The Big Picture (1989, Christopher Guest)

At its best, which isn’t often, The Big Picture is a vaguely charming Hollywood satire about young director Kevin Bacon discovering making it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But also not. Because Picture skips over Bacon’s “making it” period, other than being a dick to best friend Michael McKean and driving a Porsche instead of a quirky AMC Gremlin. The AMC Gremlin has a lot of personality onscreen; unfortunately, the film never makes it feel like Bacon’s car. But Bacon’s real success, working with soulless Hollywood producer J.T. Walsh and his gang… not on screen. We see the build-up to it, but not the actual scenes.

Then it’s just fall out.

I’m not sure where Picture’s at its worst. Probably when Bacon runs out on girlfriend Emily Longstreth to hook up with starlet Teri Hatcher, only to discover Hatcher’s got a boyfriend (something the film never addresses again), then comes home and forces Longstreth to break up with him. Unfortunately, Bacon’s already got a paper-thin character, so it makes him unlikable for a long stretch. His eventual redemption won’t even come from within; the film will bring out one of the more successful—though not really successful—big swing performances to facilitate it.

Blaming Picture on Bacon’s too easy, though. He’s just playing the role as written.

Most of the time, Big Picture’s a toothless, tepid, inconsistent, lackadaisical mess. The hopefully intentional anti-climactic third act should give the film a lot of character, but Picture doesn’t have the cameos for it. Instead, it’s a Hollywood satire where the best they could do is Eddie Albert and Elliot Gould for cameos. And Gould’s co-star Jason Gould’s dad; the film oddly doesn’t address nepotism. Though there’s a lot it doesn’t address. Longstreth’s not Hollywood, so she’s okay. Bacon’s fellow film student Jennifer Jason Leigh’s too avant-garde for mainstream, so she’s not Hollywood. But the other women are all pretty terrible. Hatcher’s an unthinking succubus, Tracy Brooks Swope’s a soulless studio exec-wannabe, Fran Drescher’s a greedy wife.

Thank goodness Longstreth’s an angel of redemption. She’s also way too good for how the movie treats her. For the first act, she’s an accessory to Bacon in his scenes. In the early second half, during their breakup, she shows some personality, but then she ingloriously exits so Bacon can complete his move to the Dark Side.

It’s unclear if Picture forgets its subplots and supporting cast members or if it just didn’t have the budget for them. It’s a Hollywood movie where they’ve got limited time on the lot.

Again, since Bacon’s just playing the part as written—an Ohio farm boy who can’t be expected to be responsible or accountable when fame and fortune are in grasp—it’s not really his fault. He’s not believable as a film school wunderkind who desperately wants to make a Bergman movie, mainly because Big Picture doesn’t acknowledge he’s trying to make a Bergman movie (without having any insight into the subject, which is a whole other thing).

Longstreth’s fine. The part doesn’t let her be good. She’s outstanding a few times, especially in the movie fantasies Bacon occasionally has to pad time. He’ll imagine he’s in a noir or something. Bacon’s clearly miscast in the scenes, and Longstreth’s great in the one she gets to play in.

Speaking of miscast… poor Walsh. He’s an obviously capable actor in a part he’s entirely wrong for. The script doesn’t help him either.

Don Franklin’s legit good as his flunky. It’s too bad he doesn’t get more.

McKean’s sort of around as Bacon’s conscious for a while. He and wife Kim Miyori are expecting their first child, providing a contrast to Bacon’s pursuit of Hollywood success. McKean—who co-wrote—is the best of the main cast.

Hatcher’s fine as the succubus. Not her fault she’s one-dimensional. The movie asks a lot of Leigh, and she delivers most of it, but it needs her to be a magician, and Picture frequently proves magic isn’t real. Hollywood or otherwise.

Guest’s direction is middling. He relies on David Nichtern’s not quirky enough score too much for personality. Then when movie music becomes a plot point, Nichtern’s score is an obvious missed meta opportunity. Ditto Jeffrey Sur’s competent but unimpressive photography (McKean’s a cinematographer trying to make it, and Bacon promises he’ll take him along to Hollywood).

Martin Short’s got an extended uncredited cameo as Bacon’s agent. He’s the best thing in the otherwise bland Picture.

Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)

The two most bewildering things about Annihilation are director Garland’s inability to frame for Panavision aspect ratio—did cinematographer Rob Hardy just not want to tell him he was reusing the same three close-up shots, with his subject on one side of the frame, looking off, the other three-quarters empty, or did Hardy not see a problem with it (given the amount of post-production filtering and CG enhancing, it’s hard to guess what they actually shot)—and Jennifer Jason Leigh being a supporting player and not the lead.

Natalie Portman is the lead of Annihilation. She’s a Johns Hopkins professor, married to a special forces guy (Oscar Isaac), who has been dead for a year. We know he’s been dead for a year because Garland (as screenwriter, adapting a novel) has a whole bunch of exposition dumps in the film. We’ve already seen a meteor (or something) crash into the planet Earth, targeting a lighthouse because… V’Ger had a series of romance novel covers on it too and then Portman in an isolation room, with a fantastic Benedict Wong interrogating her, then we flashback to before the isolation room, after the meteor. Isaac’s been dead a year, Portman’s friend at work, David Gyasi, invites her to a barbecue but she can’t because it’s finally time to paint she and Isaac’s bedroom.

Cue flashbacks of Portman and Isaac’s idyllic, playful sex life.

We’ll soon find out—because Isaac interrupts her painting the bedroom—he hasn’t been dead, he’s just been missing. In fact, the Army hasn’t even officially classified him M.I.A.—though Annihilation plays real loose with what one might consider military protocol, there are Chuck Norris movies with a heck of a lot more reasonable verisimilitude as far as military operations go. But something’s obviously wrong with Isaac, even before he starts bleeding uncontrollably. When Portman tries to take him to the hospital, a bunch of stormtroopers intercept the ambulance and kidnap them.

She wakes up in what seems like a hospital room, talking to a psychiatrist (Leigh), and quickly learns Isaac had been missing because he went inside the strange, growing zone of something or other around the lighthouse where the meteor (or whatever) hit in the opening. It’s been three years, this zone, called the Shimmer, has increased exponentially in size and overtaken the towns, military bases, shacks, and who knows what else. No one has ever come back from the Shimmer, except Isaac (and Portman, as the frequent flash forwards to the interrogation remind—it’s not a bookend device, but a narration one)—and, well, Leigh’s putting the next team together.

Leigh, secretly dying of cancer, is sick of sending men to their apparent deaths and is going to go in now. It’s going to be an all-female team; her, paramedic Gina Rodriguez, scientist Tuva Novotny, other scientist Tessa Thompson. And wouldn’t Portman make a great fifth, being a not just a Johns Hopkins biologist, but also a former soldier. There’s a (bewildering) scene where Novotny asks Portman about her CV and Portman says she was in the military so Novotny can ask which branch so Garland can kill another fifteen or thirty seconds of the runtime, which is supposedly okay because the mise en scène of life in the Shimmer—a Florida swamp with lots of colorful plant mutations–not to mention Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury’s emotive score, is so compelling.

Is the Shimmer visually compelling? Sure? Garland’s not great at establishing shots. Annihilation feels very much like someone aping Terrence Malick aping 2001 but without the commitment to either. Mark Digby’s production design is good enough it’s too bad Garland’s not patient enough to explore it. Whether Digby is a Vertigo Swamp Thing fan or it just happens to always looks like panels (or covers) from that series aside… it’s a great proof of concept for an adaptation of the comic because a bunch of it is straight from those comics. But Garland avoids visualizing too much, instead sticking close to Portman’s perception of things unless he’s got to manipulate the audience to make the next narrative twist work.

At a certain point, Annihilation peaks and then plateaus. The thirty minutes (it runs just under two hours) before they get into the Shimmer isn’t great, especially since Portman’s protagonist is flat. We keep learning more and more about her and Isaac throughout and all of it’s boring. Same goes for the rest of the team (save Leigh, who gets so little onscreen character development it does gin up curiosity). But Novotny, Rodriguez, and Thompson? They’re shadows of caricatures, Rodriguez and Thompson the most. Maybe Garland couldn’t figure out how to write them in a reality where no one in the world noticed a whole section of Florida disappear, which would be visible from space. Maybe he really thought Portman was somehow the most compelling.

Doesn’t matter. Like his framing, like his downgrading of Leigh’s character, like his choice of composers… he was just wrong and it doesn’t work.

Kind of like Oscar Issac doing a Southern accent. No matter how much CGI you throw at it, no matter how much scary gross you make it, somethings just aren’t going to work.

Annihilation desperately wants to be heady, lush, hard sci-fi and is willing to sacrifice everything else to get there.

Dolores Claiborne (1995, Taylor Hackford)

Dolores Claiborne isn’t just a mother and daughter picture… it’s not just a mother and daughter picture made by a bunch of men (directed by a man, produced by men, screenplay by a man based on a novel by a man), it’s Panavision visual experience mother and daughter picture. Director Hackford–ably assisted by Gabriel Beristain’s photography–creates a vivid, lush visual experience. It’s stunning; every time Hackford intensifies the color scheme, it heightens the film’s impact. He does a fantastic job.

Watching Claiborne–for the first time since I was a teenager, probably–I noticed how Kathy Bates’s titular protagonist has, through a trauma, become unstuck in time. It all makes sense, by the end of the film, as a traditional narrative arc for the character, but Hackford’s then got to account for the Technicolor flashbacks (versus the drab modern day). And he does.

Hackford includes a Vonnegut reference, a very quiet one, and it’s hard not to see it as intentional, given those time slips. Hackford’s whole composition scheme is based on those slips and how they jar both the viewer and the character.

There shouldn’t be enough story for a film here, certainly not one running over two hours. With Hackford, Tony Gilroy’s script and Bates’s spellbinding (not one of my regular adjectives) performance, there’s more than enough. Actually, it ends too soon.

Outstanding supporting performances from Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, David Strathairn and Judy Parfitt further deepen the film.

Excellent Danny Elfman score.

Claiborne‘s superb.

Miami Blues (1990, George Armitage)

Besides an absurd reliance on flip and pan transitions, director Armitage does an often excellent job directing Miami Blues. His script–adapting a novel, so who knows how much is his fault–is a different story. Blues is the story of a charismatic psychopath (Alec Baldwin) fresh from prison who wrecks havoc in the Miami area. The Blues in the title must be for Fred Ward, who plays the unlucky cop who’s trailing him.

Armitage, Baldwin and Ward all play Blues like half a comedy. Ward does the joke well, but Baldwin’s disastrous at it. His performance as a psychopath is so strong, it kills all the humor possibilities. Or maybe Armitage is just an incompetent director and didn’t mean to direct the scenes funny. Though that explanation seems unlikely, especially since the film opens and closes on a smile.

In this strange mix is Jennifer Jason Leigh. While Ward’s good and Baldwin’s problematic (but technically good), Leigh is astoundingly great as the dimwitted hooker who falls for Baldwin. Leigh’s so good, she makes Blues worth a viewing. Had Armitage followed Leigh (or Ward) instead of Baldwin, the film would have been a lot better.

The rest of the supporting cast–no one else has much screen time–is excellent. Nora Dunn and Charles Napier play Ward’s colleagues, Bobo Lewis is great as Baldwin’s landlord and Paul Gleason has a little part.

While Armitage’s best directorial moments come early–and lessen the disappointment of the middling script–Leigh never disappoints.