Blog Archives
The Mod Squad (1999)
There are some movies out there that you simply can’t stop yourself from scratching your head and wondering how it ever got made in the first place. Some movies so horrible that you ponder what any big suited executives were thinking. Well folks, The Mod Squad is one of those movies.
It’s the cinematic updating of the Vietnam era show epitomizing the rebellion against authority and suppression by the Boomers like only Aaron Spelling can. I’m convinced that if you pay adequate attention to the plot you will actually lower your intelligence but don’t hold me to it. It’s only a theory, I still need the tests to come back. This basically is nothing more than a watered down 90-minute jeans ad. “Oooh, look at those jeans Claire Danes shoots up in! I wonder if they have them in a size 30 waist?”
This is one of those movies I seriously can’t find anything remotely good to mention. Though I’m trying to get it all out of my head as quickly as humanly possible. I feel sickened by this poison MGM has thrown out to the masses. I remember the last time Generation X & Y tried looking back nostalgically and enviously on the Boomer’s playground. It was called Woodstock ’99. Anyone care to remember what happened there?
Nate’s Grade: F
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The Sixth Sense (1999)
August is mostly thought of as a time of dead water for summer movies. But now I think it should be regarded as the best month for film this whole mediocre summer, and The Sixth Sense is one of the main reasons. Though the title kinda’ sucks.
In a summer low on genuine chills here’s one movie that offers honest-to-God-grip-the-armrest-chills. It’s very moody when it needs to be and creepy when it never has to be but is anyway, and constantly moving. The Sixth Sense also offers audiences something they haven’t seen this summer: real characters with depth. The characters leap from the screen and are slowly established as complicated, rounded, and very thoughtful people. Now that’s something that took me for surprise.
Bruce Willis achieves his quiet mode and teams up yet again with another child (a la Mercury Rising). Willis’ acting is solemn and just enough to drive his character through his quest. You haven’t seen Bruce Willis show this much emotion since he walked over glass in Die Hard! But the story of The Sixth Sense is a little tyke that comes from out of nowhere and redefines child acting. To say Haley Joel Osment carries the film is an understatement – he throws it on his back and runs a 4.3 with it. If Ana Paquan can win an Oscar for babysitting a piano then this kid deserves one too. This is the greatest child actor I’ve seen in years and I begin to wonder why Lucas chose his miscast young Anakin.
The best thing The Sixth Sense has is intelligence. It rewards those who stood up and paid attention with a knock-out terrific ending that wraps everything up you questioned before. And you will rerun things in your mind over and over when you leave the theater. My only complaint, and it is small, is that the direction could be tighter at times. But for everything The Sixth Sense has to offer I will gladly wait in line for seconds. The best summer chiller, and one of the best movies of the year. The title still sucks though.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999)
The directorial debut from Scream scribe Kevin Williamson is in a dire identity crisis no marketers would want to handle. Is it trying to be a teen drama? Is it trying to be a thriller? Is it trying to be a comedy? Whatever it’s trying to be it most certainly isn’t entertaining. Maybe they should’ve tried that first.
Williamson, the man who made self reflective pop-culture references a career and the puppeteer over Dawson’s Creek, takes a stab at directing his own movie he wrote embittered over an unpleasant English teacher of his long ago. The wit found in most of Williamson’s trademark slash-and-dash-and-instant-cash pictures are completely absent in this outing and we are replaced with dull cardboard characters, predictable plotting, and poor direction.
The movie is bubbling over to the brim with every high school cliche you can think of. The characters aren’t even people, or even grossly overdone cartoons, they’re basically cut-outs of real people. It’s like every person phoned in a performance and had cut-outs stand in their places. Let’s see there’s the good girl hero who’s falsely accused (Katie Holmes), the good girl’s rival who kisses up to teacher (Liz Stauber), the bad boy without a cause that the good girl hates but just can’t help herself to fall in love with later (Barry Watson), and the good girl’s best friend who serves for the purpose of comic foil (Marisa Coughlan). Have we got everything covered? Okay, greenlight it!
One of the pleasant things in Tingle is Helen Mirren’s wonderful over-the-top performance as the misanthropic title villain. She shows how she can out-act anyone that dares vie for her creed. Though for the latter part of the movie she’s mainly reduced to clawing and hissing.
This effort comes off as a juvenile fantasy to exact revenge upon all those in the educational system that have ever done wrong. Notice that this same idea was used in last winter’s The Faculty to much better results. Ultimately when it comes down to, Teaching Mrs. Tingle has a few funny parts, mostly revolving around The Exorcist in some way, and a lot of predictably dull parts. Williamson doesn’t have the visual prowess to keep a career as a director, and the entire horror world has moved on from the post-irony movement he himself forged. While I do think there is a place for this man’s talent, I hope he sticks behind a typewriter more than a camera. Now what did we learn class?
Nate’s Grade: C
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Blade (1998)
You know when you’re watching a flick and you see former porn actress Traci Lords sucking someone’s fluids… well you’re in for a treat. Enter Blade, the latest installment into the vampire chronicles of celluloid. But this one is such an energetic rush that even author Anne Rice hawked up on crank couldn’t churn this one out.
I will confess right now that I am most partial to vampire movies. It’s a guilty pleasure I’m not embarrassed of. What other genres out there could you expect to find titles from Abbot and Costello meet Dracula to Blackula? Not in any period piece I’ll tell you that. So I’m strangely drawn to vampire flicks, and this one quenches your thirst.
Wesley Snipes surmises the role of Blade, the half-human, half-vampire, all ass-kicker with great enthusiasm. Most of his lines are either snarled or more snarled, but what are you gonna’ do when you work the midnight shift? The story is pretty hokey but provides just enough moments for some intense action sequences. And that’s what keeps this movie together. The glue of this foundation are the adrenaline pumping action sequences with Snipes just flying around and turning anxiously aggressive vampires into annoying CGI particles. At times the movie can drag because you’re waiting for another action sequence in between the spillings of blood and gore.
The biggest problem in Blade is the wimpy villain. I have nothing against Stephen Dorff but he’s the most non-frightening and ineffectual villain since Colonel Clink tried halting Hogan’s Heroes. He comes off as a skinny kid trying to push around the big guys. I never bought anything from him. I can’t see how he’s an adversary to Snipes’ brooding and stoic hero. Wesley could push the kid down with one arm and twist it around his back ’til he cried “mercy.”
The best comic book transition to movie since 1989’s Batman. Thank God New Line didn’t try and hound a franchise out of this like they did to ruin Spawn and Lost in Space, of course the hellaciously bad writing might have to do with their failures as well. But Blade gets the most from every drop of blood and every electronic beat on the techno enriched soundtrack. A hip and entertaining vampire action flick.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Run Lola Run (1999)
There is a certain vibe some movies resonate while watching. With some it’s the mood of pure nausea, some the feel of being derivative and meandering, but there are those few that seem to leap from the screen, slap you in the face, and scream cool. It happened with Pulp Fiction, it was there with Trainspotting and The Matrix, and you better believe every precious frame of Run Lola Run drips with a feeling of absolute cool.
Since the movie is foreign, German, and subtitled, I’m sure most out there don’t know about it. It’s the tale of Lola’s desperate quest to save her boyfriend Manni. See Manni runs money for a very shady character and has accidentally lost a bag of money earlier. Lola has twenty minutes to retrieve 100,000 Deutschmarks somehow or else he will in an act of desperation rob a corner grocery store which inevitably means his doom. So Lola dashes out the door and she runs. And does she ever!
Born in an age of avant garde MTV videos and a declining attention span nationwide, Lola is a dizzyingly kinetic concoction of energy ]and excitement.The movie is a colorful fireworks display of multiple outcomes and the varying degree minute choices and details can have on our lives. The movie is a living video game telling Lola’s trek three different ways and showing the possibilities of chance and fate.
With each run the audience’s heart beats to the thumping presence of the blistering electronica soundtrack pulsing along Lola’ runs. It simulates her racing heart and that of the audience watching. Within an hour of seeing the flick I had to run out and get the soundtrack, and after a brief listen it made me want to run myself.
The movie has more energy than the Energizer bunny, and our carrot-topped heroine could run circles around his fluffy ass. The narrative structure poses the question to audiences how our lives could be different with any of the small choices that occur day-to-day in our lives. The idea was seen in last year’s Sliding Doors but is much better played out here. All I can say is that Run Lola Run will go down as one of the coolest movies of the millennium and ushers in a new time and genre for the world of cinema. I want my Lola running shoes.
Author’s note: I was so enamored with this film I went as Lola for two Halloweens in a row.
Nate’s Grade: A
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The Haunting (1999)
Is this what passes for horror these days? Get an Irish Jedi, a Spanish sword fighting hot tamale, an indie queen, and the co-writer of Rushmore and Bottle Rocket in a creepy home and have curtains blow in the shapes of faces? Is there anyone out there truly terrified of curtains?
From Jan de Bont, the director most known for making cows fly, comes possibly the weakest horror pic ever assembled on two legs. This is no different than the weekend drive-in where they showed all the wretchedly corny movies of people in giant plastic costumes slowly walking and terrorizing young teenagers in love. Except now the costumes are far more expensive. Beyond that nothing has changed.
The story is a bit of a mystery. It’s light when there needs to be more meat, and heavy when it needs to explain itself. It even goes a step further into fulfilling the dreams of many by making Catherine Zeta-Jones bisexual. And of course then there’s the contrived happy ending that seems like something they tacked on from the outcome of a test screening.
The best asset The Haunting has is the utterly beautiful and breath-taking house and sets. You’ll hear it’s name around Oscar time for set designs, and most likely on the winner’s ballot as well. I was wrapped up in the scenery and fell in love with it. Maybe this is a trick by the movie so you don’t notice how bad it really is, well it almost worked. But this isn’t an episode of This Old House, though that might have been scarier.
With the aid of some cheap jump scares and splashy effects, The Haunting registers nothing in the world of frights and fear. It’s really unintentionally funny at many many parts. In fact the audience I saw this with was laughing far more than they were screaming. So you could label The Haunting as the funniest movie of the summer if you wanted. Some movies are just born bad.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
There’s a certain awe one has to this film. It’s Stanley Kubrick’s last movie, took over two years in development, has the big name star couple, and no one knows ANYTHING about it. All I can say Eyes Wide Shut the movie is a challenging and engaging work from a titan of a director that will sorely be missed.
The first movie from Kubrick in over a decade comes sweeping in and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The steady cinematography is gorgeous, coupled with the dream like lighting that seem glowing about on the frames. The story captured my attention and drew me in quickly as I was enthralled. It’s all about the tale of a husband and wife with sexual inadequacies, fantasies, delusions, and jealousy. It’s about the trust in a marriage, and how sex can be used not only as an intimate showing of feelings but as a weapon and as a tool. Journey with Tommy Cruise as he ventures through the city exploring all the different characters and how sex has influenced, controlled, or manipulated their lives.
The movie is adult, yes, but not pornographic. Those who argue it’s expensive porn don’t know what they’re saying. Though there are probably more butt shots of Kidman then necessary the movie never becomes exploitative or gratuitous. The sex here is portrayed more like a Victorian era arrangement instead of the hard-core stuff of today. In fact the sex is far more creepy than erotic. The actors all contribute nicely to the ensemble, even though Nicole Kidman is the slowest talker in the world here. But I couldn’t wait to see what she’d say next; she had me. The movie as well had me mostly.
The movie will certainly not go over well with audiences planning to see a Basic Instinct sequel in this. I blame the poor marketing that made it into something it was far from: a sexy and steamy adult thriller with TONS o’ nudity. So when people file in and find out it’s a two and a half hour art movie with depth, symbolism, and layers they are no doubt disappointed. Especially those who show up in raincoats. The movie is a fitting final work to Kubrick’s collection. Rest in peace Stanley.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Deep Blue Sea (1999)
So what if the movie is crammed with one-note cardboard characters that double as stereotypes and other reliable characters in the action world? So what if the script was most likely written on the back of a bar napkin in between showings of Jaws on TNT? So what if the movie is helmed by Mr. ex-Geena Davis with a track record of box office losses always following him? So what? And so what if the best acting in the movie is from animatronic sharks? Because despite all these things the movie is pure fun.
The movie actually offers some genuine thrills and suspense. It’s easy to just pigeonhole the movie as another Jaws rip-off, but it’s more of a sweet homage than any blatant rip-off. Deep Blue Sea never seems to take itself seriously and actually seems to revel in the cheese it wallows in.
Despite the fact that the sharks still look like they were created out of Jim Henson’s Muppet workshop, they do come off as believable. The story isn’t even worth printing because it’s all one giant excuse to somehow pose dangerous situations to our crew. It’s all purely corny but it’s just too much fun.
Deep Blue Sea shouldn’t be thought heavily upon because all the movie is at it’s heart is big dumb fun. Don’t try and analyze it above the thrills you get in your seat, you might hurt yourself. At least there’s one movie that’s out that you can just sit and have fun with.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Arlington Road (1999)
Psychological thrillers are always much harder to pull off than the standard Hollywood action flicks. Bullets and explosions are replaced with taut mental games and psychological grips played with reluctant victims. Though harder to pull off, the spoils can be fruitful. Arlington Road tries to bridge the gap since the last great psychological movie (a little something called Silence of the Lambs) and has lofty intentions. But its efforts fall short.
The movie moves at a snail’s pace and has the feel of a novel instead of a screenplay. Mark Pellington, the director most known for the Pearl Jam video “Jeremy,” is completely wrong for this picture. His blurs, camera swirls, exaggerated close-ups and poor lighting makes you wonder if they forgot to take off the lens cap and seem entirely out of place. Scenes go on forever with no real connection to one other.
Sure, the movie has a boatload of stars. Tim Robbins wondrously pulls off the menacing feel that his creepy neighbor character needs to seem dangerous. Joan Cusack is the standout with her devilish take on suburban motherhood and her never-ending evil grin. But while the acting is good, the movie is devoid of suspense and tension for the most part.
The movie does pack suspense into the last ten minutes. The ending is haunting and will linger with you for some time after you exit the theater. But even a terrific ending doesn’t make up for what the audience has been made to suffer through to get to that point.
Arlington Road tries to reach for the sky with its idea that terror doesn’t come from overseas, but from our own backyards. The idea is ripe with potential, but Arlington Road never lives up to it. I guess the public will have to wait for the next great psychological thriller. But Arlington Road gives me hope for what the future may bring.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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