Ravenous (1999).

Review #2619: Ravenous.

Cast: 

Guy Pearce (Captain John Boyd), Robert Carlyle (F.W. Colqhoun / Colonel Ives), David Arquette (Private Cleaves), Jeremy Davies (Private Toffler), Jeffrey Jones (Colonel Hart), John Spencer (General Slauson), Stephen Spinella (Major Knox), Neal McDonough (Private Reich), Joseph Runningfox (George), Sheila Tousey (Martha), and Bill Brochtrup (Lindus) Directed by Antonia Bird.

Review: 

"Ravenous’ is more about social misfits than the whole seductive nature of power. I would like to think that someone who enjoyed it only as gallows humor would start to think. The metaphor of power and a society where we’re encouraged to be competitive is, to me, not a great society. As a European, observing early Californian history and making a film about that — I kind of believe Europeans were responsible for a lot of stuff that happened here. Robert Carlyle’s character represents that. The Europeans practiced genocide. I think the good things about America — we’re (Europeans) not responsible for.”

A long time ago, in a frontier not too far far away, there were people in this world that came out of a travelling party with survival coming by the one thing you could not expect, at least if you believe what survives in historical fact. Alfred Packer claimed that he survived a number of days on roots within a brutal wilderness of what was not quite the state of Colorado in the winter of 1874. Aside from being a petty thief, Packer was not exactly a consistent man with his stories of survival, so it perhaps came as the tiniest bit of surprise that it wasn't so much a man making a tall tale of survival to cover a robbery but instead a claim that he survived on the bones of his party members (to say nothing of the Donner Party from three decades prior, where a group of pioneers saw 30+ people perish and a few bones missing along the way). Anyway, Ted Griffin was a first-time screenwriter that had graduated Colgate University. All of a sudden, Ravenous was one of three screenplays that got sold to a studio in a week, with Fox 2000 slating a director with Milcho Manchevski (director of Before the Rain [1994]) by 1997. Shooting was done in Mexico alongside Slovakia that saw production squabbles between its producer and Machevski to the point where an attempted replacing with Raja Gosnell went nowhere. Antonia Bird was brought in to direct because of the recommendation of her business partner, Robert Carlyle. Bird was involved in theatre from the age of 17 with Coventry Rep and directed a total of four films (Priest [1994], Mad Love [1995], Face [1997]) alongside the various TV and theatre involved as both producer and director. She did not get everything she wanted for the finished film, as post-production saw a voiceover included alongside the quotes you see in the introduction (i.e: "He who fights the monster must make sure not to become a monster."- Friedrich Nietzsche is then followed with "Eat me!"- Anonymous) that she felt was "superfluous". Even with a budget of $12 million and an initial release in over a thousand theaters, Ravenous was not a hit at the time of release. 

This ended up being Bird's last feature film as a director, as she spent the rest of her time as a TV director until her death in 2013 at the age of 62. Such a pity for a movie with interest in the intensities of competitiveness. What Bird saw the movie as was the perils of consumption and all that comes with a focus on two people that happen be the embodiment of drug pusher and junkie (in a sea of folktale movies, going with a version of the Wendigo myth from native Algonquian folklore is pretty interesting). It isn't exactly a fight for survival in the woods type of movie, it isn't exactly a fight for revenge, it isn't exactly the kind of movie for everyone...and it is still pretty damn fun. It's the type of movie to absorb in all the absurdities and pleasures that come with its atmosphere and tremendously game cast that remind you as many times as possible that one really should eat to live as opposed to living to eat when it comes to horror and pitch-black humor (did I mention the off-kilter playing of music in banjos, violins and more from Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman?). This is the kind of movie that does wonder about people who maybe see others as mere meat slabs. Pearce is given a pretty thankless task if you want to play devil's advocate: a weary junkie with nowhere to actually run. It isn't a road to seeing him becone a hero, it is a road of actually knowing what one is beyond a string of meat and desires, where one must see if they can actually atone with all that they did. Undeniably, Carlyle runs away with the show with his devilish qualities worth seeing as basically a vampire, one that believes it is more courageous to walk with him than to walk against him. He plays around with who he is to others around him with a type of confidence that could only come from someone who really has lived the tricks of the trade and decided he liked the taste too much to let it go. The body count actually is a bit considerable despite the careful pace (in fact, you might be more squeamish about seeing meat than blood, save for one scene), and Jones* manages to play off the general absurdity of his situation in wayward elegance for a few chuckles (McDonough is not in it much, hut his intensity is worth a look). It is a movie filled ominous delight over what happens when power truly does seep into the flesh and the inevitable crash of junkie and dealer in lyrical darkness that is actually pretty fun. It takes plenty of time to get there among flesh, blood, and the stark terror of the frontier, but the ride is worth it at least once, I believe. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Happy Halloween. Hell of a time for a triple header, we will see you later for Halloween -The Week After: Crazy Eights.

*I would be remiss not to mention that Jones would later be charged in 2002 for crimes involving a minor involving posing for photographs that saw him sentenced to probation and become registered as a sex offender for life.

Scream 2.

Review #2593: Scream 2.

Cast: 

Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott), Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers), David Arquette (Dewey Riley), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Cici Cooper), Jamie Kennedy (Randy Meeks), Laurie Metcalf (Debbie Salt), Elise Neal (Hallie McDaniel), Jerry O'Connell (Derek Feldman), Timothy Olyphant (Mickey Altieri), Liev Schreiber (Cotton Weary), Lewis Arquette (Louis Hartley), Philip Pavel (Officer Andrews), Christopher Doyle (Officer Richards), Duane Martin (Joel), Rebecca Gayheart (Lois), Portia de Rossi (Murphy), with Roger L. Jackson (voice of Ghostface), David Warner (Gus Gold), Omar Epps (Phil Stevens), and Jada Pinkett (Maureen Evans)

Directed by Wes Craven (#474 - A Nightmare on Elm Street, #558 - Scream, #633 - Red Eye, #939 - Swamp Thing, #1156 - Wes Craven's New Nightmare, #2135 - The Last House on the Left, #2306 - The Hills Have Eyes, #2455 - Vampire in Brooklyn)

Review: 

To be perfectly honest, I never really got into Scream the way I expected to. Sure, I liked the first film (as released in December 1996) just fine, but I honestly forgot that I saw it way back in 2014 and honestly forgot that, yeah, there were pretty clever moments to serve as the attraction for folks that maybe squirm a bit when confronted with horror stuff in a horror movie*. Sure, it was the brainchild of Kevin Williamson being inspired by both his experiences watching horror films like Halloween (1978) and also the idea that maybe movies just make psychos more creative than actually create them. The opening sequence, well, that's the showstopper, and that's the one that got Miramax to buy into it and eventually corral Wes Craven into doing it. You basically got a who-dun-it with enough pieces for folks to enjoy putting together before the inevitable TV-to-the-head. It took a few weeks, but it became a hit that led to clamors for a sequel. Naturally, Williamson actually had a few ideas in mind for potential sequels pretty early (why entice buyers with one movie when you can sell the potential for a franchise?) and production for a second movie was greenlit three months after its release. After a brief fling with having Robert Rodriguez direct, Craven elected to return instead for a film that started filming in the summer for a winter release. By this point in time, Williamson attracted enough attention to become involved in TV with his development of Dawson's Creek, which meant that he shuttled between sets that saw most of the script pages for Scream 2 written when on set. A leak of a script (with one ending stated by Williamson as a "dummy draft" meant to keep details under wraps) on the Internet did not help matters, but the film was released on time to, well, enough success to inspire further sequels, with Scream 3 (which did not have Williamson back) coming out three years later in 2000.

I don't know, man. I did like this movie just fine, mainly when it actually does engage with the actual premise of gore and also with some of its ideas of just who would go around wearing a Ghostface mask after all that happened the first time around, but it really is a case where it almost outsmarts itself with actually getting to the point by the time its two-hour trek is over. The new characters prove to be more of a cipher than really developed, which is a curious move in what is meant to be a "guess who?" movie, and in general it just feels like a movie that needed more time in the oven. The opening sequence (involving a busy movie theater with death in the seats) probably sets too high of an expectation/delight from what actually happens afterwards, and that is saying something for something that pales a bit from what one saw in to open the first film. Campbell does carry the movie pretty well in the vulnerability of someone who I suppose would do better than most in living the hell of life after seeing people you know be murdered get turned into both a book and a film (or worse yet, get played by Tori Spelling) and then see it happen all over again (minus one quibble*). It goes a bit better when seeing the interactions between Cox and Arquette, who probably share the best scenes, mainly in seeing that tension slowly melt away for fondness that is a bit fun to see (it does get a bit distracting hearing that Broken Arrow cue again and again though) in the show of just how much fun-loving bravery can be enough in one guy when pooled against opportunism (or in a different scene with Cox, getting slapped for their trouble). It lifts the film plenty when compared to the new blood with O'Connell-Olyphant-Gellar-Neal, who, well, are just not the kind of folks to really roll with besides a mild flick of my eyes, particularly when I was more interested in the wormy nature of Schreiber (given a bit more to do from the last film, if you recall). 

You might remember Kennedy's character as the one who explained the rules of surviving a horror film in the previous movie, but I'll be honest with you: I don't care (geek or no geek, I think I'll take the bus). If you're going to dispatch anyone who happened to be around from a previous horror movie, if you're going to do kill someone off to raise the stakes, if you're going to do so in broad daylight, he fits the bill, so it is quite a way to go out. It probably isn't too much of a spoiler to say that one of the new blood ends up being a killer, and I have to say that the motive is actually pretty interesting, as if someone wanted to crib lovingly from Natural Born Killers (1994), but then it gets a bit too cute with its other dangling twist, because heaven forbid one killer isn't enough, no, it runs off the oldest tricks of the book in the guise of "cleverness", as if hanging around so long in plain sight (oh hi familiar face from TV) along with, well I'm sure you can get the rest. In general, there are a few fun moments in actual mayhem (and that one fateful moment of triumph) to make for a fairly decent sequel that gives you a few scares within its scrapes of gore and playful attempts at digging into familiar slasher territory that works more often than not.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Tiniest sidenote: When doing these cast listings, sometimes I have to adjust them because for whatever reason, billing is sometimes done *alphabetically* (as noted on the poster and on Wikipedia), which is the stupidest way to do credits. You know and I know who is the star, so why bother?

*You ever hear people whine about horror movies being too gruesome or possibly being a bad influence on the youth? I laugh too.

*The only quibble I have with Sidney comes in the sequence when she gets into a car-wreck. So she escapes a wrecked car, goes a couple of feet and decides, no, I need to go back to try and unmask Ghostface just because. Nay, I won't go to see if that cop on the hood has a gun so I can straight up shoot him, I'm just going to get close and- oh golly gee, the girl I'm with is dead! On an unrelated note, I do wonder if Sidney ever considers getting a gun in the sequels because, screw it, what could go wrong?

3000 Miles to Graceland.

Review #2578: 3000 Miles to Graceland.

Cast: 

Kurt Russell (Michael Zane), Kevin Costner (Thomas Jonathan "Murphy" Liebling), Courteney Cox (Cybil Waingrow), Christian Slater (Hanson), Kevin Pollak (U.S. Marshal Damitry), David Arquette (Gus), Jon Lovitz (Jay Peterson), Howie Long (Jack), Thomas Haden Church (U.S. Marshal Quigley), Bokeem Woodbine (Franklin), Ice-T (Hamilton), David A. Kaye (Jesse Waingrow), Louis Lombardi (Otto Sinclair), and Paul Anka (Pit Boss #1) Directed by Demian Lichenstein.

Review:

Believe it or not, I really was thinking of this as a potential "Acknowledged in August" candidate for some time. How could I resist? A Kurt Russell movie where he goes around dressed up like Elvis in an action flick that was a flop? How could it go wrong? Believe it or not, the original script for the film was done by a first-timer: Richard Recco, a New York electrician (as noted in this L.A. Times article of the time, which noted that he liked to paint in addition to being in an electricians union). Inspired by his love of the mystique of Elvis and thinking "hey, I could do that" when seeing an action movie, he studied the scripts of movies such as Dog Day Afternoon and True Romance for what became, well, a Hollywood movie. Demian Lichenstein (known mostly for his work in music videos and obscure movies), interested in a previous Recco script (which had been submitted into a Sundance Film Festival competition), got interested enough in the Elvis thing to where he brought it up to Kevin Costner in a meeting that got him to be interested as well. Lichenstein made enough contributions to the script by this point to where he shares the credit with Recco for the credits. The Franchise Pictures production apparently had enough creative differences to where Russell and Costner each made their own "cut" of the film to screen, with Russell focusing more on the romcom aspects and Costner doing, well, the version you see now. Made on a budget of over $47 million, the film was a substantial flop (yes, people chose Down to Earth and Hannibal on opening week), making less than half of the budget as a whole.

Naturally, the movie is set in Last Vegas during "International Elvis Week" where a bunch of robbers dress up in jumpsuits and glasses to get millions of dollars to get in and get out, and good lord, I swear this is somehow lower on the totem pole for Vegas heists than the 1960 version of Ocean's 11. How could the Costner version have passed? What fresh hell was present in the Russell "version" that things would've been better with a movie that starts with a fight between CG-rendered scorpions? I can't really say it would've been a better movie if it just focused on the heist and these robbers (mainly because it feels designed to short-change Slater, Woodbine, and Arquette*, with the latter not even being depicted getting shot to death), but good lord, this is just a listless movie to slog through, especially for 125 minutes. You could be listening to an entire Elvis album (okay I don't do albums, but even playing six of his songs would give you more of his stuff than what you get here, since they barely do any Elvis songs). Older folks might know that Russell played Elvis in a John Carpenter-directed TV movie in 1979 and also briefly acted in that Presley vehicle It Happened at the World's Fair (as released in 1963, where he kicked him in the shins). This is basically the litmus test for how much you like Russell as a presence in movies because even in crappy fare, he at least gives the idea of a neat conman more than, well, trying to stay on the level of Cox and survive the rest of the mayhem, which naturally rests on the lead surviving not one, but two gunshots because, wait for it, he was ready with a bullet-proof vest (what, never see a zombie movie?).  The most interesting about Costner's character is that he plays someone resentful of not being able to prove that they are the bastard son of Elvis. 

As I tried to shrug my shoulders at the sheer lunacy of taking that into account, I also had to try and play fair with an actor that I don't really find myself that fond of besides, what, Field of Dreams or Bull Durham* (Dances with Wolves lends credence to the theory that you can see a movie as an 8/10 but not actually love it that much)? This performance, resembling the ramblings of a homeless man (well...*), may actually make you appreciate The Postman (1997), because at least he seemed like he wanted to actually have fun with his weird ass fable as opposed to whatever the hell his deal is meant to be here. Aside from basically killing or blowing up anything that walks into his path, it reeks of a parody and yet he plays it so seriously and so joylessly that it doesn't even matter by the time the character finally kicks the bucket. There is very little energy for me to talk about Cox and the varied attempts at comedy (in a confused movie that has moms abandoning their kids to go to Idaho, because screw it), so why even try? Who cares what she tries to give in this movie? (hell, let's throw real questions: did anyone actually like Friends?) Having to spend any time with her or the on-screen son in Kaye (a precocious pickpocket kid - what a twist) probably makes a good tribute to the Elvis movies, specifically the corny parts you skip before hearing a song. So, in the unceremonious cleaning out of Slater, Woodbine, and Arquette in the first 40 minutes, you get a supporting cast (not counting Cox/Kaye because, well, no) of even more people who are given little to really do with Lovitz, Long, Ice-T, Church & Pollak, because good lord, how do you waste that much potential? There's just little zip to the lines given for basically filler (i.e. who cares about the authorities being one step behind in a movie where a robber getting away with crime basically seems certain), as if the array of editing choices (2001 era, woah buddy!) was supposed to be the showstopper. You don't care for the heist (what's to worry?), you don't care for the "romance", and you don't care for the villain, and at a certain point in the array of deaths (such as say, a "draw your weapon" one), you just want to get to the climax because at least it'll just be Russell and Costner trying to one-up each other. Simply put, what you get here is the ultimate take-it-or-leave-it stinker: not terrible but not nearly average enough to slip by for anything other than days of having absolutely nothing better to spend time with for lazy action days.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*Still not the best baseball movie. 

*What, who else doesn't drive to Taco Bell?

*Wrestling fans might remember this was the time when Arquette "won" the World Heavyweight Championship by this vignette, as done during the making of 3000 Miles to Graceland - WCW Monday Nitro - 1,000 Miles to Slamboree (Kurt Russell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox)

Movie Night: Scream.

Review #558: Scream.

Cast

Neve Campbell (Sidney Prescott), David Arquette (Dewey Riley), Courteney Cox (Gale Weathers), Matthew Lillard (Stuart), Skeet Ulrich (Billy), Rose McGowan (Tatum), Jamie Kennedy (Randy), Henry Winkler (Himbry), Roger Jackson (Phone Voice), and Drew Barrymore (Casey Becker) Directed by Wes Craven (#474 - A Nightmare on Elm Street)

Review

Scream essentially gave new life to the horror genre, with a self aware nature and much success that would lead to three sequels. But enough about the history, let's get to the film itself. The actors are all fun to watch (my favorite to watch is Henry Winkler, who while having only a small cameo, manages to make me laugh. There's a scene where Winkler's character is playing with a Ghostface mask he confiscated, acting like the killer, silly faces and all, which is pretty amusing to me), and Neve Campbell certainly does a great job, especially at the end. Drew Barrymore (who I know for co-hosting TCM's The Essentials, which she does a good job co-hosting, BTW.) may be just an extended cameo, but her scene (the opening scene, rather) is a really memorable scene because it's more than just the intro to a horror film. I like how the movie ends, it's kind of clever and I like how the motive isn't precisely revealed, it leaves you guessing (Or you could just go onto IMDb forums and find answers for yourself, but that's another story), and Craven does an excellent job directing (Especially the horror, which is pretty good, not overblown in blood, a bit subtle), this is a good movie to watch.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.