I don’t know
what it is about bad movies, but I seem to enjoy writing about them more than I
like writing about the movies I liked.
Indeed, these reviews of films I saw in 1999 are quite a bit longer than
the reviews I wrote about movies I actually liked, particularly as I examine
butch babes in action films for my review of the forgettable film Virus and the
trend towards depravity in films like 8mm; therefore, there are only five of
them:
What Dreams May Come
I
kinda thought this one might be bad.
How I hate sometimes being right!
Robin Williams’s track record as of late has been pretty sketchy at best
(Jack, Flubber, Jumanji) and
Hollywood’s modern vision of heaven and the afterlife is downright blasphemous
(City of Angels, Michael). Well, I should have known! This story paints heaven as a surreal
playground where people can be who they always wanted, and hell as being a
self-imposed purgatory in the same playground.
It’s all mystical, yet God is strangely absent, and the souls who
inhabit this strange dimension are only accountable to themselves, and not a
higher power. But without a higher
power, what’s the purpose, or the point, of any of it? As with so many other “spiritual” movies,
this is mystical surrealism pretending to be more Christian than it really is,
and that’s dangerous!
The Faculty
What
is supposed to be a hip update of classic sci-fi a-la Invasion of the Body Snatchers and John Carpenter’s The Thing from the pen of Kevin
Williamson, scribe of the Scream
movies and Dawson’s Creek (which
really are hip!) turns out to be a weak rip-off instead. Yawn!
I’ve seen every bit of it before, in better movies. Here, there is no originality, and the Kevin
Williamson formula of winking a knowing eye to the genre being attributed to is
here starting to look obvious and trite.
The talented cast seems wasted.
Virus
What
a bunch of hokey tripe! Jamie Lee Curtis
was all right in the original Halloween,
but I’m getting a little tired these days of women in these showy
I’m-gonna-kick-some-monster-ass movies that used to be relegated only to the
macho guys. “Think Schwarzenegger is the
only one who can go up against these Predator aliens and killer robots from the
future?” these women seem to be saying.
“Well, think again!”
I think it all started the moment
Sigourney Weaver picked up a flame thrower or jumped in a power loader and told
a certain 14 foot tall alien queen to “Get away from her, you bitch!” Or if you want to blame somebody, blame James
Cameron, the director who put Sigourney in that power loader, and the same guy
who had Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio chew the scenes against macho Ed Harris in The Abyss, and matching him pound for
pound, and the same guy who plopped a buff and nearly psychotic Linda Hamilton
right into the middle of Terminator 2:
Judgment Day to not only take on whatever killer robots happened to get
into her way, but an entire insane asylum as well. She even took some time out to go kill the
innocent scientist working on the chip left behind by the first
terminator. Then came Demi Moore in GI Jane, a girl who was tough not
because she had to be, but just to prove that women could be as tough as men –
to make a statement. By the time Geena
Davis started wielding guns and swords in The
Long Kiss Goodnight and Cutthroat
Island, things were getting just a little cartoonish.
Then Jamie Lee decided to get in on
all this female action that in the past had been relegated to the likes of
Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and James Bond, and she starred opposite
Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies,
courtesy of, who else, James Cameron, modern cinema’s savior for strong female
characters who were also, almost without exception, tough as nails
bitches. In True Lies, Curtis plays her part comically mousy all the way
through, but then lets loose with enough balls to the wall action by the end as
to give Schwarzenegger a run for his money. Having found her butch side, she then agreed
to have another go at Michael Meyers and the Halloween franchise that had put her on the map, only this time,
she would be no cowering, crying victim!
This time, she was gonna walk down the middle of the street with an axe
like any self respecting male hero would do this side of Dolph Lundgren and
Jean Claude Van Damme and scream for the psycho killer to show his chicken ass!
Can we please put a stop to it
now? Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver
played women who had to be tough due to the situations they were in, not to
prove something or because it looked like more fun than doing the laundry. Not to mention that by the time Curtis made Virus, the concept, and the character,
were cartoonish and unbelievable, and not even the menacing alien or robot (in
this case, a little bit of both) was particularly scary or awesome. I’ve seen it all before, and Virus is the very definition of a modern
“B-Movie,” regardless of whether or not they spent a ton on impressive special
effects (and just in case you’re wondering, they’re not that impressive!)
Patch Adams
That’s twice in a row now that Robin
Williams has made a stinker! In the
movie’s defense, however, it did have its moments (even if it felt like they
were lifted from other films, such as the “inspirational courtroom speech”
which was much better in Scent of a Woman),
but the whole premise, and the individual situations, were so contrived and
ridiculous, it made the film unintentionally funny in spots where it’s supposed
to be serious. In the end, this is
strictly a by-the-numbers medical drama with Williams going through his usual
improvisational stream-of-consciousness humor, and in this case, his usual
schtick would be, once again, the only bright spot in an otherwise dull
film. In other words, remove Williams and
his schtick, and the film is nothing but a clichéd, been there done that,
glorified episode of Trapper John M.D.
8mm
First
Dustin Hoffman, then Robin Williams, and now, Nicholas Cage; why did they all
suddenly decide to start making bad movies?
What’s so disappointing is that each is a really good actor with
impressive filmographies. Cage was
already an impressive actor when he became a full-fledged movie star with that
superb action trilogy (The Rock, Face/Off,
and Con Air), and he also managed to
win critical acclaim and a Best Actor Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas at about the same time. Why did he decide to follow that achievement
with three stinkers (City of Angels,
Snake Eyes, and 8mm)?
My
twin brother said he’d like to someday own Bruce Willis’ movies – all of them,
because Bruce Willis is one of his favorite actors. And Bruce Willis is good, but everyone
makes stinkers. Everyone has their Hudson Hawk, their Fifth Element, their Bonfire
of the Vanities, The Jackal, or Last
Man Standing. It’s just not possible
to be great all the time, but it’s disheartening when you come across an
entertainer whose work you like, and then they disappoint you once, then twice,
then three times, and possibly more. I
am now nowhere near as likely to see the next Nicholas Cage movie.
As
I’ve said many times before, it’s the quality of the writing and how good the
story is that matters most. Everything
else is really just window dressing.
The
story of 8mm is about one man’s
search for truth and justice in a literal world of sin, depravity, and
perversion. I didn’t really want to
watch a film that had its main character wallow in perversion all around him. I wanted a murder mystery, not a visual essay
on the dangers of dancing with the devil.
One of the depraved characters here, played by Joaquin Phoenix, tells
Cage, “You dance with the devil, you don’t change the devil – the devil changes
you!” That not only applies to Cage’s
righteous character here, but also the viewing audience who watches this film,
or films like it. Films such as this,
that examine the dark corners of the human race and the violence and torture we
are capable of, are always a double-edged sword. Elite, educated minds can see the skill and
the intended message, and appreciate the examination and the stark observation
of the human condition and the society we live in, yet being human, even they
are not above succumbing to depravity.
Still others will appreciate it only for its violence rather than
what it says about violence. Natural Born Killers also comes to mind,
but the message about too much violence that it preaches is lost within a movie
with too much violence.
Critics
like Owen Glieberman of Entertainment
Weekly may appreciate that irony, and the craftsmanship of the overall
work, but all of this is lost on an audience who sees none of what the critics
or the filmmakers see, but instead end up idolizing the violent characters and
glorifying the heavy violence in these films.
Films like this are actually two different movies in one, and one of
them is a great study in the depravity of our nation, and the other is a
glorification of that depravity. Which
one will the elite critic see, and which one will the un-thinking, common man
see? Now add teenagers into the mix
(which was Natural Born Killer’s core
audience) and you can not only see the irony here, but also the danger. I’m of a mind that films like 8mm shouldn’t be made.
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