Only now does it occur to me... CANNERY ROW

Only now does it occur to me...  that if you've been wondering all this time what a Nick Nolte Indiana Jones would have looked like (Nolte notably passed on the roles of Han Solo in STAR WARS and Jones in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), then you need look no further than this freeze frame from the John Steinbeck adaptation, CANNERY ROW:

As for the film itself, despite nice turns from Nolte, Debra Winger, and M. Emmett Walsh, it fails to capture the ever-amusing humanism of the novel (and its sequel SWEET THURSDAY) ...and is fairly unwatchable.

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Film Review: CAPE FEAR (1991, Martin Scorsese)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 128 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Nick Nolte (EXTREME PREJUDICE, FAREWELL TO THE KING), Jessica Lange (THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE '81, TITUS), Robert De Niro (RAGING BULL, THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE), Joe Don Baker (THE OUTFIT, THE NATURAL, WALKING TALL), Juliette Lewis (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, STRANGE DAYS), Illeana Douglas (GOODFELLAS, GHOST WORLD), and Fred Dalton Thompson (real-life failed presidential candidate, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER).  Cameo appearances by Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and Martin Balsam (PSYCHO, DEATH WISH 3).  New screenplay by Wesley Strick (ARACHNOPHOBIA, WOLF).  Cinematography by Freddie Francis (THE ELEPHANT MAN, DUNE).  Non-original music by Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann score adapted by Elmer Bernstein (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, GHOSTBUSTERS). Credits sequence by Saul Bass.  Uncredited executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall. 

Tag-line: "There is nothing in the dark that isn't in the light.  Except fear.  Cape Fear."  (emphasis added)

Best one-liner:  "Counselor!"

Alright, folks.  CAPE FEAR '91 has kind of a bad reputation.  Now, Scorsese went all out:  I think he thought this was going to be his "Hitchcock" film.  He even updated the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack and had Saul Bass (!) do the credits sequence.

As it turns out, it ain't Hitchcock, but let me put it in perspective.  You know that clichéd high school yearbook quote, "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars?"  I think a slightly modified version of that can apply here.  I surmise:  "Shoot for Hitchcock('s moon-shaped belly), even if you miss, you'll land among the De Palmas."  And that's exactly what this feels like– a mid-range De Palma film!  And there are much worse things to be– because I happen to love mid-range De Palma (BODY DOUBLE, DRESSED TO KILL, RAISING CAIN, etc.) .

So without further adieu, and though I do prefer the original, here are seven quick reasons why CAPE FEAR '91 is a place worth visiting:

#1.  The inverse cameos.  CAPE FEAR '91 brings back three of the principals from CAPE FEAR '62, and in strange bizarro versions.
 
First, we have 'ol Rumple Eyes himself, Bob Mitchum, helping the Nick Nolte character protect himself from De Niro's version of the original Mitchum role.  Whew.


Then, we have Gregory Peck as an apparently evil version of Atticus Finch, defending De Niro from Nick Nolte's version of the original Peck role.  Damn!

Finally, we have Martin Balsam playing the judge who sides with De Niro, because he hates "vigilante justice."  Now, I know that's not true– given that I've seen him mow down legions of gang members with WWII-era machine gun in DEATH WISH 3.

#2.  Joe Don Baker drinking a combination of Pepto-Bismol and Jim Beam for the duration of the film.

If that doesn't warm your heart, then I personally forbid you from ever again watching a Joe Don Baker movie.

#3.  De Niro makin' creepy phone calls in gravity boots. 

Because... 1991.

#4.  The "clinging to the underbelly of a rapidly moving vehicle for several hours" plot twist, which feels EXACTLY like something that'd be in a De Palma film. 
  

#5.  Ditto on "murderous De Niro in drag."
 
It's really one of those strange performances where you can't quite tell if he's phoning it in or not.  There's often a fine line between "bad" acting and "genius" acting (see: the career of Steve Railsback, for example), and I kinda can't tell if this is a performance of nuanced intensity, or if it's a practical joke on the audience.  Either way, I love it.

#6.  Continuing in this vein:  in 1991, nearly one hundred years of motion picture history culminated in the subtle beauty of Robert De Niro singing a line of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now"

while offering a joint to orthodonitia-encrusted teenage Juliette Lewis:

Truly fantastic.

#7.  Nick Nolte crazy-face!

I've discussed this in-depth before, but there are few things more frighteningly exhilarating than seeing a crazy-faced Nick Nolte in his native habitat.

SWEET DREAMS, KIDDIES!


P.S.  It always struck me as bizarre that the theatrical poster's placement (see above) of the torn photo and De Niro's creepy gaze build a subliminal image of a keyhole, especially since I can't recall keyholes being relevant to the plot whatsoever.  Thoughts?

–Sean Gill

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Junta Juleil's Top 100: #85-81

85. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989, Steven Spielberg)

I really need to do a full-fledged review of this one of these days. Following two installments chock full of visual and choreographic mastery, Spielberg, Jeffrey Boam, and script doctor Tom Stoppard add something which would be inconceivable in a Republic serial: emotional resonance. The relationship between the Joneses (Ford and Connery as Jr. and Sr., that is) is a flawless synthesis of actor and role. This, of course, is steadily peppered with exquisite action sequences and visual gags- as if THE GREAT ESCAPE and THE GENERAL could somehow cohabitate on the same reel. This sort of film could easily fall flat, but under Spielberg's firm, unwavering hand, there's not a single note which rings false. There's so much to love here: the incredibly clever prologue (starring a vibrant River Phoenix) where it seems that every single event which molded Indy's life occurred on one summer's day in 1912, Indy's 20th Century motorcycle-jousting knight (and his father's phlegmatic reaction), the incredible stuntman's leap from galloping horse to hurtling tank, the breathless speedboat pursuit through labyrinthine canals, Connery and Elliott's silly secret handshake, the dour librarian with the world's noisiest stamp (in a touch worthy of Tati), or Connery slapped by a Nazi's leather glove and fiercely growling in retort- "It tellsh me that goose-schtepping morons such as yerschelf schould try RRREADING BOOKCHS inschtead of BAURNING THEM!" All of this is accompanied by John Williams' greatest score; and the payoffs- involving the three challenges and the reveal of the grail- have left an entire generation of adventure films stumbling and teetering in their wake.

84. CHARLEY VARRICK (1973, Don Siegel)

This movie has a finale which involves a '67 Chrysler Imperial versus a biplane. And no, that's not the only reason it cracked the Top 100. As I've said before, CHARLEY VARRICK is one of the best gritty, 70's, take-no-prisoners crime films populated with brutal, pistol-whippin', lady-slappin sons-of-bitchery. This movie isn't just cynical, it's amoral. Cutthroat. A lot of these flicks are like a punch in the guts– CHARLEY's a kick in the teeth! You could call it a series of clichés– it's "every-man-for-himself," "dog-eat-dog-eat-dog," "lookin'-out-for-numero-uno" etc., but Siegel takes it over the top to such a degree that we see (between the setpieces and the tough talk) the crumbling social structure, an America where calculated ruthlessness is a matter of survival, the ice-cold blood flowing through your veins a necessity. Walter Matthau is brilliantly inscrutable as our anti-anti-hero (usually the cop-killer is not the most pleasant character in a film). And Joe Don Baker's sadistic "Molly" is one of the great screen villains. Highest marks.

83. PARIS, TEXAS (1984, Wim Wenders)

A work of tenderness, of mystery, of reassurance. Robby Müller shows us the vastness of the desert landscape; Harry Dean Stanton shows us the vastness of the human soul. The pacing may be slow, but it's the sort of film in which you can lose yourself, just as you would while traveling by foot through a wild expanse. Wenders has always been deliberate; fascinated by nostalgia, sentiment, music; the ways in which we try to find order, meaning, and respite in our lives. Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, and Nastassja Kinski deliver moving, realistic portrayals; you get a sense of the spaces they inhabit, and those boundless spaces within their characters' minds. It's a movie through which you can roam, and maybe the epitome of Americana as represented on film (naturally, directed by a German).

82. CRASH (1996, David Cronenberg)

"They bury the dead so quickly; they should leave them lying around for months." I've written before that "the car itself is a conceptual hotbed of primordial fears and visceral desires: the stifling, claustrophobic space; constrictive belts and cold metal clasps; exhilarating accelerations and jolting stops– it's even the site of many a Baby Boomers' first sexual fumblings... and, oh yeah– the ever-present threat of death and shattered glass and crumpled metal and blood and fluid and bodies penetrated, torn, and ripped by the thundering collision of jagged steel and spongy tissue. We are surrounded by machines: they are part of us, and there is no escape. So we adapt, we integrate, we re-form ourselves like the maladjusted flesh sculptors we are. Howard Shore's dark, entrancing score sends metallic echoes and screeching guitar reverberations up from the pit of our deepest fears– it's as relentless and hypnotic as a highway cloverleaf. It taps into some primal fascination we don't quite have the vocabulary for– from watching bacteria mingle under a slide to pornography to, say, KOYAANISQATSI." Many great artists and writers wring truth from tracking the progress of the human mind; Cronenberg forces us to confront the progress of the body. It's ugly yet sterile, like a hideous medical tattoo. The performances are magnificent: the intensity of Elias Koteas, the smarm of James Spader, the commitment of Holly Hunter, or the gleefully misshapen Rosanna Arquette. And rarely is such a disturbing film so goddamned hilarious. Enjoy that car ride home, kiddies!

81. TOTAL RECALL (1990, Paul Verhoeven)

"If I am not me, den who da hell am I?" Now that is a fine question, sir, and perhaps the most eloquent philosophical inquiry posed to humanity since the days of Voltaire; maybe even since Montaigne. But maybe, just maybe, TOTAL RECALL is the future of human thought. Post-thought. "I've got to hand it to you, Cohagen – that's the best mindfuck yet." See what I mean? Short-attention-span philosophy with a satisfying payoff: the mindfuck. We don't have to fritter away hours flipping through the vellum of dusty tomes: that time is over. It had it's couple centuries in the sun, but now it can go the way of the Dodo. How 'bout instead– er, what was I talking about? I got over here some salacious photographs and a bunch of puns about Weiners. Er, wait– this is loosely based on a story by Philip K. Dick! How 'bout some Dick puns? How 'bout that instead?
This is what Paul Verhoeven means when he says he makes the movies that America deserves. TOTAL RECALL is completely fucken ridiculous, and meant to be enjoyed on many levels– as a latter-day Hitchcock sci-fi suspense thriller, as a quasi-Philip K. Dickian paranoid tract, as a joke on what passes for entertainment these silly days. I mean, he introduces a character, Benny, over and over and over again, just in case we've forgotten, in case we've been distracted by all the Martian mutants and gunplay and midget hookers. "Hey, it's Benny, remember me? Remember me?! IT'S BENNY!" Ah, a goddamned fun time if ever there was one. Also: Michael Ironside, in one of his finest, most startling performances; insane eye-bulging and rubbery Arnie faces; a sweeping Jerry Goldsmith score; and some of the most incredible special effects ever committed to celluloid. And, of course, I wrote this short story about what really happened behind the scenes. Pass the Labatt Maximum Ice!

Coming up next... Harvey Keitel gets naked– TWICE!

Previously on the countdown:
#90-86
#95-91
#100-96
Runners-up Part 1
Runners-up Part 2

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Film Review: MOONWALKER (1988, Jerry Kramer, Colin Chivers, & Jim Blashfield)

Stars: 3.9 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Michael Jackson, Joe Pesci, Sean Lennon, Kellie Parker, Brandon Quintin Adams (THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, THE SANDLOT). Music by Michael Jackson, score by Bruce Broughton (THE MONSTER SQUAD, TOMBSTONE). Visual effects supervised by Hoyt Yeatman (THE ROCK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE ABYSS). Special effects supervised by Kevin Pike (INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, THE LAST STARFIGHTER). Claymation by Will Vinton (THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS, THE ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN). Written by Michael Jackson and David Newman (BONNIE AND CLYDE, SUPERMAN, WHAT'S UP DOC?).
Tag-line: "On his soul, a king of music. On his heart, a king of beats."
Best one-liner: "There, get him! Come on, get him! Kill him, KILL HIM! Let's see how cool he is now!"

As I watched this film, my mind grappled with the perverse concept that we live in a universe where MOONWALKER could, and does, actually exist. Ultimately, upon holding the physical disc in my hands, feeling the weight of it, and confirming that fact with nearby witnesses, I was forced to conclude that the preceding 93 minutes were no mere fever-dream, but in fact a very real encounter with a very real movie. But what is it, exactly? A sci-fi flick? A musical? An anthology piece? A biopic? An auto-biopic? ...A horror omnibus?

I would surely not call it a horror omnibus unequivocally, but consider the following images and then tell me that it is not a horror movie:







So, now that I've adequately shoehorned MOONWALKER to fit my horror omnibus series, let's look at the film proper: MOONWALKER is utter outlandishness, a collage of ego and confusion, a self-portrait of a man-child, and a bizarre paean to the films of Steven Spielberg. In a nutshell, it's E.T., PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, TRANSFORMERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, LISZTOMANIA, BACK TO THE FUTURE, and A HARD DAY'S NIGHT bundled together into a mélange masquerading as a Michael Jackson biopic.

As the film washes over you it relentlessly defies all rational thought, and as soon as your reeling brain has a tentative handle on any one of these peculiarities, a dozen more pop up to take its place, like so many moon-walking hydra heads:

Why are we crosscutting between Michael and Chernobyl, Mother Teresa, atomic bombs, Martin Luther King, and the Camp David Accords?


Why are there so many dogs in suits?


Why did claymation Michael Jackson just transform into claymation Tina Turner, and finally into claymation Pee-Wee Herman?


Why is it that the live-action approximations of creepy claymation are about 900 times scarier than the already creepy claymation?

And why is 'The Noid' there?! I hate The Noid!

Am I supposed to be thinking about HAUSU?


Why Texas?


Is that seriously a 'spider-wipe' transition?


Let me stop myself right there. Allow me to back up a moment and try to explain exactly what is happening here in one massive stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence hopefully worthy of William Faulkner:

Michael Jackson walks onto the screen, his feet tingling and sparkling, he performs in a series of concerts, crosscut with historical events and a fanciful best-of compilation that feels somehow as if MASTERPIECE THEATER were hijacked by the alien counterparts of the California raisins



and Michael is leading the troops off to battle but what battle and against who, it must be

electricity! do they seek to battle neon lightning? no matter

and then the rats descend and so many rats, rats! rats! rats!, but why? and


at least it made the papers, but
then the children with false facial hair are reenacting BAD, crotch grabs and all, and I am appalled but I am still watching


who's bad? they ask us
not I
I hope

and I get this same feeling when I am watching adults dressed as babies, dancing in diapers, why oh why?, you wish that I had never seen these things, but some things cannot be taken back, no matter how much you wish

and then child-Michael is man-Michael and he is chased by claymation hordes who want an autograph and perhaps a pound of flesh, but what is a pound of flesh to a creature made of clay? sprung and sculpted from the loins of the earth as it were,

and Michael is sincere, and Michael is happy, like a child, I have rarely seen such genuine happiness, and then he is a bunny, Michael is a claymation bunny, and he drives on and on, he escapes the Clay-parazzi, then divides with his bunny döppelganger, his bunnyganger, and they have a dance-off in Monument Valley (or is it that desert from the Looney Tunes?),

and Michael gets ticketed for dancing because there is no moonwalking allowed in the desert, it's bad for the plants but do not linger because

Michael is leading us on a tour of the tabloids, the carnival of his life, and Bubbles is in chains

we pass through the Elizabeth Taylor shrine, it frightens me, Liz, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and all that, and then dancing with the Elephant Man's bones, is that insensitive?, I wonder

(apologies to Joseph Merrick) but then he dismantles the funhouse of public perception and strides away like Gulliver, a titan amongst us mere Lilliputians, but suddenly Michael plays soccer with kids in a field, including Sean Lennon, and I wonder


who taught him to play soccer (football?), but the fun doesn't last long,

because they wander, Goonies-style, into a secret lair, the lair of Joe Pesci who likes bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs,

is that a ponytail or a cowlick, who cares he eats peanuts just the same

he has a master plan to write himself into the history books (getting kids high on bugs and drugs) but Michael stands in his way and for that he must die but Michael escapes the assassins' bullets and turns into a car (not a DeLorean) but it turns back time anyway because he IS the car, I suppose, and so it's the 1930's

and I guess the producers of Broadway's MEMPHIS were taking notes, detailed, detailed notes,

and we go into 'Smooth Criminal' and Michael crushes a cue ball with his bare hands

only dust remains

and then they dip in those patented shoes (not merely patent-leather, mind you, patented leather), you see Michael was an inventor, too, but the dancing doesn't last because Pesci naps a kid

he just wants to get everybody high, man, you know, some good drugs, bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs, but that doesn't fly with Michael, who is actually a giant robot who can fly (would have liked to have seen him in ROBOT JOX), and the heavens open, like when they open the ark in RAIDERS


and the transformation is complete and he lays waste to the armies of darkness (like the ark of the covenant) and then he flies back to outer space (like E.T.) and the children are crying

'Thank you, Michael!' they squeak from melancholy throats but it's not over till it's over and Michael comes back and takes them to a concert where he performs 'Come Together' which was a song by the Beatles, you remember who the Beatles are, don't you?,

and Sean Lennon righteously shakes glowsticks in time with the music and then there are three sets of closing credits because a lot of people worked on this movie and it goes on for about six minutes, and there is African folk music and some outtakes from 'Smooth Criminal' and then finally Michael winks at us, a knowing wink, because we know the secret now, the secret that he is a robot and the world is safe now because Pesci was exploded, safe from bugs and drugs, bugs and drugs and whatever else, forever and amen, the end.

-Sean Gill

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