The Dead Zone (1983)

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Martin Sheen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes… It’s been a number of years. I love me some Walken, Cronenberg, and don’t get me started on Martin Sheen…

But Sheen playing an evil President of the United States who brings the world gleefully to its destruction? That’s something that makes one feel unwell and relegates the film to the not often re-watched list.

Did I Like It: Prepping for an episode on the movie for <Beyond the Cabin in the Woods> I read the King novel as well as screening the film, and I’m torn about how I feel about the adaptation. On one hand, the novel is of that era in King’s work where he claimed he could work while coked out of his gills, but it wouldn’t be controversial to say the resulting book is a bit cluttered and overlong. The movie does a stellar job of paring down the story of Johnny Smith’s (Walken) into its most essential elements.

On the other hand, there are some strange choices. One can’t help but wonder if Cronenberg was less auteur than hired hand here, as aside from one errant pair of scissors there isn’t a lot to suggest the Cronenbergian motif as we have collectively come to understand it. That’s a mild complaint, at best, as the film still works despite the lack of the artists touch. Other idiosyncratic filmmakers don’t work out so well when they go off that idiosyncratic path and lend their name as brand to a film. I’m looking in your direction, 21st century Tim Burton.

What’s more, I think the casting of Walken is at best a partial success. Scenes that show him as an increasingly isolated loner are so in his wheelhouse that it almost doesn’t seem like a challenge, but early scenes where he is asked to be a romantic lead, naturally attracting the affections of Sarah (Adams) are a little giggle-worthy, as Walken is not quite able to tune down his fundamental Walken-ness. The rest of the cast is almost too well cast, though, perhaps even unintentionally*. I’m looking in your direction, Mr. Sheen.

Which reminds me. If you’ll excuse me, I now have to mainline as many West Wing episodes as I can possibly stomach to get rid of this icky feeling I’ve been having since I finished watching the film..

*Jordan Peele would one day make great hay out of quite pointedly co-opting cast members of The West Wing to keep white liberals like your humble correspondent off balance.

Wayne's World 2 (1993)

Director: Stephen Surjik

Cast: Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Christopher Walken, Tia Carrere

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: As I watch it this time, it didn’t work for me as much as it had in years past.

For years, I would have sworn by the fact that this is just as good as <Wayne’s World (1992)>. When Carvey has spent the last several decades insisting he wasn’t very good in the film, I blanched. When there was never a Wayne’s World 3, I always shook my head. We got three (and a perpetually fourth threatened) Austin Powers films, but we were only left with this? The kung-fu dubbing was (and still is) pretty great. The joke about the sweet shop owner works on me every time.

And that’s kind of the problem. I didn’t need to be told that Myers went off and wrote a completely different version of the movie—one in which Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Carvey) secede from the United State and form their own nation*—that was well into production before Paramount scuttled it as no one had bothered to get the rights to adapt the source material.

So we’re left with this. A couple of amusing bits, but the whole thing reeks of a single all-night writing session where the eventual answer was to dust off a bunch of sketches that never made it past the Friday Night slaughter.

I guess I’ve truly grown up. I only like the first Wayne’s World now. I’ll studiously avoid re-watching that one for a while. I’m not sure what I might do if that film doesn’t hit the same anymore.

*A comic concept that, if not original in its own right, would have certainly been strange for a movie based on an SNL sketch. Just imagine the Blues Brothers trying that. Ok, I could imagine that. Imagine the guys from A Night at the Roxbury (1998). Actually, that’s pretty funny, too. Why hasn’t this come to pass yet? At any rate I can still imagine the downside being that the idiots of the here and now would have taken some supremely stupid inspiration from that.

Blast from the Past (1999)

Director: Hugh Wilson

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek

Have I Seen it Before: I remember liking the film a great deal, and I can oddly enough point precisely to when I saw it. One of the last days of Spring Break, 1999. And just about the only thing that could distract one’s mind from the reality that there really was another stretch of eighth grade yet to complete was an impromptu movie. It was between this and something else, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what that other movie would have been. Back then, I was thoroughly amused by the movie.

But a movie can’t possibly hold up for that long, right?

Did I Like It: Mostly, yes. I remember laughing more frequently somehow then, but then again I suppose if you asked me honestly, I probably remember laughing a lot more in general in the late 90s.

If there were a couple of comedy stars more charming than Fraser and Silverstone in their 90s prime*, then they’d likely be just a little too precious for their own good. Here, they are exactly as delightful as they need to be. The concept is just clever enough to hold interest throughout. Only the smallest percentage of jokes age like hot milk, and most of those have to do with an absolutely slumming Dave Foley prancing through a caricature that wouldn’t pass the smell test on a Kids in the Hall sketch.

That’s not a bad batting average. If only we could find the movie that turned back the clock twenty-five years or so.

*Sort of wild to think not so much about how much Silverstone needed a hit after Batman & Robin (1997) forced us all to forget how much we all liked her in Clueless (1995), and that Fraser would just maybe (so far) peak a few months later with The Mummy (1999).

Fade to Black (2006)

Director: Oliver Parker

Cast: Danny Huston, Diego Luna, Paz Vega, Christopher Walken

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I think film land would forgive me for blanching at imaginary tales featuring a fictional Orson Welles (Huston). One does not want to pollute the reservoir.

Did I Like It:  I’m going to be the wrong audience for this film, right? It’s kind of like a magician trying to do tricks for another magician. This actually does happen in this film, and the notion that Welles would be flummoxed by anyone attempting slight of hand in front of him was something I wouldn’t have done… because it’s ridiculous. This goes double for the moment where he discusses “self-esteem” with another character. I’m not entirely sure anyone ever used the term “self-esteem” before 1975, and I have a real problem with Welles being concerned with it at all in 1947.

On spec, Danny Huston feels like the wrong casting for Orson, and I’m struck by how badly cast he is as the film unfurls. Can anyone—let’s put me aside for a moment—not look at Mr. Huston and think he not only doesn’t look or sound a bit like Welles, but instead is a dead ringer for his father—and Welles contemporary and leading man in The Other Side of the Wind (2018)— John Huston. There are plenty of actors who have portrayed Welles who didn’t quite fit the bill of the man, but none of them are a dead-ringer for another iconoclastic filmmaker of the time.

Also, the notion that he started to get fat only because Rita Hayworth left him? It’s the kind of pat thing that makes an idea like Rosebud the last thing anyone discusses when talking about Citizen Kane (1941).

So, yes. I have some notes.

Let’s try to look at the film objectively, as if I were not me, and the subject matter of this film was any other subject matter. The film is shot with all of the bland panache of a made-for-cable-movie which would be forgotten virtually the instant the next block of programming takes over. The murder mystery story is utterly pedestrian, and I don’t care a bit when the murderer is revealed. Sequences that place Welles in the middle of post-war Italy have a certain verisimilitude, and I think that may be the most damnable faint praise I can offer the film: it works best when Welles and its genre trappings are incidental to the proceedings.

A View To A Kill (1985)

Director: John Glen

Cast: Roger Moore, Christopher Walken, Tanya Roberts, Grace Jones

Have I Seen it Before: It’s Bond. It’s a lock. I’ve even sat through the shitty ones.

Did I Like It: It may be the only Roger Moore I can say I actually like.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies?” published 04/23/2017.

Roger Moore is my least favorite Bond. Yes, that includes the dour Timothy Dalton, the dim-eyed Australian George Lazenby, Peter Sellers, and… ahem… Woody Allen. That being said, not all of his movies are that bad. In fact, I’d be willing to say of his seven times at the end of the gun-barrel sequence, I actually like as many as two of them.

This—Moore’s final outing in the role—ranks dead last of the series on Rotten Tomatoes*, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Everyone knows that Roger Moore actually went into outer space in one of his movies, right?

Beyond obvious better candidates for worse Bond movies, A View to a Kill has a lot going for it. The theme song, from film composer John Barry and British group Duran Duran is a pure New Wave confection. The action sequences, culminating in a shoot-out at the Golden Gate Bridge is fantastic, and lest we forget: CHRISTOPHER WALKEN IS A BOND VILLAIN. Has there ever been an archetype that an actor was more destined to play than Walken playing one of the heavies in this film?

Critics point to Moore’s advancing age (57 at the time of filming) as contributing to the film’s underlying incredulity. For me, though, Roger Moore always brought a certain older quality to the role. Even in Live and Let Die (1973), he seemed stiffer, more mature than any of his brethren did in their initial movies. Besides, I think an increasingly geriatric Bond is an interesting idea, although I will admit both that I may be alone in this thinking, and that the movie—and the series, for that matter—never bothers to acknowledge that Bond might age.

But, come on! The man went into space in one of his movies! Why? Reasons, that’s why. As long as Moonraker (1979) exists, I can’t accept that this movie is the franchise’s nadir.

*Not including the strange-but-watchable off-brand Never Say Never Again (1983), or the afore-alluded-to comedy version of a multi-car pile up that was Casino Royale (1967).

Batman Returns (1992)

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Michael “Greatest of All Time” Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Christopher “Yeah, But Imagine If I Had Been Playing The Scarecrow” Walken 

Have I Seen it Before: So, so many times.

Did I Like It: I’ll do you one further. Not only is it a great movie—even if it intentionally plays fast and loose with the core of Batman—it may be damn psychic.

But before I get to the film’s prescience, let’s talk a little bit about the movie in the context of the time it was released. One supposes that Warner Bros. wanted to reassemble as much of the team responsible for Batman (1989) as possible, and were willing to just about anything to get Michael Keaton and Tim Burton to acquiesce where they might have otherwise been disinterested in the prospect of returning to the batcave. 

So Warner Bros. decided to let them do whatever the hell they wanted as long as it featured the Penguin, an action set piece with the Batmobile, and was ready for summer 1992.

They delivered on all of those promises, and went completely nuts with everything else. In a movie essentially meant to entertain children, there sure is a lot of filicide, borderline S&M, and biting of Republican noses*. I can almost see why McDonalds got all bet out of shape in the summer of ’92. Maybe that means I’m getting older, but we’re treated to an unashamedly idiosyncratic movie in place of what could have been a throughly bland summer blockbuster. The Schumacher of it all that was to follow proves pretty conclusively that this movie was a special treat that is unlikely to come 

But in the twenty-five years since the film’s release, it has taken on a new life.

Now, I don’t want to say that there is some modern parable in the story of a woman beset by a crushing degree of sexual violence and harassment, while the rest of society is slowly burning under the caprice of a malevolent homunculi trying to grab all the political power he can before laying siege to everything in sight…

But I could.   

*Watch that movie again and tell me that each and every person supporting The Penguin (DeVito) in his bid for Mayor of Gotham isn’t a Republican, and I’ll be able to tell you haven’t been paying attention. Oswald Means Order, indeed.