Forces of Evil On A Bozo Nightmare

Eight of the worst films of the early 1990s.

About half a dozen things wrong with the era are in this picture.

When assorted by quality, the movies of any given period resemble a pyramid, or a mountain: the bottom is the part that’s hardest to get around or avoid. There are far more bad movies than good ones, and really, really awful films – films that can make you angry they even exist – outnumber the movies that deserve lasting notoriety. Yet our culture is mesmerized by irony (a trend that started – ironically – in the 90s), so as a bitter result many of these craptacular failures linger on, year after year.

The early 90s were not the best handful of years for American cinema, but they weren’t the worst, either. Earlier this week we mentioned seven good films from the period that deserved more recognition. Listed below, as threatened, are eight misfires from that same pocket of history. A couple of them are justly forgotten; some were notorious in their time and then forgotten later.

And we understand that every film is somebody’s favorite. We hope yours isn’t found below.

Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991) An early cable TV mainstay, the first Highlander was an overachieving B-movie about immortal humans fighting among themselves for the prize of omniscience. For the sequel, the creators made the immortals dissidents from the planet Zeist instead, exiled here by its dictator (Michael Ironside).

Also, this time around the noble immortal Conner MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) teams up with a freedom fighter (Virginia Madsen) to overthrow the corporation that’s keeping Earth locked in perpetual night. Overly violent, yet pompous thanks to a global warming subplot, the film buried the franchise for years, until the first film got a TV spinoff that jettisoned almost everything about the sequel.

Hudson Hawk (1991) The early 90s were also a time when studios were still working out the bugs of making ultra-expensive blockbusters that people would get excited about seeing. Hudson Hawk, a smart-assed caper comedy starring Bruce Willis and the last dregs of the Bruno shtick he’d worked through the 80s, goes nowhere while spending piles of cash on pretty much everything – sets, stars, special effects, the works.

Yet the film died hard, becoming a punchline and euphemism for “megaflop” until Battlefield Earth stole that dubious distinction in 2000. Not the absolute worst film of the era, except that Tri-Star expected people to line up for tickets. And play the video game. And collect the plastic cups, all to pay off its wretched excess.

The Vanishing (1993) We figure in his fifty-year career Jeff Bridges has only made maybe four or five really lousy films. This remake of the 1988 Dutch thriller Spoorloos, directed by that film’s Geroge Sluizer, can without doubt consider itself one of them. Cast somewhat against type as Machiavellian serial killer Barney Cousins, Bridges steamrolls over costar Kiefer Sutherland (playing a boyfriend obsessed with finding his girlfriend, one of Cousins’ victims) so completely that the psychological tug of war between the two collapses under its own lopsided weight.

The original film understood how to build ambient dread out of the unknown, and the fear of knowing something you have no choice but to learn; The Vanishing telegraphs everything rather than take its time or risk boring its audience, then changes the script to give the story a happy ending. Ah, Hollywood.

Threesome (1994) Like the similarly disingenuous Reality Bites released the same year, writer-director Andrew Fleming’s (Hamlet 2) romantic comedy attempted to cash in on Generation X’s coming of age with this pretentious soap opera about three Gen X’ers – two guys and a girl – sharing a college dorm suite. The script contains every indie trope that got beaten to death throughout the decade: the world-weary voiceover narration, the superficial sex, the self-consciously “witty” vulgarity, the abrupt and unearned emotional reversals.

Stars Josh Hamilton, Stephen Baldwin, and Lara Flynn Boyle are good-looking, vacant, and stiffly deliberate, as if they’re aware they’re in a movie “with a message.” Gen X’ers stayed away in droves, even while the demographic-targeted soundtrack became a hit on college radio stations.

There’s no trailer for the film on YouTube. Just searching the film’s title is awkward enough.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1992 and 94) We mention these two together because they were part of the era’s trend towards high-budget monster movies made by the era’s top talent. Francis Ford Coppola helmed the lush Dracula version, starring the reliably fearless Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) as the titular count and Anthony Hopkins as his nemesis Van Helsing.

The film is flawed everywhere: Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are as flat as ever portraying doomed lovers Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray, and Hopkins – the decade’s highest-paid scene chewer - hams away as usual. Oldman, in a scrotum-shaped wig and old lady nightgown, tries to keep up with the increasingly overheated proceedings. Coppola’s direction and production design are bloated and unconvincing, making fans of the novel take umbrage to its liberal additions of blood-drenched sex and violence.

The film made money anyway, and two years later Coppola produced a Frankenstein film directed by rising triple threat Kenneth Branagh, who cast himself as the mad doctor and Robert DeNiro as his creation. The result, somewhat surprisingly, was bleak, turgid, and opaque while struggling beneath the same middlebrow overreach that doomed Dracula. None of the actors are really bad, though DeNiro often seems uncomfortable in period dress, possibly because Branagh and co-star Helena Bonham-Carter (Fight Club) always seemed to be in movies about Victorian England.

Critics at the time wondered if Branagh was out of his element or in over his head, and the film’s box-office failure delivered his until-then wunderkind career trajectory a punishing blow that hasn’t truly recovered yet.

Jade (1995) A film seemingly assembled in studio committee for box office success, William Friedkin’s (The French Connection) Jade aimed to recreate the kinky titillation success of screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus’ previous Basic Instinct. Featuring emerging leading men David Caruso and Chazz Palminteri alongside rising screen vamps Linda Fiorentino and Angie Everhart, the story of a gruesome murder linked to a sex club among San Francisco’s political elite was nevertheless muddled, hard to follow, and surprisingly light on sex appeal.

Friedkin, known for his gritty ultra-realism, was a poor choice to realize the story’s stylish affluence, and Caruso and Palminteri failed to generate chemistry with their gorgeous co-stars. The result was a dull potboiler uncomfortable with itself.

Exit To Eden (1994) A “comedy” about an island of dominatrices and the love slaves they love, this notorious bomb film inexplicably stars Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell as New Orleans cops going undercover to catch a gang of jewel smugglers, and – and! – it’s directed by Gary Marshall, the creator of Happy Days. Not funny and aggressively unsexy despite Dana Delaney’s (Body of Proof) warm turn as a mistress learning to soften up, the all-over-the-place vibe isn’t helped by O’Donnell’s smarmy narration or the smutty jokes that seemed a cop-out from the issues that Anne Rice’s original novel eagerly confronted.

Even today, it’s hard to imagine the film’s target audience. Was it people who thought Julia Roberts should have worn more studded leather in Pretty Woman? Those who thought Aykroyd was sexy? Bondage enthusiasts who wanted to laugh at themselves? YouTube doesn’t have much of this film. Perhaps that’s just as well.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Miscellaneous Debris, October 2010 Edition

It’s the end of the month. This is what we do.

October wasn’t much of a month for movies, not counting The Social Network - known to millions of lazy people as “The Facebook Movie” or the kinda cool, “Grumpy Old Hitmen” vibe of Red. The month included quite a few box office disappointments, however, most of which look like under-cooked prestige pictures dumped before the holiday season: Life As We Know It, Secretariat, and especially Hereafter are all still playing, yet none of them are lighting up cash registers or critics’ polls.

With the winter movie season just around the corner – and more intriguing movies set to start arriving at a pretty brisk pace – here’s the news that caught our eye this month, presented in no particular order of importance.

We don't have a season two photo: Community

1. The television networks are at this moment braced for the onset of November sweeps, the crucial period in which the nets determine their ad rates for the coming new year. Virtually by tradition, shows pull out all the stops to garner viewers, with even the most established shows growing to great – often absurd lengths – to build their audiences. NBC in particular needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat, since virtually none of its new shows this year have become bona fide ratings hits.

If you’re not watching the peacock’s Community, the best comedy currently on network television, you’re only hurting yourself. Years from now, you’ll want to tell people you watched it when it was still on. Don’t make yourself a liar.

An answer: No Riddler in third Batman film

2. The third installments of trilogies are seldom the best – just ask fans of Star Wars, The Bourne Identity, The Terminator or (if any still exist) The Matrix. Yet if any franchise could break that glass ceiling, it’s likely Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. This week the director gave the L.A. Times’ Hero Complex blog some tantalizing bits about the third film: it will be titled The Dark Knight Rises and include many returning characters from the first two films. Further, it will not be shot in 3-D, and it will not include The Riddler as an antagonist.

The Riddler, a kind of road show Joker who teased Batman with elaborately cryptic crimes, was portrayed by two previous actors: Frank Gorshin had the part in the 1960s television series, and Jim Carey chewed up the scenery as mastermind E. Nigma in 1995′s Batman Forever. By the way, Nolan has already scotched rumors that bad guy Mr. Freeze will appear, either. Still, there are plenty of villains left from which to choose.

3. In more immediate comic book news, Entertainment Weekly unveils Chris Evans as Captain America in their latest issue, displaying the more military-cut uniform and gear the hero has taken to wearing in recent years. Evans, for his part, looks the part; we were skeptical of his ability to pull off a role we felt for years belonged to Mark Valley, but the physical transformation is unmistakable, and after seeing The Losers we’re willing to believe he can give the patriotic hero a human dimension.

The film opens next July, and whether it’s great or terrible it likely won’t be worse than several of the character’s previous transitions to film and television. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how low the bar is currently set.

Brand new Bilbo: Freeman

4. After several years in which it seemed Guillermo Del Toro would helm the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit, New Line announced two weeks ago that Peter Jackson, who produced and directed the trilogy, will now direct the tw0-part spinoff. Both films will be shot in 3-D, with production set to start next February. Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz) will play the younger, feistier Bilbo Baggins (played in the trilogy by Ian Holm.)

Jackson was originally set to serve as executive producer on the films, but stepped in following Del Toro’s departure. We’re all for his taking over, even if his post-LOTR projects, including King Kong and The Lovely Bones, haven’t exactly proven impressive.

Now to explain The Hobbit‘s story with music, here’s Leonard Nimoy:

5. It’s strange to say this after thinking otherwise for most of our lives, but we wouldn’t trade places with Eric Stoltz right now. The 25th anniversary home video releases of the Back To the Future trilogy include featurettes explaining why the young Stoltz, originally cast as Marty McFly, was replaced after five weeks by Michael J. Fox – in short, because he wasn’t funny enough. As if that weren’t bad enough, Stoltz’s current project, the Syfy-produced Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, was just pulled from the network’s schedule for lack of ratings.

The clip below includes footage from his work on Back to the Future:

Keep your chin up, Mr. Stoltz.

6. Another, less famous relic of the 80s also celebrated its silver anniversary as Rock & Rule arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD at the end of September. Set in a postapocalyptic society in which evolved household pets have replaced people, the story centers around a struggling rock band brought into the machinations of a satanic rock star (with the awesome, probably legally actionable name Mok Swagger) intent on raising a demon to Earth.

The soundtrack includes original songs by Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, Lou Reed, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, with Paul LeMat and Catherine O’Hara also supplying vocal talent. Produced by Nelvana – the studio responsible for the Star Wars spinoffs Droids and Ewoks - the film nevertheless belongs in the same 80s adult cartoon subgenre that includes Heavy Metal and Watership Down.

An example (and a recent review here)

7. We’re fascinated by the Vault Collection on Turner Classic Movies’ website, which features DVD releases of lesser known films from Warner Brothers, Universal, and RKO studios available on a press-upon-request basis. The WB collection is especially impressive, with hundreds of movies and television shows available from throughout the studio’s history. Even the prices, by and large, remain reasonable, if sometimes perhaps unrealistic. Good stuff for the film buff looking for that maddeningly hard to find DVD, especially with the holidays coming.

8. Finally, we want to end by promising to update more often with more content. Our staff has been pulled in several different directions by various careers and other responsibilities, but it hurts to see the blog languish with a dearth of material (even as our audience grows thanks to some basic SEO techniques deployed in various locations.) Anyway, we’ll be back next week with both some fresh material and a reprise of our drubbing of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::



70s Cinema: Zardoz

Trying for a fresh perspective on one of the strangest science fiction movies ever made.

Beyond restraint. Beyond good taste. Beyond sense.

When subjects like “failed ambition,” “hubris,” and “wretched excess” come up among film enthusiasts and science fiction fans alike, inevitably John Boorman’s Zardoz enters their conversations. The head-shaking and long, confused sighs that inevitably follow are the film’s most enduring legacy. Ambitious to a catastrophic fault, packed with enough leering self-indulgence to capsize three smaller-scale films and seemingly crazed with adolescent sexuality, at its weird heart sits a nonetheless intriguing dystopian concept. If you can find it.

Yet for all that, and despite its many coats of oily decadence or possibly because of them, it’s a harder film to understand now than ever before. Almost four decades of social change have made its vision and sensibilities quaint but not charming, like a randy old man at an otherwise polite dinner party. Few science fiction films of the 1970s, with their precocious zeal for addressing the immediate social problems of their time, have aged well (though Silent Running and Soylent Green continue to grow perennial), and Zardoz’s pervasive subtext of sexual curiosity and exploration feels dated and shabby in this era of purity rings and government-backed abstinence education. It’s always strange to see a future that never happened, especially one that doesn’t come close; Zardoz isn’t even in the ball park, but the future it proposes (that kernel of an intriguing idea) is no less alluring.

Since I don’t believe words would do the film aesthetic justice, here’s the unbelievably NSFW trailer. See for yourself:

That in just its first few seconds the film bills itself as belonging in the company of (or even exceeding) Stanley Kurbrick’s visionary masterpiece or George Orwell’s classic of political allegory indicates how lofty the film’s self-image remains for the entirety of its runtime.

Its story is slightly easier to absorb: two centuries into the future, following a society-destroying cataclysm, the human race is divided into two sects. The lower class, known as “Brutals,” live in a state of near-barbarity within civilization’s wreckage. The upper class, the Eternals, live in idyllic, force-shielded protected valleys known as Vortexes. The Eternals, in particular the foppish scientist Arthur Frayn, dominate and police the Brutals with a militia known as Exterminators. However, the Eternals have grown sterile and myopic thanks to their endless lifespans spent under the supervision of a sentient computer called Tabernacle; some have given up living and exist in semi-catatonic states, becoming known as Apathetics. The Seniles, aged into decrepitude by Tabernacle in punishment for various crimes, live in a perpetual delirium resembling a grotesque dance ball.

Frayn surreptitiously manipulates the exterminator called Zed (Sean Connery, who in the early 70s was still pushing past his tenure as James Bond) into educating himself, planting clues within a library that prove the Eternals’ supremacy is only illusory. When the floating head that is Frayn’s transport for providing the Exterminators with guns and collecting their grain shipments next arrives, Zed stows away inside, shooting Frayn and sending him tumbling to Earth. Once in the vortex, he’s kept by May (Sarah Kestelman) and Friend (John Alderton), a pair of curious Eternals who want to study his “beastial” nature. Their colleague May (Charlotte Rampling) would rather see Zed destroyed outright, especially after Zed indicates an erotic attraction for her in front of the other Eternals.

The savior of mankind. No, really.

But Zed is smarter and wilier than the Eternals realize, and with Consuella and her followers’ assistance he helps his fellow Exterminators evade the force-shield protecting the Vortex, even while learning how to overcome the Tabernacle and the (feeble) resistance the Eternals offer. As the Exterminators  sack the Vortex’s riches and murder its inhabitants (who welcome death after their protracted lifespans), Zed and a repentant, love-struck May flee to the safety of  a cave, where they begin a normal human romantic relationship that culminates in the birth of a son. Some of the surviving Eternals flee the Vortex for a life among the Brutals, presuambly ending the centuries-old segregation. As the film ends Zed and May grow old in time-lapse progression, ageing and decaying in seconds.

Fashion zombies: Zed and the Eternals

Writer-producer-director Boorman runs into some of his biggest trouble imagining his future world and the distance between its social classes. Given the trope established by other caste system science fiction as found in The Shape of Things to Come or, less explicitly, Logan’s Run, the use of rural Ireland with its sweeping hillsides and rustic stone mansions as the residence of the chosen few seems an awkward choice; the super-science that they exhibit rests largely in their somewhat corny mental powers, a bauble ring that acts as communicator with Tabernacle, and a mirrored pyramid on the estate grounds. Far from an elite and elegant master race (as for example the Eloi of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine), the Eternals are a faintly grungy-looking group of British hippies clad in pastel Renaissance Fair costumes that routinely prove unflattering for the men and exploitative of the women.

Boorman had complete creative control of the production after the box office success of Deliverance  the year before. Perhaps as a result, the mis en scene here remains a baffling example of uncompleted thoughts, of not following ideas and theories through to their logical conclusions but instead placing the “purity” of the narrative impulse over the pragmatisms of restraint and revision – the benchmark “freedom” of the 1960s, and the inadvertent cause of so much bloated overindulgence in the 70s. Zardoz looks very much a film of its era, with nudity that must have seen daring at the time but now seems – thanks again to changing public tastes – merely gratuitous, and even a little sleazy. Nudity appears whenever possible, not whenever and only whenever necessary. Sometimes it helps to further a point, sometimes not – more often not – and the extra use cheapens the ideas of class distinction and personal identity presented elsewhere.

There are a lot of things going on in this picture. A lot of things.

As a director, Boorman allows himself plenty of latitude in building a linear narrative. Scenes jump and cut away, especially those depicting Zed’s early confused rambles through the Vortex. Others, such as those set inside the Tabernacle, have a psychedelic goofiness that’s meant to seem powerful and dramatic but – again thanks to poor aging – fail to make much of an impact. This improves somewhat in the final act, when the Exterminators’ impending attack gives the story a momentum that prevents the preceding soup of exposition and sex from repeating their distractions. Except its tone is all over the place, and the confusion of ideas – especially regarding the merits of dying versus living forever  - get lost in a set piece that’s part gunfight, part orgy, part chase sequence.

Upon co-writing the film’s novelization in 1974, Boorman stated in its introduction that perhaps the story would have been better presented not on the screen but in print. That’s an odd capitulation to make considering the entire film is so much the evident result of a singular – if confused and tumescent - artistic vision. Perhaps the filmmaker realized there was so much to explore in the premise that two hours of film wouldn’t give it ample breathing room. Or that the film had wasted time appealing to instincts that had nothing to do with its ideas. In the four decades since, as Western cinema has moved away from the auteur model and towards standardization of aesthetic and theme, the mis en scene of most science fiction has become numbingly uniform. Zardoz is its own creation, a fascinating oddity that’s now more relic than prophetic. Not to be mistaken for a good film, but rather a curiosity, it’s a bold and frightening journey into the past.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

70s Cinema: Murder On The Orient Express

Sidney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of the famous Agathie Christie mystery is an opulent, sophisticated diversion.

In his charmingly candid 1995 memoir Making Movies, director Sidney Lumet discusses at length the painstaking art direction and production design that went into recreating Murder On The Orient Express‘s  mid-1930s setting. Lumet and production designer Tony Walton worked endlessly, “polishing every tile” to try to recapture the famous train’s ultra-luxurious Art Deo trappings, in many cases using authentic Wagon-Lit furniture and paneling in their own sets. Lumet was determined to make the film entertaining and frothy, admitting such tones weren’t normally his strength but that he was going to create a cheerful spirit “if I had to kill myself and everyone else to accomplish it.”

That weird duality – determined to amuse – infuses the film with a sophistication and chilly elegance that’s fun to watch but that become almost intangible once the film is left to memory. As a filmmaker Lumet is always a master craftsman if not always an artist,  and his straightforward approach to material that’s similarly two-sided – smart but not pretentious, weighty but not substantial – sometimes feels workmanlike. Then again, Christie’s novels aren’t known for their humanity or emotion, either, and half the fun is watching the clues and motives fall, machine like, into their proper place.

The story involves Christie’s master sleuth, Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) and his attempts to solve the murder of one of the train’s passengers as it was caught overnight in a snow bank. The victim, an American millionaire (Richard Widmark) with a shadowy past, had attempted to hire Poirot as his bodyguard only the night before. Relaxing in the next sleeper car, Poirot hears the crime and agrees to assist his Wagon-Lit executive friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam) solve the murder before the train is dug loose and the local police arrive.  But the first class coach is packed tight with a dozen suspects of several different nationalities, and the crime may connect to a notorious kidnapping and murder (itself immediately evocative of the Lindberg baby abduction) five years before. Much of the film’s second half concern’s Poirot’s meticulous, crafty interrogation of each suspect, with hard-focused flashbacks serving to illustrate their alibis.

Though getting neither the time nor the space to truly stretch out into distinct characters, the stellar cast makes the most of their screen time, alternately loud or quiet, or quietly loud. Ingrid Bergman won an Academy Award for her turn as Greta, a simple-minded Swedish missionary, but the rest of the players, like a full if slightly too-rich meal, satisfy in giant doses. Of the loud set, Lauren Bacall is brassy and imperious as an American aristocrat, while Tony Perkins gives his role as the victim’s secretary a shifty, overzealous spark. On the quiet side, Bergman is memorable, as always, and Jean-Pierre Cassel is poised and haunting as the train car’s conductor.

More or less underused, considering their star power, are Sean Connery and John Gielgud as two very British veterans hiding behind their military and national bearing. “Why must the English conceal even their most impeccable emotions?” Poirot wonders aloud, one of the dozens of subtly penetrating observations that Paul Denn and Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay gives Finney to chew and bellow. Poirot, a self-professed “ignorant Belgian,” is the center of the whole piece, and Finney plays the character big enough to fill the train’s narrow aisles and passageways. In a film meant to be a nostalgic trip back to vanished grandeur, the sheer hot air of Finney’s performance, full of Old World pomp and pretension, provides the gravitational pull to hold everything around it in place.

Which is probably for the best, because the climax of the film essentially requires him to yell at the giant supporting cast in one long and complicated explanation of his murder hypotheses. (He has two, of course. A story such as this would consider having a single theory unforgivably crude.) The ending, as most solutions to good mysteries usually manage, achieves the balance of seeming a surprise at first but inevitable upon reflection. The explanation is spelled out, acted out, and then reiterated just to make sure the audience gets what’s going on; the mystery train doesn’t leave stragglers. Poirot gets his man, or men, or women and men, and with nothing else to say the film stops, and the effervescence begins to dissipate at once. Ultimately, Murder On The Orient Express is not a great film, but it is a great film while you’re watching it, which is all it wants anyway.

- Michael Kabel

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Forces of Evil On A Bozo Nightmare

Eight of the worst films of the early 1990s, our generation’s gilded age.

About half a dozen things wrong with the era are in this picture.

When assorted by quality, the movies of any given period resemble a pyramid, or a mountain. There is very little at the top and much more in the middle. But the bottom is the widest section, the part that’s hard to get around or avoid. There are far more bad movies than good ones, and by proportion it just makes sense that there are more really, really awful films – films that can make you angry they even exist – than films that deserve lasting notoriety. Yet our culture is mesmerized by irony (a trend that started – ironically – in the 90s), so as a bitter result many of these craptacular movies linger on, year after year.

The early 90s were not the best handful of years for American cinema, but they likely weren’t the worst, either. In fact the truly horrendous films of the late 90s far outnumber their counterparts from the decade’s first half. Last week we mentioned seven films from the period that deserved more recognition. This week, as we threatened then, we’re considering seven of the worst from that pocket of history between the Big 80s and the Shallow 90s, an era that often encapsulated both decade’s cultural pitfalls.

This list is not supposed to detail the absolute worst films, and by no means should it be considered exhaustive. A couple of them are justly forgotten; some were notorious in their time and then forgotten later. Each one’s inclusion is just our opinion, and we understand that every film is somebody’s favorite. We hope yours isn’t among those below.

Highlander 2: The Quickening (1991) An early cable TV mainstay, the first Highlander was an overachieving B-movie about immortal humans fighting a clandestine war among themselves for the prize of omniscience. For the sequel, the creators made the immortals dissidents from the planet Zeist instead, sent here in exile by its fascist dictator (Michael Ironside). Also, this time around the noble immortal Conner MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) teams up with a freedom fighter (Virginia Madsen) to overthrow the corporation that’s keeping Earth locked in perpetual night. Overly violent, stupid, and yet pompous thanks to a global warming subplot, the film buried the franchise for years, until the first film got a TV spinoff that jettisoned almost everything about the sequel.

Hudson Hawk (1991) The early 90s were also a time when studios were still working out the bugs of making ultra-expensive blockbusters that people would get excited about seeing. Hudson Hawk, a smart-assed caper comedy starring Bruce Willis and the last dregs of the Bruno shtick he’d worked through the 80s, goes nowhere while spending piles of cash on pretty much everything – sets, stars, special effects, the works. Yet the film died hard, becoming a punchline and euphemism for “megaflop” until Battlefield Earth stole that dubious distinction in 2000. Not the absolute worst film of the era, except that Tri-Star expected people to line up for tickets. And play the video game. And collect the plastic cups, all to pay off its wretched excess.

The Vanishing (1993) We figure in his fifty-year career Jeff Bridges has only made maybe four or five really lousy films. This remake of the 1988 Dutch thriller Spoorloos, directed by that film’s Geroge Sluizer, is almost assuredly one of them. Cast somewhat against type as Machiavellian serial killer Barney Cousins, Bridges steamrolls over costar Kiefer Sutherland (playing a boyfriend obsessed with finding his girlfriend, one of Cousins’ victims) so completely that the psychological tug of war between the two collapses under its own lopsided weight. The original film understood how to build ambient dread out of the unknown, and the fear of knowing something you have no choice but to learn; The Vanishing telegraphs everything rather than take its time or risk boring its audience, then changes the script to give the story a happy ending. Ah, Hollywood.

Threesome (1994) Like the similarly false Reality Bites released the same year,  writer-director Andrew Fleming’s (Hamlet 2) romantic comedy attempted to cash in on Generation X’s coming of age with this pretentious soap opera about three Gen X’ers – two guys and a girl – sharing a college dorm suite. The script contains every indie trope beaten to death throughout the decade: the world-weary voiceover narration, the superficial sex, the self-consciously “witty” vulgarity, the abrupt and unearned emotional reversals. Stars Josh Hamilton, Stephen Baldwin, and Lara Flynn Boyle are good-looking, vacant, and stiffly deliberate, as if they’re aware they’re in a movie “with a message.” Gen X’ers stayed away in droves, even while the demographic-targeted soundtrack became a hit on college radio stations.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1992 and 94) We mention these two together because they were part of the era’s trend towards high-budget monster movies made by the era’s top talent. Francis Ford Coppola helmed the lush Dracula version, starring the reliably fearless Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) as the titular count and Anthony Hopkins as his nemesis Van Helsing. Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are as flat as ever portraying doomed lovers Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray, and critics and fans of the novel took umbrage to the script’s liberal additions of sex and bloody violence. Coppola’s direction and production design are bloated and unconvincing. Hopkins hams away as usual while Oldman, in a scrotum-shaped wig and old lady nightgown, tries to keep up with the increasingly overheated proceedings.

Still, the film made money, and two years later Coppola produced a Frankenstein film directed by rising triple threat Kenneth Branagh, who cast himself as the mad doctor and Robert DeNiro as his creation. The result, somewhat surprisingly, was bleak, turgid, and opaque while struggling beneath the same middlebrow overreach that doomed Dracula. None of the actors are really bad, though DeNiro often seems uncomfortable in period dress, probably partly at least because Branagh and co-star Helena Bonham-Carter (Fight Club) always seem to be in movies about Victorian England. Critics at the time wondered if Branagh was out of his element or in over his head, and the film’s box-office failure delivered his until-then wunderkind career trajectory a punishing blow.

Jade (1995) A film seemingly built in studio committee for box office success, William Friedkin’s (The French Connection) Jade aimed to recreate the kinky titillation success of screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus’ previous Basic Instinct. Casting emerging leading men David Caruso and Chazz Palminteri alongside screen vamps Linda Fiorentino and Angie Everhart, the story of a gruesome murder linked to a sex club among San Francisco’s political elite was muddled, hard to follow, and surprisingly light on sex appeal. Friedkin, known for his gritty ultra-realism, was a poor choice to realize the story’s stylish affluence, and Caruso and Palminteri failed to generate chemistry with their gorgeous co-stars. The result was a film about dirty sex that was uncomfortable with itself.

Exit To Eden (1994) A notorious bomb about an island of dominatrices and the love slaves they love,the film inexplicably stars Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell as New Orleans cops going undercover there to catch a gang of jewel smugglers, and – and! – it’s directed by Gary Marshall, the creator of Happy Days. Not funny and aggressively unsexy despite Dana Delaney’s (Desperate Housewives) warm turn as a mistress learning to soften up, the all-over-the-place vibe isn’t helped by O’Donnell’s smarmy narration or the smutty jokes that seemed a cop-out from the issues that Anne Rice’s original novel eagerly confronted. Even today, it’s hard to imagine the film’s target audience. Was it people who thought Julia Roberts should have worn more studded leather in Pretty Woman? Those who thought Aykroyd was sexy? Bondage enthusiasts who wanted to laugh at themselves?

YouTube doesn’t have much of this film. Perhaps that’s just as well.

On a special note, last night Screaming Blue Reviews received its 100,000th visitor. If you’ve been reading us from the beginning or (like most of you) showed up looking for a picture of Mickey Rourke or Grace Park, thanks for coming and please check us out again.

- Michael Kabel

  :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Let Us Now Praise Former Leading Men

Seven actors we want to see return to the Hollywood A-List.

Fame, it’s often said, is a fickle bitch. Increasingly so in the movie industry, where for many stars their time at the top amounts to a couple years or even just several months. The bitter truth is that plenty of so-called “stars” these days deserve the brevity of their acclaim. But plenty of others don’t.

Hollywood is hardly a meritocracy – it never was, it will never become one – but every now and then an actor makes it based on hard work, attention to their craft, and of course a great big dose of talent. The right part is important, too, but most actors have a body of work that shows a rise through the rank and file. Sometimes, unfortunately, they spend more time climbing than they do reaping the benefits of their work; conversely, very few overnight successes have long runs of quality stuff.

Presented below are seven actors that at one time (predominantly the previous decade) or another sat atop Hollywood’s A-List but have slipped a bit in recent years. They’re all still working, and in fact at least one is furiously productive. But we think they deserve bigger roles in better projects than what they’re doing now. We’ve included video clips to show them playing against type , or at least public image, and included some “unsung” performances where their work deserved more recognition than it actually received.

1. Ray Liotta: The tough guy with the icy blue eyes got his break leading DeNiro and Pesci in Goodfellas (1990) but he’d actually been making films for more a decade already, including 1998′s underrated gem Dominick & Eugene (a kind of moody, less precious Rain Man). Best unsung performance: as a world-weary father to Johnny Depp’s drug kingpin in Ted Demme’s Blow (2001). Possible career tipping point: The knee-jerk answer here is 1995′s Operation Dumbo Drop, though it’s more likely he just played the psycho asshole bit (Turbulence, Something Wild, Unlawful Entry) once too many times. Career advice: Stop making so many films with Guy Ritchie and broaden your screen persona. Alternately, find the right premium cable project.

2. Andy Garcia: Elegant and reserved but with a smoldering charisma, Garcia outshone both Kevin Costner and Sean “I’m using my Scottish burr to play an Irishman” Connery in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables (1987). Best unsung performance: as a cop-turned-prosecutor getting his idealism crushed by political reality in Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls On Manhattan (1996). Possible career tipping point: Garcia made solid work through the 90s, including perfect turns in the period classics When A Man Loves A Woman (1994) and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995). The same year he headlined the epic turkey Steal Big, Steal Little, however, and despite subsequent quality performances in Hoodlum (1997) and Desperate Measures (1998) the career damage was done. Career advice: Find a project that appeals to his romantic charm. Also, he and Liotta somehow keep winding up in the same B-movie action flicks. As with Liotta, take a break from the gun-crazy stuff.

3. Michael Keaton: The deceptively intelligent Keaton was the king of working class comedies in the 1980s, with winning turns in Mr. Mom (1983) and Gung-Ho (1986). He also headlined the cult favorites Johnny Dangerously (1984) and Beetle Juice (1988) before finishing the decade in Tim Burton’s two Batman films, both of which are aging now like medical waste. Best unsung performance: as a sleazeball coke addict stumbling towards clarity in 1988′s little-seen Clean And Sober. Possible career tipping point: Somewhere in the 90s Keaton’s screen persona shifted from blue-collar everyguy to white-collar media smartass in lukewarm fare such as The Paper and Speechless. Playing a rock singer-turned-living-snowman in 1998′s Jack Frost amounted to career hemlock. Career advice: Channel the darker side of his acting repertoire already used to great effect in Desperate Measures and Pacific Heights (1990). By all means find a way to reprise the role of Ray Nicolette, the scene-stealing cop he played in both Jackie Brown (1997) and Out of Sight (1998).

4. Gabriel Byrne: The brooding and mysterious Byrne lit up screens in the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990) as well as making similarly well-crafted performances in Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997) and The Usual Suspects (1995).  For a while in the 90s, Byrne had the career that these days the industry insists on giving to Clive Owen – the European tough guy desired by women but admired by men. Nothing against his starring role in HBO’s In Treatment, but we miss his film work. Best unsung performance: playing a lonely electronics expert working to blanket Los Angeles in surveillance coverage in Wim Wender’s The End of Violence (1997). Possible career tipping point: Back-to-back appearances playing a priest in Stigmata and the Devil in End of Days (1999), both terrible biblical-themed horror films cashing in on Millennial anxiety, seemed like an attempt at self-typecasting. Career advice: We’re curious to see what Byrne could do with some intelligent science fiction. Failing that, remind audiences how good he is at neo-noir.

5. Bill Pullman: Affable, easygoing Pullman broke through by upstaging both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler in the hilarious Ruthless People (1986). 90s-era turns leading giant ensemble casts in Singles (1992) and Independence Day (1996) established him as a solid if not exactly riveting leading man. But his under-the-radar turns in The Last Seduction (1994) and Lost Highway (1997) showed a depth that his higher-profile studio work didn’t. Best unsung performance: Daryl Zero, the world’s smartest man and most neurotic private detective, in Jake Kasdan’s weirdly endearing Zero Effect (1998). Possible career tipping point: Hard to say. Never a stranger to flops (Mr. Wrong, Brokedown Palace), Pullman’s career didn’t burn out so much as fade away. Lately he’s taken to strong character work in uneven indie fare like Bottle Shock (2008) and Nobel Son (2007). Like Dennis Quaid before Far From Heaven, he seems one good film away from a total career rebirth. Career advice: Getting slightly more selective in his indie work won’t hurt; find a project to direct as well as lead, as with 2000′s telepic remake of The Virginian.

6. Kevin Kline: Articulate, elegant, witty – Kline is an old-school movie star equally comfortable in dramatic and comedy roles alike. Never a bad performer even when appearing in bad movies, his good films are virtually legion, including semi-classics like The Big Chill (1983), Chaplin (1992), and of course A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Best unsung performance: Joey Boca, the philandering pizza parlor owner targeted for death by his wife (Tracey Ullman) and two drugged out hitmen (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves) in Lawrence Kasdan’s black-as-pitch I Love You To Death (1990). Possible career tipping point: A decline really began with his paycheck-grabbing turn in 1999′s Wild Wild West. Lately too many of his films look like ripoffs of more successful movies, including the American Beauty knockoff Life As A House (2001) and the poor man’s Dead Poet’s Society melodrama The Emperor’s Club (2002). Career advice: We’d watch Kline read the phone book if Kasdan directed it. Failing such a reunion, get back together on a project with John Cleese or William Hurt.

7. Billy Bob Thornton: Thornton has made a career out of defying or straight-up subverting public and industry expectations. He also often seems smarter than he lets on, hinting at a ferocious intellect even when playing the mentally challenged or emotionally crippled. His well-modulated, nuanced turns in underrated fare like Bandits (2001) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) go against the public’s expectations of his hard-partying redneck demeanor; audiences seem more comfortable seeing him play boozy curmudgeons in Bad Santa (2003) and The Bad News Bears (2005). Best unsung performance: Jacob Mitchell, the mentally challenged sidekick who makes a sacrifice to Bill Paxton’s life-changing scheme in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Possible career tipping point: There’s a case to be made for simple public and industry backlash. A string of odd film choices, including 2002′s Waking Up In Reno and 2006′s The Astronaut Farmer, make him hard to get a lock on. Career advice: Return to writing his own scripts, as he did in his Oscar-winning Sling Blade (1997). Also, take another stab at directing, both his own projects (Sling Blade) and for others (the 2000 Matt Damon vehicle All The Pretty Horses).

Next Wednesday we’ll unveil our list of seven former A-List leading women who should get the comeback treatment.

- Michael Kabel

  :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::