Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Five: THE VANISHING Might As Well Be Schrodinger's Cat: The Movie

"Either I let her go on living and never know, or I let her die and find out what happened.  So...I let her die."

I have very vague recollections of a movie from the early 90's called The Vanishing.  It starred Kiefer Sutherland, Jeff Bridges (pre-Dude) and a very young Sandra Bullock.  I don't know why I remember this movie.  At best it's a footnote in the careers of three actors who hadn't yet peaked, (or, in the case of Sutherland, was in between peaks) I don't remember anyone anyone ever discussing the movie in any way, and I never actually saw it.  But I feel like it played on TV a lot when I was a kid, likely because it came out right before Sandra Bullock really hit it big.  So far as I can tell, this wasn't really considered a breakout role for Bullock, whose only major lead to date involved some pretty stunning false teeth in the unfortunate romantic comedy Love Potion No. 9.  But immediately after The Vanishing came Demolition Man, Speed, While You Were Sleeping and The Net, a movie that's more than earned its spot in the pantheon of Hilariously Inaccurate And/Or Outdated Technology Films.  Anyway, my guess is that some network was able to grab the TV rights to The Vanishing on the cheap and played it enough times that the film somehow lodged itself into the hazy memories of my youth.

I had no idea it was a remake of a 1988 Dutch film until I found it listed on Lerman's roster.  (He was adamant that I make sure to watch the original.)  It's pretty good, but I'll admit that the movie didn't particularly bowl me over one way or the other.  I had a general idea of the setup going in based on the American version which, interestingly enough. was also directed by George Sluizer.  A young couple is on a road trip and along the way the woman suddenly and mysteriously goes missing.  Much like Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, I can appreciate that the film starts by immediately faking out the audience: the couple's car runs out of fuel in a tunnel and when Rex returns with a tank of gas, he finds the car empty.  But Saskia is revealed to be waiting at the other end of the tunnel - she was afraid that a car might collide with theirs in the darkness.  When they arrive at a gas station moments later, she goes inside to use the restroom and I was sure she was a goner but in fact she soon returned, and with a frisbee no less!  But the third time's the charm, and when Saskia goes back in for drinks, she promptly disappears.

It was at this point that the film sharply deviated from my expectations.  I was anticipating a ticking clock film, with the boyfriend frantically chasing down a series of clues in a race against time to save his love.  Instead, the story immediately jumps forward three years, where Saskia remains missing but Rex has never stopped looking for her.  The man responsible frequently sends him taunting postcards and even though he has a new woman in his life, Rex is really starting to lose it.  We then jump back far before Saskia's abduction and meet her captor, middle class father and chemistry professor Raymond Lemorne.  This man has resolved himself to kidnapping a woman and we spend a lot of time watching him refine his plan of attack.  He goes through a number of false starts and failed attempts - he's incredibly inept as a criminal, but also remarkably lucky in that he never captures the attention of the authorities.  Still, it's a pretty novel storytelling approach and not at all what I thought I was getting.  Just as we see Lemorne watching Rex and Saskia arrive at the gas station on that fateful day, we jump forward in time once again, as Lemorne reveals himself to Rex offers to explain what happened that day and why he did it if Rex will come with him on a short road trip.  He won't say whether Saskia is alive or dead, but promises that Rex will get answers to all his questions.

The final reveal is pretty fucking dark.  (Spoilers.)  The abduction played out from Lemorne's perspective is really great, a perfect culmination of all his past attempts.  But at the same time, in a way it's not very dramatically satisfying.  Lemorne basically kidnapped Saskia as an intellectual exercise, just to see if he was capable of it.  Eventually he gives Rex a choice: He can take a sleeping pill and when he awakes he will experience exactly what Saskia did, finally getting an answer to that which has vexed him for years.  Or he can refuse, and Lemorne will return him home unharmed and he'll never know the truth.  Rex points out that if Saskia's dead, it means that he'll essentially be killing himself and Lemorne offers no argument, leaving the decision squarely in Rex's hands.  Earlier Rex describes a dream in which he's presented with the opportunity to learn the truth, noted in the pullquote above.  It's Schrodinger's Cat personified, and when Lemorne gives him the chance to play the scenario out for real, Rex lives up to his word.  He takes the drug and wakes up in a coffin, buried alive while Lemorne goes on living his life with little regret and nobody the wiser.

The American version got a lot of shit for changing the ending - from what I gather, Kiefer Sutherland still gets buried alive, but his new girlfriend Nancy Travis tracks him down and eventually saves him from Jeff Bridges, who looks from the trailer to be doing some really strange character work here.  In a way it's hardly surprising that the American producers opted to shift the drama from existential to physical in nature, along with the bad guy eventually getting some form of punishment.  What is interesting is that Sluizer actually filmed a similar ending for the Dutch original, but never used it.  I suppose he wanted to know how audiences would have reacted to that version of the story, and when he was given the opportunity to find out five years later, he took it.  As with Rex, the results were disappointing to say the least.

But sometimes, you just need to know.


What's The Connection? - Thankfully The Vanishing doesn't have much in common with A Serbian Film's more grotesque particulars.  But each feature a character whose lover has gone missing, and each would be better off not knowing the truth as to why.

Up Next - The Disappearance Of Alice Creed.


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Title: The Vanishing
Director: George Sluizer
Starring: Bernard-Peirre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus
Year Of Release: 1988
Viewing Method: Amazon Instant Watch

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Four: A SERBIAN FILM Will Make You Unclean

"Start with the little one."

GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH.

Immediately after watching A Serbian Film I found myself relieved that I hadn't yet showered that day, as I would have certainly felt compelled to cleanse myself for a second time.  Then again, I'm the one who asked Lerman to find me some "out there" shit.  This is what I signed up for.

A Serbian Film was something I'd heard rumors about for years, spoken in hushed tones by those who had seen it and likely wished they hadn't.  I read plenty of stuff about controversial films and sometimes it feels like the hype is far more dramatic than the actual material, but the way people talked about A Serbian film...this was different.  I still haven't gotten around to watching either of the Human Centipede movies yet, but now the idea of people whose mouths are sewn to assholes seems positively quaint by comparison.  To be clear, I'm not generally one who reacts to art with outrage and pearl-clutching.  I've never been offended by a joke and, when it comes to narrative film, there's not much you can depict that will make me seriously flinch.  But this thing has been haunting me for days now.  This is a film that is so fucked up, I couldn't even pull up the IMDb page at work because it was blocked by the office firewall.

When Jamie isn't really interested in a movie I'm watching, she tends to sit on the couch with her laptop and headphones, listening to One Direction.  This time, I made sure she left the room entirely.

The story starts off almost playfully puerile, with Milosh, the one-time Marlon Brando of pornography, now retired and struggling to provide for his beautiful wife and son.  One of his former co-stars gets in touch with a job offer; a new and charismatic filmmaker named Vukmir Vukmir wants to make truly artistic pornography and he's willing to pay ludicrous amounts of money to his star.  He needs the best.  He needs Milosh.  We're then treated to a Rocky-esque training montage as Milosh tries to get back in shape and focus his skills for his big return to the cameras.  In an inspired moment, we even experience Milosh get (and then lose) an erection all from the perspective of his dick.  Penis POV!  It's exactly the right balance of truly weird and slyly brilliant.  I was really starting to enjoy this thing. What was all the fuss about?

Oh Daley, you sweet, naive fool.

Vukmir's production turns out to be pretty fucked up, shooting in a former orphanage with at least one underage girl present and featuring a lot of women suffering physically abuse.  Part of Milosh's contract stipulates that he won't know what the scenes entail before filming, but faced with some pretty degrading material Milosh decides to cut bait and go back to retirement.  However when he tries to break the bad news to Vukmir, Milosh is drugged and awakens three days later, forced to retrace his steps and piece together exactly what went down and why he doesn't remember it.

Just before Milosh is drugged, Vukmir shows him a clip of a new kind of pornography, something so horrifying and patently immoral that I was convinced that the film had reached peak awfulness.  The next thirty minutes proved me so very, very wrong.  A Serbian Film was just getting warmed up.  I won't detail any of the depraved, abhorrent action that followed for one simple reason: 90% of you don't want to know that someone even contemplated such behavior, let alone depicted it on film, and for the 10% of you (that might be a generous estimate) who, like me, suffer from insatiable curiosity, telling you anything would be counterproductive. You simply have to see it.

I suppose one could make an argument that those behind A Serbian Film are trying to take a stance against the porn industry and all the lives that it destroys.  It certainly subverts any kind of playful, Don Jon-esque representation of porn and focuses instead on the dark and disturbing underbelly of the business, taking that representation to the absolute extreme edge of decency.  It's not too dissimilar to Scorcese's strategy with Wolf Of Wall Street, fully embracing any and all excess and taking the story completely over the top to the point of near absurdity in order to provoke a specific response in the audience and forever change their perception of the parties involved, be they Wall Street brokers or pornographers.

Or these guys could just be a bunch of sick fucks.

Who can say?

A Serbian Film is such an insane, singular experience that I almost can't believe that it exists on any level.  That it was written, shot, edited and then made available to the public seems beyond my comprehension.  I'm glad I watched it once, but I'm honestly not sure I can ever sit through it again.  And that's saying something.

What's The Connection? - Necrophilia!  Plus, both High Tension and A Serbian Film feature some seriously disturbing blowjobs.

Up Next - The Vanishing (1988)

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Title: A Serbian Film
Director: Srdjan Spasojevic
Starring: Srdjan Todorovic, Sergej Trifunovic, Jelena Gavrilovic, Slobodan Bestic, Katarina Zutic
Year Of Release: 2010
Viewing Method: Digital Copy (TV)

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Three: HIGH TENSION Is A Beautiful, Bloody High Wire Act

"I'm glad I finally met your family."

I can't believe it's really been ten years since High Tension came out.  I've been meaning to watch this movie forever, but I hadn't realized that so much time had passed.  It's a feeling that comes more and more frequently these days, especially when it comes to stuff like attending my little brother's college graduation in the spring.  It's little wonder that I missed this film in its theatrical run, as horror films historically tend to fall pretty low on my list of priorities, but my recent month-long horror extravaganza has certainly given me a better appreciation for the genre.  This was the film that put director Alexandre Aja on the map in America, and oddly enough I've actually seen his two best known follow-ups, remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3D.  (He also has a film coming out this year in which Daniel Radcliffe sprouts devil horns.)

The film's title perfectly captures what makes it so engrossing.  The story follows two attractive college girls, Marie and Alex, who head off to the latter's remote family home in order to study for exams.  But shortly after arriving, a hulking hillbilly in a rusted out delivery truck arrives and forces his way into the house, silently slaughtering the entire family and kidnapping Alex.  Marie is able to hide and then stow away in the van in order to rescue Alex, who Marie is secretly in love with.  And so the majority of the film is an exercise in maintaining tension, placing the audience directly in Marie's shoes and drawing out her discovery by their attacker for as long as humanly possible until the two are forced to eventually confront each other in the woods.  Taken purely as an exercise in dramatic momentum, the film is wildly successful.  I was at the edge of my seat and talking to the screen the whole time.

Sadly, it's easy to see why most people probably walk away from High Tension dwelling not on the film's masterful second act, but instead on the crazy third act twist.  Typically I'd tip-toe around the spoilers, but considering the film is now over a decade old, we might as well dig in.  When the police finally enter the picture, they watch security footage from a gas station revealing that the killer was actually Marie the whole time, that she's been suffering from a sort of psychotic break and enacting all this violence herself through some imagined persona.  It's one of those reveals that works really well in the moment, but quickly falls apart the more you mull it over.  Obvious cracks appear, like where did the truck come from in the first place?  And, for that matter, what the hell was with that truly bizarre non-sequitur in the film's opening moments, in which the hillbilly is introduced sitting in his truck nearby Alex's home hours before the girls even arrive?  Sure, the fact that he's jerking off into a goddamn severed head is disgusting and certainly makes for a memorable moment, but once you have all the pieces it makes no sense whatsoever.

Even still, Aja direction is so strong and Cecile De France's* performance as Marie is so fantastic, both as a kickass final girl and as a creepy as hell psychopath (that final shot is a doozy), that I kind of don't care.  It's such an enjoyable ride in the moment that I can't help but love it, and the way the film's opening scene is reframed at the end is exactly the kind of thing I'm always a big sucker for.  (One of this year's Oscar contenders pulls off the same trick beautifully, although I won't reveal which one for those who are still playing awards season catch-up.)  I fear that High Tension might be a bit of a one-shot deal, that without the element of the unknown to maintain the audience's anxiety, the film might not be nearly so much fun.  Nonetheless, I look forward to revisiting it a few months down the road to see how well it holds up.

What's The Connection? - Both Crazy Love and High Tension depict a character driven to acts of insane violence in the name of love/infatuation.

Up Next - A Serbian Film



*I couldn't place why Cecile De France looked so familiar as I was watching the film, but when I looked her up I realized that she also played Isabelle, the lesbian in L'Auberge Espagnole.


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Title: Haute Tension (High Tension)
Director: Alexandre Aja
Starring: Cecile De France, Maiwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea
Year Of Release: 2003
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day Two - CRAZY LOVE Is The Precursor To The Horrors Of Reality TV

"When I get my wife home, there may be another sexual abuse charge against me."

Halfway through Crazy Love, I texted Lerman the following:

"These people are FUCKED."

Pictured above are Linda Riss and Burt Pugach.  Theirs is a classic love story.  Linda was a stunning young beauty and Burt was a successful New York lawyer.  Sure, he may have been a bit of an ambulance chaser and he might not have been the most attractive guy on the block, but he had a lot of money and he loved spending it to impress young Linda, so she thought, "Why the hell not?"  After a whirlwind romance in the late 1950's, Linda eventually discovered that Burt had a wife and a child in another state, and that was NOT cool.  He tried to convince Linda that he was in the process of getting a divorce and that worked for a time, but he also became extremely jealous and paranoid, convinced that she was secretly sleeping with other men despite her insistence that she was saving herself for marriage.  She even went so far as to take Burt to a doctor so that she could give him medical proof of her virginity.  So clearly this is an extremely healthy relationship built on mutual trust and respect.  Eventually Linda realized that Burt's wife was never going to grant him a divorce, so she broke off the relationship and Burt promptly went absolutely fucking nuts.  His depression became so severe that he was eventually committed to a mental institution, emerging a few months later with a beard that properly reflected his unhinged nature.  Linda was now engaged to an attractive young guy and Burt grew so enraged that he began stalking her, even going so far as to wait outside her home with a gun in order to kill them both.  But when actually faced with killing the object of his obsession, Burt simply couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.

So instead he hired two guys to ring her doorbell disguised as delivery men.  When she answered the door, they threw lye in her face and blinded her.

The media circus that followed was long and involved, but in the end Burt was sent to prison, where he spent the next 14 years writing Linda love letters in an effort to win her back.  Linda, now missing most of her sight, was attempting to get by in the outside world but her handicap limited her employment opportunities and her new physical deformity chased away most potential suitors.  (Her fiance had quietly broken off the engagement once the media frenzy had died down.)  She was making very little money and growing increasingly lonely and...well I'm sure you can see where this is going.  At Linda's request, Burt started sending her money as a form of penance, an act that would eventually get him paroled from prison.  The two began communicating directly, started spending time together...and eventually got married.

Like I said, these people are FUCKED.

They remained married, even after Burt was caught in an affair in the late 90's and was accused of threatening to blind and murder his mistress when she decided to leave him.  Linda defended her husband to the press while Burt defended himself in court and he was acquitted on all major charges.  Linda died last January at the age of 75.

That's all pretty much terrible, a story that's equal parts horrifying and depressing.  Burt was a victim of constant child abuse and clearly became incapable of expressing his emotions in any kind of healthy or appropriate way.  He seemed to emerge from prison a changed man and all of their friends were forced to admit that, despite the couple's extreme history, Burt spent the rest of his life taking very good care of Linda.  And I'm not categorically opposed to the idea that even a man as so clearly disturbed as Burt Pugach can be rehabilitated and earn a second chance in life, but if I were Linda Riss, I simply don't see how I could ever feel safe being alone in a room with that man ever again.  Sadly, as depicted by Dan Klores's documentary, Linda comes off as one step short of being the world's most tragic gold digger.  Her initial attraction to Burt was largely based on his ability to provide for her and shower her with lavish signs of affection.  And when an imprisoned Burt sent a friend to try and talk to her, she told the man that if Burt really wanted to do something for her he could send her some money.  It was this financial patronage that eventually brought the two back together, and word of their engagement sparked a whole new media firestorm, including a biography and appearances on a number of talk shows.  These were clearly two people who craved the spotlight, regardless of the circumstances that brought them notoriety.

The Pugachs became the darlings of the tabloids and they absolutely ate it up.  The more bizarre their story became, the more attention they garnered.  It's shocking true crime meets celebrity romance gossip, the kind of grotesque horrorshow that has become inescapable in the modern era of 24-hour-news and rumormongering infotainment.  If this happened today, the likes of Nancy Grace and US Weekly would lose their fucking minds.  And by the time they were married, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Pugachs would have their own reality show on E! or TLC.  I have a longstanding hatred of all reality television, which started as my actor's resentment at seeing so much of the television landscape dedicated to inexpensive nonsense that actively took jobs away from working actors.  But over the past dozen or so years, that resentment has morphed into full blown disgust at the amount of time and attention paid to lowest common denominator shitshows that celebrate the reprehensible behavior of shallow attention whores and the intellectually bereft.  Sure, there are people who consider stuff like Jersey Shore or Keeping Up With The Kardashians as farce, an extreme theater of the absurd to be looked down upon and mocked for the minstrel show that it is.  But these televised clowns are increasingly regarded as actual and unironic role models - look no further than the backwoods bigot from Duck Dynasty being held up as a persecuted hero of free speech while dominating news cycles for two solid weeks.  With a story like the Pugachs', this threat feel particularly insidious as it sends a dangerous message to both women and men concerning what constitutes acceptable behavior and a healthy relationship.  (Twilight famously suffers from the same malady, exacerbated by the fact that it's inarguably aimed at girls at their most impressionable age.)

I'd say we dodged a bullet in that the modern media machine wasn't around in 1959 to feed on the Pugach saga, but Burt and Linda's influence on today's culture of manufactured celebrity seems undeniable.  Jamie saw the first few minutes of Crazy Love, wandered back in around Linda's attack and said, "These two are gonna get married later and I'm supposed to think it's really sweet, right?"  To her, the ending was obvious because, "I watch TV.  I know how this works."  I really can't argue with that logic.

What's The Connection? -  I was looking for all sorts of plot-driven or thematic connections.  A guy who falls in love with a woman he doesn't really know and tries to impress her with over-the-top methods?  Burt and Craig McHugh even drove almost identical cars.  But as the closing credits rolled, the connection became obvious: Crazy Love was co-directed by none other than Fisher Fucking Stevens, who I had almost forgotten is now an Oscar winning documentary filmmaker.  I've been meaning to watch The Cove for years, especially now that I like sushi so much.

Up Next - High Tension


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Title: Crazy Love
Director: Dan Klores, Fisher Stevens
Starring: Burt Pugach, Linda Riss, Bob Janoff, Syliva Hoffman, Rita Kessler, Berry Stainback, Margaret Powers, Jimmy Breslin
Year Of Release: 2007
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

Lerman's 14 For '14 Day One - The Adolescent Pleasures Of MYSTERY DATE

"The Chinese are probably inside making a living."

In the early days of this blog, I made a list of people I hoped would be willing to give me some recommendations and right at the top was my friend Michael Lerman.  I've spoken about Lerman before, as well as his varied and completely bonkers taste in film, so I was certain that if I could get him on board, he'd expose me to a variety of cinematic oddities that I'd likely never discover on my own.  And when Lerman gets excited about something, the guy goes all out.

I was hoping he'd give me two or three titles.  He suggested curating an entire month.  We settled on two weeks.

And thus I'm kicking off 2014 with fourteen films (see what I did there?) hand picked by my longtime cinematic sherpa.  According to Lerman, "...each day relates to the previous day in some way, which you should try to figure out.  It should be fun, but also means that when it gets dark, you're not getting out of it quickly.  That being said, I would suggest you read as little as possible on each of them before you begin -- go into them fresh."  So no only has he given me two weeks of movie magic, but he's also built a sort of puzzle into it.  I LOVE PUZZLES!  And for those of you who want to play along at home, all fourteen films are currently listed in the calendar linked above.  I've taken his advice and done no prior research, and while about half of the films I'm vaguely familiar with in some way, the other half are complete mysteries to me.

Speaking of mysteries, I started off my journey into madness on New Year's day (after getting exasperated with the BBC livestream of the season premiere of Sherlock and giving up halfway through the episode) with Mystery Date, starring young Ethan Hawke as Tom McHugh, a kid who goes on a sort of blind date with Geena, (Terri Polo) the beautiful blonde girl who's housesitting down the street.  You see, Tom's been seeing her around the neighborhood for weeks now and he's totally lovestruck, but he's also pretty shy when it comes to the ladies.  Enter Tom's perfect big brother Craig (classic 90's "that guy" Brian McNamara) home from law school for the weekend with his totally sweet baby blue '59 convertible.  Before you can say Jesse And The Rippers, Craig has cold called Geena and set his brother up on a date, arranged for a limo, dispensed with all sorts of sleezy and misogynistic advice (like what to do when a girl slaps you in the face) and given Tom a complete makeover in his own image.  He even hands over his wallet so Tom can use his credit cards and his ID to get booze.  What a guy!  After totally stiffing flower delivery guy Fisher Stevens on a tip, Craig skips out with his brother's car to "visit some old hangouts," leaving Tom in the lurch when Fisher Stevens crashes into the limo while backing his comically oversized delivery truck out of the driveway.  Tom is left with no choice but to borrow Craig's totally awesome convertible for his big night out with Geena.

And that's where the zany adventures kick in!

Turns out that Craig is a lot shadier than he first appeared, (okay, he was pretty obviously a dick) and he's somehow mixed up with some dirty cops in search of missing evidence as well as some Chinatown gangsters in search of an antique vase, not to mention a host of local floozies looking to slap him in the face (don't worry, HE KNOWS WHAT TO DO!) and Fisher Stevens who still really wants his goddamn tip!  And wouldn't you know it, since Tom is wearing all of Craig's clothes, driving his car and using his credit cards, everyone thinks that he's really Craig!  Nevermind the fact that they look absolutely nothing alike, he's wearing Craig's blazer.  And everytime Tom tells someone that Craig is his brother, they all scoff and say, "Let me guess, he's your evil twin brother?"  Apparently this is a whole town full of people who have gained all their life experience from daytime soaps and romance paperbacks.  Thus Tom has to make it through the night without being captured by the cops, killed by the mob or run over by the flower guy, all without blowing his chances with the hot girl who's totally into it because she reads mystery novels!

Lerman prefaced Mystery Date by saying, "It might not be as good as I remember from when I was ten, but fuck you, I can make you watch whatever I want!!!!!"  With that in mind, I can TOTALLY see the appeal to ten-year-old Lerman.  In fact, if I had first come across Mystery Date playing on TV when I was in fifth grade, I'd probably have an irrational attachment to it as well.  For one thing, I love young Ethan Hawke as well as Fisher Stevens, although nothing will ever rival him playing an Indian in the Short Circuit movies.  (The fact that he got promoted from plucky comic relief to the goddamn hero between films one and two is a miracle for which we should all regularly give thanks.)  And for a hopeless romantic adolescent who wasn't great at impressing girls, I have no doubt that this tale of comic misadventure in the name of winning over your dream woman would have totally appealed to me.  It reminds me of Adventures In Babysitting, but with a hero designed to appeal more to insecure teenage guys instead of suburban teenage girls.

Everything about Mystery Date perfectly encapsulates the embarrassment of the early 90's, from the hairstyles to the fashion to the music.  It's that fuzzy era where people are struggling to get out of the 80's but the Seattle grunge scene hadn't yet hit the mainstream.  (Mystery Date was released about six weeks before Nirvana's Nevermind would cause a seismic shift in the pop culture landscape.)  But that's a moment in time that absolutely defines my childhood, so I can't help but have a soft spot for it.  And the movie is just goofy enough to be appealing, from Ethan Hawke accidentally murdering a police detective and then driving around the rest of the movie with a trunk full of corpses, to the motorcycle cop who can't tell blood from transmission fluid, to BD Wong's babyfaced Chinese mafia boss who occasionally slips into a James Cagney-esque accent.  We also get two outlandish and total throwaway cameos by both James Hong and Victor Wong, because most of the third act takes place in Chinatown and there were seemingly only six Asian actors working in the early 90's.  I'm almost surprised Long Duk Dong doesn't make an appearance.  And let's not forget Fisher Stevens essentially playing a cross between Wile E. Coyote and the newspaper delivery kid from Better Off Dead.  Sadly, Terri Polo doesn't really have much to do as the object of Tom's affection, but she's totally hot and a girl who's equally down for exotic drinks at an island-themed hole in the wall bar by the docks or beers at a death metal club in an old warehouse where GWAR (!!!) is playing, so twelve-year-old Daley probably would have been smitten.

Lerman was gracious enough to actually buy me Mystery Date on DVD, so it's now part of my collection.  (You can watch the whole thing in mediocre quality on YouTube.)  It feels like a movie I can adopt as a retroactive childhood favorite, right up there with The Man With One Red Shoe or Hudson Hawk, although sadly Mystery Date never matches the dizzying heights of Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello as showtune singing cat burglars trying to steal Leonardo Da Vinci's alchemy machine on behalf of The Vatican.  Then again, nothing really does.  Nevertheless, it's extremely comforting in a way, knowing that Lerman is starting my journey in a place that feels very familiar and even downright nostalgic.

I can't wait to see how he's going to get to A Serbian Film in just three moves.


What's Next? - Crazy Love


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Title: Mystery Date
Director: Jonathan Wacks
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Terri Polo, BD Wong, Fisher Stevens, Brian McNamara, Don S. Davis, James Hong, Victor Wong
Year Of Release: 1991
Viewing Method: DVD

Podcast Episode 5: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET Leaves Us Howling With Laughter And Righteous Anger

"That kid makes it look so goddamn easy."

Two podcast episodes in a row!  That wasn't originally my intention, but when Bart and I walked out of The Wolf Of Wall Street, it felt like the kind of movie that simply demanded a proper conversation.  I love a film that sends you out of the theater buzzing with an electric energy that makes you want to spend the next two hours talking about everything you just witnessed, a film with no easy answers that forces you to actively engage with the material and struggle to put your emotions into words.  Wolf is just such a film.

No matter who you are and what you do in life, we should all aspire to be as sharp and on our respective games as Martin Scorcese is at the age of 71.  Sweet Jesus.  This might be the pinnacle of his long running collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio (five films spanning eleven years) and both of them bring an energy and a focus to bear that would be impressive for men half their age.  This is three solid hours of behavior that is so depraved, so appalling on every conceivable level that it'll make you want to burn all of Wall Street to the fucking ground, but you'll be too busy hyperventilating from laughter to actually spark a match.  And those three hours flew by in a blink and left me hungry for three more.  DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are absolutely mesmerizing and I want, nay I NEED to see these two in another buddy comedy as soon as humanly possible.  Between Hill's transformative vocal work and DiCaprio's jaw-dropping physical performance, you're looking at two guaranteed Oscar nominations that, while no less deserving, are destined to stand as the polar opposites of Michael Fassbender and Chiwetel Ejiofor's work in 12 Years A Slave.  This will be the litmus test for Academy voters.

While it may not be as obvious as a film detailing the horrors of American slavery, Wolf is a story that no less repugnant.  Yes, this is a film that revels in excess, featuring enough sex and drugs to make a 70's porno blush and it's certainly not for the uptight or those of a sensitive disposition.  (I just overheard a coworker talking about watching the film with her whole family, including her uncle the 81 year old priest.  Talk about a massive tactical error.)  But there's a difference between depiction and endorsement; Scorcese certainly doesn't beat you over the head with his own moral judgement, but he's definitely trying to provoke a reaction from you and it's certainly not hero worship.  Make no mistake, this is a film fueled by outrage.  The Wolf Of Wall Street is unquestionably one of the most astounding films of the year and anyone who says otherwise simply wasn't paying attention.

So listen along as Bart and I drink 90 proof liquor made from carrots (we didn't have any ludes handy) and gush about The Wolf, along with a discussion about the evils of Wall Street, my favorite films of 2013 and the value of rewatchability versus initial theatrical experience.  Plus a reaction to the trailer for Kung Fury.

Enjoy!

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Title: The Wolf Of Wall Street
Director: Martin Scorcese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jean Dujardin, Matthew McConaughey, Cristin Milioti
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical - Showcase Revere

Podcast Episode 4: THE HOBBIT Desolates Our Patience

"Dragonfire and ruin, that is what you'll bring upon us."

First off, apologies for my recent online absence.  Life always gets a bit more hectic around the holidays and sadly I allowed my writing to fall by the wayside a bit over the last few weeks.  As the last two months of my year draw near, I'm hoping to really kick things into high gear and bring you a lot more content, including two weeks of really crazy guest curation and a few more podcast recordings.  I've even taken steps to get the show up on iTunes.  It's like we're a real podcast!

My younger brother Tim is in town for the holidays, on break from his senior year of college in Cleveland.  He spent a few days hanging out at my place and watching movies with me, including Peter Jackson's latest sojourn into Middle Earth, The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug.  I thought it'd be fun to have Tim make a guest appearance on the podcast with me and Bart, but it turned out that Bart hadn't actually seen the first installment of The Hobbit.  So we made a plan to watch the two films back to back last Saturday, exactly the way we used to approach Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies.  But while those past marathon viewings were always full of fun and excitement, six hours of The Hobbit felt like a prolonged chore.

I certainly wouldn't call these bad films, if only because Middle Earth is a world in which I'm always happy to spend some time.  But I would say that this new trilogy is tragically misguided, attempting to shoehorn a slight and fun story into the epic and serious mold of The Lord Of The Rings.  It's such a shame, because I so want to like these films and they're well produced enough that I can almost convince myself that they're better than they actually are.  The Hobbit was originally planned as two films instead of three and I think that would have been the stronger approach, forcing Jackson to keep the proceedings lean and nimble and leaving cool but inconsequential stuff (like the werebear and his cow ponies) on the cutting room floor.  In fairness, The Desolation Of Smaug is certainly a step up from An Unexpected Journey, if only because it features lots of Bilbo being terribly clever and solving various puzzles (a big part of why I fell in love with the Bass/Rankin cartoon from the 70's) as well as a pretty sweet dragon and a lot of actual stuff happening, as opposed to the first film's endless walking and singing.  But that doesn't excuse the fact that the film is at least 25 minutes too long, haphazardly edited and doesn't really end so much as it just stops playing.

So here's episode four of the Daley Screening podcast, which also includes some discussion of Paul Rudd entering the Marvel Universe, Joaquin Phoenix being courted for Lex Luthor, and the trailer for Transcendence.  Enjoy.

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Title: The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Benedict Cumberbatch, Lee Pace, Evangeline Lily, Orlando Bloom, Ken Stott
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical - IMAX Reading