Twister

Meteorologist Bill (Bill Paxton (Trespass (1992))) travels out to rural Oklahoma to retrieve some signed (he hopes) divorce papers.  His soon to be ex Jo (Helen Hunt (Rollercoaster)) is also a meteorologist and is hesitant about putting down her signature.  Part of it is she wants to make Bill suffer for walking out on their relationship.  But the other part is she’s still in love with him.

Bill greets his old scientist friends that comprise Jo’s field team and they’re all pleasantly surprised and glad to see each other again.  But uh oh, Jo didn’t sign the last page of the settlement.  She stalls and Bill gets annoyed but suddenly one of the assistants yells out “Jo, major action!”  Everyone knows what that means but they wait for the signal.  After a moment of silently gazing into Bill’s eyes Jo gives the green light and they’re off in a frantic whirlwind to wrangle themselves…a tornado.  That’s right, they’re motherfuckin’ storm chasers.

Ok, ignoring the completely unnecessary scene that takes place before this showing Jo’s dad getting murdered by a tornado when she was a little girl this is a very good setup.  A lot of information gets doled out about the characters without feeling too contrived and having Melissa (Jami Gertz (Renegades)), Bill’s new fiancé, tag along for moral support is a smart move.  She’s basically the audience who the other people have to explain stuff to.  She ends up being the best character in the whole movie and I’m not fucking kidding.  But I’ll get back to her.

First I wanna break down Bill and Jo.  Yes, they’re clearly meant for each other.  They have a mutual fascination with tornadoes, they’re enthusiastic about their research, they’re dedicated to better understanding how a tornado works so they can develop improved warning systems to help people and they’re both bat shit crazy.

Bill goes by two nicknames, “The Human Barometer” and the way more radical “The Extreme” (he’s also called “The Most Out of Control Sonuvabitch In the Game” but I guess that’s too long for a nickname).  Now I’m not saying Bill doesn’t deserve to be called “The Extreme” but it kinda fits Jo a little better.  While Bill will put himself directly in the path of a tornado he always tries to bail out at the last moment.  Jo definitely wants to get sucked up into one.  She has a death wish and it’s frustrating to watch.  In fact it’s a wonder she made it this far in her life without getting too close to a cyclone and dying.  She’s supposed to be a professional scientist and not act like a googly eyed zombie forgetting everything she knows when she sees a tornado.

Hang on a sec though ‘cause I’m not letting “The Extreme” off the hook that easily.  This dude has serious emotional problems.  He’s antagonistic towards Jo when she tries to make polite conversation, he goes into rage mode over a competing scientist stealing his idea for a tornado study experiment and has to be held back, and he insists on driving the truck all the time even though he keeps fucking up and getting too close to the tornadoes.  However, I do love the sorta badass story about how he got his nickname.  You see one time he strolled up to a tornado while drunk and naked and cursing.  He says “have a drink” and throws a bottle of Jack Daniels at the thing.  He was so close the tornado sucked it right up.  Alright, I guess he earns “The Extreme” moniker.

So Bill and Jo are kinda boneheads.  It’s fiancé and therapist Melissa who’s astoundingly reasonable and amiable.  One of the most amazing things she does is ride along on three storm chasing sessions so Bill can share his true passion with her.  She also asks questions showing genuine interest in the topic.  She could’ve hung back from the start or tapped out after the first spin but she keeps going out there because she’s gonna stick by her man no matter how insane this activity may seem.

Melissa is also very nice to everyone, doesn’t look down on Bill’s friends or dismiss their profession.  Nah man, she’s captivated by the world she’s unexpectedly found herself in.  The good doctor even takes patient calls while she’s out there being twirled around by a tornado.  Sure, she’s freaking out but she lets the person on the other end know that she’s there for her.  She’s just a really good person.

On top of all this Melissa knows that Bill and Jo should be together and does the right thing by breaking up with Bill and letting him live the life he clearly loves with the woman he clearly still loves.  Melissa says she isn’t upset either but doesn’t know what that means.  Well I’ll tell ya.  She helped Bill see what was there all along.  He needs to be chasing storms with Jo and the gang and not tucked away in a studio doing weather reports.  He’s “The Extreme” not “The Content” and making him realize that makes Melissa feel at least fine about it.  Happy may be stretching it since she did just lose her fiancé.  But anyway, you get my point.  She wants Bill to be happy even if that means giving him up because she cares for him.  Melissa’s the best.

As for those wily tornadoes they do give you a lot of them, six scenes in total.  We see them destroying structures, flinging debris around and chasing after our protagonists all like you would want to see in one of these pictures.  For something called Twister they certainly deliver on the twister action and I commend the filmmakers for doing that.

But I will stop short of calling into question how realistic the tornadoes behave and if Bill and Jo really should’ve died several times throughout.  Yea I know everyone likes to make fun of them surviving the most violent type of tornado (F5) by tying themselves to a pipe with puny leather belts, the tornado can pick up the truck right next to them but they’re left alone, they can outrun a tornado, the twister roars and screeches like some horrible beast and blah blah blah, etc.  There’s so much in here that seems like total bullshit movie physics/science type stuff that it gets to a point where I simply don’t care.  It pelts me into submission.

The CGI used for the twisters isn’t terrible however.  I mean if you pull up footage of actual tornadoes they all look kinda fake.  This massive swirling cloud that appears randomly, damages a bunch of shit and then suddenly vaporizes seems like something too bizarre to exist in real life.  And they look truly frightening to encounter.  Fuck these things man.

Getting back to the movie, the filmmakers use a lot of wind, lighting and rain effects to stand in for the tornadoes most of the time because CGI was still expensive as hell in 1996 and had limited uses.  If you couple that with all the props like full sized tankers, tree branches, wood boards, farm equipment and etc being flung around and dropped from the sky the effects are nicely done and convincing.

On the negative end there’s a shocking amount of excess stuff that didn’t need to be in this picture.  I already cited the opening scene.  Merely mentioning that Jo’s father was taken out by a tornado is all you need to do, we don’t have to see it with our own eyes.

Another superfluous aspect is the very high number of members on Jo’s science team.  There should be Bill, Jo, two other assistants and maybe that one navigator guy (Alan Ruck (Star Trek: Generations)) with all the maps ‘n shit whose job ironically would be obsolete in a short ten years or so.  But Jo has no less than ten members including herself and Bill.  And it’s not like they all have a specific purpose.  Most of these characters don’t do anything except spew one line of science jabber.

And among the redundant team members is Dusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman (Red Dragon)), who’s there for comic relief and to try to get the audience pumped by yelling shit like “we got one!” and “it’s coming, it’s headed right for us!”  God I hate this obnoxious quasi hippie character.  He’s not funny, he’s not helpful, he’s just a doofus.  Is this asshole even a scientist of any kind?  He doesn’t say anything science-like or observe weather patterns or study data that’s been gathered or anything.  He’s an exasperating pest who contributes jack shit to the field work.

Out of everything though perhaps the most pointless element in the film is the inclusion of the rival storm chasers.  They’re sellouts in it for that sweet life threatening up close tornado observing money, or something.  Everything about them is designed to be a direct contrast to Bill and Jo’s team.  The sellouts dress in stiff slacks and polo shirts as opposed to denim and flannel, they drive uniform black minivans which is definitely less cool than the hodgepodge of vehicles in Jo’s fleet, their tiny tornado sensors are angular cubes instead of smooth orbs and etc.  The film makes you believe these guys are going to play a big role in the upcoming events but it turns out they have absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever.  If you took them out not a damn thing would change.  They’re only here so the tornado can have someone to kill later, and even then it’s only two out of the entire team.

I actually have something to say on the death of the sellouts and it’s this: what the fuck did they ever do to deserve the gruesome demise they got?  Like one guy gets impaled by a metal lighting truss and then their car gets tossed through the air and explodes in a huge fireball.  Man, that death sentence is severe.  I get that these guys are jerks but as far as we know they never endangered anyone’s life, circulated false science into the community, punched someone in the face or anything.  Yea, they stole Bill’s tornado observation experiment but their goal was to help people by crafting a better early warning system, same as Bill’s.  The tornadoes are the villains here.  They didn’t need human bad guys as well.

One last thing I want to mention is the strange way this movie maligns weather reporters.  Bill gives up storm chasing to become one and as a result everyone kinda gives him shit for it.  I guess relaying weather newscasts to the public who rely on that information to know if a fucking tornado is headed their way isn’t as noble as deliberately and perpetually putting yourself in the path of that deadly force of nature.  What’s with those weather reporters trying to warn people about imminent danger and aiding them in what they can do to remain safe?  Gosh, what a bunch of losers.

Of course I’m being sarcastic but really, for all the glory they bestow upon storm chasers the way they’re portrayed here is probably insulting.  I don’t know shit about meteorology or any of that but I get the strong feeling that this picture makes people who study tornadoes look like irresponsible idiots.  They come off more like thrill seekers in search of a high than seasoned specialists who have enormous respect for what they’re studying.  I dunno.

Anyway, you add all this up and unfortunately you get a movie that’s pretty stupid.  That may sound harsh but none of it makes much sense if you think about it.  At the same time the movie does have that big summer popcorn blockbuster feel which is wonderful.  And I really mean that.  For all the bad mouthing I just did the film goes down no problem.

Longtime cinematographer turned director Jan de Bont followed up his fucking tremendous debut Speed with this.  He had been in the industry thirty plus years by 1996 and that’s what shows up on screen and makes the thing so easy to watch.  The man knows the language of big Hollywood film and how to satisfy a mainstream audience.  He only made five movies during his short directing career but they were all in the blockbuster style and Twister is no exception.  It’s a loud, fast paced, larger than life action adventure spectacular with just the right amount of hokey romance and comic relief sprinkled in to make it appealing to a boatload of people.

This was part of the natural disaster genre comeback in the 90’s and it was a big deal when it came out.  I remember they were showing real tornado footage in the lobby to get folks juiced and goddamn did it work (for the record I don’t recall them showing tornadoes damaging anything so they kept it tasteful, probably, potentially, actually I don’t have any way of confirming that).  The subject matter was deserving of a large scale Hollywood production and it paid off.  Twister was a monster hit.

While this one is a good time overall it has a lot of fucking problems.  The way the characters are introduced and the initial setup scene is well done but other than that things are a mess.  Although, I can’t deny the film does everything you want it to do.  There are plenty of tornadoes, they cause destruction, they put the protagonists lives in danger at various moments and our leads fall back in love by the end.  The essential beats are hit.  And everything else is stupid.

Twister was such a success that Universal Studios made an attraction out of it.  Basically it was a recreation of the drive-in movie scene from the film and we got to see a tornado destroy a bunch of stuff.  It included real sets, props, fire, water, wind, an unconvincing cow flying by on cables and a decent sized tornado all meticulously timed to give you a glimpse of what these things can do.

The attraction is long gone now though and admittedly I never thought too much of it whenever I did it over the years.  But the last time I took a ride I got to experience the front row with maybe only like five other people.  It was like a private showing.  Seeing the special effects demonstration that up close including the fifty foot tall tornado that was created indoors was incredibly impressive (the technology behind the ride is fascinating which involved measuring weather conditions in real time outside to help create the funnel).  It also made me realize how scary that fucking thing is and this is only a fraction of the size of a real one.  This final moment with the attraction earned it a special place in my heart and by association the stupid movie it’s based on.

Mish Mash 15 (Phantom Thread, North Shore, The Fly (1986) Ending, Days of Wine and Roses, The Killing of a Sacred Deer)

Phantom Thread

This is probably Paul Thomas Anderson’s (Inherent Vice) best looking movie and that’s saying a lot.  I guess that makes sense considering the backdrop to the weirdo love story is the world of 1950’s high fashion.  It all needs to be just so and so does the handling of the delicate plot and characters.  Very few filmmakers can make a picture about an abusive relationship work.  In this case both sides inflict massive pain yet they really do seem to love each other despite how ludicrous and childish it looks from the outside.

I liked it a whole lot but it’s definitely not for everyone.

North Shore

My buddy had a DVD copy of North Shore sitting in his basement for who the fuck knows how long.  Of all the people that came through there no one had the courage to put it on.  I don’t think the fear was that it was going to be a very poorly made corny 80’s teen romance picture, but that it was going to be a boring very poorly made corny 80’s teen romance picture.  Well fifteen or twenty years later North Shore finally came knocking.  And it’s really not bad (I know, ringing endorsement).

The movie’s about Rick, a surfing teen from Arizona who makes the journey to Hawaii to find out how good he really is.  He falls in love, gains some friends, makes some enemies, gets disappointed that his hero is a total jerk and etc.  It’s nothing special at all.  We’ve seen this scenario play out a bajillion times before with the likes of Thrashin’, Footloose, Airborne, ‘n shit.

What’s nice about North Shore though is this kid finds out he has to work pretty damn hard to achieve his dream.  It’s not that he’s naturally supremely talented like most of the films in this vein.  Rick travels on his own to a place he’s never been to before and where he has no contacts.  So he needs to figure out where to stay and how to earn money and practice his surfing skills so that he can become better.  Instead of simply learning to believe in himself like would normally be the case it’s cool to see Rick pull himself up and put in a real good effort to make shit workout.

The Fly (1986) Ending

Spoiler on a thirty year old movie

The ending to Cronenberg’s The Fly is a throwback to older pictures where the credits would come up as soon as the bad guy was vanquished.  No need to do a quick wrap up of events or ramp down of the heart pumping climax.  Here there’s only time for a couple of brief reaction shots and then they start those end credits rolling.  I wonder if this was an intentional nod due to it being a remake of a 1950’s joint.  It’s an interesting tactic and I wouldn’t be opposed to more films ending like that.  Maybe one day it’ll come back in fashion.

Days of Wine and Roses

Really wonderful and immensely tragic tale of a drunk named Joe (Jack Lemmon (My Fellow Americans)) and a teetotaling young secretary named Kirsten (Lee Remick (The Omen)) who fall in love.  It’s not too long before Kirsten gets on board with the booze too and very soon they both can’t put the bottle down.  Their alcoholism ruins their lives as well as those around them.

The storytelling may be a little ham fisted at times where it feels like a public service announcement (for AA in particular) but its heart is definitely in the right place.  Director Blake Edwards (10) and co want you to see how horrible alcohol addiction is and that if you or someone you know is wrestling with the disease there’s something you can do about it, the situation isn’t hopeless or endless.

So many aspects are touched on like Joe and Kirsten fail to hold a steady job, they have trouble looking after a small child, they lie and steal to get money to buy more liquor, Kirsten vehemently denies having an addiction and claims she can stop drinking whenever she wants, disappearing for days at a time, relapsing multiple times, severe withdrawal and etc.

Both Lemmon and Remick give incredible performances (ironically Lemmon admitted to alcohol dependency later in life) and Edwards goes all in with almost no comic relief.  The whole thing’s impressive from start to finish.  This is one sad and powerful picture.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Every once in a while I run up against a movie where everyone in it acts in an unnatural way and it makes me feel like an idiot because I don’t understand why that’s happening.  In this case all the characters in the film are emotionless.  They say their dialogue and go through scenes that are supposed to be filled with tons of catastrophe but they all remain calm and stone faced.  This is what I had a hard time getting past.  The story about a teenage boy placing a curse on a man’s family forcing him to sacrifice one of them to save the others is weird enough and sorta interesting.  There didn’t need to be this experimental sterile performance angle on top of it.  It doesn’t really add anything to the picture.  In fact it’s unbelievably distracting.  I would’ve loved to have seen this plot executed more straight up but we got what we got.  It’s an alright movie.

The Great Race

This one’s about a turn of the century auto race from New York to Paris which really did take place in 1908 (USA got the win after Germany was penalized for deviating from the designated route).  It seems like an insane idea to do something like that today let alone over a hundred years ago.  It also stirs your imagination about what kind of an experience that would be.  Fortunately, somebody knew this would make for an entertaining movie and so here we are.  But the race was only used as a template.  Everything else was made up.  And the filmmakers sure went in a wacky direction.  You should probably file this piece under “Live Action Cartoon”.

In the good guy camp there’s The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis (Winchester ’73)) with his impeccable white outfits, worldly knowledge, sophisticated demeanor, top of the line automobile and perfect teeth that sparkle when he smiles.  In the bad guy camp there’s Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon (Grumpier Old Men)) with his all black attire, mean spirited attitude, propensity to clumsily fail in every endeavor, self-made monstrosity of a racecar and long twirl-y mustache.  Basically he’s a Snidely Whiplash rip off (that character debuted six years earlier).

Natalie Wood (Miracle of 34^th Street) plays a reporter and fierce women’s rights advocate who covers the race from start to finish.  This could’ve been a much stronger character but unfortunately she keeps getting into situations over her head and eventually becomes the typical damsel in distress.  Making this move is a bit of a slap in the face because she bails both The Great Leslie and Professor Fate out of some dicey situations throughout the race and her reward is to get stripped down, tied up and threatened by some eurotrash asshole.

But overall this is an incredibly fun adventure comedy.  And there’s a huge emphasis on both of those parts.  For instance the movie opens with The Great Leslie and Professor Fate trading off daredevil stunts like parachuting out of a hot air balloon and rocketing down a stretch of railroad track at hundreds of miles per hour.  The race itself is filled with colorful settings like the American west, the Antarctic and eastern Europe.  And the two opponents have to overcome adversity around every corner.  Remember this takes place in the early 1900’s so if their car breaks down they have to fix it themselves, rely on their own navigation skills as maps aren’t totally reliable and finding gas is a recurring issue.

The comedy is a different thing.  I mean I love it but not everyone is gonna go for the extremely zany jokes like Professor Fate using a comically large crossbow to shoot at The Great Leslie, or staging a colossal pie fight with everyone getting plastered head to toe in custards and preserves.  All of the jokes are very old timey, even for when the film was made in the mid 60’s.

Every time I go back to this picture it just amazes me how big of a production it is.  The idea is ambitious and luckily we get the full treatment that matches the true scope of the premise.  This sucker is two hours and forty mins long with an overture, an intermission, two musical numbers and the last half hour turns into The Prisoner of Zenda which involves a plot to have Professor Fate impersonate a prince so that evil folks in the regime can gain power.  It’s jam packed with so many mini storylines and grand set pieces and great actors and a fantastic score by Henry Mancini and etc.

Blake Edwards did this after making the first two Pink Panther movies back to back so he was on a helluva roll.  His films tend to get a little sidetracked after a while though.  It’s like he gets bored two thirds in, his mind wanders and then suddenly he snaps out of it and realizes he has to wrap this thing up.  But his cartoonish yet dry sense of humor coupled with his straightforward way of filming is something I really dig.  He lets his actors, costumes and sets do all the work.  He’s simply there to make sure everyone is in frame and in focus.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say The Great Race is an acquired taste.  Either you’re gonna enjoy the exaggerated craziness or find it annoying from the first scene.  It’s not really a “just stick with it, trust me” kinda picture.  But in my book this is a tremendous big time Hollywood type film with star power and enormous vision and all that shit that goes into the making of an epic.  It lives up to the title.  This race right here is pretty damn great guys.

No Escape (1994)

This feels like a gumbo pot full of a bunch of different movies but the one I can pick out most distinctly is Escape From New York.  The general concept of sealing off an entire island and turning it into a prison without your usual cells and guards and tossing in a fresh con with a mean ass loner attitude is the obvious lift.  But there’s different stuff too like the angle of a relatively peaceful village taking in a stranger with a hazy past and warring factions that the protagonist gets in the middle of.  You put all that together and the result ain’t half bad.

I hadn’t seen No Escape since it came out and expectations were very low going in because no one ever talks about it and I was skeptical of how hacky the concept was going to come off.  But it turns out I started diggin’ it almost immediately.  After some initial cheap B sci-fi movie sets and effects depicting what the dystopian future of 2022 will be like (your usual dust storms, giant floating holographic heads and metallic boxy trains whizzing around on a single rail track) things really start to pick up.  The first half hour is nonstop with Robbins (Ray Liotta (Hannibal)) defying evil warden Michael Lerner (Radioland Murders) and then getting shipped off to the remote atoll to fend for himself.  When he arrives he’s faced with the two opposing gangs that have their own little territory.  Marek (Stuart Wilson (Lethal Weapon 3)) is the leader of the ruthless barbaric gang and the Father (Lance Henriksen (Dog Day Afternoon)) is the leader of the good forget-the-past-let’s-start-over gang.  Robbins doesn’t want to have anything to do with either side, he just wants off the damn island.

The action is alright, not great.  There aren’t any badass “holy shit” kinda moments but Liotta is convincing as a mystery man with a military background that can break your neck in an instant if he chooses.  There’s a psychotic and even suicidal edge to Robbins that makes the performance and the movie as a whole go down easier.  I would totally watch another installment with this stoic character who doesn’t say much and lets his actions speak for themselves.

The non-action stuff is surprisingly strong though.  Henriksen is a gem as always in this nurturing mentor role.  The wisdom and humanity the Father is trying to infuse into his community of cons is genuinely inspiring.  The speech he gives during a funeral for his fallen comrades after a devastating night raid by Marek is particularly beautiful.

Speaking of Marek I want to like this guy but he makes it difficult.  He’s just a little too lame.  Stuart Wilson’s a cool actor but he plays the character all sophisticated by using haughty language, sporting a well groomed beard (although with long semi-dreaded hair) and smiles a helluva lot showing off those perfect white teeth.  In order to make this villain appear edgier they gave him these pins that go through the bridge of his nose and dressed him in black junky battle armor.  The attempt to make him blend more with his crazed followers, who have sharpened teeth or are covered from head to toe in black mud, doesn’t work.  The filmmakers clearly didn’t know what they wanted and they ended up with an unsuccessful clash of ideas.  Although admittedly it’s sort of interesting to see this cultured brute type tried out because it’s hard to tell on paper if that would come together.  Perhaps in the right instance it still can but this film provides unconvincing evidence.  Oh well.

This was directed by Martin Campbell and he’s a bit underrated in my opinion.  Sure he made the notoriously terrible Green Lantern but he also did what are considered to be the two best James Bond movies ever made, GoldenEye and Casino Royale.  And that’s fine (not really a big Bond fan) but the one piece of his that stands out for me is The Mask of Zorro.  It’s such a kickass action adventure extravaganza and if you haven’t seen it in a while you should seriously consider re-upping.  And with all this under his belt and more (Vertical Limit, Edge of Darkness) he’s rarely brought up.  That’s weird to me.

On No Escape Campbell turns in a solid effort.  He may not have a discernable style (perhaps a reason why no one discuses him) but he does know how to handle his action/character development balance.  And if he has a trademark it’s that he manages to make what you’re watching feel important.  I wanted to see Robbins succeed and for the word to get out about the unthinkable shit that’s going on in the prison and on the island.  The world needs to know!

So this picture is pretty fun in my opinion.  There’s plenty to like here and even the shit that doesn’t work gives you a little something to think about.