Arnie Has His Oscar Moment

Arnold Schwarzenegger had his Oscar moment. Y’know,the movie that proves an action hero can really act (sorta like Sly Stallone in Creed.)

Too bad very few people saw it (and probably no one from the Academy.)

Too bad, too, because (in my opinion) the big guy is actually pretty good in this one.

He doesn’t play a homicidal robot (The Terminator), a legendary warrior (Conan the Barbarian), even a gun-totin’ DEA agent (Sabotage) or any of the larger than life heroes he has portrayed in past flicks.

Instead, he is just a farmer and a grieving father. Seem his daughter (Abigail Breslin), the Maggie of the title, has gone to New York and picked up a strange sort of virus which will turn her into something inhuman in 10-15 days. 

MAGGIE – Arnie & Abby play dad & daughter

All Arnie’s character can do is watch and wait while his beloved daughter slowly turns into something straight out of The Walking Dead.  Turn Maggie’s “condition” into a metaphor for terminal illness, as some viewers have suggested, and the scenario becomes truly chilling.

I get the feeling this was a deeply personal film for Mr.S. For one thing, he is listed as one of the producers. And, unlike recent films, he has put himself in the hands of an untested young director (Henry Hobson) and screenwriter (John Scott 3). You can see the pain in his eyes as his character watches helplessly while his daughter worsens and the time begins to shorten before he is forced to make, what for a parent, must be an unthinkable decision. The famous (or infamous) Teutonic accent is seldom heard.

Sure, if you’re a cynic, you could chuckle as Ah-nuld goes heavily dramatic on you. Or you can immerse yourself in the film and feel a father’s pain and wonder how he will resolve his dilemma. Will he end his daughter’s life or will he succumb to the inevitable?

It is not hard to see why this film did not play well in the multiplex. That sort of suspense is way more subtle – and probably alienating to action fans accustomed to the  thrill-a-minute editing common to the genre. 

However, director Hobson has decided (perhaps, stubbornly) to unfurl the story at his own (some might say, glacial) pace. The result, to this viewer, is a bleak, atmospheric human drama with no easy answers.

Director Henry Hobson makes his first feature film with Maggie

Credit the British-born filmmaker as well with pumping some fresh blood into the tired zombie genre by making us realize that those shuffling monsters in movies and TV once had lives and feelings much like our own. He has also gotten a convincingly emotional performance (as far as this writer is concerned) from an action hero whose acting style has often been characterized as, to put it kindly, wooden.

According to IMDB, Hobson had no new directing projects in the pipeline as of March 6,2016 (part of that may be due to Maggie‘s dismal fate at the box office (I saw it on Netflix) but on the basis of this debut I look forward to his challenging feature.

As for Ms. Breslin, on the basis of what I have seen here, her talent has been wasted in movies like Wicked Blood and The Call. (Either get yourself a new agent or make better film choices.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Rented It at the Video Store: JOHN WICK

The Russians are always the bad guys in Hollywood movies. During the Cold War they were unsmiling Commies. Now they are ruthless mobsters operating out of NYC (and other major American cities.)

In this case the spoiled young son (Alfie Allan, TV’s Game of Thrones) of an unsmiling ruthless mobster named Viggo Tsarov (Michael Nyquist, who portrayed Mikael Blomkvist in the original Swedish version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) has killed a dog given to John Wick (Keanu Reeves) by his late wife (Bridget Moynihan of TV’s Blue Bloods, glimpsed briefly in flashbacks) and stolen his vintage ’69 Mustang.

“He once was an associate of ours,” Tsarov explains to his son in a sinister Russian accent (Russian accents are always sinister.) “They call him Baba Yaga.” (Seriously?)

“The boogeyman?” 

”He was the one we sent to kill the (bleep) boogeyman …. I once saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil” (Honestly, I don’t make up this dialogue.)

Viggo rings up his former associate. (They still use land lines in this movie): “Let us not resort to our baser instincts. Let us handle this like civilized men.”

John doesn’t say a word. He listens and hangs up.

“What did he say?” asks his right hand man (Dean Winters, you may remember him from hard-bitten TV shows like Oz and Law and Order:SVU)

“Enough” says the mob boss grimly.

And it’s on.

“What happened, John? We were professionals. Civilized,” asks Viggo during a fight scene.

“Do I look civilized to you?” Wick replies as the rain continues to pour down. (It’s that kind of movie.)

The body count is only slightly lower than a World War II movie ( Fury, for example.)

But then John doesn’t have to worry. He knows a body disposal expert. an underground doctor and the neighbourhood patrolman on a first name basis

“You workin’ again?” asks a cop, noting a body in the hallway of John’s house.

“No, just sortin’ some stuff out,” Wick replies.

“Good night, John.”

“Good night, Jimmy.”

The cast includes Willem Dafoe as Marcus, a fellow hit man and close personal friend of John Wick;

Yeah, that Willem Dafoe

Adrienne Palicki (TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as a shapely assassin who tries to pick up a four million dollar bounty Viggo has placed on Wick’s hide and a weathered-looking Ian McShane (TV’s Deadwood ), as Jonathan the proprietor of an underground club catering to the criminal classes. “You know the rules. No business can be conducted on these premises,” Jonathan tells Wick, “lest incurring heavy penalties.”

Viewers are meant to get the impression John Wick was a respected and feared contract killer before his retirement. But in case there is any doubt Mr. Reeves shows off some fancy moves in the role, no doubt picked up partly from flicks like 47 Ronin and Man of Tai Chi (which he directed) and partly from veteran stuntmen Chad Stahelski and David Leitch. Stahelski is credited with the direction. Leitch is uncredited but listed on The Internet Database anyway. (When in doubt, check imdb.)

What an inspired idea! Getting stuntmen to direct an action movie!

Reeves radiates a cool authority in the role, the film has even gotten good reviews (83% critical approval on Rotten Tomatoes -if still in doubt check RT) and with $78 million in world wide box office (figures courtesy of boxofficemojo.com – there’s never any doubt in Hollywood when it comes to the bottom line ) it is not surprising they are already talking about a follow-up.

Sure, I enjoyed the movie. But then I am an action flick fan. (I was also entertained by 47 Ronin –  which received a 14% critical rating on RT).

My opinion on this pic could best be summed up by Jim Lane of the lowly Sacramento  News & Review:

“The mordant humor of Derek Kolstad’s script quickly dries up, the movie starts taking itself seriously, and the pleasure gives way to the guilt.”

P.S. The flick was produced by (among others) Eva Longoria. With movies like The Baytown Outlaws and Over Her Dead Body on her resume it is probably a smart move to get behind the camera more often.

I Saw It (Again) on CRACKLE: Kurt &Courtney

I first saw Kurt and Courtney  on DVD.  I  was embarking on my own lo-fi experiment at the time as arts and entertainment reporter for a local cable TV program and I was intrigued by director Nick Broomfield’s deliberately downmarket style.  ( I even watched Broomfield’s Biggie and Tupac and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.)

In  the wake of the twentieth anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s passing (and the induction of  Nirvana in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), I viewed the documentary again on crackle.com. 

The film starts out conventionally enough with the facts surrounding the discovery of Mr. Cobain’s body (Broomfield informs us in a voiceover that the Nirvana frontman was killed by a shotgun blast to the head. The official verdict was suicide.)

Having established that Mr. Cobain felt uncomfortable with his level of fame and  suffered from a crippling heroin addiction Mr. Broomfield has nowhere to go and a lot of tape to fill so it’s off to Seattle to visit Aunt Mary where we hear baby Kurt singing “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees” and making a brief appearance as a teenager in a home movie. 

“Hey, hey, she’s Aunt Mary!”

The locale shifts to the small logging town of Aberdeen, Wash. where  Mr. Broomfield “interviews” Dylan Carlson, Kurt’s bandmate in a pre-Nirvana group. We are also introduced to one of Mr. Cobain’s teachers; Ms. Love’s former boyfriend; some of Kurt’s boyhood friends  and a mysterious woman known only as Chelsea whom Mr. Broomfield “interviews” after she sticks a cryptic note on his windshield.

“The people he interviewed in Kurt & Courtney were hilarious. Half of them were almost nodded out on completely heroin,” writes a poster called DocumentaryAddict on Broomfield’s IMDB message board.

A poster on imdb identified as “melindack26”  is less enthusiastic: “…. pathetic interviewees …. who claim to have known the subjects, have absolutely no proof, and babble incoherently with wild speculation.”

Even Broomfield admits at one point in the film that “I didn’t have an angle on the story. I was just trying to find my way through it.”

It slowly becomes apparent (to me, anyway) that this doc is not so much about Kurt Cobain and his wife as it is about Broomfield and his  struggle to make the flick.  This may have been all right, even encouraged, in the Golden Age of showboating Michael Moore style docs. However, in a time when filmmakers like Academy Award winner Alex Gibney have raised the bar for all documentarians Bromfield comes across (at least to this viewer) as dated and a tad self-absorbed.

Director Nick Broomfield:
Have Mike, Will Travel

Shadowy financiers threaten to pull out, rights to the Nirvana song catalog  are withheld  (Mr. Broomfield may be the only filmmaker to lens a feature on the late Nirvana frontman without featuring any Nirvana music)  and it is darkly hinted throughout the film  that Ms. Love and/or her minions are somehow responsible.  

It isn’t long before Mr. Broomfield is investigating those pesky conspiracy theories surrounding  Mr. Cobain’s sudden death.

Roger Ebert once wrote that “in all of Broomfield’s films, you meet people you can hardly believe exist” and in this case one of the freaks on display is El Duce, a heavy metal wannabe and self-styled hitman who claims Courtney Love offered him 50 grand to “whack” Kurt Cobain. (We later learn Mr. Duce met his Maker after stumbling drunkenly into the path of a train.)

Courtney’s father. Hank Harrison, a onetime music biz manager and author of Kurt Cobain, Beyond Nirvana: The Legacy of Kurt Cobain seems to achieve an instant rapport with the film-maker. (Kindred spirits?) I may never be able to relate to Ms. Love  (although I admired her performances in The Man in the Moon and The People vs. Larry Flynt) but I have some insight into her chaotic lifestyle and personality after listening to Dad in this film. 

Was Courtney disciplined as a child by Rottweilers, Mr. Broomfield asks. (It’s not the first time nor the last that I get a whiff of tabloid sleaze.  Phew! Smells like mean spirit.) 

“No, pit bulls,”replies Mr. Harrison amiably. It’s all part of his “tough love” approach to parenting, apparently. 

Mr. Harrison will never win a Father of the Year award. Nor does he care. 

“Keep on bad rappin’ me,” he warns his absent  daughter , “and I’ll keep kickin’ your arse (sic).”

“I love how hes in and out of shots with his 1970’s head phones and camera pack. LOL Perhaps he should do comedy instead of docs,” writes DocumentaryAddict in another imdb thread. Either this poster is an ardent fan or boasts an especially subtle sense of satire. Whatever. I respectfully submit that no matter what the reason the human tragedy that marks the final phase of Mr. Cobain’s life is no fit subject for comedy. (But then that is just me.)

Not surprisingly, the film  received mixed reviews upon its release.

“Thoroughly watchable,” writes Kenneth Turan in LA Times, “in a bad car accident, trash TV kind of way.”

And that was  one of the positive reviews. 

 

PS What is it with musicians and heroin? Bradley Nowell/Sublime, Layne Staley/Alice in Chains and  Darby Crash/Germs  are just  a few  of the recent casualties when it comes to  heroin  overdoses.  Even at the height of my drug experimentation phase (back when my hair was longer) my social circle knew enough to stay away from that particular horse. A flood of new and dangerous designer drugs have emerged, making heroin seem positively old school but, as recent events have demonstrated,  the drug still has a lethal kick.)