Classic Movie Review Judgment Night

Judgment Night (1993) 

Directed by Stephen Hopkins 

Written by Lewis Colick 

Starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, Stephen Dorff, Denis Leary 

Release Date October 15th, 1993

Published October 16th, 2023 

The most interesting aspect of 1993's action flick, Judgment Night is how star Emilio Estevez held the producers over a barrel. Estevez is rumored to have been very low on the list of actors that the producers wanted for the lead role of Frank in Judgment Day. Naturally, they were chasing a big star, Tom Cruise. That didn't work so they went to Christian Slater who also passed on the role. The role was then passed on by John Travolta and Ray Liotta before landing at the feet of Emilio Estevez. The production had a small window to actually shoot and complete the film and with that, the studio offered Estevez the role because he was available and so many others said no. And then Estevez asked for $4 million dollars for the role and he got it. 

That's way more interesting than what happens in this dopey urban action drama which posits a mostly empty downtown Chicago a fully dystopian Chicago that is desperately violent but also a ghost town. Four buddies are traveling to the big city from the suburbs in order to attend a boxing event. Frank (Estevez) is joining his best friend Mike (Cuba Gooding Jr), Frank's brother, John (Stephen Dorff), and their obnoxious, pushy, irritating pal Ray (Jeremy Piven) for the trip to the city. 

Because his personality apparently isn't obnoxious enough, Ray decides to scam his way to borrowing a gigantic motor home to take the four friends to the city for the fight. Unfortunately, the group fails to account for Chicago traffic on a night when there is a giant sporting event and they wind up missing the start of the event while trapped on an expressway. With time slipping away, Ray makes an illegal turn and uses an off-ramp to try and sneak around traffic. The group ends up in the dystopian future set of Chicago, unrecognizable to suburban yokels like themselves. 

As the group bickers about being lost, Ray hits a pedestrian with the motor home. Forced to stop by his friends, Ray frets about going to jail as his buddies tend to the injured pedestrian. To say this pedestrian is having a rough night would be an understatement. Not only was hit just hit by a motor home, he'd been shot in the gut just before the accident. Clutching a bag full of ill-gotten cash, the man begs for help and the friends force Ray to try and find a hospital, despite his desire to abandon the injured man and try to avoid going to jail. 

Mike takes over driving and the group is on the run, choosing to try and chase a police car on its way to call. That's when the motor home is struck by a car and forced off the road. The motor home finally comes to rest trapped between two buildings. The men in the car that hit them turn out to be gangsters led by Fallon (Denis Leary). They break open the back of the motor home to snatch the injured man and they kill him. They then want to kill the witnesses to that killing and set off after our suburban commandos who rush off into those famously empty Chicago streets. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Paradise City

Paradise City (2022) 

Directed by Chuck Russell 

Written by Corey Large, Edward John Drake, Chuck Russell 

Starring John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Stephen Dorff, Blake Jenner 

Release Date November 11th, 2022 

Published November 9th, 2022 

The effort that Director Chuck Russell puts into not putting John Travolta and Bruce Willis on screen together, despite their being co-stars in the new movie Paradise City, might have been better used to make a good movie. But, that's just wishful thinking. No, instead of bothering to make a good movie, Russell spends loads of time creating scenarios that led to his stars never sharing the screen at the same time. Why? Who knows. I'm not familiar with whether or not there is some issue between Willis and Travolta. 

All I do know is that they have a scene in the movie Paradise City where Travolta and Willis's characters, a wanted international criminal who underwent serious facial reconstruction, and the world's greatest bounty hunter respectively, are supposed to be sitting in a restaurant together. It's a flashback to an important face to face showdown that is edited to have only given us a vague sense that perhaps the two stars had been in the same room at the same time. 

The... inelegant, to the be charitable, camera and editing gymnastics that keep Travolta and Willis from having to breathe the same air in the same room are the most notable thing about Paradise City. Like me, if you waste your time watching this Z-Grade thriller you will spend most of that time wondering why Travolta and Willis never share the screen, even when their characters are supposed to be in the same room having an important confrontation. 

The movie opens with Bruce Willis in a car racing along some Hawaiian roadway. He crashes and retrieves a hooded figure from the trunk. He drags this hooded figure to the beach and waits for the people chasing him to come along. He tries to reason with, what appear to be corrupt members of law enforcement, Willis' go-to late in career villains, before he's forced to release his hostage and is subsequently brought down in a hale of bullets. 

The hooded prisoner is Travolta but we only find that out later when we see the aftermath of the shooting, Willis's bounty hunter miraculously survives, and with Willis fully out of frame and dying in the ocean, the hood comes off to reveal Travolta. Again, I don't know if there is some kind of beef between Willis and Travolta, it's just this weird choice the movie made. Perhaps they could save money by shooting their most expensive cast members separately, that seems logical, but regardless, it's deeply distracting and with the remaining cast headed up by Blake Jenner and Dollar Store Christian Slater impersonator, Stephen Dorff, it's easy to get distracted. 

Click here for my full length review of Paradise City at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Somewhere

Somewhere (2010) 

Directed by Sophia Coppola 

Written by Sophia Coppola 

Starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning

Release Date December 22nd, 2010 

Published December 18th, 2010 

A dejected movie star drives his car in circles for a 2 or 3 minutes to begin Sophia Coppola's “Somewhere” and things only grow more elegiac and confounding from there. Stephen Dorff stars in “Somewhere” as movie star Johnny Marco and for the first 20 minutes of the film he is a most irritating and off-putting presence. After the driving in circles we are treated to a scene of the despondent star in his posh Chateau Marmont apartment being entertained by twin strippers before he simply falls asleep watching them.

The scene is noisy and goes on and on and on with Marco never leaving the bed and the girls never leaving their poles until the end and only then to offer a kiss goodbye to the sleeping star. These scenes will test the patience of even the most forgiving fan of writer-director Sophia Coppola and yet as you stick with “Somewhere” something strange begins to happen. A strange fascination arises even as Johnny Marco barely rouses from his stupor.

Conventionally, the story kicks in when Johnny's pre-teen daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) arrives for a visit. At first she is just a visitor and Johnny is welcoming but with an eye on the clock. After another interlude with the twins, Cleo returns, this time with plans to stay for a while longer. In a more typical story Johnny would be the diva father who learns how to be a better dad through the course of an adventure with his daughter. That however, is not this movie.

Sophia Coppola takes this story in a unique and fascinating direction by seeming to give it no direction at all. Somewhere has a hazy, dreamy feel and it builds fascination by avoiding the typical movie narrative expectations and instead allowing “Somewhere” to unfold in a mercurial fashion that feels natural even as nothing seems to be happening.

It's a daring approach as scenes begin with the chance that something might happen to break the dreamy monotony of this story and then the scene plays out and the dream continues. The ending is near perfection as it plays out in a way that fits the shapeless, prosaic nature of all that came before it. The ending is ambiguous and unusual and leaves the viewer wanting to know more and yet ready to leave Johnny Marco be.

”Somewhere” is one of the most divisive films of 2010. Many will walk out in the first 20 minutes; many will make it to the end and be left agape. But for those who find this film's groove and feel its vibe, “Somewhere” is a real trip, a memorable unendingly fascinating mind wipe that drifts away like fog lifting from your psyche. I hated “Somewhere” for a solid 20 minutes and by the end I loved it. If you can find the groove, you will love this movie too.

Movie Review Public Enemies

Public Enemies (2009) 

Directed by Michael Mann

Written by Ronan Bennett, Ann Bideman, Michael Mann

Starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Stephen Dorff

Release Date July 1st 2009

Published June 30th, 2009

Public Enemies arrives in theaters with the hype and release date of the typical summer blockbuster. However, this is so not a typical summer blockbuster that the ad campaign, trailers and 4th of July weekend release date actually threaten to be detrimental to the film. The idea of Public Enemies as a blockbuster is a disservice to the actual movie, a far more meditative and unique movie. 

Thoughtful, filmic and observant, this crime drama from the brilliant Michael Mann is everything your average summer movie is not. Yes, there are chases, bank robberies, and bullets and the look evokes classic gangster movie mythology but Scarface this is not. Michael Mann sets out with a goal of capturing history in his lens and in doing so brings an almost documentary realism to the proceedings.

In striving for gritty realism, Mann eschews the outsized, mythic and outlandish aspects of the gangster/anti-hero stories of the past. Thus much of what audiences are expecting to get in Public Enemies will not be there.

Johnny Depp stars in Public Enemies as the legendary outlaw John Dillinger whose life revolved around robbing banks. Dillinger lived for little else than the thrill of the hold up. Everything else in life from women to the trappings of fame in fortune were distant second to pulling off a bank job quickly and efficiently.

Dillinger is alleged to have robbed more than 2 dozen banks and even a couple of police stations. He famously escaped from prison twice as well, both prison breaks, daring and unique as they are, are featured in the film. Ironically, as bold and daring as these escapes are, director Michael Mann refuses to make them cute or play up the naughty anti-heroic fun that other directors might have reveled in.

Mann observes these escapes and if you happen to find it humorous that Dillinger escapes one prison with a wooden gun and by stealing the warden's own vehicle, driving it past a small army of soldiers meant solely to stop him, that is your prerogative. For Mann, Public Enemies is not a celebration of the American anti-hero or the Robin Hood myth of Dillinger.

Public Enemies is a dry observance of a historic figure, the important moments of his life and his death. The performance of Johnny Depp is most evocative of the director's intent in bringing the life of John Dillinger to the screen. Here Depp is free of mannerism, tics and actorly flourish. All of the colorful aspects of past Depp performances are gone from his Dillinger in favor of a quiet intensity.

Much of the performance remains behind his eyes. Watch the eyes and see Dillinger the man, coldly practical but also frightened, confused and conflicted. Some will sit impatiently waiting for what's behind those eyes to be expressed in some kind of physical or verbal flourish. I can tell you now, you will be left waiting. This is Johnny Depp at his most quiet and controlled. It worked for me, it may not work for most, especially you fans of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Now, I say the film is cold and observant. However, where there is warmth is in the classic touch of Cinematographer Dante Spinotti who brings a hint of classic gangster movie to the film. At times, and it is fleeting, the film takes on the look of the old Warner Brothers period gangster films whose mythic anti-heroes the film so ironically brushes aside. It is nevertheless an at times breathtakingly beautiful tribute to old Hollywood.

Also spectacular is the period production design of Nathan Crowley, the costume design of Colleen Atwood and the superior editing of Jeffrey Ford and Paul Rubell. These aspects of the film often make readers of movie reviews roll their eyes and say who cares but Public Enemies is a movie that revels in and works brilliantly because of these oh so intricate and detailed touches.

Not your typical blockbuster, Public Enemies is an extensively detailed and ingenious piece of filmmaking. An classic Oscar contender dressed up as a blockbuster star vehicle for a fourth of July weekend. I love, love, love this movie but I can understand if some people walk out unsatisfied, Public Enemies is not exactly the movie that the marketing campaign sold you on.

Movie Review: World Trade Center

World Trade Center (2006) 

Directed by Oliver Stone 

Written by Andrea Berloff 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Michael Shannon, Stephen Dorff, Jon Bernthal 

Release Date August 9th, 2006

Published August 9th, 2006 

When United 93 was released back in March of this year I was floored by that films documentary realism and emotional punch. However, I was unable to recommend the film. To whom do you recommend a film that gives the feel of actually reliving the greatest tragedy you have ever witnessed. Standing in the theater the following day watching audiences cue up with pop and popcorn in hand I was struck with how vulgar it seemed to munch popcorn while reliving 9/11.

World Trade Center, director Oliver Stone's flag waving, rah rah, patriotic remembrance of that day feels like a film you could munch popcorn to. Classically Hollywood, World Trade Center is about bravery, self sacrifice and the kind of heroism rarely ever seen. It's also saccharine, remote and rather simpleminded. Though skillful and respectful World Trade Center fails to grasp the gravity of it's subject and thus never feels important enough to justify having been made at all.

On September 11th John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) rolled out of bed at 3:30 am without waking his wife Donna (Maria Bello), it was going to be just another tuesday morning at the port authority police precinct. Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) rose a few hours after Mcloughlin and kissed his wife Allison goodbye before joining McLoughlin at PAPD headquarters.

This of course was to be no ordinary Tuesday for anyone in the country. After receiving assignments for the day, McLaughlin in charge of everything and Jimenez sent to Port Authority bus terminal, things turn horrifying quickly. As Jimenez is shooing away homeless people the shadow of the first plane passes over him headed for it's deathly collision.

Returning to the station, Jimenez will join McLaughlin, his pal Dom Pezullo (Jay Hernandez) and several other officers in heading off to the trade center towers to evacuate the people inside. Arriving at the towers, after commandeering a city bus, the officers find a horror show of the injured and the dead. Some are victims who leapt to their death rather than burn alive in the towers.

McLoughlin, Jimenez, Pezullo and another officer, Antonio Rodrigues (Armando Riesco), are the guys who chose to run into the towers and get people out. The cops are in the concourse between the towers when they began to collapse. Rodrigues was killed, Jimenez and McLoghlin were buried by the first tower  collapse while Pezullo managed to be unharmed and attempted to free Jimenez. Sadly Pezullo died when the second tower fell.

One of the most striking elements of these scenes in which the actors are trapped in the rubble is the complete loss of time. Unless you methodically researched and kept time on your watch you don't remember and cannot keep track of the time between when the planes hit, when the first tower fell and when the second tower fell. We have the benefit of hindsight but the characters do not, so every scene in which they wander the trade center gathering materials, in which they are first nearly crushed by debris of the first tower to the second tower falling, is filled with dreadful tension.

As filmed by Oliver Stone these scenes are the best in the film. Harrowing, nail biting moments that have a real emotional kick even as we already know what is about to happen. The actors approach to these moments is stellar without any pretense or knowingness, each actor plowed ahead acting on their assigned duties, working through fears of the unknown, fears of a world on edge that they cannot comprehend.

Nicholas Cage is especially good in the early scenes of World Trade Center before his portrayal devolves into a series of mushy  flashbacks. Early in World Trade Center Cage thrives as the efficient, matter of fact police sergeant who also happens to be the officer behind the disaster scenarios at trade towers. When McLoughlin tells a superior officer that we prepared for any number of occurances after the attack in 1994 but we did not plan for this, the lines hit hard.

The most fascinating moments of World Trade Center focus on a supporting character, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes. Working on 9/11 as an insurance salesman in Connecticutt, Karnes left work soon after seeing the attacks on television. He visited his pastor and told him that god was calling him to the towers to save people. He went to a barbershop and got a military buzzcut and pulled his marine corp uniform out of mothballs and made his way to New York.

Arriving at the site, passing security thanks to the uniform, Karnes was the first person to jump onto the fallen towers and begin searching for survivors. Joined by a fellow  marine, Thomas played ever so briefly by William Mapother, Karnes searched the rubble and found Jimenez in McLoughlin some 20 feet below, trapped in the rubble. Karnes determination and heroism are stunning, so stunning that many have found his story unbelievable. Dave Karnes is for real and his story was real, one of many extraordinary stories that fateful day.

Karnes' story could warrant his own movie, he went on to fight in Iraq for 18 months at the age of 45, the attacks having inspired him to re-enlist. Unfortunately there are only so many stories that Oliver Stone and writer Andrea Berloff could work into a reasonable runtime. Another great story was that of former paramedic Chuck Sereika, played by Frank Whaley, who also gets only a gloss in World trade Center. When Chuck arrived at the site he was no longer a medic, having spent the most recent months in rehab. He intended only to tie a few tourniquets and help where needed. He ended up the first man inside the rubble when McLoughlin and Jimenez were found.

All of these stories are dramatic and compelling but they are the periphery of what is a real Hollywood-ization of 9/11. Most of World Trade Center is dedicated to the heightened melodrama of McLoughlin and Jimenez trying to keep each other alive and there families at home trying not to fall apart. The heightened emotion in these scenes is portrayed with a belt it to the back of the room, broadway musical like theatricality. To much of World Trade Center rings with a tinsel town phoniness that is anathema to a movie based on 9/11.

Most obvious of these egregiously inflated scenes comes at the end of the film. As Nicholas Cage as John McLoughlin is lifted from the rubble of the World Trade Center his stretcher passes through the hands of hundreds of rescue workers who shake Cage's hand and he gives the thumbs up to. With a star the size of Nick Cage laying in the stretcher the scene plays like a Hollywood homage to the heroic saviors of 9/11.

If any group are worthy of a big Hollywood thank you it's the fire fighters, policeman and rescue workers who saved what few lives could be saved that day but the justification does not make the scene feel any less false and cloying.

I find it bizarre and a little disgusting to try and examine the entertaining aspects of World Trade Center. By comparison I rated United 93 a zero in my popcorn rating. That film was just too much like watching 9/11 happen again for me to treat it like a typical movie. World Trade Center , because of it's star power and melodrama is more of a movie movie. I was able to seperate from World Trade Center far more than I could the more visceral and real United 93.

That seperation comes twofold. I was able to find aspects of World Trade Center that I could judge from a movie making standpoint, things such as the performances of Cage, Pena, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello all of which are solid with just a hint of falsehood. Also Andrea Berloff's often overwrought and at times gut wrenching script that never fails to hit a melodramatic note but also misses few chances to really touch you with sincerity.

However, this is still a 9/11 movie and it is rubbing a wound that is still raw. Oliver Stone is very careful to be respectful with his storytelling. There is no shock factor, no forced conspiracy theory, really no controversy about Stone's interpretation whatsoever. The film is an earnest examination of character and heroism that uses the greatest attack on American soil as a framing device. That is both respectable and repugnant. It is both a great piece of storytelling and an impossible rendering of a painful memory.

Because the film is directed by Oliver Stone parsing the films political aspects should become quite a sport. However, these efforts are futile. Stone honestly avoids any overt political message in favor of a simple tale of heroism. If you want to find politics in World Trade Center they will likely be your own. I have read reviews that claim Stone's use of a Brooks and Dunn song on the soundtrack is an example of his red state bent. On the other hand I personally read a minor political statement into Stone's montage of citizens around the globe reacting to the attack and rallying around America. The Bush administration went on to squander this international goodwill almost completely. That however, is my own parsing of the scene not Oliver Stone's.

In searching the film for political viewpoints you cannot ignore the most fascinating and complicated character in the film, Staff Sgt. Dave Karnes played by Michael Shannon. There is no question that Shannon was a hero that day selflessly risking his life to locate McLoughlin and Jimenez in the rubble. On the other hand, the creepy intensity that Michael Shannon brings to the role allows a political interpretation.

Karnes is a neo-con wet dream of god and country patriotism who re-enlisted in the military twice to join the war on terror. Karnes is undoubtedly brave and heroic but, the creepy intensity with which he is portrayed could be read, if one were so inclined, as a metaphor for the right wing's frighteningly single minded pursuit of the war in Iraq. That again though, is me bringing my personal politics to a chapter of the movie that may not have politics at all.

Oliver Stone's reputation simply invites this sort of speculation.

World Trade Center is a film that fills me with conflict. There is nothing horribly offensive about the film. It is relatively well crafted with some very powerful moments. But, I cannot escape my own horror at watching 9/11 dramatized. It's still too raw and too fresh in my memory for a movie to portray in a way I feel will show respect and deference for what happened.

That is not Oliver Stone's fault. He made what I'm sure he feels is the best movie he could make given the materials he had to work with. Much of what he delivers is Hollywood hokum that is out of place in a movie about 9/11. However, there is far too much solid work for me to write the film off completely. Michael Shannon for one deserves a serious Oscar push as does Stone's set design team whose attention to detail may be the films most emotional experience.

To whom do you recommend a film about 9/11? I cannot think of anyone to whom I would say this film is a must see. Maybe the academy for what I mentioned before but with great reservation. I cannot fathom who would want to watch a dramatization of this horrifying event in history when so much of it is still so fresh in our collective memories.

Movie Review: Fear Dot Com

Fear Dot Com (2002) 

Directed by William Malone 

Written by Josephine Coyle 

Starring Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Stephen Rea, Udo Kier

Release Date August 30th, 2002 

Published August 29th, 2002 

The uneven career of Stephen Dorff continues. From his great performances in The Power of One, Blood & Wine and Entropy to his outright awful work in SFW, Space Truckers and Deuces Wild. On occasion he combines both a good and bad performance in one film. Such was the case in Blade where he had some effectively scary cool moments bookended by scenes of screen chewing hamminess. Fear Dot Com sadly features Bad Stephen Dorff, sullen skulking plot manipulated Dorff. Throw in an equally dull Natascha McElhone and you have a very unpleasant moviegoing experience.

fear dot com is a website, or rather FearDotCom.com is the website in the film. No I'm not kidding, Feardotcom.com, which is also the film's official website. Anyway back to the movie. Dorff plays a put upon cop in a nameless city constantly in darkness and always raining. My guess would be Seattle, but no one is drinking coffee and listening to Pearl Jam, which is my narrow stereotypical view of the city. The film was actually shot in Luxembourg, probably for the cheap labor and lack of strict labor laws. I'm off subject again but that was the way it was while I watched the film with my mind constantly wandering off, my inner monologue fixating on better movies than this like The Net or Howard The Duck.

Oh right the plot description. Basically this website takes possession of your soul and makes your eyes bleed until you kill yourself and the person nearest you. The same type of experience you would have watching Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Anyway Stephen Dorff is the cop investigating the website. Dorff is aided by a pretty girl from the health department played by Natascha McElhone. The website steals their souls and won't give them back until they track down a serial killer named Allistair Pratt, played by Stephen Rea doing a sort Peter Lorre crossed with Geoffrey Rush and the devil thing. There is more to it but I don't remeber much of it, this plot makes more holes than a gopher.

Director William Malone, who delivered one of the best B-movies of the last decade with his remake of House On Haunted Hill, seems to want to go in interesting directions but can't get around this minefield of a script. So Malone, Cinematographer Christian Seboldt and Production Designer Jerome Letour do everything they can with the film's visuals to at least make the film a tolerable visual experience. Their work pays off a little in the final 20 minutes or so but by then it's too little too late.

Fear Dot Com isn't the worst film I have seen this year but it is an early candidate for the top 10 worst of the year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Movie Review: Deuces Wild

Deuces Wild (2002)

Directed by Scott Kalvert

Written by Christopher Gamble 

Starring Brad Renfro, Stephen Dorff, Fairuza Balk, James Franco, Johnny Knoxville, Matt Dillon, Norman Reedus, Deborah Harry, Frankie Muniz 

Release Date May 3rd, 2002

Published May 3rd, 2002

The troubles of actor Brad Renfro are well documented. Renfro has had multiple run-ins with the law and is also notoriously difficult to work with. What gets lost in Renfro's problems is the fact that the kid is one hell of an actor. Renfro has a Brandoesque persona, handsome with deep soulful eyes that emit a piercing gaze that cuts like a knife. Sadly, Renfro's troubles have kept him from the acting status his work aspires to and is likely the reason he is relegated to such B-release fare as Deuces Wild.

In Deuces, Renfro plays Bobby, a street tough who runs with a gang called the Vipers. The film begins in flashback with Bobby's brother Leon (Stephen Dorff) carrying the limp lifeless body of their brother Al. Al is dead from a drug overdose administered by rival gang members Marco (Norman Reedus) and Franky (Balthazar Getty), members of the Vipers.

Three years later Leon is the leader of the Deuces and Bobby is his thuggish enforcer. The Deuces are dedicated to keep drugs off their block. This comes into conflict with the Vipers and their leader Marco, fresh from jail and looking for revenge against Leon for sending him there. Neither gang can make a move without the approval of a local mobster named Fitzy and played semi convincingly by Matt Dillon.

Deuces Wild is as much a gang movie as it is a love story, as Bobby falls for a Vipers girl named Annie (Fairuza Balk). The courtship between Bobby and Annie would be sweet if it weren't steeped in cliché and bad 50's dialogue. In fact, the whole film is buried under clichés from West Side Story, The Outsiders, Lords of Flatbush and whatever greaser gang movie you can think of.

It gets worse, even with the problems of the ridiculous attempts to ape 50's lingo, the film introduces and dismisses subplot after subplot. Marco seeks revenge on Leon for sending him to jail, while we in the audience find out in a dream sequence that it wasn't Leon who did the deed, a piece of information that makes no difference whatsoever and is never resolved. Then there is Leon's romance with Betsy (Soprano's actress Drea Demateo), which exists solely to provide Leon with something to do while not beating the crap out of people in fistfights.

And why does Leon feel so bad about everything he does? Where is the commitment to the cause? In one scene he watches as the Vipers burn down his block. In another scene he admonishes his gang for acting against a pair of drug dealers moving into their territory. It was interesting to note that gangs of 50's Brooklyn only controlled one block. Literally one block! So, the Deuces kept drugs off of one city block, but if drugs were sold right around the corner, it was all good.

Renfro for his part is uncomfortable with the lame attempts at 50's dialogue, but still communicates with body language and his laser stare. This kid is a contender, as he showed in Apt Pupil and his Tour De force performance in Bully. With Deuces Wild, Renfro signals an attempt to move into mainstream Hollywood roles. Here's hoping he develops the same eye for Hollywood material as he has for his indie work, and that Deuces Wild is just a minor annoyance on the way to an Oscar nomination.

Movie Review: Cold Creek Manor

Cold Creek Manor (2003) 

Directed by Mike Figgis 

Written by Richard Jeffries 

Starring Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, Kristen Stewart, Stephen Dorff

Release Date September 19th, 2003 

Published September 18th, 2003 

Why does Hollywood seem to dislike anyone who lives outside of New York or Los Angeles? A number of recent releases show big city folk wandering off to the sticks to get away from it all and finding themselves terrorized by small town folk who don't take kindly to strangers (pause to spit tobacco). The horror films Wrong Turn and Cabin Fever both featured the scary backwoods redneck types, and the new Mike Figgis film, Cold Creek Manor, also recycles the cliché of the whacked-out redneck. That all three of these most recent examples are also less-than-stellar films should tell you something.

Dennis Quaid stars in Cold Creek Manor as Cooper Tilson, a documentary filmmaker and stay-at-home dad to two precocious kids (Kristen Stewart and Ryan Wilson). Cooper's wife, Leah Tilson (Sharon Stone), is some sort of executive, constantly jetting off to important meetings and missing her family. When their son is nearly killed by an angry New York driver, mom and dad decide that it's time to give up city life and live the ultimate yuppie fantasy of a beautiful country home.

In true money pit fashion, however, the couple chooses the absolute wrong house, a place called Cold Creek Manor. It's the kind of place that, when it's name is spoken, people look away in horror. Of course, the city folk are dense enough not to notice the many warning signs. One thing they can't avoid noticing however is the manor's former owner Dale Massie (Stephen Dorff), who, upon leaving prison, promptly breaks into the home and joins the family for dinner. As a courtesy for having sold off all of Dale's belongings, they hire him on to help rehab the rundown house.

Needless to say, Dale has some bad intentions toward his home’s new occupants and it's not long before the crazed redneck is terrorizing the family. Call it Cape Fear-light; we have definitely seen this whole thing before. The odd thing is, the trailer and commercials seemed to play up a supernatural element to the story. It's an element that is not in the actual film, where the melodrama is all too human.

Sharon Stone makes an obvious attempt to soften her image in Cold Creek Manor, playing a loving mother as opposed to her typecast sexpot roles. Unfortunately, Stone's performance in Cold Creek Manor only serves to highlight exactly why she has been typecast. Stone radiates the warmth of an icy river. Writer Richard Jeffries doesn't help much by giving her a weepy victim role instead of a fully fleshed out character.

Dennis Quaid is only slightly more effective as the father character but much of that is based on his cultivated career playing a wide range of likable good guys. Also playing opposite Stephen Dorff's well-played psycho gives Quaid the opportunity to bounce off of some good character work. Indeed, Stephen Dorff is the film’s true star. Though his character is not very well written, he infuses it with the necessary menace and smarminess to make it as believable as it can be within the ridiculously over the top story.

It might have seemed confusing to see such a mercurial director as Mike Figgis directing such a conventional thriller. The only reason I can see why he made Cold Creek Manor was to indulge his love of architecture. As he did in his little seen but well respected film Liebestraum, Figgis directs his sets better than his actors. You can see where this script would appeal to Figgis because it allows him to film a house of exquisite design. The house in Cold Creek Manor is in fact at times better shot than its stars, Ms. Stone in particular.

But great architecture does not make a great movie. Cold Creek Manor is too conventional, stereotypical and languidly paced to be a great movie, or even a good movie for that matter.

Movie Review: Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark (2005) 

Directed by Uwe Boll

Written by Elan Mastel, Michael Roesch, Peter Scheerer 

Starring Christian Slater, Matthew Walker, Tara Reid, Stephen Dorff

Release Date January 28th, 2005 

Published January 27th, 2005 

German born Director Uwe Boll did not exactly set the world on fire with his first atrocious major motion picture, the horror video game adaptation House Of The Dead. Yet, because of the films low budget, success can be judged by lowered standards. Thus it's not entirely surprising to see Mr. Boll directing another low budget horror film based on a video game. What is a little surprising is that he was unable to improve on one of the worst films from any director in history.

Christian Slater, a long way from Heathers, stars as paranormal detective Edward Carnby, a former member of a secret government agency that fights the forces of evil. Now working freelance, Edward has just intercepted a rare Indian artifact and someone wants to kill him to get it. Turns out the artifact is part of a key that could unlock the gate to hell.

The bad guy chasing the artifact is Professor Hudgens (Matthew Walker) who, thanks to his assistant and Edward's ex-girlfriend, Aline (Tara Reid), has assembled all but one part of the key. The Professor has more links to Edward's past as well.  He was involved in some strange way with the disappearance of Edward and the entire population of his childhood orphanage.

The orphans, except Edward who escaped, were turned into zombie assassins who could be called only by Professor Hudgens. He calls when he is ready to open the gate to hell and it's up to Edward, his ex-girlfriend, and his former colleagues at that secret government group led by Stephen Dorff to kill the zombies and stop the Professor from opening the gate. There are also some demons from hell that are unleashed to provide some CGI carnage but God help me if I can remember why the hell they were in the movie.

Poor Christian Slater. He used to be so cool. Pump Up The Volume, Heathers even Broken Arrow, Slater had the calm sardonic cool that you can't teach. Even in a bad picture like 1992's cop comedy Kuffs Slater had the ability to bring charm to a charmless and idiotic plot. In Alone In The Dark, you sit and you wait for him to crack wise, to show how much smarter he is than the movie he's trapped in, but it never comes. Slater just looks tired, as if he has just given up and resigned himself to fate as a straight to video actor. That's a real shame.

The rest of the cast actually seems right at home in this awful material, especially Stephen Dorff who chews the scenery like a B-movie legend. Listening to Dorff bark his every line as if belting every word to the back of the theater is almost camp enough to be entertaining. Alas he can't resist taking himself and this ridiculous movie seriously as something that might actually scare someone. Like with his stolid performance in Fear Dot Com, Dorff earnestly believes he's making a good movie and that makes his performance more sad than laughable.

Director Uwe Boll is a hack, plain and simple. He is a directorial machine, built to transcribe bad scripts to filmed images. Whether those images coalesce into anything resembling a movie seems to be none of his concern.

Missing from the plot is any kind of motivation for Professor Hudgens to open the gate to hell. The professor has very little backstory for explanation, aside from turning orphans into future zombies, so the only explanation is that the professor has a case of the "movie evils". "Movie evils" occur when a movie character does something horribly evil only because the plot requires it. The professor does not benefit from opening the gate, and seems perfectly aware of what will happen if he does open it. If he has any demonstrable motivation it was left on the cutting room floor.

But hey, who needs character motivation or a coherent plot when you've got oodles of fake blood, dummie bullets and CGI demons. In a so-bad-it's-good movie that might be all that you need in order to provide some giddy cheap thrills. Unfortunately Alone In The Dark is much too dour and takes itself way too seriously for any real good camp, aside from casting Tara Reid as a scientist, HA! That's pretty funny, but they did not mean it to be a joke amazingly enough.

Watching Alone in the Dark makes me wonder-- with its imbecilic plot, bad special effects and dull witted characters, was it even a very good video game? A gamer friend of mine told me that there has not been a new Alone video game since Playstation 1 sometime in the late nineties. So why did this game get the big screen treatment?

Asking that question is as futile as asking why Uwe Boll continues to get directing assignments when clearly his real talent is inhumane torture. Or maybe it's Svengali-ism, how else to explain how he has convinced real life professional actors that he is a filmmaker.

I hate to ruin your appetite, movie fans, but indeed Mr. Boll will have another horror video game adaptation very soon. Bloodrayne stars Sir Ben Kingsley and will be in theaters early 2006. Just what we have done to deserve this I do not know but repenting our sinful ways might be a good idea before some other obscure video game receives a script commitment and comes knocking on ol' Uwe's door.