Category: 1989

Tango & Cash (1989, Andrey Konchalovskiy)

The scary thing about Tango & Cash is its ability to improve. Not sure who wrote or directed the end of the second act, when Kurt Russell gets to act opposite people besides Sylvester Stallone and you remember it’s actually an achievement to make him so unlikable for so long, but it’s a lot better. During the sequence where Teri Hatcher gets to be profoundly objectified, the editors even manage to string together a subtle—for Tango & Cash—suspense sequence. It’s not great, but it’s about the only time in the movie you think anyone involved with it should be trusted with a video project more complicated than… not a wedding, but maybe a graduation?

And the editors are not unprofessional, incompetent editors. Tango & Cash is just so incredibly bad there’s no way to make it right.

The film’s got a single credited screenwriter—Randy Feldman—but he didn’t actually write much of what’s onscreen. The strange part is there isn’t a full list of script doctors; there must’ve been some kind of blood pact. There’s a couple moments I’m convinced are Jeffrey Boam but he swore none of his material made it. There’s also the single credited director, Konchalovskiy, but we know Albert Magnoli came in and did a bunch.

So there are failures at every level but the big problem is Stallone’s atrocious. He can’t land any of the jokes. Even if seventy-five percent of his jokes weren’t homophobic one-liners he murmurs to himself at the end of every scene, he wouldn’t be able to land any of the jokes. The direction’s bad, regardless of who did it, but there are giant terrible action sequences and those would require some kind of competency to execute. So, again, it’s not incompetent. The writing is incompetent. The directing is just uninspired and insipid.

But no one could get a good performance from Stallone in this part, which seems to be him demanding another shot at Beverly Hills Cop, complete with a Harold Faltermeyer score. Faltermeyer adds some Fletch to the Axel F and, voila, Stallone as a rich, Armani-clad Beverly Hills cop who only does the job for the action. Russell’s the rough and tumble one here, not owning a shirt without a torn neck.

They’re going to terribly bicker banter at each other for ninety or so minutes of the runtime (there are like five minute end credits, thank goodness) and you forget either Russell or Stallone has ever been in a good movie, much less given a good performance. Hence why it’s so noticeable when Russell all of a sudden gets a lot more engaging—because without the charisma black hole of Stallone’s performance, Russell can still shine.

Relatively speaking. It’s still all terrible.

And then it does get worse again. The third act’s awful.

No good performances; an uncredited Geoffrey Lewis and a Clint Howard cameo are the best and it’s not Hatcher or Michael J. Pollard’s fault. Jack Palance does more than the part or movie deserves as the Mr Big. He’s not good but he’s not boring. Lots of bad and boring in Tango & Cash.

Though with Brion James’s performance… it’s hard to be bored as one watches a performance as bad as James’s. Finding out Stallone thought it was a good performance and gave James more scenes—same thing happened with Robert Z’Dar, who is also laughably bad—explains some of Tango & Cash’s badness. The disaster starts to make sense at least.

The movie’s got an interesting place in Hollywood history—it’s the last Guber-Peters Company movie after they found a new peak early in the same year with Batman then they screwed over Warner Bros. (between Batman in the summer and Tango & Cash at Christmas)—but you certainly don’t have to watch the movie for that kind of trivia.

There’s no reason to watch Tango & Cash and there never has been. Unless you’re measuring its accelerating rot rate over time. But even then why bother.

The Killer (1989, John Woo)

When The Killer introduces second-billed Danny Lee, it certainly seems like Lee’s arc is going to be the most important in the film. He’s a Hong Kong cop who starts chasing professional hitman Chow Yun-fat and gets in the middle of Chow’s fight with crime lord Shing Fui-on, with tragic results for everyone involved.

And while the film does track Lee’s perception of Chow over the film, it never tries to reconcile the Lee of the first act—who’s just shot a suspect dead on a crowded passenger tram, resulting in the death of a civilian—with the sidekick who has to figure out how to accept Chow into his moral system. Woo spends a lot of time on the burgeoning friendship between the two men, but only one of them is an unrepentant killer. Chow’s only ever in trouble because he cares when innocent people get killed. Lee just yells at the review board about he’s done it before and he’s going to do it again.

The internal character discrepancy doesn’t seem intentional—Lee’s cop seemingly just doesn’t believe in collateral damage, while it’s all Chow thinks about, whether it’s nightclub singer Sally Yeh or another bystander who gets shot while Chow’s trying to escape Shing’s goons. But it definitely adds something to the film, especially after Lee’s sort of revealed as an erstwhile alpha male who desperately wants to play sidekick to a real alpha (Chow). I’d be surprised if there’s twenty minutes of non-non-stop action in The Killer, but most of it is dedicated to Lee’s man-crushing.

All of the action is great. Woo’s direction, Fan Kung-wing’s editing, the sound, the music. Yes, the movie wouldn’t last more than two minutes of its present action if Chow’s guns weren’t on infinite ammo mode—the only time anyone ever runs out of bullets is for dramatic purpose, otherwise even when we watch Lee load a revolver with six shots, he’s got at least ten or more. I don’t think Lee’s revolvers ever actually run out of bullets, the scenes just end.

Lee’s pursuit of Chow also involves older cop, Kenneth Tsang, who’s Lee’s sidekick. The film juxtaposes Tsang and Chu Kong (Chow’s handler and best friend) as the two beta males–being a beta is whole arc for Chu—but also it turns out Lee’s not so much an alpha as a beta who just hasn’t found the right alpha. He thinks Chow’s the alpha. The Killer is technically a buddy action movie, but Lee and Chow don’t really do anything but kill bad guys together. And lots of them. When they team up, it’s thirty against two, whereas the earlier action sequences have Chow and Lee, independently, facing off against a more reasonable number. Like ten guys. Five to ten. You lose count. The goons rarely live for longer than a few seconds (save Shing and Ricky Yi Fan-wai, the super-hitman Shing has to hire to kill super-hitman Chow).

Meanwhile, Chow’s trying to help Yeh get a cornea transplant—he had to put a gun right in her face to shoot a goon—and it’s all tied up with Shing and Chu. The film’s cagey about Chow’s relationship with Yeh; it’s definitely protective and often seems romantic, but Woo intentionally keeps it opaque. And even though Yeh figures into the second act a whole bunch—she’s Lee’s pawn for a good portion of it—she doesn’t have much of a character. She’s a girl so she can’t participate in Lee and Chow’s gleeful chases, where they grin at getting to play with someone almost as cool as them. Well, at least until Lee realizes Chow’s the real deal.

Chu’s arc is probably the best in the film—it doesn’t avoid anything like Chow’s or Lee’s—with a couple great twists, which reveal layers to what’s come before. Great performance from Chu. Probably the best acting in the film. But it’s hard to say best performance in the film because Chow is transfixing. Yes, Woo showcases him to be transfixing but it works because it’s Chow. He’s inscrutable until you realize he’s not, which should make it harder on Chow (and Woo), but instead it’s just better once he’s revealed. The Killer doesn’t have a lot to be obvious about because it’s a pretty simple narrative with a lot of lengthy action sequences to eat up the run time, but its eventual sincerity is incredibly affecting.

Great music from Lowell Lo. The music does a lot of the heavy lifting on that sincerity. The music and Fan’s editing. The main song (sung by Yeh), which quite literally haunts her and Chow, is perfect.

The Killer’s outstanding. A little bit Western (especially the buddy flick aspect), a little bit noir, an unbelievably amount of blood squibs, it’s a spectacular, transcendent action movie.

Erik the Viking (1989, Terry Jones)

Erik the Viking is a great example of when the director doesn’t know how to direct the script. What makes it peculiar is… director Jones wrote the script.

The film, an absurd comedy about a group of Vikings trying to end Ragnarok so they people will stop killing each other, starts with the the very not comedic scene (though the film gets to laughs really quickly, which is rather impressive) of lead Tim Robbins, having completed his looting and pillaging, moving on to the raping part of the Viking code. His intended victim is Samantha Bond. Only Bond’s not into being raped, which throws Robbins for a loop—he’s never done this raping part before and doesn’t have the predilection for it. Instead he and Bond have what becomes a life defining conversation (for Robbins anyway) right before his comrades show up to rape her and he kills them.

And, accidentally, her as well, which throws him into a right funk. He can’t stop seeing Bond’s face, whether in a crowd, in the distance, or laid over another woman his comrades are torturing. Empathy’s a very un-Viking value, something Robbins’s grandfather (Mickey Rooney in a wonderfully unhinged cameo) tries to explain.

Rooney, rightly, doesn’t reassure Robbins, so Robbins heads up into the mountains to talk to recluse Eartha Kitt (in a good but sadly not great cameo, partially just due to the terrible composite shots showing the landscape outside her cave) and she tells him how he’s going to have to quest to the mystic land, Hy-Brasil, retrieve a magic horn, blow the horn to get to Asgard, then again to wake the gods, then again to get home.

To accomplish this task, Robbins has to put the band together. There are tough guy Vikings Richard Ridings and Tim McInnerny, McInnerny’s dad, Charles McKeown (who doesn’t think McInnerny’s tough enough), Christian missionary Freddie Jones (who’s the butt of endless great jokes, even when he’s saving the day), John Gordon Sinclair as the wimp (he’s great), and Gary Cady as the heartthrob blacksmith. Now, turns out Cady doesn’t want Ragnarok to end because he’s a blacksmith and capitalism; you stop the looting, pillaging, raping, and murdering and he’s out of business. So he gets his sidekick, Anthony Sher, to go and narc to local warlord John Cleese (of course) about Robbins’s mission. So Viking is basically Robbins and company on their quest, while avoiding Cleese trying to kill them all.

The quest takes them to the aforementioned magical land, which is a violence-free paradise with Greco-Roman style architecture, ruled by Jones. Imogen Stubbs plays Jones’s daughter, who becomes infatuated with Robbins. The attraction is mutual but only when Robbins forgets his secret mission—to bring Bond back from the dead. The questing will also take the band to Asgard, where they find the gods don’t live up to expectations but are a lot realer than anyone could anticipate. Because Jones, as writer, has a bunch of great ideas and a lot of good sequences, he just can’t figure out how to realize them on screen.

Making it stranger is the fantastic production and costume designs from John Beard and Pam Tait, respectively. Good photography from Ian Wilson, good music from Neil Innes; not good editing from George Akers, but you really get the impression it’s because Jones, as director, didn’t get enough coverage for him. Viking has great sets, great costumes, great make-up, so it never makes sense when it doesn’t look right. Sometimes it’s those bad composite shots—but the miniature special effects are excellent—and then the third act has some really bad optical effects.

I’m zealous about special effects not dating, they just sometimes don’t work and Erik the Viking’s special optical effects for the finale… they just don’t work. And the film relies way too heavily on them. Nicely, the film’s able to—more or less—skate by to the finish, which has this really oddly profound moment for the characters and you wish Jones (the director) could’ve visualized it better onscreen. It works but not enough to lift things up. The whole third act seems rushed and cramped in ways it shouldn’t, both in terms of story and setting.

Good lead performance from Robbins, with great support from some of his comrades; Stubbs is good, Bond’s excellent, Cleese is fun (it’s a fluffed out cameo)… Sher’s really good as the turncoat.

Erik has almost all the right pieces for success; Jones not being able to crack his own script is the dealbreaker.

Lords of the Deep (1989, Mary Ann Fisher)

Lords of the Deep exists for reasons. Some of them seem interesting enough I’m disappointed the trivia section on IMDb doesn’t offer any explanations. But just going on what it’s like watching the film and what it’s good for? You hate top-billed Bradford Dillman and want to simultaneously be reminded why you don’t like him and watch him humiliate himself in scene after scene. He’s godawful, impossible to take seriously as authoritative—he’s the boss—partly because the script’s so bad, like how he uses “because I say so” for shutting down autopsies, but also because Dillman’s so absurd when acting opposite anyone else. He kind of struts. You want to know if he was nice to his coworkers on set. Like, it’s something to be curious about. And just like everything else to be curious about involving Lords, none of it has to do with the film’s story.

For example, co-writer and third-billed Daryl Haney. He’s terrible—as an actor, but clearly new at it; Dillman’s terrible but experienced at it. So why did they cast Haney; some of the other supporting parts are sort of okay (Eb Lottimer, Richard Young, and Stephen Davies are downright professionally respectable with their terribly written parts), so they could’ve gotten someone better for the part. Did Haney want the part? Was it a condition of the deal? If so, couldn’t producer Roger Corman have just gotten someone else to write it. It’s not like Lords of the Deep’s script has much distinct about its badness. Unless you count the telepathic communication—sadly uncredited—between space aliens living on the ocean floor (but it came out before The Abyss, months before The Abyss, actually) and sympathetic scientist Priscilla Barnes. Barnes is also dating Haney.

Why is she dating Haney? Who signed first. Is there some story about Barnes being Haney’s favorite “Three’s Company” blonde? It’d be so much more interesting than the movie. So much more interesting.

Barnes is terrible but not unlikable. Lords of the Deep is cheap. Cheap enough you feel bad for the actors. So even though she’s never good, Barnes isn’t unlikable. Not like Dillman. You get sick of seeing Dillman. Similarly second-in-command Gregory Sobeck. He’s a fine weasel. But you get sick of him. Barnes you don’t. And not just because it’s hilarious watching her to try act off Haney. Also when Barnes makes scientific discoveries she gets this “far out, man” expression on her face and it’s at least amusing to watch. Lords of the Deep would probably have been a lot better if everyone were dropping acid or at least incredibly stoned.

Mel Ryane is the only woman besides Barnes. Crap part, but Ryane’s okay considering. She’s not annoying. Even people who aren’t bad in Lords tend to get annoying sooner or later; the script’s against them scene after scene. Ryane not so much; she’s an actual asset.

Some of the special effects are all right. Lots aren’t, but every once in a while they’ll be solid. Director Fisher is enthusiastic but bad. She doesn’t seem to be directing the actors, which doesn’t do the film any favors. There’s also something weird about Nina M. Gilberti’s editing. It seems like it’s sometimes unintentionally effective. Like Gilberti’s cuts kind of save some of the bad composition, some of the time. Most of the time not though.

Jim Berenholtz’s music… isn’t bad. Not great, but consistently decent plus.

It’s a bad movie and there’s probably not any good reason to watch it. Unless, like I said, you really want to hate watch an awful Bradford Dillman performance.

The Tall Guy (1989, Mel Smith)

Mel Smith is a stunningly inept director. Especially for comedy. Though, given its awkward flashback montages, lack of supporting character resolutions, impromptu musical number, and just over ninety minute runtime, it sure seems like there might be a longer version of The Tall Guy out there. As is, The Tall Guy is way too skinny. So maybe it’s not all Smith’s fault. Or maybe it’s just editor Dan Rae’s fault. Maybe Smith directed a bunch of good comedy and Rae just screwed it all up. Maybe there’s some explanation for why it doesn’t work.

Because lead Jeff Goldblum is really cute. He’s really cute with romantic interest Emma Thompson. The movie’s not cute, but they’re cute. They carry a lot with this movie and don’t get anything in return. Richard Curtis’s script short changes them just as much as everyone else. Including third-billed Rowan Atkinson, who’s an inflated cameo. It’s weird. So maybe there’s a good reason for it.

It’s the fairly familiar tale of American actor Goldblum trying to make it in London. He can’t get any parts because he’s too tall apparently, which isn’t clear for a while because he’s employed at the start of the movie. He works for Atkinson, who’s a bastard physical comedian with a hit stage show. Goldblum’s his sidekick. And Goldblum doesn’t seem to have any ambition past being Atkinson’s sidekick. He just wishes Atkinson would be nice to him. And he wishes his roommate Geraldine James would at least have the courtesy of bringing home a dude to buff who isn’t going to drink Goldblum’s orange juice. Goldblum’s a man of few pleasures, orange juice is one of them.

Until Goldblum has to get his seasonal allergies resolved because it’s screwing up his performance—only it’s not, it’s just getting him laughs and Atkinson is a prima donna who can’t handle anyone else getting laughs. That single tidbit of character motivation for Atkinson is more than Goldblum or anyone else in the film gets. Anyway, Goldblum has to go to the doctor, there he meets nurse Thompson and falls for her immediately. The reminder of the first act is Goldblum getting shots for his allergies from Thompson, not asking her out, whining about not asking her out to roommate James, cue comic bit about what James’s lover of the moment is doing (usually hidden from view and humorously contorted), repeat.

Once Goldblum does go out with Thompson, they immediately get physical in a raucous love-making scene you know is supposed to be funny but it’s really more just dumb. It also results in Goldblum losing his job with Atkinson, which kicks off the second act proper as Thompson will soon tell Goldlbum he’s got to get another job because she’s not dating some bum actor.

Now all of a sudden it’s supposed to be believable Goldblum’s employable as a professional stage actor. This time the absurdity of his potential projects generates the charm, as the film phases out Thompson and Goldbum’s romance, then Thompson almost entirely. How’s Goldblum feel about it? Who knows. He doesn’t have the depth of a head shot.

Affable performances all around, though by the third act you’ve got to wonder how Goldblum and Thompson kept a straight-face through the disastrous third act. Professionalism, pass it on.

Atkinson always seems like he’s about to be really funny and it never pays off.

Anna Massey is fun as Goldblum’s agent.

There’s a poppy score from Peter Brewis. It’s rather energetic, which is something since the film manages to drag even at ninety-two minutes.

Adrian Biddle’s photography is solid.

Smith could be worse at composing shots. He could be as bad at it as he is directing actors.

The Tall Guy’s problematic execution give the film its charm through the first half plus a few, but then once it shatters that charm—intentionally—it’s got nothing to replace it with. Not in the acting, writing, or directing. It’s a bummer for Goldblum, Thompson, and Atkinson; they deserve something for keeping the film afloat. Against some considerable odds.

This post is part of the Jeff Goldblum Blogathon 2019 hosted by Emma of Emma K Wall, Explains it All and Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

The Mighty Quinn (1989, Carl Schenkel)

Right until the action-packed finale of The Mighty Quinn, there’s nothing the film can do lead Denzel Washington’s charm can’t forgive. But the finale, which incorporates poorly choreographed and poorly shot capoeira (from obvious fight doubles), a helicopter, a machine gun, suddenly awful music from composer Anne Dudley, and a handlebar-mustached M. Emmet Walsh in a tropical shirt… well, Washington can only do so much. And it seems like Quinn realizes it, because it doesn’t even try to leverage Washington for the rushed epilogue. Actually, it sort of leans away from him.

Because even though Washington is The Mighty Quinn, the film’s never comfortable being about him. Certainly not about his mightiness. Instead, Washington’s protagonist—police chief on a small, unnamed Caribbean island—is in a state of disarray. He’s functionally separated from wife Sheryl Lee Ralph (because he’s trying to sell out like island governor Norman Beaton, though we don’t find out about it until relatively late in the film), he’s a loving but absent dad to son David McFarlane, and he’s a lousy best friend to local pothead and ladies man Robert Townsend. Townsend’s barely in the film, but the whole thing hinges on him. He is the prime suspect in a murder investigation, after all, but he’s also the people’s hero. Washington is not. Washington (we find out—again—very late) went off to the States to join the Marines and then go to FBI school only to return home to the island… presumably for Ralph, but it’s very unclear. Washington’s character revelations usually come either in brooding expository scenes or drunken expository scenes. The film avoids Washington’s backstory, instead concentrating on the mystery… and Washington’s charm.

And the charm focus works. For a long, long time.

The mystery? Not as much.

At the start, there’s conflict with crappy White guy resort manager James Fox. There’s never overt racism from Fox but it’s always there. Until Fox disappears anyway. The scenes aren’t good because Fox is a lousy villain-type. He can’t stand up to Washington, but the character’s written to be pompous and Fox isn’t believably pompous. There’s also the weird way director Schenkel handles tone. Fox’s part of the mystery, including Mimi Rogers as his unhappy, abused, unfaithful wife, is all noirish. Or Schenkel’s version of it, which is stylized and self-aware. After Fox disappears, Rogers sticks around a bit to provide some flirtation for Washington. She’s that part of the film’s femme fatale, even though the film doesn’t really need one, because the mystery soon turns more to conspiracy thriller involving a suitcase of money, a company man (M. Emmet Walsh) arriving in town to clean-up the situation (officially), and a professional soldier (Alex Colon) also in town, but unofficially. Townsend figures into the conspiracy thriller a little, but never the noir stuff.

Not even when the film tries really hard.

After the conspiracy thriller takes over, there’s more of Washington away from the White folks. And the movie’s better when he’s away from them. The mood is lighter. He’s got gross old white man Walsh tagging along for a bit, but for those scenes, Schenkel still has the more playful touch. It’s the best stuff in the film—Washington with McFarlane and Ralph (even though the former scenes are just for exposition on the island’s colonial history and the best moment between Ralph and Washington was created in editing, not with the actors opposite one another), Washington with the other cops, whatever. Everything but the subplot about some other woman after Washington. Because Schenkel can’t figure out the mix on the noir and comedy in it, because a femme fatale stalking a sullen but lovable cop is noir but it’s for laughs. The film doesn’t know how to be sincere. It wants to be, but Schenkel doesn’t make it work.

It’s not all his fault, of course. Townsend is… lacking. He’s amusing enough. And some of the problem is the direction, but Townsend doesn’t have a presence opposite Washington. Fox doesn’t have one either. Only Ralph and Walsh hold up their part of the scene. Rogers does too—mostly—but there are a lot of style problems in her scenes, often both visual and narrative. Townsend needs to be Quinn’s secret mighty weapon and he’s not. Not even when he gets action sequences, which always come off like the filmmakers are trying too hard on their limited budget. Lots of silly at the end of Quinn. Lots of silly.

Until the end, there’s also fantastic editing (except on the action set pieces) from John Jympson and an affable score from Anne Dudley. Neither of them come through in the finish. Though Jacques Steyn’s photography is unchangingly solid throughout the film. It has some good moments, but what appear to be stylistic choices sometime just turn out to questionable standards. Schenkel’s direction isn’t successful, but it’s interesting and engaging. If he could get the mix between comedy and thriller right, it’d be fine.

Washington is mighty but Quinn is not.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Carl Schenkel; screenplay by Hampton Fancher, based on a novel by written by Albert Z. Carr; director of photography, Jacques Steyn; edited by John Jympson; music by Anne Dudley; production designer, Roger Murray-Leach; produced by Ed Elbert and Dale Pollock; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Denzel Washington (Xavier Quinn), Robert Townsend (Maubee), Sheryl Lee Ralph (Lola Quinn), M. Emmet Walsh (Fred Miller), Art Evans (Jump Jones), James Fox (Thomas Elgin), Esther Rolle (Ubu Pearl), Norman Beaton (Governor Chalk), Alex Colon (Jose Patina), Tyra Ferrell (Isola), and Mimi Rogers (Hadley Elgin).

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Great Balls of Fire! (1989, Jim McBride)

There’s no point to Great Balls of Fire! As a biopic it’s shaky–lead Dennis Quaid only gets to be the protagonist when he’s not being too despicable, which isn’t often and the film has to distance itself from Winona Ryder, playing Quaid’s love interest.

And thirteen year-old cousin.

So it’s understandable director McBride and co-screenwriter Jack Baran don’t want to delve too deep into the characters.

It’s also not a comedy, because even though Quaid plays Jerry Lee Lewis like an affable buffoon, it’s never clear if it’s all an act and Quaid (or Lewis) is really calculating or he’s just an idiot. Either way, he knows perving on his thirteen year-old cousin is wrong because her father–John Doe–is also putting a roof over Quaid’s head and playing in his band. During one montage sequence–when Lewis performs on “The Steve Allen Show”–suggests Fire could be some kind of rumination on American culture in the fifties, as the film cuts to various television shows of the era with the characters watching the television in shock… but it’s just that one sequence.

Otherwise, Fire just sort of churns along through the timeline. Hit records, marriage, failure. Sort of. There’s no arc to any of it. No one gets one. Not Quaid, whose character has less internal activity than a three scene cameo by Michael St. Gerard as Elvis. Certainly not Ryder, who gets a fun montage where she’s shopping for her home, then a breakdown when she realizes she’s just a kid then… relatively nothing until she starts getting abused by drunken failure Quaid. Doe kind of gets an arc. But it’s all background, going on when McBride is paying attention to other things. Doe probably gives the film’s best performance, partially because of that arc.

As his wife (and Ryder’s mom), Lisa Blount is fine. She’s in the movie a lot but gets absolutely nothing to do actually do. Except calm Doe occasionally.

Trey Wilson and Stephen Tobolowsky are the record producers. They’re fine. Wilson’s a little better, though both their parts are razor thin.

Then there’s Alec Baldwin as preacher Jimmy Swaggart (real-life cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis). He’s okay? His presence in the film is simultaneously sensational and pointless.

Quaid’s really good at pretending to play and sing the music. The real Lewis recorded all the songs and there are piano stunt doubles for the harder stuff; but what Quaid does, he does really well.

Technically the film’s more than proficient. Good production design from David Nichols. Solid photography from Affonso Beato. The problem’s the script. No one can act it well because it doesn’t want to be acted well. It gets queasy dwelling on its caricatures.

In the end, Fire just fizzles out. It’s often entertaining, sometimes engaging, but McBride and Baran don’t have a handle on the story they want to tell, much less how to tell it.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Jim McBride; screenplay by Jack Baran and McBride, based on the book by Myra Lewis and Murray Silver Jr.; director of photography, Affonso Beato; edited by Lisa Day, Pembroke J. Herring, and Bert Lovitt; production designer, David Nichols; produced by Adam Fields; released by Orion Pictures.

Starring Dennis Quaid (Jerry Lee Lewis), Winona Ryder (Myra Gale Brown), John Doe (J.W. Brown), Lisa Blount (Lois Brown), Trey Wilson (Sam Phillips), Stephen Tobolowsky (Jud Phillips), and Alec Baldwin (Jimmy Swaggart).

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My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989, Jim Sheridan)

My Left Foot is told in flashback. There’s the present–kind of glorified bookends–when Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a successful adult and flirts with his nurse (Ruth McCabe)–and then the past, which recounts Brown growing up poor, with cerebral palsy, in 1940s Dublin. Hugh O’Conor plays Brown until he’s seventeen or eighteen, then Day-Lewis takes over. Since Day-Lewis has a beard and a distinct manner in the present-day stuff, when he’s a teenager and before he’d ever gotten any rehabilitation or treatment, it’s a very different role. O’Conor plays a very different role too in his maybe twenty minutes–he’s got to play younger Day-Lewis from the first scene when he’s not even a tween. And he’s got the big material to get through.

Dad Ray McAnally thinks Day-Lewis is catastrophically cognitively impaired. Mom Brenda Fricker doesn’t think so, but McAnally’s a loud (sometimes scary) drunk and there are the six other kids to think about. But it also means the audience knows something the characters don’t. Yes, there’s something about the expectation, both for the narrative and O’Conor’s performance–but also presents the characters from a particular angle, which tends to work a lot better for Fricker than McAnally. Because there’s also the unseen scary bits regarding McAnally. Fricker–rightly so–gets sainted. McAnally gets gray, only My Left Foot isn’t really set up for gray.

My Left Foot is very precise in its attention and its intention. The focus is on O’Conor and Fricker–then Day-Lewis and Fricker–in the family’s house. My Left Foot’s production values are never bad, but director Sheridan and production designer Austen Spriggs focus their efforts on the scenes at the family’s house. Sheridan’s not a flashy director, but when he’s out in public–basically these occasional pub scenes for McAnally–and photographer Jack Controy is no help–the precision is gone. To wildly varying degrees. The verisimilitude orbits Fricker. Because Day-Lewis (and O’Conor) are too busy doing these layered performances, not to mention the impossible physicality layer. They don’t need a grounding or anything, they just can’t be concerned with tempering the mood.

It’s actually something brought up later on–as someone reads Brown’s actual writing aloud–regarding the constant feeling of isolation, even in a large family. Day-Lewis and O’Conor are always isolated. Much to Fricker’s frustration. Day-Lewis, Fricker, and O’Conor all have big character arcs in the film. No one else has them. Even if their characters do change a lot–like McAnally or Fiona Shaw, as Day-Lewis’s first doctor and champion–they don’t get to do it on screen. Once they’ve changed too much, they just disappear. Same thing happens to Fricker in the third act; worse, sometimes she’ll be in a scene and wasted. Shane Connaughton’s script sacrifices a lot of character for efficiency. Sheridan enables it, yes, but the script is ruthless.

But I’m getting a little ahead.

Once Day-Lewis takes over, the film nicely ambles about. There’s a subplot about McAnally and Fricker being able to buy him a wheelchair and one of the sisters getting in trouble, but they’re very mild subplots. They provide some narrative structure. Otherwise, it’s these micro-vingettes, all of them doing–often heartbreaking–character development for Day-Lewis. Fricker gets her character development in big moments. Day-Lewis’s builds. The film avoids getting too in-depth with anything. Just like McAnally’s faults are left unexplored, as are all of Brown’s medical problems over the years. Or physical realities. Or, actually, mental ones. Day-Lewis has a couple big rejection from women scenes and the film skips the hard stuff. My Left Foot isn’t rosy, but Sheridan and Connaughton make a real effort not to get too real with any of it.

And, given–while in the present and now apparently a writer (Brown’s work as an artist and writer are very murky in the background)–Day-Lewis tells McCabe (who’s reading his first book, My Left Foot) about how it’s too sentimental. The film is too sentimental. The acting is never too sentimental. The production never looks too sentimental–Jack Conroy’s photography is too flat for the emotion. But Sheridan and Connaughton are going for sentimental. Elmer Bernstein’s score is often so saccharine–while being technically competent if not better–it distracts from the acting.

Of course, with a better ending–the micro-vingettes have been becoming summarized micro-vingettes skipping forward in the narrative without any rhythm–the film maybe could’ve gotten anyway with the sentimentality. Day-Lewis is charming as hell by the present day stuff. He’s just not in it enough in the present day to get too sentimental about. Everyone’s material take a dive in the third act; the film has run out of time to tell its story so there’s a rush to the finish. The transition from flashback to present is really, really, really rough. It races and interrupts the actors.

The film’s exceptional moments come in the first and second acts, when all the elements sync up–the acting, the writing, the history–and Sheridan is able to get these fantastic scenes. Because the writing gets so loose with the history later on, there’s less opportunity for that sync.

And no real attempt at it in the present day stuff. Day-Lewis and McCabe are just cute together. Both actors do quite well with the material, but Sheridan is going for cute. And gets to pull it off thanks to Day-Lewis.

Sheridan and Connaughton are able to get away with a lot because of Day-Lewis and Fricker. Fricker not getting to finish any of her subplots is downright mean of the film, given how much of it she enables.

Fricker, Day-Lewis, and O’Conor give great performances. Exceptional. Singular. Performances deserving that sort of adjective. McAnally is excellent. His part isn’t good enough but he’s excellent. Fiona Shaw is fine. She’s sympathetic but not too sympathetic. McCabe’s cute. All the brothers and sisters are perfectly fine; they’re interchangeable in the narrative, so there’s not opportunity for much more.

My Left Foot has its problems. It also has exceptional pluses. The pluses win out.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Jim Sheridan; screenplay by Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan, based on the book by Christy Brown; director of photography, Jack Conroy; edited by J. Patrick Duffner; music by Elmer Bernstein; production designer, Austen Spriggs; produced by Noel Pearson; released by Palace Pictures.

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis (Christy Brown), Brenda Fricker (Mrs. Brown), Ray McAnally (Mr. Brown), Fiona Shaw (Dr. Eileen Cole), Hugh O’Conor (Young Christy Brown), Ruth McCabe (Mary), Alison Whelan (Sheila), Kirsten Sheridan (Sharon), Declan Croghan (Tom), Eanna MacLiam (Benny), and Cyril Cusack (Lord Castlewelland).

THIS POST IS PART OF THE 2ND DISABILITY IN FILM BLOGATHON HOSTED BY ROBIN OF POP CULTURE REVERIE AND CRYSTAL OF IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD.

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Love and Rockets (1982) #31

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The issue starts with Maggie trying to join Hopey and Tex’s new band. They’re delayed getting back to California, which might not even be on Hopey’s radar. It’s a Maggie and Hopey story, a little different given Hopey’s hair, but also because it’s two pages and (roughly) twelve panels a page. Maggie runs into Ray’s ex-girlfriend. It’s a cute little Locas, but feels like Jaime’s just keeping their burner warm.

Next is Beto’s Poison River. Part three. Teenage Luba gets married. The husband is a band manager and conga player (in said band). He’s much older. He’s also married with at least one child, but Luba doesn’t know about the other family. He’s obsessed with her and nowhere near as creepy as the other grown men pursuing Luba and her teenage friends. There’s also the origin of the hammer. It’s an excellent story; Luba isn’t particularly familiar in it. She’s not the kid from the previous issue, she’s not the Luba from regular Palomar. She’s actually far more revealed than her adult self. The husband, who Beto didn’t identify as a husband, showed up in one panel at the start of Human Diastrophism when Beto was going over Luba’s kids’ fathers. There’s also the start of Luba’s bather career; she and her friends work at the local bath house. Beto does a lot with it, especially since everyone except Luba and her family (who don’t play a big part) are new characters. It’s excellent. Beto makes it seem casual in the excellence.

Then is a Doyle story. Jaime’s not done with Doyle, which is a surprise. It’s a flashback story to 1982, so presumably before Doyle met Hopey and Maggie but after he’d been friends with Ray. Doyle’s just out of jail, looking for Ray (who’s gone east), working for with his girlfriend and Lily, who isn’t his girlfriend yet. Lily and the girlfriend are exotic dancers, Doyle collects the money and gets rough if need be. Jaime structures it all around broken toilets keeping Doyle up at night, which is a special kind of despondence. There’s not much with the girlfriend, but the burgeoning relationship with Lily is really sweet and well-done. It’s out of place in the sweetness, but also perfect. There’s some great art too. It’s just a surprise.

But nowhere near the surprise of the last story, Beto’s Love and Rockets: Premiere. It’s this comic–but sad and dark–story about Steve Stranski, a metalhead surfer who… if you look close… once vacationed in Palomar. He’s taking a couple hot chicks to see this band, Love and Rockets, perform. Only they think it’s the actual band Love and Rockets and not some garage band knockoffs. It’s a fun, goofy story and then all of a sudden Steve meets his friend’s new Hispanic housekeeper and starts crushing on her, even giving her a ride home with pal Gerry (another surfer who vacationed in Palomar). Turns out it’s Riri and she and Marciela are trying to make it in the States. And it’s to be continued, which is another surprise. Beto’s doing Marciela’s story too.

It’s a sort of different issue–even with Luba being active in her origin, it doesn’t feel like Luba, and Doyle’s proto-Doyle, and Maggie and Hopey are just cameoing. But it’s another excellent one. Both Jaime and Beto maintain their ambitions throughout.

Love and Rockets Bonanza (1989) #1

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Love and Rockets Bonanza collects short Love and Rockets miscellanea from, approximately, 1985 to 1988. The first issue of 1985 was #10, the last issue of 1988 was #28. All these little stories–the longest ones are six, some are just single pagers–appeared in other Love and Rockets publications, like the collections or in the color Mechanics series or Fantagraphics’s Anything Goes anthology. There’s even a Los Bros story from “The Village Voice.”

What’s so interesting about the stories in the collection is what Beto and Jaime were developing outside the regular series. Like Pipo getting dropped on her head on delivery and it haunting her. Or Pipo hanging out with the boys until she started wearing dresses. Or Chelo’s back story. None of this Palomar stuff made it into the series proper–well, maybe some hints about Pipo hanging out with the boys, but nothing to this level. Instead, it showed up in the collections–in Pipo’s case, starting with the first one. Pipo, who disappeared from the series proper, had a whole character development thing going (as a kid, anyway) and it never bled through to the main series.

Similarly, Daffy is much more of a supporting cast member in some of Jaime’s extra Locas pages than she ever was in the main series. Especially in the time frame of these stories–it’s all “Mechanics”-era stuff. There’s even a story, from Anything Goes, so not a Love and Rockets collection (yet… it subsequently got collected), where there’s actual closure with Rand Race. At the time Jaime did the story for Anything Goes, Hopey and Maggie were about to be separated–or already had been–Bonanza’s March 1989 release was a flashback to a much different Love and Rockets than where Jaime and Beto had ended up in the main series at that point.

Though there were some definite hints of things to come. While most of the new elements are on their own–like Pipo’s head, Daffy’s continued presence, some actual sibling bonding for Hopey and Joey–there’s also Beto foreshadowing Ofelia’s tragic story. It’s in a story about Guadalupe’s interest in astronomy, which may or may not have the giant book from Human Diastrophism (more like does), from Anything Goes in May 1987. Beto didn’t get around to fully revealing it in the main series until #30, over two years later.

There’s also some interesting standalone stuff, like Beto and Jaime collaborating on the “Village Voice” piece. They both wrote, Jaime pencilled. It feels very much like one of Beto’s first person punk historicals, which he stopped doing in the main series ages before March 1989 when Bonanza dropped. Jaime’s got a A Date With Hopey, about some doofus who–according to him–was “this close” to dating Hopey. It’s all from his perspective, Hopey and Maggie are background, and the whole thing reads like Jaime’s trying to ape Beto’s first person style. Very, very, very interesting stuff in the creative timeline.

It’s a solid collection of stuff; Beto’s Palomar stories are the best, just because Jaime’s not trying too hard with the Locas material. It’s for fun. He’s got some great art–Maggie reading the comic book adventures of her time with Rand Race, for example, has some gorgeous science hero-ish art from Jaime; material from a September 1988 collection, years after Jaime had stopped doing “Mechanics.”

There’s some stuff with Penny telling Hopey about Costigan, so set in the early days, during a story covering Maggie’s first day as Race’s assistant. Very cute story. Jaime goes for laughs and smiles, Beto goes for laughs and smiles but with some depth.

A lot of Beto’s art is much cleaner in these little stories, less hurried, like he was trying to be impressive for the collections.

Bonanza has been collected again elsewhere, but like I said, it’s a interesting bit of creative development stuff–what the Brothers didn’t work on in the main book, but worked on to support the main book when it got collected.