The Hunt for Red October (1990)

Director: John McTiernan

Cast: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones

Have I Seen it Before: Yup.

Did I Like It: So, lately I’ve been listening to many of the later (read: preposterously impossible to be adapted to film) Tom Clancy novels via audio book and before we get into this film, I think now is as good a time as any to get some things off my chest. Never have I ever been through such a more progressively ridiculous set of events in my life, and I include both the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump presidency in that statement. Why have I subjected myself to these interminable tomes? Well, I had purchased Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears (read, those Clancy books which were begrudgingly—by all parties—adapted to film) on Audible and with my reading goal for 2021 well passed, I could take some chances on some books I only bought on an ill-defined impulse. By the time I was in the middle of Fears—which at least partially hinges on a subplot involving Ryan’s bout of erectile dysfunction*--I was “Jim-ing” an unseen camera so often, that John Krasinski’s eventual casting finally made sense. I kept going because the knowledge that Ryan’s supreme intelligence and only-honest-man-in-town-ness propels him into the Presidency… for reasons. It’s time I’ll never get back, and by the time of Executive Orders when Ryan addresses the nation and applauds his fellow citizens for making responsible decisions for themselves in the efforts to stem an outbreak of airborne Ebola, I laughed so hard at my car’s stereo, I fear I may have hurt my Honda Civic’s feelings.

Tom Clancy is garbage. He continues to be garbage, and he’s been dead for nearly ten years.

But, here’s the good news! None of the later—and even occasionally posthumous—absurdities of the saga of John Patrick Ryan are here. This is a brilliantly constructed spy thriller, where Jack Ryan (Baldwin – could you imagine him, or for that matter Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, or Krasinski portraying Clancy’s latter-day Reaganesque fever dream of a President?) is the perpetually under-estimated smartest man in the room… or boat.

While I might say that the story ultimately halts more than it concludes, the trip to that anti-climax is engaging enough, and all of the people involved aren’t bringing to the proceedings the same baggage as the source material** that it’s extraordinarily difficult not to like the film, despite my steadily increasing antipathy for the character.

*Clancy sure knew his audience. I’ve got to give him that.

**To be fair, part of the film’s strength is that the direct source material is far and away Clancy’s strongest book. It came before he started to buy his own press.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Director: James Foley

Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes. I may have had the DVD on my shelf for the better part of twenty years, and I’m reasonably sure I haven’t watched it since buying it.

Did I like it?: That’s not to say that the film has no quality! I’m thinking the main reason I haven’t watched it in the last few years because the prospect of watching anything with Kevin Spacey in it is pretty icky. Thankfully his character, Williamson, may not be the villain of the piece, but he certainly gets berated for being subhuman by literally every other human being in the film. We’re not supposed to like anybody in this film, I’d imagine, but there’s something right about people repeatedly telling Spacey to go fuck himself.

Cinematically, the film is flimsy in the extreme. Stylistically stuck in the early nineties, the opening credits almost feel like they belong to a movie made for cable TV. The rest of the film is stagey and practically frozen.

I’m probably tempted to forgive the film for those missteps. While there could have certainly been a bit more adaptation (other than Alec Baldwin’s work in the film’s early minutes, which bewilders me that the play could survive without it), but anything that strayed too far from Mamet’s play would have probably missed the point. We’re not here for camera acrobatics. We’re here to see great actors shout at each other at the top of their lungs and ultimately be made into chumps by fate, Roma included. Honestly, is there anyone in the film who ends up with anything resembling dignity? Even Baldwin’s character is relegated to vain attempts to motivate people he clearly thinks are beyond help. Roma’s (Pacino) lost the Cadillac and may only just barely make it with the steak knives. They’re going to catch Moss (Harris) before too long, especially when Shelley (Lemmon) gives him up to weasel out of the trouble he’s found himself in*.

Is it possible that, at the end of the day that Spacey is the only one who got out ahead? Is he really Keyser Soze? Ugh. I really could do without watching him ever again. Anyone got a bead on grafting Christopher Plummer into the movie?

*I’m now honestly wondering if Moss, despite all of his talk, had anything to do with the theft of the Glengarry leads. Shelley took the opportunity, finally, and it likely destroyed most of them.

The Shadow (1994)

Director: Russell Mulcahy

Cast: Alec Baldwin, John Lone, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Boyle

Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, sure. I’m still kind of befuddled why this film didn’t take fire in 1994 like it might have. There are troubles with the film, to be sure (more on that later), but there are several far worse film that captured the imagination of America’s youth. It sure captured mine. I bought up all the Shadow action figures I could get a hold of, and grabbed as many tapes of old Shadow radio shows as I could, igniting my interest in both Orson Welles and radio drama.

Now that I think about it, this film has quite a lot to answer for.

Did I like it?: Let’s dwell on the positives, shall we? I think the only thing that separated Alec Baldwin from a long run as a verifiable leading man is a run of bad luck. In this film he is equal parts menacing, funny, and charming. Had he been British, he would have made a great Bond. Even though this film kind of falls apart under its own weight, I could have watched a long series of him as Lamont Cranston. I’ll eagerly take 30 Rock as consolation prize, though. The rest of the cast is brilliant. The movie contains Jonathan Winters, Ian McKellan, and Tim Curry without breaking a sweat. Every other bit part (and some of the leads, let’s be honest) ooze b-movie goodness in ever second of screen time.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score is one of his best, and that’s a career that’s included Gremlins (1984), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

The film looks amazing, from the cinematography through the production design, all the way through the set decoration. I dare say a far more effective art deco nightmare than some of the contemporary Batman films. It manages to make an effective Times Square of the the 1930s using only matte paintings, and the Shadow’s sanctum is one of the cooler sets that is tragically underutilized. The whole world, filled with an evil man forced into redemption—and his agents—is fantastic.

Now, if all of that had been used in service of a storyline that wasn’t held together by very weak string, and further waylaid by what feels like tampering at the editing bay, then we’d be celebrating this film for the delicious pop explosion it could have been.

But then again, so many films stories are flimsy as hell. Who cares? Let’s give this film all of the credit it is due.

Beetlejuice (1988)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Michael (f’ing) Keaton, Winona Ryder, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Jeffery Jones, Glenn Shadix, Robert Goulet, Dick Cavett… Christ, the cast on this picture is bonkers.

Have I Seen it Before: It is a core member of the “VHS tapes I wore down to the point of evaporation during childhood” association. 

Did I Like It: It’s a weird movie, but that’s more of an objective statement, isn’t it?

Beetlejuice—Tim Burton’s second feature—is about death. Again, that seems like a pretty objective statement. Perhaps it is about death in the same way that Young Frankenstein (1974) is about neurosurgery. And yet, over dozens of viewings in the late 80s and early 90s, that never seemed to be what the film was about. If you were to ask me in my first decade of life what the story of the film actually is, and I would probably tell you that some people wander around a movie for the better part of an hour before Michael Keaton shows up and the real movie begins. This may be because a) I was more familiar with the ensuing cartoon series based on the movie, that transformed Beetlejuice (Keaton) and Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) from the lecherous demon in search of a suicidal child bride into a pair of wacky pals and b) I wasn’t quite ready to comprehend the idea of death at the age of five.

And yet, I can kind of get where I missed the idea way back when. The whole movie attaches itself to a pointedly nebulous aesthetic. The football team is out of left field, especially when they’re in the last shot of the picture. Why do dead people get sent to Saturn? Why is it a huge public health issue in the deceased community? Why has no one noticed Sand Worms traveling the surface of Saturn? Why did the sandworm appear out of nowhere at the Maitland/Deetz residence? That one’s a bit of deus ex machina, right? Don’t get me started on the fact that this may be the only film in existence which is regularly uncertain about the spelling of its title.

And so the film exists in a state of contradiction, often bewildering, but just as frequently charming. It might be the key case study in my Michael Keaton Theory. (Which postulates that a film is automatically ten percent better than it would have been otherwise. It works wonders in cases like Robocop (2014), and brings the rottentomatoes score of a movie like Multiplicty (1996) into the mid-eighties).

Another thought that only just now occurred to me on this screening: So odd that Burton directed this as sort of a warm up to Batman (1989) and didn’t cast Baldwin as the Dark Knight the next year. I mean, I’m grateful. Baldwin at this point in his career is too-on-the-nose for the “dance of the freaks” Burton was intent to bring to the screen, but the fact that the studio didn’t insist—or, in the alternative, Burton was able to bypass their insistence—is sort of freaky.