Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

I thought it was heavy-handed, insufferable, and obvious. But you may like it.

Flattery will get you everywhere.

52 Pick-Up, 1986

Successful construction businessman Harry (Roy Scheider) is living a pretty great life until three masked strangers pull him into a room and reveal that they have damning footage of him fooling around with his decades-younger mistress, Cini (Kelly Preston). Despite the fact that his wife, Barbara (Ann-Margret) is about to run for office, Harry makes the bold decision to anger the blackmailers by only pretending to deliver the money they want. In retaliation, the blackmailers commit a horrific act of violence against Cini and threaten to frame Harry for it. With his back against the wall, Harry attempts to turn the blackmailers against one another.

This film about grimy people and their wicked deeds leans a little too much into the mindset of its main characters.

There is something so distressing about a film that has elements you love cozied right up next to a bunch of elements you hate. I found very little middle ground in this movie between the good and the off-putting.

The good? Well, John Glover plays one of the most enjoyably repulsive villains, elevated (if that’s the right word) by one of the most hideously hilarious accents I’ve ever heard. His detestable Alan is a porn theater manager, amateur pornographer, and total accounting whiz. Clarence Williams III plays Boddy Shy, a different breed of sociopath---a man for whom violence and murder is a casual, unremarkable thing. And rounding out the trio of blackmailers is Robert Trebor as Leo, a sweaty, gay “live nude girls” manager whose voice suggests an aw-shucks cartoon dog more than a human being.

I also quite enjoyed Vanity’s turn as Doreen, one of the nude performers at Leo’s joint and a friend of Cini’s. Doreen understands the precarious position she is in, and must work to avoid getting between the men. Preston and Ann-Margret are both good in their roles, but are given much less to work with script-wise.

This is a movie about sleazy people with all the moral compass of a rotten cabbage, and at times it manages to exist in an unsettling place of observing their inhumanity toward one another. Shy torturing Doreen to find out what she knows--or might have told Harry--in a sudden explosion of violence. The genuinely disturbing torture of Cini, something staged cinematically by Alan for Harry’s benefit.

It’s hard sometimes to distinguish between a movie that is exploitative and a movie that is about exploitation. For me, this is a movie that fell too much into the former category. And what makes it worse is the fact that the filmmakers seem keenly aware of the dynamics of the world it is portraying. The most obvious component is the vulnerability of sex workers. Cini and Doreen are in a precarious position, but the film takes particular interest in getting them undressed as often as possible. The stark, invasive camera is willing to look down their shirts or up their skirts no matter what. (We get several sequences of pornography being filmed, but it only ever includes nude women. Gosh, wonder why?).

Intentionally or not, the protagonist ends up being kind of repulsive largely because of his lack of care for the vulnerable women around him. He is protective of his wife, but after an initial reaction of shock regarding what is done to Cini, he literally never expresses a single regret about what happened to her, or the fact that his actions led to it. The same goes for his willingness to include Doreen in his quest for revenge. These women are literally disposable, and it’s the threat to his marriage and upper-middle-class lifestyle that mainly seems to motivate him.

The character I ended up rooting for the most, shockingly, was Leo (and his adorable boy-toy assistant). Leo is the only character who expresses any genuine emotion of remorse about the horrible things that are done to Cini, and the only person who seems willing to make a sacrifice to get some form of justice for her. Are some of his motivations about self-preservation? Yes. But his is the only actual anguish in the film that isn’t purely selfish.

By the time the last act rolled around, I’d pretty much tired of the film repeatedly leveraging violence against women for thrills and as a motivation for the main character. (The fact that the movie features an actual rapist in a cameo role . . . does not help my feelings about this aspect of the film). With more character development, this might not have been such a sticking point, but the women in this film totally undercut the strong actresses behind them. Poor choices and baffling reactions all seem to exist merely for the sake of the script, and it gets really old by the last 20 minutes or so.

I did like the way that the film was shot, and at times the way that Harry attempts to double and triple-cross the blackmailers was very engaging. But overall I couldn’t get past the lack of empathy and the treatment of its female characters as punching bags.

Holy cow, what a blast from the past. I haven't seen this film in like 35 years and had kinda forgotten it existed. I used to watch this all the time because it was on HBO and it was "gritty which was my thing and I loved Roy Scheider when I was young, from the Jaws films to Marathon Man to Still Of The Night, Blue Thunder, 2010, this film, I just loved the guy.
I can't remember much about it now, of course, but it's neat to see it pop up, maybe I'll give it another go sometime. I realize you didn't recommend it but I do like re-visiting movies from my youth, like The Star Chamber and such, when I get the chance.

I would recommend Carlito's Way as an alternative to Scarface. I saw it fairly recently and was blown away. If you're looking for soul, it may be up your alley.

I would rank Scarface at the bottom of what I've seen from De Palma since it suffers from too much bloat.

Le Corbeau, 1943

In a small village in France, doctor Remy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) has a somewhat suspect reputation due to his tendency to save the lives of pregnant women, even at the expense of their unborn fetuses. Germain has a mutual crush on Laura (Micheline Francey), the young wife of one of his co-workers, but is also in a relationship with Denise (Ginette Leclerc), a woman who prides herself on her sexual conquests. The whole situation is a powder keg, and an anonymous person lights a match when they send a series of anonymous poison pen letters, many of them directly targeting Germain. But who is the letter writer? And what secret past is Germain hiding?

Though it lacks some briskness on the thriller side of things, this film examines the ease with which the intimacy of a small community can turn suffocating.

Taken merely as a mystery about who is writing these mysterious letters, this film seems at times like it’s just moving in circles. Various names and motivations are bandied about, but with no real way to prove anything, it often doesn’t amount to much more than speculation. But where the film does keep a good momentum is in the evolving way that the villagers see one another, and our understanding of how they have positioned themselves socially and morally against one another.

At first the roles all seem spelled out: Germain is the practical, unsentimental doctor. Denise is the femme fatale, a spoiled child feigning illness to get attention. Laura is the decent woman, trapped in a marriage to an older man and resisting her attraction to someone more her own age.

A big a-ha for me was letting go of expecting a linear mystery/thriller structure. What happens in this film is more the rhythm of real life. Many people in the village have suspicions, but without evidence there’s no resolution, just a mounting sense of unease. It’s pretty obvious to everyone that Germain is being targeted disproportionately, but why? Is it something petty, or a genuine grievance? What this film captures is the uncomfortable place where you can’t help but be suspicious, and the way that this drives a wedge between us as people.

In the last act, this film really ramps up the character development. While we’ve spent a lot of time watching the characters interact with each other and making assumptions about their character and motivations, now we begin to see why they act the way that they do. In some cases, that clarity lends character more sympathy. In other cases, someone we liked suddenly seems petty or cruel. It’s a neat lesson in snap judgements, as we the viewer look down on the villagers for their behavior, only to realize that we’ve been making (sometimes incorrect) value judgements all along.

I also liked the way that the film forces us to sit with different moral quandaries, and consider the way that people must navigate their own morality. Is it wrong to not tell a patient that their condition is fatal? When faced with a pregnant woman whose life is endangered, do you save the mother or the fetus? At what point is lethal retribution appropriate? The fact that these are questions we still grapple with as a society gives the film a resonance, even more so because characters are able to articulate the life experiences or personal beliefs that lead them to their stances.

Finally, I appreciated that the film showed the ripple effects of spreading gossip in a small community. Think you’re getting one over on a woman who has had an affair by insinuating that her baby isn’t her husband’s? Great, except for the part where that child now sees herself as the cause of her parents arguing. No action that harms someone exists in a vacuum, even if you perceive that action as being justified. Does the poison pen writer not realize there will be such effects, or do they simply not care? It’s another piece of the puzzle in trying to unravel if this person is profoundly cruel, or merely focused to the point of not understanding the extent of their actions.

This isn’t what I was expecting in terms of a mystery/thriller, but it ended up being a very interesting drama and examination of small town dynamics. Leclerc’s character and performance really grew on me as the film went on, and Denise went from feeling like a caricature to perhaps the most interesting character in the film.

I watched this last week or so. Not at all what I was expecting, which might have colored my rating for the film somewhat, but it still managed to move me as the ruminations on the various ways gossip can impact people were very moving. I also liked how the tension of the poison pill letters was depicted. It didn't result in a conventional thriller so much as their normal lives being occasionally disrupted by the letters to varying degrees.

Le Corbeau is a great film. Loved it.

1280 reviews is impressive, Takoma11! Can't see myself reviewing every single film I watched.

I am very sad that I wrote hundreds and hundreds of reviews on previous forums and literally didn't back-up/save a single one of them, and now they are lost to the void. Ah, well.

You better back 'em up on Letterboxd or something in case Yoda goes bankrupt and has no money to pay for the hosting.

You better back 'em up on Letterboxd or something in case Yoda goes bankrupt and has no money to pay for the hosting.

Payback, 1999

After a daring heist, Porter (Mel Gibson) is left for dead by his partners, friend Val (Gregg Henry) and his own wife, Lynn (Deborah Unger). After laying low for a few months to recover, Porter returns to the city with revenge on his mind. He finds a willing accomplice in acquaintance Rosie (Maria Bello), but the odds are against him as Val is now in cahoots with big time criminals.
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This is a by-the-numbers thriller with decent enough execution.

How do you take a movie where Lucy Liu plays some sort of extreme dominatrix and render it boring? That should be, like, impossible, right?

Everything in this movie feels just way too subdued, and that even extends to moments where a car full of surprised goons is blown up by the protagonist. It’s like you can see the pieces of a good thriller, only the volume has been turned down on it all.

One thing I learned watching this film is that Mel Gibson isn’t really someone I want to look at anymore. I see his face, and all I can think about is some mish-mash of his drunk ramble wishing sexual violence on someone (with bonus racial slurs!). So right away, I knew I wasn’t going to love the film because Gibson is the wrong kind of distracting. But even taking a step back from my distaste for the actor, I don’t think this is a very good performance. It’s an empty jumble of smirks and world-weary sighs.

The supporting cast, which is absolutely loaded with talent, doesn’t fare much better. Liu at least makes an impression, with her radically absurd sex worker who spends most of her screentime punching Val in the face. (A weird running gag of people punching anyone who interrupts their phone calls is the best part of this subplot.) Bill Duke and Jack Conley are on hand as two police officers who squeeze Porter for a share of the money. If we’re being honest here, Bill Duke’s amazing grandma glasses are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of enjoyment of these characters.

Other reliable supporting actors like John Glover, Kris Kristofferson, David Paymer, and William Devane get a chunk of screentime, but no one really makes a strong impression. The cast is too large, in a way, and it all comes off as too slight. Characters are introduced and then die ten minutes later with little fanfare, and there is almost a video game sensibility to it all as Porter moves up the levels.

There’s plenty about this movie that’s fine, but nothing that really struck me as great, or even really good. Bello’s character has a cute dog. There’s a stunningly stupid scene that at least made me laugh where Porter is trying to find the son of a gangster, and said offspring decides to stand up and shout “Woo! Hey! That’s me!!!! I’m Johnny!”. Nothing in this movie is bad-bad, just bland and predictable.

There was nothing to love or hate here, just hitting the expected beats and then end credits. Oh, here’s something to hate: the movie is pale blue and looks ugly in a very late-90s way.

Aw. I really liked this movie, musta watched it half a dozen times, because I thought it was kinda unlike anything I was seeing at the time and I liked the sort of subdued way it played it and the way it just sort of moved from one villain to the next. And James Coburn getting upset about Porter shooting his alligator suitcase with his expensive suits in it never fails to amuse me.