Review: "Blue Steel" is Mixes Horror and Crime Genres (Happy B'day, Kathryn Bigelow)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 75 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

Blue Steel (1990)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA - R
DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow
WRITERS: Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red
PRODUCERS: Edward R. Pressman and Oliver Stone
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Amir Mokri
EDITOR: Lee Percy
COMPOSER: Brad Fiedel

CRIME/THRILLER with elements of horror

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ron Silver, Clancy Brown, Elizabeth Pena, Louise Fletcher, Philip Bosco, Kevin Dunn, Tom Sizemore, Matt Craven, and Richard Jenkins

Blue Steel was director Kathryn Bigelow’s third directorial effort (her second solo feature), and like her earlier mixed genre efforts, the film is a horror flick dressed in the clothes of a cop movie.

When rookie policewoman Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) shoots an armed robber during a holdup, one of the witnesses is Wall Street broker, Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver). A psychotic who hears voices talking to him, Hunt becomes obsessed with Megan. He cunningly removes the robber’s gun, and quietly leaves the store without Megan ever realizing he was there. Hunt carves her name on the bullets and begins a killing spree. Later, Megan meets Eugene, and he woos her into a budding romance, but his extreme mental illness causes him to reveal his crimes to Megan. However, virtually no one believes that he is the killer. As the deadly psychopath draws the young cop into a deadly game of wits, Megan thinks she’s one step ahead of him, but Hunt is much closer than she thinks.

Casting Jamie Lee Curtis as the rookie female policeman was a good move. Having spent much of her early film career playing beautiful young women stalked by mad killers in such films as Halloween (1978), The Fog and Terror Train (both 1980), and Halloween II (1981), Curtis just feels right in Blue Steel as the feisty girl against the seemingly unstoppable mass murderer. She also looks the same in her early 30’s when Blue Steel was filmed as she did when she was just in his 20’s and starring in slasher movies in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The general idea of Blue Steel seems to be that Curtis’s Megan Turner never realizes just how precarious her situation is, whether she is at home (where her father is an abusive husband), in the office (where her colleagues don’t respect her), or on the streets of New York City (where the killer stalks her).

The problem is Kathryn Bigelow and Eric Red’s screenplay, which attacks plausibility at every turn. This is a brutal cat and mouse game, and Bigelow presents Blue Steel as an exercise of urban violence and fierce gunplay – the kind that was fashionable in 1980’s action movies such as Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Much of the violence is a kick in the gut, but this concept plays with the conceit of horror movies (where many things that happen don’t have to make sense) rather than cop movies (where most things should make real world sense). In the Blue Steel, the killer is unstoppable and somewhat supernatural and the girl hero and the police department don’t seem to have much common sense, which they should.

5 of 10
C+

Thursday, May 10, 2007

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"Halloween H20" a Standout in the Franchise

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 82 (of 2012) by Leroy Douresseaux


Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Running time: 86 minutes (1 hour, 26 minutes)
MPAA – R for terror violence/gore and language
DIRECTOR: Steve Miner
WRITERS: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg; from a story by Robert Zappia (based on the characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill)
PRODUCER: Paul Freeman
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Daryn Okada
EDITOR: Patrick Lussier
COMPOSER: John Ottman with Marco Beltrami and Jeremy Sweet

HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, LL Cool J, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Janet Leigh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nancy Stephens, and Chris Durand

The subject of this movie review is Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, a 1998 slasher film from director Steve Miner. Although he is only credited as one of the executive producers, Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter of the hit horror movie, Scream, contributed as a writer on Halloween H20.

Halloween H20 is also the seventh film in the Halloween horror film franchise that began in 1978 with the highly influential John Carpenter film, Halloween. Halloween H20 takes place 20 years after the events depicted in Halloween and its sequel, Halloween II (1981). Once again, the cursed brother-sister duo of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode must struggle against one another. Halloween H20 ignores the third (which did not involve Michael Myers) through the sixth installments of the franchise.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later opens in 1998. As Halloween approaches, Michael Myers (Chris Durand) reappears. Meanwhile, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is living in Summer Glen, Northern California under the assumed name, “Keri Tate.” She is the headmistress at the posh, secluded, private boarding school, Hillcrest Academy High School. Laurie also has a boyfriend, Will Brennan (Adam Arkin), but her life isn’t quite perfect. She is a functioning alcoholic, forever fearful that Michael will come coming looking for her. Her son, 17-year-old John Tate (Josh Hartnett), is tired of dealing with his mother’s paranoia. On Halloween night, however, John will discover that his mother has to face her fears one more time.

I have to keep it real. I really like Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. I have seen it in its entirety three times, and I still watch bit and pieces of it whenever it is shown on television. It never fails to thrill me, and it is easily the best Halloween film since the first two. I give a lot of the credit for this movie’s quality to director Steve Miner and the various screenwriters.

Miner is a veteran film director, having helmed several horror films, including House (1986), Lake Placid (1999), and two installments of the Friday the 13th franchise. Miner uses some of the techniques that Carpenter used in the original film. He builds intensity with musical cues, eschews gore in scenes of violent death, uses darkness and shadow to create an atmosphere that suggests fear and mystery, and turns every setting into a place of danger, regardless of the time of day. Halloween H20 is quiet and ominous rather than frantic and clumsy, which some of the Halloween films are.

I don’t know which writers contributed what to the screenplay, but clearly (to me at least) the respect for the original films comes first for Kevin Williamson. Halloween H20 is smooth and also stripped down to its raw essence: Michael Myers’ relentless drive to kill his sister and Laurie’s naked fear of Michael finding her and killing both her and her son.

Without John Carpenter and actress Jamie Lee Curtis, the Myers character had not been able to carry this franchise. With Myers alone, each Halloween was simply another bad slasher flick – a movie that was little more than product turned out, like a cheap fast food hamburger, to separate a sucker from his money. With Miner doing his best work, Curtis returns and makes Halloween H20: 20 Years Later one of the best horror movies of the 1990s. It is scary, thrilling, a little funny, and sometimes a nail-biter. The people that control this franchise should have stopped here.

8 of 10
A

Thursday, November 01, 2012

1981 Version of "Halloween II" a Worthy Sequel

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 120 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux


Halloween II (1981)
Running time: 92 minutes (1 hour, 32 minutes)
MPAA - R
DIRECTOR: Rick Rosenthal
WRITERS/PRODUCERS: John Carpenter and Debra Hill
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dean Cundey
EDITORS: Mark Goldblatt and Skip Schoolnik
COMPOSERS: John Carpenter and Alan Howarth

HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Charles Cyphers, Jeffrey Kramer, Lance Guest, Pamela Susan Shoop, Dick Warlock, Leo Rossi, Gloria Gifford, Tawny Moyer, Ana Alicia, and Ford Rainey

Halloween II, the sequel to the highly influential 1978 horror film, Halloween, picks up right where the original ended. In fact, Halloween II begins with footage from the first film that finds high school babysitter, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), and psychiatrist-with-a-gun, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), fighting off masked killer, Michael Myers.

Loomis shot Myers six times at the end of the first film, but Myers walked away from what should have been kill shots. After that recap (with some new footage mixed in), Laurie is hauled off to the local hospital, but Myers tracks her across town and enters the hospital, where he begins to kill off the hospital staff so that no one can be in his way when he moves in to kill Laurie. Meanwhile, Dr. Loomis is running into his own problems, as Michael’s murder spree from the first film has the entire state in an uproar, with the blame placed squarely on Loomis’ shoulders. Dr. Loomis also learns a hidden secret, which reveals that Laurie was Michael’s main target all along. Can he get to the hospital in time?

Although the screen credits for Halloween II list John Carpenter, who directed the first film, as strictly a co-writer and co-producer for the second film, Carpenter thought Halloween II director, Rick Rosenthal, had delivered a sequel that was too tame. Carpenter did three days of re-shoots for Halloween II and added the new scenes into the footage Rosenthal shot in order to make the final version of the sequel bloodier, and Halloween II certainly is. The body counts exceeds 10 (whereas there were only four onscreen killings in the first film), and the sequel certainly reflects the gory nature of 1980’s slasher films like the Friday the 13th franchise, although the original Halloween, which almost single-handed gave birth to the 80’s slasher craze, does not have an abnormally high body count.

Despite the bodies piling up, Halloween II has a superbly chilling atmosphere that will have goose flesh raised and the viewer cowering in his seat. The hospital, operating on a nighttime skeleton crew, is all dark rooms and shadowy corridors, which is perfect for the spooky sequences of Myers slowing stalking the hallways, his slow footsteps bringing him from one scene of bloody mayhem to the next. Rosenthal, who would later direct the 2002 installment of this franchise, Halloween: Resurrection, should probably get credit for creating this frightful ambiance. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance give good performances, in particularly Pleasance, who gives Dr. Loomis a droll sense of humor and a matter of fact attitude about his quest to stop Myers. However, this flick’s true stars are the darkened exteriors and interiors and the murderous wraith that stalks them. Halloween II may be inferior to the original film, but it’s not inferior by a whole lot.

7 of 10
A-

Friday, June 02, 2006

Catch "Virus" When You Need a B-Movie

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 21 (of 2001) by Leroy Douresseaux


Virus (1999)
Running time: 99 minutes (1 hour, 39 minutes)
MPAA – R for sci-fi violence/gore, and for language
DIRECTOR: John Bruno
WRITERS: Chuck Pfarrer and Dennis Feldman (based upon the comic book series created by Chuck Pfarrer)
PRODUCER: Gale Anne Hurd
CINEMATOGRAPHER: David Eggby (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: M. Scott Smith
COMPOSER: Joel McNeely

HORROR/SCI-FI/ACTION/THRILLER

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin, Donald Sutherland, Joanna Pacula, Marshall Bell, Sherman Augustus, and Cliff Curtis

The subject of this movie review is Virus, a 1999 science fiction-horror film. The movie is based upon the 1992 comic book miniseries, Virus, which was created and written by Chuck Pfarrer, drawn by Howard Cobb and Jimmy Palmiotti, and published by Dark Horse Comics.

A crippled salvage tug, the Sea Star, seeks refuge in the calm eye of a typhoon. The crew discovers a seemingly abandoned and ghostly silent Russian research vessel. The Star’s captain, Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland), seeks the potentially lucrative salvage rights for the ship, but the Star’s navigator, Kit Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis), and chief engineer Steve Baker (William Baldwin) sense wrongness about the ship. Their suspicions are justified when they find the Russian ship’s sole survivor, chief science officer Nadia Vinogradiya (Joanna Pacula) who is deathly afraid of something mysterious and malevolent, an alien virus or life form that is loose on the ship. The virus takes over machines and electronics and merges it with human tissue to create monstrous creations bent on wiping humans, which it also considers a virus, off the face of the planet.

Director John Bruno, a long time visual effects specialist, creates an occasionally very intense and scary thriller. In a sense it is one of the best B-movies in recent memory – cheesy, but enjoyable and, for SF fans and action movie fans, a fun movie. The story drags a bit early on, and screenwriters Chuck Pfarrer (Hard Target) and Dennis Feldman (Species) include the standard horror movie bumps, knocks, and chills the first third of the movie before revving up the gore and violence.

The characters are standard for this kind of movie. It has the standard lead characters around which a movie revolves; we know something of their motivations and of how their pasts affect the story. We also get the stock cannon fodder, the guys with the guns and the testosterone that inevitably die. However, everyone plays up to his or her part, and no one is lax in the proceedings.

Ms. Curtis is the consummate professional who can be smart when she has to be; she can scream and play the backpedaling victim, but she can fight back in the end, although this movie does force her to be limp enough to allow for Baldwin’s manhood. Not great, but a good supporting player, Baldwin plays the blue-collar guy smart enough to survive. Sutherland, slumming as he so often does, is the consummate character actor; with a distinctive voice and the skills to play a variety of characters, he gives Captain Everton that touch of evil that would make his captaincy ripe for mutiny.

Virus is a nice one for home viewing, especially on a dark and stormy night. Obviously not a fine meal, it’s a darn good burger.

5 of 10
C+

Review: "Trading Places" is Timeless (Remembering Denholm Elliot)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 83 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Trading Places (1983)
Running time: 116 minutes (1 hour, 56 minutes)
MPAA – R
DIRECTOR: John Landis
WRITERS: Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod
PRODUCER: Aaron Russo
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Paynter (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Malcolm Campbell
COMPOSER: Elmer Bernstein
Academy Award nominee

COMEDY

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliot, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristin Holby, and Paul Gleason

The subject of this movie review is Trading Places, a 1983 comedy film and satire from director John Landis. The film stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy as a snobbish commodities trader and a streetwise con artist, respectively, who plot revenge against two conniving millionaires who cruelly use them in a personal wager.

Rare is the comedy film that enjoys success across a broad spectrum of viewer types and still remain popular even two decades after its initial release. That is exactly the case with director John Landis’s buddy, comic caper Trading Places.

Mortimer (Don Ameche) and Randolph Duke (Ralph Bellamy), millionaire commodity brokers, have made a bet. Randolph believes that he can take a common criminal off the streets, Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), and make him into a successful businessman, the old nature vs. environment/nurture. Mortimer disagrees, siding with nature, and the brothers bet one dollar to whoever wins. To learn if even a man who has been brought up in the right environment and has gotten everything he wants can go bad, they pick their hand-chosen successor at Duke and Duke, the snobbish Louis Winthorp III (Dan Aykroyd), and frame him for a few crimes. He loses his job and winds up in jail. The Dukes give Billy Ray Louis’s home and job at Duke and Duke. When Billy Ray accidentally discovers the wager, the wily young con artist joins Louis, Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) a hooker with a heart of gold who has befriended Louis, and Louis’s butler Coleman (Denholm Elliot) to turn the tables on the two callous Duke Brothers.

One of the things that makes this film so much fun is that it plays upon broad socio-economic stereotypes that are very familiar to audiences. What makes these almost stock characters work so well is a combination of excellent comic actors and a good comedic script. Dan Akyroyd is a very good actor, but he is mostly known as a comedian; combine good acting with a great sense of comic timing, and you have a great performance.

Eddie Murphy’s star as a movie actor was rapidly rising at this point in his career, but he was already a quite accomplished player in the cast of “Saturday Night Live.” The Murphy here is still the brash, streetwise, fast talker bursting with the kinda of “black comedy” that both black and white audiences love – you know, the sassy and mouthy Negro who always has a come back or something smart-alecky to say. That Murphy is mostly gone and rarely makes a film appearance now almost 20 years into Murphy’s film career, but looking back, one can see that he makes Billy Ray Valentine both hilarious and loveable – the guy you can root for and with whom you can almost identify.

Kudos also go to longtime screen veterans Bellamy, Ameche, and Elliot for bravura performances that take stock characters and give them flavor and delightful personalities. We also get the added gem of seeing Ms. Curtis in a role that didn’t require her to run from a knife-wielding murder. Up to this point in her career, Ms. Curtis had become the new "Scream Queen" of horror films.

If you haven’t seen this film, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you’ve seen it once before, you should be at least on your tenth viewing.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
1984 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score” (Elmer Bernstein)

1984 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Supporting Actor” (Denholm Elliott) and “Best Supporting Actress” (Jamie Lee Curtis); 1 nomination: “Best Screenplay – Original” (Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod)

1984 Golden Globes, USA: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical” and “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical” (Eddie Murphy)

Review: I Could Watch "The Fog" Forever (Happy B'day, John Carpenter)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 136 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980)
Running time: 89 minutes (1 hour, 29 minutes)
MPAA – R
COMPOSER/DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
WRITERS: Debra Hill and John Carpenter
PRODUCER: Debra Hill
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dean Cundey (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Charles Bornstein and Tommy Lee Wallace

HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, John Houseman, Tom Atkins, James Canning, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Kyes, and Darrow Igus

The Fog is a 1980 horror film from director John Carpenter. A ghostly revenge tale, The Fog takes place in town about to be besieged by a strange, glowing fog during its centennial celebration. This film was also remade in 2005.

The small seacoast town of Antonio Bay is celebrating its Centenary, but it doesn’t know that doom is approaching in the form of a strange fog that hides the forms of long-dead denizens of the sea. One hundred years prior, six of the town’s founding fathers reneged on a bargain with a ship’s captain; now, the captain has returned from the deep with his crew to avenge themselves on the descendants. A local disc jockey (Adrienne Barbeau), a sexy drifter (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a fisherman (Tom Atkins) are all that stand between Antonio Bay and ghostly doom.

John Carpenter’s The Fog is a moody, little gem of a horror flick. Carpenter mixed the campfire tale and pulp nonsense with his own unique brand of imaginative madness and created an enduring scary movie. Although the characters are flat and the SFX suspect, the overall package in quite entertaining. I’ve seen this several times, and it always a spine-tingling tale of terror for me. The Fog is no more flawed that the standard horror film, but one glaring weakness is that the end is a bit of a letdown. Still, the film is a nice, creepy ghost story though it lacks the pyrotechnics audiences have come to expect from horror/fantasy films. But it does one thing very well. Like the best ghost stories, it keeps you guessing – wondering what was real or imagined and wondering just when, not if, the ghosts will return.

7 of 10
B+

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Review: John Carpenter's "Halloween" is a Great Horror Movie and Great Film

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 112 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

Halloween (1978)
Running time: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
WRITERS: Debra Hill and John Carpenter
PRODUCER: Debra Hill
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dean Cundey
EDITORS: Tommy Lee Wallace and Charles Bornstein

HORROR/THRILLER

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Nancy Loomis, P.J. Soles, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Brian Andrews, and Nick Castle

On Halloween night 1963 in Haddonfield, Illinois, six-year old Michael Myers stabbed his sister to death. Fifteen years later, Michael escapes from a mental institution in Smith’s Grove, IL, and he heads back to Haddonfield with his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence), hot on the trail. Halloween night 1978, Michael is about to go on a bloody rampage, and high school student and babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends are his targets.

John Carpenter’s Halloween, more than any other film, was responsible for the 1980’s slasher movie genre. Lunatic/spree killer Michael Myers would influence the horror movies psychos that would wield knives, axes, and assorted sharp and blunt instruments to kill their teenage and 20-something victims in such films as Friday the 13th and Prom Night, especially the characters that had sex sometime during the course of the movie.

Although slasher films are a particularly bloody movie genre, Halloween is relatively free of blood and gore. There are only four onscreen murders (one off screen), and one of those happens at the beginning of the film to establish Michael’s legend. Carpenter spends most of the films first 50 minutes or so establishing mood and atmosphere. Once night falls, Carpenter allows only minimal lighting, so that most of the violence occurs in near total night darkness, which only adds to the creepiness and heightens the scares.

Carpenter also scored the film, and his “Halloween theme” is one of the most famous scary pieces of movie music. The other element that helped Carpenter create such a great horror flick is actress Jamie Lee Curtis, whose appearances in scary movies in the late 70’s and early 80’s made her the quintessential scream queen. Here, she personifies suburban innocence and all-American teen beauty – a flower ready to be plucked – which makes her the perfect victim for a knife-wielding maniac.

9 of 10
A+

Review: "A Fish Called Wanda" is Still Amazing (Happy B'day, Kevin Kline)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 153 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Running time: 109 minutes (1 hour, 49 minutes)
MPAA – R
DIRECTOR: Charles Crichton
WRITERS: John Cleese, from a story by Charles Crichton and John Cleese
PRODUCER: Michael Shamberg
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Alan Hume
EDITOR: John Jympson
Academy Award winner

COMEDY/CRIME with elements of romance

Starring: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Marie Aitken, Tom Georgeson, Patricia Hayes, Cynthia Caylor, Ken Campbell, and Geoffrey Palmer

Set in London, a crooked foursome: heist man Georges Thomason (Tom Georgeson), his partner and close friend, Ken Pile (Michael Palin), George’s American girlfriend, Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Otto (Kevin Kline) a weapons expert who pretends to be Wanda’s brother, but is really her lover, successfully pull off a big time diamond heist. They are about to get away with it when someone informs on George, who is promptly arrested.

George, however, never trusted Otto, so he hid the diamonds away, and only Ken knows where the new hiding location is. Meanwhile, Wanda seduces George’s barrister (attorney), Archie Leach (John Cleese), in hopes that he can discover and reveal to her the stolen loot’s location. There are, however, complications. Archie really falls in love with Wanda, but jealous Otto keeps interfering every time Wanda is about to get intimate with Archie and get the info she and Otto need. As George’s trial approaches, the desperate situation to learn the location of the diamonds really tests the notion of “honor among thieves.”

Nearly two decades after its initial release, A Fish Called Wanda remains a truly great comedy. I laugh at it now as much as I did when I watched in numerous times in the late 80’s. There is any number of reasons the film works so well as both a comedy and a crime film. One is timing, which is required for comedy. If the cast is in synch, it’s probably because they have good chemistry, and good screen chemistry gives a ring of truth to the proceedings – a sense of verisimilitude. The audience can suspend disbelief and believe that the actors are who they’re pretending to be and are really living in the film’s situations. One of the really good examples of this is the scene in which Archie Leach’s wife, Wendy (Marie Aitken), returns home and nearly catches Archie seducing Wanda. While Wanda and Otto, who’d also snuck into the home, scurry behind curtains, we get to watch Cleese’s hilarious performance as he tries to explain to his wife why he’s suddenly appeared in their upstairs living room with a bottle of champagne and two glasses – when he didn’t even know that she’s returned.

The film is also very well written in terms of characters and well-directed in terms of allowing the cast to develop and play the characters. The script is written by the most famous alum of the comedy troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, John Cleese, and Charles Crichton, a filmmaker at the legendary Ealing Studios, where he directed another great heist film, The Lavender Hill Mob (the film to which Wanda was often compared when Wanda was release in 1988). Both brought their sensibilities for creating truly mean-spirited, venal, vain, and eccentric characters. American filmmakers are good at making mean characters, but they often transform them into heroes – especially in comedies. From beginning to end, there is never any doubt that the characters in A Fish Called Wanda are liars, cheaters, thieves, and sometimes murderers, but we’re supposed to laugh at them. Their wicked ways cause them many inconveniences and hardships, and their vanity causes them embarrassment. Other characters are constantly picking at the things that make them vain and eccentric. This is comedy and fiction, so it’s OK to laugh at and even like these “bad guys.”

A Fish Called Wanda is also marked by what’s often called tour-de-force performances, and much of it has to do with the fact that the entire cast, especially the four leads are highly skilled actors, but are also excellent comic actors. Each does a simply fabulous job selling their characters to the audience. The most memorable performance in the film probably belongs to Kevin Kline, who won an Oscar for his role as the supposed-CIA agent, Otto. However, he’s only the cherry on top of what remains a great, great comedy.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
1989 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Kevin Kline); 2 nominations: “Best Director” (Charles Crichton) and “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” (John Cleese-screenplay/story and Charles Crichton-story)

1989 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Actor” (John Cleese) and “Best Actor in a Supporting Role” (Michael Palin); 7 nominations: “Best Film” (Michael Shamberg and Charles Crichton), “Best Actor” (Kevin Kline), “Best Actress” (Jamie Lee Curtis), “Best Actress in a Supporting Role” (Maria Aitken), “Best Direction” (Charles Crichton), “Best Editing” (John Jympson), and “Best Screenplay – Original” (John Cleese)

1989 Golden Globes: 3 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical” “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical” (John Cleese) and “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical” (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

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