Harefooted Halloween: The Purge

What I Liked: Nada.  Well ok, that one fight in the game room with the billiard table, the pinball machine and the ax is kinda fun.

What I Didn’t Like: Everything else.

Overall Impressions: Look, I’ve always thought the idea for The Purge was pretty stupid so when I finally sat down to see it I was a little surprised that it was even worse than I expected.  Nothing in the film makes a lick of sense or is all that compelling or suspenseful.

If this were a simple home invasion horror/thriller picture that took place in the regular world would it make a difference?  I argue yes, it would actually improve the thing.  I get that a huge part of the draw (or maybe the whole draw) is the crime-is-legal-one-night-a-year gimmick but in my opinion it detracts from the investment I’m supposed to have.  We know there’s no possibility of anyone coming to help the one family who’s fine with the idea of the purge but doesn’t participate themselves.  We also know there are no consequences for the intruders so again, why should I care?

I mean jeez, I could run down a long list of all the reasons why the framework for the film is total nonsense (which it wants us to take completely seriously by the way) like a good chunk of the country burns to the ground every year making a full recovery never achievable so commerce is basically fucked.  Yet everything seems to be hunky dory when it ain’t purging time.  But probably the biggest fuck up the filmmakers made when they put this crap together is they tell us that all crime is legal for twelve hours when I think they really meant bodily harm is legal.  So to be clear, every single crime on the books is fair game.  Sure, there are some bullshit exceptions like that the highest level government officials are off limits and only “class 4 weapons and lower can be used”, whatever that means, we never find out, but I doubt anyone with a murder boner is gonna give a flying fuck.  Anyway, shit like robbing banks, jewelry stores, cyber crimes, poisoning a water supply, creating your own army to wipe out entire cities (using class 4 weapons only of course), insurrection (without killing top officials of course) and so on is all totally fine!  The picture ignores this extremely ugly stuff even though the parameters allow for it.  What they really had in mind is what they show, physical one on one altercations, mostly murder.  It’s frickin’ weird how this slipped through.  I dunno, maybe they thought crafting very specific rules was going to be too hard for the audience to follow, plus “all crime is legal” has a cleaner nicer ring to it.  Whatever.

Boy, I hate to be this down on what should’ve been a fine thriller that just happened to be teed up on an idiotic, but ultimately ignorable, platform.  Unfortunately the setup and execution are so dumb I can’t get beyond it.  The most unique element of the film is also its worst aspect.  On top of that half the movie’s in the goddamn dark because the lights go out and we can’t see shit and can’t tell what the hell’s going on and every decision every character makes is infuriating and plot points are tediously predicable and the commentary and messaging is ham fisted as hell and, *sigh*, this thing sucks man.

Harefooted Halloween: Q (aka Q: The Winged Serpent)

What I Liked: Now this is a wacky straightforward story I can get behind.  A huge flying creature is going around NYC scooping up folks from rooftops and killing/eating them.  It’s up to the cops and one unsuspecting low-life civilian to stop it.  Sure, why not?

While Michael Moriarty’s (Troll, A Return to Salem’s Lot) character, Jimmy Quinn, is an annoying sleazebag his performance is good.  Quinn is a small time criminal with a checkered past who always blames others for his problems and leverages his unique knowledge about the monster for financial gain.  Moriarty nails this guy.  The way he speaks, his mannerisms and intensity all feel true to life.  I think we’re supposed to believe he has a heart of gold deep inside but we never really see that.  In a completely superfluous scene we find out he can play decent jazz piano which I guess is supposed to add dimension?  I dunno.  My point is while Quinn is irritating I can make a separation in my mind and appreciate the craft that went into the character.  Shoutout to Richard Rountree (Earthquake) who also gives a memorable performance as one of the cops investigating the bizarre deaths around town.

You know I gotta give it up for how they handled the dragon (I’m calling it that; throughout the movie they say “bird” but it has four legs, a pair of wings, a long tail, no feathers and is at least a hundred feet tall).  David Allen (The Howling, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Willow) and Randy Cook (Fright Night, Poltergeist II, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) use every trick in the book to sell it.  Stop motion animation, puppets, models, rear screen projection, POV angles, quick editing, etc.  And the end result doesn’t look half bad.  By that extension it doesn’t look half good either but for a low budget picture like this they did a totally admirable job.

That badass hand painted poster is fuckin’ cool as hell.  Boris Vallejo of Barbarella and National Lampoon’s Vacation fame did an awesome job.

What I Didn’t Like: This was a very rushed production with a relatively low budget so there’s a lot of head scratching in here.  A bunch of the time you’ll be asking yourself why is this person doing this?  Or where are they?  Or what’s going on now exactly?  Or how does no one in NYC notice an enormous flying beast going around murdering people and who nests in the top of the Chrysler Building?  Sure, you’re not supposed to take the film deadly seriously but it’s still a lot to accept.

They give an explanation as to why the dragon exists and that wasn’t necessary.  Supernatural elements in the form of ancient magic are introduced which I personally don’t care for.  I would’ve preferred the creature just exists to leave more mystery.  Asking why could’ve been explored in a sequel (there wasn’t one).

Overall Impressions: Certainly not for everyone.  It’s a mashup of Godzilla, Ray Harryhusen and Jaws with all the positives and negatives that come with that territory.  It’s a B picture so the script, acting and dialogue aren’t the best.  You also really need to suspend your disbelief with the base premise.  However, if you like the 1998 Godzilla there are plenty of similarities.

For what this is though I had a good time.  This is such an effects heavy project and they pulled off a miracle, especially since almost no pre-production was done.  Writer/director Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, The Stuff, writer: Maniac Cop) just shot stuff and worried about all the effects later which sounds like a nightmare to piece together.  But his team pulled through and the end result is a fun watchable creature feature.  Not only that but the score is nice, the cinematography is dynamic with lots of helicopter footage and even some parts that look like they were shot guerrilla style around NYC, the pacing is great with the dragon taking plenty of victims throughout, they got to shoot at the real Chrysler Building including the very top attic that naturally looks gloriously like a garbage dump and so on.  It’s kinda more impressive than an actual good movie.

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.