Harefooted Halloween: Dreamcatcher

*There are going to be some minor spoilers in this one because it’s impossible to talk about otherwise*

What I Liked: Morgan Freeman (The Muppets Mayhem) plays a bad guy which you almost never see.  He can be an intense actor so combining that with his signature calming almighty voice used as a weapon is effective.  Here he plays a colonel who has the resources of the US government at his disposal to kick alien ass which he’s been doing for twenty five years under the radar.  He’s hellbent on destroying every last one that has come to Earth so he’s kinda edgy.  Freeman’s natural command of every scene he’s in works well for this character and makes him a bit scary because you automatically want to trust he knows what he’s doing but really he’s unpredictable.  There are a couple of speeches about how the aliens knocked on the wrong fucking door which are delivered perfectly.  Who knew Freeman is so good at playing a maniacal bastard?

What I Didn’t Like: Pretty much everything else.

Overall Impressions: Back when this came out I remember seeing the advertising and not understanding anything about what was shown.  The trailer, the poster, the title, it was all so cryptic.  Honestly, it didn’t even register with me that this is an alien invasion picture.  They do tell you briefly in the trailer but if you blink you miss it.  So for twenty years I didn’t know what to expect.  The two things I did know are that it’s Stephen King related and it has a terrible reputation.  And yea, I can mostly see why.

While I haven’t read the book I’m guessing this wasn’t adapted very well, which is common for King works.  There’s too much story and too many characters for a single film.  A miniseries or TV show would’ve worked better.  Even still the basic premise comes across as a weaker version of IT.  A group of teenage friends from Derry, Maine with telepathy get together later as adults to fight an evil monster using said abilities.  They gained their powers as adolescents from an autistic kid (ok, technically not autistic but that’s how it’s presented for nearly the whole runtime) who knew the world would be in danger one day (twenty goddamn years later).  Now they’re trapped in the snowy wilderness and need to figure out what in the hell’s going on and fight numerous enemies and learn to use their superpowers in the correct way to overcome the situation.  There’s also Morgan Freeman and his covert alien hunting arm of the military who doesn’t care how many innocent people have to die as long as he eradicates the invaders but at the same time he’s being pushed out by his superiors and alright that’s enough already.  There’s a lot of backstory and several plots happening at once and multiple conflicts and it’s all too much.

Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan (French Kiss) actually does a decent job of keeping all this shit comprehensible somehow.  But there are still times when things don’t make much sense or there’s confusion over how the aliens operate or why they want to take over Earth and we find out they can hijack people’s bodies The Thing style which makes you wonder why they don’t do that more and put themselves in greater positions of power (they’ve been at this for who knows how many decades) and so on.  The filmmakers either needed to streamline the plot or go all in as a multi-part event.  As is it feels rushed so I’m assuming a lot was cut from King’s novel.  On top of this there are simply some strange decisions like the main alien villain randomly using a British accent or when an alien gestates inside a human they heinously burp and fart uncontrollably.

On the technical side there are plenty of issues as well.  The performances are a mixed bag with the actors being fine in one scene but then suddenly awful in the next.  Sometimes it’s the actor’s fault and sometimes it’s the director's fault where they use a weird angle or don’t cut away when they should.  The editing can be a bit obnoxious, especially during the action scenes.  The alien design are these kinda generic big slimy creatures with lots of teeth.  And lastly the effects.  Oh man, not only does the CGI not hold up but the green screening looks bad too.  Plus some of the sound effects are stock shit that tend to lend a cheap feel.

Look, with all of that said this picture isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be honestly.  It’s pretty followable with at least one standout performance.  It’s didn’t really grab me but if alien invasion movies are in your wheelhouse or if you’re a big Stephen King fan then you might get a kick out of it.

And I have to admit that after watching so many Stephen King adaptations for so many years at this point there’s something comforting about them.  Even though Dreamcatcher was new to me I could recognize his style immediately in the characters, plot devices, location and general spirit.  In that sense it’s like hanging out with an old friend.  So while I can’t say this is a particularly good film it’s still familiar in an ephemeral way, like a dream.

Harefooted Halloween: Talk to Me

What I Liked: A somewhat unique take on the horrors of drug addiction, grief and depression.  When you grab a porcelain hand and say certain phrases you see ghosts and can get possessed by them.  Instead of being disturbed the users walk away with an adrenaline rush and euphoric high.  The catch is if you do it for too long it’ll fuck you up.  You’ll start seeing spirits outside of hand sessions and those spirits will trick you into doing bad shit like murder.  The deeper you dive the more past trauma comes to the surface which makes you want to use the hand to search further for answers but you try to quit the hand and you can’t and you get the idea.  While this is all a thinly veiled metaphor it still works.

The actors in this film act way more like actual teenagers than what you normally see in horror movies.  The way they goof around with each other, the subtle yet clear dynamic divide between acquaintance vs friend, everyone’s attitude is either everything-is-a-joke or everything-is-annoying, the predilection to film everything with their phones and post it to social media, the way they put up walls to protect themselves, how cruel they can be one moment and then amiable the next, etc.  If this supernatural hand existed in real life and teens got ahold of it I have no doubt they would use it how it’s portrayed here.  They would get “high” off it and in between “hits” place a joint in its fingers as a gag to take a toke and place it on their crotch and thrust it like a dick.  All low brow (but admittedly kinda funny) shit that feels completely true to life.

And the design of the hand is cool.  It’s open in a shaking position with an attached wrist so it can be propped up on a table or flat surface.  It’s all white but entirely covered in writing and graffiti (another thing teenagers would totally do).  This is a much more alluring look than if it resembled a real person’s amputated rotting extremity.

What I Didn’t Like: While the setup is well done the picture starts to lose me a bit when ghosts begin to appear outside of hand sessions.  It becomes murky if what you’re seeing is really happening.  That can be fine if handled delicately but in this case it tends to clash with what’s been established.  In the beginning the rules for using the hand are nice and simple and easy to follow, but then after a while there’s a certain sense of we’re-making-this-shit-up-as-we-go.  I think the filmmakers knew where they wanted the movie to end but had a little trouble getting there.

Overall Impressions: You can see flashes of other films in here like Brain Damage, The Addiction, The Babadook, It Follows, etc. but that combine well enough to be its own thing.  The first half is more successful than the second half in my opinion.  I like the concept of teens using a paranormal hand to get giddily fucked up on.  It’s a party and they’re having a blast.  That’s a great subversion of expectations because normally these quasi-séance scenes would be played very seriously as the scariest thing they’ve ever experienced, and now the hand must be destroyed but the ghosts are still haunting them and so on.  Here the juxtaposition of going from “haha, this hand thing is the shit!” to later “omg, this hand thing is absolutely fucking up our lives!” is wonderfully refreshing.

Unfortunately as it goes the picture meanders a touch.  It’s not clear where the story’s going or what it’s building up to which could be a good thing.  Unpredictability can be pleasing as long as the payoff satisfies.  This one left me scratching my head a little.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression though, I like this movie.  The camera work, acting, editing and symbolism are all fantastic.  It’s the story and lore that gets hazy after a point.

Harefooted Halloween: Final Destination: Bloodlines

What I Liked: Hey FD is back and most of the deaths are pretty fun.  The opening sequence that takes place in the 60’s at a Space Needle equivalent, called The Sky View, is long and elaborate involving multiple layers of destruction and carnage.  At twenty minutes it’s a short film unto itself.  It doesn’t beat the opening of part2 with the loose logs on the highway (still the best sequence in the entire series in my opinion) but it’s impressive nonetheless for how intricate it is.  Other highlights include the MRI machine and backyard BBQ scenes.  Good buildup of tension and misdirection.  Each payoff got a chuckle out of me.

There are some clever ideas the filmmakers try out that I don’t think were in any of the previous installments.  For example, the Reaper seems to punish someone who is not on his immediate list for interfering too much in the sequence.  Also, at one point the protagonist correctly predicts how events will unfold in quick succession to cause a death.  Another couple of elements are introduced that are neat but that’s spoiler territory.

Tony Todd (The Rock) makes one last appearance as Bludworth and they give him some time to make a farewell speech.  Todd died shortly after filming and it’s sad that visibly he looks so unwell here.  At the same time it’s nice to bask in his performance one last time.

What I Didn’t Like: This item isn’t so much of a gripe but more of a personal preference.  If you read my other thoughts on the previous films you’ll know that I tend to gravitate towards the sillier entries like parts 2 and 4.  This one has a more serious tone that matches part 5.  There are plenty of moments of comic relief, and thankfully they’re handled much better than part 5’s coarse humor, but for me the balance is just not ideal.  With a premise this outrageous either give me the goofy or push the tone into dark ass territory.  Pretty sure I’m an outlier on this though so maybe ignore this paragraph.

Overall Impressions: Yep, we got a Final Destination movie folks.  Initially it may seem like part 6 is a departure from the typical structure we’re used to but it really isn’t.  The movie presents the events to you very slightly out of order in the beginning but then quickly settles into the same old familiar plot points.  A protagonist notices Death is killing those around them in a specific order, they have premonitions, search for a way to break the chain so they can survive, they think they’ve done that and eventually realize they were wrong.  Over twenty years later Part 2 is still the only one that bucks this trend a bit.

The new bloodline aspect injected into the story is both intriguing and nonsensical (which is why I didn’t put it in either section above).  In these pictures Death usually goes after its missed targets right after the establishing catastrophe.  Here he waits several generations before striking.  The backup is due to one survivor outwitting ol’ Scratch by staying alive for decades…somehow.  It’s not really explained.  Self-isolation appears to work somewhat (similar to Clear Rivers taking up residence in a mental hospital in part 2) but there are instances in the other installments of victims still dying when they’re all alone in a house.  Additional supernatural shit isn’t introduced in this one either so I dunno.  Anyway, that one particular survivor has lived long enough to have kids who in turn grew up and had kids of their own.  Whole branches of families should not exist so Death has some major cleanup to do.  This is kinda interesting because a few family members estrange themselves with their constant fear of death leading to fucked up relationships.  Honestly, this could’ve been explored a lot more by delving into mental health and such but I totally understand that’s not the kind of complex psychological/familial-relationship film they were aiming for.  On the flip side the decision to keep Death at bay for so many years comes across kinda dumb because it feels random and contrived to make the story work.

Look, bottom line is this episode delivers exactly what you expect from a FD, nothing more, nothing less.  For me it’s on par with the likes of parts 3 and 5.  What’s amazing is this franchise hasn’t missed a beat in the fourteen year (!) gap since the last one.  Shit picks up right where that one left off.  Weirdly, even the effects look like they’re from fourteen years ago.  But yea, a solid entry.  Nothing to get overexcited about.

Mish Mash 29 (Save the Tiger, The Miracle Worker, The Count of Monte Cristo (2024), F1: The Movie)

Save the Tiger

A-day-in-the-life films (not to be confused with one-crazy-night pictures) can be a neat trick to pull off if you have the right elements strung and intertwined together.  There’s definitely a certain level of suspension of disbelief you need to adopt to get on board.  As long as you can get past the notion of “no one’s life is this crazy” it can be a fun wild ride.  And Save the Tiger works for me in that regard.

Harry Stoner (Jack Lemmon (Grumpy Old Men)) owns a mid-level fashion house in LA where they design and manufacture their own line of women’s clothing.  The company is in financial trouble though so Harry does whatever he has to in order to keep the doors open.  He sets up his biggest buyer with sex workers to grease the wheels for more orders and argues with his CFO about the best approach to secure additional funding.  But his most underhanded tactic is to arrange for one of his warehouses to go up in flames so he can collect the insurance payout.

Lemmon is fantastic as a hard-nosed, tenacious businessman.  He’s depressed about the state of his company but is still unrelenting in his drive to keep it going.  He says all he wants is one more season and he’ll damn near kill himself to get it.  Stoner’s only solace is when he reminisces about old baseball.  A slight smile will peek through as he remembers the players and the game that once gave him such joy.  But these moments are fleeting as new crises constantly emerge that he must deal with.

What makes the movie work is Stoner.  Despite his questionable (or downright deplorable) ethics you want to see him succeed.  His motivation isn’t solely personal which helps.  His business employs dozens of workers who he doesn’t want to see out of the job.  So that’s nice.  This along with not wanting to fail after years and years of building his company from the ground up is admirable.  It’s his desperation strategies that make him both troubling and fascinating to follow around for a day.  Highly recommended.

The Miracle Worker

Look, I’m not someone who’s anywhere near qualified to dive deep into the subject matter of this one but I still want to give a shoutout because of how moving it is.

The Miracle Worker deals with activist Helen Heller when she was seven and first met her teacher Anne Sullivan.  Keller lost her sight and hearing months after being born and Sullivan was brought in to help train her how to communicate.  Sullivan herself was partially blind so she took her knowledge of fingerspelling, where you spell out words into someone’s hand using various shapes similar to sign language, and taught it to Keller.

This isn’t as easy as it sounds though because Keller didn’t even know what words were.  Think about that for a second.  She could mimic Sullivan’s hand gestures but didn’t understand at all what they meant or that a particular string of gestures corresponded to objects, actions or concepts.  How in the hell do you get across the idea that everything has a word associated with it and here is the word?  It’s mind boggling.

That would be difficult enough if you had all your senses but Keller was operating without sight or sound to aid her.  With those two unavailable she was effectively mute as well.  I can only very vaguely imagine not having one sense but not having two?!  I can’t even remotely comprehend what this girl went through.

With a story this tricky to convey you need some expert performances and directing and boy did they deliver.  Anne Bancroft (G.I. Jane) as Sullivan and Patty Duke (The Patty Duke Show) as Keller are phenomenal.  Bancroft runs the gamut as she shows all levels of love, contempt, frustration, enthusiasm and relentlessness to educate her sole student.  Duke gives maybe the best child performance I’ve ever seen?  She was sixteen and definitely not seven like she’s playing but that’s easily overlooked because she kills it.  Not only did I totally buy into her disabilities (Duke is neither blind nor deaf in real life) but she portrays the immense confusion and trepidation of the seemingly insurmountable task before her with equally matched ecstasy that it’s completely immersive and captivating.  You’re with her every step of the way.  Bancroft and Duke also played their roles in the play that the movie is based on and jeez, they had to do these passionately intense performances every night for almost two years.  Unbelievable.

While this piece is certainly hard to watch at times, and just exhausting with some utterly unrelenting knock down drag out fight scenes between Sullivan and Keller over teaching something as simple as how to sit at a table and eat food with a spoon, when it’s all over it’s amazingly uplifting.

 

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)

Real quick one here.  If you’re into epic stories of revenge, comeuppance and love that span decades then this is for you.  A sailor in early 1800’s France gets framed and wrongly imprisoned by his friend over a woman.  Many years later the dude breaks out, discovers hidden treasure, reinvents himself as an affluent Count and enacts his retribution.  That may sound straightforward but I’m leaving out a ton of details.

If you like the 2002 Kevin Reynolds version I think you’ll dig this one too.  The former is somewhat more action-oriented while the latter is fairly more dramatic and about incorporating more character and story elements.  Both are fantastic in my opinion.  I have no idea if this one is closer to the book but with a three hour runtime and being an actual French production based on a French novel I would think so. 

Regardless this tale is one for the ages and the filmmakers did a marvelous job.  The performances are wonderful, the production design is beautiful, the cinematography is captivating, it’s excellent all around.  I could quibble about some minor things that I wish were either left out or handled a touch differently but with such a grand focus they nailed all the big stuff.

 

F1: The Movie

To be totally honest I don’t give a rat’s ass about Formula 1 racing, or pretty much any kind of racing in general.  I’m not dismissing it, it’s just not for me.  However, what I do love are car chases and sports movies and F1 lies right in that overlap.

One of the main reasons this lit up my radar is because from the trailer the racing footage looked exhilarating and yeah, it’s goddamn cool as hell.  They strapped real (tiny) cameras to real race cars and had real actors drive the cars and shit, the results are tremendous.  POV, trailing, crowd angles, overhead, drone sweeps and all sorts of other nifty shots are mixed together to create a heart pumping montage of these cats pushing their vehicles around tight corners and down straightaways at hundreds of miles per hour.  You certainly get a real sense of the crazy speed but there are also times when you catch a car going through the right turn at the right angle that it almost looks like the thing is floating along in slow motion.  Throw in visual extras like fireworks exploding in the sky or flames/sparks shooting out the backs of the cars or rain impairing the driver’s view and it only ups the ante.  Of course the sounds of the race and score play a pivotal role in bringing the entire effect across the finish line (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

As a sports film you get the typical clash of personalities and strategies that keeps the tension high off the track as well.  Brad Pitt (The Tree of Life) plays the grizzled vet who should’ve been the next great Formula 1 driver but got derailed due to a horrific accident during a race early in his career.  Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos) is the manager type guy who brings Pitt into the fold as a last resort to help anchor/save his team.  The only other reliable driver they have is a cocky young up and comer (Damson Idris (Snowfall)) who’s talented but lacks the experience to lead on his own.  And I like that the goal isn’t to take the top spot in the standings but only to win a single race to save their jobs so they can come back next season.  This leads to sneaky, but technically legal (?), tactics employed by Pitt to get his team the W.

This one’s a stunner in the visual department and worth seeing for that aspect alone, but the whole piece is well done.  Good performances, a solid (if predictable) story, nice pacing and editing and likeable characters.  It’s a well directed spectacle and Joseph Kosinski is the other main reason why I wanted to check this out.  He did such an amazing job with Top Gun: Maverick that I had to see what he would do with race cars.  And sure, it’s essentially the same plot and not the badass barnburner that one is, but I would still definitely recommend F1.

Another Day in Paradise

Here’s a quick recommendation to flash your way.  Another Day in Paradise follows teenage couple Bobbie (Vincent Kartheiser (Alpha Dog, Mad Men)) and Rosie (Natasha Gregson Wagner (Lost Highway, Urban Legend)) who are both junkies and petty thieves.  One night Bobbie breaks into a row of vending machines to steal quarters when a security guard brutally beats the shit out of him.  Bobbie fights back by stabbing him in the gut with a screwdriver and flees.  He’s hurt real bad so his roommate calls his uncle Mel (James Woods (The Specialist)) to fix him up.  Now Mel is another low level crook (and junkie) but still several steps above Bobbie.  He decides to take the kid under his wing and use him for a job.  So the bulk of the movie is Bobbie and Rosie tagging along with Mel and his lady friend, Sid (Melanie Griffith (Something Wild)), on the road getting high and ripping folks off.

It's pretty undeniable that this is a Tarantino inspired picture despite being based on a book by Eddie Little.  The 70’s aesthetic, somewhat casual yet heightened approach to violence, memorable seedy characters and soul soundtrack all fit.  There’s some snappy dialogue too but almost all of it comes from James Woods.  Safe crackers, gun runners, addicts and other underground figures are given an ultra cool sheen while also showing how quickly shit can go sideways in their world.  For example there’s one scene where Mel and Bobbie are selling a cache of pills they stole from a doctor out of a motel room.  Guns are hidden in the couch Mel is sitting on so he can pull them if there’s trouble.  That’s the cool part.  But then the situation gets sticky and his secret guns aren’t able to save him.  These rapid circumstance shifts are handled very well that can gut punch you even if you sense things might not end well.

The entire cast works wonderfully together.  Kartheiser and Wagner give natural performances as a pair of strung out aimless kids.  They’re in love but are enablers who support each other’s terrible decisions.  They both have such an innocence to them that you wanna root for them despite their actions.  And while not the brightest bulbs they’re not total idiots either.  Bobbie is psyched to get what he believes to be an invaluable criminal education from Mel yet he’s not a total lapdog.  When Mel starts getting aggressive after a botched job he begins to rethink his choice.  Rosie is more or less along for the ride but she’s in Bobbie’s corner all the way which is touching to see that kind of devotion.  Woods is, well, Woods.  He puts on his jokey schtick during the quieter scenes and overacts during the intense ones.  While the guy is an acquired taste and doesn’t work for me in most roles I kinda like him here.  His goofiness helps to lighten the tone so it’s not depressing.  Plus he does tend to exude a certain sleaziness that suits this character perfectly.  You know, a heroin shooting relatively small time thief who thinks he’s tougher than he actually is.  Griffith is the dark horse who’s so damn nice to everyone all the time in her soft spoken way.  She takes on a maternal role with Bobbie and Rosie making sure they’re being taken care of.  Don’t let that fool you though.  She’s no airhead or pushover.  If she needs to blow away a sucker with a shotgun she’ll do it without hesitation.  No one crosses her, no one.  But as long as you’re straight with her she’s your best friend.  Admittedly it’s a bit hard to see someone like Sid (intelligent, measured) hooking up with someone like Mel (hotheaded, irrational at times), but if you don’t think about it too much I think they’re convincing enough as a wild couple.

This was Larry Clark’s second feature and it has to be his best film, better than Kids and Bully anyway (and I like those movies).  I wanna say it shows a maturity that the others don’t but apparently he was a nightmare to work with and turned in a much longer and skeezier picture that had to be re-cut without his involvement.  The positive is the end result has really nice steady cam cinematography that’s never nauseating (Eric Alan Edwards (Cop Land, To Die For)), great editing that accentuates the emotions of the characters (Luis Colina (Overnight Delivery)) and a killer retro song selection that fits the mood of the scenes and film in general.

Everything about this one comes together which is something of a miracle.  Credit to James Woods who’s one of the producers and helped whip the thing into shape.  I’ve been a big fan of it ever since it came out.  Unfortunately it seems nobody saw it or cares about it.  The movie definitely has that 90’s indie film vibe if you dig that kinda thing.  Regardless, it’s an excellently made little crime piece.  Part hang out movie, part thriller, part glorification of thug life, part warning against venturing down that path.  It’s a slice of junkie life with endearing characters, a tight plot, heartfelt moments, spurts of bloody violence and a layer of swagger that sorta knows just how rad it is.  I highly recommend it.

American Flyers

There are all manner of sports movies out there with most of them showcasing the big five: basketball, baseball, hockey, football and soccer (or football).  Boxing is an interesting one that might be more popular on screen than it is in real life.  Anyway, it’s always intriguing to see a film spotlight something less popular like figure skating (The Cutting Edge), horse racing (Seabiscuit) or even arm wrestling (Over the Top).  Well, American Flyers takes on competitive cycling where a large group of riders navigate a punishing outdoor course that could include mountainous terrain and last a hundred miles.  Sounds ripe for your usual scrappy-upstart-takes-on-the-pros-and-omg-he’s-like-amazing-and-has-a-real-chance-of-winning-it-all type arc.

While the picture does deal with that business there’s another layer thrown in for dramatic flair.  David (David Marshall Grant (The Devil Wears Prada)) is a young fellow who lives at home with his mother in St. Louis and doesn’t know what to do with his life.  He tried pre-med, pre-law and is now studying eastern philosophy.  He loves to cycle though including all through the apartment.  It’s his passion.  It’s also Marcus’ passion, his older brother (Kevin Costner (Message in a Bottle)).  He’s good enough to have made the 1980 Olympic team as an alternate.  They love each other but there’s tension in the family because their father died of an incurable brain disease and Marcus blames their mother for shutting down during that moment of crisis.  Marcus split shortly after and has had tepid relations ever since.  David holds a grudge against Marcus for leaving and blaming their mother for perhaps not doing as much as she could for their father.  In other words, it’s complicated.

Marcus, now a doctor, shows up on their doorstep some time later looking to reconnect with David and take him back to Wisconsin for a medical examination and to cycle around.  You see they fear that one or both of them might have the same brain disease that took their father so they want to run some tests.  This is also a bit of a ruse to get David to join Marcus in a big time bike competition called Hell of the West that takes place in Colorado.  It’s Marcus’ last time and he wants his brother to be by his side for it.  Naturally it’s a go so they load up and head out.

I know that’s a lot of backstory I dumped on you but it’s the first half of the film and plays heavily into the entire plot.  Now while there’s cycling throughout it’s the second half where we get to see the real action of the contest.  And it’s definitely pretty exciting.  There are loads of cool shots of riders taking fast turns, chugging up steep hills, sweating and breathing profusely, wiping out and all sorts of other events.  Not to mention the absolutely gorgeous landscape they compete in.  The race is split up into three days with each course in a different location and the most beautiful has got to be the second leg.  It takes place in Colorado National Monument Park that’s dubbed the excellent “Tour of the Moon” due to the stunning quasi alien-like scenery.

It's questionable how authentic the racing actually is though.  There are times when the athletes push, punch and grab at each other which seems illegal but then again I don’t know jack shit about this sport.  The one part where someone tries to murder David by driving him towards the edge of a cliff might be grounds for a time penalty at the very least.  Who the fuck does that?

Speaking of which, naturally there’s a rival villain who you’d think would be the brutish looking Soviet competitor but he’s relegated to a lower level antagonist.  Our main one is some joker called The Cannibal (Luca Brecovici (Dir: Ghoulies (!))).  I mean he has a real name but who cares?  This guy’s set up to be a real sonuvabitch who wants to make Marcus suffer before he ultimately beats him.  They were teammates once and Marcus’ girlfriend/pit crewmember (Rae Dawn Chong (Hideaway)) is The Cannibal’s ex-wife.  It’s never stated how he got that nickname or what the bad blood is between he and Marucs exactly but based on evidence given I suppose he wins at any cost even if that means stepping on his own teammates?  I dunno.  He’s a pretty one-dimensional anger machine for the most part.  Except there’s one scene where he explodes on a reporter out of nowhere declaring his major resentment towards America.  He was supposed to compete in the 1980 Olympics but they were held in Moscow so the US (plus many other countries) boycotted due to the Cold War (true story).  He missed his window.  Admittedly this is a fascinating angle and legitimate reason for the character to be so goddamn bitter.  This doesn’t explain why he hates Marcus so much though.  Really this character isn’t necessary.  The brain disease is the bad guy.  It messed up the family and continues to stalk them years later.

On the flip side Grant and Costner do have good chemistry and you can tell they genuinely care for each other.  There are scenes that are fun like the one where Marcus has a crazed dog chase them during a training ride to up their speed and stamina.  But there are also touching ones like when they argue if they should continue in the competition due to complications that arise (the twist is kinda obvious).  Yes, that’s a typical scene in these sorts of pictures but the backstory and lead up is richer than normal so the payoff feels more earned here.  Grant plays it with a likeable innocence combined with a hard work ethic that makes you want to root for him.  And Costner plays the older brother part to a tee where he’s concerned for David but also wants to push him outside his comfort zone and expose him to new situations while essentially being a father figure.  Both of them are making up for lost time so they make the most of the road trip/competition.

However, not everything is great.  There are a few clunky transitions and character turns that sometimes come out of nowhere.  Rae Dawn Chong in particular is awkwardly distant and serious throughout for some reason.  And the backstory isn’t laid out the clearest either.  On one hand I like that they don’t over explain but it also feels like we’re thrown into a situation that we never fully get ahold of.  Like the mother is made out to be maybe, possibly a somewhat terrible person but we’re never told why.

One thing you damn sure can’t miss is who paid for this frickin’ thing.  McDonald’s, Coors and 7-Eleven must have put up some bucks because they’re everywhere.  7-Eleven sponsors The Cannibal’s team so you see their name on their jerseys for half the movie.  And more than once David and Marcus stop at McDonald’s to catch a bite during training!  Then towards the end of the film the last leg of the race begins at the Coors plant.  Honestly this type of shit is funny to me because of how blatant it is.

Steve Tesich also wrote the cycling centric Breaking Away which is a coming of age story about a teen who’s obsessed with the sport and his parents and friends don’t quite understand.  You could argue that’s a better more endearing film, and I might even agree, but I find something like American Flyers with its mostly formulaic overcoming-the-odds-in-competition plot more entertaining.  Strangely, the characters act a bit peculiar in both so that must be a Tesich trademark.

This is another solid effort from director John Badham of Saturday Night Fever fame.  He knows how to deliver the thrills like in War Games and Drop Zone but also the tenderness like in Short Circuit.  And he knows how to deliver one helluva Christopher Walken performance in Nick of Time.

While this isn’t amazing or anything it’s certainly an enjoyable sports drama.  Whether it does a good job of introducing the world of road cycling I can’t say but I was into it.  Ride on down if this sounds like your cup of Schwinn.

Random Hearts

Right off the top, this is a weird one.  You could maybe call this sexy thriller adjacent.  It’s about a DC internal affairs cop named Dutch (Harrison Ford (The Mosquito Coast)) who loses his wife, Peyton (Susanna Thompson (Little Giants)), in a plane crash only to discover afterward that she was cheating on him.  She was meeting up with her lover, Cullen (Peter Coyote (Sphere)), on that flight so he also got killed.  Dutch makes contact with the guy’s wife, Kay (Kristin Scott Thomas (Under the Cherry Moon)), to let her know what was going on.  She badly wants to turn a blind eye to the entire situation but starts to become as intrigued as Dutch about the history of their spouses’ relationship.  After some probing, resistance and conflicting emotions the widows eventually fall in love.

So where does the thriller part come in?  Well the B plot involves Dutch trying to nail a thieving murdering cop but he’s short on evidence.  Not to mention his only witness gets slayed and tossed in a dumpster.  Dutch starts losing his mind resorting to unethical abuse of power type shit to make his case which ultimately gets him suspended.  The contrast between the two main threads is jarring to say the least.

Honestly, I wouldn’t say this is a very good movie.  Too many things about it don’t work.  One of the biggest and strangest is that the dirty cop story overshadows the love story, at least for me.  It’s just so much more exciting than exploring two couples’ infidelities.  Now this is based on a book so the vastly different tones could possibly mesh better in that format.  I wonder what the pitch meeting for the film was like though.  Was the studio like

Studio: “Are you sure you want the unconventional love plot the main narrative of the picture?  Wouldn’t you rather have the killer cop investigation be the focus?” 

Filmmakers: “No, no.  The love story’s the A plot for sure!”

Studio: “I mean I guess we trust you.  It just seems kinda flipped around.”

Filmmakers: “Don’t worry boss, the romantic tension between Dutch and Kay is gonna ooze off that screen so hard.  And we’ll make the bad guy cop extra evil to balance everything out.”

Studio: “Ok!”

I think you get my point.

Another major issue are the characters.  We’re supposed to like Dutch and Kay not only because they recently lost their spouses, who in addition were incidentally carrying out affairs behind their backs, but also because they’re presented as people of integrity.  I don’t buy it though.  Dutch is meant to be a good hard working cop who makes sure his brethren walk the line.  However, he’s a bit of a hothead who ends up doing illegal shit in pursuit of his suspect.  Furthermore he’s obsessed with Peyton’s clandestine tryst so he borderline harasses her friends, family and co-workers about it.  His existence becomes detrimentally defined by it.  We don’t see him grieve over his wife’s death so I guess this is how he’s processing shit.  Unfortunately he turns into this sad and, frankly, annoying figure.  Kay, meanwhile, is running for Congress so she’s very busy focusing on that.  Her whole thing is yea, she’s a politician, but she’s an honest one.  At the same time she can’t be forthright with her own teenage daughter about her cheating father.  And, of course, Kay is constantly concerned with her image and how recent events will affect her chances of winning the race.  So again, like Dutch she doesn’t come off nearly as likeable as intended.

It doesn’t help that Ford and Thomas don’t have any chemistry either.  They bicker in the beginning with Dutch desperately wanting to talk to Kay about the affair and Kay wanting to pretend like it never happened and move on.  They pull that cheesy move where the leads are fighting with each other and then suddenly embracing and kissing passionately.  Part of this relationship stems from finding solace in the wake of tragedy.  That would be fine if it were played in more of a transactional way.  Instead it comes across much more contrived like these two get together because they’re supposed to.  Ford and Thomas don’t shoot out sparks of love or a ton of warmth even.  Their approaches are too detached.

There are a few other quirks that are worth noting.  Kay finds out (minor spoilers in the rest of this paragraph) her husband was actually having multiple affairs during their marriage.  Amazingly Peyton might’ve been doing the same thing!  Dutch confronts one of her male co-workers about it but gets the I-won’t-even-dignify-that-with-a-response rebuff instead of a straight up “no”.  So inconclusive there.  I don’t totally get the point of piling on the betrayal here.  Why make these characters out to be even bigger assholes than they’re already set up to be?  Next, Cullen and Peyton worked overtime on their cheating.  For one thing they kept a secret apartment together near where they lived.  However, if that wasn’t bad enough they also flew all the way to other states under the guise of business trips to bump uglies.  Sheesh, that’s expensive and a lot of work.  And finally, the audience knows what’s going on from the start with the affair so when we follow Dutch around investigating what Peyton’s been up to it ends up being kinda boring.  Ideally we should be discovering the truth along with Dutch but admittedly the payoff of basically an ordinary affair just isn’t all that gripping so the filmmakers were sorta stuck.

Who got excited about this project?  This was a major studio film so several folks had to be pumped to see this story turned into a star studded blockbuster.  It had been kicking around Hollywood for over a decade to boot.  Look, you can turn anything, anything, into a compelling picture but the results of this one are bizarre.  I know I keep coming back to this but the much more enticing dirty cop B plot is way too robust for what was required.  Fine, we need to establish Dutch is distracted by his wife’s death and adultery so his job performance suffers, but they could’ve scaled it back a touch from him failing to capture a psychotic murderer.  Plus the romance between Dutch and Kay is forced and built on extremely odd circumstances.  And the main characters are irritating in their own ways.

With all of that said you might randomly get a kick out of Random Hearts if you enjoy peculiar beasts.