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Reviews
Wild in the Streets (1968)
Groovy Flashback...LSD not Required
Since I was only in fifth grade at the time of this film's release in 1968, I did not have the unmitigated joy of seeing this on the big screen. In fact, I had only heard rumors of the film's existence until I caught it tonight on one of the Starz channels. (Thank the movie gods for them!) And despite the dated but still delicious grooviness of the then-teen flick, there are shades of relevance today.
The seemingly ridiculous premise: an unbelievably handsome 22-year-old millionaire singing idol (Christopher Jones)--who can make his own LSD!--helps a congressman (Hal Halbrook) become senator on the platform of lowering the voting age to 15, through sheer charisma gathers thousands of youths to rally in both L.A. and D.C., eventually wins the office of U.S. President as a Republican (!) and then forces anyone over 30 into a "paradise camp" to be forever happy on LSD so that they are incapable of causing any more trouble.
To many teens at the time (and even now, I suppose), this idea was not all that ridiculous. The "establishment" was greatly concerned over the growing influence of the babyboomers, who made up over half of the population at that time, and the young people knew it. This film's message of hope for peace and love by removing "old school" approaches to politics, while also offering a great song (which actually hit the charts), attractive actors in up-to-the-minute costumes and a higher-than-usual quality of filming, appealed to the rebellious nature of youth and their demands for a cool movie that they could relate to but that would simultaneously freak out their parents. It made a LOT of money for its day and genre.
The film opens with the rebel-protagonist quickly growing up with overbearing mom Shelley Winters, who chews up scenery like nobody's business. She has hilarious bits throughout the film, perhaps most notably after her acceptance of the "new order" as she extols the merits of LSD therapy! James Dean look-alike Jones intoxicates us with his gorgeous looks and charm, whether singing with his band in clubs or convincing us to go along with his outlandish hope for 14-year-olds to get the vote, since his own businessman/guitarist is 15!
Other highlights of the cast include Holbrook's full-on (dare we say it, mature?) dramatic acting, which contrasts greatly with the laid-back, free-spirit antics of the other young stars of the film, especially Richard Pryor, who assists in spiking the Washington D.C. water supply with LSD! Ed Begley has a couple memorable scenes as a stereotypically crabby and uncooperative senator who eventually finds drug-induced bliss at the over-30 camp, and Army Archie and Dick Clark (!) have cameos. Post-election ugliness and the ending scene with a future child star add ridiculous but poignant twists.
Today, many will see the film as over-the-top and rather campy, a weird period piece from the era of activism but also of often really bad movies. However, those old enough to have been around then will remember not just the drugs and far-out clothes but the counter-culture rumblings of the late 60s. True, this is not high art and certainly not cerebral. But far from being a throw-away film, "Wild In the Streets" remains a funny examination of a time when the demands for social change brought about extremes in actions. The posters on the message boards for this site who are searching for copies of this time capsule gem attest to its lasting appeal.
Pieces of April (2003)
Quirky Short Gem
All of us old enough to hoist a 20-pound turkey have probably had our share of stressful Thanksgivings, and the twenty-something April (Katie Holmes) is certainly no exception. For the first time, she has invited her whole family from the suburbs to her seedy neighborhood in NYC to partake of a traditional feast, including yams, cranberry sauce and the other trimmings. However, after her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke) drags her out of bed early that Thursday morning and helps her get the butterball rolling, so to speak, things start to happen--most notably, her oven doesn't work!
What could easily turn into a slapstick flick about dealing with every misstep in her preparations turns into a delightful show of relentless hope for a good Turkey Day through the kindness of the strangers living in her apartment building. After telling the sob story of her life and her mother to a lovely African-American couple, they agree to tag-team the turkey with their own, and the husband, apparently a culinary king, insists she make long-cook cranberry sauce at their place. "Nobody likes canned cranberry sauce," he proclaims.
As the turkey cooks for the first couple of hours, she decorates the halls and hand makes place-cards in anticipation of her family: a mother (the wonderful Patricia Clarkson) suffering from cancer who has serious issues with April as a screwup, a father (the great Oliver Pratt) who so misses his little girl, a photobug brother who rolls joints for his mother (!), a know-it-all sister who is the mother's pride and joy, and the mother's own mother, who seems to be suffering from Alzheimer's.
As the film progresses, we learn much about the dynamics of the family (the "pieces" of April), particularly the tensions surrounding the mother and April, and about the neighbors who come to her aid. Two floors above her, neighbor Wayne (Sean Hayes) is particularly bizarre but agrees to allow the next phase in cooking in his fabulous new convection oven, but this help ends up being at a price. Additionally, a small but significant subplot surrounds the mysterious meeting of Bobby and a friend while April is left to deal with the hubbub of meal preparations on her own, including a very odd way to make mashed potatoes.
Director/writer Peter Hedges gives us a real-life look at the stress that young people can go through in an attempt to impress the family, even for just one day, but also gives us plenty of humor--not belly laughs but warm tickles to the funny-bone--interspersed with the sadness and even bitterness of the gravely ill mother. We come away from the film with the understanding that we all need a little help sometimes, just as the Pilgrims did back in 1620, a story simply told by April to her helpful immigrant neighbors.
All of the leads and supporting actors do wonderful jobs, but Clarkson's emotionally complex, cancer-ridden character is a standout. Platt seems to have perfected the understanding husband/father role to an art form, and Holmes shows that she has grown as an actress since her "Dawson's Creek" days. Even Alice Drummond's small role as Grandma Dottie is a delight.
All in all, this is a heart-warming film that never gets schmaltzy, and there are no over-the-top characterizations, which keeps it from being the laugh-riot of "Home for the Holidays." However, the 80-minute combination of drama and true-to-life mishaps makes it a fresh addition to one's collection of holiday film fare.
Tell Your Children (1936)
CAUTION: This movie could be hazardous to your funny bone
Having just re-watched this movie after a twenty-year hiatus, I have to say that it still stands up as one of the most egregiously erroneous films ever made. Sure, it has low production values--after all, it WAS a propaganda film--and sure, the acting is over the top. But the really amusing part of the film for us (with more modern information) is the super-dramatized falsehoods regarding the drug, which THEY refer to as a "narcotic"! Since a summary of the film's main plot and great moments of illogic already exist on this sight, I will simply say that, other than those scary 1950s health films, there are precious few films out there that can compare to this one in the general field of misinformation.
That being said, to us, of course, this is a laugh-riot, well worth one's time to at least view it once. Anyone who has seen this film, which was clearly meant to cash in on the post-illegalization of marijuana, will surely find the Ralph character's stoned antics to be hilariously campy and the Bill character's everything to be alarmingly wooden. (Unnatural extremes of acting were apparently the order of the day for the director, who was probably laughing while making this tripe, imagining that he was going to make a bundle off it eventually.) The frenzied piano scene while the ringleader Mae is puffing on a joint is also a crowd favorite.
However, the deliciously weird dialogue is what really "sells" the film: nonsensical gems and "cautionary" pearls of wisdom abound. Thankfully, writing THIS bad doesn't come around all that often. And pay close attention to the seemingly endless scene between Bill and his kid brother about a non-functioning model airplane--it seems to have no point at all to the storyline or the message of the film, but the kid is cute and precocious in that 1930s sort of way.
Although the film has its moments, true enjoyment will come if it is shared with a friend, since you just HAVE to comment! And no, you do not have to be high when viewing it, but twenty years ago...
Going All the Way (1997)
Intriguing Variation on a Well-known Subject
Is there really a need to re-examine the seemingly worn-out subject of the plain, skinny guy looking for his heart's desire while his hunky jock buddy gets all the girls with little effort? Yes indeed, and Mark Pellington's "Going All the Way" takes a harder look at just that theme while adding a little humor and dark pathos to the mix.
Based on the novel by Dan Wakefield (who also wrote the screenplay), this film hopes to show another side of the familiar topic of very different male friends who emotionally lean on each other through the trials of dating, this time set in post-Korean War middle America. Servicemen "Sonny" (Jeremy Davies) and "Gunner" (Ben Affleck) had gone to the same high school but haven't seen each other in quite a while when they meet on a train returning to their native Indianapolis.
Sonny is the soft-spoken, non-athletic ex-photographer who did not see action, while Gunner is the handsome, ex-all-around-jock ladies man who served in Korea. Gunner has returned a changed man after his contact with Zen Buddhism (!), which has made him rethink his vacuous high school and college years and wants more out of life, partly explaining why he befriends the likes of Sonny, who he wouldn't have paid much attention to in the old days.
The root cause perhaps of their emotional differences is that Gunner, besides having the typical charmed life seen in other films of this genre, has a very hot, free-spirited, with-it but bigoted mother, Nina (Leslie Ann Warren), whereas Sonny's parents (Jill Clayburgh and John Lordan) are rather plain, unexciting, very religious and controlling. Back home, the guys have fairly sophisticated personal conversations at bars, and Sonny even teaches Gunner about photography, something that interests the latter because he has some artistic spirit to express. They soon become fast friends.
After a while, Gunner begins to question his sex-based relationship with ex-high school sweetheart DeeDee, who wants to get married because she is already 23 years old, after he meets the intellectually stimulating and physically delicious Marty (Rachel Weisz), who is a Jewish (gasp!) art student who inspires Gunner to dabble in abstract painting. Meanwhile, Sonny has gone back to his old sweetheart, the aptly named Buddy (Amy Locane), with whom he has sex--in his religious parents' house, no less!--but for whom he has little passion; it is a comfortable relationship of convenience that Buddy wishes could be more but who doesn't press him on it.
However, when Sonny ends up meeting Marty's gorgeous, sensuous friend Gail (Rose McGowan) and is convinced she is "the one," he is exceptionally funny and charming, mostly due to excessive liquor, but has trouble "performing" when they get down to business. The troubled feelings caused by this setback, combined with Gunner's impending trip to New York City to follow after Marty and to start a new life there, sends the already rather emotionally fragile/unstable Sonny into a depression, causing a chain of events that the two will not soon forget.
Sure, the basic premise of the film is a familiar one, but the performances and production values are what kept my attention. Davies' rather odd acting style adds an effective extra layer of pathos to the troubled Sonny, and Affleck is quite on the mark (despite a couple of distractingly anachronistic mannerisms) for what we are looking for in a smooth and handsome Gunner type. Clayburgh is completely believable as Sonny's over-the-top-sweet but covertly manipulative mother; however, I would have liked to see more of Warren, whose scene-stealing Nina was a great mix of sex appeal and shocking ignorance. Filmed in Indiana, the movie has nice outdoor scenes, unobtrusive sets (although the abstract painting at the museum is fabulous) and a fun score that add to the overall effect, with the exception of the opening tune which actually came out three years after the setting of this movie!
"Going All the Way" is no 10-star film, to be sure, but the earnest efforts of cast and crew come through sufficiently that it is worth your while to give it a look. This is a character-driven film that asks you to open your heart and, although set in the 1950s, examines one aspect of the human condition that we can relate to even today.
The I Inside (2004)
Don't ya just love to be confused?
Here is a film that will keep you wondering just what it's all about. For those who are into such movies, you're in for a treat. The familiar theme of going back to the past to "fix" certain wrongs is offered here with an engaging plot and a bang-up twist.
Simon Cable is a wealthy young man who wakes up in a hospital after some kind of accident in 2002, supposedly due to wood refinishing fumes. We soon learn that he has been in this hospital before, in 2000, which is when his brother Peter was killed. His wife Anna comes to see him but apparently was somehow involved in the cover-up of the truth behind Peter's death. All of this is unknown to Simon, since he has amnesia (or so his doctor thinks) and now believes he has lost two years of his life. It is here that we movie-goers become intrigued, and the attention-grabbing twists do not stop. Who is the blond woman Claire? What is the secret of Simon's brother's death? Why is his doctor unfathomably a pediatrician?
As Simon recovers from his accident, he seems to have flashbacks to 2000, filling the holes in his memory. Or does he? His doctor in 2000 makes a pretty good case that his mind is creating images that Simon feels are actually premonitions of 2002. Confused? Well, so's Simon, and we come to understand the "real" story in bits and pieces, just as Simon does. Eventually, he believes (based on a rather shocking incident during a "flashback" to 2000) that he can go back in time to undo past wrongs and, as in so many other films of this type, things do not go well.
Seen it before, you say? Well, this is a well-wrought presentation of the basic premise, with a possible murder and wife/mistress conflict, some good editing, and more than respectable acting, especially from Ryan Phillipe (Simon), who seems to be blossoming as an actor, or at least is getting better roles. This is a good thing, considering that Phillipe is in every scene, and the other actors all have rather small parts by comparison. Big-name actor Stephen Rea as Doctor Newman is nothing to write home about, but that may partly be because his role is relatively less significant to the total story. The role of Simon's brother Peter, played by Robert Sean Leonard, is even smaller, and Leonard seems to barely walk through it. However, watch for Stephen Graham's portrayal of particularly crabby heart patient Travitt in the year 2000 scenes.
In any event, go into this film with an open mind, and try not to compare it to others of its genre, most recently "The Butterfly Effect." The last few minutes of the film will make you rethink your comparisons anyway and leave you with a new confusion worth discussing at your favorite coffeehouse afterwards.
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Quite a movie to wrap one's brain around!
Producing yet another time-travel alternative-reality film is always a sketchy proposition because so many movie-goers have seen so many of them over the years. But this is NOT a schlocky 1950's take on the genre, nor is it as sweet as "It's a Wonderful Life." Instead, it is smartly written and engaging, most notably because it visually plays out the premise set forth in a Ray Bradbury short story some years ago: small changes in the past create big consequences in the future. In other words, going back in time and "fixing" things is not all that simple because of the myriad of chain reactions that those changes will produce.
In the case of "The Butterfly Effect," those reactions center around a boy suffering from blackouts who grows up to realize that he may be able to change the past in order to better the present. This involves altering the lead character's past with a little neighbor girl (who he has always loved), her sadistic brother and a neighbor boy who was unwittingly caught in the fallout caused by being their friends.
And with any good sci-fi, certain suspension-of-disbelief is required in order to appreciate what the writer/director is attempting. Sure, this film may have a plothole or two when it comes to fooling with timelines, but mostly, it deals with ramifications, interesting and thought-provoking ramifications of altering the past. And, yes, it has a complicated plot--most time-shift movies do--but that's part of the challenge and the enjoyment.
Nevertheless, the dialogue is natural, the cinematography appealing, and the score unobtrusive but additive. Although I'm sure that many of us had doubts about Ashton Kutcher's ability to pull off a dramatic role, this film proved to be certainly within his grasp, and the other young actors also gave convincing performances throughout.
"The Butterfly Effect" may take two or three viewings to get its full effect, but it will be time well spent.