Classic Movie Review The Fugitive

The Fugitive (1993) 

Directed by Andrew Davis 

Written by Jeb Stuart, David Twohy 

Starring Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Julianne Moore, Selma Blair, Joe Pantoliano

Release Date August 6th, 2023

Published August 7th, 2023 

The story behind the movie The Fugitive is much crazier than I would have ever expected. The movie is so tight and so uniquely performed, I assumed that it must have been a terrifically assembled piece of work behind the scenes. Then, I read an incredible thread on Twitter from a user named @ATRightMovies. This person lays out a behind the scenes story that, on the surface, you would assume led to the creation of a complete disaster of a movie. Script problems, a star who was halfheartedly interested in making the movie, and assumptions on the set that everyone was making a bad movie, somehow led to the creation of a film that was nominated for 7 Oscars, with one Oscar win. 

The Fugitive is based on a popular 1960s television series starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of murdering his wife. Harrison Ford takes on the role of Dr. Kimble in the movie which finds him returning to his well appointed home to find a one armed man had assaulted and murdered his wife (Sela Ward). Kimble fought the one armed man but he managed to mistake. When Police arrived, they found Dr. Kimble covered in his wife's blood, he'd tried to perform CPR and ended up clutching her dead body in his anguish over her death. 

The blood and Kimble's story about a one armed man are too much for the Chicago Police Investigators to buy. They arrest Kimble and charge him with murder. Found guilty, Richard is facing life in prison when fate intervenes. While being transported to a Federal Prison, other inmates on the transport initiate a plan for escape. They attack and stab a guard, the driver of the bus is shot and killed, and the bus crashes on train tracks. In a spectacular sequence, a train is headed toward the bus on the tracks. Kimble picks up the injured officer and saves his life. Then, in a moment that has been shared among the best action sequences of the past 30 years, Kimble leaps from the broken bus seconds before the train strikes it, leading to a train derailment. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review The Family Tree

The Family Tree (2011) 

Directed by Vivi Friedman

Written by Mark Lisson 

Starring Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis, Chi McBride, Max Thieriot, Selma Blair, Christina Hendricks

Release Date August 26th, 2011

Published August 25th, 2011 

The Family Tree, starring Dermot Mulroney and Hope Davis is nuts, in a really great way. This dysfunctional family comedy about a family going to pieces is populated by a wonderfully game all-star cast that sacrifices dignity at every turn to deliver more than a few ridiculously funny moments.

The story is thus, Dermot Mulroney stars as Jack Burnett, a below average suburban working stiff. Hope Davis is his bitchy wife Bunnie and Max Theriot and Britt Robertson are their screwed up kids Eric and Kelly. Eric is a Jesus freak with a love for guns while Kelly portrays herself as loose though she’s not really.

What happens to this family during The Family Tree includes infidelity, a very unique accidental death–an acquaintance, not a family member—drugs and some divine intervention. All of the action is captured by first time director Vivi Friedman in a madcap fashion that plays like American Beauty through the prism of the Coen Brothers.

The phenomenal supporting cast includes Chi McBride’s funniest and most unexpected performance in years as Burnett's neighbor. McBride is joined by a veritable Battle of the Network Stars size supporting cast that includes Burn Notice star Gabrielle Anwar, Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, Jane Seymour, Selma Blair, Madeline Zima, Keith Carradine, Rachel Leigh Cook and Bow Wow, among others.

Corralling all of this talent into one wonderfully wild movie is first time director Vivi Friedman. Working from a script by a veteran TV writer, and I do mean veteran, the guy who wrote for Hart to Hart, Mark Lisson, Friedman takes her cast and just keeps whipping them into a weird comic frenzy right up to the odd, highly unlikely but still strangely satisfying ending.

Hollywood tried to turn Dermot Mulroney into a hunky leading man a few years ago but it never took. He’s better off without the romantic comedies; character roles like this one in The Family Tree may just be his niche. Mulroney finds a note of suburban white guy awkwardness in The Family Tree that never fails to find the most unexpected laughs.

Hope Davis is a terrific match for Mulroney as a Real Housewife of just outside Beverly Hills. I don’t want to spoil all the trouble that Davis’s Bunnie finds in The Family Tree, but I’ll just say that after her character comes out of a brief hospital stay she becomes endearing and adorable in strange and interesting ways.

I could go on for a while about the rest of the cast but as I said, I don’t want to spoil the movie. The Family Tree is not without its flaws, the guy in the tree… sorry, no spoilers. That aside, I laughed a lot and quite hard while watching this terrific little indie comedy that will without doubt sneak up and surprise you if you give it a chance.

Movie Review: Feast of Love

Feast of Love (2007) 

Directed by Robert Benton 

Written by Allison Burnett, Charles Baxter

Starring Morgan Freeman, Alexa Davalos, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair

Release Date September 27th, 2007

Published October 14th, 2007

Frustrating, maddening, endlessly watchable. These are my impressions of the movie Feast of Love from director Robert Benton. Watching this trainwreck of romantic goofiness, supernatural hooey and a whole lot of nudity, is both a pain and a pleasure. Great characters mix with bad characters in a script that is a maddening mix of foibles and quirks.

Professor Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) has that qulaity that draws people to him. They reveal to him things they might not reveal to anyone else. His sage wisdom and reassuring gaze mask a personal pain he doesn't share but that does give him an insightful sadness that aides him in seeing things others may have missed.

That is what happens when he joins his friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear) and Bradley's wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) for a drink. While Bradley yammers away about nothing, Kathryn locks eyes with Jenny (Stana Katic) and it's love at first sight. Harry see's it right away, though he doesn't feel it's his place to explain it to Bradley. Atleast, when Bradley does find out, Harry is there with more sage advice.

Bradley unfortunately, is not someone for whom advice is all that helpful. When he meets Diana (Radha Mitchell), it's clear she's not in his league but he pursues anyway. Diana encourages Bradley's affection but she's also sleeping with David (Billy Burke). Bradley might notice this if he weren't a pathetic puppy dog, desperate to be loved.

Also hovering in Harry's sphere are Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos). Oscar works in Bradley's coffee shop and when the flakey, beautiful Chloe, pronounced by her as Chlo-ah, wanders in wanting a job, despite a lack of experience or even vague knowlege of coffee, he practically climbs over the counter to tackle Bradley to get her hired. Harry see's it right away, love at first sight strikes again.

Feast of Love was directed by Robert Benton whose best remembered as the director of Kramer Vs Kramer. That cultural touchstone was the last time Benton was relevant. Since then his career has meandered from one forgettable film to the next. That career track is oddly like Feast of Love which meanders from one slightly interesting character to the next uncovering truths here and there but failing  to become relevant.

Obsessed with sex, Benton stuffs the screen with female nudity and simulated coitus. There is certainly nothing wrong with sex on screen. The problem with Feast of Love is Benton's obsession with showing it at the most inopportune or unnecessary moments. There is a lovely scene between Toby Hemingway and Alexa Davalos that features a very erotic sex scene and evolves into this lovely emotional moment and then it's undone by Benton's need to include one last shot of the young couple having sex.

That is part of a maddening pattern that unfolds in Feast of Love. Nice moments undone by Benton's lust for his female cast members. I won't argue that Alexa Davalos, Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair and Stan Katic are great to look at but at some point I want more information than how great they look during sex or just standing around nude.

I don't want to create the impression that Feast of Love is of porno quality. My issue is not with the amount of nudity but the context of the nudity and the distractive quality of it. There are some lovely moments of romance and insight hidden within this odd duck of a movie. Those scene however get lost in the naked flesh and under explored characters of Feast of Love.

The cast of Feast of Love is for the most part terrific; especially Morgan Freeman. Admittedly, the role of the sage, grandfatherly old friend is becoming something of a cliche. Freeman however, is so good you can easily forget how familiar this character is. Freeman is such a reassuring and warm presence that you forgive him and through him forgive the movie, many transgressions.

Freeman does elegant, romantic work with Jane Alexander who plays his wife. The only character who understands his deep inner pain, because she shares it, Alexander is patient but concerned as she watches her husband bide his time observing the lives of others without turning that insightful eye on his own life; slowly passing him by.

Greg Kinnear on the other hand suffers at the hands of a character so wishy washy and walked upon that you can't believe one woman, let alone the three women in the film, would be willing to be with him. First there is Selma Blair's Kathryn who, after several years of marriage, finds she is attracted to women. This is not unprecedented however as it plays in Feast of Love her decision is predicated more on the aesthetically pleasing girl/girl sex scene than on a truthful understanding of character.

Then there is Radha Mitchell's Diana. Clearly out of Charlie's league, she is busily sleeping with a married man and takes to Kinnear's Charlie out of spite for her married paramour played by Billy Burke. So, she's a conniving bitch and Charlie is a dunderheaded fool. Not much fun about this relationship and very poorly explored and played in Feast of Love.

That Mitchell plays this role well is a compliment to her talent. She plays this role in much more interesting and challenging fashion however in Woody Allen's underrated Melinda and Melinda.

There is yet a third woman thrown at Kinnear in Feast of Love but the less said about her, the better.

Feast of Love is not a terrible movie just a misguided one. There is insight, humor and romance in the mix it's just lost in the malaise of an unformed idea. Director Robert Benton has something to say about life, love, loss and other such L words, he just isn't quite sure what he wants to say or how to say it. Benton remains a skilled director but his skills are at a loss to match whatever his ambitions were in Feast of Love.

Movie Review Hellboy

Hellboy (2004) 

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro 

Written by Guillermo Del Toro 

Starring Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, David Hyde Pierce, Doug Jones, Karl Roden, Rupert Evans

Release Date April 2nd, 2004

Release Date April 1st, 2004 

What Director Guillermo Del Toro went through to realize his vision of the comic book Hellboy on the big screen is the textbook definition of perseverance. Del Toro survived dozens of pitch meetings, copious amounts of idiotic studio notes about everything from “Why is Hellboy red?” to “Can he have a hellmobile?” to the biggest battle over the casting of Hellboy himself. From day one, Del Toro wanted Ron Perlman. Various studios kept suggesting The Rock, Vin Diesel or even Schwarzenegger (pre-Governator).

If only the vision that Del Toro finally realized was as interesting as the battle to realize it.

Ron Perlman is Hellboy, born in the fires of hell and brought to Earth via a portal opened by the Nazis in 1944. You see, Hitler was a devout occultist and hoped to use a portal created by the legendary Russian bad guy Rasputin (Karl Roden) to unleash the 7 chaos of blah blah whatever. Rasputin was interrupted in his attempt to destroy the world by a group of US Army soldiers, led by President Roosevelt's top advisor on paranormal activity, Professor Broom (John Hurt). The interruption prevented the end of the world and killed Rasputin, sort of. One thing did survive and that was Hellboy.

Sixty years later, Dr. Broom has raised Hellboy as his son and the two fight evil as part of a secret FBI division dedicated to the paranormal. With the help of other freaks like the psychic fish-man Abe Sapien (Doug Jones with the voice of David Hyde Pierce) and the pyro-kinetic Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Hellboy fights evil. Well at first Liz isn't much help, unable to control her fire making capability, she has left the group and is trying to forget her past. Hellboy, nursing a serious crush on Liz, won't let her forget.

The group’s newest member is just a regular guy, Agent John Myers (Rupert Evans). His assignment is to take over Dr. Broom's daily assignment of attempting to cover Hellboy's huge tracks. The media has been hounding FBI Director Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) about Hellboy for years. Still, the FBI always denies his existence with graceful dodges. That task is complicated by Hellboy's constant escapes to retrieve beer, cigars and to see Liz. It's Myers' job to keep Hellboy in line.

When Rasputin rises from the grave, with the help of his henchwoman, an immortal named Ilsa (Biddy Hodson) and a surgery freak dome-wearing Nazi, he brings with him a group of squid-like dogs that feed on human flesh and multiply when killed. The squids are meant to occupy and capture Hellboy and Liz for some convoluted end-of-the-world scheme. If you think my plot description is complicated, see the film and try to figure it out for yourself.

What I liked about Hellboy is Ron Perlman. Perlman plays Hellboy like your average world-weary cop who happens to be seven foot tall and from Hell. Sadly resigned to his fate Hellboy sets about each task in front of him as if this were just another average day. Perlman gives Hellboy humor and depth with the way he delivers his lines and the way he regards the camera and the other actors. Hellboy is the one and only fully fleshed out character in the film.

The rest of the cast is a wash, especially Rupert Evans as Agent Myers. Evans is the first actor I have seen who makes Ben Chaplin look animated. His blank stare and damsel in distress poses should be played for laughs but sadly it's obvious he was playing it all straight. The character of Myers is given a subplot as a romantic rival to Hellboy for Liz Sherman, but it's never a fair fight. As for Selma Blair, one of my absolute favorite actresses, she is sadly on autopilot in this film. She can conjure fire but her eyes never show any flame of interest in the story.

Oddly, the one interesting character aside from Hellboy is the Nazi in the helmet who keeps himself alive through gruesome means. That character is uncredited on IMDB so I know neither the character or the actor’s name, but he was pretty good. He’s a better villain than Karl Roden's Rasputin who is basically Alan Rickman minus charisma.

I will say this for director Guillermo Del Toro, his eye for special effects, makeup and CGI is spectacular. The CGI in Hellboy is some of the best outside of George Lucas and Star Wars. Seamlessly integrated with the actors, very little of the digital shadowing that haunts so much of the CGI effects employed in this type of picture.

If as much work had been put into creating a coherent story as was put into the incredible effects, then Hellboy could have been spectacular. As it is, it's worth seeing for Perlman and the work of Del Toro's special effects, makeup and graphics teams.

Movie Review Kill Me Later

Kill Me Later (2001) 

Directed by Dana Lustig

Written by Dana Lustig

Starring Selma Blair, Max Beesley, Brendan Fehr

Release Date September 14th, 2001 

Published June 3rd, 2002 

Actor Max Beesley is a very well respected dramatic actor and sex symbol in his home country of England. Sadly, here in the U.S., Beesley is best known as Mariah Carey's love interest in the horrendous flop Glitter. Beesley may never live that one down, in America anyway, but he is doing what he can to put it behind him and the straight-to-video feature Kill Me Later, co-starring Selma Blair, is a good start on his redemption tour.

Beesley is Charlie, a drummer who turns to bank robbery as a way of providing a future for a young daughter he has never known. Selma Blair is Shawn, a bank teller in a bad relationship with her married boss played by D.W Moffett. After her boss spends the night and explains that he has no intention of leaving his wife or having children, Shawn contemplates suicide. 

Shawn isn't considering suicide because of her jerk boss, but rather her personal embarrassment over getting involved with him at all. Charlie and Shawn's paths cross when Charlie and his crew rob the bank where Shawn works as a loan officer. The robbery may have come off without a hitch if Shawn hadn't been on the roof thinking of jumping, thus causing a neighbor to call the police who accidentally interrupt the robbery.

Charlie keeps Shawn from jumping and takes her hostage. Of course it's not that simple. Being suicidal, Shawn doesn't make for a very good hostage. Charlie cuts her a deal; if she cooperates he promises he will kill her later. It doesn't take a genius to figure where the story is going from here, of course they fall in love and are chased by cops and various other contrived drama about the money and the cops.

What sets Kill Me Later apart from other similar films is director Dana Lustig, who employ's stylish camera movements, music video style editing and lighting to make for a visually interesting film. My favorite technical innovation was the editing. While not groundbreaking, Lustig and her team employ a quick cutting style of shots that last no more than 10 to 15 seconds. Especially effective are the tight close-ups of Blair, backed by bright lighting against her pale skin accentuating her beautiful eyes and jet-black locks.

Selma Blair truly shines as a misanthrope whose hatred of the people around her is only surpassed by her own self-hatred. Blair is wonderful, communicating an innate intelligence and deep sadness with her gorgeous brown eyes. Beesley, for his part, is charming and magnetic. The camera loves him. In Glitter he was flat as a board. Here he shows that if the material is good he can be great.

Movie Review: A Guy Thing

A Guy Thing (2002) 

Directed by Chris Koch 

Written by Greg Glienna 

Starring Jason Lee, Julia Stiles, James Brolin, Selma Blair, Shawn Hatosy 

Release Date January 17th, 2002 

Published January 16th, 2002 

Recently, I have been reading about the Auteur Theory, an idea first championed by European filmmakers in the 1960's which caught on here in the States through the writings of critic Andrew Sarris. The theory postulates that the director is the creative force in the movie-making process; that the script is nothing until the director gives it light and imagery. Essentially, a director gives life to a script. According to this theory, a true auteur/filmmaker can take a lifeless, innocuous script and pair it with awe-inspiring imagery and performance to create a masterpiece. After seeing the film A Guy Thing, it's safe to say director Chris Koch is no auteur, as he takes a lifeless and innocuous script and makes a lifeless, innocuous film.

Jason Lee stars as Paul Morse, a soon-to-be-married schlep who isn't enjoying his bachelor party. Not wanting to take part in the debauchery, Paul allows his best man (played by Shawn Hatosy) to pretend he is the groom-to-be so the strippers will give him their full attention. One of the strippers is Becky, played by Julia Stiles, and she is awful at her job. Becky is not a good dancer and really doesn't care. She takes an immediate liking to Paul, not knowing that he is the groom.

The next morning, Paul awakens to a phone call from his mother-in-law, informing him that his wife-to-be is on her way to his apartment. This would not be a problem except that Becky is in Paul's bed. This encounter leads to a series of wacky episodes involving mistaken identities, crazed ex-boyfriends and various misunderstandings that are staples of the romantic comedy genre. A Guy Thing isn't a bad film. It has moments that are honestly funny; however, it is also clichéd and too often dull. Lee, one of my favorite actors, mugs and preens and does everything he can with the limited material he is given. Stiles remains one of the most appealing actresses of her generation as she makes her way through the film on her wits and charm, barely sidestepping the script's many pitfalls.

The main problem with the film is Koch and his inability to bring life to the film. Almost any director can bring a literal translation of a script to the screen, but it takes an artist to make that lifeless script a film. Even if that script has so little originality can, with the steady hand and eye of a great director, can be entertaining. Koch, however, directs A Guy Thing with a simple point-and-shoot style that takes the scripted page and translates it directly on to the screen. If you are going to do that, you may as well film the actors simply reading the script.

Koch is not a bad director. He is technically sound. He simply needs to develop a style of his own. Koch needs to learn to trust his own instincts instead of taking a script from the producers and translating it directly to the screen with no style or substance.

Movie Review: The Sweetest Thing

The Sweetest Thing (2002) 

Directed by Roger Kumble 

Written by Nancy Pimental 

Starring Cameron Diaz, Thomas Jane, Selma Blair, Christina Applegate

Release Date April 12th, 2002

The battle for the title of Worst Film of 2002 is a three-film race so far. There is John Mctiernan's expression of audience hatred, Rollerball, Dominique Swain's spiraling career suicide in Tart, and now Cameron Diaz's inexplicable The Sweetest Thing. This bizarre, gross, deeply failing comedy somehow manages to make the terrific Cameron Diaz look like a terrible person. That should tell you all you need to know about The Sweetest Thing. 

The Sweetest Thing begins in documentary style with guys talking straight to the camera about a girl named Christina who broke their hearts. This pre-credit sequence seems tacked on as if the director realized that the script didn't bother to introduce the character Cameron Diaz is playing so he had to do something desperate to get some exposition into the movie to provide comic credentials for Diaz's character. 

Once we are into the actual film we meet Christina (Cameron Diaz), your typical flighty movie chick dancing in the streets of San Francisco. Where are these pixie-ish girls who dance in the streets with no regard for the world around them? Oh right, mental hospitals.  Christina and her friend Courtney (Christina Applegate) meet up at Christina's apartment where their friend Jane (Selma Blair) is crying over a lost boyfriend. Christina and Courtney give her the typical advice, forget about Mr. Right and go get Mr. Right Now. How clever! 

The three friends go to a club where Christina meets Peter Donahue (Thomas Jane). Initially, Christina and Peter are adversarial but then they keep meeting and grow to like each other. Peter eventually invites Christina to a party but she decides not to go. Why? Well, if she goes, we wouldn't have this idiot plot where Christina has to try and find this great guy she met a this party. Oh, and she didn't get his phone number either for the same reason. 

One of my movie pet peeves is when an entire film hinges on a situation easily resolved by a brief conversation but left unresolved in service of the plot. In The Sweetest Thing all they had to do is what anyone in that situation would have done, either go to the party or exchange phone numbers. If they did that though we wouldn't have the lame road sequence where the girls have wacky things happen, like Christina's discovery of what a glory hole is. Oh so clever.

I doubt the glory hole has ever been used for a good laugh in a film, there is probably a reason for that, but The Sweetest Thing doesn't stop there. The film includes a sequence where the girls start a restaurant singalong about penis size, and poor abused Selma Blair has a scene where let's just say something gets stuck somewhere.

Writer Nancy Pimental and Director Roger Kumble want to roll around in the same mud as There's Something About Mary and the American Pie movies, but they forget what it was that made those movies funny. There's Something About Mary and American Pie 1 & 2 were funny because the disgusting jokes were in context and framed against characters who earned our sympathy. The Sweetest Thing never bothers to introduce the characters, they expect that we will like them because we like the stars. That was not enough for me.

The Sweetest Thing is legitimately hard to watch. Rather than relating to the characters I was embarrassed for the stars trapped in the film’s humiliating and stupid situations. The Sweetest Thing is a complete embarrassment. 

Movie Review Storytelling

Storytelling (2002) 

Directed by Todd Solondz 

Written by Todd Solondz 

Starring Selma Blair, Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, James Van Der Beek

Release Date January 25th, 2002 

Published August 3rd, 2002 

Todd Solondz is the brilliant auteur behind the blindingly funny Welcome To The Dollhouse and the endlessly disturbing Happiness. In his most recent film, Storytelling, Solondz attempts to combine the satirical and the disturbing and succeeds to a point.

Storytelling is two entirely different stories, one called Fiction and the other Non-Fiction. In Fiction, Selma Blair plays Vi, a disillusioned college girl who, after growing weary of insensitive freshman boys, begins a relationship with a freshman with cerebral palsy. She assumes he will be nicer than most because his options are far more limited. 

After finding him to be much like everyone else, Vi heads to a bar and is picked up by her creative writing teacher, a bitter African-American Pulitzer Prize winner, who takes revenge on racism by having sadomasochistic sex with young white girls. The teacher, played by Robert Wisdom, has the intense creepiness of Anthony Perkins and is easily the most disturbing character in the film.

Fiction is by far the more compelling of the film’s two stories. Fiction is challenging and confrontational with some shocking laughs. Sadly, Fiction takes up only 20 minutes of screentime, just enough to introduce its interesting characters and raise its challenging issues and then walk away before leaving an impact.

Non-Fiction is a somewhat aimless take on the suburbia Solondz so deftly dissected in his first two features. Here however, he doesn't seem to know what it is he's attempting to say. The lead of the story is Paul Giamatti as a wannabe documentary filmmaker who wants to document the disaffected youth in the suburbs. 

His subject will be Scooby Livingston, played by Mark Webber. Scooby is an aimless gen X'er whose goal is to become a talk show host. Also involved are Scooby's parents, the angry and intimidating Marty (John Goodman) and the meek and clueless Fern (Airplane’s Julie Hagerty). There is also a subplot involving Scooby's little brother Mikey and the family's maid Consuelo, played by Lupe Ontiveros.

Non-Fiction is as aimless as the subject of its movie within the movie. Scooby has no ambition and neither does the story. Admittedly there are a couple of good laughs and a strong cameo by Franke Potente, however, Non-Fiction is undercut badly by the unfocused story and the outlandish and ridiculous subplot. The culmination of the little brothers subplot involving hypnosis and revenge leaves one to wonder if the story was supposed to be satirical or serious.

There was a great deal of potential for Storytelling. That potential goes unrealized, but the attempt is respectable.