Classic Movie Review Defending Your Life

Defending Your Life (1991) 

Directed by Albert Brooks 

Written by Albert Brooks 

Starring Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Lee Grant

Release Date March 22nd, 1991

Published November 14th, 2023 

If I could choose what the afterlife looks like, I'd want it to look like the afterlife as presented by Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life. As both an idyllic and, ultimately positive take on life and death, Defending Your Life has a strong philosophical underpinning. The idea is that you go to Judgment City, you defend the life you live, try to prove that you overcame the fears that held you back in your previous life, and if you did, you get to move on to a nebulous afterlife that we can only assume is some kind of unending paradise. 

For all of the meta-gags, the performative pomposity and cluelessness, that marks the Albert Brooks character, Brooks' sincere world building in Defending Your Life is inspired. Brooks plays Daniel Miller, an ad executive who buys a new car and immediately gets himself killed in an accident. Arriving in Judgment City, Daniel thinks he's in heaven. The reality however, is different. No, he's not in hell. Hell doesn't exist in this universe. Judgment City is where one goes to defend the life they lived in hopes of moving on to the next place. 

If you fail, no big deal. If you fail, you just go back to Earth and live another life. You can do this as often as it takes to finally get it right. At a certain point, yes, you may be flung into to the universe with nowhere to go, but that's just for people who've failed a lot and show no interest in moving forward. Nothing to actually worry about. That's what Rip Torn's character, Daniel's advocate in Judgment City, Bob Diamond says with confidence that he's letting you in on a comforting secret that isn't as comforting as he thinks it is. 

Torn is Academy Award level brilliant in the role of Bob Diamond. Bob Diamond will present Daniel's life to a pair of judges who will determine whether or not he overcame his fears enough to be worthy of moving on. Standing opposite Bob and Daniel is Lena Foster (Lee Grant), a shark-like prosecutor who aims to use Daniel's life choices against him to keep him from moving on. In this universe, anything you have ever done has been recorded and is accessible as a video file. To give a sense of fairness, only a specific number of days from your life will be chosen to be looked at. The more days being used in your trial, don't call it a trial, but it's a trial, the harder it can be to move on. 

There is a running gag in Defending Your Life where small talk inevitably leads to people asking Daniel 'how many days' and when he says '9,' the residents of Judgment City each cringe and wish him luck. One kind restaurant owner, upon hearing Daniel say 9 days immediately gifts him dozens of pies. This sounds insane but one of the perks of Judgment City is that its adjacency to Heaven means the food is incredible and you can eat as much of it as you want. That's the kind of perk of the afterlife we can all get behind. 

Daniel's afterlife is changed forever when he meets Julia, one of the few people who died relatively young like himself. They bond as Daniel heckles a terrible comedian at a nightclub. Apparently comedy doesn't get the rub from Heaven as the food does. Julia immediately finds Daniel charming with the easy way he can make her laugh. In Streep's gentle, sweet, and assured comic performance, we can easily see why she would fall for Albert Brooks. She can see his emotional wounds and appears eager to help him heal, both because of her kindness and because she just likes the guy. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Turn the River

Turn the River (2008)

Directed by Chris Eigeman

Written by Chris Eigeman 

Starring Famke Janssen, Chris Eigeman, Rip Torn, Lois Smith

Release Date May 9th, 2008 

Published July 8th, 2008 

Trusting an actor like a brand name is risky. Unlike your favorite brand of pop, the consistency and taste won't always be the same. I trust actor Chris Eigeman as a brand. His work from television (Gilmore Girls) to the big screen (Last Days of Disco) have displayed consistent quality, good taste and entertainment value.

Now that he has moved into the realm of writer-director he risks his brand name on a difficult new venture. Thankfully, my trust in the Eigeman brand is well rewarded. His debut feature Turn The River is an exceptional, dark character study, consistently riveting and heartbreaking without ever cloying.

Famke Janssen stars in Turn The River as Kailey, a degenerate gambler and pool hustler. She also happens to be a loving mother who longs to see her little boy Gulley and lives for their brief Central Park meetings before school, away from prying eyes. Gulley was taken from Kai at birth by his grandmother, a pentecostal type who couldn't imagine her grandson being raised by a woman who made her money gambling.

Some ten years later, with the help of a friend and pool hall owner, Quinn (Rip Torn), Kai has reconnected with Gulley and the two are exchanging letters and meeting secretly. When Gulley shows up with a broken hand and cryptic excuses, Kai begins to suspect that his father (Matt Ross) is responsible. So, Kai hatches a plan to kidnap her boy and head for the border.

The clever twist of convention in Turn The River is having our degenerate gambling hustler played by the exotic and glamourous Famke Janssen. We have seen plots about low life characters who try to turn their lives around for their kids but they are always with male leads and the doom is predictable. With Janssen in the lead we are a little off balance with this typical plot and it's kind of nice.

Chris Eigeman's direction does a tremendous job of bringing us around to Kai's side even as she engages in less than the best behavior. She has poor judgement and grand ideas, always a bad combination and yet we are with her from beginning to an ending that will leave many audiences up in arms.

Though the film is oddly called Turn The River, a poker reference for the uninitiated, the films third lead is pool. Janssen's Kai engages in an epic series of single pocket and nine ball games with ever increasing stakes and the way they are played by Eigeman and his tremendous cast, we are sucked in and the suspense is palpable. The plot mechanics do nothing to push the outcome and the genuine unknown quality is tense.

Turn The River is a tremendous debut for actor Chris Eigeman as a writer-director. He has extended his brand loyalty to another level and it will be excited to see what he does next. Whatever comes next, I have complete faith in the quality of the effort. Turn The River demonstrates that the Chris Eigeman brand is only getting stronger as it diversifies.

Movie Review Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette (2006) 

Directed by Sophia Coppola

Written by Sophia Coppola

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne, Asia Argento 

Release Date October 20th, 2006

Published November 19th, 2006 

It is very quiet.  Austrian Archduchess, Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst), aged 15, has just been betrothed to Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), the future king on France.  Throughout the long trip from Austria to France, there is an odd expression on everyone’s face.  It’s as if the air itself is uncomfortable.  As the French court awaits Marie Antoinette’s arrival, they putter around amidst the leaves and talk amongst themselves about nothing at all.  They all seem to be thinking something to themselves.  Judging from the same puzzled expressions on the moviegoers’ faces at the screening of Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE I attended, I think they might be thinking how strange the entire scenario seems.  

Everything feels a little bit slow, a little too quiet and mostly out of place.  It is too early to give up on the film at this point.  After all, this is Coppola’s follow-up to the haunting, offbeat LOST IN TRANSLATION.  We are in good hands.  This uneasiness must be in step with what Marie Antoinette is going through.  Once she finds her footing, I’m sure she will break out of her shell and show these French folk how to live freely and the film will follow.  Well, Marie Antoinette, the person, gets the hang of it but sadly, MARIE ANTOINETTE, the movie, never does.  It remains hollow and aimless, leaving me wondering how Coppola could have been happy with it.

Coppola took a decidedly different and brave approach to chronicling the woman who became the queen of France at age 19.  She cast American actors in French roles and did not have them speak French or even with an accent.  She boosts the soundtrack with 80’s new wave music instead of music of the period.  The choices are meant to highlight the lonely plight of Marie Antoinette, to show that her emotional journey is timeless.  

Only Dunst shows hardly any emotion in the title role so there is nothing to take away.  She can handle isolated and she can party with the best of them but she doesn’t show any turmoil or inner-conflict.  It doesn’t help that Coppola’s script features naturalistic dialogue either.  People rattle on about nonsense and gossip but rarely ever say anything of note to each other.  Perhaps this is what Coppola had intended to show but meaningless conversation needs to give insight into a character’s mind at the very least.  Here, all the minds are empty.

If it weren’t for the fashion and the food (and the fortune that must have been spent on making everything look so lavish), there would be nothing at all to focus on.  For such famous historical figures, very little actually seems to happen to them.  For what seems like half the movie, the entire plot focuses on how Louis won’t have sex with Marie Antoinette.  It is certainly a pressing matter as an heir has to be produced in order to validate their marriage.  If it is not consummated, it may even be annulled.  

When the “great work” was finally done, Marie Antoinette is elated but there is no explanation as to why it was so difficult to begin with nor does it seem like it became any more frequent afterwards.  Her brother had a chat with the future king and that supposedly did the trick.  There is no mention as to what that chat was about so your guess is as good as mine as to what finally turned him on.  

Historically, Marie Antoinette became the scapegoat for France’s increasing deficit.  Whereas the majority of France’s money had been sunk into the 7 Years’ War and aiding the Americans in their struggle for independence from England, the masses pointed their fingers at Marie Antoinette’s frivolous spending.  She went from an adored queen to being chased from her palace.  The build that led to that change must have been tumultuous but Coppola leaves history at the door while very little happens inside.  By the time the mob shows up to drive her and the king out, it feels more like a device than a moment in time.

I can see why the French booed at Cannes.  MARIE ANTOINETTE is a calculated project that was troubled since its conception (Coppola abandoned it during the script writing process to create LOST IN TRANSLATION because she wasn’t sure how to make it work).  The deliberate disregard for historical accuracy may have been valiant to start but finished feeling labored.  Coppola’s previous works relied on emotion more so than dialogue to get under the skin of the viewer.  

Their success announced great promise for MARIE ANTOINETTE but Coppola lost her edge somewhere among the hundreds of pairs of Minolo Blahniks custom made for the film.  A lesser director would not have taken such an ambitious approach to this story.  A lesser director would have made a film far worse than this one.  May MARIE ANTOINETTE be but a misstep along the path of a brilliant career.

Movie Review Love Object

Love Object (2004) 

Directed by Robert Parigi 

Written by Robert Parigi 

Starring Desmond Harrington, Melissa Sagemiller, Rip Torn 

Release Date February 14th, 2004 

Published July 18th, 2004 

I like movies with a twisted sense of humor or morality. Often the best films with that twisted sense of right and wrong, or moral and immoral, break with conventional Hollywood standards of filmmaking and that is always a welcome sight.

However, being different and having that twisted sense is not entirely enough. A film must still be well made and entertaining. The new video Love Object has that twisted quality but is lacking a number of essential elements in great filmmaking.

Desmond Harrington, best known as Eliza Dushku's love interest in Wrong Turn, stars as Kenneth, an office drone who writes instruction manuals and little else. Kenneth is quiet and unassuming with that creepy quality people always describe after they find their quiet neighbor was hiding severed heads in his fridge. Regardless of Kenneth's lacking social skills, his boss Mr. Novak (Rip Torn) respects his ability to get the job done fast and for his next assignment gives Kenneth his first assistant.

The assistant is a beautiful blonde temp typist named Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller, Soul Survivor). She is also quiet and unassuming but far less creepy than Kenneth. Lisa has that librarian quality, dowdy with the potential to be a hotty. That is certainly the quality that Kenneth sees in Lisa as he begins fantasizing about her.

Kenneth's fantasies are stoked by another new friend, an inanimate sex doll. After overhearing some guys at work describe this love doll, Kenneth orders one, customized to resemble Lisa. From there things only get weirder. Lisa is honestly attracted to Kenneth and he seems to resemble a normal human being for a time until he stops customizing the doll and begins customizing Lisa, buying her clothes and making her resemble the doll.

For a time the film, written and directed by Robert Parigi, reminds us a lot of last year’s best film, the horror film May. However this script is not as clever as Lucky McKee's and Desmond Harrington lacks the sympathetic sadness of Angela Bettis. Harrington never develops that unique quality to make you feel for him while he does things that go against anything you should ever have sympathy for. The film is also far more predictable than May, until its ending where Love Object takes a twist that is entirely off the wall but not in a good way.

For her part Melissa Sagemiller is admirable in a very underwritten role. The focus of the film is unquestionably on Harrington and that leaves little room for Sagemiller to make an impression aside from being very attractive.

Behind the camera for the first time, Robert Parigi does create a terrifically subversive atmosphere but he just can't maintain it. There is some good stuff in there but in the end Love Object is an occasionally creepy, weird funny movie but also derivative and by the end completely over the top and off-putting.