Presidential Inception

 

I'm sure there's some kind of essay to be written on Dennis Quaid going from trying to prevent a Ronald Reagan stand-in from starting a nuclear war to, 20 years later, playing Ronald Reagan, but we'll leave that for another time. Peacock is streaming 1984's Dreamscape. Let's go.

Quick Plot: Dr. Novotny is running a successful series of studies on dream immersion, sending psychics into patients' REM cycles to help identify underlying problems in their lives. It's great for curing impotency, but Novotny's aims are peanuts compared to government agent Bob Blair, who sees this new technology as a means of far greater things. 

Since Blair is played by Max Von Sydow, you can be pretty sure such things are not exactly related to world peace.

Enter Alex Gardner (Quaid), a former psychic prodigy turned loan shark-owing gambler. Novotny brings Alex back to help develop his studies. While there, Alex falls for Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw), a woman who could do a lot better than a jerk who sneaks into her dreams to have sex with her without consent. But it's 1984, they're both attractive, so we move on to them uniting to save the world.

See, there's a very important man having nightmares: the President of the United States. He's plagued with visions of a nuclear wasteland, which worries Blair, who would rather not see his country move to disarmament. Blair's plan is to send his pet psychic Tommy into the President's dream for a sleepy assassination. Alex has some warning from horror novelist Charlie Prince (Norm!) but as bodies begin to pile up, it's clear the only way to save the world is to do some inception.

Dreamscape is a fun little sci-fi horror dripping with its time. The script has multiple writers credited, including Chuck Russell, who would go on to use quite a few small touches from this film into the beloved Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Director Joseph Ruben was never a stranger to oddness in genre cinema: this is the man who turned a kidnapping film into an alien invasion in The Forgotten, and who I think about every day for the last 30 years because he's responsible for the absolutely bonkers The Good Son. 

We do not talk nearly enough about The Good Son.

Dreamscape doesn't quite reach those heights (and literally, because REMEMBER HOW THIS MOVIE ENDS?)

Sorry, it's hard to ever focus on something that isn't The Good Son when talking adjacently about The Good Son.

AS I WAS SAYING, Dreamscape is neat. It feels of its time in catching that late '70s/early '80s psychological experimental era of The Brood and The Fury, but with more electric music that even bridges the upcoming early '90s with some sexy saxophone magic. Plus, there's even some timely nuclear war politics! Quaid shows the charisma that would make him a star. Capshaw is smart and sexy. The dreams are just weird enough to feel like dreams. It's a good time. 

High Points

By golly this is a good cast

Low Points

Aforementioned ickiness regarding the fuzzy sexual assault question and resolution

Lessons Learned

The best way to get a cad to do something is to invoke the IRS

In our dreams, we're often very racist

The easiest shorthand to imply 'unhinged psychopath' is simply casting David Patrick Kelly

Rent/Bury/Buy

Dreamscape is quite fun. Sure, the visual dream language is basically a karaoke music video filmed in 1992 eastern Europe, but there's a lot to enjoy here. I watched via Peacock, which did occasionally have a weird bug happening where at least two scenes weren't transferring correctly. Not sure if that was simply my connection, but I figured it was worth a warning.

Murder On the Soviet Express

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm not a true crime person. There's something seedy about reveling in the intrigue of something that has real-life victims, and as an unabashed horror fan, I find it uncomfortably blurs lines that I've spent my life defending. 

That being said, 1995's Citizen X intrigued me: a made-for-HBO movie in its early days of original programming following the real-life case of a prolific Soviet serial killer and equipped with a ridiculously good cast.

Quick Plot: It's 1982 in the Soviet Union, and new forensic specialist Viktor Burakov (Stephen Rea) has a rough night (and subsequent 8 years) ahead of him. A corpse found in the nearby woods arrives right at closing time, but as Viktor insists the police go deeper in their search, he can't complain when they discover another handful of victims, abused and murdered according to a pattern.

Before he can shower, Viktor is summoned to an early morning council of Soviet officials allergic to hearing words like "serial killer" or "FBI." This is bureaucracy at its tightest, and the best Viktor can hope for in his investigation is for the careful, deceptively ambivalent machinations of his superior Col. Fetisov (Donald Sutherland) to pay off. 

Viktor is a passionate, caring man who sees the problems in front of him and can't understand why the system won't bend. Fetisov has spent his whole career playing the game, gathering intel quietly and never rocking the boat publicly. In its own way, it's a marriage made in heaven.

But there's a lot of hell in between. 

The identity of the killer isn't hidden from the audience. We meet unhappy factory worker Andrei Chikatilo (familiar face Jeffrey DeMunn) early on and see his pattern as Viktor pieces it out: hang around the train stations on the outskirts of Moscow until a target appears. The victims are either children, sex workers, vagrants, or young adults that can't necessarily fend for themselves. 

Viktor nails Chikatilo's routine down so well that he actually captures the man, only for his superiors to scoff at the idea that a respected, heterosexual member of the communist party could do such a thing. Faulty bloodwork leads to Chikatilo's release, and the hunt continues for another few years, along with additional victims.

Written and directed by Chris Gerolmo, Citizen X is an incredibly watchable product of its time. Today, this would be the first season of a limited anthology series vying for Emmys against a dozen similar products. But in 1995, the gaggle of prestige actors trying out Russian accents is kind of charming in its own way.

There's actually a surprising amount of charm to be found in this story about a sadistic child killer. Gerolmo doesn't revel in Chikatilo's violence, instead showing the weight such crimes have on those who directly witness them. There's a rather noble sense of honor about Viktor's pursuit for justice, as well as how Fetisov watches the world around him with caution so that he can play his cards at just the right time and for the right result.

The only time Citizen X really slips into straight procedural is the ending, which suffers by moving closer to Chikatilo and further from Viktor and Fetisov. The abrupt coda feels off, especially since Citizen X seems so clear-minded about what it really wants to explore: this should be a story about how intelligent and more importantly, persistent investigating led to the capture of a monster, not so much a story about the monster.

High Points

There's such joy to be had when you get to watch good actors play off each other, and nowhere is that more true than when Stephen Rea and Donald Sutherland get to develop their tentative teamwork from two wildly different backgrounds

Low Points

It's fun to see a young Imelda Staunton pop up as Viktor's dutiful wife, but like so many of these kinds of "men investigate things" stories, it's also a minor shame that she, as one of the few speaking women onscreen, exists in the story to remind him (and us) that he's a good man

Lessons Learned

If you want to get things done in a bureaucracy, you better know how to avoid making it look like you're getting anything done

Being a hero is enormously taxing

When in doubt, send in Max Von Sydow

Rent/Bury/Buy

I had a shockingly good time watching Citizen X, and this is coming from someone who generally backs away from these kinds of films. Have at it on whatever we're calling the HBO app these days.

The Pilgrim's Progress

Even a bad medieval-set action fantasy movie is probably going to more interesting than just ANY old bad action movie. 

Right?

Quick Plot: Meet Solomon Kane (the poor man's Hugh Jackman, James Purefoy), a saucy 17th century pirate who quickly changes his ways after an encounter with a demon that wants to steal his soul. Resolved to live a life of peace, Kane donates his plundered fortune, removes his hoop earring, and joins a monastery for one year until a spooked priest evicts him.

On the road, Solomon meets a friendly family of Pilgrims led by Kobayashi himself, Pete Postlehwaite  Together they pray and wax nostalgic about wartime life, but their Walton-esque future is threatened by a gang of demonically possessed black-eyed warriors who kidnap the prettiest Pilgrim (Peter Pan's Rachel Hurd-Wood) and slaughter most of the rest. Most importantly, they finally awaken the bloodthirst inside Kane, prompting him to slice and behead his way through forests in search of the Big Bad.

I first heard about Solomon Kane via a 2009 review by the great Gentleman's Guide to Midnite Cinema podcast following its North American debut at TIFF. For whatever reason, the film never received never received a theatrical release stateside. My interest in the material was based not on author Robert E. Howard's famous character, but for the fact that Michael J. Bassett was writing and directing.

Bassett has quickly become the kind of filmmaker I love. His prior efforts include the trench warfare-set ghost story Deathwatch, the survivalist action thriller Wilderness, and the 3D sequel Silent Hill: Revelation. The first two were made with little money but never showed financial strain in the final product. Personally, I found all three films to be flawed but far more enjoyable/effective than most of their competition.

Solomon Kane was, according to IMDB, made for $45 million, and though the final product is something of a mess, it also looks outstanding. Sure, we get the occasional pixels of CGI blood, but the landscape and set design never betray its budget. We're also treated to plenty of weird gore stuff, including crucifixion, mirror demons, wraith thingies, and head possession (makes sense when you see it). There's also plenty of hokey slow motion missteps, but I think that's automatically included in a fantasy action movie.

I guess what I'm saying is that I enjoyed Solomon Kane, even if I feel like I shouldn't have. It doesn't have the all-out bite of the far more fun and trashy Conan remake, but Pete Postlehwaite wore a Pilgrim hat, the villain looked like a chunkier version of Street Fighter 2's Vega.

Also, every time our hero touched his sword, something went "whoosh!"

Call me simple, but these things entertain me.

High Points
I love me a score that works overtime when needed

Low Points
Poor Solomon Kane. He might have been living with the guilt of his past sins, but his real problem in life was the fact that he had such awful ears in a world before hearing aide technology. As far as I can tell, that's the only way to explain why hordes of enemies could sneak up on him time and time again (and time and time, since I think I counted at least four) 

Lessons Learned
In the 17th century, nobody stood up to evil. Also in the 17th century, Christians used teeth whiteners while heathens brushed theirs with dirt and acid

If a creepy isolated preacher is eager to show you something, it’s probably not a stamp collection

The benefit of being evicted from a monastery is that the parting gifts include a pretty kickass Gandalf staff

Rent/Bury/Buy
Is Solomon Kane a good movie? Goodness no. The symbolism is heavy handed, the character relationships rushed, self-importance quite glaring, and dentistry, inconsistent. But does it involve a few beheadings, sword battles, and scenic cliffs? These things are all true, which is why I had some fun with a movie that you should probably wait to see on Instant Watch. The DVD does come loaded with special features for the more dedicated, with a commentary track, deleted scenes, making-of, and interviews with Hugh Ja--er, James Purefoy and the positively charming Bassett.