Only now does it occur to me... THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

Only now does it occur to me... that even in a movie where he's in a wheelchair,

Note the wig.

Christopher Walken manages to shoehorn in... a dance sequence!


Granted, it's via a short-lived flashback, but boy oh boy does the man love to dance.

In all, THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD is sort of a mediocre "Guys Doing a Job" crime movie, injected with 90s indie quirkiness and a slightly out-of-place existential tone.  Clearly, the Weinsteins were trying to capture some Tarantino-ish lightning in a bottle once again, but it doesn't quite take.   However, the Guys Doing the Job are a terrific ensemble, as Andy Garcia assembles a team that includes trailer trash William Forsythe, sporting rainbow-colored tattoos and looking like his character from STONE COLD:

Christopher Lloyd as a crabby porno theater projectionist who's always complaining about how he just "lost a toe!":

Treat Williams as a psychotic ex-boxer and current funeral home employee who trains using corpses as punching bags:


and Bill Nunn, shot from low angles like his character Radio Raheem from DO THE RIGHT THING:

Bill Nunn in Denver...

...and Bed-Stuy.

Plus, we got Fairuza Balk as a streetwalker

doing that same sassy/punk/smartass thing she does in almost every 90s movie, but that's why we love her.

And closing it out over here is Steve Buscemi as "Mister Shhh," the master hitman––

 

who feels more like a character from a Rodriguez film instead of this one, but I s'pose that's fine, too. 

In all, a 90s curiosity that's far from essential viewing––but it does function as a tremendous repository of bizarre and brilliant acting choices.

Only now does it occur to me... SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER

Only now does it occur to me... that Bill Paxton nearly saves SPY KIDS 3-D GAME OVER from itself.

Granted, this is a children's movie that embraced the 3-D gimmick (in 2003) before its officially annoying resurrection, and by all accounts is trying to be a nonsensical mess of CGI fuckery.  However, even by Rodriguez/SPY KIDS standards, this is pretty unbearable, and for the first three-quarters of its runtime, the only saving grace is Ricardo Montalbán in a CGI robot suit.

The primary antagonist is Sylvester Stallone (who agreed to do this at one of the lowest points of his career) as a computer programmer known as "The Toymaker"

who frequently banters with three virtual alter-egos, all also played by Stallone, including a Kaiser, a nerd, and a hippie.

This is even more awkward than you can possibly imagine.

You will recall Stallone's earlier attempts at comedy in such films as RHINESTONE and OSCAR and STOP! OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT.

I think I'll leave it at that.

Anyway, in the final act, characters from the previous SPY KIDS films are called into action to defeat giant CGI robots.  Everyone was clearly on set for about five minutes, delivering their line in front of a green screen and then going about their business.  You gotta love Rodriguez.  Anyway, this motley crew includes Steve Buscemi, who maintains his dignity despite riding a flying pig,

Danny Trejo as Uncle Machete,

Alan Cumming, Tony Shaloub, Carla Gugino as "Mom," Banderas as "Dad,"

etc., etc., etc.  And then we have Bill Paxton as "Dinky Winks"

who delivers this film's benediction:

in a perfect reference to both the film's title and Paxton's own legendary line reading "GAME OVER, MAN!  GAME OVER!!!" from ALIENS.  Thank God for Paxton.

(Also, in case it was somehow not apparent from the screenshot of "Hippie Stallone," you should absolutely not see this movie.)

Film Review: CON AIR (1997, Simon West)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.

Running Time: 123 minutes (director's cut).

Notable Cast or Crew:  Nicolas Cage (WILD AT HEART, VALLEY GIRL), John Malkovich (EMPIRE OF THE SUN, DANGEROUS LIAISONS), John Cusack (BETTER OFF DEAD, ONE CRAZY SUMMER), Steve Buscemi (KING OF NEW YORK, MILLER'S CROSSING), Ving Rhames (PATTY HEARST, JACOB'S LADDER), Dave Chapelle (BUDDIES, 200 CIGARETTES), Rachel Ticotin (TOTAL RECALL, FALLING DOWN), Danny Trejo (KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS, DEATH WISH IV: THE CRACKDOWN), M.C. Gainey (LOST, FATAL BEAUTY), Doug Hutchison (LOST, THE X-FILES), Fredric Lehne (LOST, DALLAS), Colm Meaney (UNDER SIEGE, DICK TRACY), Mykelti Williamson (HEAT, FREE WILLY, FORREST GUMP), and a possible vocal cameo by Powers Boothe (SOUTHERN COMFORT, TOMBSTONE).  Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (THE ROCK, TOP GUN).

Tag-line: "Welcome to Con Air.  They were deadly on the ground.  Now they have wings."

Best one-liner:   "Cy..."  –"Onara!"  [man is burned alive]

Alright, ladies and germs.  We all know CON AIR already, and we all know that it's glorious.  Certain elements have been discussed to death, and I'm sure I could zero in on Cage's mullet, his distressingly bad Southern accent, or his doing origami for the love of a daughter he's never met:

or Steve Buscemi being zanily creepy and singing "He's Got the Whole World (In His Hands)":

 or the enormity of all the hare-raising-stuffed-bunny-related setpieces.

But in such cases where a film– notorious for its singular, over-the-top flavor– has been often discussed elsewhere (á la, say, a BLOODSPORT or a COMMANDO), it would likely behoove me to discuss the elements that you don't think about every day when you reach that point in the afternoon that you reserve for thinking about CON AIR.  Therefore, I am proud to present my ten newest and most absurd observations– nay, revelations– that materialized upon my latest viewing of CON AIR.

#1.  Danny Trejo's intention to fuck your whole family.

Playing the rapist "Johnny-23" ("one heart for each of my 23 bitches"), Trejo's had a lot of experience playing convicts– both in real life and in the movies THE HIDDEN, RUNAWAY TRAIN, PENITENTIARY III, LOCK UP, MANIAC COP 2, WEDLOCK, JAKE AND THE FATMAN, LAST LIGHT, AGAINST THE WALL, ANIMAL FACTORY, and a bunch of others.  In fact, after recently seeing him in Cannon Films' KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS, I now am actually afraid that Danny Trejo is going to fuck my whole family. 

Anyway, my point is that I guess it isn't really an action movie unless Danny Trejo is in it, portraying some kind of imprisoned ne'er-do-well. 

#2.  It's not technically an action movie till you blow up a gas station.

I've held this theory for a while, but I'm just impressed that CON AIR, a movie whose logline would lead you to believe that it must take place entirely in a prison and on an airplane, manages to do so by about the halfway point.

#3.  It's not an action movie till there's a vanity license plate.  

One day I'm going to do a feature on vanity license plates in horror and action movies of the 80s and 90s, but until that day, we'll just have to take 'em one at a time.  It's no AWESOM50 from COBRA, but AZZ KIKR firmly receives the Junta Juleil seal of approval.  Here, it doesn't actually belong to John Cusack, it belongs to his hateful boss Colm Meaney, who's playing an aggregate of every bureaucratic authority figure from all of the DIE HARD films combined.

#4.  John Cusack's bizarre cultural references.

Speaking of DIE HARD, Cusack's function here is basically to be the Reginald VelJohnson (Carl Winslow) role from DIE HARD– a.k.a. the only man on the ground who fights the FBI/DEA bureaucracy and believes in his anonymous action-buddy helper who's trapped in the building/airplane fighting thieves/hijackers, and then, ultimately, proves himself as he saves Willis/Cage from that pesky Godunov/Malkovich who you thought might be dead already but then of course he wasn't.  Whew.  Anyway, I guess my original point was to say that it's an odd choice to have the Cusack character quoting Dostoyevsky and enthusing about the PLANET OF THE APES Pentology, but it's a choice that I appreciate.

#5.  Q:  Are Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman CON AIR fans?

A:  Difficult to say, but all of the main characters from Kaufman's first two screenplays to be directed by Spike Jonze (Cusack & Malkovich and Cage & Cage in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION, respectively) come from the top billing of CON AIR.  Makes ya wonder.

#6.  I never thought in a million years that I would ever see Dave Chappelle's corpse plummet to Earth

 

and land atop the hood of Don S. Davis' car in a bit intended to be comic relief. 

Also, it's never explicity made clear whether or not Don S. Davis is still portraying his character from TWIN PEAKS, Major Briggs, so for the sake of argument, I'm just going to assume that he is.

#7.  There's an extremely bizarre connection to TV's LOST.  Okay, they're not just both about airplanes that happen to crash.  It goes deeper.  In CON AIR, only two characters actually fly the eponymous airplane: the original, pre-hijacking pilot; and the prisoner who takes the controls post-hijacking.  The original pilot is none other than Fredric Lehne, who on LOST plays the Marshal Edward Mars, the only true authority figure on the plane.
 
After the convicts– or CON AIR's 'Others,' if you will– take over, M.C. Gainey mans the controls.

Fans of LOST will recall him as the memorable, mysterious character Mr. Friendly who is the initial face of the "Others" and one of the primary antagonists throughout several episodes.  Pret-ty strange, I say.  [Also, Doug Hutchison ("Horace Goodspeed" on LOST) has a bit part here, too. ]

#8.  The look in Nic Cage's eyes after he reveals his intention to prove that God exists.  You see, at one point, it doesn't look like Cage's prison buddy (Mykelti Williamson– Bubba from FORREST GUMP) is gonna make it.  He's been shot, maimed, and needs insulin. 

And all he can think about is, like, there ain't no God.

Cage says, "I'm gonna show you God does exist," and then commences to kick some ass and cause a crash landing and a number of slow motion explosions.  But before he commences with the requisite Bruckheimerian antics, he does this with his face:

Maybe Cage attempting to will God into existence, or it's Bruckheimer's kind of deus ex machina, with Nic Cage as literally a god in the machine.  Or maybe it's something else entirely.  Who can say?  Regardless, I applaud it with the same slow-clap used by faux-Gorbachev in ROCKY IV.

#9.  Strange surface similarities to David Lynch's WILD AT HEART.  For those, not in the know, that's another movie with frequent slow motion flames where Nicolas Cage has an ambiguously terrible Southern accent and serves a prison sentence while a blonde waits patiently for him and upon his release introduces him to his own beloved child that he's never met in the flesh before.   

#10.  The idea that this film was born as the filmmakers absentmindedly daydreamed while watching THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and decided that wouldn't this be a lot better as an action movie?  Think about it.  Combine Steve Buscemi's gnawin' mask and Malkovich's intellectual psychopath and you've basically got an American Hannibal Lecter.  "Hannibal the Cannibal."

  That's perfect!  Wait-  they couldn't call him that, though– copyright issues!  Damn!  How 'bout "Cyrus the Virus?"

Then– they co-star Colm Meaney as the "annoying, undermining-the-whole-operation-through-his-own-dickery bureaucrat" character.

He functions and looks like the Irish version of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS' American counterpart, Anthony Heald!

However, all of this simply proves that I have too much time/character actor knowledge on my hands.  Ah, well.

Four and a half stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: STATE OF THE UNION (1948, Frank Capra)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 124 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Angela Lansbury, Van Johnson (THE CAINE MUTINY, BRIGADOON), Adolphe Menjou (PATHS OF GLORY, A FAREWELL TO ARMS), Margaret Hamilton (13 GHOSTS, THE WIZARD OF OZ). Based on the play by Howard Lindsay and and Russel Crouse (LIFE WITH FATHER, THE SOUND OF MUSIC). Screenplay by Anthony Veiller (THE KILLERS '46, THE STRANGER) and Myles Connolly.
Tag-line: "How's the state of the union? IT'S GREAT!" Not quite nailing the nuance, there.
Best one-liner: "No woman could ever run for President. She'd have to admit she's over thirty-five."

What with the state of the union address last week and the primary circus reaching new heights of wondrous absurdity, the timing feels right for a look at Frank Capra's STATE OF THE UNION.

I'd seen most of the "big" Capras as a kid, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, ARSENIC & OLD LACE, and LOST HORIZON– and of them, only MR. SMITH really made an impression. I'd sort of written off Capra as something of a craftsmanly sentimentalist, and that was a terribly reductive way to look at who's now, really, one of my favorite directors. While I was working on this ongoing "Junta Juleil's All-Time Top 100" list, MR. SMITH came up, and J.D. of Radiator Heaven strongly recommended some "bleaker Capra," which led me onto a real Capra kick, one that ended with a trio of hard-hitting, gut-ripping, compassionately progressive but bitterly true films: MEET JOHN DOE, MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, and STATE OF THE UNION. As I wrote in a comment previously– I'm almost shocked that these things were allowed to be made, in that they highlight the *gasp* "socialist" ideals of the Founding Fathers; attack nearly all kinds of mass media; and rise above the pettiness of politics and instead piling on dollop after dollop of pure, bright-eyed Humanism in a world on the brink of tearing its own throat.

STATE OF THE UNION feels ridiculously prescient, though I suppose it's arrogant to believe that the problems of our era are in any way unique. We've got fights over government deregulation, pre-nomination doubletalk, fear-mongering politicians, a media kingmaking "primary" that's more important than the actual votes (see the much-spoken of "Murdoch Primary" for comparison) - the film even boldly dares to ask if there's any real difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore. And the line "Politicians have remained professionals only because the voters have remained amateurs!" has to be one of my favorite zingers in the history of political cinema.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, but it involves Spencer Tracy as an industrialist ("Any man's made as much money as him is a good sound American") who's pushed into running for president by the kingmakers and who decides to do anything he can to get the nomination. The respective angel and devil on his shoulders are his reluctant, conscionable wife (Katherine Hepburn) and the ruthless, power-hungry media magnate (Angela Lansbury). And, as anyone will attest, an evil Lansbury in your movie is always a good thing. (Futhermore, Lansbury is the most vicious, calculating character in a movie whose cast includes Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West!)

Evil Lansbury refuses to acknowledge the help.

So go see STATE OF THE UNION. It's pretty damn good, and it's extremely damn relevant. Which makes it all the more hilarious that Google offered the old chestnut "I'm sorry, did you mean to search for XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION?"

So on to my secondary point: I watched STATE OF THE UNION later on the same day that I rewatched BARTON FINK, which is probably my favorite Coen brothers film. I was treated to some extremely bizarre and possibly intentional coincidences; some so specific that I probably never would have noticed them had I not happened to view the films back to back. Since the Coens love to repackage and adapt past works (CUTTER'S WAY and THE BIG SLEEP become THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE GLASS KEY and RED HARVEST become MILLER'S CROSSING, etc.), I'm probably not way off base here.

Now, BARTON FINK and STATE OF THE UNION are both set in the 1940s, so there's nothing extraordinary about overlapping fashion and decor and popular slang of the time like calling guys "heels," yet, as I watched on, these general tonal similarities began to strike me as odd. And, you know, Judy Davis is kind of like 1991's answer to Katherine Hepburn in her own way.

There's nothing terribly remarkable about that. But then I realized that the plots are basically the same– a man fighting to be in touch with the common man is whisked from one opportunity to another by soulless and strange entourages and handlers who use him as a tool to advance their own self-interests. Also, both films take place largely within the confines of hotel rooms. And, hey!– there's even a creepy little bellhop who prefigures the bizarre-itude of Buscemi in BARTON FINK.


Then, IMDB lists the infamous (of Ed Wood, Jr. fame) Tor Johnson as an uncredited wrestler. It must have been a blink and you'll miss it walk-on, because I must have blinked and missed him, but aficionados of BARTON FINK will take note of the wrestling connection.
But finally, the last parallel, and the one that vindicates my craziness: there's a scene whereupon Tracy and Hepburn are going through the campaign mail bag. They finish reading a letter and marvel, in a strange little moment, about how it's signed "Madman Mundt..."


...who is John Goodman in BARTON FINK!

I'm not sure what I've proven, precisely, outside of "The Coen brothers must love STATE OF THE UNION," but I suppose I'll take that.

-Sean Gill