Film Review: DEMOLITION MAN (1993, Marco Brambilla)

Stars: 3.75 of 5.
Running Time: 115 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt, Glenn Shadix (BEETLEJUICE, SLEEPWALKERS), Denis Leary (TRUE CRIME, RESCUE ME), Nigel Hawthorne (GANDHI, FIREFOX), Andre Gregory (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, THE LINGUINI INCIDENT), Troy Evans (THE LAWNMOWER MAN, UNDER SIEGE, ER), Bob Gunton (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, JFK). Bit parts by Jack Black and Jesse Ventura. Music by Elliot Goldenthal (HEAT, PUBLIC ENEMIES), cinematography by Alex Thomson (THE KEEP, LABYRINTH, EXECUTIVE DECISION), editing by Stuart Baird (director of EXECUTIVE DECISION, editor of SUPERMAN and LETHAL WEAPON), Directed by Marco Brambilla (DINOTOPIA, EXCESS BAGGAGE).
Tag-line: "In the year 2032, Simon Phoenix escapes from prison, on the verge of bringing crime to San Angeles. One man is called back to duty as a last resort. They call him... THE DEMOLITION MAN."
Best one-liner: "You're gonna regret this the rest of your life... both seconds of it!"

Picture this possibly fictitious scenario. It's Los Angeles in 1991. Sylvester Stallone broods in the flickering darkness of a movie theater screening TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Perhaps a single tear rolls down his cheek. Like Salieri, he knows that he can never adequately respond to this latest salvo in the Schwarzenegger/Stallone rivalry. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks that if he could just have his own 'man waking up naked in a time that is not his own to fight an epically demonic foe' movie, maybe he could show the world that Stallone is not going down without a fight.

Two years later, we have DEMOLITION MAN. It does not approach the heights of T2, but what we have here is a frivolous but quotable action flick from the screenwriter of HEATHERS. (And the commentary on the futuristic "utopia," even when it reaches cornball levels, is always entertaining.)

There's a lot going on here:

Wesley Snipes is about as psychotically entertaining as a villain can be, despite the fact that his wardrobe looks culled from the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE movie.

Does that belong to Bebop? Perhaps Rocksteady?

(Jesse Ventura even gets in on the action. In a henchman's role which apparently possesses greater depth in the novelization.)

Denis Leary as a shaggy resistance member:

Bob Gunton playing a character which can only be referred to as the 'poor man's Donald Pleasence':

Glenn Shadix (R.I.P.) with a shock of white hair, a kimono, and that patented smarmy attitude which won the hearts and minds of everyone from HEATHERS and BEETLEJUICE fans to Tennessee Williams himself (!).

Greenhorn actor Andre Gregory is afforded the enviable opportunity to share some screen-time with Wesley Snipes:

And we're entreated to many fantastic tableaux of Snipes firing lasers, machine guns, etc. and Stallone diving for cover with that profound- yet familiar- expression etched upon his rubbery face.

YAHHHH

And, as far as the weirdly prescient references go in Stallone vs. Schwarzenegger movies, there are some odd ones here: "Scott Peterson" appears as a name in the criminal database years before his infamy, and there is a reference to the "Arnold Schwarzenegger Presidential Library" and the 61st Amendment which made his presidency possible. An ominous portent of things to come? (Schwarzenegger himself seeks presently to overturn the constitutional clause that would prevent foreign-born nationals from becoming president...)

I'm unsure what more you could even hope to get out of DEMOLITION MAN. Nearly four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: LEVIATHAN (1989, George P. Cosmatos)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 98 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Written by David Webb Peoples (UNFORGIVEN, SOLDIER, BLADE RUNNER). Starring Peter Weller (BUCKAROO BANZAI, NAKED LUNCH, ROBOCOP), Ernie Hudson (THE SUBSTITUTE, GHOSTBUSTERS), Richard Crenna (RAMBO, UN FLIC), Amanda Pays (MAX HEADROOM), Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE, narrator on THE WONDER YEARS), Hector Elizando (PRETTY WOMAN, AMERICAN GIGOLO), Meg Foster (THEY LIVE, STEPFATHER II). Music by Jerry Goldsmith (CHINATOWN, ALIEN, RAMBO). Special effects by Stan Winston (PREDATOR, THE TERMINATOR, JURASSIC PARK).
Tag-line: "Welcome to your worst nightmare, welcome to Leviathan." (...Butt-horn?)
Best one-liner: "Say 'Ahhh,' motherfucker!"

"That's JUST great! You tellin' me we got a god damn Dracula in here with us?" Like its human-absorbing, hybrid fish-creature star, LEVIATHAN is a film built entirely from pre-existing components. Everything here, we've seen before, be it in THE THING or ALIEN or THE ABYSS. We've already seen Peter Weller (ROBOCOP) and Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS) hoist gigantic futuristic weapons around.

Daniel Stern (HOME ALONE) opens soda cans with his mouth and is always talkin' about how much he'd like the female crew members to sit on his face. There's the British woman (Amanda Pays) who requires no character development, because her accent already tells us that she's a quick-witted expert of some kind. We got Richard Crenna (FIRST BLOOD) sitting in front of an ancient monitor, shaking his head at some statistics, EXACTLY like Wilford Brimley does in THE THING.


The creature even drains the blood supply! We've got a nefarious corporate master played by the evil chick from THEY LIVE.

And it's a cautionary tale: the chain of events (that causes slavering, mutating monsters to emerge) all starts with a practical joke and some purloined booze. Somehow that's even worse than the Jason movies, where sex begets death. Jokin' around equals death? Jeez! Cut us some slack!

Anyway, I don't think I've yet mentioned that I really enjoyed this movie. Like ACTION JACKSON or UNDER SIEGE, you don't really care that it's completely unoriginal. Plus our eel-man comes courtesy of FX master Stan Winston, and the screenplay's by David Webb Peoples (BLADE RUNNER, UNFORGIVEN, TWELVE MONKEYS), so clearly this isn't really catering to the least common denominator. And Weller is great.

Wearing a hot pink and blue trucker hat, he exudes layers of 'performance' (as an actor in the film, and pretending to be a 'tough as nails captain-type' for the benefit of his crew), and ends the film by punching a woman in the face. Only you can get away with that kinda thing, Pete. Four stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: EUREKA (1983, Nicolas Roeg)

Stars: 3 of 5.
Running Time: 130 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Mickey Rourke, Joe Spinell (MANIAC!), Joe Pesci, Ed Lauter (TRUE ROMANCE, DEATH WISH 3).
Tag-lines: None.
Best one-liner: Not really.

Remember that one movie? The epic one with the atonal music. The one that began with a man making the solitary discovery of a massive quantity of a natural resource that exploded toward the heavens. The one where the guy had a really complex, disturbing relationship with his kid as a result of his own selfishness. There were striking visuals, majestic landscapes, and brief interjections of horrific violence. Yeah. Well, this is called EUREKA, and it came out in 1983. Now, I'm not gonna lie: THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a much better film than EUREKA, but it seems 'ole P.T. Anderson was adapting more than just a novel called OIL!, and he probably should have given credit where credit was due.

However, EUREKA is classic 'less than the sum of its parts.' It suffers from a rare condition known as ‘Nicolas Roeg disorder,’ which means that it's going to seem incredibly strong at the outset, possess breathtaking visuals and editing throughout, but ultimately, will kind of blunder into a morass where it doesn't quite know what the hell it's doing. And sometimes that's okay.
In my mind, DON'T LOOK NOW and BAD TIMING are films of his that escape completely unscathed. The first forty minutes of PERFORMANCE are 'top ten of all-time' quality, and then it derails into a Borges-wannabe psychedelic wankfest. Same thing kinda happens to EUREKA. Except its a long-winded courtroom-drama, voodoo-orgy kind of detour.

EUREKA still possesses some moments of power, however, and features some fine actors. Mickey Rourke is a mobster milquetoast, Rutger Hauer is a raging a-hole son-in-law, Theresa Russell is a sharp but self-destructive daughter, Joe Pesci is the same old gangster he always is, and Gene Hackman is this picture's gilded core.

I would recommend, however, watching the [your name here] cut of EUREKA. Whenever it starts to bore you, just shut it off, cause it's not getting any better, unless you really, really want to see Rutger Hauer in a cage. Three stars for effort.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: HIGH SPIRITS (1988, Neil Jordan)

Stars: 2 of 5.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Peter O' Toole, Steve Guttenberg, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher, Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, Darryl Hannah.
Tag-line: " He's an American. She's a ghost. Vacation romances are always a hassle."
Worst one-liner(s): "No respectable ghost would live in California!" OR "I'm dead. So this is what it feels like. Like a hangover." OR "You're a ghost, I'm an American. It would never work out." OR "I mean I know you like passive women, Jack, but she's dead!"
Only good line, courtesy of Peter O'Toole: "What is going on here? Eamon? Why are chunks of masonry floating about?"

Neil Jordan. Director of THE CRYING GAME and MONA LISA. Hell, let's stick INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE up there, too. This cast. Peter O'Toole, one of the finest actors of all time. Steve Guttenberg, one of the most infectiously fun American comedy actors of the 80's. Darryl Hannah with an Irish brogue that kinda flits in and out. Solid actors like Liam Neeson, Beverly D'Angelo, and Peter Gallagher in the small roles that most comedies don't even attempt to cast with quality. A creepy mansion comedy of manners in the vein of CLUE. All these things should add up to something that's at least watchable.

I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to like it SO MUCH. I love questionable cinema of the 1980's. I love the Gute. I love Irishmen. I AM an Irishman. I love Peter O'Toole. He's one of the greatest drunks of all time, and he's in a movie called "High Spirits!" This is the guy who once went for a drink in Paris and woke up in Corsica. The guy who went on a bender with Michael Caine, and when they awoke, Caine asked 'What time is it?' 'Never mind what time it is, what fucking day is it?!,' O'Toole replied, and sure enough it was two days later. Now, O'Toole is obviously wasted for real for the duration of this film, which is the only reason this earned two stars.


He's even drinking with Guttenberg in one scene. I should love this. But dammit, there's not enough O'Toole and Gute. There's somehow too much, AND not enough. Instead, we get smacked over the head with a parade of some of the worst forced laughs in film history. The film is trying SO HARD to wring a laugh from me here and there, and I am trying SO HARD to love it, and somehow ne'er the twain shall meet. That makes me sad, and it makes me exhausted. Worth a rent only if you fast-forward between all the O'Toole drinking scenes.

-Sean Gill