Starship Troopers (1997)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. All young people think they’ll have the same buzzy, borderline narcotic feeling for all of Verhoeven’s films that they had when they first saw Robocop (1987)*.

Did I Like It: You can keep your Showgirls (1995) and your Hollow Man (2002), this is as good as late-stage American Verhoeven can get. And this is even excluding the fact that Denise Richards has never been able to get anywhere in the vicinity of being able to act. I can’t say Van Dien is all that better of a performer than his love interest, but Van Dien is at least able to fit into the testosterone heavy parts of the film. I don’t think Richards has ever fit into a role correctly. I must be mellowing in my increasingly older age. Time was, one resoundingly false performance can obliterate an entire movie. I’m not sure when I got to the point where I can look past something like that.

There’s enough of the demented political satire present in Verhoeven’s best to keep things interesting, but you really have to want to get what’s going on in order to get it. Something about the crowd I saw this with made me think that they were resolutely on the side of not just the humans, but the humans with enough moral fortitude to strive for citizenship.

The film is resoundingly on the side of the bugs, and at this point so am I. They’ve made some mistakes, sure, but I don’t think they started traveling among the stars wanting to start any trouble. They were just prepared with trouble when it came.

And I don’t care what the brain bug did, no one deserves that kind of treatment.

*When not edited for TV, naturally.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Sophie Marceau, Robert Carlyle, Denise Richards

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. It was twenty-five years ago, and I can’t remember the precise details about that Christmas season, but I do have the distinct memory of being stuck at the mall for a number of hours, and managed to pull away from whatever was going on to go catch a screening.

Did I Like It: As with most of the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, twenty-five years ago I remember thinking that the post-gun barrel pre-title sequence was a well-crafted little thriller. The succeeding film meanders through perfunctory scenes, punctuated by an occasional ambition to give some depth to Bond that was never going to be fully realized until they were able to re-boot things entirely with Casino Royale (2006).

I’m pretty much feeling that same way now. Renard (Carlyle) is an interesting villain, but oddly enough may have worked better in a novel than it does in film. Having him already essentially dead might have fueled several good chapters trying to get into the head of someone who has already died but is losing sensation after sensation as he slowly loses consciousness. In a film, it removes any sort of pretense to tension, and makes him essentially invulnerable for those moments where he has to exchange blows with Brosnan.

Dame Judi Dench clearly wielded her power well going into this film. Having a number of juicy scenes to play in Goldeneye (1995), she spent most of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) doing control-room schtick that wouldn’t have challenged Bernard Lee or Robert Brown in earlier films. Here, she has a very real role in the story and even plays into the action as it unfolds. Yet another example of the series’ ambitions that were waiting for Craig.

On the “Bond Girl”* front, it is a mixed bag. Sophie Marceau plays an interesting character, archly named in the best Bond tradition. She is full of as close to surprises as this era of the franchise is likely to get, and Marceau clearly understand the best parts of the assignment at hand. Then there’s Denise Richards. Whoo, boy. It’s not so much that she’s bad casting for a nuclear scientist (she is, but at least she has a good sense of humor about it, as evidence by her later appearances on 30 Rock), but it is that her performance is so perfunctory that she makes Britt Eklund and Tanya Roberts look like possible heirs to… Well, Dame Judi Dench, now that I think about it.

*It almost feels like that term should be trademarked, no?

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Director: Michael Patrick Jann

Cast: Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards

Have I Seen It Before: Pretty sure I have, although memory has faded. There was definitely a time where I was taking in every mockumentary I could get my hands on, and the sight of a beer can welded to the remains of Ellen Barkin’s hand is not one would just forget.

Did I Like It: It is regularly very funny, and with a pitch-black quality to the proceedings that in my own head this film and Fargo (1996) take place in the same universe*.

But there’s got to be some kind of problem, right?

If one were to get within striking range of watching this now, especially with people who love the film—as I did during a late-night screening at the Circle—there are always whispers that the film couldn’t possibly be made today**, for fear of it being immediately cancelled. I tend to think that for every pitch-black joke on display, its horrifyingly funny not because we are laughing at someone’s plight, but more because we realize that the only reason these characters are as miserable as they are is because the myopic conservatism that passes for some sense of community in Mount Rose obliterates any degree of human kindness and will inevitably destroy everyone it touches. I’m laughing at Kirstie Alley and Denise Richards, not so much Will Sasso or Alexandra Holden.

Then again, maybe it’s the day before the election, and I’m reaching.

*Aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it (and I sincerely hope you don’t miss it) appearance by Kristin Rudrüd as “Pork Products Lady”, there’s no cast overlap. There’s almost as much connective tissue between these two movies as there is between Fargo on film and TV.

**When did 1999 become so long ago? Oh. Sometime between numbers starting with “2” and it being a quarter of century ago. Got it.