Daily Grindhouse would be pretty much my favorite website even if I weren’t writing for them, but since I am, here’s a collection of all my work so far. It’s some of my very best stuff. Enjoy!
Make Daily Grindhouse your daily destination for genre movie news, reviews, and interviews — there’s a ton of truly great content over there, beyond just the parts with my name on ‘em.
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I’m never happier than when I’m writing about old horror movies. Hopefully that’s true for you too, because as of today, you can read what I wrote about a pair of old horror movies over at Daily Grindhouse!
For all his technical experimentation, psychological insight, and sophistication of purpose, Michael Mann is essentially a pulp director. It’s very rare that he departs from the overarching genres of noir and action. THIEF, MANHUNTER, HEAT, COLLATERAL, MIAMI VICE, and all of his TV work (Crime Story, Miami Vice, and Luck) are all ne0-noirs. LAST OF THE MOHICANS and PUBLIC ENEMIES are history-based action movies. Even ALI, a biopic of one of the most famous men to have ever lived, could be argued to fit within these bounds as more of a genre film than the standard biopic, since the boxing film has always only been a step away from noir and Mann’s compositions in ALI remain moody and romantic as in any of his other films.
THE INSIDER, then, is perhaps Michael Mann’s most high-minded movie, and on paper, there’s no reason it should be remotely as watchable and rewatchable as it is. It’s a true story about network TV, newsmagazine journalism, and big tobacco, and yet it’s suspenseful, moving, and entertaining as all hell. It belongs to the same line as ACE IN THE HOLE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, yet ironically it’s more grounded in realism and less dependent on lurid incident than any of them. There’s only one bullet in all of THE INSIDER, and it isn’t ever seen in motion. The drama of THE INSIDER comes from depositions and confidentiality clauses, lawyerese and how it makes the layman’s head spin, of good intentions and obfuscations and families straining under corporate pressure. It’s a thriller where the suspense is primarily internal. The roiling atmosphere that engulfs the film is stormy and ominous and reflective of the thought processes of the lead characters.
So much of that comes from the robust, dynamic, iconoclastic directing choices of Mann, working with his cinematographer Dante Spinotti, returning from MANHUNTER, LAST OF THE MOHICANS, and HEAT. Mann and Spinotti enlist their typical blue-gray palette, but this time there are greens and oranges and constantly disarming variations on all of the above — all of which keep the movie from resembling any other ever made. THE INSIDER has an unprecedented look, which separates it from easy comparison, while making it easy on the eyes for its duration. There’s also a rare intimacy and tactile sensation to THE INSIDER, beginning from the very start, where Al Pacino as 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman is driven to a meeting with a Hezbollah leader — we can almost feel the ridges and pores of the blindfold over his eyes as it ripples with the wind and sunlight flickers through. You can feel the otherworldliness of a driving range at night, the dampness of a rooftop just after a rain, the warmth of a bar, the isolation of a hotel room. The movie puts the viewer in these environments, which makes the story feel that much more urgent.
In a word, THE INSIDER is absorbing. Absorbing. That happens through unity of disparate crafts. The musical selection, both of score and soundtrack, is impeccable and distinctive as it ever is with Mann, and the editing style is precise and hypnotic. The script by Mann and Eric Roth is impeccably-rendered, full of dialogue that is full of truth and untruth and both and neither, and then to deliver it, you have a roster of some of the world’s greatest actors, led by Al Pacino, bellowing but focused in maybe his last truly excellent role to date, Christopher Plummer in his rummiest of cadence as beloved newsman Mike Wallace, and Russell Crowe, who was so ferociously incredible in his transformative role as the title character that the 1999 Oscar voters realized they fucked up by not giving him Best Actor for this movie and corrected the mistake the very next year.
In fact, is there anyone who is seriously willing to argue that the elected Best Picture that year, AMERICAN BEAUTY, is in any way comparable to THE INSIDER as a whole? I’m sure there is, actually — just don’t try arguing it with me. I’ll smoke you.
THE INSIDER lands on Blu-Ray on February 19, 2013. If you appreciate greatness, you will buy it.
This collection has been much-requested and a long time coming. To get at the reviews, just click on the movie poster of your choice. And be sure to bookmark this page, because it’s bound to get updated frequently!
For constant news about updates, follow me on Twitter: @jonnyabomb
And we’re back! Ready for round two. Inspired again by my friend-in-movies at Rupert Pupkin Speaks, I’m re-presenting and reshuffling my top fifty movies of all time. “Reshuffling” sounds a little more extreme than what I’ve done here — most of the titles remain the same, and the order isn’t much different. But there’s a fair amount of new blood, and I’ve updated the links to any movies I’ve written about at length (those are bolded in red.)
This list is absolutely subject to change, so keep watching this space, but while you’re at it, don’t forget to keep watching the skies.
Some of my constituents, particularly my very vocal hot-girl readership (there are a few), rightly point out that I keep going back to “old” movies. To some of them, anything before the 1990s is considered “old.” So I hate to disappoint, because 1961 is positively ancient, but THE INNOCENTS is too goddamn creepy for me to skip over without recommending. Particularly now, in an era where people are somehow satisfied by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies where literally nothing happens, I have to make a case for a real-deal scary movie like this one. Call it “old” if you want, but at least in THE INNOCENTS, you actually see the ghosts.
THE INNOCENTS has a remarkable and surprising literary pedigree — based on the novella The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James, and co-written by Truman Capote — but it’s as eerie as a ghost story gets. I was asleep during most of English class, so I was surprised to find out that The Turn Of The Screw was a ghost story, and apparently a fairly sophisticated one. I did’t know that they were writing spooky ghost stories with psychosexual subtext and supernatural over-text as far back as the Henry James era, but here’s the evidentiary pudding.
Deborah Kerr (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE KING AND I) plays a repressed woman who is hired as a governess at a remote mansion in the country, where she’s meant to watch over these two spooky little kids, who have been corrupted by the haunted nature of the estate. The ghosts aren’t just sightings — which are the scary, throat-catching highlights of the film — but they also seem to be halfway-possessions, which leads up to a still-shocking-even-by-today’s-standards kiss between the governess and the pre-adolescent boy. It’s one of the creepiest kisses in cinematic history.
THE INNOCENTS is clearly influential, from the most direct, such as in the Nicole Kidman film THE OTHERS, to the more stylistic, such as in much of Guillermo Del Toro’s work and as in plenty of Asian horror cinema. The stark, sweeping, remarkably crystalline black & white cinematography by Freddie Francis is absolutely a landmark. The sound design is ingeniously eerie, as is the staging, courtesy of director Jack Clayton. Fifty years later, this movie still retains its ability to haunt.
This beautiful portrait was taken by @SethKushner.
Hollywood legend Ernest Borgnine passed away Sunday, July 8th, 2012. He was 95, which is not young. But anyone who suggests that his age makes the loss much easier would be mistaken. There are people who are irreplaceable, and this was most certainly one. Ernest Borgnine, or Ernie to his fans, had more than sixty years in the movie business — just think of how many stories he must have had left to relay. Though he gave plenty of great interviews over the years, that probably was only a fraction. With Ernest Borgnine goes a unique and eternally ingratiating talent, and a pivotal bridge that spans Old Hollywood, New Hollywood, and the modern age we’re currently living in. For this post I’ve collected a ton of pictures and posters of the many movies I’ve seen Ernest Borgnine in. I will touch on most of these movies (and maybe more) in the longer appreciative piece I am working on, but in the meantime, please enjoy these movie memories of a true original.
That’s The INtouchables, not The Untouchables. The Untouchables is a good movie which I’d have no problem watching again anytime. Let’s have one excellent moment together before the darkness descends.
Now I’m going to make fun of this, and I don’t think I care who it offends.
The reason I say that is because the only people who I care about offending are the same exact ones who would be offended by the very idea of this movie. Maybe it’s not my place to advocate for the groups who are diminished by a movie like this one, but remember what Edmund Burke said – “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” In other words, if I’m not able to make fun of a movie released in 2012 where a rich white guy hires a poor black guy to be his manservant and we’re expected to see it as uplifting just because he’s in a wheelchair, then we all lose.
How patronizing, facile, clumsy, calculated, shallow, insincere, maudlin, ignorant, superficial, saccharine, simplistic, etc., etc., infinity, can one trailer be? You might be able to get away with this shit in Europe, but don’t go bringing it to my country and expect me to receive it with a gentle kiss on both cheeks. To be fair to the filmmakers, I’ve not seen the entire movie. But to be fair to myself, I ain’t never gonna.
I saw the trailer at the front of a DVD I watched recently, and my hatred immediately ignited as soon as the following exchange transpired:
“These street guys have no pity.”
“That’s what I want… no pity.”
Holy shit, dude. Not “Hey, you’re wrong about those ‘street guys’, and you shouldn’t generalize, my privileged racist friend”, but “You’re totally right about those black guys — I mean, street guys – and that’s the kind of cruelty I need!”
It’d be a lot easier to take if there weren’t an adorable lil’ Hitler joke a minute later.
Or how about the way that the white guy becomes a quadriplegic from a hang-gliding accident, and instead of learning his lesson from it, just straps himself to the black guy so he can go hang-gliding again, with cruddy Snow Patrol or whatever that song is soaring on the soundtrack with the wings of a moronic eagle.
I hope there’s a scene where the “street guy” reintroduces the wheelchair guy to the pleasures of the flesh and the herb:
I thought so.
How sweet. Hey, I didn’t know this was a bittersweet comedy about how a lowly thug teaches a self-defeating rich man how to love life again by helping him to smoke weed with Asian hookers. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have been so nasty.
Let’s take a look at some production stills and see if we can’t predict exactly what happens in this movie…
“This is the guy behind the guy behind the guy.”
“Well, Wheelchair Guy, I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change.”
“You‘re the man now, dog!”
And of couse there’s a scene where the Senegalese guy helps the wheelchair guy win a race against two people on Segways. The fucking French.
Nineteen-million French people can’t be wrong, huh?
Honestly it’s not as much the French who are annoying me here. They don’t know any better. They don’t have the history with racism, both onscreen and off, that our country has. Even beyond the repulsiveness of this premise (it’s Finding Forrester meets Awakenings! The Blind Side meets The Christopher Reeve Story!) in the context of everything that has happened in real life in America from slavery to Rush Limbaugh, the lame conventions of modern cinema are strong with this one. We should be beyond this shit by now. It’s just as offensive to have a magical minority character who brings joy to the wealthy whiteys as it would be to have a stereotypically villainous minority character. It’s a bad joke if you’re awake, but I’m sure it could appear sweet and affecting if you’re not keyed into this stuff. That’s why I’m disappointed in Harvey Weinstein, a savvy businessman who should have more of a social conscience — The Weinstein Company picked up The Intouchables for distribution in the States and bought the rights to a remake. With any luck, Meryl Streep and Tyler Perry can star in a Garry Marshall film and everyone involved can make a bundle off everybody in America who never actually met anyone of another ethnicity. See, if you actually have a diverse social circle than you know that we’re all just people. Nobody has mystical abilities, and no one’s problems are solved by anything so easy as a kite ride. It’s either ignorant or consciously exploitative to sell a movie like this — now which kind of wrong do you want to be?
Maybe I’m the asshole, but I don’t take The Intouchables any more seriously than I take this:
According to the Wikipedia entry on The Intouchables, a Nina Simone song was appropriated for the movie’s soundtrack. That’s a bit of blasphemy. Nina Simone would have fucking HATED this movie on sight. I super-promise it.
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If I’m wrong, enlighten me. But if I’ve got a point, then please hate thoughtfully. I’m findable on Twitter: @jonnyabomb
While I was compiling my most recent Unfortunate Movie Posters column, I spotted something intriguingly weird. Let’s take a look at the posters for a movie called Inseparable. This movie was made in China and released there on May 4th. There is as yet no American release date. That’s not the odd part.
Okay, so it’s a superhero movie — apparently a lighthearted one at that. Aside from the cameo from the fish from the Faith No More “Epic” video, there’s nothing particularly unusual about a comical costumed-hero movie from the Asian film industry.
But not usually like this. Watch as this guy is joined by a partner-in-crimefighting…
Does the profile of the caped gentleman on the left look familiar? Squint.
Still hard to tell? Here, let’s open it up…
Well there’s the name and a closer look, but can we get a picture without the mask?
BAM! Kevin Spacey!
Wait — what?
That is indeed esteemed actor Kevin Spacey, American star of movies as uniquely American as The Ref, Seven, The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, American Beauty, Horrible Bosses, Casino Jack, and Margin Call, and he is indeed up there wearing a cape in a Chinese-only movie.
And he will be joined by Peter Stormare, man of a thousand accents. You know Peter Stormare from his villainous roles in movies such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Constantine, and Lockout, and I can pretty much guarantee you sight-unseen that he plays a villain here too.
What else do we know about the story of Inseparable? Well, according to the internet, the official site is coming soon, but the placeholder does offer us this image:
So it looks like Kevin Spacey makes some friends while he’s over there!
And, instead of having to battle one, he gets the chance to be a superhero:
This article at The Playlist sheds a little more light, explaining that Inseparable is about a suicidal young businessman who is saved and befriended by a mysterious American (who favors 1980s LL Cool J tracksuits) — they find purpose in life by making costumes and heading out to the streets together to fight crime. The girl pictured above, it turns out, is the young man’s wife, a reporter who apparently gets her own costume eventually. The Playlist links to another article that explains how the film was financed and made in China but shot partly in English, which is slightly reminiscent of how most of the ”spaghetti” Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s were produced.
I think it’s great, by the way. I’m all for it.
It’s now a badly-kept secret that American movie stars often collect major paychecks for appearing in commercials in the Asian marketplace, far away from the judgment of American audiences. (It’s famously a running joke in Lost In Translation.) That’s not what this is. At a reported budget of $4-6 million, this is a relatively modest production, but it’s a notable development. The foreign market is exceedingly and ever-increasingly important to Hollywood. Have you noticed that the huge Hollywood summer movies have been premiering overseas even before we get them here? The Avengers is a colossal hit here in America, but would you believe that the rest of the world actually got to see it a week before we did?!? It’s a noticeable development.
We can interpret this mounting trend in two different ways. One, it’s an alarming portent of how Hollywood, in a pursuit of foreign audiences (and revenue) will continue to forgo character and nuance for spectacle and costumes, since action scenes, giant robots, and explosions are always the easiest story elements to translate.
All that’s true, but I prefer the more optimistic interpretation, which is that dropping American stars into Chinese films (to take the example on the table) is a fun and fresh way to create a multicultural mash-up. We’ve already seen Kevin Spacey interact onscreen with just about every name actor we could possibly think of — maybe pairing up such a recognizable and reliable talent with some foreign faces will produce some refreshing results.
At the very least, maybe all this multinational branding experimentation will one day bring us an actually awesome new Godzilla movie.
More mysteries of life solved daily on Twitter: @jonnyabomb
I have this theory about movies – especially action movies – that sometimes it’s not wrong to just give the people what they want.
The Ang Lee Hulk movie had that great scene where the Hulk fought army tanks in the desert, but other than those all-too-brief two minutes, the movie had some kind of strange and intense aversion to depicting what we all paid to see – a big angry green guy ripping shit up!
Was it too soon for Marvel Studios to put out a new Hulk? Heck no! Is it ever too soon (or too late) to make a movie about a big angry green guy ripping shit up? The problem with the Ang Lee Hulk was that it spent all that time on character development, and ultimately it didn’t make you know or care any more about the characters at the end than you may have at the beginning. The new movie doesn’t have that problem. It’s a chase movie with fight scenes, more Bourne than anything else, which means you get your character development on the fly, and no more or less than you absolutely need. Which is why it works.
Here’s what else I liked:
Ed Norton as The Hulk.
Ed Norton. As much as I like Eric Bana as an actor, Norton is better casting for the role. Bana plays torment well, but in nearly every role he takes, Norton is scary-smart, and that’s the ideal Hulk-Banner combo right there. And not to spoil anything, but by the end of the movie, Norton seems to have morphed back into his look from The Illusionist.
Ed Norton as The Illusionist.
Liv Tyler. I’m not particularly a huge fan, but she comes off as just plain sweet, in this movie and others. It really works in the scenes where she soothes the savage beast, so to speak. The Hulk eases off the bigger beat-downs because he doesn’t want to upset Liv, basically. Sounds silly, but as it plays out: very believable.
Craig Armstrong is the Scottish composer of classy, urbane scores for movies like Moulin Rouge. (I highly recommend his album Piano Works for the Bruce Banners among us who could use a calmer moment or fifteen.) While I thought the Danny Elfman score was one of the few things that worked just fine about the Ang Lee Hulk, I was really into the music in the newer movie. Perfectly complemented the action and the mood; kept both moving.
The new CGI Hulk looks like Charles Bronson in Hard Times, if he had contracted scurvy. Big, angry, green guy. With fists.
Hulk in 2008.
Bronson in 1975.
The Abomination is a giant skeleton with a British accent. Which conjures up friendly feelings about Army of Darkness, and results in a slightly cooler nemesis than the previous movie’s ‘Dark Nolte’.
Abomination!
Nick Nolte, electrified.
Speaking of Army of Darkness, Ty Burrell (pre Modern Family fame, as Betty’s new boyfriend Dr. Samson) looks a whole lot like Bruce Campbell post-mentoplasty.
William Hurt is can’t-miss as a conflicted villain.
Tim Roth is can’t-miss as an unconflicted villain.
Lastly: The evil army scientist who gives Tim Roth the gamma-epidural is an absolute ringer for Barack Obama. Therefore it makes sense that he be the architect of the Obama-Nation.
(This was written in 2008, before such groaners became common place in right-wing rhetoric. Blame Central Casting for setting up the softball on the bad-pun tee, not me for taking the swing.)
