Only now does it occur to me... VIRTUOSITY (1995)

Only now does it occur to me... that VIRTUOSITY (1995) is perhaps Ridley Scott's favorite movie.

What––you don't believe me? That a film directed by Brett Leonard (THE LAWNMOWER MAN, SIEGFRIED AND ROY: THE MAGIC BOX, Billy Idol's "Shock to the System" music video) would be Ridley's fave? I promise I'll convince you. But first, some background.

Penned by underrated genre scribe Eric Bernt (SURVIVING THE GAME, ROMEO IS BLEEDING), it's a post-DEMOLITION MAN/GHOST IN THE MACHINE cyberpunk fable of a murderous A.I.––in this case, a virtual "serial killer" training program (Russell Crowe)––who escapes into the real world to battle his nemesis, a jailed and hardboiled cop (Denzel Washington). I'd say that it draws some tonal inspiration from Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER and BLACK RAIN––for instance, there's a scene where Crowe's A.I. come-to-life encounters an older, bartender-model robot (Kevin Loreque, in a great, butoh-adjacent performance),

 and is made so existentially uncomfortable that he "retires" him, á la BLADE RUNNER:

In general, I must note that this movie is majestically entertaining. Allow me to submit, for your consideration, a scene where Russell Crowe jaunts down the street in a '90s zoot suit while homaging SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and receives his very first high-five––a moment which calls for serious and immediate contemplation.

 

Or this scene, where Russell Crowe rocks out, in concert, with some theremin-style 1990s musical accoutrement.

The film features John Waters'-own Traci Lords as a cyberpunk nightclub singer, 

and even brings us the mind-boggling occurrence of a Debbie Harry/non-David Byrne Talking Heads song called "No Talking Just Head" which, I guess, attempts to subtly satirize the Talking Heads' existence while mostly sounding like an ersatz Nine Inch Nails banger. This plays over the end credits and just feels like the perfect capper for the madness we've just witnessed.

But I don't want to stray too far from my main point, which is that "VIRTUOSITY is Ridley Scott's favorite movie." Now, I may have amply demonstrated the "whys" and "hows" of VIRTUOSITY becoming someone's favorite movie, but I haven't fully illustrated the Scott connection.

You're probably thinking: Oh, yeah, you're going to remind us that Ridley Scott is a maniac for Russell Crowe and casts him in all of his movies. He even cast Crowe and Denzel Washington in AMERICAN GANGSTER (2007), and reversed their roles, with Crowe as the cop pursuing Washington's criminal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're absolutely right, I think that's a point worth discussing. But I sense you pushing back already. 

Well, that's not enough to prove your hypothesis, buddy––you're making a serious claim about Sir Ridley Scott's rarefied tastes, and you don't have the receipts!

I hear your skepticism. I hear it loud and clear. But what if I told you that most of the supporting roles also had a latter-day Scott connection? Stephen Spinella ended up in the Scott-produced NUMB3ERS... and Junta Juleil Hall-O-Famer William Forsythe (THE ROCK, EXTREME PREJUDICE)

appeared in the Scott-produced MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE... the great William Fichtner (GO, HEAT, DRIVE ANGRY, THE DARK KNIGHT) 

was also later cast by Scott in BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001). (Oh yeah, and in this screencap, Fichtner appears next to none other than Louise "Nurse Ratched" Fletcher.) Who's to say that he didn't bring these folks into the Scott fold because he was such a VIRTUOSITY fanatic?

I am. These are all working actors, bub––having them pop up in a subsequent Scott project doesn't prove diddly.

Okay, I can accept that. But how about a canister of primordial, life-giving goo which lends Russell Crowe's A.I. a corporeal form:

 

isn't that exactly like the "concept of Alien life" promulgated by the Engineers in Scott's PROMETHEUS (2012)?

Maybe, but it's not terribly original here, nor in PROMETHEUS. You gotta give me something more substantial.

Alright, here it is: Russell Crowe bursts into an ultimate fighting championship––a modern gladiatorial game, if you will, not unlike Scott's GLADIATOR (2000)––and backflops (that's correct, it's more of a backflop than a backflip) into the ring, and offers not one, but two General Maximus-meets-Vince McMahon"Are you entertained?" gestures to the crowd.

Roll the tape:

Well, that's pretty spot-on, actually, you might be saying. Say, this is all pretty weird. Is it possible that Ridley Scott really does love VIRTUOSITY above all other films?

To which, I say––well, 1995 was a good year. Not "a good year" like Ridley Scott's 2006 Russell Crowe-vehicle wine-country drama "A GOOD YEAR," but a good year nonetheless:

Book 'em, Danno. I says: case closed.

Film Review: SCANNERS (1981, David Cronenberg)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 103 minutes.
Tag-line: "There are 4 billion people on earth. 237 are Scanners. They have the most terrifying powers ever created... and they are winning."
Notable Cast or Crew:  Michael Ironside (TOTAL RECALL, EXTREME PREJUDICE, CHAINDANCE), Patrick McGoohan (THE PHANTOM, BRAVEHEART, THE PRISONER), Jennifer O'Neill (A FORCE OF ONE, RIO LOBO), Stephen Lack (DEAD RINGERS, HEAD ON), Lawrence Dane (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, BRIDE OF CHUCKY), Robert A. Silverman (EXISTENZ, NAKED LUNCH, JASON X), Fred Doederlein (SHIVERS).  Music by Howard Shore (THE LORD OF THE RINGS, AFTER HOURS, VIDEODROME).  Cinematography by Mark Irwin (THE FLY, VIDEODROME, WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, DUMB & DUMBER).
Best One-liner: "You murdered the future!"

SCANNERS is an achievement in unrelenting atmosphere. It is perhaps (along with VIDEODROME) the purest filmic distillation of a particular paranoid, Philip K. Dick-ian, modernist sci-fi vibe.  It is a film meant to be experienced, not quite digested; a sensory assault in varying modulations.  Sometimes it comes to you as white noise, sometimes it careens with a metallic shriek.


If THE BROOD (Cronenberg's previous feature) is his most personal film (dealing with the fallout of his divorce), then SCANNERS might be his most "impersonal."  This is a compliment.  The writing,  performances, set design, sound design, and direction conspire to keep you at an arm's length.  (I would say it is Cronenberg at his most Kubrickian.) The future is now, and it has all the sterility and detachment of a doctor's office, a psych ward, or a chemical storage depot.

It settles around you, slowly but relentlessly, like silt collecting on a river bottom, suddenly pressing down, pressing down... invisible, a force field, a barely perceptible hum, like someone's thumbing through your mind, aimlessly flipping the pages... like you're being scanned––

OH DEAR LORD!

SCANNERS is perhaps an unusual film to kick off my Halloween season, but for all of its sci-fi trappings, I would say that it aims primarily to disquiet and unsettle.  It is a horror film in the sense that ERASERHEAD is a horror film; it's not a "crowd-pleaser," but you stumble out of the theater afterward, staggering down streets you thought you knew so well, but now, under the film's spell, feel somehow different.  Malevolent.  This movie has a half-life.  It lingers.  Howard Shore's incredibly atmospheric electro-mayhem penetrates your mind; it sounds like early Wendy Carlos, the deep cuts, like the music they briefly use while torturing Alex DeLarge.

In one of the film's rare, human moments, an artist (played by character actor Robert A. Silverman, a favorite of Cronenberg's) confronts cold, sterile modernity through his sculpture.

"My art... keeps me sane," he says.  "Art.  Sane."  In this moment, though you realize that the character is not quite reaching his goal of long-term sanity, perhaps it is Cronenberg himself making this confession.
 
The sculptor's art includes an enormous, walk-in head.  SCANNERS is not unlike this sculpture; a sensory journey deep within the mind, evoking feelings of surprise, wonder, and dread.

You may have noticed that I'm going out of my way not to describe the plot of SCANNERS, which is a mystery best unfolded by a first-time viewer.  I'm not even going to divulge what happens in the immediate aftermath of this screen capture,

an image that has likely been spoiled for you already by popular culture, even if you've never heard of SCANNERS.

Instead, I'm going to take my usual jaunt down Minutiae Lane, and place a few, out-of-context specifics under my microscope.

#1.  I have seen your dystopian future... and it is a Canadian megamall from the 1980s!


I kinda love it... obviously.


#2. THE PRISONER keeps a prisoner.


At one point, THE PRISONER's Patrick McGoohan is holding Stephen Lack captive in a medical facility.  McGoohan is always great, and here he's occupying an early Cronenbergian archetype––that of the semi-creepy, semi-fatherly techno-sage.  See also: Oliver Reed's "Dr. Raglan" in THE BROOD or Jack Creley's "Brian O'Blivion" in VIDEODROME.


#3. Mark Irwin's Cinematography.

His lens captures that Canadian color palette so well.  His framing is exceptional, glossy and sterile––he does much of the heavy lifting in building the aforementioned "paranoid modernist" atmosphere.


#4. Dick Smith's (and his team, who included Stephan Dupuis, Brigitte McCaughry, Constant Natale, Tom Schwartz, and a young Chris Walas, who went on to direct THE FLY II) incredible makeup effects.  While not quite as intensely imaginative as what Rick Baker and Co. would create for VIDEODROME, the work here is exceptional––


creepy, veiny, and "new-fleshy," all the way.


#5. While SCANNERS is no action movie, "it ain't an action movie till they blow up a gas station" is still permitted to apply.

FOOOOSH


#6. Ironside, Ironside, Ironside!  In his breakout role, the legendary Michael Ironside delights and terrifies as the mysterious Darryl Revok.  In a film where the other actors proceed with nearly Bressonian detachment, Ironside is on the loose and off the chain (dance).  He delivers all the best lines, things like "We're gonna do it the scanner way––I'm gonna suck your brain dry!"  He even gets to be suave with a glass of scotch, like a Bond villain in the third act, and I approve of that.

SCANNERS could be described as a "film" or it could be described as a museum of frightening Ironside facial contortions.






At least one of these is Ironside's O-face, and now you can never wipe that thought from your mind.

I've often thought of Ironside as the Canadian Jack Nicholson (and the breadth of his talent is such that it's a shame he hasn't been cast in more Nicholsonian roles).  There's one scene in particular of Ironside in mental hospital, and he feels very much like Nicholson's "McMurphy" from CUCKOO'S NEST


Ironside spills water...


...and so does Nicholson.

Furthermore, Ironside peels off that cryptic n' creepy third eye bandage

and I'm seeing shades of J.J. Gittes in CHINATOWN:

Coincidence?  Or is it one of those weird, Busey/Nolte döppelganger-things that science can't explain?  I'd also like to see Ironside as The Joker in BATMAN (though we kind of already have) or as Jack Torrance in THE SHINING.  Then, I'd like to see Nicholson's take on FREE WILLY and HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING.

#7. So, the SCANNERS end credits are done in the mode of a DOS terminal, which is stylistically and thematically appropriate to the film.

At the very end, the screen blips to green and then to black, but I was sure I saw some hidden text in there.  I freeze-framed and saw this:

It says "MAX SECURITY SELF DESTRUCT SECONDS 1" and then blips out of existence.  Perhaps some other movie has done this before, but so far as I know, SCANNERS is the only film to ever successfully self-destruct!  (I'd seen SCANNERS three times before this latest viewing, and I'd never noticed this detail before.)

Five stars.

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... THE FLY II

Only now does it occur to me...  that Eric Stolz may have been fired as Marty McFly, but eventually he did get to be "Martin the Fly."  It seems too weirdly specific to be mere coincidence.

By the sound of it, THE FLY II doesn't seem as if it would be a "good movie," and subsequently I'd avoided it for years, assuming the worst.  Now I'm prepared to say, without reservation, that THE FLY II is dad-blammed fantastic and one of the great sci-fi films of the 1980s.

The directorial debut of Chris Walas (one of the FX masters of 80s creature features– from GREMLINS to THE FLY to ENEMY MINE to ARACHNOPHOBIA to NAKED LUNCH), THE FLY II has a tremendous eye for visual detail and some of the finest practical effects I've ever seen.

We have spectacular makeup á la THE FLY and ENEMY MINE,

viscous ALIEN/THE THING-esque cocoon props,
 
 mind-blowing gore that nearly puts Tom Savini to shame,

and a titular creature whom history may well remember as one of the last great movie monsters before our fun was ruined by CGI.

 BZZZ

And since this isn't a full review, I'll share a few random observations:

#1.  There's a nice Cronenberg shoutout when a random Bartok security guard happens to be reading THE SHAPE OF RAGE, the first major scholarly study of the Cronenberg canon.
 

 #2.  An amusingly acerbic cameo appearance by John Getz ("Stathis," the quasi-villain and Goldblum rival from THE FLY 1).

He's the only FLY 1 cast member to officially return, though we do see Goldblum in some archival footage, a few clips of which were deleted scenes from the prior film.

#3.  A sensitive, pathos-filled lead performance from Eric Stoltz, who probably scored the gig based on his ability to deliver even when covered in makeup (MASK), but who in every sense transcends what you'd expect from a sequel to a remake of a sci-fi B-movie.

#4.  Also, it occurs to me that this may be the greatest accomplishment of Mick Garris, who wrote the story and co-authored the screenplay (with Frank Darabont, Jim Wheat, and Ken Wheat).  Though storywise it's closer to, say, a Spielberg flick rather than a Cronenberg one, it's a helluva lot of fun.  I've been ragging on Mr. Garris a lot lately (i.e., for DESPERATION and QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY), but hey– he brought us the finest CRITTERS sequel and the greatest (and only) sequel to Cronenberg's version of THE FLY.  Thanks, Mick!

–Sean Gill