familiar orange, brown/black sectional pattern on the carpet of The Overlook.  At one point in film, Danny goes for a job interview and the office he sits in is an exact recreation of when his father Jack met with the managers of the hotel at the beginning of Kubrick’s film.  This kind of attempt at consistency has to be saluted.  It’s really amazing.  Mike Flanagan shows his painstaking efforts at recapturing Kubrick’s designs. I do not look at these efforts by Flanagan as commemorations so much as I see an omnipotence that observes Danny like it did to his father Jack before him. Danny might have survived, but the demons of his past and the sins of his father remain. He can never escape where he came from even if he relocates to New Hampshire, or wherever he goes.

Doctor Sleep offers the disturbing imagery you’d expect from Stephen King.  I’ve never been the author’s biggest fan.  Still, I really appreciate the creativity he lent to his sequel nearly a half century later.  It makes sense to have waited this long for the writer to pick up where he left off with some of his most well-known characters and locations.  

This dark fantasy works for its collection of heroes and their villains.

NOTE: I viewed the Blu Ray Director’s Cut which Miguel informed me is the better way to watch the film. I agree. There are more nods to Stanley Kubrick’s original film, and the outline of the picture performs in chapter sections like you might expect in Stephen King’s novel. Mike Flanagan never lost sight of either storyteller’s accomplishments. Doctor Sleep is an undervalued achievement in film. A very worthy sequel.

A TIME FOR SUNSET

By Marc S. Sanders

Tom Calloway’s A Time For Sunset is a well-crafted film with shadowy, haunting cinematography and some decent edits.  Unfortunately, it travels towards its conclusion on a repetitive Groundhog Day trajectory.  Regrettably, the deliberate slow burn does not work.

A cell phone rings.  It’s answered.  A few lines are exchanged and then there is the hang up.  Five seconds later, the phone rings again and the same routine occurs, between the same two people. This pattern occupies the ninety-minute running time of this film. Sometimes the same questions are asked. The conversations seem similar to what I’ve already encountered, and I asked myself if we’ve covered this already. Out of nowhere someone gets shot right between the eyes, but I am so numb to this lethargic routine that I can’t even become alert to see what could happen next.  After all, the phone is going to ring again for a couple of lines to be said before the next hang up, followed by another call.

Don Worley is John, a seasoned assassin, who checks into a downtown hotel room with a set of golf clubs.  He calls his wife and daughter to say hello while he begins to assemble his sniper rifle.  Just after he disconnects with them, “No Caller ID” (Nicholaus Weindel) rings and John realizes that while he awaits his assigned target to appear on the street below, John has also become a target.  Each time this caller phones, he seems to share more information about John’s current circumstance thereby putting him in danger along with his wife and daughter.  Now it’s one assassin against another, but John is clearly at a disadvantage because he is unable to pinpoint from where this caller is watching him.

With Thomas L Callaway directing, A Time For Sunset monopolizes its camera work on actor Don Worley who is up for the one-man challenge.  Intermittently, other figures on the hotel floor disrupt the phone conversation to lend to John’s contained paranoia such as a bellhop, a couple of rowdy kids, a manager and an angry mother.  One person arrives to up the stakes with a cleverly rigged bomb and my mind immediately went to the third act of Jan DeBont’s Speed.  These all feel like brief episodes though with not enough oomph to break the monotony.

The pace of the film moves very slowly because it focuses too often on a guy talking into his cell phone or the accompanying earpiece. So, the thrill of this thriller is mostly absent.  Don Worley might be portraying this expert assassin with a measure of calm and cool sensibility during a high-pressure circumstance.  However, his tone hardly changes as the stakes are getting higher.  I never saw the desperation unfold, even as the film was wrapping up.  John hardly breaks a sweat.  Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth was another picture that came to mind.  Colin Farrell’s everyday man seemed to respond to the fear that is sorely lacking in Callaway’s film.

I liked the idea of this bottled up storyline.  It has the potential to be compelling. A lot can be generated when someone must work against an unknown entity within a small setting.  The original Saw, for example.  Yet, even with a ticking time bomb front and center, plus the intrusion of a red pointer beam from a sniper scope, the direction does not build any suspense here. 

Despite what the introductory scene appears to spell out for John’s fate, I really didn’t care what would become of the poor fellow.

THE EXORCIST (1973)

By Marc S. Sanders

Perhaps it is my Jewish upbringing or the fact that I’m not a spiritual person anymore, but what many consider to be the scariest movie of all time really does not alarm me that much.  William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is a superb demonstration in horror though.  Disturbing? Yes.  Unsettling? That’s an understatement.  Scary? A little bit. 

It’s not so much the threat of a random demon or the possibility of Satan on earth that chills me.  It’s this poor, sweet girl who has been unfairly taken advantage of that makes me shudder. 

William Peter Blatty adapted his best-selling novel into his Oscar winning screenplay and it succeeds so well because amidst all of the terror, there’s an education to be had.  Do any of us truly know or have witnessed someone who has been demonically possessed by an entity of pure evil?  I’ll be the first to come clean and say no.  Therefore, I’m intrigued as Friedkin’s film proceeds to observe how the decision to exorcise a demon from the shell of a pre-teen girl arrives.  Nevertheless, to me it is all fantasy.  I might just hold more faith in the Jedi practice of the Force than I do in the ideas of holy water, devilish idols or even what can befall you by flippantly using the name of Christ in vain.

Famous film star Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) is on location in Georgetown shooting her latest picture.  She resides in a furnished home with her twelve-year-old daughter Regan (Linda Blair), along with an assistant and a butler servant.  Regan is a fun-loving kid and adored by her mom.  Strange behaviors begin happening and all too quickly, the daughter is beyond control with patterns of activity that are anything but recognizable.  I can’t even describe most of the imagery.  I could never do it justice.

Doctors are quick to attribute Regan’s afflictions to a lesion resting on the cerebellum of her brain.  Yet, extreme procedures and x-rays show no medical disruption or disturbances.  I recall Friedkin’s director cut from 2000 inserted the questionable practice of dosing the girl with Prozac.  Before the supernatural is ever considered, the merits of science and medicine must be explored.  

Nevertheless, it is unbelievably bold how this personification puppeteers young Regan with vile actions of vomiting, uttering the ugliest vocabulary and committing terrible bodily harm and atrocities with a crucifix.  Blatty could have drawn the line with the slaps and punches Regan delivers to the doctors and her own mother.  The point would have been clear.  Yet only something that has to be tangibly real with no question of a joke or side humor, has to go this far.  It’s often sickening and demoralizing to the worst degree, but reality never compromises.  The drivers of this fiction wish to move this as far away from what’s not valid. It’s evident how convincing all the footage is within the film.

Following the mysterious death of Chris’ film director, along with an unheard-of recommendation from a physician, the idea of committing an exorcism to release whatever’s possessing the girl is suggested.  The problem is there is no expert on the subject of exorcism.  It seems absurd, and the Catholic Church is never quick to endorse the procession.  

During the first hour of the picture, a second story covers the personal conflict of Father Karras (Jason Miller).  One of his first scenes shows him arriving home to his ailing mother and removing his collar.  It’s a visual sign that the minister is questioning his own faith as he undoes his garb.  Karras may be a priest, but he also specializes in the study of psychology for his parishioners.  As he encounters Regan in her bedroom, he’s gradually assured that he is speaking with the demon who knows too much about himself.

A third story, which actually opens Friedkin’s film, occurs in Iraq where Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) is excavating through an archeological dig.  He doesn’t have much to say but his stoic expression tells us that his discovery of a medallion buried in the rubble, along with particular statue, spell dread.  It’s no accident that Friedkin places this scene often against the backdrop of a sun sparked, blood red sky.  

Eventually, all three stories intersect within the coven of Regan’s upstairs bedroom, where this demon taunts, cackles, teases and defies the power of the Bible and the Catholic faith.  This third act is impossible to take your eyes off.  Every second of imagery builds upon the power of the supernatural from moving furniture that charges forward like monsters on the attack, to ceilings and doors that split open.  The bed rumbles.  Demonic imagery appears out of the cold darkness.  It’s such a well-crafted sequence of events that is completely atmospheric.  

On what I believe is only my second viewing of the film, there are few things I noticed.  Chris is not a religious character.  So, when she evokes frustration, first at her ex-husband over the phone, and then at doctors and priests who lack explanations, she’s apt to shout “For Christ’s sake,” or “Jesus Christ.”  Variations of the word fuck is also adjacent to this dialogue.  Chris’ language could be a close second to the abhorrent verbiage coming from her monstrous daughter.  Blatty and Friedkin seem to imply how the son of God and the potential of Satan are so easily taken for granted.  Chris may be corrupted, but it is the innocent, young Regan who is trifled with.  There is nary a thing more disturbing in film than watching a child in peril.

Friedkin’s direction with Father Karras is consistently interesting as well.  Often, he positions his camera on a ground floor or at least pointed up to a level above to witness Karras’ ascents.  His faith is clearly shaken.  So, all he can do is rise and rise again, closer to a heaven that may still be welcoming.  Karras climbs flights of stairs or walks up sidewalk hills, to approach a vile intruder seeking to disrupt the purity of angelic youth.  

Only after I watched the film did I read that Linda Blair’s unforgettable performance was not the only contributing factor to Regan’s demonic possession.  Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge who originally was not credited, supplied the scratchy, tormented and taunting voice of the demon.  It’s an unbelievable embodiment of a powerful villain.  Linda Blair was Oscar nominated for this role, but because she did not entirely own the performance, she likely lost to another child actor, Tatum O’Neil (Paper Moon).  The craft of Blair’s makeup all the way to her changes in eyes is a gut punch to the psyche.  Regardless, this is one of the most uncompromising and effective child performances I’ve ever seen in a film.

Max von Sydow donned aging makeup on his youthful forty-four-year-old complexion, and he looks straight out of another famous role from later in his career (Minority Report).  Richard Pryor and Saturday Night Live did a hilarious spoof on The Exorcist and for this nonbeliever I related to Pryor’s antics.  Yet, Max von Sydow takes what could have looked like utter silliness and convinces me that the ritual of exorcism is incredibly trying and exhaustively repetitive accompanied with the robes he dons to the holy scripture he reads from.  Merrin specifically instructs Karras not to directly respond to the demon.  Don’t even talk to it.  Merrin sticks to that practice.  Karras, the younger and less experienced sidekick, is drawn into the monster’s personal jibes.

Despite my position on religion and faith, I do not frown on what others value.  People find solace in their perceptions of God, the biblical stories, and the figures who teach. Religion often bestows a fulfilling life cycle.  Religion offers comforts through pain, loss, love and hope.  That’s okay. Everyone must follow their own path towards salvation. I tend to turn towards my personal psyche which I speak to daily.  

I watched The Exorcist off of a 4K streaming print found on HBO MAX, and the picture is positively striking.  Aside from dated fashions and cars of the early 1970s, the picture looks incredibly modern.  The themes of the film remain strong.  Hardly anything has ever matched the horror of The Exorcist.

I value everything in The Exorcist that Father Karras and Father Merrin heed to.  I believe in this story wholeheartedly.  Friedkin and Blatty, plus the cast enhance the authentication of demonic possession and how it operates.  This work of fiction, which Blatty claims to have been inspired by from an account of possession of a young boy during the 1940s, is a thousand percent genuine.  Within the moment and inside the confines of this picture this demon lives by overtaking young Regan.

How much did I believe it? Before bed last night, I made sure my little night light was on and I never walked into a dark room.   Every single light in the whole house was practically turned on.  

It’s not about the fear of God or the Devil.  It’s the fear I had for young Regan.

THE MIST

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m tough to satisfy when it comes to monster movies.  Too often they all look the same, or they behave with similar instincts and motives.  There’s a new dinosaur movie coming out this year where they apparently stalk a military unit.  So!  I’ve seen seven Jurassic Parks.  About the only monster that still gets under my skin are the acid pumping, knives for teeth xenomorphs of the Alien franchise.  Everything else is been there, done that, and this includes the insect like pests found within the mist of Steven King’s The Mist, directed by Frank Darabont.  Fortunately, there’s a better and much more engaging attraction to this eat ‘em up blood fest.

Within another small fictional town in Stephen King’s version of Maine, a dark and stormy night kills the power within the area.  The next morning large fallen trees appear to have damaged the homes of David Drayton and Brent Norton (Thomas Jane, Andre Braugher).  Phones and power remain out, but a curious cloud of mist grows over the lakeside area.  

The gentlemen decide to go into town for supplies with David’s son Billy (Nathan Gamble) in tow.  The checkout line of the supermarket is crowded with tourists and residents when a similar mist envelopes the building and clouds up the expansive front window of the shop.  An elderly man runs through the parking with a bloody nose and urges the shoppers to lock the doors because there are things within this unwelcome mist that are terrifying and bloodthirsty.  I’ll spoil this for you. The old coot is right.  The creepy crawlies are thirsty for blood and hungry for flesh.

You’ve seen much of what Darabont’s screenplay adapts from King’s novella in similar iterations of horror.  The wheel is not reinvented here and though an explanation of this mist and the organisms it conceals is spelled out, nothing is jaw dropping.  Seems similar to how King’s The Stand opened.  The cast of this B movie is what needs to be talked about.

Sure, there are doubters of things terrorizing the community just before the blood is spilled.  Some characters make hard decisions despite the urging of others not to leave the store.  Yet, when these flesh eaters become evident, then the end of days gospel of Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) permeates through the populace of the supermarket.  That’s when The Mist grows a brain to demonstrate the power of fear, threat, and especially influence.  The disturbing Mrs. Carmody exaggerates the purpose of this phenomenon with select biblical scripture both documented and I believe conjured on the fly by her.  Now I am reminiscing back to tenth grade English when I studied Lord Of The Flies.  A tribe forced to live together will ultimately divide.

Darabont so wisely reads a collection of different walks of life forced to either work together or work against each other, both sides with desperate means to survive.  William Sadler is a dimwit mechanic who goes through three different modes of purpose during the film.  He starts with a tough guy mentality, then on to timid fear and regret, and lastly, he’s reawakened to echo the call of Marcia Gay Harden’s religious zealot.   Truly insightful because I often wonder how any person can so easily succumb to the influential beliefs of someone else.  I mean you would have to be dense to allow that to alter your mindset, right? Well Stephen King and Frank Darabont remind me that there’s more dense people on this planet than wise.  A dread of cabin fever only exacerbates to succumb to what someone will tell you. Therefore, let’s observe how the morons respond to the dominant personality.

The action for the sake of jump scares and expected horror does not disappoint too much.  There’s screaming. There’s lots of blood. There’s lots of running too, and monsters and webs and teeth and claws.  A sneak away trip to the pharmacy next door is neat centerpiece, but you’ve seen stuff like this so many times before. Frances Sternhagen gets the opportunity to use a makeshift, bug zapping, flame thrower that made me laugh and cheer.  

The jump scares are not very effective, though.  One bug thuds against the window pane. Otherwise, there’s monster stuff to absorb like tentacles, claws, teeth and webbing. I don’t go for slasher flicks and endless bloodletting gore like most movie makers of this genre attempt to achieve.  Too much blood is boring and a sign of a lack of story.

I was invested in uncovering why this all started.  I was taken with how a small group of people quickly engages in a mob mentality because their individual desperations refuse to satisfy. What instincts will undo people when hope dwindles and your companions turn on you?  Darabont presents some effective moments for these questions. However, once the exposition was out of the way, I didn’t care who lived or died.  My concern was knowing how whoever survives gets out of this dilemma.

The answers come and there is an unexpected ending tacked on by Darabont that is not recounted in King’s work.  Trust me when I say I’ll never forget the conclusion of The Mist.  Same as I’ll never forget the ending to The Sopranos.  That’s not necessarily a compliment though because I think Frank Darabont was only adding unnecessary insult to injury. He resorts to using a terrible psychological epidemic for one last twist of his gleeful, mischievous knife in my back.  I am not spoiling anything for you dear reader, but James Cameron went this route during a sequence in Aliens and it made much more sense, while offering convincing justification.

While you might like the chills and thrills of The Mist, be warned that it’s the ending that’ll leave you angered for days and nights thereafter. I had a furious urge to throw my popcorn at the screen.  

Popcorn can be found on aisle 5 by the way.  Bug spray on aisle 9.

MISERY

By Marc S. Sanders

The worst thing that could have happened to Paul Sheldon is that Annie Wilkes saved his life.

Rob Reiner breaks away from innocent romantic comedy to deliver a violently cruel kind of intimacy. He directs his second Stephen King adaptation, Misery.  (His first was based off King’s novella The Body, which became Stand By Me.)  With next to no prior record with horror or disturbing psychosis, Reiner achieves greatness with this film.  Much like Martin Scorsese, he focuses quite a bit on props that offer no dialogue but say so much.  A cigarette, a match, a champagne flute, a bottle, a beat-up briefcase, a clunky Ford Mustang, along with a gun, a two by four block of wood, a portable grill, a knife, a syringe, a sledgehammer, and a porcelain penguin.  Barry Sonnenfeld is the cinematographer offering brilliant clarities of color for mundane and endless discomfort.

Before leaving his mountainous Colorado cabin, Paul has smoked his cigarette and savored his glass of 1982 Dom Perignon.  He has just completed a new manuscript; a big departure from his best-selling series of novels focusing on his beloved heroine Misery Chastain.  Lady Misery is not how Paul wants to be entirely defined as an author.  

Unfortunately, on his way back down the snowy mountain, he veers off the road and lands upside down in his Mustang, buried within a blizzard.  A hulking figure carries him back to a peaceful, isolated cabin in the woods.  When he awakens two days later, he meets Annie who has already begun to nurse him back to health following two very damaged legs and a popped shoulder blade.  By his grogginess, he might have had a concussion too.  Lucky for Paul because apparently, he cannot reach a hospital or get a call out to his family or literary agent (Lauren Bacall) due to the harsh weather conditions.

It’s also convenient that Annie is quite the fan of Paul’s work, particularly his series of Misery novels.  She has a maternal bedside manner, but oddly enough she becomes irascible at any given moment.  After honoring Annie’s request to read his untitled manuscript, Paul realizes that might have been a mistake.  Annie can easily get unhinged to say the least, and that temper…

Paul Sheldon is portrayed by James Caan, and he was one name on a long list of leading actors considered for the role including Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford, Robert DeNiro, and Jack Nicholson.  Any one of these guys could have done the part.  However, I can now only see James Caan.  He beautifully plays stationary vulnerability as he’s anchored to a bed for most of the film.  Ironically, for a writing master of words, Caan’s dialogue is not even half of the script that belongs to his counterpart.

Kathy Bates was deservedly awarded the Oscar and a slew of accolades for her role as Annie Wilkes.  This role put Bates on the map.  Her portrayal is timed so authentically with changes in tempo from childlike enthusiasm to demented rage that she only makes Stephen King seem like that much better of an author than he already was at the time.  Actually, I’d argue that before Misery hit theaters, the Stephen King factory of film adaptations was churning out subpar products like Cujo, Firestarter, Christine, and his own film that he directed Maximum Overdrive.  Misery elevated the author’s brand back to when it was celebrated with Brian DePalma’s Carrie and Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable interpretation of The Shining.

I believe what helps is that of all the varieties of horror the author was delivering, Misery did not hinge on the supernatural.  Annie Wilkes is a very real embodiment of capable terror and disturbing psychological handicap.  Kathy Bates effectively demonstrates byproducts of schizophrenia and obsessive, compulsive disorders.  Living alone in the woods with the subconsciousness of an author speaking to her through the pages of his fictional hardcover novels only feeds the beast that she’s become. 

I’m not a big fan of Stephen King’s works.  Often, I find his material of gore stretches too hard for shock value, and hardly ever achieving insightful originality.  To the best of my recollection, I’ve only read Misery, The Stand and It.  That’s enough for me.  I read that as he was writing Misery, he was emoting his alcoholic demons that left him obsessively challenged.  Annie Wilkes developed into that tangible, physical fiend.  This story takes a far step away from the macabre world that built his literary empire.

Rob Reiner does not go for any kind of novel inventions with his film.  He’s simply telling a story with the tools provided by celebrated screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men) and his wise adjustments from King’s piece.  Goldman and Reiner wisely cut out a lot of King’s gory schlock.  (That foot scene, for example.  Either way?  YEESH!!!) Smart move, because Annie Wilkes is such force of power personified by the hulking physicality (by choice of Reiner’s lens) and range of Annie Wilkes.  Even though Kathy Bates is short, she is a hulking menace here. Kathy Bates is doing stage work in front of a camera.  I’d argue her performance inspired the idea of eventually converting Misery into a Broadway play that featured Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis in the roles.  I wish I could have seen that. 

Goldman wisely allows the picture to move on with another perspective in the form of two characters that were not part of King’s story.  A perfect casting of Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as the local sheriff and wife advance the curiosity of Paul’s absence from the world.  They speak for the surrounding areas that don’t reveal what is beneath the blankets of snow where few clues remain, and not even a missing 1965 Ford Mustang can show itself.  They’re funny, quirky, and unusual, almost like a combination of Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple seeking to resolve the mystery.

Props like a gun and a knife along with visuals like uncontrollable fires and fight scenes are nothing new.  However, it’s when these scenarios are paired with Kathy Bates to victimize a small, weakened James Caan that these items become well filmed properties of Rob Reiner.  So again, I focus on the inanimate objects of Misery because Reiner lends a lot of footage to all of these working pieces.  This revolver suddenly has dialogue of its own through one of Annie’s personalities.  The knife works like a guard dog for Paul.  The aluminum can of lighter fluid sadistically squirts itself to tickle or tease an extreme point for Annie.

The cigarette and champagne flute emote those small, cheating, harmless vice escapes from commitment that awards Paul. 

The sledgehammer puts its foot down.

The match plays both sides of the duality during different points of the film.

Misery is that film that works with a small cast, but with a wide population of environment, in a snug, confined space.  I describe the picture this way because like Annie Wilkes, this exploration in psychological terror operates without fair balance.  When an animal cannot control and subdue its instincts, there’s no telling what to expect, and an unpredictable Annie Wilkes might be one of the scariest personifications any one of us could ever encounter.

GONE BABY GONE

By Marc S. Sanders

Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, is crime drama mystery thriller that never offers easy answers and concludes with great debate.  You’ll ask yourself if right decisions were made.  You will argue with your best friend or significant other about the endings.  What’s undeniable though is that the film, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, is full of an array of characters, most operating with the best of intentions, and yet they wind up doing everything wrong or against their sworn principles.  In order to work the problem, these people will have to betray themselves. 

One of Affleck’s many best decisions was casting his brother Casey Affleck in the lead role of private detective Patrick Kenzie.  With his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), they specialize in tracking down missing persons in and around the Southeastern Boston area.  The brothers’ pairing is especially effective as Boston, Massachusetts is where they were born and raised.  They know this setting intimately. Unpolished multi-floored tenement neighborhoods near seedy watering holes are where the crimes of Gone Baby Gone occur.  Casey can ensure that his character, Patrick, can speak the slang, use the thick dialect, and feel comfortable amid a crowded and overpopulated area. As director, Ben ensures the setting is captured in great detail from Red Sox caps to beat up cars and dirty unkept apartments and secret hang outs.

In the middle of the night a little girl has gone missing and her deadbeat, drug addicted, careless mother Helene (Amy Ryan) is unmotivated to offer the police much to go on. Helene’s brother and sister-in-law (Titus Weliver, Amy Madigan) take it upon themselves to hire Patrick and Angie to find their niece.  The only leads that Patrick, Angie and the police (Ed Harris, John Ashton and occasionally Morgan Freeman) have to go on are Helene’s contacts within the drug peddling underground.  Someone within that community might have taken the girl or know someone who did.

Gone Baby Gone may feel like a Law & Order episode where red herrings are offered early and then dismissed for the actual truth.  However, Lehane’s story twists much deeper beneath the surface.  Not one character is wasted in this film.  Each serves a purpose to how and why this crime ever occurred.  Mysteries get resolved but the answers are not simple because they are multi-layered with many different people spinning twice as many plates.

Ben Affleck seems nothing like an amateur director here.  He does not always rely on dialogue to describe a scenario because he films quite a bit of a disheveled room or kitchen, or an outdoor area.  A daylight scene will take place in a darkly lit bar where only people need to hide from their troubles on an ordinary workday, or maybe they are in there to suppress something uglier.

The cast is outstanding.  While the characters belonging to Freeman, Harris and Ashton seem familiar from much of their other career films, they look like they lived within this environment of three-story houses bordering the harbor, across town from Fenway.  You believe these guys know every alleyway, street corner or contact among the city’s small-time deadbeats. 

Amy Ryan was nominated, and perhaps should have won, for her trashy Bostonian performance as Helene, the missing girl’s mother.  This actress is buried so deep in this role, from her worn out facial features to her New England dialect that blends so well.  She is completely believable, which is why you would not be able to stand sharing the same space with her.

Titus Welliver dons a thick, wide Irish mustache.  I read he had to keep it because he was shooting his HBO series, Deadwood, at the same time.  Nonetheless, it builds his character into the blue-collar working man whose greatest achievement is getting out of the life of small-time crime in order to put food on the table, while his sister could not.  His wife played by the great Amy Madigan, an actress that does not get enough coverage, is perfect.  Just her facial expressions with a pale, freckled complexion, tight chin and pinched lips show her biting her tongue while in the same room as her loser sister-in-law.  It sickens her that a sweet little girl like her niece is missing.  Everything is read on her face.  I know Madigan best as Kevin Costner’s midwestern cheerful wife in Field Of Dreams.  She played this role almost two decades later and she absolutely hides herself.  You forget you are watching her.  An outstanding character actress.  (I’m glad she’s getting new recognition with 2025’s hit horror movie Weapons.)

Michelle Monaghan as the girlfriend Angie is the sidekick to Casey Affleck’s Patrick.  Yet, she makes the horror of this movie convincingly real.  Early on, Angie is reluctant to accept the case because she doesn’t “want to find a kid in a dumpster.”  Now this isn’t some Dirty Harry or Lethal Weapon cop showcase.  It’s not glamourized with Hannibal Lecter glee.  This has not become much further materialized.  I don’t want to see a horrifying outcome for a child either, but Ben Affleck’s direction does not make any promises.  There are some repulsive, scary people in this world, right outside the front doors where people listen to the game on the radio and kids play stickball in the street.  Monaghan seems like that young woman who came from another place in the country with a fine upbringing and fell in love with Affleck’s character. With her brains, instincts and empathy, Angie took up the cause as a fellow crusader.  None of this is spelled out in the film and I have not read Lehane’s books, but I can see it in Michelle Monaghan’s performance.

Casey Affleck is a perfect surprise.  He dons the appearance of a thin, shrimpy kind of kid (supposedly age 31), and yet no matter who he is coming face to face with he never shows any sort of apprehension.  I truly believe that Patrick is not afraid of his work or the people he has to confront while trying to solve his various mysteries.  If a large gun is introduced into a scene, Patrick’s reaction is an act of “whoa, what’s this?”  Another character in another film would tighten up and hold their breath, or they would knock the weapon out of the way for an action scene.  Patrick has put this kind of act on before to outlast a situation.  Angie has definitely seen it before. 

Casey Affleck is great at just listening.  Shortly after he accepts the case, Patrick and Angie are in one of these darkened bars trying to collect information.  Ben Affleck shoots his camera above Casey sitting in a booth with a beer.  The actor keeps his head tilted as if he is listening to nothing spewing from a possible lead sitting across the table.  When a gun is pulled though, Casey stands three feet taller than his posture implies and controls the scene.  That is Dennis Lehane’s character Patrick Kensie completely defined because Casey Affleck has a full understanding of this guy.  Someone like Patrick knew that if he was going to take this kind occupation on full time, he had better be aware he would not survive on brawn that he cannot show.  It’s a confidence that has to come through. 

Gone Baby Gone is a gripping and engaging thriller shown with varying degrees of light and perfect cinematography to offer genuine on-site locations of Boston and the surrounding areas.  Ben Affleck chose not to compromise any of his set pieces.  With handheld cameras, when a missing person’s search is happening, it feels like a documentary of procedure is being shown. 

The various directions and endings are entirely unexpected and yet very, very plausible.  This is a smart, sensational crime drama that deserves a resurgence of attention nearly twenty years after its release.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

By Marc S. Sanders

What is Stanley Kubrick attempting to demonstrate with A Clockwork Orange, arguably the most controversial and shocking film of his career?  The film is considered an almost precise adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ novel.  I never read the book, but the sources I found on Wikipedia and IMDb are consistent with their claims.  Kubick’s vision is never not odd or strange.  It’s almost always repulsive and I have to believe the director is proud of the finished accomplishments left in every caption and scene.  Yet even Kubrick was disgusted by some copycat attempts that spawned from what the story’s protagonist troublemaker executes within this context.  Regrettably, in 2025, it would be easier to ask what did you expect Mr. Kubrick?

In a dystopian future of England, young Alex (age 17, but 15 in the book) relishes on walking the streets each night, accompanied by his three droog companions, committing the worst atrocities imaginable.  They beat up a homeless beggar, engage in gang brawling, and brutalize and rape a wealthy couple in their own home to the celebrated tune of Singin’ In The Rain.  I’m curious how reminiscent A Clockwork Orange is to people who only wish to watch the cheerful and innocent fare of Gene Kelley.  Is their subconscious intruded by Malcolm McDowell as naughty boy Alex with the one eyelash, bowler hat, protective jock strap and erection mask?

Mayhem is the specialty of Alex and his degenerate friends.  However, Alex who is the leader of the pack is challenged to uphold his command on the gang of four, and once the others betray him, the poor boy is sentenced to a militaristic, concentrated prison where he must don an academy uniform while studying the gospel of the Bible.  

What happens though if the student sees himself more as the Roman with the harsh whip, and less as the savior willing to die for our sins?  Are people like Alex only inherently wicked, vile, and perverted?  Can nothing change their insatiable appetites for harm and evil doing?

I thought about One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest while watching A Clockwork Orange.  McMurphy fakes an impression of insanity to be institutionalized. He operates under the presumption the circumstances will be more accommodating than a jail cell.  Alex campaigns to be a guinea pig for a new kind of therapy believed to eliminate all temptations of violence and cruel sexual escapades. This could be a means to free him from a forty-year prison sentence. I never believed he wanted to be liberated from his appetite of rape, torture and murder, though.

Following an abundance of sickening, visual exposition, Stanley Kubrick is ready to test some possible outcomes by forcefully prying open the subject’s eyes to witness footage of violence, extreme rape, harsh pornography, and Nazi propaganda.  Will this overexposure repulse Alex away from being the monster he used to be?

I’m not sure A Clockwork Orange provides any definitive answers but the weirdness of this off scale and ugly England is nothing but apparent.  Nothing is normal looking or relatable in this film.  Everything from the colors to the costume wear to the slang verbiage of the dialogue and even the furniture is completely twisted.  Kubrick would offer a similar approach in The Shining. No director is louder and more offensive with colors in a film. A green bedroom ceiling or a blue typewriter or even a glass of milk and stark white sexually posed mannequins used as furniture pieces in a hangout joint are so much more than discomforting.

Even the infamous rape scene is uncharacteristically done.  The Droogs happily sing while brutalizing this couple.  Before Alex commits his “push in, push out” he scissors the woman’s red jumpsuit around her individual breasts before cutting her out of the fabric to be entirely nude.  I’ve seen plenty of staged rape scenes but then there is what Kubrick envisions. Not to mention, how notoriously redundant he is with repetitively shooting his scenes over and over again. Kubrick is an auteur filmmaker but his desire for perfection in his shots are as twisted as many of his films.

A woman is brutally killed by being pummeled with a sculpture of a penis/taint/anus piece. (I don’t know what else you call this!) A typical baseball bat, stick or hammer is not the bludgeoning weapon of choice. Stanley Kubrick wants to ensure this perverted item of art owned by a wealthy woman is used to commit the crime. A mix of sinful natures ranging from sexual to violent.

Why go to all of these lengths to be so unusual?

A Clockwork Orange is deliberately shocking and thus everything on display is disorienting.  With all the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, on top of some of the most unusual fetishistic material I’ve witnessed, I imagine I’m like most viewers where I’ve grown accustomed to the violent and sexual debauchery on display.  I’ve seen so much I am practically desensitized to it all.  When I read about another school shooting in the news, regrettably and with sick sarcasm, I’ll think to myself, “Huh!  Must be a Tuesday.”  It feels so wrong but there is truth in this ongoing epidemic. Stanley Kubrick, back in the early 1970s, had to work that much harder to grab the attention of the viewer.  Nothing can prepare you for an initial viewing of A Clockwork Orange. Back in 1971, I’d argue no one was prepared for this film’s content. It’s a pioneering document of extreme violence and sexual perversion. Filmmakers, like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, and Brian DePalma hereafter would push their own limits while bridging these activities with the natures of their challenged characters.

Is there a confidence to seeing if a heathen like Alex can be cured of his original nature? Can he be returned to a society where his once menacing threat is nonexistent?  Plus, can Alex live a peaceful and nurturing life?

Alex is not the only villain to this piece.  While we do not get to know his parents well enough, how sadistic are the individuals behind his therapy process? Alex’ “recovery” becomes politicized and treated like scientific doctrine at the expense of his own humiliation. He is used to prove a point by beating him up publicly and forcing him to lick the bottom of a man’s shoe and exposing him to a naked woman, as well. Those that he encounters again, like former victims and fellow Droogs, following his therapy are not perfectly complimented to this new Alex. Scenarios that re-introduce him to society imply that Alex’ conditioning process might have overlooked what was to come following his release. Were they truly “healing” their patient?

A Clockwork Orange is never a refreshing film.  It’s always alarming right down to its final frame.  The picture certainly does not endorse the merits of psychotherapy or psychological reform.  Maybe, that’s why I believe that anyone specializing in the field of mental health should watch the picture. See what works and what doesn’t. Kubrick is uncompromising with getting his cast to do what he wants, no matter how off putting the material is. If anything, I wonder if this movie is more relevant today. Can anyone who traps themselves in an impersonal and isolated environment of social media influence attain the capability to shed their destructive proclivities for a natural desire to live, care and cherish fellow human beings?

Like most of Kubrick’s films, A Clockwork Orange is not an easy watch.  I know a friend who describes the movie as a comedy.  I know what she’s talking about and why. Still, how can anyone allow themselves to guffaw at someone who is an agent of death, torture, destruction and chaos? 

I don’t know what else I can say about A Clockwork Orange.  I do not recall asking so many questions in one review as I demonstrate here. Watch the film on mute or with Alex’ voiceover against an assortment of classical music as Kubrick intends simply because Alex’ only friend, only ally, is “Ludwig.”  No matter how you observe the piece, it is likely your jaw will drop, and your eyes will wince.  You will cringe and you will unquestionably test your tolerance.  You may just turn the movie off.

Regardless of how you respond to the picture, be assured that Stanley Kubrick successfully completed what he set out to do.

BLOW OUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Brian DePalma’s Blow Out is an inventive approach to the political conspiracy thriller.  In 1981, following a mask of innocence the United States lost with the assassination of President Kennedy, later his brother Bobby, plus the drunken, liable carelessness of their brother Ted, and then finally the Watergate scandal, DePalma capitalized on newsworthy incidents to make a paranoid thriller of present day while incorporating what he likely knows much about which is sound effects editing.  Despite the cheesy music soundtrack that is highly intrusive and poorly composed, Blow Out is a good blend of hysteria and suspense.

John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a Philadelphia sound effects recording artist for b-grade schlock horror movies.  One night, while out in a park trying to pick up sounds of outdoor nature, he witnesses a car suffer a blown-out tire and crash into a nearby river.  Jack is able to rescue a woman named Sally (Nancy Allen) but cannot save the Pennsylvania governor who was driving the car.

As he is about to leave the hospital, he is specifically instructed to never speak to Sally nor acknowledge to anyone about any of his own involvement in this incident.  However, Jack cannot help but recount the sequence of events in his head and as new details come to light, he knows that there is a cover up at play.

Blow Up operates like a how-to kind of picture.  The expertise of a sound effects recording artist is demonstrated as Jack replays every sound that his equipment picked up. Later he’s able to manufacture his own film by assembling a series of published photographs that also captured the crash.  Sync up the sounds with the sights and a new theory surfaces.  Other mysteries change the course of the riddle through dialogue.  This character has to work by himself using the skills he’s acquired to learn the truth.  He hardly has anyone to commiserate with.

John Travolta is convincing within this occupation that’s not as common as a cop or a private eye.  I like how I can pick up how he uses his recording equipment and even the minute details like labeling what he has preserved within his inventory.

It took a little bit of patience to get used to Nancy Allen’s damsel in distress who plays it up like Judy Holliday or Jean Hagen with the squeaky, dingbat voice.  When we first meet her, she is in an intoxicated stupor that goes on a little too long. Nevertheless, I came around because the tension of the film builds quite well.

John Lithgow is the sadistic adversary – a serial killer and assassin rolled into one.  He’s got the weird, unwelcome appearance like any bad guy in a Hitchcock film.

DePalma is known for his split screen cuts that he offered in Carrie and later in Mission: Impossible.  More well known is his reliance on bringing a character in zoom close up, while in the same frame, another object will be zoomed out at a distance.   During an outdoor evening in the park, an owl hoots and stares us down while John Travolta is far in the background standing on a bridge. Within this same moment, DePalma does it again with a toad ribbiting up close with the actor again positioned out. It’s a disorienting approach that works well at maintaining the perplexity of his story.

I think the final act of Blow Out falls apart a bit.  Travolta is on the heels of rescuing Sally by rampaging his jeep through a crowded parade.  The scene is shot so aggressively that it was hard for me to believe he would survive much less not run down a cop, spectator, or the entire marching band.  DePalma could have tightened this up a bit.

Blow Out ends on a bleak irony that’s quite surprising and definitely against formula.  There’s a running gag for Jack and a film director as they edit a silly problematic issue for a new slasher flick.  I guessed early on how this was going to resolve itself.  Though I was right, I didn’t expect how the conclusion arrived at my predication.  

As well, there are some notable questions left unanswered.  I had to roll back and see if I missed something.  I didn’t.  DePalma’s script neglects some key points with unfinished resolutions. So, I was not entirely satisfied. Still, the how-to procedures along with the pursuit of the truth, while also evading demise, are very engaging.

When I conduct workshops on playwriting, I always recommend keeping up with the news.  An unending wealth of ideas are there to be discovered.  As a sincere compliment to Brian DePalma, it could not be more apparent where his creativity took off with this film.  As a skilled and educated filmmaker, he also writes what he knows.  

Blow Out is very close to being a smart nail biter that echoes the sad truths of political rule breaking by means of savage crime. I wish modern films would be as risky today.  There are so few of these kinds of thrillers being made anymore.

WALTZING WITH BRANDO

By Marc S. Sanders

You think you know someone, but then you learn a whole other side about the person.

I only know Marlon Brando from his achievements in The Godfather, Superman, A Streetcar Named Desire and On The Waterfront.  There’s also his final picture, The Score, with his Vito Corleone counterpart, Robert DeNiro.  I’ve seen him spoofed on Saturday Night Live and know that he’s even poked fun at himself in a film like The Freshman.  He was notoriously and proudly quirky.  I guess Brando was so content to appear odd to everyone else beyond the island of Tahiti, which became his escape to paradise, away from autograph hounds, environmental abuse and Hollywood barbarianism.  Brando simply endured his greatness as one of the most incredible movie actors ever to subsidize how he really wanted to live in utopian isolation.

Billy Zane seamlessly inhabits the persona and physical appearance of Marlon Brando in Waltzing With Brando.  The film presents a slice of the actor’s uncompromised efforts to build an ecological home, and maybe a hotel, on an uninhabited island next to Tahiti.  To bring this idea to fruition, Brando recruits a young, undaring Los Angeles architect named Bernie Judge (Jon Heder) to helm the project.  This will be an undertaking that Bernie could never expect and can hardly circumvent around impossible challenges in the face of proven scientific engineering, chemistry, and physics.  Brando seems to have an answer for everything though.

By breaking the fourth wall to speak to the viewer along with voiceover narration, Heder is charming about his unexpected adventures.  The white-collar shirt and necktie of city life is abandoned for shorts and conch shell necklaces.  Actually, as Brando demonstrates its better and less inhibited to just be nude like the rest of the cheerful islanders.  Despite his reservations, Bernie gets more and more accustomed to Brando’s perceptions but still he has to find ways to be practical to complete this unconscionable project.

Drinking water is needed.  Marlon’s answer is to filter it from his own urine.  Electricity needs to be installed on the island.  Though, is Marlon truly serious when he suggests that energy stem from a power source like electric eels?  Bernie soon learns that there will never be a client as unpredictable as Marlon Brando.  Money is not an obstacle he cares about.  Oscar trophies serve a menial, floor level purpose that is only a little more useful than resting on a mantle.  An upcoming gangster movie is not really his thing.  A paradise devoid of man-made contamination and pesky societal intrusions is where his focus lies.

Watching Bernie Judge struggle with being away from his wife and daughter, while working with islanders to start at the basics like building an airplane landing strip first, I was reminded of The Brutalist, the fictional period piece that centered on building a grand, outrageously expensive structure within a mountaintop.  That film watched its architect wither away into haunting madness.  The Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford also came to mind.  Thankfully, Waltzing With Brando does not take these directions.  I know nothing about architecture or engineering or practically any kind of science.  Yet, I know that whatever Marlon Brando conjures up seems unheard of and impossible.  Brando’s friend, Bernie Judge, did not allow these considerations to stop him though.  Why shouldn’t we explore our ideal paradise no matter how exuberant it seems? (Mosquitos are also a problem to deal with and Brando frowns on using pesticides.  Hmm. What can be done?)

Still, we have to be realistic.  Richard Dreyfuss plays Brando’s money manager and represents the challenge of making resources obtainable.  Brando has to go back to work.  Judge needs more and more funds for material and labor.  He takes daring personal risks.  Even the banker does.  Utopia is expensive and never merciful. 

Director Bill Fishman wrote and adapted Bernard Judge’s biographical tales of his encounters with Marlon Brando.  His film is lighthearted, hardly stressful in any kind of dramatic weight.  Perhaps that is because Bernie Judge did not respond to Brando’s ideas with frustration like The Brutalist would have you believe.  While I was not entirely fond of the voiceover narration because I did not recognize its necessity, Jon Heder is magnetically likable.  He’s a cheerful friend telling a bedtime story that took place in a small corner of the world.  Most people never explored these crystal waters and white sands traversed only by Marlon Brando and the native islanders.  This is a civilization unaware of the burden of conflict and pressure. 

Billy Zane does not go over the top with his portrayal of Marlon Brando.  The more subtle and aloof he is in each scene, the more convinced and accustomed I became to his peculiarities.  With Fishman’s script, Zane delivers a handful of dynamics to Brando.  Early in the film, Brando tells Judge that his desire is to live in this Tahitian paradise forever.  He knows however that he must continue to make movies to eventually fund this lifestyle permanently.  Later in the film, it is easy to surmise why Brando feels that way.  While filming The Last Tango In Paradise, he is trapped in a phone booth where his fan base recognizes him.  It’s one of the few times when Billy Zane performs on Marlon Brando’s genuine discomfort, and it is terribly unsettling.  It’s awkwardly ironic that the most famous actor in the world is out of his element among a worldwide community of followers and devotees begging for pictures and autographs.

Like Marlon Brando and an eventual Bernie Judge, Waltzing With Brando wants you to leave the theater with a smirk on your face.  An attempt at achieving the impossible with absolute content does not have to be a miserable journey.  An effort to find ways to overcome challenges can deliver lifelong friendships and personal experiences that belong only to you.  Bernie Judge learned this through his friendship with Marlon Brando.

Waltzing With Brando is a thankfully rewarding experience, a brush with perfect happiness.

NOTE: Stay through the end credits because this “Marlon Brando” has a few treats in store for you.

TRUE LIES

By Marc S. Sanders

James Cameron’s True Lies never had to be believable.  It only had to be fun, and it is fun for the first act and most of the third act.  Too bad the sitcom like, chauvinistic second act pretty much overthrows the whole picture.

When you watch an Arnold Schwarzenegger pic, you have to take it with a boulder of salt.  Throughout his career, he’s been pregnant (never saw Junior), he’s begged God to give him the strength to fight Satan (I’m being honest here. It happened in End Of Days), he’s been tossed out of a plane at thirty thousand feet with no parachute and lands safely in a dumpster (Eraser) and his twin brother has been Danny DeVito.  (Do I really need to share the title of that movie?) In True Lies, I have to accept the fact that the muscular body builder with an Austrian accent, and pretty good line delivery, convinces his wife and daughter, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Eliza Dushku, that he’s simply a boring computer salesman.  It’s shocking, utterly shocking, to realize that he is actually a clandestine spy, and his family is completely unaware.  See if Bruce Willis or Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson were in this role, then I’d buy it.  Tom Arnold might have been a good pick, but James Cameron settled to make Roseanne’s ex-husband Schwarzenegger’s secondary partner with some comedy bits. He might be the best part of the movie.

A brilliant 007 inspired opening gets this adventure started off with a literal bang at a black-tie affair at a wintery German mansion. Harry Tasker (Schwarzenegger) infiltrates the party along with support from his partner Albert (Tom Arnold) who hides in a tech equipped van that’s close by.  Harry does the tango with Tia Carrere, which is charming and something new for the Terminator.  The outcome of this shoot ’em up episode puts these super spies on the trail of an Arab terrorist who has the capability of unleashing a nuclear arsenal on the United States.  When Harry is not chasing this guy on horseback and up high-rise elevators, with the equine in tow, he and Albert report to an eye patch played by Charlton Heston.  

Somehow, I sleepwalked into another movie, though.  Harry has not been the model family man and when he tries to make amends, he inadvertently hears his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) chatting with a sleezy car salesman (Bill Paxton).  Now all of the spy department’s resources change course to surveille Helen and this moron she’s been talking to because this is the episode with the misunderstanding.  James Cameron’s script makes very poor efforts to achieve sitcom level comedy.  A laugh track couldn’t even save this tripe.

Bill Paxton is a great actor, but he accepted a terrible, unfunny role as he ironically pretends to impress Helen by actual being a spy.  Ha!!!! Go figure!!!!

Jamie Lee Curtis is a great actor too, but she agreed to play one of the dumbest women to ever grace a screen.  She believes this moron’s lies as easily as she believes the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger is just a computer nerd.

One of the most intolerable scenes I can ever think of occurs after Harry learns what is really going on. He gladly continues to play one over on his neglected and unhappy wife by believing he’ll give her a fun adventure he thinks she deserves.  Helen is convinced that she must abide by the wishes of a clandestine government group who apprehends her.  She arrives at a dark hotel room with Harry sitting in the shadows, mere feet away, and convinces his wife to do a striptease dance in front of a stranger.  This routine goes on for the longest five minutes.  It’s not funny.  It’s not sexy.  It’s eerie and perverted with sick narrow mindedness. 

At the risk of getting political and prudish, Jamie Lee Curtis has always been one of the most outspoken celebrities for equal treatment between men and women and has ostracized those in positions of power who work towards their own self advantage.  Yet here she allows herself to be objectified by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger to be a punchline for male chauvinistic pranks.  If this scene ended with Curtis breaking Schwarzenegger’s nose with a karate chop while holding him at gunpoint, then this becomes something else.  That’s a no, however.  Instead, she is a scantily clad victim of sexual deviants, and she never stands up for herself, or exudes any kind of pride.  I recall in 1994 not liking this sequence.  Over thirty years later, well after the tides of the Me-Too movement have passed, I still hate this material.  With all of the high-flying stunts and action thrown in to other parts of the movie, it is this scene that stays with me.

Once this stupid story detour is over with a cast of actors enhancing its inanity, do I sleepwalk my way back into the movie I was watching before.  Whattya know?  The Arab terrorist who has not been discussed for the last forty-five minutes, still exists. So, while being held captive, this becomes an opportune time for the unhappy couple to sort through their baggage.

True Lies starts out so fun and when the action is turned on, James Cameron and his team are offering some solid footage.  Helicopters, limos, and missiles fly over a bridge running from the Florida Keys.  Then it is ridiculous silliness with a fighter jet piloted by Schwarzenegger who uses the entire cache of weapons to wipe out the one bad guy while trying to rescue his daughter who his hanging from a crane high in the skies over Miami.  Some say the slapstick of The Three Stooges is a demonstration in violence.  I ask if those critics have seen True Lies because the mayhem is absolutely bonkers. 

I can’t endorse this movie because I think it is one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s worst films.  It’s also one of James Cameron’s most awful efforts.  The action is marvelously over the top, but the characters are reprehensibly idiotic and the film gets hijacked by a whole other storyline that is neither funny nor worth caring about.  There are so many better options to select from this writer/director, and this entire cast. 

With an absence of untruth, I am being forthright by declaring that True Lies belongs back within the scummy cauldron from it was stirred up from.