Nixon (1995)

Director: Oliver Stone

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Mary Steenburgen, James Woods*

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: First of all, the fact that David Hyde Pierce and Madeline Khan were in the same film together means it should be one of the all-time greats. I mean, it’s not a comedy, but still… That’s just science. The rest of the cast is pretty stacked, too. It’s one of those movies where as the opening credits unfurl, I’m more and more excited for the three hours that are to follow.

And the movie is pretty good. Hopkins gives a solid performance throughout, especially as his Welsh access can never be completely supplanted by the Nixonian growl, and his eyes are always a bit too manic** to fully recreate the Yorba Lindan’s scowl. He gives Nixon all of the tragedy he needs to sell a biopic about him, without ever fully forgiving him for his more baffling flaws.

And on the topic of baffling flaws, there are a few things that nag at this viewer. I don’t think I have ever been more pulled out of a film than when—at the height of the famous first debate of the 1960 Presidential election, John Kennedy is clearly depicted via archival footage… until suddenly he isn’t. Turning on a dime, JFK is suddenly played by an actor who isn’t even remotely doing a reasonable impression to match with the previous archival stuff. Where’s Vaughn Meader when you need him?

One more thing from the baffling department, but I actually kind of like this one. I can’t quite fathom why the Watergate burglars were watching what was clearly a Jam Handy instructional film during the movie’s opening scenes. It does obliquely introduce some of the themes with which we are about to reckon, but for the life of me I don’t understand why Howard Hunt and the rest were spending their down time doing this, but I’m oddly charmed that both this movie and the MST3K episode of Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966).

*In a recent review of John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998), mainly because James Woods starred it. This film was much easier to swallow, given that he’s playing one of history’s greatest dickheads.

**One might be tempted to think too much of Lecter, but I also can’t not look at him and see Don Diego de la Vega.

Vampires (1998)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: And I’m not as frustrated with myself on that one, as I have been with my other blind spots in the Carpenter canon.

I’m never more struck by the idea of the alternative utopia than I am when watching movies. We think Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) would have been better if Colin Trevorrow had been allowed to make his version, but he also made Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), so it’s not like if his version of that other film came together, it wouldn’t be riddled with flaws, too. If Tim Burton had made a third Batman film, it would have been far superior to Batman Forever (1995), but I also have the suspicion that he would have tired of the series, been hamstrung by the studio, or both. I’m also tempted to think that Halloween H20 (1998) would have been much better if Carpenter had been involved, but his track record in the 90s was so thoroughly spotty, and with a climax that, we might be better off imagining Carpenter fixing every horror movie we thought went wrong than actually getting to see the movie.

This is all to say, I’m not really enjoying the film, and it only partially has to do with the fact that I can’t stand to look at James Woods for longer than a few minutes, anyway. Here, he’s offering the worst kind of self-conscious, affected performance. It’s no wonder that his greatest work has been as supporting heavies in other films. It’s also no wonder that he can’t get arrested anymore, but that’s another story all together. The best performance in the whole film is Daniel Baldwin, and that’s only because he takes a lighter to his arm in such a way that I’m left with the only conclusion that he felt every flick of that flame.

The movie is filled to the brim with too much meaningless exposition, and far too many bad special effects to have any hope to truly enjoy it. It’s a shame so many of Carpenters films in the 80s were great but under appreciated, marching through his 90s films is watching him become disenchanted with filmmaking all together.

At this point I almost don’t want to watch Ghosts of Mars (2001). I may not like any Carpenter movies after that… No, that’s crazy. I’ll always have The Thing (1982), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and of course, Halloween (1978).

Contact (1997)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, John Hurt

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. However, this particular screening came about after the recent news that the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is being decommissioned after suffering recent structural difficulties. Lora mentioned such news was doubly sad, as it was the location for the opening scenes of the film. I insisted that the film actually started with Jodie Foster discovering the Vega signal at the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

She was right; I was wrong. I apparently hadn’t remembered the film in much detail. It’s entirely possible that I have clearer memories of the trailer than I did of the film itself. And it wasn’t exactly like I saw it once in the theater and haven’t looked at it since. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen at least once in the last ten years. The human mind is weird.

Did I Like It: I’m happy to report that my lack of memory for the film had nothing to do with its quality. Far before Zemeckis decided to be content with being the least interesting filmmaker addicted to the WETA workshop, he was able to follow up the cultural permeation of Forrest Gump (1994) and the singular crowd-pleasing qualities of Back to the Future (1985) with the kind of meaty, thoughtful science fiction movie that best recommends the genre. Films that were common in an age of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Planet of the Apes (1968)* and are rare enough now, give or take an Arrival (2016) or two**.

McConaughey may be a member of that breed of movie stars who is almost entirely personality. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially here where Foster is allowed to give the far more nuanced and interesting performance. Had it been another actor portraying her love interest (or, for that matter, a less confident screen presence than Foster herself) Zemeckis and the studio might have been tempted to let the man overpower the woman in the frame. 

How many science fiction films lead one to talk about the performances as the central feature?

*Between those two and the superlative second season of the original Star Trek, sci-fi may not have seen a better tonnage crossed with quality year than the year Apollo 8 finally moved the idea of landing on the moon from the purely theoretical to the imminently possible. 

**You may want to bring up Interstellar (2014), but for my money Inception (2010) was far more thought-provoking.

Hercules (1997)

Director: Ron Clements, Jon Musker

Cast: Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, James Woods, Susan Egan

Have I Seen It Before?: Never. After right about The Lion King (1994), the degree of my familiarity with Disney feature animation becomes spotty at best. Why now? I accidentally scratched my wife’s car, and watching this on Disney+ is my penance.

Did I like it?: And it wasn’t that much of a penance at all. Even in their relative nadir, Walt Disney Feature Animation would never let something out of the lab that was not designed within an inch of its life to entertain as many people as possible. So what’s not to like about the movie? I mean, I think there isn’t a warm-blooded creature still living who could use less James Woods in their lives, but how about those muses? Danny DeVito is always terrific, and you can’t help but smile when you hear Michael Bolton crooning over the end credits (although that might be a bit of historically revisionist criticism, I’ll admit).

There’s an element of Disney animated films that never work too well for me. The cell animation in this film is pretty great, and each character is designed as if they are the relief art on a Greek vase. Cell animation is great. I wish they continued to make more movies like this. But this is an interesting post-Toy Story (1995) era where the Mouse House (and to be fair, any other feature animation of the era) felt the need to fuse computer generated images with their cell-animated characters. It most often happens in action sequences, and it never looks quite right. I am not sure if it was a cost-saving measure, or if there was a sensibility that merging these two styles would be the cutting edge of artistry, but twenty-plus years later, the seams will always show.