Only now does it occur to me... BLOWN AWAY (1994)

Only now does it occur to me... I can show you what you need to know about Stephen Hopkins' BLOWN AWAY better than I can tell you. In short, it's a delirious slice of mid-90s madness, as if PATRIOT GAMES and SPEED were ground together into mélange of Jeff Bridges running in vain toward slo-mo explosions, the absolute worst Irish accents ever put to film, and a sensibility that screams "Bruckheimer," though no Bruckheimers were involved in this project. It was ahead of its time.

But first, a few clips, with very little context.

The first, I call: "Forest Whitaker Fails to Notice an Extremely Conspicuous Tommy Lee Jones."

Here, Forest is jogging up a Boston staircase and is so zoned out to the beautiful strains of U2 that he does not notice Tommy Lee Jones––in the busiest Jesus t-shirt ever worn––taping him with a camcorder from six inches away.

The second, I call: "Tommy Lee Jones Is Suspiciously Protective of His Crab Bag."


Here, he simultaneously creeps out and amuses Suzy Amis, who has never seen crab puppet theater performed on a public beach.

The final clip, I call: "Tommy Lee Jones Drunken Dance Mania."

While in some ways this is of a piece with "Ed Harris Dance Mania in CREEPSHOW," the intent is more along the lines of "Ted Levine/'Goodbye Horses' in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS." I have excised the footage of Jeff Bridges wandering around the cobwebb'd periphery of Jones' lair in this clip because it did not involve Tommy Lee Jones drunkenly rocking out to, yes, the exact same U2 song that Forest Whitaker was listening to in Clip #1.

I believe I have now informed you of all you need to know about BLOWN AWAY, and you may carry on.

Film Review: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993, Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

Yoshi Eggs: 2.5 of 5?
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, MONA LISA, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT), John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET, CARLITO'S WAY, ENCANTO), Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET, WATERWORLD, EASY RIDER), Samantha Mathis (BROKEN ARROW, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, AMERICAN PSYCHO), Fiona Shaw (MY LEFT FOOT, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, the HARRY POTTER saga), Fisher Stevens (MY SCIENCE PROJECT, HACKERS, SHORT CIRCUIT), Richard Edson (DO THE RIGHT THING, STRANGE DAYS), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, HARD TARGET, NEAR DARK), Don Lake (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, POLICE ACADEMY, BEST IN SHOW), Francesca P. Roberts (HARD TO KILL, INSIDE MOVES). Music by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE AVENGERS, MAC AND ME). Cinematography by Dean Semler (THE ROAD WARRIOR, APOCALYPTO, COCKTAIL, XXX, YOUNG GUNS). Edited by Mark Goldblatt (TERMINATOR 2, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, HALLOWEEN II, PREDATOR 2, BAD BOYS 2, XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION).
Tag-line: "This ain't no game."
Best one-liner:  "Remember, trust the fungus!"

For this particular film––from the directors of MAX HEADROOM and many a "Rush" music video, and in which stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo allegedly drank themselves into a stupor between takes––I feel that my review is best delivered as a series of questions to which there are (likely?) no answers. As it were, a sober philosophical inquiry.

Why did they feel the need to invent an entirely new mythology for the Super Mario universe, one which involves a parallel dinosaur dimension caused by the extinction asteroid event and called "Dinohattan?"

Could there possibly be a more '90s tableau than a recumbent "Luigi" Leguizamo in acid-washed jeans, a sideways ballcap, a generic "flaming yin-yang" tee, and while playing with a Pin Art executive toy?

Is it now official canon that the Mario brothers are so called because their actual names are "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario?" Is it canon that they are half-brothers separated by twenty-two years of age? How did they manage to shoehorn in "Manhattan land developer villains" in a movie which takes place largely in the SF&F hellscape of "Dinohattan?"

Are all of the dinosaurs here because of Yoshi's popularity, or because of JURASSIC PARK's? How many dinosaur bones are under the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

How strange is it that the "portal to another dimension" plot feels nothing like the SUPER MARIO BROS. games, or even anything like the formative "magic gateway" genre classics (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, WIZARD OF OZ, THE LION, THE WITCH, et al.), but in fact most resembles the Cannon Films/Kathy Ireland classic ALIEN IN L.A.?

Is it wrong that I like the sprawling, chaotic, teenage mutant "Albert Pyun"-itude of it all, and way more than I should? 

Here's a question I can answer: is it because the production designer is the Oscar-nominated David L. Snyder, who worked on BLADE RUNNER, DEMOLITION MAN, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY? Yes, yes it is.

Is it wrong that it feels so strange to see Samantha Mathis (the egg-hatched-and-raised-by-nuns Princess Daisy, here) in an early '90s movie without Christian Slater?

Do you think Slater/Mathis were more of an early '90s Tracy/Hepburn, or more of a Bartel/Woronov?

Do the creators of "Dinohattan" regret including the now-chilling image of a crumbling World Trade Center?

(The movie was released fewer than three months after the 1993 WTC bombing. See also: DOWN/THE SHAFT.)

Did the producers realize that one of their trendiest resources was not, in fact, Was (Not Was)' "Everybody Walk the Dinosaur," but having Sonic Youth's Richard Edson and Naked Angels Theater Company co-founder Fisher Stevens as rando Dinohattan henchmen?

Is the greatest moment of Fisher Stevens' life when he said "Sayonara, dicknose!" in MY SCIENCE PROJECT or was it his Grand Skateboard Entrance in HACKERS?

Was it a mistake to reimagine King Koopa as a "germaphobe Frank Booth" with weird Maggie Simpson cornrows and a bitchin' snakeskin jacket?

In which of his '90s villains does Dennis Hopper channel BLUE VELVET the hardest? Is it his work in WATERWORLD, SPEED, CHASERS, RED ROCK WEST, or SUPER MARIO BROS.? (Eh, I actually think it's SPEED.)

Who is "Lena" meant to be in the wider SUPER MARIO mythos? Does it matter when it's essentially the great Fiona Shaw playing, um, a live-action Disney villain?

Is the Yoshi puppet actually.... really impressive? I swear, it's one of the better puppet/animatronics of the CGI era and pretty much equal to anything in JURASSIC PARK. How 'bout that?

Why does the film take such a hard turn into a Terry Gilliam-influenced Kafka nightmare, complete with Rube Goldberg torture devices and Soviet gulag ambience?

Is it a "fun" gag when the Mario Brothers are nearly executed at a Lavrentiy Beria-style tribunal which resembles Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808?"

Is John Leguizamo even acting at this point, or has he surrendered to the existential horror of appearing in this film?

Is a tableau such as this what the kiddies are hoping for in their SUPER MARIO popcorn fare, an extrajudicial political prison to contain their favorite 16-bit heroes?

I mean, this would be at home in an Andrzej Żuławski film, or maybe an early Lars Trier joint, but...

 

maybe they've stumbled onto something good here, with this conceit of the "De-evolution" chamber––can finally the disparate worlds of MAX HEADROOM and IN THE PENAL COLONY co-exist? Do you receive a similar religious epiphany when you Devolve as you do when your crimes are carved onto your flesh with Kafka's Machine?

What was the impetus behind reimagining the "goombas"––tiny villainous mushrooms, in the game––as BEETLEJUICE-shrunken-headed dinosaur monsters?

Can Dennis Hopper explain it to us? (The answer? "Partially.")

Should the entire movie instead have been refashioned to center on Francesca P. Roberts' character, "Bertha," who has rocket boots and the best fashion sense in the film (courtesy of THE MANDALORIAN and NEAR DARK's costume designer Joseph A. Porro)? (Undoubtedly, the answer to this one is, "yes.") 

Why does the sequence of the movie which seems most directly based on a video game––featuring Bob Hoskins dodging traffic––

 take its inspiration not from SUPER MARIO BROS., but from the arcade classic FROGGER?

Why does the final showdown with Dennis Hopper/King Koopa center entirely around gunplay, when guns and first-person-shooting are have never been associated with the sort of games released under the SUPER MARIO umbrella?

 

And are you going to tell me that, ackshually it's kosher because those are SNES "Super Scope" guns, which technically were a Nintendo product compatible with exactly one game in the SUPER MARIO-verse, the mostly forgotten YOSHI'S SAFARI (1993), which, again, represents only one of forty-nine (!) MARIO-adjacent titles and is only representative of the series at large if you are a big ol' nerdy nerd?

So why does Lance muthafuckin' Henriksen play King Reznor, who, now that Dennis Hopper has been defeated, is no longer a giant fungus installation piece, and... er... who is King Reznor anyway? Trent's dad?

Is a fitting finale to have Lance Henriksen sit up in a golden throne and exclaim, "I'm back!––I love those plumbers!"

Perhaps it is.  

Then there is a post-credits scene which tries to imagine that this film is simply the ur-text from which Japanese game developers adapted the games. Okay!

What's the worst thing Bob Hoskins ever did? Wait... I'm being told we have an answer for this one!

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

–Bob Hoskins, as told to The Guardian in 2007

Well, there ya have it folks. SUPER MARIO BROS. 

To quote this film's version of "May the Force Be With You," I'll leave you with this benediction: "Trust the Fungus."

Only now does it occur to me... THE BODYGUARD (1992)

Only now does it occur to me... that Kevin Costner's character in THE BODYGUARD hates boats because he's experiencing psychic reverberations of the trials he will endure in the future of... WATERWORLD.







Speaking of "psychic reverberations of the future," he's talking to Whitney Houston's onscreen son there, played by DeVaughn Nixon. Throughout this film, he must live in fear of an unstoppable killer who wants to murder his mom. Not unlike his performance in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, when a practically unstoppable killer (Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor) wants to assassinate his dad (Joe Morton's Miles Dyson).

I must also give a shout-out to two major nods to arthouse cinema: first, during Whitney's "Queen of the Night," she is done up like Brigitte Helm in the notorious "Whore of Babylon" dance sequence from Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS:

as scenes from the film are projected behind her:

 Secondly, Costner takes Whitney on a date to see Akira Kurosawa's YOJIMBO,

which translates to, in English, "THE BODYGUARD." They review the film as follows:

I wish this would happen more often. What if, in Paul Haggis' CRASH, Thandie Newton and Terrence Howard had gone to the movies and seen David Cronenberg's CRASH? What if, in Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, Viggo Mortensen had arranged a post-apocalyptic screening of Fellini's LA STRADA? Some good possibilities there. Anyway.

Only now does it occur to me... BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that Robert Zemeckis, in his infinite wisdom, decided to include an oddly specific homage to the comedy BLIND DATE (1987) in his BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990).  Since the average movie viewer today is more likely to have seen the concluding chapter of the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy than Blake Edwards' BLIND DATE, a film best described "as if Scorsese's AFTER HOURS slipped on a banana peel while Bruce Willis played a slide whistle," allow me to explain.

Early on in BACK TO THE FUTURE III, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), having traveled to 1885, is attempting to blend in at the local saloon

when Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) comes to harass him in a Biff-inspired scene which should seem quite familiar to fans of the series.

 After giving his name as "Clint Eastwood," Marty innocently refers to Buford as "Mad Dog," which induces his fury.

Commanding him to dance, Buford shoots at Marty's feet... and Marty proceeds to do the "moonwalk."







He then shouts "Whooo!" in the manner of Michael Jackson and kicks a full spittoon onto Mad Dog.


This leads to a chase sequence. End scene.


In BLIND DATE, Bruce Willis' character has been set up on the titular blind date with Kim Basinger,

which triggers a series of unlucky and harrowing events (he's fired from his job, has his car destroyed, and begins suffering a full psychotic break, for instance). Basinger is also being stalked by her ex, John Larroquette, who carelessly menaces and nearly kills Willis with his car. Later on, a worse-for-wear Willis encounters his new nemesis Larroquette and begins brawling with him.


 When Willis lays his hands on a mugger's gun,

he holds Larroquette at gunpoint and insists that he dance.

 When the dance is not to Willis' liking, he insists he moonwalk.


Larroquette proceeds to moonwalk. However, it was a insincere request, as Willis soon announces, "I hate that shit!" and begins firing at his feet.

Shortly thereafter, Willis is arrested, leading to the iconic "BLIND DATE mugshot" sequence.

And end scene.

Okay. So. There's little doubt that these scenes of comedic violence are interconnected, and the connection is so specific that I have to imagine Zemeckis intended for his scene to be an homage to BLIND DATE. Or, perhaps, he saw BLIND DATE, and though he tried to forget it––a feat many BLIND DATE viewers have attempted––he felt some ineffable connection between the moonwalk and being held at gunpoint and inserted it into his film via sheer BLIND DATE-osmosis. I wonder if this is something they discussed when Zemeckis directed Bruce Willis in DEATH BECOMES HER. Or if this led to the John Larroquette cameo in the Zemeckis-produced TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT.

Also, if we want to get really "out there," note that the poster/cover art for BLIND DATE bears an eerie similarity to 1988's ACTION JACKSON––a film that co-starred Thomas F. Wilson, a.k.a. "Biff/Buford Tannen" from the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy.

Only one thing seems clear: truly, all roads lead back to BLIND DATE, whether we like it or not.