Tag: Jennifer Beals

Swamp Thing (2019) s01e08 – Long Walk Home

All right, the show’s definitely intentionally traipsing into the endgame, which is a hopeful sign they’ll be able to wrap it in the remaining ninety minutes.

Crystal Reed returns to Atlanta with the sample of “the rot” and finds best friend Leonardo Nam less supportive than expected. And Reed’s got a new boss, Adrienne Barbeau, who isn’t impressed to hear Reed’s been hanging out in the swamp instead of doing case studies or something. Suddenly, the show’s about CDC bureaucratic procedure and minutiae, but really just to set Reed up with some personal conflict.

It’ll turn out that she doesn’t need the personal conflict, but it’s nice for her to get some character development on the professional arc. The show hasn’t been about Reed as a hotshot, globe-trotting scientist since episode two at the latest.

Meanwhile, Will Patton is hallucinating his way through the swamp, including flashbacks to his origin with his dad. We find out why the swamp hates Patton and Patton hates the swamp. Despite that hostility, Swamp Thing Derek Mears isn’t willing to let Patton bleed out, so the two have a moment. Thanks to Mears’s field dressing, Patton doesn’t get so woozy he’s going to reveal any of his own secrets. It’s a surprisingly good scene. I’d thought Patton had run out of mandibles to chew at “Swamp Thing,” but he’s got another set.

And Mears is successful in his first significant scene opposite anyone but Reed.

The episode keeps another couple of subplots percolating. Henderson Wade’s not feeling great about his recent actions and discoveries; mom and boss Jennifer Beals’s constant reminders to buck up and get through are wearing thin. It’s treading water but not bad.

Finally, there are more machinations with Michael Beach’s malevolent venture capitalist, including his continuing team-up with Kevin Durand. No Virginia Madsen at all this episode, which is a bummer. Hopefully, they’ll get that thread resolved okay.

I already wish “Swamp Thing” had another episode to finish up. This episode’s mostly getting the pieces back into place; it does rather well, functionally, with the now separated leads in their own respective dangers, making for a compelling forty-five minutes.

But this episode’s pacing being successful is contingent on next episode having enough time to get things done.

Fingers crossed.

Swamp Thing (2019) s01e06 – The Price You Pay

So, “Swamp Thing” keeps the momentum. It’s not a breakout episode like last time, with a combination of action and reveals. This episode’s got the reveals and developments—the show’s not taking its time with subplots. Not sure if it’s because their order got cut or if they were just unsteady in the “pilot” episodes, but they’ve found very solid ground.

Apparently, they just needed to up the actual supernatural instead of the mysterious and probably supernatural. Swamp Thing and Blue Devil and the Phantom Stranger and Madame Xanadu—get all those gears working and the rest of the show being a Southern Gothic corruption soap opera shot muddy evens out. “Swamp Thing” needed to escape reality as soon as possible; now, free of it, the show’s character choices work all the better. Human heart in conflict with itself, others, and its (supernatural) environment: just ups the ante.

Potentially.

The show continues to make interesting choices, plotting-wise. This episode, it’s Selena Anduze (as Kevin Durand’s wife, fellow scientist, and moral compass), Jennifer Beals, and Henderson Wade. Wade in particular. He’s revealing a brooding side to the beefcake. And Beals is just great at this point. If the show had opened with her and then transitioned over to Andy Bean and Crystal Reed, it would’ve been awesome. Well, so long as they had the current few episodes’ writers on it. The first couple episodes got rough on the dialogue.

Will Patton and Kevin Durand are delightfully restrained bad guys. Reed confronts Patton about sending thugs to rough up Maria Sten (who’s not as good as last time but better than before), which led to Ian Ziering getting smacked on the head. He’s now comatose with low brain activity and little chance of recovery per Reed.

He does, however, have REM sleep visibly going on, but no one’s paying attention to him, which fits the characters a little better than it should. Everyone in “Swamp Thing” is operating under unimaginable pressures and would constantly be making sleepy, bad choices. The show’s not a lackadaisical anthology of supernatural incidents; traumas hammer. I may be making excuses, but there are a couple of really deft moves in the episode—Tania Lotta gets the writing credit—and I feel like there’s agency behind the show’s better decisions.

Also, Toa Fraser’s direction is good. Not showy, sturdy; funny how the big-time movie director couldn’t find a tone, but the TV directors can; you’ve got to direct for the soap.

And it’s not a particularly soapy episode. Patton and Durand’s machinations are sci-fi, and Ziering’s their guinea pig.

Good episode for Ziering. He’s been likable on the show, but he’s downright charming now. Guess burning him alive in blue flame adds sympathy.

Reed and Swamp Thing Derek Mears have a bit to do—the episode opens with an action scene, then there’s lots of talking before some suspense sequences and chase scenes, but no more Swampy action. There’s some Swampy magic—he’s talking about the Green a lot, and I’m very curious if the show’s going to be able to do it (either in terms of success or of four episodes left). It comes at the end, setting up a precarious next episode.

But the show’s definitely improved—a lot.

Swamp Thing (2019) s01e04 – Darkness on the Edge of Town

I’ve been trying really hard with Maria Sten, who plays Crystal Reed’s bestie. Sten’s just in the show to ask Reed what she’s going to do next or what she’s just done. Last episode, it seemed like Sten was going to have a reporter subplot, but it was just to set up Will Patton for later. In this episode, they don’t even pretend Sten will get anything to do for herself. She’s around for her dad, Al Mitchell, to get infected with a supernatural swamp bug, but just so she can call Reed into the subplot. It’s a bad part.

And Sten’s not good in it.

Maybe she’ll turn it around. But it’s four episodes in, and she’s worse with better dialogue. This episode’s got the least bad lines so far; writing credit to Erin Maher and Kay Reindl. It’s still lots of bad lines, but much fewer than before. And there’s character subtext for the first time ever: Patton wants to adopt little orphan Elle Graham, but is it because he misses having a daughter or because Graham proves a good control for intemperate wife Virginia Madsen? It’s a wild plot for Patton this episode. He starts burying a dead body and ends buying his wife a granddaughter.

But, in the context of dark soap opera, it’s a plus for the series. And Madsen’s fine. Jennifer Beals is still solid, Kevin Durand’s still out there in the right way, and other cast members are evening out. Jeryl Prescott and Ian Ziering only seem to exist during their scenes in episodes, but this time around, the show knows how to package the subplot.

Then there’s Swamp Thing Derek Mears and newly reunited pal Reed. The show provides no context for Mears’s journey of discovery with his new existence—the plants are talking to him, and he knows how to grow trees—but from a horror angle. The show never tries to give Mears’s perspective, including when he’s never on time to meet Reed in the swamp. She goes out three times, and despite saying he can feel her presence immediately, he always takes forever to get there. So what’s he off doing?

Swamp Thing started as sci-fi horror mixed with regular horror, but the show has a real hard time with it. Maybe because they aren’t doing the sci-fi. There are a couple times there’s atrocious dialogue, but the show can get away with it because there’s nothing else they can do at that moment. They’ve boxed themselves into this supernatural threat-of-the-week format, and the only way out is through.

There are some secret origin hints about Reed; she has a nightmare about her greatest fear, and it’s not killing Madsen’s daughter; it’s something else, meaning the Madsen and Patton dead daughter storyline gets pushed some more instead of just dealt with. Hidden secret soap operas are so lazy.

Anyway.

It’s the best Reed’s been, and Mears’s still all right.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995, Carl Franklin)

Devil in a Blue Dress is almost so much better. Director Franklin gets easily distracted and follows tangents, both in the script and the directing. The latter makes sense–he’s always too enthuastic about the (excellent) production design, recreating late 1940s Black Los Angeles. With Tak Fujimoto’s warm but vibrant photography, the “regular life” part of the film is breathtaking. Sadly, Franklin’s too loose on the mystery side and he can’t bind the two.

The script’s the same way. Franklin has devices for lead Denzel Washington, including the narration, but also just how Franklin directs the scene. How he visualizes the space Washington occupies with the people he comes across. Washington’s a Black WWII vet turned amateur P.I. tracking down missing rich white guy’s white girlfriend Jennifer Beals. Franklin and Washington pay a lot of attention to personal space and what it reveals about character relationships, race relationships. But when they get the most ambitious, the narration fails. Or just isn’t present.

And Washington’s biggest character development arc is out of nowhere, introduced over halfway into the movie, with Don Cheadle’s arrival. Franklin desperately tries to forecast Cheadle through dialogue, narration, even one of the film’s ill-implied flashbacks. Yet when it comes time for Cheadle to get called up, Franklin botches the narration. Franklin sets up Devil in a Blue Dress to need narration–even though he and Washington could easily get away without it, Washington’s great and Franklin’s great with his actors–but he sets it up as an essential, then botches it.

It’s really unfortunate.

There are stops and starts throughout the film–scenes transitions are usually awkward, either too heavy or too light. Fujimoto’s photography on the investigation stuff is bad, which is an additional problem given the first act visual tone doesn’t match the rest of the film. But Franklin doesn’t know what to do with those scenes either. Devil in a Blue Dress tries to avoid film noir tropes so bad it ends up putting its back out.

The acting is either good or great. Washington is great. His performance has a sadness Franklin the director focus on, but Franklin the screenwriter ignores. Cheadle’s phenomenal as Washington’s loyal, unrepentent murderer sidekick. Tom Sizemore’s good as Washington’s mysterious client turned nemesis. Mel Winkler and Jernard Burks are real good in smaller parts. Lisa Nicole Carson’s good.

But then there’s Beals, who’s just okay. Some of it is Franklin’s direction; she’s supposed to be a femme fatale, but Devil in a Blue Dress doesn’t believe in femme fatales and she’s written as one. She’s another victim to Franklin’s indecision.

And Maury Chaykin is just bad. He’s only in a couple scenes, but they’re important ones, and he’s just too much. Same thing. Written as a noir villain, but Franklin doesn’t want to engage it.

Elmer Bernstein’s score is oddly half on, half off. Either way, it lacks personality, which is a no-no for Devil in a Blue Dress; everything else about it exudes personality. Except, obviously, Fujimoto’s “noir” shots.

Devil in a Blue Dress features some wonderful possibilities, some great photography, some great direction, some great performances. It should be amazing. It’s sad it isn’t.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Carl Franklin; screenplay by Franklin, based on the novel by Walter Mosley; director of photography, Tak Fujimoto; edited by Carole Kravetz Aykanian; music by Elmer Bernstein; production designer, Gary Frutkoff; produced by Jesse Beaton and Gary Goetzman; released by TriStar Pictures.

Starring Denzel Washington (Easy Rawlins), Jennifer Beals (Daphne Monet), Don Cheadle (Mouse Alexander), Tom Sizemore (Dewitt Albright), Terry Kinney (Todd Carter), Mel Winkler (Joppy), Jernard Burks (Dupree Brouchard), Lisa Nicole Carson (Coretta James), and Maury Chaykin (Matthew Terell).


THIS POST IS PART OF THE COLOURS BLOGATHON HOSTED BY THOUGHTS ALL SORTS.

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Flashdance (1983, Adrian Lyne)

Even though it’s terrible, Flashdance at least sticks with protagonist Jennifer Beals for most of the film. She’s a steel worker who dances at a club and starts dating her boss (at the steel mill, not the club, which is actually a bar). For a while, director Lyne and screenwriters Thomas Hedley Jr. and Joe Eszterhas try really hard to create the atmosphere of camaraderie at the bar.

All of the supporting cast has a story, especially Sunny Johnson, who dates the cook (Kyle T. Heffner, who wants to be a stand-up comic). She dreams of being an professional ice skater. But gives it up.

The film’s actually more of a character study than anything else. Just a bad one with a lot of pop music and Giorgio Moroder music playing over montages of Beals dancing sweatily (or her dance double dancing sweatily). When it’s actually just Beals working out, even if it’s scantily clad, Lyne feels the need to immediately follow with a break dancing montage of street performers.

I guess if it’s called Flashdance, there needs to be a lot of dancing.

There’s some more terrible stuff–a supporting cast member dies from an acute case of deus ex machina–but Beals is the protagonist. And then all of a sudden the film takes away her most important moment and makes her just a girlfriend character. It’s really upsetting, because Beals is at least likable, even if the movie’s crap.

The final disappointment is just too much.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Adrian Lyne; screenplay by Thomas Hedley Jr. and Joe Eszterhas, based on a story by Hedley; director of photography, Donald Peterman; edited by Bud S. Smith and Walt Mulconery; music by Giorgio Moroder; production designer, Charles Rosen; produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Jennifer Beals (Alex Owens), Michael Nouri (Nick Hurley), Lilia Skala (Hanna Long), Sunny Johnson (Jeanie Szabo), Kyle T. Heffner (Richie), Lee Ving (Johnny C.) and Ron Karabatsos (Jake Mawby).

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The Book of Eli (2010, Albert and Allen Hughes)

I guess if The Book of Eli were a bigger hit, someone would have told Nick Cave composers Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross and Claudia Sarne ripped off the beginning of his “In the Ghetto” cover and turned it into the musical score’s theme.

Someone else might let Kevin Costner know about the… ahem… similarities between Eli and The Postman, but… those are the only good parts of Eli, so maybe don’t.

For about half the movie–it’s so split there should be a title card reading “End of Part One”–The Book of Eli is real good. It’s Denzel Washington doing an action movie, but one where he gets to play his age, and also a samurai. There’s Gary Oldman playing the boss of an Old West town, only in a post-apocalyptic future. It’s solid. It’s good.

I mean, the Hughes Brothers can direct. Their action sequences in this film, undoubtedly tied together with CG, are astoundingly good.

So what goes wrong? A couple things. First, Mila Kunis. She’s more convincing as a voice on “Family Guy” than actually giving a full performance. She’s incredibly weak and it’s not believable Washington’s hardened road warrior would have let her tag along, much less become emotionally attached to her.

Second, it’s got a moronic, “affecting,” “real” ending. I’m sure the filmmakers thought it was honest or something.

But it’s not honest to the good parts of this film, so it must be being honest to something else.

Total waste of time.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes; written by Gary Whitta; director of photography, Don Burgess; edited by Cindy Mollo; music by Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross and Claudia Sarne; production designer, Gae Buckley; produced by Joel Silver, Denzel Washington, Broderick Johnson, Andrew A. Kosove and David Valdes; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Denzel Washington (Eli), Gary Oldman (Carnegie), Mila Kunis (Solara), Ray Stevenson (Redridge), Jennifer Beals (Claudia), Tom Waits (Engineer), Frances de la Tour (Martha) and Michael Gambon (George).

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The Last Days of Disco (1998, Whit Stillman)

I don’t know how to start talking about The Last Days of Disco. I was going to start with saying I first saw it ten years ago (I first saw it on video), but then I realized I probably first saw it eleven years ago and eleven doesn’t have the same ring. People do like things in ten. Then I was going to start with saying I didn’t understand why it isn’t better known or better appreciated, but I guess I do know why it isn’t better known or better appreciated. It’s an unabashedly superior film. It was the first Whit Stillman film I saw and I still don’t think either of his previous works suggest he’s capable of this level of filmmaking.

Where Stillman excels–in terms of the script–is in creating this self-aware (which really comes into play for a joke near the end) envisioning of the disco era. Because he doesn’t deal with any of the modern (in 1998) disco stereotypes, except to point out they are stereotypes, Stillman’s disco club really is, as one character puts it, the greatest club ever. It’s impossible not to think so, not to understand why the characters have to keep going back, even though they talk about never going back. They’re part of a phenomenon and Stillman makes the audience part of it too. In some ways, it really reminds me of the new Star Wars movies–really, it does–because whether or not someone can dance (just like in Star Wars they don’t have any discernible lightsabering skill) doesn’t even fit into it. Stillman fills his dancing shots with as many recognizable faces as possible and leaves it to the viewer to come up with the reason Kate Beckinsale and Matt Ross are dancing next to each other, even though Ross is there with Tara Subkoff. These little narrative tricks, ones Stillman did exhibit in his previous films, make Last Days of Disco feel like a confrontation experience. To say it’s a film requiring a lot of brain power from its viewer is an understatement–Stillman’s composition alone (or Mark Suozzo’s occasional, beautiful score) requires the viewer to pay very close attention.

Which isn’t to say Stillman makes Last Days of Disco particularly dense or heady. He just forces, with his composition, a kind of attention–I think the only thing I’d compare it to is Barry Lyndon. You have to notice the tree outside Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny’s apartment. You miss something if you don’t.

The acting is all spectacular. Seeing the film again, I remember when I had high hopes for Mackenzie Astin’s acting career. Sevigny gives an amazing lead performance. She’s quiet in so much of the film–most of the talking comes from Beckinsale (as a spectacular bitch–she’s just fantastic in making this dislikable character utterly compelling) and Chris Eigeman. I was talking about how good Sevigny is in the film… got sidetracked, sorry. She’s so quiet, just watching, looking, and then Stillman gives her these big–but quiet–moments and she nails all of them. The acting from her and Beckinsale is simply amazing, from the first moment they walk into the film.

Also great is Matt Keeslar, who I’ve longed supported (starting with seeing him in this film). He gets the closet thing to a male protagonist role in the film. He’s great–walking through it with a bemused look–but then Stillman throws all sorts of character revelations at him and he handles every one perfectly.

The supporting cast–Burr Steers, David Thornton (both have some great lines)–is excellent.

I think the first time I saw The Last Days of Disco, I watched it a lot and made other people watch it. I haven’t seen it in eight years, which is way too long to go between viewings.