Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

“We’ve become bored with watching actors give us phony emotions.” So begins the metatextual and prescient dramedy The Truman Show, released 2 years before reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother would launch in the US and enrapture the public consciousness. The opening lines are spoken (un-phonily) by Ed Harris, the only performer in the cast to score an Oscar nomination, in addition to behind-the-camera nominees Peter Weir for Best Director and Andrew Niccol for Best Original Screenplay. Harris plays Christof, the “televisionary” director of a groundbreaking reality show that’s been running for 30 years, of which Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is unwittingly the star. “While the world he inhabits is, in some respects, counterfeit, there’s nothing fake about Truman himself,” Christof continues during the film’s opening. “No scripts, no cue cards. It isn’t always Shakespeare, but it’s genuine. It’s a life.”

Though it’s actually located in a massive soundstage in LA, the town in which Truman believes he resides is the idyllic Seahaven, similar to the titular setting from Pleasantville, which was released a few months after The Truman Show in 1998. The most important “characters” in his life are his chipper wife Meryl (Laura Linney) and trusty drinking buddy Marlon (Noah Emmerich), though actors with earpieces in roles big and small populate this tiny town. They all get their marching orders from Christof, who runs the production from the Lunar Room control room with the help of assistants like Simeon (Paul Giamatti) and Chloe (Una Damon). Much like a serial from the 1950s, the sudden presence of a UFO sends Truman on an adventure, though the inciting incident in this case is actually a par can light falling from the sky. The questioning of his reality causes Christof to scramble as he works with his crew to preserve the illusion that has been maintained all of Truman’s life.

In the same way it’s difficult to imagine The Truman Show without Jim Carrey, it’s hard to see anyone else in the role of the prodigious puppet master besides Ed Harris. But when production kicked off, it was Dennis Hopper who filled the role of Christof before leaving just two days into the shoot, due to creative differences with Weir and producer Scott Rudin. Hopper never elaborated on what those “creative differences” were but it’s possible he played Christof as too sinister, given his streak of antagonist roles at that point in his career. If his Christof was more of a Lucifer-type, then the God-like approach that Harris came up with on short notice — he was cast mere days before production would’ve been halted — was just the ticket. It’s clear Christof has a god complex, difficult to combat when you literally cue when the sun rises for the star of your show, but it’s also clear that he truly cares for Truman too.

When asked by an interviewer how Truman has yet to discover his entire existence is an elaborate ruse, Christof cooly responds, “we accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.” But it takes a whole lot of work to keep this “world” going and the first scenes of The Truman Show where we spend significant time with Christof depict him hard at work keeping things running smoothly. At one point, he’s feeding lines to Marlon — more precisely, the actor playing Marlon — as he’s in the middle of an emotional conversation with Truman. “The last thing I would ever do to you…is lie to you,” he recites on the verge of tears as Christof looks on. The irony of the moment could come across as a bit of a laugh line but the way Harris whispers the lines into his headset suggest a mea culpa of sorts, that something in Christof regrets the years of deception visited upon his “creation”.

Moments of vulnerability can be difficult when everyone looks to you for strength and direction. After all, Christof has some 5000 cameras at his disposal and antsy network executives, like one played by the eminent Philip Baker Hall, ready to jump down his throat. In addition to his calm composure, Christof certainly has the wardrobe that communicates a forward-thinking control freak. It was design consultant Wendy Weir, the wife of director Peter Weir, who suggested the character sport a backward beret and round wire-rimmed glasses that just shout “genius”. He’s always dressed in black and, in one scene, he’s even wearing the same kind of dark turtleneck sweater that Steve Jobs made famous earlier in the decade. Harris completes the ensemble with a pensive fist to the chin, suggesting that Christof the only kind of gifted mind who could take on the task of crafting Truman’s surroundings.

It’s hard to discuss Ed Harris’ work in The Truman Show without going over the film’s final scene, so apologies in advance for those who haven’t seen it. After many obstacles, including a literal firewall and a biblically strong storm at sea, Truman valiantly sails to the edge of “Seahaven” and rams his boat into the soundstage’s wall. As he makes his way up cloud-painted stairs to a disguised exit door, Christof speaks to Truman for the first time as his words echo through the gargantuan ecosphere like the voice of God. Face-to-face with his “creator”, Truman asks “was nothing real?” to which Christof asserts “You were real. That’s what made you so good to watch.” Truman is obviously the hero of The Truman Show, which makes Christof the de facto villain, but Harris plays him with such genuine care and concern that he’s hard to hate.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

In hindsight, Cobweb never stood a chance. Released on July 21, 2023, the same day as a couple other movies called Barbie and Oppenheimer, its box office numbers were so dismal that they weren’t even reported, amid the combined Barbenheimer domestic take of $244 million that opening weekend. Lionsgate likely should’ve known better than to release a movie of any kind amid a cultural phenomenon like Barbenheimer, but they absolutely should’ve known better than to release a horror movie in the middle of summer as opposed to October. Not only is Samuel Bodin’s directorial debut a horror movie set during Halloween but it’s one so steeped in spooky season that the central family literally has a pumpkin patch in their backyard. Even though it got demolished at the box office worse than Tommy Doyle’s pumpkin in Halloween, Cobweb remains creepy crawly fun worth spinning up on streaming.

The film stars C’mon C’mon breakout Woody Norman as Peter, a shy and sensitive third-grader who lives under the overly-vigilant eye of his mom Carol (played by Lizzy Caplan) and dad Mark (played by Antony Starr). His school life suffers due to class bully Brian (Luke Busey) and his home life suffers from the stifling control of his parents. Thankfully, he gets some respite in the form of substitute teacher Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman), who recognizes his troubled inner life and shows him more attention. One night, Peter begins to hear scratching on the other side of his bedroom walls and, along with it, a voice claiming to belong to a sequestered sister of whom he was never made aware. As more nights pass, their conversations grow more in-depth and the voice pushes Peter to stand up both to his parents and the bully at school.

An early intertitle indicates Cobweb begins one week before Halloween, although there are so many visual clues to this throughout the movie that it may not even be necessary to say. If a moonlit shot of the abundance of pumpkins in Peter’s family’s backyard isn’t enough, a creaking swing in the forefront dancing amid the autumn breeze should help drive things home. There are several jack-o-lantern carvings and costumed kiddos abound, in addition to spooky accoutrements like a ridiculously oversized witch hat that Miss Devine sports in class on day. Italian electronic composer Drum & Lace has fun setting the tone on the sonic side of things, staccato strings and hollow marimbas leaving plenty of space in between the notes for tension to creep in.

The melancholy music also stages Cobweb as less of a conventional frightfest and more of a dark fairytale from the perspective of a troubled child trying to make sense of his world. We spend the majority of the movie inside Peter’s home but the production design intentionally makes the rooms appear larger than they actually would be. Numerous establishing shots give us a sense of the ramshackle house’s size but when we go inside, the interiors are impossibly large compared to what we’ve seen from the outside. The effect created is that we’re seeing these spaces through the eyes of Peter, with wide shots casting gargantuan silhouettes and shadows atop the eldritch wallpaper. When we’re small, the rooms in which we spend the most time feel massive but as we grow up, they get smaller and smaller. The visual personification of this concept lends itself to beautifully haunting set design.

The trio of main actors in Cobweb also do a fantastic job making this off-kilter world make its own kind of sense. Lizzy Caplan may still be better known for her presence in comedies like Mean Girls and The Interview but she’s also honed her creep chops on TV in series like Castle Rock and Fatal Attraction. It’s perfect prep for her role here as an overbearing mother who can just barely pass for normal in public but doesn’t bother to conceal her crazy around Peter and Mark. She stresses all the wrong words in her sentences and her emotional reactions to almost every situation are difficult to predict. Even more disconcerting is Antony Starr, effortlessly channeling the psychopathy of his Homelander character from The Boys to this officious father role. “Not everything’s as sweet as it seems,” he warns Peter as they prep cinnamon-scented rat poison for pest control.

Lest one get the sense that Cobweb is too much of a slow burn, it has more than its fair share of jump scares and nightmare scenes before we get to the satisfyingly gnarly conclusion. Up until that point, only a few swear words keep the movie from a PG-13 rating but Samuel Bodin goes hard in the proverbial red paint when it comes to the gore and lethality on display during the final extended setpiece. It’s a welcome contrast in tone to the more chilling and staid tenor that envelops everything preceding it. In that way, it calls to mind the darkly fantastical work of Guillermo del Toro, specifically Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. Cobweb isn’t quite as strong as either of those chillers but at 88 minutes, it’s easy to get wrapped up in its dark delights as the seasons change.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

When we lost David Lynch earlier this year, it felt like a flame that would never stop flickering was suddenly snuffed out. Suffering from emphysema, the 78-year-old director’s health reportedly took a turn for the worse when the Sunset Fire’s proximity to his house necessitated that he evacuate. There’s a tragic irony in the fact that some of Lynch’s most evocative images prominently involve immolation, like the shack burning in reverse in Lost Highway and the candle flickering monstrously in Jeffrey’s nightmare in Blue Velvet. There’s that infamous on-set photo of him filming The Straight Story where he’s smoking in front of a house on fire and one of his short films is even titled Fire (Pożar). But of his features, flames can be found most prominently in his twisted romance road movie Wild At Heart, which opens with a title card ablaze and peppers in numerous close-ups of stricken matches and cindering cigarettes.

The film tells the love story of snakeskin jacket-wearing bad boy Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and his vivacious sweetheart Lula Fortune (Laura Dern) as it finds itself through various stages of tumult. The main source of obstruction for the star-crossed lovers is Marietta (Diane Ladd), Lula’s viciously overbearing mother who has never approved of Sailor and even goes far enough to send men after him. After Sailor spends almost 2 years in prison for killing one of the attackers hired by Marietta, the couple decide to hit the road to be free from her controlling menace. Plotting a spontaneous trip from North Carolina out to California, Sailor and Lula have the future in their eyes but Marietta hires seedy detective Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) to track them down and bring Lula back home safely.

This being a David Lynch movie, there are plenty of strange detours, mercurial pitstops and eerie non-sequiturs in the journey that make this anything but a traditional road trip. Its manic-depressive push-pull tone is perhaps best typified by the range in soundtrack choices from speed metal band Powermad and The King himself, Elvis Presley. In a five minute stretch, Lula pounds her feet on a motel bed as we crossfade to her dancing shoes bouncing to heavy guitar chugs but after a scuff-up with an interloper, Sailor belts out “Love Me” in the mosh pit. Another standout on the soundtrack is Chris Isaak’s moody masterpiece “Wicked Game”, whose initial release didn’t garner much attention but shot up to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its inclusion in Wild At Heart.

Of all the wayward and wild weirdos Sailor and Lula meet along the way, the most chillingly memorable is the criminally creepy Bobby Peru, played indelibly by Willem Dafoe. While at a string light party in Big Tuna, Texas, Sailor and Lula cross paths with Bobby as he slithers across the yard behind three topless women hootin’ and hollerin’. He’s dressed in all black with slicked back hair, his mustache as thin as the strings of his bolo tie. But his most defining characteristic are his undersized teeth, which we first get a glimpse of as he bites on a cigarette while cheekily clarifying to Lula and Sailor that his last name is the same as the country. Lynch wrote in the script that Bobby was to have grubby and stubby chompers but Dafoe didn’t expect to have dentures molded and created for the character. Once he had them in, he later explained that they unlocked something primal and lascivious within him and became “the key to the character”.

Lynch lingers on Bobby’s creepy smile the longest after Lula responds that she’s 20 years old; we can see the hostile lust in his eyes, even if poor Sailor can’t. Scored by a slowed-down version of Chris Isaak’s “In The Heat Of The Jungle”, Bobby bitterly recalls his Marine days before vulgarly excusing himself to go to the restroom. If that wasn’t off-putting enough for Lula, he barges into her motel room the next day to finish the job, loudly urinating with the bathroom door open. Things only get uglier from there, as Bobby takes advantage of Sailor’s absence and violently coerces her into asking him for sex. It’s a repulsive act and even though he involves Sailor in different criminal pursuits, Bobby does get what’s coming to him and then some by the end of Wild At Heart.

Across hundreds of wide-ranging film roles, Willem Dafoe has made a permanent mark on film history with his impressively expressive face and turn-on-a-dime theatrics. Lynch utilizes Dafoe’s talents perfectly in this fever dream of a film that is still one of the master filmmaker’s more straightforward accounts. Bobby Peru has echoes of Dennis Hopper’s horrid villain Frank Booth from Blue Velvet but Dafoe gives Peru a sort of twisted sex appeal that makes it all the more horrifying when sexual assault is introduced into the story. It can be hard to watch someone behave so repugnantly in a movie and yet the fact remains that you can’t take your eyes off them. As such, Bobby Peru remains one of Dafoe’s most magnetic performances.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

By the year 2000, Jerry Bruckheimer Films was in the middle of a hot streak, following the box office successes of both Armageddon and Enemy Of The State two years prior. Teaming back up with Nicolas Cage, the star of their 1997 vehicle Con Air, the production company looked to strike lightning again with the heist remake Gone In 60 Seconds. In addition to Cage, the movie boasted a talented ensemble cast featuring fellow Oscar winners Robert Duvall and Angelina Jolie, the latter of whom received second billing on the project. But even with the components for a hot-rodded blockbuster under the hood, the film was a financial failure for Touchstone Pictures and ultimately written down as a $212 million loss for Disney. Critically, it was even more of a crash-and-burn affair and while it doesn’t exactly hold up 25 years later, it encapsulates the turn-of-the-millennium penchant that studios had to outdo each other in the “edginess” department.

Gone In 60 Seconds opens in the middle of a “boost” under cover of darkness at the hands of car thief Kip Raines (Giovanni Ribisi), who makes a noisy getaway with a Porsche 996. Ever the screw-up, Kip brings heat back to his crew’s warehouse, forcing them to ditch the cadre of confiscated cars they’ve spent weeks acquiring. This puts them way behind for the job they’re completing for ruthless gangster Raymond “The Carpenter” Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), who threatens to kill Kip if he can’t make things right. Doubtful that Kip can finish the job, Calitri’s right-hand man Atley (Will Patton) reaches out to Kip’s older brother Randall “Memphis” Raines (Cage), a notorious carjacker who went straight years ago. Up against a ludicrous 72-hour deadline to steal 50 luxury vehicles, Randall recruits — among many others — his mechanic ex-flame Sway (Jolie) and mute mortician Sphinx (Vinnie Jones) to pull off the high-octane heist.

Though Jolie is riding shotgun on the cast list and appears caddy corner with Cage on the one-sheet, she doesn’t appear in Gone In 60 Seconds as much as one may expect. After Randall surprises her by popping by work unannounced, Sway slides out on her creeper to reveal a suspiciously clean uniform and bleached blonde dreadlocks that kids today would deem “a choice”. Randall follows Sway to her second job bartending, her pouty lips and ice-blue eyes reluctantly refusing his recruitment opportunity but, of course, reconsidering the next day. She interrupts a meeting between Randall and Atley, pulling up on her motorcycle and insisting that she’s only taking the job for Kip. From here on, just about every subsequent line Jolie utters is paired with a raised eyebrow, a salacious smirk or both at the same time.

One would assume Jolie shot a good deal more footage for Gone In 60 Seconds that didn’t make the final cut and there are several plausible reasons her scenes hit the cutting room floor. The most obvious is that she doesn’t have much on-screen chemistry with Cage, despite the movie’s best effort to steam up windows with a stakeout-turned-makeout scene. As Sway shimmies over the gear shifter while Randall seduces her by reciting auto parts, they briefly lock lips before she puts the brakes on and insists they get back to work. Cage’s scenes with Jolie are peppered with the actor’s typical eccentric line reads and she tries to return the volleys but for some reason, their freak frequencies don’t quite line up. It doesn’t speak well of the film that Cage has better chemistry with the Shelby Mustang GT500 nicknamed “Eleanor”, overtly identified as “the one that got away”.

At the same time, it’s a wonder director Dominic Sena is even able to accommodate a potential romantic subplot when he has so many other storylines to address. Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant collectively have more screen time than Jolie as detectives chasing down leads and shaking members of the crew down while trying to put the elusive Randall behind bars for good. Portraying the wise old mentor coming back for one last ride, Robert Duvall is relegated to crossing off the female code names for automobiles in canted-angle close-ups during the film’s climax. Elsewhere, rapper Master P plays Johnny B, a gang leader who pops up guns blazing in several scenes to settle a score with Randall left over from his past life. Michael Peña even turns up in an early film role as a thug appalled by the ease with which one of the crew members digs through dog feces to procure a set of laser-cut car keys.

In Gone In 60 Seconds, the cars should be the props and the actors should be the stars but in actuality, the opposite ends up being the case. Much of the movie’s second half is devoted to flashy montages set to big beat remixes on the soundtrack of vaunted vehicles being broken into and illegally revved up. Car nuts might drool at the sight of some of these exotic beasts in action but those watching, like me, who top out at “sensible sedan” will be bored watching what feels like all 50 of those on the checklist being picked off. When I first watched the movie with my friends, I think I was more in awe of the fact that the PlayStation 2 we used to watch it on could play DVDs; clearly, this was no 20th century video game console. Fittingly, Jolie had more success adapting the PlayStation title Tomb Raider just a year later, catapulting her onto the A-list after Gone In 60 Seconds didn’t quite turn the engine over.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

The poster reads “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer” above a fog-obscured shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the illuminated suspension cables resembling mournful eyes weeping over the Bay Area. This haunting one-sheet sets the stage perfectly for David Fincher’s quietly devastating Zodiac, a thorough and thoughtful retelling of one of the most infamous unsolved cases in United States history. Having spent his childhood in a small town 20 miles north of San Francisco, Fincher had a personal connection to the material, hearing terrifying stories about the elusive Zodiac Killer at an impressionable age. But the film also follows a theme that can be found in many of the other works throughout his career: monomaniacal focus in one’s professional life at the expense of one’s personal life.

After depicting a brutal 4th Of July shooting at a Vallejo highway lookout point, Zodiac introduces us to the main players involved in trying to track down the titular slayer. The San Francisco Chronicle is one of several news outlets to receive encoded letters from the killer who calls himself “Zodiac”, striking immediate and intense curiosity in the paper’s political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). The Chronicle’s head crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), is skeptical at first, but when Graysmith makes a correct prediction before the first letter is deciphered, Avery becomes the Bernstein to Graysmith’s Woodward. More killings and more letters follow, causing police inspectors Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Bill Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) to head up the case but as years go by, promising leads turn to dead ends.

Though it’s a movie about a well-known, real-life serial killer, Zodiac doesn’t follow in the footsteps of other mystery thrillers, where we’re shown evil deeds but can feel better having witnessed them knowing justice is served in the end. Fincher and his screenwriter James Vanderbilt did copious amounts of research investigating the true identity of the Zodiac Killer but they don’t present one theory here as absolute truth. It’s as much of a police procedural and news journalism movie as a thriller, given that the search for the killer is the actual story as opposed to their unveiling. How can we reconcile that the details of unspeakable acts can remain forever unknowable to everyone except those involved? How do we collectively move on from cases that are ultimately deemed unsolvable? Zodiac follows two central characters who believe in their bones that we can’t and we don’t.

On the morning the Chronicle receives the first letter, Avery blithely offers 20 bucks to whoever decodes the killer’s name before heading to the nearby watering hole Morti’s for an early drink. Though he acts indifferent initially, Avery’s intrigued after the letter is deciphered that Graysmith correctly predicted the killer wouldn’t reveal their name. He introduces himself to Graysmith — even though they’d already been working together for 9 months — and asks “how does one do that?” with inquisitive snark when Graysmith works to figure out the “leftover symbols” from the Zodiac’s first note. Thus commences the beginning of an unlikely professional partnership, where earnest curiosity and cynical scrutiny produce a nexus of all-encompassing fixation. Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr. play off each other brilliantly as these opposite personalities collide with one another.

Look no further than the sequence following the Chronicle getting their second Zodiac letter, when Avery invites Graysmith to Morti’s intent on pressing him why he’s been going through his trash but instead getting hung up on his drink order. The bartender slides a distractingly blue cocktail Graysmith’s way and after a minute of labored conversation, Avery quips “alright, this can no longer be ignored: what is that you’re drinking?” Graysmith defends his Aqua Velva and after Avery takes a long sip following a short pause, Fincher smash cuts to Downey Jr. with his head resting on a booth table with six empties in front of his face. With an ace song choice of “Crystal Blue Persuasion” playing in the background, Avery drunkenly asks Graysmith what he wants out of all of this sleuthing, explaining “it’s good business for everyone but you.”

Downey Jr.’s sardonic wit is the highlight of these early interactions — and remains one of his most indispensable assets all these years later — but Avery’s self-destructive streak created a pathway for a more tragic performance. After Avery receives a Halloween card from the Zodiac, ominously portending “you are doomed”, crime reporters begin sporting “I Am Not Paul Avery” pins, cheekily signaling they don’t want to be targeted next. Though Paul himself clips it to his lapel and says of the Killer “he wishes to remain anonymous; I wish to remain infamous”, the stresses of the unwanted attention take their toll. Avery buys a gun, smokes like a chimney and takes enough day trips to Morti’s to put his position at the Chronicle in jeopardy. A third act scene set on Avery’s houseboat hammers home how his involvement in the case led to a heartbreaking downward spiral.

Downey Jr. has made it clear through several interviews that his time shooting Zodiac was not especially pleasant. Fincher is well-known to be an exacting filmmaker, sometimes demanding dozens of takes for even seemingly simple scenes. Needless to say, Downey Jr. didn’t have any room for looser line readings or improvisation and Fincher’s penchant for perfectionism inevitably led to long days of shooting. Downey Jr. found his own way of protest by, according to Fincher, leaving mason jars of urine on-set in lieu of loo breaks. Years later, Downey Jr. would work with Christopher Nolan on — and ultimately win an Oscar for —Oppenheimer and the experience working with another similarly precise director seemed to give him a renewed appreciation for the process. Speaking in 2023 with co-star Mark Ruffalo, Downey Jr. admits “I called Fincher recently because, in retrospect, everything changes. 15 years later, you have such a different perspective on stuff, you know?”

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

If the archetypal Denzel Washington performance can be summarized in a single word, it would be “control”. No matter who he’s playing, we in the audience trust that his character has things under control. Robert Zemeckis knows we expect this, which is why he opens his 2012 character drama Flight with Denzel strutting down a hotel hallway to Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright” after ripping a line of cocaine. In fact, it’s so in line with what we expect from his characters, it could certainly be seen as a cocky needle drop so on-the-nose that it’s meant to play for laughs. But like the plane that Denzel’s pilot character Whip Whitaker flips mid-air later in the first act, Zemeckis inverts Denzel’s cool, calm and collected persona in his story of compromised heroism. Washington has been outstanding in many films but his work in Flight remains my favorite of his still-thriving career.

As Whip Whitaker, Denzel exudes the brand of confidence we expect of our commercial captains and it’s not unearned. After taking off from Orlando, Whitaker ably navigates through a storm during takeoff so perilous that it even rattles his young co-pilot Ken Evans (Brian Geraghty). We learn Whip was likely able to stay so sedate during the emergency because he’s still drunk the night before, a condition he exacerbates by pouring a couple shooters of vodka into an orange juice bottle while addressing the cockpit after the fracas. A sudden mechanical failure leads Evans to cede control of the plane back to Whitaker, who turns an uncontrolled nosedive into a crash landing that spares the lives of almost all aboard. Whip wakes up in the hospital with Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood), a friend of Whip’s since their days together in the Navy, by his bed on behalf of the pilots union.

Now it’s Charlie’s turn to navigate a vessel on the ground even more unstable than the one Whip maneuvered in the sky. Charlie and Whip go back a ways but the former doesn’t seem to realize the extent of the latter’s personal issues until he learns more about the details of the emergency crash-land. Charlie brings in a “co-pilot” in the form of criminal negligence attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle), who calls attention to the toxicology report done in the hospital that indicates Whip’s BAC as .0.24%. Given the scale of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board is forced to conduct a thorough investigation and though Whitaker’s actions were heroic, his compromised state during the flight means he could be facing serious prison time. While waiting for the NTSB to rule on the cause of the crash, Whip finds comfort in the arms of Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a fellow addict he met while recovering in the hospital.

Wisely, Zemeckis doesn’t allow his film to get mired in the bureaucracy of lawyers prepping for the public hearing the NTSB will hold to pass along their findings about the incident. Flight is focused on Whip, what drives him to drink and why it’s so difficult for him to confront his alcoholism. He sees in Nicole a wounded soul struggling to overcome her demons but doesn’t quite seem to consider how much alike they may be. Like everyone else, she’s in awe of the expertise and instinct that allowed him to save all but 6 of the 102 people onboard that fateful flight. But the stress of the NTSB’s in-depth inquiry leads Whip to hit the bottle even harder than usual, causing Nicole to take the role of caretaker more than girlfriend. She hasn’t known him long but knows he needs help, twisting his arm to attend an AA meeting in which he sullenly sits cross-armed before leaving a few minutes after it begins.

As a Denzel Washington vehicle, what Flight does so brilliantly is make us reconsider the confident characters that the larger-than-life actor has portrayed in the past and wonder how many had the struggles that Whip has here. If the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one, he’s been stubbornly standing with his heels together for years. Even though it cost him his marriage and a relationship with his now-teenaged son, his addiction remains the most crucial priority in Whip’s existence. Calling the aftermath of the crash a “come to Jesus moment” lines up nicely with the “Act Of God” designation that can appear on accident reports. When Lang brings up the term while surveying the crash site with Whitaker, Whip solemnly ponders “whose God would do this?” Zemeckis taps on the theme of religion earlier in the movie, by way of a cancer patient character played by James Badge Dale who posits that even if you hate God, you’d be a fool not to believe in one.

Though every actor who appears in Flight, including John Goodman and Melissa Leo, makes the absolute best of the screen time they have, Washington is not only perfect for this role but flawless in his execution. After spending more time with Charlie and Hugh after the accident, he’s all too happy to direct his indignation at the airline for giving him a plane that was doomed to fail but isn’t able to admit that his intoxicated state points to deep moral failing. The scene where he attends the funeral of one of the flight attendants shines a spotlight on the vulnerability that Washington brings to this performance. He spends most of his time up to the NTSB hearing scrambling to cover his six, specifically in trying to convince one of the surviving flight attendants that he was in good shape to fly. His desperation and consternation in this moment flies in the face of the stoic, sun-glassed specialist we see in the opening moments of the movie.

Rewatching Flight after seeing Zemeckis’ disastrous Here in theaters last month, it’s a testament to just how right or wrong the veteran filmmaker can go depending on the story he’s piloting. After the one-two punch of What Lies Beneath and Cast Away — the latter which incidentally hinges on a plane crash — in 2000, he spent the rest of the decade on mo-cap animated ventures that leaned into technical innovation. Though the terrifying aircraft setpiece in Flight utilizes CG effects, they still look convincing and Zemeckis holsters the technical wizardry throughout the remainder of the film. He trusts his actors and knows that the special effect is in watching these performers make magic in their interaction with one another.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

When it comes to horror, I’d like to think that I’ve seen my fair share of both the bonafide classics and the most chattered-about of recent entries. But there’s a title that I’ve seen name-checked more and more in interviews and reviews over the past several years and that’s Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. Up until last year, it was a bit difficult to access the film (at least in the US) but the cult film finally arrived on streaming for the first time in 2023, thanks to the horror service Shudder. This past summer, it was also announced that Robert Pattinson and Smile 2 director/writer Parker Finn are in the process of remaking the movie, which should widen the original’s audience even further. So it seemed a fitting time to go back and remedy a horror blindspot whose reputation has improved considerably since its initial release in 1981.

At its most fundamental level, Possession is the story of a struggling marriage devolving past the point of recognition. It begins with Anna (Isabelle Adjani) asking Mark (Sam Neill) for a divorce, a request that he doesn’t take especially well at the outset but at least tries to remain civil about. The pair discuss living arrangements and shared custody for their son Bob (Michael Hogben) but after causing a scene at a restaurant, Mark turns to booze to distract himself from the pain of losing his wife. While picking Bob up for school one day, Mark notices that Anna has seemingly left him by himself for days and things get stranger when Mark meets Bob’s teacher Helen (also played by Adjani) and she looks almost identical to Anna. Suspicious of Anna’s goings-on following their separation, Mark hires a private investigator to see what’s keeping Anna from taking care of their son.

The aspect of Possession that usually comes up first when it’s discussed is the intensity of the performances, particularly the dual role by Isabelle Adjani. A flashback sequence set in a subway station showcases spasmodic acting from Adjani so manic and visceral that it went on to inspire homages from a Massive Attack music video starring Rosamund Pike to a similar one-take scene in The First Omen earlier this year. While this is unquestionably Adjani’s most unhinged sequence in terms of physical performance, there are several other scenes of confrontation with Sam Neill’s character that aren’t far behind in terms of ferocity. An argument earlier in the film leads Anna to slap Mark in retaliation, presumably for the first time in their marriage. When he turns back to face her, the fear in her eyes slowly softens and gives way to a demented smile that she unsuccessfully tries to wipe away.

Sam Neill is still best known for his role as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park series but he’s many, many miles away from that paleontologist’s placid personality in Possession. Even in the quieter scenes, Neill has a crazed sort of look in his eyes that never makes us feel certain he won’t lash out in a violent rage at a moment’s notice. As his journey into Anna’s troubled psyche and concerning activities creeps along, there’s little question that Mark is losing his grip on reality and sense of self in the process. Even when he rocks back and forth in a chair we see him sit in during several different points in the movie, his body is so rigid that it doesn’t even register that he’s getting any benefit or comfort from the activity. The makeup used on Adjani and Neill makes them appear as pale as ghosts through most of the movie, making it easier to view their characters as a pair of incensed apparitions haunting each other.

Given the personal nature of the narrative, it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Andrzej Żuławski wrote and directed Possession — which he describes as “essentially a very true-to-life autobiographical story” — on the back of a messy divorce. Not only does this inform the numerous scenes of explosive domestic strife but it also underlines Mark’s paranoia about Anna’s lover Heinrich (played by Heinz Bennent) and why she chooses to be with him. Without giving too much away, the inclusion of a Kafkaesque creation and the evocation of doppelgängers later on in the film point to Mark’s fear of the unknown and neurotic insecurity about his own shortcomings. Even without much context into Żuławski’s personal life, it’s fascinating watching him work out his troubled thoughts through this bizarre and beguiling beast of a film.

There are so many movies about demonic and supernatural possession that horror fans may go into Possession expecting familiar narrative beats of the subgenre but the film certainly doesn’t adhere to any such formula. In fact, the simple title generates several questions about which characters in Żuławski’s story are actually possessed and who or what is possessing them. On first viewing, I can’t say I have concrete answers for those questions and yet still feel that it’s a perfect title to sum up the essence of the picture. The acting, not just from the two leads but from all of the performers, feels like it was the product of humans whose spirits temporarily left their body so they could house otherworldly spirits that move and speak in ways that can’t be easily deciphered. If you want to know what it feels like to be in the grips of madness, spending two hours with Possession may just be the ticket.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

“History is ultimately an inventory of ghosts.” – Guillermo del Toro

“What is a ghost?” These are the first words we hear a voice ponder at the outset of The Devil’s Backbone, Guillermo del Toro’s breakthrough work that scored him the strongest critical reviews of his career up to that point. As the voiceover continues to consider if a ghost can be “an emotion suspended in time, like a blurred photograph, like an insect trapped in amber,” we understand that del Toro is not setting up a traditional horror movie or ghost story. Set towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, it’s a film that wades in the melancholy generated by senseless violence and the ripple effect of irreversible acts. In keeping with a motif del Toro continues to evoke in his work, human beings in his tales can act more monstrous than the actual monsters (in this case, apparitions) themselves.

We meet young Carlos (Fernando Tielve) as he is taken to an orphanage in the Spanish countryside after his father is killed in action. The orphanage’s headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes) is reticent to take on one more child, as they’re already struggling to take care of the orphans in their care already, but the head doctor Casares (Federico Luppi) convinces her to take Carlos in. At first, the orphanage bully Jaime (Íñigo Garcés) is needlessly cruel to Carlos and leaves him alone in the dark after the pair go to fill pitchers of water overnight. It’s here that Carlos first sees the ghost of Santi (Junio Valverde), a boy who died at the orphanage under mysterious circumstances years ago. As the conflict between the loyalists and nationalists rages on outside the confines of the orphanage, the violence threatens to make its way through the gates.

The first drafts of The Devil’s Backbone date back to Guillermo del Toro’s college days in the 1980s, even though the project wasn’t fully realized until many years for its release in 2001. Given this, along with the fact that del Toro felt the need to return to his roots after the commercial failure of 1997’s Mimic, it doesn’t seem a stretch to call The Devil’s Backbone his most personal work. While he wasn’t around in the 1930s when the movie takes place, he did go to an all-male Jesuit school with conditions similar to an orphanage and recalls hearing disembodied voices on the grounds. Much in the way that the audience finds its way into this story through Carlos, del Toro must have found his voice most clearly through the protagonist (who he’s described as a “force of innocence”) as well.

Del Toro also explores a surrogate father role for Carlos by way of the kindly Dr. Casares, who gives him the nickname “Carlitos” and looks out for him when his peers give him a harder time. Whether he’s reciting poetry or listening to music on his phonograph, his gentle disposition is a respite from the harsh realities of Carlos’s world. By comparison, the lead administrator Carmen is much colder and more cynical, burdened by a wooden artificial leg that causes her constant pain. Both supporters of the Republican loyalists, Casares and Carmen speculate on the outcome of the war, with the former characteristically optimistic that the loyalists will triumph and the latter dour about what she perceives as an inevitable victory for the nationalists. When discussing how dispiriting the war’s outcome looks, she laments, “Sometimes, I think that we are the ghosts,” a line that carries unintentional metatextual significance, as The Devil’s Backbone was released the same year as fellow ghost story The Others.

As much as the war is a metaphor for the ghost story and vice versa, The Devil’s Backbone contains several spine-chilling moments that stand on their own. The majority of these are courtesy of Santi, an eerie composite of ghoulish makeup and special effects that are still hauntingly effective more than 20 years later. My favorite detail is how Santi is surrounded by murky particles that aren’t easy to see when he moves but when he stands still, they float and coalesce in a way that calls attention to his ghastly presence. He also has a head wound with blood that slowly trickles up, another clue as to how Santi met his untimely demise. The sight of him is unnerving as is but his voice alone can make the hair on your arm stand on end; his portentous refrain of “many of you will die” tap us into the fear that Carlos feels in his midst.

As scary as Santi is, del Toro makes it clear that Carlos has other threats to his life that aren’t of the otherworldly or supernatural kind. In addition to the cruelty of some of the orphans and the threat of violence from the war, there’s also a groundskeeper (played by Eduardo Noriega) who lashes out at the kids from time to time. When he finds them sneaking around in the basement of a supply house, he grabs Jaime by his hair and viciously chastises them for trespassing. He then cuts Jaime across the cheek and then runs the children off, warning Carlos, “A single word about this and I’ll rip you in half.” Those who have seen Pan’s Labyrinth, which del Toro has called a “spiritual successor” to The Devil’s Backbone, may find parallels between Noriega’s character and the brutal Captain Vidal from that film.

Del Toro masterfully bookends his tale with an expansion on the opening line, musing that in addition to simply being a spirit of the dead, a ghost can also be an embodiment of a past mistake or residual energy of tragic events that replay over and over. We’re also given more context into who is narrating and at what point in time they’re doing so, leading to a powerful denouement and unforgettable final image. The Devil’s Backbone is a pivotal work in del Toro’s career when he found the courage to tell stories his own way.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

At this point, it’s difficult to imagine that another performer will top Meryl Streep’s record for Oscar nominations in the acting categories. Over the past 45 years, she’s been nominated for either Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress a combined 21 times. It’s a mind-blowing figure and while acting awards don’t mean everything, they certainly contribute to Streep’s status as one of the most gifted actresses in film history. Her first Oscar win came in 1980 for her work in the divorce drama Kramer Vs. Kramer but her first nomination came the year prior for a film that had nominations in 8 other categories and wins in 5. Though The Deer Hunter can be seen as a movie dominated by masculinity, Streep provides a crucial counterbalance in a role that helped shoot the young actress into stardom.

Set during the late 60s in the Southern Steel Valley near Pittsburgh, The Deer Hunter centers around the relationship between three close friends before, during and after their deployment in Vietnam. The leader of the trio is Mike (Robert De Niro), who everyone seems to instinctually follow out of the steel mill when the 5 o’clock bell has rung. Right by his side is Nick (Christopher Walken), who is housemates and likely best friends with Mike as well. Then there’s the soft-spoken Steven (John Savage), who may not have Mike or Nick’s assertiveness but has loyalty to spare, evidenced by the fact that he’s marrying Angela (Rutanya Alda) even though she’s pregnant with another man’s baby. Shortly after Steven and Angela’s spirited wedding, the three men go off to war and what they experience together alters their relationship with each other and their community forever.

Streep plays Linda, whose soft features and warm demeanor have captured the affection of both Mike and Nick. She’s introduced in The Deer Hunter adorn with a lovely bridesmaid’s dress while anxiously preparing a meal for her alcoholic and abusive father. In an attempt to flee from his monstrous presence, she asks Nick if she can stay at their house while they go on a hunting trip and later when they go overseas to fight. Later at the wedding, Nick returns the favor and hastily ups the ante with an even more serious question: asking if she’ll marry him. Even though glances across the dance floor imply that she also has feelings for Mike too, she excitedly says “yes” to Nick’s proposal and awaits their return home so they can have a wedding of their own.

The second act of the film largely centers on the three brothers in arms during their time in the Vietnam War, which leave each of them broken in different ways. Steven loses both of his legs due to a fall from a helicopter, while a PTSD-ridden Nick goes AWOL and recklessly drifts from one Chinese gambling den to another. Mike returns to his small hometown of Clairton and while Linda is overjoyed to see him, she is understandably worried about her absent fiancé. The final act is where Streep’s performance really shines, imbued with quiet yearning and shattering heartache that realigns the emotional core of the film. After Mike finds Linda crying in the grocery store where she works, Linda laments “did you ever think life would turn out like this?” to him in the car a moment later.

As it turns out, Streep may have been mining from ongoing personal experiences when crafting her Oscar-nominated performance. During the filming of The Deer Hunter, Streep was in a committed relationship with John Cazale, who also stars in the movie as one of Mike’s hunting buddies in his final film role. Tragically, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer that quickly spread to his bones, a fact that he withheld from the production studio EMI because he was worried he would be pulled from the production for insurance reasons. Robert De Niro was fully behind his friend and co-star, threatening to walk if the EMI dismissed him from set and, as it was finally revealed just a few years ago, De Niro was the one who paid Cazale’s insurance premium so he could stay on. Since the clock was ticking, director Michael Cimino shot all of Cazale’s scenes first and sadly, Cazale passed shortly after filming wrapped.

Even though Streep and Cazale don’t share many scenes together in The Deer Hunter, the real-life events give both of their performances an added layer of sorrow even independent of one another. ”I was so close that I hadn’t noticed his deterioration,” Streep later said of Cazale. ”John’s death came as a shock to me because I didn’t expect it.” In the film, Linda doesn’t deal with the same circumstances that Streep had to travail off-set but her character does suffer heartbreak and loss all the same. When Linda first embraces Mike upon his arrival home, she lets out such a cry of relief and surprise that it hits the senses like a thunderbolt. But when she realizes that Nick isn’t going to make it back, her spirit sinks as high as it rose when Mike hugged her at their door. Streep doesn’t have an abundance of screen time in The Deer Hunter but she pours her heart into every second that she’s on screen.

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

Though 2006’s Snakes On A Plane contains one of Samuel L. Jackson’s most famous movie lines, another film with “Snake” in the title which premiered later that same year has one of Jackson’s most accomplished performances. Black Snake Moan was released by Paramount Vantage in March of 2007 against the biker comedy Wild Hogs, which made more in its opening weekend than Moan could amass during its entire domestic run. While that’s dispiriting, it’s not exactly difficult to see why; Paramount Vantage tried to market the film with a titillating poster and trailer that drastically shortchange its thematic complexity. Yes, it’s a movie whose risqué subject material was bound to raise some eyebrows, but its provocations are backed by compelling characters and a nuanced storyline about addiction and redemption.

Jackson stars as Lazarus Redd, a former blues musician-turned-gardener whose wife Rose (Adriane Lenox) is leaving him for his brother Deke (Leonard L. Thomas) after an affair happening behind his back. Coming back from town one morning, he discovers a young woman named Rae (Christina Ricci) beaten and unconscious on the side of the road. Lazarus tasks himself with tending to Rae’s fever and wounds and when she deliriously runs out of his house one night, he does what he considers to be the sensible solution: chains her to his radiator to keep her from running away. He then learns that Rae’s sex addiction is well known around town now that her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) is away on National Guard deployment. Ever the devout man, Laz keeps Rae confined at his house even after she recuperates, seeing it as his spiritual duty to rid her of sin.

In a lesser movie, this premise could set Lazarus up as a religious kook who’s gone off the deep end and, naturally, we’d root for Rae to break free from his secluded farm. But Black Snake Moan doesn’t settle for those kinds of rote characterizations and routine plotting. Writer-director Craig Brewer is more interested in the ways that these two people, who seemingly have nothing in common, will draw out their surprising similarities in close quarters. Though Rae initially tries to use sex to parlay her way out of her waist chain, she soon finds that Lazarus has no interest in a sexual relationship with her. Both characters have emotional wounds that have festered over time and, though the circumstances are highly unusual, they find that they can help heal one another in their time together.

Jackson is sensational as Lazarus, a man who has tried all sorts of ways to battle his demons and has found the closest thing to salvation in the form of blues music. The veteran actor took months to learn the guitar from scratch, even getting some help with his chops from the prop master while on the set of Snakes On A Plane. Not only does Jackson play several songs on guitar in Black Snake Moan but he also accompanies himself with blues singing as well. In the style of Son House, who pops up in archive footage interludes at a few points in the story, Jackson alternates between singing and speaking when belting out his tunes. He may not have the most conventionally pleasing voice but Jackson is pitch-perfect in terms of allowing the character to cathartically sublimate his anger and sadness.

When it came to crafting the character, Jackson drew from experiences he had with family members who grew up in the Deep South, specifically his grandfather. That could be the main reason that his work here comes across as deeply-felt and personal, tapping into an emotive range that Jackson seems to reserve for his finest on-screen work. “We ain’t gonna be moved,” he growls with conviction after he makes the decision to hold Rae captive by chain. In trying to exorcise her demons, Lazarus knows that his methods aren’t legal, and maybe not even moral, but feels it’s the only way to get the evil out of someone he sees as “possessed” by sin. Jackson is brilliant at balancing Lazarus’s religious convictions with his deep sense of sympathy for Rae’s tragic background.

Ricci has a challenging role here, not only as someone who is struggling immensely with infidelity and nymphomania but also fighting hard against bettering herself. Rae is a character for whom seduction is practiced out of habit and is conducted like a first language, until she finds that Lazarus isn’t fluent. Walking right up to the line of exploitation, Brewer has Ricci in very little clothing for most of Black Snake Moan and I would understand some being upset with how Rae as a character and Ricci as an actress are portrayed here. It’s an unquestionably brave performance that attempts to authentically capture the experience of having a specific kind of sexual dysfunction that could easily be played for cheap thrills in more immature films.

Black Snake Moan is an immaculately-crafted two-hander between a pair of broken souls who are chained together through their shared pain and freed by hard-fought understanding.