Category: 1992

Cool World (1992, Ralph Bakshi)

What does it say about a performance when the actor is better voicing a cartoon than giving a full performance? I think it says the actor’s performance is godawful, but I’m not sure that adjective is strong enough to describe Kim Basinger in Cool World.

And Cool World is not a film with good performances, so for Basinger to come out so far ahead (or is it behind?) the pack is true atrociousness. If it weren’t already terrible, she’d ruin it. She does. She makes a terrible movie even worse.

Second-billed Gabriel Byrne is pretty bad too. He has the benefit of having an awful character though. The screenplay only totally fails Basinger’s character once the cartoon vixen becomes real. Before that change, it’s up in the air–the real problem’s the handling of Byrne’s character though. He’s even supposed to be the protagonist, which is a laugh.

Brad Pitt’s more the protagonist than Byrne or Basinger and he’s fairly bad. He has occasional moments, but all the acting by himself established some bad habits. His finish in the movie is actually worse than anyone else’s.

There are some good performances, but they’re all voice ones–Candi Milo, Charles Adler and Maurice LaMarche are all good.

Bakshi’s direction is a mixed bag. His real world sequences are lousy. His cartoon ones are okay, though Cool World‘s way too cheap for its ambitions.

Mark Isham’s score is occasionally good.

It’s a truly lousy movie, with Basinger making it worse.

Rapid Fire (1992, Dwight H. Little)

Even with his silly, slicked back eighties cop hair, Raymond J. Barry is easily the best actor in Rapid Fire. His first appearance is delightful, as it washes away some of the film’s already very bad taste.

Rapid Fire is an action movie without any good action. Director Little’s terrible with actors and composition, but he also has a lousy crew. Ric Waite’s photography, while mildly competent, looks like he’s shooting the picture through bathwater. Gib Jaffe’s editing loses characters and he can’t figure out how to edit star Brandon Lee’s fight scenes. It’s okay, I guess, since Little can’t figure out how to shoot them. If the draw of Rapid Fire is supposed to be Lee’s martial arts abilities, actually showing them as something other than editing tricks would be helpful.

Besides Barry, only Tzi Ma makes any good acting impression… but it might be because Ma starts out opposite Nick Mancuso. Either Little told Mancuso to do a Sonny Corleone impression or Mancuso came up with it himself. Every moment Mancuso is on screen, whether playing with his hair or staring off into space, sears the reasoning parts of the brain. It’s laughably bad.

As for Lee? He’s not very good. It’s partially Little’s direction–and a lot of it is Alan B. McElroy’s terrible script–but he’s still not good.

Speaking of McElroy, he works numerous Chinese epithet to show Rapid Fire is socially conscious.

It’s an awful movie.

And Christopher Young’s smooth jazz score doesn’t help.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Dwight H. Little; screenplay by Alan B. McElroy, based on a story by Cindy Cirile and McElroy; director of photography, Ric Waite; edited by Gib Jaffe; music by Christopher Young; production designer, Ron Foreman; produced by Robert Lawrence; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Brandon Lee (Jake Lo), Powers Boothe (Mace Ryan), Nick Mancuso (Antonio Serrano), Raymond J. Barry (Agent Frank Stewart), Kate Hodge (Karla Withers), Tzi Ma (Kinman Tau), Tony Longo (Brunner), Michael Paul Chan (Carl Chang), Dustin Nguyen (Paul Yang), Brigitta Stenberg (Rosalyn), Basil Wallace (Agent Wesley) and Al Leong (Minh).

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Captain Ron (1992, Thom E. Eberhardt)

For an innocuous Touchstone family comedy, Captain Ron isn’t bad. Like most Touchstone movies, it lacks any real personality–Daryn Okada’s photography, for example, should be full of lush Caribbean visuals but it isn’t. Part of the blame goes to director Eberhardt, who doesn’t know how to open up his shots, and Okada’s no help. Ron feels too artificially controlled.

The movie still has some very amusing moments and it’s well-acted by the principals. More accurately, the adult principals. Martin Short inherits a boat and brings along wife Mary Kay Place and kids Benjamin Salisbury and Meadow Sisto. Salisbury is annoying, Sisto’s bad.

Place easily gives the film’s best performance, while Russell manages to be charming with the illusion of edginess. That Touchstone touch. Short’s wrong for his role as a neurotic control freak; his best scenes are when Eberhardt’s stuck using him as a physical comedian. Short’s good enough to sell the non-physical stuff, but he’s in the way of his own movie. Eberhardt and co-screenwriter John Dwyer don’t have a particularly good script and their character arcs are even worse.

Those writing problems aside, Eberhardt has five principal cast members and barely any significant supporting cast and he paces the scenes exceedingly well. His problem’s his weak composition. The short set-up–a walking, exposition-filled argument between Short and Place–still feels natural and complete, even though it’s manipulative.

William F. Matthews’s production design is better than Ron deserves. Nicholas Pike’s music is worse.

Man Trouble (1992, Bob Rafelson)

Man Trouble is a strange film, right from the start. It opens with then thirty-year-old Lauren Tom in old age makeup (well, her hair tinted grey). That casting choice–following the animated opening titles–establishes it as an oddity. It’s not a bad film, just a strangely detached one. The protagonist is Ellen Barkin, but since she’s opposite Jack Nicholson, he’s the de facto protagonist.

Nicholson does a good job playing a sleazy, but lovable ne’er-do-well–he’s so lovable, even the people he owes money can’t stay angry at him–and there are occasional moments of Nicholson brilliance. Unfortunately, they’re during the human parts, which he doesn’t get many.

Barkin’s excellent. The film makes a mistake at one point comparing her to trampy sister Beverly D’Angelo. It’s clear Barkin’s character–intelligent, socially awkward and shyly sexy–would never bother making such an obvious comparison. Especially given D’Angelo’s sister is introduced as an unsympathetic cancer on her life.

Some of the supporting cast–Veronica Cartwright, Saul Rubinek–is good. Others–D’Angelo, Michael McKean, David Clennon–are on autopilot. I don’t think Harry Dean Stanton was even awake, they just taped his eyes open.

But the cast isn’t the problem, it’s the script. Eastman’s script is technically good, but it clearly should have been a novel. It’s a reality-based absurdist conspiracy situation comedy. The movie can’t get enough information across to really tell the story.

Still, it’s charming to some degree and much better than I expected.

White Sands (1992, Roger Donaldson)

It’s not hard to identify the problem with White Sands. Daniel Pyne’s script is terrible. His characters often act without motivation and the double and triple crosses he writes into the plot never have any pay-off. It doesn’t help director Donaldson sees himself–and not incorrectly to a point–doing a desert noir in the vein of Touch of Evil. But Sands is too big for a desert noir and Donaldson doesn’t have any tricks, except good Panavision composition, once the desert element runs out.

There are a lot of good performances in the film–Donaldson casted a lot of fine character actors–but Willem Dafoe is an ineffective lead. A lot of that deficiency is the script’s fault, but Dafoe doesn’t bring any implied depth. It’s a casting misfire (bad guy Mickey Rourke, who’s quite good, would have been a better lead).

Samuel L. Jackson, M. Emmet Walsh, Miguel Sandoval, John P. Ryan and Fred Dalton Thompson all provide texture to the supporting cast. Walsh isn’t doing anything new and Jackson gets off to a rocky start, but they’re fine. The only other misfire is Maura Tierney, who’s absurd.

As Dafoe’s erstwhile romantic interest, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is okay. If the script were better and gave her a real part (she doesn’t even show up until a half hour in), she’d do better.

There’s excellent photography from Peter Menzies Jr. and Patrick O’Hearn’s score often makes Sands seem like a better film.

With a rewrite, it would’ve been.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Roger Donaldson; written by Daniel Pyne; director of photography, Peter Menzies Jr.; edited by Nicholas Beauman; music by Patrick O’Hearn; production designer, John Graysmark; produced by Scott Rudin and William Sackheim; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Willem Dafoe (Ray Dolezal), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Lane Bodine), Mickey Rourke (Gorman Lennox), Samuel L. Jackson (Greg Meeker), Miguel Sandoval (FBI Agent Ruiz), M. Emmet Walsh (Bert Gibson), James Rebhorn (FBI Agent Flynn), John Lafayette (FBI Agent Demott), Maura Tierney (Noreen), Alexander Nicksay (Ben Dolezal), John P. Ryan (Arms Dealer), Fred Dalton Thompson (Arms Dealer) and Mimi Rogers (Molly Dolezal).

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Bad Lieutenant (1992, Abel Ferrara)

Harvey Keitel’s performance in Bad Lieutenant reminds me of a supporting actor in a stage play who keeps fidgeting to get the audience’s attention. I wonder if Keitel passes out copies of the DVD to his neocon buddies these days.

I have seen the film before, back when I turned eighteen and went through about three days of NC-17 movies… only to learn most of them were pretty lousy and sensationalist.

Bad Lieutenant hasn’t improved in the last fourteen years.

Ferrara’s filmmaking approach here is Cassavetes-lite. It’s like Cassavetes, only with the dialogue cut (Lieutenant‘s dialogue is frequently absurd). Keitel’s delivery of those lines–alongside actors like co-writer Zoë Lund and Phil Neilson–occasionally make the film seem like a twisted attempt at camp.

Of course, it’s not camp. If the three hundred thousand Jesus icons (not to mention the shot of a wailing Jesus on the cross) don’t clue you in, it’s about Catholic redemption.

What’s so funny about the film is how ludicrous the simple parts get. The police investigation makes absolutely no sense (the crime isn’t investigated for three days, even though the cops and, presumably, the whole world know about it).

The film opens with an unintentionally comedic moment–foul-mouthed Keitel taking his kids to school–which at least suggests the film is going to be somewhat engaging. Instead, it meanders through its run time. Keitel’s the whole (bad) show.

Ken Kelsch’s cinematography’s good.

For all the noise, I almost fell asleep.

Blame It on the Bellboy (1992, Mark Herman)

Herman opens Blame It on the Bellboy with his two weakest features—and the film’s full of weaknesses so to start with the worst ones? It’s sort of impressive he set it up to immediately stumble.

First, Andreas Katsulas’s mobster. The film takes place in Venice and Katsulas plays the only Venetian. He plays the role with an absurd New York accent. It’s an incompetent performance.

Second, Bronson Pinchot’s titular bellboy, who sets the film’s wacky events into motion by not understanding English. The surprising thing about Bellboy is the absence of a plagiarism suit as Herman rips off scenes and dialogue from “Fawlty Towers,” apparently telling Pinchot just to ape Andrew Sachs’s Manuel on that program. Unfortunately, even in someone else’s role, Pinchot can’t give a good performance.

Then the principals show up. Bryan Brown, Dudley Moore and Richard Griffiths. Griffiths is the best as minor British politician looking for sleazy romance in Venice. Brown’s an assassin, Moore’s a nebbish on assignment from a bad job. Moore actually manages to be likable; Brown barely makes an impression. In about half his scenes, he doesn’t even speak, just nods.

The female cast is Patsy Kensit, Penelope Wilton and Alison Steadman. The script’s response to the character enduring a sexual trauma is to make her comically unsympathetic. Steadman is initially treated well (and her performance is good) before Herman too makes her a target for audience laughter.

Only Steadman keeps afloat, giving the film’s best performance.

Herman makes a bad Bellboy.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Written and directed by Mark Herman; director of photography, Andrew Dunn; edited by Michael Ellis; music by Trevor Jones; production designer, Gemma Jackson; produced by Steve Abbott and Jennifer Howarth; released by Hollywood Pictures.

Starring Dudley Moore (Melvyn Orton), Bryan Brown (Mike Lawton), Richard Griffiths (Maurice Horton), Andreas Katsulas (Scarpa), Patsy Kensit (Caroline Wright), Alison Steadman (Rosemary Horton), Penelope Wilton (Patricia Fulford) and Bronson Pinchot (Bellboy).

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Once Upon a Crime (1992, Eugene Levy)

To sum up Levy’s direction, although Once Upon a Crime filmed entirely on location in Europe, the whole thing feels vaguely Canadian. Or, to put it another way, it’s hard to believe anyone footed Jim Belushi’s airfare to Monte Carlo to film this one.

But Levy’s only a mediocre director, the casting is the real problem. Belushi’s awful and so is Richard Lewis. The joke of the screenplay is the men are always weaker than their women, whether it’s Belushi and Cybill Shepherd (who’s okay), Lewis and Sean Young (who’s good), John Candy and Ornella Muti (more on them in a bit), or even the butler and maid (Geoffrey Andrews and Ann Way). The only subtle part in the film is this repeated power dynamic.

Maybe Levy missed it. He was too busy letting Belushi fail at acting a moron. Now, the script isn’t genius dialogue by any means, but it’s not terrible. Lewis is doing his stand-up (he’s even in his trench coat) and it doesn’t work. But Belushi simply can’t act. In the scenes opposite Candy, when Levy’s going for something out of a screwball comedy, it’s a perfect example of Candy’s ability and Belushi’s lack of it. Candy makes it work, all of it. Belushi drags every scene.

Muti’s good as Candy’s suffering wife; their scenes together are a highpoint.

The best performance is Giancarlo Giannini as the police inspector investigating the surprisingly engaging mystery.

Once Upon a Crime is a bad film, but not entirely.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Eugene Levy; screenplay by Charles Shyer, Nancy Meyers and Steve Kluger, based on an earlier screenplay by Rodolfo Sonego, Giorgio Arlorio, Stefano Strucchi and Luciano Vincenzoni and a story by Sonego; director of photography, Giuseppe Rotunno; edited by Patrick Kennedy; music by Richard Gibbs; production designer, Pier Luigi Basile; produced by Dino De Laurentiis; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring John Candy (Augie Morosco), James Belushi (Neil Schwary), Cybill Shepherd (Marilyn Schwary), Sean Young (Phoebe), Richard Lewis (Julian Peters), Ornella Muti (Elena Morosco), Giancarlo Giannini (Inspector Bonnard), George Hamilton (Alfonso de la Pena), Roberto Sbaratto (Detective Toussaint), Joss Ackland (Hercules Popodopoulos), Ann Way (Housekeeper) and Geoffrey Andrews (Butler).

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  • OTHER 1992 RELEASES

    • Honeymoon in Vegas (1992, Andrew Bergman)

    Honeymoon in Vegas almost defies description. Bergman drags a sitcom out to ninety minutes. But he also makes his straight man—Nicolas Cage—act like a lunatic. Cage’s performance during the second act features him screaming the end of every sentence.

    Wait, I forgot about the utterly useless prologue (though it does give the chance for an Anne Bancroft cameo). Also important is when James Caan’s character reveals himself to be a dangerous psychopath—at the start of the third act, before then he’s just enthusiastic. What else am I forgetting….

    Bergman treats the narrative like Johnny Williams’s terribly unfunny flunky, who’s constantly eating. Bergman pays so little attention to his film… he forgets he’s got Cage narrating it in the past tense.

    Caan’s bad throughout—it’s the script’s fault, but it’s also his inability to deviate from his normal performance anymore. It’s depressing to see him in Vegas.

    Cage is good at the beginning, terrible in the middle and okay at the end. His character is unbelievably stupid because he needs to be, which makes it hard to like him.

    And Sarah Jessica Parker, who they both love (Cage had her first, Caan steals her away), is terrible at the beginning. But then she’s great in the middle. She holds up at the end too.

    Bergman’s directing of actors is almost as bad as his soap opera composition.

    Oh, I didn’t even mention David Newman’s terrible score….

    Honeymoon in Vegas is, like I said, indescribable. Except by negative adjectives.

    Love Potion No. 9 (1992, Dale Launer)

    I wonder if there’s not a better version of Love Potion No. 9 out there somewhere. The film only runs ninety minutes and feels anorexic. Launer’s writing–even his narration for Tate Donovan–has these moments of incredible strength. It’s so strong, in fact, it and Donovan make Love Potion a fine diversion.

    Well, those aspects and Mary Mara’s repugnant call girl who is hilarious in a wicked stepsister sort of way.

    Launer’s script has its issues–characters appear and disappear on a whim, as the film decides to focus on Donovan almost exclusively about halfway through. Before, it’s fairly evenly distributed between he and Sandra Bullock. Bullock is the film’s biggest problem. She’s absolutely awful in the second half, when she’s talking anyway. She has this whole sequence where she’s pretending to be mute so no man falls in love with her (the titular love potion affects the vocal cords) and she’s rather charming. Of course, it’s the exact same performance she’s been giving in the twenty years since this film.

    But once she does start talking, her character becomes third tier in the story and Launer can’t figure out how to write the scenes. In the first half, he’s got a solid concept. In the second, he’s got a good performance from Donovan and Mara.

    It’s really shouldn’t be enough… but it succeeds.

    The good memories (from the first half) of Dylan Baker and Rebecca Staab go a long way.

    And having Anne Bancroft around never hurt anyone.