Only now does it occur to me... SIDE OUT (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that there's only one movie where you can witness a neon-candy-colored Jose Cuervo-sponsored volleyball Kumite. And that movie is SIDE OUT.

So what is a "side out?" It seems to be an arcane bit of volleyball jargon which is, as far as I remember, never defined by the film itself. As to the question of what is "SIDE OUT," the movie? we can creep a little closer to clarity.

So what we have here is C. Thomas Howell (THE OUTSIDERS, THE HITCHER, RED DAWN). He's playing a law student on summer break. (Can we thank our lucky stars that it's not his blackface-wearing law student from SOUL MAN?) He's picked up at the airport by volleyball-enthusiast/hearse-driving buddy Christopher Rydell (best known to readers of this site for starring in Dario Argento's TRAUMA). Rydell immediately ingratiates himself to the viewer by forcing a weird Freddy Krueger reference

which sort of implies that he deserves primo airport parking because he's picking up... a burn victim child murderer? (C. Thomas Howell does not play a burn victim in this movie, not even if we're counting sunburn.)

Rydell has rad vanity plates, too, because this is a movie made in 1990.

Anyway, C. Tom Howell is really here on the West Coast to do the bidding of his evil uncle (Terry Kiser, of WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S)

who is absolutely just reprising "Bernie" from WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. It's basically a prequel. He's a real estate lawyer who puts poor C. Tom up to some white-collar repo man antics, evicting poor people and gathering materials to help dastardly land developers (again, this is a movie made in 1990).

Kathy Ireland is here, playing the evil uncle's paralegal, or something. 

 

She's in the movie for such a brief span, I have to imagine she had other scenes which were deleted. Which is a shame, because Cannon Films' ALIEN FROM L.A. revealed that she has better acting chops than you might expect.

Anyway, C. Tom finds out that obeying corporate masters is much lamer than jus' hangin' out and playin' beach volleyball all day.

 

So Rydell makes him an offer he can't refuse.

And C. Tom gets a girlfriend along the way: Courtney Thorne-Smith (MELROSE PLACE, ALLEY MCBEAL, SUMMER SCHOOL), a waitress at the local volleyball-themed watering hole.

 Check out that totally tubular neon sign out front, of a volleyball getting swatted back and forth:

And can we talk about Courtney Thorne-Smith's blouse for a minute? The costumers were up to some wacky shit here––obviously neon pink was a staple of a 1990 beach fashion ensemble, but when we finally get a reverse shot, it reveals a heretofore unseen transparent plastic back panel

which is practically some outré, cyberpunk, "Zhora in BLADE RUNNER" type-stuff. (There will be more on this neon fashion manifesto later, that's a promise.)

Anyway, she is the romantic lead, and she is mostly defined by her blondeness and physical proximity to C. Thomas Howell. I'm pretty sure this doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, but you already knew that.

So C. Tom is living his best life, and participating in volleyball tournaments which are far more plentiful and higher paid in the SIDE OUT universe than in ours. Oh, look––C. Tom and Christopher Rydell are doing the crane kick from THE KARATE KID, a playful reference to a film starring C. Tom's OUTSIDERS cast buddy, Ralph Macchio:

Anyway, Christopher Rydell is tragically injured during this match, and C. Tom must join forces with crusty volleyball veteran Peter Horton (CHILDREN OF THE CORN, THIRTYSOMETHING), who is absolutely the poor man's Steven Weber. Think about those implications.

Through many montages, the two learn to work past their differences and become an awesome volleyball team. Also, C. Tom helps him out with some real estate difficulties, and really sticks it to the man (his uncle "Bernie"). Whew.

A good drinking game you could play with this movie is, "drink every time C. Thomas Howell takes his shirt off."

Eventually, it's time for the big tourney, the Jose Cuervo-hosted volleyball kumite with a $100,000 prize.

If you've seen ROCKY IV, you can probably predict exactly how this goes, point by point,

even if you don't predict the use of the rad 1990 insult "cheese dick."

The movie ends the instant they win "the big game," without any additional character development/reaction/resolution, because the movie knows itself well enough to know that would be completely unnecessary. 

What I don't understand is this: why isn't this just called VOLLEYBALL: THE MOVIE? If you polled a thousand people at the mall and asked them what sport a "side out" is from, how many would guess volleyball? This movie's entire raison d'être is the Kenny Loggins volleyball montage in TOP GUN, and they're even brazen enough to recycle "Playing With the Boys" for it's biggest volleyball montage.

One final thought. At a fashion-show-within-a-volleyball-tournament they actually spell out the formal aesthetics of this movement. It's practically a manifesto. I thought this sort of rigorous self-definition went out of style with the Dadaists, Surrealists, and the Cubists, but here it is, veritably thriving in 1990!

 

 

Volleyball fashion is an ethos, really. Also, there are women in that crowd, and that woman is talking about a fashion manifesto––so I guess this sorta passes the Bechdel test? 

SIDE OUT, ladies and gentlemen.

Only now does it occur to me... HITMAN'S RUN (1999)

"Lesser Lester" Week Continues:

Only now does it occur to me... that Richard Donner's ASSASSINS (1995, starring Stallone, Banderas, and Julianne Moore) was apparently enough of a 'thing' to inspire some imitators––including Mark L. Lester's HITMAN'S RUN.

Banderas in ASSASSINS....


...and Eric Roberts in HITMAN'S RUN.


Mostly notable for an evocative scene where Eric Roberts kills a man in a phone booth by running him over with a wood-paneled station wagon,



HITMAN'S RUN follows the exploits a former mafia assassin (Roberts) in the witness protection program who comes out of hiding for one last adventure involving hackers, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, skateboarding kids, stylish haircuts, late 90s sweaters, and lite John Woo-style gunplay.

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."

Other major highlights include the bizarre and possibly improvised interactions between Roberts and his new wife (who knows not of his hitman past).  I mean, just look at this beautiful exchange:





Yes, it certainly does seem so much longer.  But Roberts is doing a decent job, and I appreciate the extra effort his haircut is making.


Hey, look, it's C. Thomas Howell!

There's always a peculiar melancholy whenever I see C. Thomas outside of the 1980s... like I'm a distant relative who expected the worst, but when I see him, I squeeze his shoulder and say really sincerely, "Oh, I'm so glad to see you're doing okay."  I feel like I should be sending him $25.00 checks for his birthday, is what I'm saying.


I also learned that a recordable CD has 650 megabytes of memory.

Er-–wait a second––who is that sweater-vest-wearin', faintly 90s subculture HACKERS émigré?  I know him from somewhere...  It's almost like I can see him, about to be paddled by a douchey Ben Affleck...

Yup, it's Esteban Powell, best known as Mitch's pal "Carl" from DAZED AND CONFUSED!

Not a lot has changed.

His major character trait in HITMAN'S RUN is that he says things like "Whoa-kay!" instead of "Okay," and I suppose that's fine.

In the end this is the kind of generic mafia flick that's sort of worth your time. It's certainly a "lesser" Lester––on the second-rate action scale, I'd put it somewhere between a Glickenhaus and a Pyun.  Most of it will depend on your tolerance for the less-than-selective Eric Roberts (according to IMDb, he has THIRTY-SEVEN films coming out in 2016!), as apparently not everyone is on the Roberts bandwagon.  I, conversely, am driving that bandwagon.  I realize that some of the joy of Eric Roberts is how terrible many of his films are, but I still contend that the man himself is one of the finest actors of his generation (see RUNAWAY TRAIN and STAR 80 back-to-back if you don't believe me), and even amid the direct-to-video dreck, little shards of his talent keep piercing through.

Television Review: THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (2005, John Putch)

Stars: 1.5 of 5.
Running Time: 174 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Rutger Hauer, Steve Guttenberg, Adam Baldwin (FULL METAL JACKET, D.C. CAB), Bryan Brown (COCKTAIL, F/X), Peter Weller (NAKED LUNCH, ROBOCOP), Alex Kingston (CROUPIER, Dr. Corday on ER), C. Thomas Howell (THE HITCHER, RED DAWN, SOUL MAN), Nathalie Boltt (DISTRICT 9, DOOMSDAY), Peter Dobson (THE FRIGHTENERS, LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN). Directed by John Putch (THE BOY WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS), screenplay by Bryce Zabel (MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION).
Tag-lines: "THE GREATEST DANGER IS ALREADY ON BOARD"
Best one-liner: "How do you celebrate saving nine people when thousands have died?"

How did it come to this? How did it come to watching a Hallmark original movie with a running time of nearly three hours on a Saturday night which I had not previously reserved for such self-flagellation? Well, I'll give you a reason: Rutger Hauer. You want another one? You got it: Peter Weller. Thirsty for more? Hang onto your hats: Steve Guttenberg. Bryan Brown. C. Thomas Howell. That's right- this movie is a late-career pit stop for the luminaries who helped bring us BLADE RUNNER. ROBOCOP. COCKTAIL. THREE MEN AND A BABY. It's a reunion for the two leads of THE HITCHER, an excuse to show us how much the Gute's been working out, and an opportunity for Bryan Brown to down a couple Singapore Slings and get paid for it (except there's no Hippy-hippy Shake or Tom Cruise wing-manning this time around).

A remake of the 1972 disaster classic (starring Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters, among others) that chronicled the overturning of a doomed ocean liner and the attempts of the survivors to escape, Hallmark's 2005 POSEIDON ADVENTURE does not disappoint. Oh wait––yes, it does. Despite the staggering talent lined up before the camera, the film manages only to be an awkward shitstorm of bad CGI, unbearable bit players, cumbersome writing, intolerable pacing, and bungled set-pieces which only serve to remind the viewer of the superiority of the original, a film held together by that incredible human glue called Ernest Borgnine.

Such a film as this does not deserve a coherent review, so I shall offer some semi-articulate stream-of-consciousness ramblings that we may pretend are well-organized talking points. After all, I just pretended that Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE was a real movie, so if we all just go through the motions, perhaps we can salvage some of C. Thomas Howell's dignity.

A few observations on Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE:

1. The POSEIDON itself. Now, I'm not even going to get into how, in this version, it's "terrorists" and not a tidal wave that flips the infamous ship, but let's give some thought to a cruise ship that's all CGI, all the time. Not just when it's sinking or flipping over or exploding... all the time.

Note CGI moon.


AHHHHHHH

Was stock footage of a cruise ship that hard to find? Or even shooting new footage of an actual cruise ship? I'm having a rough time coming to grips with the fact that it's apparently easier to book Rutger Hauer than it is to find stock footage of a cruise ship. Although it gives renewed hope to my dream that Rutger Hauer will one day host a screening of BLIND FURY in my apartment.

2. Adam Baldwin. He played 'Animal Mother' in FULL METAL JACKET with a twisted joie de vivre that was so memorable, I would go as far as to say that the name "Animal Mother" is more recognizable than "Adam 'no, not one of those Baldwins' Baldwin."

Playing some sort of anti-terrorist agent, he wanders around the ship scowling with intensity, mumbling about "terroristic activities in this hemisphere," and growling lines like "Everything's safe till it isn't!" He- like most everyone else in the film- is giving it his best shot, but without trying toooo hard. I'm imagining a conversation between Baldwin and maybe a gaffer dude at the craft services table...

Baldwin: "You know... I worked with Kubrick."
Gaffer: "Oh yeh?"
Baldwin: "He took me aside once, and said–"
Gaffer: "Do you think you could get me Alec's autograph?"
Baldwin: "..."

3. There may be no Borgnine this time around, but there is an annoying kid with a video camera.


Why you gotta do that, Hallmark POSEIDON ADVENTURE? Haven't we suffered enough already? Everybody hates that device in a movie when somebody whips out a video camera and then we see 'Video POV' ––generally just the •REC logo slapped on the image, which doesn't actually look like a real camcorder's viewfinder anyway. You played with fire, Hallmark POSEIDON ADVENTURE. You played with fire, and you got burned. (More on that later.) 

4. The ill-conceived "Sea Pass" sequence, whereupon the major players are introduced by their snazzy Photoshopped Poseidon I.D.s...

...no further comment.

5. 'Gute the sex bomb.

Maybe my memory's a little fuzzy, but I don't remember in POLICE ACADEMY or in THREE MEN AND A BABY or even in THREE MEN AND A LITTLE LADY the Gute getting naked more often than Harvey Keitel. I think it's a recent development. And I shall not judge: I mean, the dude has been working out a lot, apparently. So he gets a quasi-erotic massage from a lady who's not his "harpy wife,"

which leads to the two of them in flagrante delicto when the POSEIDON flips. He puts some clothes on to escape, and lo and behold, a sleeve immediately tears, revealing Gute bicep action.

It goes past the point of 'the director had a crush on the Gute' to 'it was probably in the Gute's contract.' And so the Gute joins the ranks of Keitel and Dafoe, which for some reason has me pondering how different ANTICHRIST would have turned out had it starred the Gute. More on him and his massage-mistress in a bit.

6. C. Thomas Howell.


Looking pretty gaunt but still holding up well, I thought I'd be happy to see C. Thomas. E.T. THE OUTSIDERS. RED DAWN. THE HITCHER. TANK. The man made the most of the 80's. But something about his presence here depressed me. He does a fine job with his paper-thin character, but I think the disheartening element is how happy he is. He's exuding genuine peppiness. Vim and vigor. He is damned excited to be on set. No one else, not even the twenty-somethings getting their first "break" by appearing in this film are that excited. This is a Hallmark production. C. Thomas, you've appeared in enough quality pictures in your lifetime, that even if you're not at the top of the A-list these days, you should kind of be phoning it in for a Hallmark movie. Rutger Hauer is mailing it in, for godssakes (more on that later).

7. But how great is it to have Rutger Hauer and C. Thomas Howell chowing down at the same table for the first time since that diner in THE HITCHER.


According to the DVD bonus interviews, Howell said that "it was great to reconnect with Rutger." He also says "Hallmark stories are from the heart." I say he was still probably as scared shitless of Rutger as he was the first time around. Anyway, on a semi-related note, I'm pretty sure that this makes me the first person to actually indulge in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE's bonus features.

8. Rutger, Rutger, Rutger.

I see you. I see you recoiling in horror at this movie. You know you're in the Gene Hackman role, and you know he played the part with a selfless ferocity that was downright electric. I know you know that you could pull it off, too. I also know that you know that you're in a Hallmark movie. And you know that I know that you're in a Hallmark movie. And we both know that you're phoning it in, and we both know that there's nothing else you can do. Fade into the background and hope people mistake you for the wallpaper. Live to act another day. In something like HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. You are the true survivalist, Rutger. I salute you.

9. Peter Weller. Donning Grandma glasses and a captain's uniform, he plays his brief role with a soft-spoken old-Hollywood-style charm which sort of recalls, I dunno, Fred Astaire?

He's solid enough, and doesn't wear out his welcome. But even if he were terrible, I don't think I could ever say anything bad about Peter Weller.

10. Bryan Brown, playing a Simon Cowell-esque celebrity.

You could say, "I bet it was easy for him to play the part, because he is a celebrity." But then I would ask you, "When was the last time I made a 'Rollie' Tyler reference and somebody knew what the hell I was talking about?" Regardless, Bryan Brown's always a lot of fun to watch, and I though I don't actually think he was wasted for the duration, I'd still prefer to think so. His character's got a young French wifey (Tinarie Van Wyk-Loots) who presents two problems for us:

#1. Her fake French accent is pretty rough, and #2. We have to listen an extremely overproduced singing voice. I 'get' that it's a nod to "The Morning After" (the Oscar-winning song from the original POSEIDON), but that don't make it hurt any less.

11. Alex Kingston. I'm a big Kingston fan because of her role as Dr. Corday on ER, where she embodied that elusive combination of classy charm and smart-ass smarm.

Here, she's required to furrow her brow, look at a radar screen, and mutter shoddy faux-sincere dialogue. I hope she bought herself something nice with her paycheck.

12. THE MAW OF CGI FLAMES!!!

In goes the terrorist! Boo! Hiss!

Then, in a semi-shocking series of extremely judgmental events––in goes the massage-mistress!


That'll teach ya, ya chippy! Mess around with a married man and you can taste the flames of the CGI inferno! Guttenberg's character somehow avoids this moral death penalty. Thank you, Hallmark. If you had let her live, the very values systems which guide our lives may have been tarnished.

I can't write any more about this. And because I can't quite focus on driving my points home, I'm afraid that it may leave you with the impression that Hallmark's POSEIDON ADVENTURE is not quite as bad as it actually is. It is bad. It is very bad. And it is three hours long. Hold that in your heart, and go forth.