Horror in the 90s Nothing But Trouble

Nothing But Trouble (1991) 

Directed by Dan Akroyd 

Written by Dan Akroyd 

Starring Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, Dan Akroyd, John Candy 

Release Date February 15th, 1991 

Box Office $8.4 million dollars 

Why does Dan Akroyd's elderly villain in Nothing But Trouble have the top of a penis for a nose? Why would this be funny? Is it intended to funny? Is it intended to be disturbing? It's certainly confusing. It achieves a high level of confusing. For the life of me, no matter how often I turn this idea over in my mind, I cannot understand the choice of having Akroyd's elderly villain creep have the tip of a penis for a nose. I imagine you reading this and kind of laughing to yourself as the absurdity of the idea of a penis tip for a nose. You're not wrong to laugh, it is absurd and funny but not in the way Dan Akroyd thinks its funny. 

And that is the deeply unfunny heart of 1991's Nothing But Trouble, it's often something you may laugh at but not for the reasons that director Dan Akroyd assumes you will laugh. For Akroyd, the presentation of something is enough to call it a joke. For instance, his penis tip nose or the sight of John Candy in a dress playing his own sister. These visuals are presented to us as if we are supposed to laugh at them, but they aren't actually doing anything funny, either visually or otherwise and thus we are left confused at the choice to show us these things. 

Another thing that writer-director Dan Akroyd thinks is funny but most assuredly is not, is Akroyd's pal, Chevy Chase at his most smug and exhausting. Akroyd has bought into Chase's delusion that just being smug engenders being charming and funny. Chase never says a single funny line in Nothing But Trouble but he's presented by Akroyd as the height of charming. Chase however, is merely arrogant and dismissive of others in a way that might be funny if Chase weren't so dead behind the eyes. Chase is all surface, no substance and his minor barbs lobbed at the villainous characters in Nothing But Trouble, never lands. 

Nothing But Trouble stars Chevy Chase as Chris, a stock expert who has made millions giving stock advice. He lives a fabulous life in a fabulous New York City apartment with fabulous friends that he can barely tolerate. One day, on the way home to a party in his own apartment, Chris meets his new neighbor, Diane (Demi Moore). It's not a meet cute in the traditional sense, it's more of two people sharing the same space that the script requires to be together. To say that Moore and Chase don't share a particular chemistry is an understatement. It appears to take a lot of effort from Moore to be in a scene with Chase, struggling to find a place amid the odor of his massive ego. 

Diane has just lost a big client in Atlantic City and she desperately needs a ride. She asks Chris, who she just met, if she can borrow his car and he insists on driving her himself. A pair of Chris' most obnoxious party guests, played in broad South American caricatures by comedian Taylor Negron and Berlita Demas, overhear Chris and Diane's plan to drive to Atlantic City and insist on going with them. So, on top of the anti-chemistry of Moore and Chase we have a pair of obnoxious stereotypes to overcome. It's as if Akroyd actively wanted us to hate Nothing But Trouble. His dedication to not having actual jokes continues to plague the movie. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Blind

Blind (2017) 

Directed by Michael Mailer 

Written by John Buffalo Mailer 

Starring Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin

Release Date July 14th, 2017 

In nearly 20 years as a film critic, I have seen more than my share of terrible movies. I have seen The Room without the Rifftrax commentary track. I sat all the way through The Happening with my mind reeling at the incompetence of M. Night shyamalan’s most incomprehensible work. And I have seen all the Transformers movies which should qualify me for some sort of movie critic combat pay. But in nearly 20 years I can genuinely say I have never seen anything quite like Blind.

Blind is a film of such remarkable, incomprehensible awfulness that it can comfortably stand alongside the oeuvre of Tommy Wiseau and not feel out of place. Directed by longtime producer and first-time director Michael Mailer, Blind takes very talented, formerly big name stars, Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore, and renders them as amateurs via a script, editing, and direction that could only kindly be described as amateurish at best, and blatantly, intentionally incompetent at worst.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Indecent Proposal

Indecent Proposal (1993) 

Directed by Adrian Lyne 

Written by Amy Holden Jones 

Starring Demi Moore, Robert Redford, Woody Harrelson 

Release Date April 7th, 1993 

Published April 19th, 2023 

Indecent Proposal tries to skirt the issue of its sweaty desperation with a softcore stylishness that had become a cliche trait of director Adrian Lyne well before he recaptured the zeitgeist with this movie. For all of the talent he clearly has and the discourse his movies have inspired, the one consistent thing about Lyne is that he enjoys watching attractive people cavort in little to no clothing while sweating profusely. If you can rely on Lyne for anything, it's getting well known stars to doff their duds to provide late night masturbatory thrills. Not there is anything terribly wrong with that. 

It's the pretense that Lyne has about his movies. Lyne appears to have quite a high opinion of his movies which, without the imprimatur of big movie stars, would be late night cable fare. High minded as Adrian Lyne may be, it's the smut that really revs his engine. In Indecent Proposal he is desperately reaching for a respectability always slightly out of reach, probably because his other hand is reaching for a particular body part that his work aims to stimulate far more than has drama might stimulate the brain. 

That said, there is no denying Lyne's talent for base mass appeal. Lyne's lurid fantasies, just on the dark side of morality, always seemed grab hold of the culture, even if only for a short time. With Indecent Proposal, Lyne made an impact with a very simple premise: What would you do if someone offered you a million dollars for sex, with the permission of your partner? I'm being quite loose with that question. The reality is it wasn't much of a question for the masses but, rather, for the male audience. Would you let your wife sleep with another man for $1 million dollars? 

Indeed, the woman in question, played by the gorgeous Demi Moore, is rather superfluous to the drama of Indecent Proposal. She's the object in play between two arrogant, possessive and deeply insecure men. That might not sound so bad except that neither the movie or the men involved, played by Woody Harrelson and Robert Redford, are remotely aware of how insecure they come off. Each wants to play the 'alpha' male with Redford's fortune proving to be the deciding factor as to who is indeed the bigger dog in this yard. 

The opportunity to explore male insecurity is thwarted by a narrative more interested in moral failings like greed and infidelity than in examining where the real failings of these characters exist, in their massive, unfulfilled egos. The film romanticizes Harrelson's jealous possessiveness, as if he hadn't encouraged his wife to sleep with Redford and was a victim of her greed and his own indecisiveness in the face of a moral quandary. Jealousy is not a cute quality, it's romantic, it's ugly and creepy and while it happens to everyone, it's not a good quality and it makes Harrelson's character more of a creep than the heartbroken romantic of Lyne's conception. 

Find my complete review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Bobby

Bobby (2006)

Directed by Emilio Estevez 

Written by Emilio Estevez 

Starring Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Elijah Woods

Release Date November 17th, 2006

Published November 17th, 2006 

For most of its 2 hour and 10 minute runtime Bobby is a bad movie. The dialogue stilted. Extraneous characters crowd each other for screen time and lame montages remind us that the film is set in the 1960's, as if the death of Bobby Kennedy weren't enough of a reminder. That said, the last 20 minutes of Bobby take on the emotional equivalent of a giant boulder rolling down a hill. Somehow after all of the bad dialogue and bad characters, we find ourselves invested in the tragedy of it all.

Most of it is our own emotion about how Bobby Kennedy may have changed the world had not Sirhan Sirhan changed it in an entirely different way. There is no denying however, that what writer-director Emilio Estevez does with these last 20 minutes is powerful, affecting work. If only he could have done that with the whole film, I could actually recommend it.

On June 6th 1968 a joyous crowd of supporters and hotel employees awaited the arrival of Bobby Kennedy, the man many believed would be the next president of the United States. Kennedy established his California headquarters at Los Angeles' famed Ambassador Hotel and it was expected that night he would be there to celebrate his victory in the California Democratic primary. Indeed Bobby Kennedy did win the primary but moments after delivering his victory speech, Bobby joined his brother John in the annals of history, gunned down by an assassins bullet.

Emilio Estevez's Bobby is not about Bobby Kennedy and is only tangentially about the assassination. For the most part Bobby is a reassembling of the moment in 1968 when Kennedy was killed. Calling together a Love Boat sized cast of stars, Emilio Estevez wastes much time finding something for everyone to be doing rather than relating them all to the death of Bobby Kennedy.

The cast is far too large to detail who everyone is, Estevez himself can barely make time to give name to each of his many characters, better still to list just some of the Fantasy Island cast of Bobby. Sharon Stone, Lindsey Lohan, William . Macy, Nick Cannon, Heather Graham, Helen Hunt, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Joshua Jackson, Shia Le Beouf, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Christian Slater, Harry Belafonte and even a role for director Estevez as well.

With a cast this large; all Estevez can do is create a revolving door where characters are brought on screen at random and quickly shuffled off before we get to know to much about them. Many of the minor subplots created for these stars could, with great ease, be excised with no damage to the movie, and some edits would even improve the movie.

Take for instance Ashton Kutcher who plays a drug dealer who sells LSD to a couple of Kennedy volunteers. The LSD montage that follows is like a reminder that these things took place in the sixties. In case we may have forgotten, Nixon was the enemy, vietnam was bad and an LSD trip is always accompanied by psychedelic rock music and goofy camera angles. These scenes could be cut from the film and the only change to the movie would be removing Kutcher's name from the movie poster.

The same could be said of Kutcher's real life paramour Demi Moore. Moore plays a fading caberet star who performs in the Hotel night club. Her function is allegedly that she will be the one to introduce Bobby Kennedy that night. However, when the scene comes, Moore is nowhere to be found. Estevez uses historical footage of Kennedy taking the podium and delivering his speech.

Moore and Estevez's own role as her husband in the film are two more characters who could be easily eliminated to clear up some of the clutter that is the cast of Bobby.

The one actor who gets enough screentime and invests that time well is Freddie Rodriguez. The former Six Feet Under star plays Jose a young busboy who had planned on seeing Don Drysdale set the consecutive shutout record that night when he was told he was needed at work. When Bobby Kennedy was lead through the kitchen he came face to face with Jose and suddenly next to him, but unseen by him, a man with a gun. As Kennedy lay on the floor Jose is their comforting him.

The real Jose was named Juan Romero. He was just 17 years old, which makes the 31 year old Rodriguez an odd choice for the role. However, verisimilitude is not a big part of Bobby. Estevez changes the names of many of the people involved including those of the people who were also shot in the spray of bullets fired by Sirhan Sirhan. Why Estevez chose drama over historical accuracy is curious but inconsequential.

The best thing about Bobby is the ending of the film which manages to corral a few of the films many extranneous characters and turn a few of them into important players. Elijah Wood plays a newly married young man who ends up in the kitchen near Kennedy when he is shot. Helen Hunt as the trophy wife of Martin Sheen also ends up in that kitchen. Heather Graham and Joy Bryant in the ballroom deliver strong reactions. And Nick Cannon as a Kennedy volunteer with dreams of a job in the White House captures the emotion of the moment just after Kennedy was taken from the hotel.

These characters finally take on meaning as they become our emotional stand ins. The overwhelming emotions they express allow us identification and the opportunity to share in the grief of this history changing death. The reactions of these characters are played beneath the audio of one of Robert Kennedy's wonderful speeches about the devastation of violence and the promise of the future.

Is the movie cheating a little using Kennedy's speech to comment on his own assassination rather than crafting something of it's own? Yeah, maybe, but it works. So does the few moments of historic footage of Kennedy greeting throngs of people who lined up to see him wherever he went. Audio from his many speeches open and close the film making you wish that Estevez had simply made a documentary of this footage and audio rather than attempting to remake Crash with Bobby Kennedy.

Crash is indeed the template for Bobby. An expansive cast, plots that revolve and collide with one another and a moment of devastating connection. The difference is that Crash is more focused and far better written than Bobby. Crash writer-director Paul Haggis managed to place his cast in a context that was at once believable and dramatic. Emilio Estevez fails to create characters and situations that exist beyond types and what they represent of 60's culture. There is no emotional context until the last 20 minutes when the death of Bobby Kennedy draws some but not all of these characters into the same movie.

The ending of Bobby is undeniably powerful, but, for the most part, most of Bobby is simply a bad movie. Put in all the starpower you want, you can't magazine cover your way into a good movie. Bobby is stilted and awkward and meandering and despite the great ending, and the terrific work of Freddie Rodriguez, Bobby is far too messy and unfocused for me to give it a pass.

Movie Review Charlie's Angels Full Throttle

Charlie's Angels Full Throttle (2003) 

Directed by McG 

Written by John August 

Starring Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore, Bill Murray 

Release Date June 27th, 2003 

Published June 26th, 2003 

The first Charlie’s Angels film delighted in the kind of mindless, plotless humor that made the Austin Powers movies so much fun. Or at least the first Austin Powers movie. As the sequels in that series show, it's difficult to maintain that atmosphere. The humor relies so much on the outlandishness of the setup that you’re forced to top yourself from one gag to the next. For the Charlie’s Angels crew, that means skimpier outfits and racier humor that pushes the boundaries of it's mandated PG-13 rating. Thanks to a cast that has earned a great deal of audience goodwill, they manage to succeed this time, but one more will be really pushing it.

We all remember the flashy sex kittens from the original, Alex (Lucy Liu), Natalie (Cameron Diaz) and Dylan (Drew Barrymore). No need for reintroduction, the film jumps right into the action as the girls save a federal marshal from a group of Mongolian terrorists, with the cunning use of special effects and Cameron Diaz's ebullient sexuality.

From there it's back to the states where Charlie (the disembodied voice of John Forsythe) explains what we need to know in order to give the film’s gags a minimal amount of context. Some mess about the federal witness protection program and the list of people in protection. A bad guy has the list and is trying to sell it and it's up the Angels to stop them and retrieve the list.

During the investigation it's revealed that Dylan is on the list for having testified against an Irish mobster named Seamus O'Grady (Justin Theroux), who conveniently enough has just been released from prison. Oh but he's not the big bad guy. As the girls quickly figure out the real bad guy is a former Angel named Madison Lee (Demi Moore). Why she stole the list and blah blah blah is not necessary. How hot she looks in a bikini, now that is what this movie is really about.

Moore's role is actually rather limited in screentime, not much more than a cameo save for the big fight scene at the end. There are numerous cameos throughout the film that at times it's like an episode of the Love Boat. Matt LeBlanc reprises his cameo from the first film, as does Luke Wilson. John Cleese drops in as does Robert Patrick and even Demi's ex husband Bruce Willis. There is also a small role Shia Leboef from Holes, pop singer Pink and even the Olson Twins. Sadly, the film failed to get the cameo that really would have set tongues a wagging, Demi's current boy toy Ashton Kutcher.

Bernie Mac has a slightly bigger than a cameo role as the new Bosley, taking over for Bill Murray. Who cares how or why he has the role, Mac is welcome presence because he's just damn funny in every scene he's in.

Reigning over all this is Director McG, whose skills as a music video director were very much on display in the first film and they are far more pronounced in this sequel. McG is maturing quickly from video director to pop artist. His visuals are pure eye candy and his actors merely props to decorate his painting. McG skillfully maneuvers his actors through a series of eyepopping scenes, both titillating and action packed.

McG is to be commended for his amazing ability to skirt the censors who somehow were convinced to give this film a PG-13 rating. McG walks the line between obvious Russ Meyer style exploitation and acceptable humorous double entendre, like a skilled tightrope walker. The stars of the film and their director seem to say it's okay to exploit their sexuality, such as a scene where the Angels go undercover in a strip club, as long as the girls are in on the joke. What woman could resist having their butt worshipped the way McG seems to worship the butt's of his leads? All shot as lovingly as one might film the Mona Lisa.

Getting away with this type of envelope pushing for another sequel is highly unlikely. Unless the ratings board says PG-13 means the girls can strip naked and kill bad guys at the same time, the filmmakers will have a hard time finding anything more safely titillating than what they concocted in Full Throttle.

Movie Review Mr. Brooks

Mr. Brooks (2007) 

Directed by Bruce A. Evans 

Written by Bruce A. Evans, Raynold Gideon 

Starring Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, William Hurt, Marg Helgenberger

Release Date June 1st, 2007 

Published May 31st, 2007

The career of Kevin Costner has had many ups and downs. He has been one of the biggest stars in the world and People Magazine's sexiest man alive. He's also been the most reviled man in Hollywood and a grand punch line after his triple failures, Waterworld, The Postman and Wyatt Earp. He has recently tried to reinvent himself as a character actor and a comeback kid, a perception fed by well received performances in The Upside of Anger and Open Range.

Now however, as he tries to reclaim leading man status; Costner is once again flailing. First, there was the disastrous Rumor Has It, a pseudo sequel to The Graduate with Costner as a middle aged Ben Braddock. Now comes Mr. Brooks a disaster of a different kind, one that isn't really Costner's fault.

"The Hunger has returned to Mr. Brooks, it never really left"

That is the opening title card to the new thriller Mr. Brooks, a title card that thrusts us into the midst of the madness of a man named Earl Brooks (Kevin Costner). Earl is a proud father, a loyal husband and a respected businessman who runs a major box company. However, in his spare time he is the thumbprint killer, a maniac who likes to pose his victims after killing them and then get off over the photos he takes.

He has been at this for years and for years has been careful to not get caught. He even managed to stop killing for 2 whole years with the help of  weekly A.A meetings, though alcohol never played a part in his compulsion. Then the hunger returned and he selected a pair of victims. Unfortunately, he wasn't as careful as he used to be. He left the curtains open and across the street, an amateur cameraman saw him commit murder.

Luckily for Mr. Brooks the cameraman, call him Mr. Smith (Dane Cook), is a sick puppy like himself. Smith doesn't want to turn Brooks over to the cops, rather he wants to learn from Mr. Brooks, he wants to kill. Thus sets up an uncomfortable partnership between the steely, calculating Mr. Brooks and the unnerved novice Mr. Smith.

That is just one of several plots running concurrently in this rather misguided take on the Dr. Jekyll, Mr Hyde mythos. Also jammed into this plot is a backstory and sub-storyline for Demi Moore as the cop investigating the thumbprint killer and another different killer and a credulity stretching plot for Danielle Panabaker as Mr. Brooks' daughter who may have inherited the serial killer gene.

A glance at director Bruce A. Evans' resume offers a few clues as to why Mr. Brooks  turned out so goofy. Evans wrote the lauded screenplays for epics like Cutthroat Island, Jungle 2 Jungle and Kuffs, a Christian Slater guilty pleasure that he also directed. Curiously, Evans hasn't directed since Kuffs. Maybe he was waiting for something that could match the goofball pleasures and squirm inducing discomfort of that early nineties crime comedy.

Mr. Brooks is certainly goofy but it's not supposed to be. It's intended to be a thriller but thrills are in short supply compared to the unintentional laughter induced by some of the bizarre choices made. There are more than a few moments of unintended humor such as watching comic Dane Cook attempt to appear credible as an actor opposite the veteran Costner. The disdainful glare of Costner's Mr. Brooks towards Cook's Mr. Smith plays like Costner's silent commentary on his co-star.

Despite the loopy plots and unintentional humor there are a few honest pleasures in Mr. Brooks, not least of which is the chemistry between Kevin Costner and William Hurt. These two veteran actors are so in sync and so on the money that you hate the movie for the constant interruptions of their interplay. Taking time out for Demi Moore's lame backstory and a search for another serial killer aside from Mr. Brooks and the daughter's story and Dane Cook's story all serve to upstage the film's one and only asset, the Costner-Hurt duo.

In the few moments that Costner and Hurt get to play we actually get to dig into Mr. Brooks' character and find out how he ticks and why he does what he does. The potential is there for a very unique take on the classic serial killer picture, a movie from the killer's perspective. Few killers are as uniquely villainous as Mr. Brooks, the upstanding businessman and father who happens to be a serial killer.

What a waste, Mr. Brooks had all sorts of potential and wasted it all on dopey, distracting subplots. Director and co-writer Bruce A. Evans is not a bad director really, just inexperienced with a seeming lack of confidence. Evans lacked the courage to jettison what was clearly not working and focus things where they were working, with Kevin Costner and William Hurt riffing and roaring.

Oh, what might have been.