Hey folks, Harry here with Beuller and his look at two films still quite a ways off. This first one doesn't have a release date as of yet and is listed as a 2004 film on IMDB. MEANWHILE the second film... THE BLACKOUT MURDERS is said to be set for release on April 2nd, 2004. As a result, there's still quite a bit that can happen to both films. With so much time till release, the problems and wonderful parts can both change and/or flip flop around given the improper treatment. We'll have to wait and see. Really can't imagine Phillip Kaufman's film being this bad, but we'll have to wait and see...
Hi Harry,
I wrote you back in December about "Biker Boyz," a movie so bad I practically fought my way out of a free test screening after 30 minutes so I could get home, see an episode of "24" and save my night from complete ruin. When asked by the studio flacks what I disliked, i said "Everything." They asked me to be specific and i said, "Ok, the writing, the direction, the acting, ,the cinematography and the music all sucked." If they had kept me there til the end, i would've killed someone. But for whatever reason, you never ran my review. So I"m trying again, with two writeups: one for a surprisingly great film called THE BIG SHOT and another for THE BLACKOUT MURDERS, which i saw a couple months ago and tried to forget but couldn't blight out of my mind. Since i never saw it mentioned on the site, i'm hoping i can still perform a valuable public service by declaring it a filmic biohazard..
Last night i saw a test screening at the Paseo Colorado 14 in Pasadena of a film that IMDB lists as "Providence," but which now has the title "The BIg Shot." This is a "Get Shorty"-style ensemble comedy from Touchstone that stars a pretty interesting cast, working from back to front: Joan Cusack, Toni Colette, Calista Flockhart (the best thing she's done since the first season of "Ally McBeal"), Tony Shalhoub, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Matthew Broderick, and...Alec Baldwin (!) Yes, Alec Baldwin is the star.
Now, I like the rest of the theater and no doubt your readers all had one thought in mind before seeing this movie: "How the fuck did Alec Baldwin get to star in a major movie again?" The guy just had a direct-to-cable movie get shitty reviews for chrissake! He hasn't had a good movie since the first Bush was in office! But somehow, he got this one, and it's actually really good. I was part of the 20 person focus group after the movie and 3 of us (including me) rated it "Excellent", 3 fair and 14 "very good"s. Having been part of 5 or 6 of these groups since i moved here last fall, that is a really good response. And amazingly, not only was Alec Baldwin not an obstacle to the film being rated well, but all of us - even the "fair" votes - rated him as excellent and said we wished he was onscreen even more than he was (sections of the movie follow Matthew Broderick's character separately. This is also his best movie in years, redeeming him from crap like "Inspector Gadget" and "Godzilla.")
So here's the story, without giving the whole damn thing away like some of the spies:
This is "based on a true story" and takes place in 1985. Alec Baldwin plays a sad-sack FBI agent based in Providence, Rhode Island who is trying to bring down a Mob guy (Shalhoub) who is raking in money as a gobetween between Teamsters and their film trucks and filmmakers who are being raked for tons of money by the union. Baldwin needs to bring the guy down, so he proposes that the FBI allow him to go undercover as a film producer in order to catch Shalhoub in his extortion scheme. While he's told he'll get a million bucks to produce one, the goal is to never actually make a movie, but rather set up a poor sap filmmaker into thinking he's making a movie until the sting can be completed.
Broderick is that sap - a guy who's written a dreadful script called "Arizona" that now must be shot in Rhode Island. He acts like he's principled and passionate about his work but ultimately he gets won over by Baldwin's constantly throwing perks at him and soon an absolutely disastrous movie is set in motion (and no, i'm not talking about this film, but the movie within the movie!!!) Cusack plays an insanely bitchy movie producer, Toni Colette is hilarious as a psychotic big star (some people guessed it was based on Rebecca de Mornay, who was big at the time, but the studio folks wouldn't say what the real "Arizona" was and who was in it.) The film has the spirit of "The Producers" in it and that makes this a good fit for Broderick. This is probably his best flick since "Bueller."
"The Big Shot" is written by "Catch Me If You Can" screenwriter Jeff Nathanson, who makes his directing debut. To my mind, everything seemed perfect - fast pace, lots of twists, top notch performances, really funny stuff. The best part is that this is the rare black comedy that pulls no punches - people swear, screw and backstab each other, and there's no stupid "message" at the end - though the film does have a couple of good serious moments along the way. I wanted to punch another lady in the focus group who said she "wished it was more uplifting and had a message. I like movies that have a message. And if you took out the language, you'd have a good family film." I did manage to mutter that she should stay home and watch "Family Ties" reruns. And I yelled that this movie should not be toned down because it's one of the maybe two comedies a year that are not dumbed down for kids and play for an adult sense of humor. It's also full of character quirks including a suicidal dog that kept getting huge laughs.
One other person with a noticeable brainwave compared this to "There's Something About Mary" on the way out. That's a good comparison, not just in the laugh factor (it's up there) but in regards to the challenge this will pose in marketing - Matt Dillon had NEVER been in a blockbuster in nearly 20 year career at that point, Cameron Diaz was still new to much of America, and Ben Stiller was a cult hero on the rise then - it wasn't the slam dunk it seems in retrospect. Touchstone has to overcome the box office poison of post-"Red October" Baldwin, but if they can do it right this will be huge. And people will be surprised to find they like Baldwin again.
THE OTHER FLICK...
"The Blackout Murders", despite its retarded title, should have been good. Saw it also at the Paseo theater a couple months back and it had the most insane security I've ever seen. This was worse than going to the fucking airport and being checked before your flight to Baghdad. I guess host studio Paramount knew they had a megaton nuclear bomb on their hands, as even studio head Sherry Lansing showed up to assess the damage.
"Blackout" (frankly, that word alone is a better title than the mass-paperback murder-mystery title it now holds) stars another surprisingly decent cast: Ashley Judd, Sam Jackson and Andy Garcia. Judd is supposed to be our heroine, a San Francisco cop who is investigating a string of murders of men. The catch is, all the victims are men she's slept with, and because she keeps drinking til she blacks out, she can't remember if she's the killer or not. So, here's the deal: our "heroine" who we're supposed to root for is also an alcoholic who drinks til she blacks out (OVER AND OVER AND OVER again) and also goes to bars to pick up strangers for rough sex (this i wouldn't mind if the producers had actually offered up some skin, but is there anything more stupid than an R-rated movie that claims to be erotic yet keeps the actress's clothes on?). She also has a problem with her temper, as we see when she kicks the living shit out of a suspect in the film's ludicrous opening scene.
Yet despite all these character flaws, she keeps getting promoted (well, she's a cop, so maybe kicking the shit out of suspects IS deemed raise-worthy.) Sam Jackson is (surprise!) her cop boss. He's also her father in a plot twist that left me asking "Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?!" Jackson was her real father's old partner before he got killed; he then raised Judd since she was a young girl. Yet despite their constant pronouncements of "you raised me" and "I raised you," there's not an ounce of familial chemistry between them. Jackson may as well have adopted her through a TV ad for a children's charity.
The real problem with this film is that no one - i mean, NO ONE - in it is likable. Amazingly, it was written and directed by Philip Kaufman, the dude behind "The Right Stuff," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and the hugely, unfairly ignored "Quills." But you could have put the proverbial 100 monkeys to work and come up with a better script than this dung pile.
The film is trying to get viewers to think Judd is just the feminine flipside to all the male action heroes who fight, drink and screw their way through films. The only thing is, in these days of "Queer Eye" and "metrosexuals" and what Richard Roeper has called "The gayest summer ever," times have changed so much that no one really wants to see their male action heroes do that shit either anymore. It's played out and as we've become more "sensitive" as a society it just isn't that appealing from men OR women. After the third murder victim turned up, one of the cops goes "Dont' tell us - you slept with him too." it's meant to be hardboiled. Instead, I yelled "Slut!" and the theater started giggling. By the time the next couple bodies turned up, the whole place was roaring with laughter. When Judd breaks down and says,"What should I do?" someone yelled "Keep your pants on!" and there was a round of applause for the comment.
SPOILERS (although with a film this bad, the whole film is spoiled)
The film offers up Andy Garcia as her partner and the red herring of the story. He's pretty good, but then i've been a consistent fan of his despite his usually poor movies (check out "Man From Elysian Fields" though - terrific).
The real howler is Jackson, though. He has one of the worst "I'm a bad guy and here's why" speeches I've ever laughed through. It turns out that despite the fact you're wondering when is this "dad" going to tell his "daughter" to keep her fly zipped and offer some sort of lecture like any other guy who knows his girl's a slut, he never talks to her about it. Instead, it turns out he follows her around to the bars, watches her go home and have sex, has slipped roofies in her wine bottles, and then kills her guys while she's blacked out. All because he actually IS offended by her skank ways. Father of the Year!!!
I swear to God, ,though, if Jackson makes another movie in the next ten years it'll be too soon. What's the guy in - 20 movies a year? And aside from the surprisingly good "Changing Lanes," which pulled off the miracle of even making Ben Affleck seem to have talent, none of them have been good in years. Does he ever take some time off? If he's worried about missing money, then I implore my fellow film lovers to take up a collection for the guy to retire. He's gone from being a mark of quality to being a veritable "Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!" sign to stay the hell away from a film.
If this movie ever gets released, I'll be surprised. I think Paramount would be better served by turning all available prints into guitar picks and sending them to music programs for Third World children to take the tax writeoff.
I miss my beloved Chicago, so call me Bueller...
