Movies Watched The Week Of 5/10 - 5/16

Hey gang! Welcome back, we got a new weeks worth of cinema to bring to ya.  Sadly, it's a week with less great in it than prior weeks, but there's enough stuff in here worth some enjoyment.  It's a solid week, nothing special or horrible.  So let's give it a go and see what happens.  

Coogan's Bluff (May 10th, 2015)

Director: Don Siegel

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Susan Clark, Tisha Sterling, and Lee J. Cobb

You gotta love some old school Clint movies that are charmingly out of touch with the times.  Clint stars here as a Sheriff deputy from Arizona who is tasked with extraditing a prisoner back to Arizona from NYC.  So it’s a movie where not only does Clint get to play fish out of water in 1968 NYC, but the prisoner is a hippie and the world he inhabits is so cartoonish that you can’t help but chuckle at it, like a crusty grandpa who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about but is confident he does.  Aside from the charming ignorance on display, the movie is kind of shaggy and slow.  It ambles along with no real urgency, despite the mad dog killer roaming the streets.  Clint spends most his time just laying pipe with women around town.  The only real highlight of the movie is Clint getting into a big brawl in a bar.  That’s about as interesting as the movie gets.  It’s got some late 60s movie charm to it with the aforementioned hippy silliness, but that’s about it.  Charming enough if you want a Clint fix. 

Rating: 7/10

The Dead Zone (May 13th, 2015)
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Herbert Lom, and Martin Sheen

If someone told you that an adaptation of Stephen Kings book The Dead Zone would be made in the 80s, David Cronenbergs name wouldn’t immediately jump to mind.  He is an intellectual director, not necessarily a man interested in plot or everyday people.  But with further thought put into it, the match is actually a pretty good fit.  Cronenberg has one fascination when it comes to movies, and that is the body turning against ones self.  And that is what The Dead Zone is, a story where everyman Johnny Smith (Walken) gets into a car accident and slips into a coma for 5 years, coming out of it with the ability to see the important moments regarding life and death to those he touches with his hand.  But this ability is taking a toll on Johnny and it is slowly killing him the more he uses it.  Cronenberg is a pretty good fit here as he is more interested in intellectual ideas and tone, bringing a real sense of melancholic doom to the movie.  It’s also easily makes the weird seem reasonable, never coming off as fake.  And while he isn’t one for the technical aspects of filmmaking, he does get some good shots and a cool visual way to show Johnnys ability.  Walken is good in the role, but is kinda the weakest link in the movie.  He is just naturally so weird and off putting that his journey he takes isn’t as rewarding or natural, similar to Jack in The Shining.  But it doesn’t kill the movie.  The only other weak link is the ending plot with Johnny meeting Greg Stillson (Sheen) is a bit rushed, only really coming into play in the last 20 minutes or so, rushing Johnnys journey into the decision he has to make.  But it’s done decently enough in the rush to work within the overall framework, still ending on a tragic but kinda bittersweet note.  This isn’t my favorite Cronenberg (that’s still A History Of Violence), but I have a lot to see and thus far from what I’ve seen this is the best of his from the 80s. 

Rating: 9/10

Cujo (May 15th, 2015)
Director: Lewis Teague
Starring: Dee Wallace, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Danny Pintauro, and Chris Stone

This is an interesting companion piece after coming off the heels of The Dead Zone.  Whereas that movie felt very much in line with Kings work with an auteurist feel, this one tries to emulate King with a workmans hand guiding it.  Which is fine, as it’s still a decent movie and fixes some pretty bad aspects of the book in the transition, but is hindered by the weak narrative at play before the showdown in the car actually comes into play.  The one weakness still in play from the book is that Dee Wallaces character is really kind of unlikable, a woman who steps out on her husband because she’s a spoiled brat.  And she makes some stupid decisions that just are horror movie stupid, making her hard to root for.  And just the domestic stuff doesn’t click anyway, with Kelly as her husband kinda not interesting to watch anyway.  And the movie is screwy when the rabid killer dog is more empathetic than the humans it’s trying to kill.  But once the dog attacks the car, it takes off and works pretty well.  It still retains a bunch of the obnoxious coincidences that plagued the book as well, but they work well enough in a story about a dog thats as good and devious a killer as Jason Voorhees.  It’s a movie that requires some more than usual suspension of belief, but there’s some charm to be had for it, that 80s drive in charm.

Rating: 7/10

Bad Lieutenant (May 16th, 2015)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Frankie Thorn, Zoe Lund, and Paul Calderon

This is a weird movie in the fact that it has a very seedy tone to it that it does pretty well, but it is also not the greatest in any other aspect.  Keitel gives a great performance as this little shit, a wolf in sheeps clothing who can’t do anything right who just descends into even worse depravity at the end.  But that’s pretty much what the movie has going for it.  It tries to go for a Catholic forgiveness redeeming story, but it gets to it with way too little time left.  It’s got that early 90s indie feel to it, and Keitel is really the only one in the movie.  People just float in and out.  It’s a weird flick, one that I can’t even completely say is good but is so odd and singular with a great performance at its center, I can look past the really repetitive drug scenes.

Rating: 8/10






Top Movies

1. The Dead Zone
2. Bad Lieutenant
3. Cujo
4. Coogan's Bluff

- Tom Lorenzo