Yes, true believers, I'm taking a short vacation before the New Year's holiday to recharge the creative batteries. Considering that, aside from this blog, I'm also trying to get a book of poetry published, enter a playwriting contest, and write, direct, and produce my own no-budget film, I really got tuckered out over the holidays. So, that equals no Movie Monday this week.
But don't worry, next week I'll be back with a review of...oh, what's that thing called...a movie, right! I have such a problem with short-term memory...uh, where was I? Oh, screw it. Anyway, hope everyone had a merry Christmas and wishing you and yours a happy new year from Justin Swartz, the Bargain Bin Barbarian, at Movie Monday!
Monday, December 29, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Movie Monday 03: El Mariachi
Well folks, I only have two episodes left to go on that Beast King Go Lion box set I got as an early Christmas gift, so I decided to head to Borders and see if any more of them existed. What I got instead was Robert Rodriguez's first flick, El Mariachi, on sale for $7.99. Was it worth it? Read on...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All I wanted was to be a mariachi, like my ancestors. But the city I thought would bring me luck brought only a curse."
--Carlos Gallardo as The Mariachi, El Mariachi
The very first independent film I ever saw was Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi. It was on a stuffy August night about three years ago when I was still living with my parents. I lived in an apartment attached to their house, and I was restless--no job, barely any money, and really no friends to speak of. I needed some serious cheering up.
I went down to my local Lackluster (oh, I’m sorry, did I say that? I meant Blockbuster) store and went scouring through the action DVDs, looking for something to take my mind off my current life situation. What I found was El Mariachi, which I had heard about online and read some reviews of. Everyone was praising it as "a triumph" and "a movie miracle," which probably meant that I was going to hate it.
Boy, was I ever wrong. El Mariachi is one hell of a movie, and don’t you let anyone tell you any different.
The setup is simple: a nameless mariachi, or musician in Spanish, comes to a town near the Mexican border, hoping to find work playing the guitar. He wants to be a mariachi, like his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him; it’s the only desire he’s ever known. Simultaneously, a gangster named Azul has just been busted out of prison on the edge of town after his old boss, Moco, tried to rub him out.
What do Azul and the Mariachi have in common? They both carry guitar cases, only Azul’s is full of weapons. Azul goes around town, killing Moco’s boys. Meanwhile, the Mariachi is two steps behind him, trying to get a job. It’s on one of these junkets that he meets Domino, a sexy bar owner who finds him odd and doesn’t know what to make of his desire to be nothing more than a guitar player.
When the Mariachi tries to get a hotel room, the hotel clerk makes the connection between the guitar case and assumes that the Mariachi is Azul. He calls Moco’s men, and luckily, the Mariachi escapes with his guitar intact...but he has to kill four men to do it.
The Mariachi returns to Domino’s bar and confesses to her what has just happened, and after convincing her not to call the police, they seem to reach an understanding--the Mariachi will play in her bar for room and board, and she has some new nighttime entertainment. Meanwhile, Azul and Moco keep going back and forth over some owed money, and Moco’s men keep trying to track down Azul...but they keep mistaking the Mariachi for the hitman, mostly because they both carry guitar cases.
Have I mentioned yet that this movie is not even in English? It’s in Spanish, available subtitled in English. And if this sounds absolutely stupid to you and something that deserves to be in the bargain bin, then shame on you, because you’re missing out on a simple yet very entertaining movie.
Because there are no major stars in this film, and director Rodriguez was the only real crew on hand, the performances are very natural, very real, almost like we’re spying on these peoples’ lives. Carlos Gallardo, Rodriguez’s best friend since high school who had aspirations of being an actor, clocks in as The Mariachi, and he probably gives the best performance out of all the actors. You can tell that he’s comfortable and in control throughout the entire film, and even though it’s in a foreign language, a lot can be told from the expression on someone’s face, and Carlos’s speaks volumes.
Consuelo Gomez, who played Domino, was the only one who had any kind of acting experience, according to Rodriguez. She’s also the only actor on this gig who got paid any kind of money during filming. Consuelo had a great challenge here--she had to act like she wasn’t interested in The Mariachi, and really sell it, so that when she says that she’s staying on his side near the end of the film, the moment has real meaning and cements their relationship. It’s very subtle, but she pulls it off. As an added note, her off-base humor during the bathtub scene was very entertaining.
Peter Marquardt, who Rodriguez met in a medical testing facility while trying to raise money to shoot El Mariachi, plays Moco, the main bandido gangster in this film. Dressed perpetually in white and always wearing his sunglasses, Peter didn’t know any Spanish at all--he was fed his lines phonetically off a cue card by Carlos, The Mariachi. The result is nothing short of an iron clad, mean-as-all-hell villain, and when he finally gets his, it really does make you want to cheer.
The film itself is really something to marvel at. The editing and pacing are matched so well to the acting that you wonder how Rodriguez pulled it off. Well, here’s the clincher: he had made about 40 short films with his friends on video and film cameras before he made El Mariachi, so it was truly a case where the guy just knew what he was doing. The plot may leave something to be desired for the more high-class crowd of "indie" film viewers, but Rodriguez certainly didn’t skimp when it came to fun and entertainment.
You might notice some slight mistakes in here as well. One guitar case had a wooden top; you’ll catch it sometimes when the cuts aren’t as quick. In one instance, Domino is looking off-axis (she’s looking to her right, and The Mariachi is looking to his right). A Playboy sign on the wall in Azul’s bachelor pad suddenly disappears a few scenes later. And of course, the biggest mistake (which was not really a mistake at all) was having the actors dress in the same clothes throughout the entire shoot. By the end of the movie, The Mariachi should have bought a new shirt, not a new guitar.
Rodriguez explains in his book Rebel Without A Crew: The Making of El Mariachi that he used a borrowed 16mm camera to do a two-week shoot and ended up with an 81-minute film. He edited the film on videotape using a dual-deck VCR. He shot without sound, or what they call MOS in the film business, and recorded all the sound effects and dialogue afterwards and edited it back in from his single-track tape recorder. He then submitted it to the Sundance film festival, where it won the audience award and was picked up by Columbia Pictures for theatrical distribution.
El Mariachi went on to make $2,000,000 domestically.
It was made for only $6,000.
A movie miracle indeed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All I wanted was to be a mariachi, like my ancestors. But the city I thought would bring me luck brought only a curse."
--Carlos Gallardo as The Mariachi, El Mariachi
The very first independent film I ever saw was Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi. It was on a stuffy August night about three years ago when I was still living with my parents. I lived in an apartment attached to their house, and I was restless--no job, barely any money, and really no friends to speak of. I needed some serious cheering up.
I went down to my local Lackluster (oh, I’m sorry, did I say that? I meant Blockbuster) store and went scouring through the action DVDs, looking for something to take my mind off my current life situation. What I found was El Mariachi, which I had heard about online and read some reviews of. Everyone was praising it as "a triumph" and "a movie miracle," which probably meant that I was going to hate it.
Boy, was I ever wrong. El Mariachi is one hell of a movie, and don’t you let anyone tell you any different.
The setup is simple: a nameless mariachi, or musician in Spanish, comes to a town near the Mexican border, hoping to find work playing the guitar. He wants to be a mariachi, like his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him; it’s the only desire he’s ever known. Simultaneously, a gangster named Azul has just been busted out of prison on the edge of town after his old boss, Moco, tried to rub him out.
What do Azul and the Mariachi have in common? They both carry guitar cases, only Azul’s is full of weapons. Azul goes around town, killing Moco’s boys. Meanwhile, the Mariachi is two steps behind him, trying to get a job. It’s on one of these junkets that he meets Domino, a sexy bar owner who finds him odd and doesn’t know what to make of his desire to be nothing more than a guitar player.
When the Mariachi tries to get a hotel room, the hotel clerk makes the connection between the guitar case and assumes that the Mariachi is Azul. He calls Moco’s men, and luckily, the Mariachi escapes with his guitar intact...but he has to kill four men to do it.
The Mariachi returns to Domino’s bar and confesses to her what has just happened, and after convincing her not to call the police, they seem to reach an understanding--the Mariachi will play in her bar for room and board, and she has some new nighttime entertainment. Meanwhile, Azul and Moco keep going back and forth over some owed money, and Moco’s men keep trying to track down Azul...but they keep mistaking the Mariachi for the hitman, mostly because they both carry guitar cases.
Have I mentioned yet that this movie is not even in English? It’s in Spanish, available subtitled in English. And if this sounds absolutely stupid to you and something that deserves to be in the bargain bin, then shame on you, because you’re missing out on a simple yet very entertaining movie.
Because there are no major stars in this film, and director Rodriguez was the only real crew on hand, the performances are very natural, very real, almost like we’re spying on these peoples’ lives. Carlos Gallardo, Rodriguez’s best friend since high school who had aspirations of being an actor, clocks in as The Mariachi, and he probably gives the best performance out of all the actors. You can tell that he’s comfortable and in control throughout the entire film, and even though it’s in a foreign language, a lot can be told from the expression on someone’s face, and Carlos’s speaks volumes.
Consuelo Gomez, who played Domino, was the only one who had any kind of acting experience, according to Rodriguez. She’s also the only actor on this gig who got paid any kind of money during filming. Consuelo had a great challenge here--she had to act like she wasn’t interested in The Mariachi, and really sell it, so that when she says that she’s staying on his side near the end of the film, the moment has real meaning and cements their relationship. It’s very subtle, but she pulls it off. As an added note, her off-base humor during the bathtub scene was very entertaining.
Peter Marquardt, who Rodriguez met in a medical testing facility while trying to raise money to shoot El Mariachi, plays Moco, the main bandido gangster in this film. Dressed perpetually in white and always wearing his sunglasses, Peter didn’t know any Spanish at all--he was fed his lines phonetically off a cue card by Carlos, The Mariachi. The result is nothing short of an iron clad, mean-as-all-hell villain, and when he finally gets his, it really does make you want to cheer.
The film itself is really something to marvel at. The editing and pacing are matched so well to the acting that you wonder how Rodriguez pulled it off. Well, here’s the clincher: he had made about 40 short films with his friends on video and film cameras before he made El Mariachi, so it was truly a case where the guy just knew what he was doing. The plot may leave something to be desired for the more high-class crowd of "indie" film viewers, but Rodriguez certainly didn’t skimp when it came to fun and entertainment.
You might notice some slight mistakes in here as well. One guitar case had a wooden top; you’ll catch it sometimes when the cuts aren’t as quick. In one instance, Domino is looking off-axis (she’s looking to her right, and The Mariachi is looking to his right). A Playboy sign on the wall in Azul’s bachelor pad suddenly disappears a few scenes later. And of course, the biggest mistake (which was not really a mistake at all) was having the actors dress in the same clothes throughout the entire shoot. By the end of the movie, The Mariachi should have bought a new shirt, not a new guitar.
Rodriguez explains in his book Rebel Without A Crew: The Making of El Mariachi that he used a borrowed 16mm camera to do a two-week shoot and ended up with an 81-minute film. He edited the film on videotape using a dual-deck VCR. He shot without sound, or what they call MOS in the film business, and recorded all the sound effects and dialogue afterwards and edited it back in from his single-track tape recorder. He then submitted it to the Sundance film festival, where it won the audience award and was picked up by Columbia Pictures for theatrical distribution.
El Mariachi went on to make $2,000,000 domestically.
It was made for only $6,000.
A movie miracle indeed.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Movie Monday 02 - 29 Palms
Well folks, the winter season is in the air, the cold weather has frozen my mother's hair. So, without further ado (and so I can get back to watching the first box set of Beast King Go Lion my friend Matt got me for Christmas), here is Movie Monday #2, of the 2003 independent thriller 29 Palms.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“What’s your name, anyway?”
Rachael Leigh Cook as The Waitress, 29 Palms
I’ve never been a huge fan of independent films. I don’t know what the reason is, but I think it has something to do with most of them being about absolutely nothing worthwhile and not coming close to entertaining me in any way, shape or form. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by 29 Palms, a 2003 “indie” I picked up during my Black Friday shopping bonanza when I was visiting family in Uniontown, PA. This film has some serious star power behind it for being an independently produced flick, such as Chris O’Donnell, Jeremy Davies, and Rachael Leigh Cook. I also laughed my butt off at this very quirky neo-noir from 2003, so let’s jump right in.
This story is told in a non-linear style, so it gets a little confusing at first. None of the characters have any names, but are addressed by their stereotypes--The Waitress, The Drifter, The Judge, The Chief, The Hitman--you get the idea. The movie opens with The Drifter (a very soft-spoken Jeremy Davies) discovering that The Judge (a very pissed-off Michael Lerner) has voted against expansion of an Indian casino on a nearby reservation, due to being bribed with more money from Las Vegas builders.
The Drifter, always out to defend the little man, attempts to reason with The Judge, who instead assumes that The Drifter is an undercover FBI agent investigating his operations. The Judge meets with The Chief, a hilariously stereotyped Indian who accepts The Judge’s explanation that The Drifter is undercover FBI, and orders his men to go kill him (which prompts the line, “They’re white people--everything we do amazes them.”). When The Drifter arrives home, he sees that The Chief’s men have killed his girlfriend instead, and after a quick foot chase, he ends up in the desert, wandering.
Enter The Hitman (Chris O’Donnell). He’s paid $200,000 in a black bag to finish the job The Chief’s men screwed up, and when he goes into the men’s bathroom to count it, a perverted Security Guard (Jon Polito) who’s currently masturbating to the women’s bathroom spies the bag of money and decides to steal it. By some miracle of God, this numbskull makes off with the bag of money, but because The Hitman shot him in their struggle, he passes out at the wheel and drives into a fence.
Thus begins the dark ferris wheel of comedy, crime, and greed that drives 29 Palms. In the second act of the film, it seems like everyone gets their hands on the black bag at one point or another (expect for Keith David, who plays a very convincing small-town sheriff), a lot is shown rather than said (a technique that is hard to master in fiction writing), and somehow, everyone gets what’s coming to them at the end.
The style of this movie is really something to be commended. The script, while not calling for any specific names for any of the characters, also didn’t call for any specific time period. There are modern weapons and modern words and phrases, but there are older cars and buildings, along with older clothes and older technology (I don’t think I spotted a single computer in the whole movie). Plus, my favorite 70’s car, the AMC Pacer, makes an appearance in this film as the car The Waitress (Rachael Leigh Cook) uses to run over The Cop (Michael Rapaport) before she kills The Drifter.
This is one independent film where the casting couldn’t have been better. Jeremy Davies has the perfect look and temperament for The Drifter, a man who has lost everything that he loves and suddenly finds it again. Rachael Leigh Cook is equally perfect as The Waitress, the girl who hooks up with The Drifter originally to get his money, but instead ends up with his heart. Jon Polito is an absolute riot as The Security Guard with too much time on his hands (sorry, couldn’t resist) and represents the sometimes-comedic consequences of our actions.
Chris O’Donnell has grown up considerably since his Batman & Robin days, as has his acting chops. I think casting him against type as The Hitman in this film showed an extra dimension to his talent that hadn’t been seen before. Make sure you watch past the credits to the end of the movie--there’s a conspiratorial wink at the audience that is pure Chris O’Donnell. Michael Rapaport is slightly miscast as a duplicitous cop who roughhouses everyone and has no respect for the law that he is supposed to uphold. This was the one role in the film that I just didn’t understand. I suppose this stems from the fact that I’ve never found him to be very funny and never liked his brand of humor, so this is probably just a personal quibble (he did, however, get in a very funny line to Jon Polito that went, “Go ahead! Shoot him, limpdick! I won’t shoot you!”).
The music is something to be talked about as well. Stemming from blues rock to adult alternative, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman has assembled a stunning soundtrack that ends with one of the best songs to end a dusty, sand-strewn neo-noir like this one: “These Are The Days” by World Party. I had never heard this song before, but it suited the film so well that I found myself re-watching the end credits just so I could hear the tune over and over again. The musical score composed by Mario Grigorov was also noteworthy, filled with electric guitars and trippy jazz saxophones.
I had very few complaints about 29 Palms. It was an extremely well-written, well-acted, and well-directed independent neo-noir that checks its pretentiousness at the door and does what indie film does best: shows life as it really is, not how Hollywood portrays it. If that’s what you’re hungry for, then 29 Palms should fill that tummy nicely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“What’s your name, anyway?”
Rachael Leigh Cook as The Waitress, 29 Palms
I’ve never been a huge fan of independent films. I don’t know what the reason is, but I think it has something to do with most of them being about absolutely nothing worthwhile and not coming close to entertaining me in any way, shape or form. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised by 29 Palms, a 2003 “indie” I picked up during my Black Friday shopping bonanza when I was visiting family in Uniontown, PA. This film has some serious star power behind it for being an independently produced flick, such as Chris O’Donnell, Jeremy Davies, and Rachael Leigh Cook. I also laughed my butt off at this very quirky neo-noir from 2003, so let’s jump right in.
This story is told in a non-linear style, so it gets a little confusing at first. None of the characters have any names, but are addressed by their stereotypes--The Waitress, The Drifter, The Judge, The Chief, The Hitman--you get the idea. The movie opens with The Drifter (a very soft-spoken Jeremy Davies) discovering that The Judge (a very pissed-off Michael Lerner) has voted against expansion of an Indian casino on a nearby reservation, due to being bribed with more money from Las Vegas builders.
The Drifter, always out to defend the little man, attempts to reason with The Judge, who instead assumes that The Drifter is an undercover FBI agent investigating his operations. The Judge meets with The Chief, a hilariously stereotyped Indian who accepts The Judge’s explanation that The Drifter is undercover FBI, and orders his men to go kill him (which prompts the line, “They’re white people--everything we do amazes them.”). When The Drifter arrives home, he sees that The Chief’s men have killed his girlfriend instead, and after a quick foot chase, he ends up in the desert, wandering.
Enter The Hitman (Chris O’Donnell). He’s paid $200,000 in a black bag to finish the job The Chief’s men screwed up, and when he goes into the men’s bathroom to count it, a perverted Security Guard (Jon Polito) who’s currently masturbating to the women’s bathroom spies the bag of money and decides to steal it. By some miracle of God, this numbskull makes off with the bag of money, but because The Hitman shot him in their struggle, he passes out at the wheel and drives into a fence.
Thus begins the dark ferris wheel of comedy, crime, and greed that drives 29 Palms. In the second act of the film, it seems like everyone gets their hands on the black bag at one point or another (expect for Keith David, who plays a very convincing small-town sheriff), a lot is shown rather than said (a technique that is hard to master in fiction writing), and somehow, everyone gets what’s coming to them at the end.
The style of this movie is really something to be commended. The script, while not calling for any specific names for any of the characters, also didn’t call for any specific time period. There are modern weapons and modern words and phrases, but there are older cars and buildings, along with older clothes and older technology (I don’t think I spotted a single computer in the whole movie). Plus, my favorite 70’s car, the AMC Pacer, makes an appearance in this film as the car The Waitress (Rachael Leigh Cook) uses to run over The Cop (Michael Rapaport) before she kills The Drifter.
This is one independent film where the casting couldn’t have been better. Jeremy Davies has the perfect look and temperament for The Drifter, a man who has lost everything that he loves and suddenly finds it again. Rachael Leigh Cook is equally perfect as The Waitress, the girl who hooks up with The Drifter originally to get his money, but instead ends up with his heart. Jon Polito is an absolute riot as The Security Guard with too much time on his hands (sorry, couldn’t resist) and represents the sometimes-comedic consequences of our actions.
Chris O’Donnell has grown up considerably since his Batman & Robin days, as has his acting chops. I think casting him against type as The Hitman in this film showed an extra dimension to his talent that hadn’t been seen before. Make sure you watch past the credits to the end of the movie--there’s a conspiratorial wink at the audience that is pure Chris O’Donnell. Michael Rapaport is slightly miscast as a duplicitous cop who roughhouses everyone and has no respect for the law that he is supposed to uphold. This was the one role in the film that I just didn’t understand. I suppose this stems from the fact that I’ve never found him to be very funny and never liked his brand of humor, so this is probably just a personal quibble (he did, however, get in a very funny line to Jon Polito that went, “Go ahead! Shoot him, limpdick! I won’t shoot you!”).
The music is something to be talked about as well. Stemming from blues rock to adult alternative, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman has assembled a stunning soundtrack that ends with one of the best songs to end a dusty, sand-strewn neo-noir like this one: “These Are The Days” by World Party. I had never heard this song before, but it suited the film so well that I found myself re-watching the end credits just so I could hear the tune over and over again. The musical score composed by Mario Grigorov was also noteworthy, filled with electric guitars and trippy jazz saxophones.
I had very few complaints about 29 Palms. It was an extremely well-written, well-acted, and well-directed independent neo-noir that checks its pretentiousness at the door and does what indie film does best: shows life as it really is, not how Hollywood portrays it. If that’s what you’re hungry for, then 29 Palms should fill that tummy nicely.
Monday, December 8, 2008
MOVIE MONDAY NO. 1 - Dec. 08, 2008
Greetings! My name is Justin A. Swartz, and I'm often called the 'Bargain Bin Barbarian' by my friends, due to my sifting through music trade stores, discount stores, and other places for cheap movies. So, I thought I'd start a blog that featured my thoughts on these specific bargain films. Let's jump right in with the very first Movie Monday, Final Analysis.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“You ever think that maybe you picked the wrong sister?”
--Pual Guilfoyle as Mike O’Brien
When I was ten, I used to get oodles of money from my Aunt Barb. If she had change in her purse, it was mine. If she dropped a twenty on the floor (intentionally), she would declare it “dirty money” and give it to me. Somewhere between eighteen and now this practice stopped for unknown reasons. Over the recent Thanksgiving holiday, Aunt Barb handed me forty dollars on Black Friday and said, “Buy yourself something nice.”
Being the lover of cheap movies that I am, I headed to the Ollie’s Bargain Outlet located in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the hometown I was visiting over Turkey Day. Boy, did I ever luck out when I saw the thin, worn wire-bound rack of assorted $2.99 DVDs arranged by the cash registers. I went nuts. My mother politely said, “Don’t spend it all,” and let me be. My father said, “Listen to your mother,” and left as well. I disregarded both their statements and went digging. You’re talking to a guy who, three years ago, was living on the paltry sum of $210 a month from welfare and learned how to dig through bargain bins and music trade stores to get his DVD fix, so this rack at Ollie’s was like discovering an oasis in the Sahara.
One of my better finds that day was the Warner Brothers’ 1992 psychological thriller Final Analysis, starring Richard Gere (who also executive produced this romp), Kim Basinger, and Uma Thurman. Gere plays Isaac Barr, a noteworthy San Francisco psychiatrist who is frequently called on to testify at criminal trials, due to his extensive knowledge and study of the criminal mind.
One of his patients, Diana Baylor (played by a very provocative Thurman), is suffering from a recurring dream about arranging flowers. She insists that the answer to this dream lies with her sister Heather (played by Basinger), who she suggests Isaac should meet.
They do, and they meet several more times, Isaac becoming more and more involved with Heather. During the process of their entanglement, it’s revealed that Heather is married to Jimmy, a Greek mobster played one-dimensionally by Eric Roberts. Eric was in prime villain form here, and was also in peak physical condition as evident by the many scenes he plays without a shirt on. It’s clear that Jimmy is a manipulative jerk when it comes to Heather, whom he’s simply using for a sexual release or two, and Heather comes to a decision to leave Jimmy for Isaac.
In the meantime, Isaac has learned that Heather is married to Jimmy and has his best friend, district attorney Mike O’Brien (Paul Guilfoyle in a devilishly funny pre-CSI role), look up his record. Jimmy is under investigation by the Justice Department for ripping off low-income housing and keeping it all for himself. When Mike suggests to Isaac that he stop seeing Heather immediately, Gere injects the right amount of desperation into his character’s voice by saying, “She’s not the kind of girl you stop seeing.”
If this all sounds like a campy soap opera at this point, I admit that Final Analysis starts off that way, until it’s revealed that Heather suffers from a little-known disorder called pathological intoxication. With this disorder, even the smallest amount of alcohol will send her into psychotic rages and fits...which gives her the perfect defense for murdering her husband Jimmy with a weight-lifting dumbbell. It’s right around this point in the film that things start to get twisted and very interesting, and I have no intention of spoiling any more of it for you.
I’ve always felt that Richard Gere has been handed a lot of roles that make him come off as a complete dork. This role in Final Analysis is one that he can really sink his teeth into and seems to suit him and his temperament rather well. There’s an early scene where he comes on to Basinger’s character in his home and drops all pretenses of professional ethics by asking her out to coffee. There’s no music, no fancy props, no fancy camera angles, just him and Basinger doing their magnetic chemistry thing. It’s one of the standout scenes that really sold their attraction to each other, and it couldn’t have been done without an actor like Richard Gere and without such a well-written role.
Basinger is part seductress, part psychotic murderer, and part scarred victim. She plays all three parts of Heather’s personality to the hilt, but the psychotic murderer side of her (i.e. when she sticks it to Jimmy) is hugely over-the-top and did not match any of the other acting in the film. It’s quite the switch to see Basinger act like someone off their medication for a week, but I think she’s better off sticking with more subtle roles.
Thurman blew me away in this one, which is not a role she’s widely known for. There is a bit of a tag at the end of the movie that makes you wonder if she wasn’t the one who instigated the “kill Jimmy and pin it on Isaac” plan, and she plays it with the expertise that one would expect from a seasoned actress, such as Basinger or Gere. I think Thurman is one of the most under-appreciated actresses in the film business today, and her turn as Diana in Final Analysis is evidence that she was on her way to great things back in ’92.
The supporting cast of Guilfoyle, Roberts, and a very stereotyped Keith David as the police detective out to pin something on Gere is directed well enough, but I thought that Roberts’s character of Jimmy was so one-dimensional that it was almost like a satire of Greek gangsters. He lives in a plush apartment, soaks in a bubble bath every night, his wife removes her clothes on command...you see what I’m saying? He’s sinister and controlling enough, which Roberts is nothing short of perfect when he plays those characters. I just wish there was some more dimension in his character, like a snippet or two about how he came to power in San Francisco.
The style of this movie is something to talk about too. Fashioned like a Hitchcock thriller or Laura-esque film noir, but shot in 1992, it really adds to the throwback/homage feeling of the plot, the characters, the setting, and the production design. Even the lighthouse, the scene of the final confrontation, is ripped right from an old 1940’s noir mystery, with rusty catwalk and spiral staircase. Hats off to production designer Dean Tavoularis and director Phil Joanau for getting the mood just right.
Overall, Final Analysis was a real nail-biter that starts off slow and ends with a righteously big bang. I highly recommend it to fans of the Gere-Basinger combination or anyone looking for a great thriller that honors the masters of yesteryear.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)