8 Million Ways to Die (1986)

I’m an ex-cop. Los Angeles. Matt Scudder (Jeff Bridges) is a part of LAPD’s Sheriff’s Department and he takes part in a drugs bust that goes badly wrong with his colleagues beaten to death. Six months after the internal investigation he’s in Alcoholics Anonymous celebrating his pin for sobriety but his marriage is gone, his daughter lives with his wife and he’s picking up private eye work from his meetings. A request from a call girl Sunny (Alexandra Paul) brings him back into contact with a drug dealer Willie ‘Chance’ Walker (Randy Brooks) he used to know from the streets who’s now running a flash gambling club where he has a business arrangement with Angel Maldonado (Andy Garcia) who himself has an ongoing interest in another one of the prostitutes, Sarah (Rosanna Arquette). When Sunny turns up at his home looking for help because she’s being threatened Matt agrees but she’s abducted and brutally murdered and he’s too late to help. He wakes up in a detox ward and signs himself out. When he finds evidence against one or other of the men at the club in Sunny’s Filofax, he embarks on a quest for vengeance aided by the discovery of a jewel and a mountain of cocaine while Sarah accompanies him and tries to seduce him before agreeing to help … You’re not a mindless lush after all. Adapted (somewhat) from Lawrence Block’s fantastic New York City-set novel, the fifth in the Matt Scudder series, this was a disappointment on several levels. Oliver Stone did the first pass (and more), with R. Lance Hill (writing as David Lee Henry) then went off to direct a film of his own, so Robert Towne was prevailed upon by director Hal Ashby to do a rewrite but took so long the production was already shooting and changes made on the hoof with improvisation by the cast by the time his pages started arriving. Unrelenting and cliched in ways and draggy in the second half, which is surprising given Ashby’s subtle way of controlling narrative, it retains some of the superficial interest that the cast and behind the scenes team accrues but takes too long to get where it’s going and is horribly violent in one scene. The plausibility of an alcoholic former cop being allowed back in the fold to exert a vigilante-type revenge seriously tests the saw suspension of disbelief. And yet this hovers on the edges of greatness which begs the question why it went wrong. The drift commences with the change in setting – which the opening voiceover does not assist in any way. It’s (obviously) set in New York City. Then, Matt Scudder is an NYC detective, cut from a very different cloth than any denizen of LA. All the performances feel a little too loose in a film that swings between character study and crime story. The contrasting styles of Sunny and Sarah seem off and Angel’s swagger is exaggerated. Bad writing, bad direction or both? I live in a world I didn’t make. Bridges had already done better in the era’s popular noir remake Against All Odds and the thriller Jagged Edge – so this was not his best performance although he has his moments as the lower depths of his addiction to the bottle are plumbed. The major problem appears to be the fact that the film was taken from Ashby and edited by someone else. Ashby, as we know, was one of the great film editors prior to directing so this made absolutely no sense albeit he had his own addiction issues and this was sadly his final feature. This is beautifully shot by Stephen H. Burum with a striking score by James Newton Howard but it fundamentally changes the intent of the book and the re-edit altered it completely. The final shootout is simply unbelievable and not in a good way. Novelist Lawrence Block was not happy (to say the least) with this first screen take on Matt Scudder, as he recounted to this author. You can read more about that and Robert Towne in Chinatowne: The Screenplays of Robert Towne, https://www.amazon.co.uk/ChinaTowne-Screenplays-Robert-Towne-1960-2000/dp/1695887409/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1MXGOF3HFVGNA&keywords=elaine+lennon+chinatowne&qid=1705759297&s=books&sprefix=el%2Cstripbooks%2C847&sr=1-1. Waking up is the hardest part. #600straightdaysofmondomovies

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Everything is flat and empty here. There’s nothing to do. In 1951 Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane Jackson (Jeff Bridges) are high-school seniors and friends in Anarene, North Texas. Duane is dating Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd), who Sonny considers the prettiest girl in town. Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs. Over the Christmas holiday Sonny begins an affair with lonely Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman) the depressed wife of high-school “Coach” Popper (Bill Thurman) who is secretly gay. At the Christmas dance Jacy is invited by Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) to a naked indoor pool party at the home of Bobby Sheen (Gary Brockette) a wealthy young man who seems a better romantic prospect than Duane. Bobby tells Jacy that he isn’t interested in virgins and to come back after she’s had sex. Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) bans the boys from his cafe, pool hall and cinema when they mistreat their retarded friend Billy (Sam Bottoms) taking him to a prostitute who beats him for making a mess. Sam dies while the boys are on a road trip to Mexico and leaves his property to different people, including Sonny. Jacy invites Duane for sex in a motel and eventually breaks up with him by phone, eventually losing her viriginity on a pool table to her mother’s lover Abilene (Clu Gulager). Sonny fights with Duane over Jacy  and Duane leaves town to work on the rigs out of town. Jacy sets her sight on Sonny and they elope to her parents’ fury. The war in Korea provides an escape route for Duane but there’s one last picture show on before the cinema closes down forever … Nothing’s ever the way it’s supposed to be at all. They say the third time’s the charm and so it was for neophyte director Peter Bogdanovich in this adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel about kids growing up in small town North Texas which he co-wrote with the author as well as wife Polly Platt, who was the production designer and collaborator with Bogdanovich on all his films. (Then he fell in love with his young leading lady Shepherd, but that’s another story). The film was shot in black and white following advice from Orson Welles, Bogdanovich’s house guest at the time (and the best book on Welles derives from this era of their wide-ranging conversations, This Is Orson Welles, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum).  The cinematography rendered by Robert Surtees is simply exquisite, the attention to detail extraordinary but this is no nostalgic trip down memory lane. The universally pitch-perfect performances exist in this very specific texture as a kind of miracle, duly rewarding Johnson and Leachman at the Academy Awards. But Ellen Burstyn as Jacy’s mom Lois has some of the best lines and delivers them with power. She and Shepherd have one amazing scene together. This is a coming of age movie but it’s also about ageing and loneliness and deception and disappointment and it’s the acknowledging of the sliding scale of desperation where the emotions hit gold. And there are juxtapositions which still manage to shock – like when Sonny looks out the window to see one horse mount another while a great romantic poem is being read in class. The realisation that Sam’s great love was Lois and vice versa. The callous way sexual manipulation is used as a casual transaction for the bored. There were controversies over scenes of sex and nudity which didn’t make it into the initial release but those parts were restored in 1992 by Bogdanovich so that the full potential of the story could be contextualised. A poignant Fordian masterpiece now firmly imprinted as an American classic.  You couldn’t believe how this country’s changed

Just Dropped In

Kenny Rogers RIP. The Dude Abides!

 

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Alright, yeah, I think it’s some kind of pervert hotel. It’s 1969. The El Royale is a run-down hotel that sits on Lake Tahoe on the border between California and Nevada. It soon becomes a seedy battleground when seven strangers – cleric Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), soul singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Ervio), a travelling vacuum cleaner salesman, Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), the Summerspring sisters, Emily (Dakota Johnson) and Rose (Cailee Spaeny), the sole staff member on site, manager Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) and the mysterious Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth) – all converge on the hotel one fateful night for one last shot at redemption before everything goes wrong… I can’t do it. I can’t kill no more people. Doesn’t your heart go out to actors nowadays? Either they starve themselves on chicken breasts and broccoli to appear as ludicrous superheroes looking deranged from hanger and bodybuilding steroids on the subsequent publicity tour, or they wind up in something like this (or in Hemsworth’s case, both), a kind of Tarantinoesque closed-room Agatha Christie mystery trading on well-worn tropes. It’s really not right, is it? Seven strangers. Seven secrets. All roads lead here. However this pastiche is cleverly staged (with an actual state border running through the building), impeccably designed (by Martin Whist) and shot (by Seamus McGarvey) and well performed outside that narrow generic style that such material demands.  It’s overlong but florid and rather fruity with nods to Hitchcock and Lynch and the big reveal is worth waiting for. Written, produced and directed by Drew Goddard. Well, it looks like the Lord hasn’t forsaken you yet

Against All Odds (1984)

Guys are crippling themselves for you, lady. I could give a shit what you believe. Having been cut from his professional football team the Los Angeles Outlaws after sustaining a shoulder injury, ageing down-and-out athlete Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges) is in desperate need of money. Crooked nightclub owner and bookie Jake Wise (James Woods) offers Terry a hefty sum to go to Mexico and find his girlfriend, Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward) the daughter of team owner Mrs Wyler (Jane Greer). Terry is broke and cannot turn the offer down. When he finds Jessie on an island off Mexico, the two fall in love and he reveals to her his guilt over his points-shaving scam with Jake. Terry reports that he failed to find Jessie but Jake sends someone else – the team trainer Hank Sully (Alex Karras) who reveals that he had identified Terry and other debt-laden players to Jake to make them work for him. When a gun falls into Jessie’s hands during a struggle the twists of the plot start being revealed to Terry, the patsy of all time … You got problems now, Terry. You want trouble too? One of the great Eighties thrillers, this remake of Out of the Past (adapted from Daniel Mainwaring’s novel Build My Gallows High, its alternative title) written by Eric Hughes, this is dangerous, surprising, gorgeous to look at (shot by Donald E. Thorin) and literally drenched in sex (one scene is frequently cut from TV broadcast). The central relationship between Terry and Jessie is one of the most cunningly constructed of all movie pairings, a brilliant homage to Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, the original amoral noir girl nicely cast here in the role of Jessie’s powerful mother. Key roles are played by Saul Rubinek and Richard Widmark. The action is superb – what about that chickie race down Sunset! The plotting becomes convoluted, its neo-noir narrative nodding to Chinatown with a property/environment conspiracy backdrop but it’s the twists and turns between this sexy couple that’ll have you panting for more. A sensational film that gets better by the year with a performance by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, one of the many acts on a soundtrack distinguished by the famous title song, by Phil Collins. Directed by Taylor Hackford.  Don’t leave without saying goodbye

The Fisher King (1991)

Obnoxious NYC shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) is doling out advice as per and looking forward to a part in a TV sitcom when the news mentions his name – a man was inspired by his rant against yuppies to go on a shooting spree in a restaurant and then killed himself. Jack spirals into a suicidal depression and we find him three years later working in the video store owned by his girlfriend (a fiery Mercedes Ruehl) and about to kill himself when some youthful vigilantes decide to do some street cleaning – he’s rescued by Parry (Robin Williams), a Grail obsessive and homeless loner whose wife was killed in the restaurant massacre. How their lives intertwine and they both chase the objects of their affection (and each other’s obsession) while battling mental illness is the backbone of this comedy-drama-fantasy that is told in the usual robust and arresting style of Terry Gilliam, who was directing a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese. There are iconic images here – the Red Knight appearing to Parry as his hallucinations kick in, and the chase through Central Park;  the extraordinary Grand Central Station waltzing scene in which Parry meets the weird Lydia (Amanda Plummer);  Jack and Parry watching the stars. Gilliam’s own obsessions are all over this despite his not writing it, with references to the Grail (obv) and Don Quixote.  It’s all wrapped into four distinctive performances which embody oddball characters in search of a role for life in a very conventional time, with emotions riding high while personal circumstances contrive to drag them to the very pit of their being. There are some outstanding performances in small roles by Tom Waits, Michael Jeter and Kathy Najimy in a film that proves that dreams do come true.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Nobody fucks with the Jesus. The Dude abides. Where to start with one of the most cherished films there has ever been? Not in the beginning. I may have almost had a coronary from laughing the first time I saw this at a festival screening prior to its release, but a lot of critics just did not get it. It’s the Coen Brothers in excelsis, a broad Chandler adaptation and tribute to Los Angeles,  a hymn to male friendship and the Tao of easy living with some extraordinarily surreal fantasy and dream sequences – not to mention some deadly bowling. Jeff Bridges is Jeffrey ‘Dude’ Lebowski, a guy so laid back he’s horizontal but he gets a little antsy when some thieves mistake him for The Big Lebowski and piss on his rug (it really tied the room together). Best friend Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) is his bowling buddy, an uptight Nam vet with adoptive-Jewish issues in this hilarious offside take on director John Milius. Steve Buscemi is their sweet-natured friend Donny and John Turturro is the unforgettable sports foe, a hispanic gangsta paedo in a hairnet, Jesus Quintana. After the rug issue is handled, Dude is hired by his namesake (David Huddleston) a wheelchair-bound multimillionaire philanthropist, to exchange a ransom when his young trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) is kidnapped. Naturally Dude screws it up. There’s a band of nihilists led by Peter Stormare, some porn producers (Bunny makes flesh flicks), Lebowski’s randy artist daughter (Julianne Moore) and a private eye following everyone. And there’s Sam Elliott, narrating this tale of tumbleweed and laziness.  Everyone has their signature song in one of the great movie soundtracks and Dude has not only Creedence but White Russians to really mellow his day. Just like The Big Sleep, the plot really doesn’t matter a fig. This is inspired lunacy and I love it SO much.

Arlington Road (1999)

What are you doing? How many people are you going to kill? Reston, Virginia. Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is a history professor at George Washington University where he specialises in terrorism. His late  wife Leah (Laura Poe) was an FBI agent who died in the line of duty in a Ruby-Ridge-type standoff, and Michael now lives with his 9-year-old son Grant (Spencer Treat Clark). He is still friends with Leah’s partner Whit Carver (Robert Gossett) and dates his former graduate student Brooke Wolfe (Hope Davis). Upon finding a severely injured boy named Brady (Mason Gamble) stumbling in his neighborhood, Michael rushes him to the hospital, where the wounds are determined to be caused by fireworks. Michael meets Brady’s parents, structural engineer Oliver Lang (Tim Robbins) and his wife Cheryl (Joan Cusack) discovering they are his new neighbours. They become friends and their sons join the Discoverers, a Boy Scouts-style group. In casual conversation, Oliver expresses his sympathy for Leah’s death by displaying potentially violent anti-Government beliefs. This, and the cause of Brady’s injuries, make Michael suspicious about him. He finds blueprints in Oliver’s possession that are not for his purported building project, and receives misdirected mail suggesting Oliver lied about his college years. Brooke and Whit dismiss his concerns as paranoia. Michael takes his class on a field trip to the site where Leah was killed, excoriating the FBI for igniting the standoff after failing to probe the besieged family. His students appear uneasy. Michael reluctantly lets Grant go to a Discoverers camp with Brady. His research reveals that Oliver was born ‘William Fenimore’ and tried to blow up a post office in Kansas when he was 16. Oliver discovers Michael’s interest and confronts him, stating that his immature act (in revenge for the government’s role in his father’s suicide) cost him imprisonment and a new identity to hide his past from his children, which he regrets. Michael appears to let the matter drop but Brooke spots Oliver swapping cars and exchanging metal boxes with strangers. From a payphone, she leaves Michael a message lending validity to his suspicions, but is discovered by Cheryl. Michael learns of Brooke’s (off-screen) death on the news where it’s presented as a car accident. After discovering that messages had been erased from his answering machine, Michael asks Whit to check FBI records about Oliver and recent calls to his home. He also visits the father of the late Dean Archer Scobee (Stanley Anderson), accused of blowing up a federal building 14 months earlier in St. Louis, from where the Langs had moved … You can’t ask Government to be infallible but you can ask it to be accountable. You know you’re watching a terrific thriller when Joan Cusack’s sudden appearance at a phone booth makes you jump out of your seat in fright. The screenplay by the gifted Ehren Kruger is concerned with homegrown terrorism, a notion that has never gone away but had particular currency in the era of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. Jeff Bridges is immensely sympathetic as the recently widowed history lecturer finds his new neighbours Oliver Lang might be plotting a very nasty spectacular  along the lines of McVeigh and realises too late that his young son is spending way too much time in their company. This is a brilliantly sustained tense piece of work about domestic terrorism which never drops the ball and is tonally pretty perfect. An underrated achievement. Directed by Mark Pellington. I’m a messenger Michael, I’m a messenger! There’s millions of us, waiting to take up arms, ready to spread the word… millions of us!

Cutter’s Way (1981)

If you were to put a gun to my head I would have to say that this is my favourite American film. Or my favourite Californian film. Or my favourite film of the Eighties. Or …  my favourite film, period. There is simply nothing wrong with it. And it was one of those curious coincidences that made me see it. I had borrowed the source book from the public library just 10 minutes before seeing the poster at the local fleapit without being remotely aware of the film’s existence. I went to the library each Friday immediately school was out to borrow three books. They took precedence over any homework when I was a kid. The novel was Cutter and Bone, by Newton Thornburg and I saw a poster (not this one) with Jeff Bridges and John Heard and looked closer:  it was indeed an adaptation of the book I was holding in my hand (the name was changed because publicists thought it sounded too surgical). I read the book over the course of two days and saw the film on the Sunday night. It filled my head for years. I loved John Heard, had done since BBC2 had screened Between the Lines on Valentine’s Day 1980. Bridges of course I adored since he accompanied Clint in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot when that finally turned up on TV.  Heard is Alex Cutter, the crippled one-eyed Nam vet who is convinced of his friend’s story that an oilman is responsible for a teenage girl’s death after seeing her body disposed of in a trash can in a Santa Barbara street on a rainy night as he’s returning from an assignation. Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) is a boat salesman and gigolo who seems to love Alex’s sad alcoholic wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn) more than her husband does and all three live a rackety lower class life in this very upper class town. Cutter pursues the suspicion with the dead girl’s sister (Ann Dusenberry) and they go after magnate J. J. Cord with devastating results.  (And yes there are those who will see in this an element of Moby Dick, something Alex himself references early on.) The three leads are just astonishing with Eichhorn offering one of the best performances you will ever see. Their complementarity reminds me that the American movie business was still making great films in my lifetime.  Heard was director Ivan Passer’s choice after playing in Othello – the role was originally intended for Dustin Hoffman (whew).  Jeffrey Alan Fiskin’s adaptation alters the last section of the novel but it works, however angrily and unhappily. Jack Nitzsche’s music has the aching power of a lullaby and Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography is as indelible as a piece of enamelled jewellery. I still feel privileged to have seen this on the big screen on its first release (they let me in though I was far from 18… well, it was a small town and I was the only regular customer.) Incredible. I love this film so much. It makes my heart beat.