Tin Cup (1996, Ron Shelton)

Tin Cup’s got very few problems. It’s just a romantic comedy about a ne’er-do-well golf pro who decides to improve himself to impress his rival’s girlfriend. There’s a little more nuance to it, but not much. Kevin Costner plays the hero, Rene Russo plays the love interest, Don Johnson plays the other guy. Because all the cast members are in their forties, Tin Cup has a little more sophisticated air. Costner’s old enough to have become a would-be golf sage. Russo’s got a grown-up backstory with a lot of implications. Johnson… well, Johnson’s sort of ageless. The part’s a caricature, but it’s caricature Johnson passively exudes, so every utterance is a revelation of asshole.

But he’s not a great villain. He’s too likable. The movie gets away with it thanks to the cast’s charm, but it does sort of reduce the dramatic impact of Costner’s wooing Russo. There are a couple places in Cup where they avoid a topic or skip a thing because otherwise, it’d get too heavy. If it ever gets too weighty, it’s time to move on. Costner’s got a lot of West Texas golf pro zen monologues about golf to make, and those are funny and successful because Costner turns on the sincerity for a gag. But if you actually have to think about him—he’s basically an immature, lovable jackass who gets by thanks to innate intelligence and being good-looking and charming like a movie star. Costner’s against type partly because most of it requires a scrub, not a movie star.

What’s strange is the film leans into being more comedic in the first act and then dumbs it in the second. The third act is a sports movie and a good one, albeit a low-stakes one. Director Shelton goes out of his way to showcase Russo’s comedic ability, only for her to not be in the movie enough in the second act for them to matter. Once the sports story starts, Russo’s demoted, but she also gets a lot less comedy. So when she’s with Cheech Marin—who plays Costner’s best friend, caddy, sidekick, and conscience—it’s fantastic because she gets to have fun.

It’s when she’s not Johnson’s girlfriend; it’s when she’s got agency.

But most of Tin Cup’s problems resolve themselves, and a couple become strengths. For better or worse, demoting Russo in the second act changes the impact of the third on Costner, making him a fuller character and giving the dramatic sports finish even more gravitas. Shelton’s got a problem with changing the tone for it; it gets more serious—real golfers are cameoing now—and almost all the jokes are gone. But it also makes the third act stand alone and special. Tin Cup’s an exquisitely produced film.

For the most part.

It has what I assume is a 1996 Top 40s Country-Western soundtrack. Shelton seems to try to cover for the pointless tracks with on-the-nose tracks (there are golf country songs), but the music doesn’t fit the characters. At times we’re supposed to think Kevin Costner is listening to these songs on his Walkman. Or at least the songs are playing, and Costner is inexplicably wearing a Walkman like he lost a bet to a guy at Sony, so maybe he’s listening to them? It seems more like he’d be listening to books on tape—for the character at his place in the movie, even if it were a golf book—but Costner gets zero self-improvement.

Tin Cup is about being so special at one thing, you never have to say you’re sorry for anything else.

Wow; sort of a metaphor for how the movie can still be good with that lousy soundtrack. William Ross does the score, and it’s okay—it really comes in for the sports finale, but then it’s basically just Hoosiers music—so I don’t know if he’d have brought enough personality. But the movie begs for a good score versus lousy songs.

Though there’s a Chris Isaak song where you realize Costner’s mooning over Russo isn’t as dramatic or romantic as the song, which then makes it too serious for a moment. It’s an interesting glimpse into the movie being done straight dramatic.

And the last song isn’t not catchy. The sex scene song, however, is grating. Though the sex scenes themselves are a little pointless. So, regular romantic comedy problems, but with a good cast and a fine production. And a terrible, worst kind of media conglomerate synergy soundtrack.

All the performances are good with asterisks. Russo’s excellent in the first act until she gets reduced to girlfriend in the second act. Johnson’s outstanding, but it’s a thin part. Costner’s successful, but it’s hard not to be successful when the movie’s about your character never actually being wrong and usually quite the opposite. He’s a little loose on the more comedic—Marin’s there to pick up the slack—but he’s got the sincerity. And when scenes do go wrong, it’s not Costner’s fault. It’s the soundtrack.

Tin Cup’s a mostly delightful nineties romantic comedy. One’s mileage may vary with the soundtrack—even if you like the songs, they’re pointless selections. Costner, Russo, Marin, and Johnson are a fine team. Linda Hart’s good as Costner’s ex.

It’s a good time.

This post is part of the Odd Or Even Blogathon hosted by Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews and Rebecca from Taking Up Room.

Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)

Knives Out is very successful, very neat riff on the Agatha Christie-esque genre of mystery stories, specifically the limited cast, the intricate death, the “gentleman detective.” Out’s gentleman detective is Daniel Craig, who plays his French-named character as a Southern Gentleman with aplomb. He’s always delightful, even though he’s—intentionally—not particularly good at the investigating, rather trying to figure out where the truth will reveal itself and meet it there. Nice Gravity’s Rainbow reference, though writer and director Johnson’s joke about people not actually reading it… well, there’s an insight ceiling. Out does a pretty good job not bumping it while covering a range of precarious topics throughout, with the Pynchon cop out probably being the closest call.

The lead in the film is instead Ana de Armas, nurse and confidant to recently deceased (apparently by suicide) Christopher Plummer. Plummer’s a millionaire mystery novel writer who supports his greedy family members, reigning from an intentionally gothic house with the occasional physical gimmicks related to his mystery novels. The house set is a lot of fun. When the film finally leaves for a sustained period (instead of just quick asides to remind de Armas has a real life away), it loses a bit of its personality. Especially when it will just turn around and head back, reining in its expanse at the end of the second act just to use the house again in the third. Only once it returns, it’s already shown what’s behind the curtain–Johnson does a fine job establishing the actual suspects from the potential ones and gives the audience enough information to at least guess the perpetrator if not the motive.

It’s a good script. Even during the finale, which goes on a little too long, all of Johnson’s instincts and twists are good, there’s just too much material in between them. Some of it’s Craig mugging but Johnson’s also really careful never to let him go too far. The film’s got a very specific tone, very specific narrative distance—it’s got to encompass a lot around de Armas—Johnson and his crew do an excellent job with it. Steve Yedlin’s photography, Bob Ducsay’s editing, Nathan Johnson’s music. All works out.

No small thanks to de Armas, obviously, who’s able to do a lot in this spotlight, including entirely, exquisitely humanize Plummer. It isn’t until their big scene together Plummer really gets to act; until then, opposite the family, it’s all for motive setup. With de Armas, Plummer gets real personality, which resonates throughout the film.

The first act’s a series of flashbacks and flash arounds, establishing the last night of Plummer’s life, with the various family members and suspects—Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette—incriminating themselves and others and getting annoyed with cop LaKeith Stanfield’s repeated interrogations. Stanfield’s the straight man, Noah Segan’s his numbskull sidekick, Craig’s the gentleman detective. Johnson has a great handle on the genre norms and nimbly adapts some of them.

Good performances all around, though Out is really de Armas, Plummer, and Craig’s movie. Of the supporting cast–well, the family (Stanfield’s great but he’s de facto third tier)—Collette and Shannon are the best. Curtis and Johnson are both fine, they just don’t have the same opportunities. As the black sheep and prime suspect (of sorts), Chris Evans is good (his amazing sweater, hiding Avengers guns, is amazing) and maybe even better than I was expecting given the part, but he doesn’t have the spark the big three exhibit.

Though he also doesn’t have Johnson showcasing him the way de Armas, Plummer, and Craig get the spotlight. They all transfix, the film riding on them—which just makes de Armas more and more impressive as the film moves along.

Knives Out is good. Just about ten minutes too long.

Watchmen (2019) s01e07 – An Almost Religious Awe

Seriously, they couldn’t come up with anything better? This episode has a bunch of reveals and every time it’s… really, this reveal is the best thing presumably well-paid writers could come up with. Worse, it starts like it’s going to be a Regina King episode and therefore safe but… no. King doesn’t get her own memory flashback episode to herself, she has to share it with the regular cast because… it’s unclear. I don’t think I’ve used this many ellipses for effect in the same paragraph in a long time. Because, I suppose, nothing’s deserved it. But “Watchmen: The HBO Event Series?” Seriously… they couldn’t come up with anything better?

Why even bother.

King doesn’t even get the biggest shaft it turns out. Jean Smart’s experienced vigilante turned experienced FBI agent is a numbskull who walks into very obvious traps. It was already a pointlessly thin part in a vanity series but it gets even worse this episode. Pretty much everyone gets worse this episode.

Like Hong Chau; she’s not good this episode, partially because it all hinges on a mystery involving Lou Gossett Jr. but also because she’s being super-secretive with impromptu patient King. See, even though Gossett was helping Chau bring about whatever end of the world type thing she’s planning on, he didn’t have a timeline for King taking his memory pills so they were unprepared for her to need medical help.

“Watchmen” is full of logic holes, narrative shortcuts, and all sorts of storytelling laziness. It’s exactly what it appears to be.

The best part of the episode is how Jeremy Irons, now on trial by his clones, only gets a line. He doesn’t deliver it well—Irons’s gruff American thing is a wee tiring after thirty years of it—but at least it’s only one line.

The episode ends on what could be considered a big cliffhanger but only if there were any reason to be invested in the show other than morbid curiosity or intellectual self-loathing.

It’s nowhere near as offensive as last episode—though the scene of older white women Smart and Francis Fisher sitting around and talking about being a Black man who has to become a white superhero to find justice is a little ick, especially with how poorly the scene’s executed—but it’s still pretty bad. The waste of King, the waste of Faithe Herman as young King… at least the show’s almost over. Soon it’ll just be a remembered viewing regret.

Really good performances in the supporting cast—Valeri Ross, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Jolie Hoang-Rappaport—just make you sorry for them, not happy they got screen time.

Though I’m finally curious why Jessica Camacho is in so little of the series. Did her part get cut before or after they shot it….

Watchmen (2019) s01e02 – Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship

As good as “Watchmen” gets at dissecting the comic book, learning from its anatomy, figuring out how to adapt it to live action—though this episode is nowhere near as uncanny as the previous one with composition—the show, pardon my French, fucks with the viewer. Alan Moore comics don’t fuck with the reader, they explore and they reveal (without ever being about the reveals). “Watchmen: The TV Show” is all about narratively cheap but big budget cliffhangers. It’s not exactly frustrating or disappointing—because it’s HBO after all—but means whatever the show creatives learned from the comic… they didn’t learn enough. And “Watchmen: The TV Show” is going to suffer from it. This episode, written by Nick Cuse and show creator Damon Lindelof, is all about surprises, even when they should be obvious to the characters if not the audience.

“Watchmen: The TV Show,” like a TV show, is going all in on the money shot reveals, where it’s stage play Dr. Manhattan’s junk or the clone reveal or… the flashbacks to the cops getting attacked by the white supremacists. Turns out Regina King and husband Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (he’s really the guy from Aquaman, I can’t believe it, he’s good in this show) didn’t adopt some white kids because it’s a better reality but because the kids are her dead partner’s kids. It’s One Good Cop. But without Michael Keaton and Rene Russo.

Makes you wonder how their Batman Forever would’ve been.

Anyway.

The show also reveals—again, the show’s exposition is all about the reveals too, whether it’s DNA tests or tough talking cops—the reparations are for victims of hate crimes or descendants of hate crimes. The show opens with a newsreel about the destruction of Black Wall Street. It’s not clear how Black Wall Street is going to figure in to the Watchmen aspect of the show, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a good plot device and, actually, completely reasonable for big budget Watchmen fanfic. I don’t think Moore would’ve ever done it because Lindelof’s exploiting the idea whereas Moore never exploits things. So Tulsa because White people in Oklahoma are racist who aren’t ever going to take responsibility for their great-grandparents’ murderous racism so they Klan up to take on the federal government only with Rorschach masks. Kind of a big deal, but also something the show is happy to keep as ground situation, which is concerning. How seriously is “Watchmen” going to take this aspect of the story, which is the whole point of Regina King so don’t end up giving her a shit part.

Like Tim Blake Nelson. He’s maybe going to have a shit part. Or not even enough of a part to have a shit part. Don Johnson’s got some “say it isn’t so” reveals in this episode but you know he’s going to come out of it fine because Don Johnson can do amusing shit-stain.

All of a sudden I really want to watch Tin Cup, which isn’t out on Blu-ray, which is dumb.

Yeah, Nelson… Nelson’s either going to really pay off or he’s going to be a waste. He can be a waste in a few ways, but so far it’s unclear how he could pay off. “Watchmen: The Limited TV Series” is nine episodes; we’re almost a quarter done. There’s only so much time; the longer the show goes on more concerned with turning Easter eggs into plot points… the less it seems likely the show’s going to add up to anything. And there’s a very low bar here. “Watchmen” just has to not screw up its actors’ performances, it just can’t screw up the production design as far as the adaptation, it never actually has to be good. It just can’t be embarrassing. DC and Warner Bros. have been humiliating themselves on Watchmen adaptations for what seems like decades but really has only been eleven years.

King is shouldering the globe, but it’s far from steady.

It also doesn’t hurt, despite not great material, Lou Gossett Jr. is awesome.

Watchmen (2019) s01e01 – It’s Summer and We’re Running Out of Ice

The only times “Watchmen” doesn’t feel calculated are when you can’t imagine the shot as a David Gibbons comic panel. Every couple minutes you can feel how the sequence of shots would feel as a Watchmen comic, showing how just because DC Comics could never figure out how to do it without the original creators doesn’t mean episode director Nicole Kassell and show creator Damon Lindelof can’t figure out how to do it while adapting it to another medium. Though, to be fair, the secret might be in adapting it. Especially since the show creators don’t just have decades of comic book adaptation tropes to avoid they’ve also got the actual Watchmen: The Movie as one hell of an example of terrible Watchmen adapting.

The show figures out what the movie couldn’t, primarily in terms of acting (get good actors and then get good performances out of them) and come up with a sound design not focused around selling a soundtrack album. “Watchmen: Episode 1” often sounds a little like an eighties John Carpenter movie, just with less synth. It’s disquieting in all the right ways.

In fact, there’s nothing the show does wrong but only because it’s positioned itself rather securely. Its ambitions are only in delivering itself as a product. “Watchmen” doesn’t allow itself performance anxiety, just a base execution anxiety. The show doesn’t worry about giving stars Regina King and Don Johnson great parts, it just worries about never giving them bad ones. It also gives Johnson Frances Fisher for a wife, which does a lot of immediate character development. Everyone else is background, even Tim Blake Nelson who seems like he’ll be great as the thing progress. So far Yahya Abdul-Mateen II—as King’s homemaker husband—is perfectly fine, which I was initially worried about because he was so bad in Aquaman. But, no, having a director who cares about acting helps.

The only Watchmen comic character to show up so far is probably Jeremy Irons as Ozymandias. Probably because they’re teasing it. “Watchmen: The TV Show” might try to get away with not explaining all the pertinent history. Lindelof has utterly changed the context—the show’s set in 2019 in the Watchmen: The Comic Book universe, some thirty years after the events, with Robert Redford being president for thirty years (vs. Nixon) and having gotten reparations through, which has led to a Rorschach-inspired white supremacist organization. So in “Watchmen: The TV Show” universe it takes actual reparations (and Black people apparently not having to pay taxes) to get white men so steamed up but in reality it only took a Black president, which would make for great, pseudo-intellectual water cooler talk, which is what “Watchmen” is sort of all about.

Lindelof, Kassell, and everyone else do their corporate overlords great service with the show… they’ve finally turned Watchmen into a crossover property, something not a single DC Comics creator could do.

Also, given the Black Wall Street massacre finally getting mainstream coverage… can we stop listening to white centrists from Oklahoma yet?

The Hot Spot (1990, Dennis Hopper)

One of the most important things about a film noir is the ending. It has to be perfect. It doesn’t matter what comes before, the ending just has to be right. The Hot Spot is a film noir. It’s not a neo-noir. There’s an important distinction. Hopper seems very aware of that distinction; everything he does in the film engages it. But The Hot Spot‘s in color and the frame isn’t academy ratio–when it comes down to it, these differences are showier than the more obvious ones. What Hopper does is present a hard-boiled film noir with everything explicit–it’s not just the sex, it’s the violence. Neither are implied or hinted at–Hopper shows them both in detail. By the first violent scene, that angle completely overshadows the graphic sex. It’s so violent, it’s like he’s going too far (but it’s only fair, given how far he took the sex).

Oh, the ending. I kind of forgot about it (I wish I could).

The Hot Spot‘s ending is a dismal failure. The film’s shockingly good until the end. I never thought I’d be comparing Don Johnson to Robert Mitchum (before I even read the script was written, in 1962, for Mitchum), but he’s like Robert Mitchum here. His delivery of the dialogue is perfect. He’s got a real lack of affect–his eyes don’t emote–and it plays perfectly here. Watching his seemingly soulless character fill with hopes and dreams… it’s wonderful. Too bad about the end.

What happens at the end–and The Hot Spot takes a hit with its final pseudo-scene. A real big hit. Before, it’s already impaired, but the last shot is just rubbish. Anyway, what happens is simple. Dennis Hopper seems to think Virginia Madsen is giving a good performance and she should have more material. Madsen’s performance–and her Texan accent–is laughable. If it weren’t for Jennifer Connelly’s laughable performance (and Texan accent), it’d be stunning. It’s like Hopper casted both women based on their willingness to do nude scenes. Connelly’s character spends a lot of time being quiet and demure, so that awful accent isn’t popping up all the time. Madsen can’t shut up. Yap, yap, yap. It’s embarrassing to both Johnson and the film.

The end falls apart because Hopper relies on Madsen. I have no idea how it would have played with a good actor in her role–because, by the third act, it’s impossible to imagine anything but the horror of Madsen’s performance. It’s excruciating.

Hopper’s direction is excellent. Ueli Steiger’s photography is good (Wende Phifer Mate’s editing is lacking). The supporting cast–Charles Martin Smith especially–is great… Barry Corbin, Jerry Hardin. Only William Sadler (mostly because of his bad accent) is weak.

Until the last fifteen minutes, The Hot Spot was a veritable joy to watch. The ending’s such a misfire, it’s hard to believe no one said anything about it while they were filming. Like a rigger looked up from plugging in some lights and said, “This is terrible.”