Classic Movie Review Reality Bites

Reality Bites (1994)

Directed by Ben Stiller

Written by Helen Childress

Starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, Ben Stiller 

Release Date February 18th, 1994

Published February 21st, 1994

In the 80s you were called a sellout when you appeared in commercials for brands that people didn't like or respect. In the 90s, this insult evolved into people being called Posers. Essentially, people who tried to be part of a culture that they were not authentically part of were 'Posing,' pretending to be cool and hip and down with the kids. It's strange to think how antiquated this thinking is today. In our modern culture, some of the most popular celebrities are themselves a brand that is associated with other brands for the purpose of selling products to consumers, also known as fans. In the 80s, famed comedian Bill Hicks railed against celebrities in Diet Coke commercials as the ultimate sin that one could commit against authenticity. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a celebrity who isn't accompanied by some kind of brand deal and we all just accept it as the norm. 

Sorry for the tangent but writing about Reality Bites bums me out so getting distracted is like a gentle and brief oasis. Reality Bites is the ultimate Poser movie. In the 90s, if marketers wanted to reach the youth market that would find an attractive model or celebrity, throw some flannel and chunky boots on them and have them 'Hello Fellow Young People' their way into our living rooms. We'd roll our eyes and call them posers and then probably still buy the products but ironically and without passion. That's Reality Bites in a nutshell, a movie that comes wandering in dressed in flannel and armored in irony and disaffected youth while selling the notion that it is The Big Chill for Generation X. And yes, I rolled my eyes when I thought of that and then bought a ticket for Reality Bites so I could roll my eyes in front of the big screen and pretend not to care about how the movie was selling a conception of my generation to me like any other branded product. 

Reality Bites stars Winona Ryder as Lelaina Pierce, college valedictorian and wannabe documentarian. Lelaina spent her college years getting drunk, getting high and still making it to class on time and getting good grades. Most of Lelaina's time is spent behind a camera where she has been documenting the lives of her closest friends including Vickie (Janeane Garofalo), a manager at The Gap, Sammy (Steve Zahn), a closeted gay man, closeted at least to his family, and Troy (Ethan Hawke), Lelaina's on again, off again, best friend and flirting partner. We get to see plenty of Lelaina's supposed documentary and what we see does not communicate any serious attempt at documentary filmmaking. It's an entirely facile representation of someone's dream of making movies and it gets Reality Bites off to a deeply inauthentic start that doesn't get any better from there. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Gringa

Gringa (2023) 

Directed by Marny Eng, E.J Foerster 

Written by Patrick Hasburgh 

Starring Steve Zahn, Judy Greer, Jess Gabor, Roselyn Sanchez

Release Date April 21st, 2023 

Published April 18th, 2023 

Gringa stars Jess Gabor as Marge, an awkward teenager struggling in school and on the soccer field. Marge's mom, Margie (Judy Greer), is a busy but not quite successful real estate agent. Though she loves her daughter, the two see little of each other as Margie hustles to give them a life. Everything changes when Margie is killed in a tragic car accident. Facing the prospect of moving to Arizona with her stern and unyielding grandparents, Marge decides to set her own path. 

Having learned that her former soccer star and current deadbeat dad, Jackson (Steve Zahn), is living in a beachfront shack in small village in Mexico, Marge decides to sneak across the border for an impromptu reunion. What she finds is a debauched alcoholic who when he isn't asleep is usually drunk or surfing. Dad also coaches Girl's Soccer in town, an obligation he gave himself in order to win the attention of Elsa (Roselyn Sanchez), a local bar owner, way out of Jackson's league, but who can't fully resist his charm. 

The dramatic father-daughter reunion is sad but also deeply awkward. Neither knows how to take the other. Jackson is sympathetic to the death of Margie, he did love her once, but he's also a stunted man-child so his sympathies only go so far. Marge herself is rightfully bitter toward the father who abandoned her. These early scenes have a strong emotional charge as Jess Gabor and Steve Zahn wrestle with the complicated emotions at play. These are the strongest moments of Gringa. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Management

Management (2009) 

Directed by Stephen Belber

Written by Stephen Belber 

Starring Steve Zahn, Jennifer Aniston, Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward

Release Date May 15th, 2009

Published October 10th, 2009

I have seen some truly unendurably awful movies; I'm looking at you All About Steve, but few are as mind numbingly tone deaf awful as Management, a new, supposed, romance starring Steve Zahn and Jennifer Aniston. From first time writer-director Stephen Belber comes a romance so ludicrous and so off-puttingly wacked that even Ms. Aniston's charm gets trampled in the wake.

Management stars Steve Zahn as a slow witted creep who acts as the night manager at his parents roadside motor lodge in Kingman Arizona. One night he meets Sue (Aniston) who's just passing through on business. It's love at first sight for him but she is rightly creeped out, especially after he drops by her room unannounced with a bottle of champagne and invites himself in.

The whole thing should end there. He's a creepy, 40 something adolescent and she sees that right away. We see it more than she does because he is the supposed hero of this disaster and thus we are subjected to him throughout. Nevertheless, the movie can't end 10 minutes in and she is forced to keep the movie going with a very bad and incomprehensible decision.

When she leaves the following day, the creep follows her, cross country, to her home in Maryland. Further poor decision making is all she can do to keep the plot moving forward. The two spend an awkward evening and morning together, no sex, and he's back on a bus to Arizona.

Oh, but we are only half way into this disaster. She must then make another bad choice and return to Arizona, on business and not really at his prompting. They have another brief interlude, including a visit to his dying mother that makes everyone uncomfortable, and then she's gone and he's chasing her across the country again.

Somehow, they get to Washington state where more incomprehensible crap takes place. She moves in with an ex played by Woody Harrelson and the creep skydives into their pool. He works and lives in the basement of a Chinese restaurant. The movie thinks these ideas are charming and funny though nothing is actually done to make them charming or funny.

The whole of Management plays like a joke that everyone involved assumed would be funny but just isn't. Jokes fall flat from the actor's mouths. Pratfalls are taken with no set up. Ideas are introduced as if the idea were really all anyone had and that should somehow be enough. It's not.

Jennifer Aniston's losing streak has reached astonishing proportions. Management is her third consecutive rom-com disaster following the abysmal twosome of He's Just Not That Into You and Love Happens. That Management is somehow worse than both of those films is even more astonishing.

Steve Zahn is a funny actor who in the right role can be very effective. Here, dressed as a teenager with the haircut of a mental patient, Zahn starts as a creep and remains a creep throughout and yet is supposed to be the romantic hero. The plausibility of any movie is negotiated on the movie's terms. Even by that standard Management fails. Even by its own rules it cannot make this creepy moron seem like a match, not just for Jennifer Aniston, but for any other human being ever.

Management is a loathsome exercise in quirk as a replacement for acting, character development and storytelling. A trainwreck of bad choices, flat humor and tone deaf pacing.  It is mind blowing that anyone involved thought this movie was a good idea.

Movie Review Sahara

Sahara (2005) 

Directed by Breck Eisner 

Written by James V. Hart, Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, Penelope Cruz, Lambert Wilson, Rainn Wilson, William H. Macy 

Release Date April 8th, 2005

Published April 8th, 2005

Author Clive Cussler had vowed never to work with Hollywood again after what they did to his 1982 novel Raise The Titanic. That film was a massive commercial and artistic failure and Cussler was devastated. 23 Years later Cussler has finally returned to Hollywood and once again he has been disappointed. Sahara, based on Cussler's 1994 best seller that continues the adventures of Cussler's signature action hero Dirk Pitt, once again has Cussler fighting Hollywood in court while a movie based on his work stinks up theaters.

Matthew McConaughey stars in Sahara as Dirk Pitt, oceanographer and adventurer. Part Indiana Jones and well... part Indiana Jones, Dirk Pitt seeks buried treasure and occasionally prevents a global ecological disaster. His latest adventure has him and his sidekick Al (Steve Zahn) chasing the legend of a civil war ship stocked with gold that somehow floated from the Carolinas to the Sahara desert.

Parallel to Dirk and Al's adventure is that of a World Health Organization doctor Eva Rojas (Penelope Cruz). The doc is following a virus across Africa and crosses paths with Dirk when she is attacked on the beach by thugs trying to keep her from the source of the outbreak. Dirk saves her life and flirts up a storm and the adventure begins again.

The remaining plot revolves around the virus which is linked to a wealthy industrialist in the middle of the desert, Massard played by Lambert Wilson. The industrialist is dumping nuclear waste with the help of a warlord, General Kazim (Jude Akuwidike) who is involved in a civil war with a group of peasants apparently named after an American car, Tuareg. Dirk and co. must stop the nuclear waste, punish the industrialist and fight Kazim and maybe find the civil war ship that was nearly forgotten amid the goofy environmental plot.

Matthew McConaughey is the ideal actor for this material. With his movie star looks, oozing charisma and quick wit, he is a classic heroic leading man. Teamed with Steve Zahn as his comic sidekick and Penelope Cruz as his eye candy love interest, you have the pieces in place for a solid B-movie adventure. Unfortunately something is lost in the translation of this terrific team of actors into a coherent and entertaining action picture.

That missing element that would turn Sahara into a good movie from a mediocre rehash of action cliches is Director Breck Eisner. Directing as if he were stuck in neutral, Breck Eisner stifles the good things about Sahara, the amazing cast, with bad editing, bad pacing and a bad script penned by old friends of his rather than trained screenwriters.

Given Breck Eisner's industry credentials, you know who his father is, the adaptation of the script by his good buddies T.D Donnelly and Josh Oppenheimer seems like the whim of a charlatan. Who is going to stop the son of one of the film industry's top executives from making a movie, even if he wants to chuck the script in favor of a rewrite by his friends. Clive Cussler's worst nightmares come true in yet another adaptation that makes his already over the top brand of action novel look ridiculous.

The one truly enjoyable aspect of Sahara is the camaraderie of the cast who seem to really be having a good time. So what if the film makes absolutely no sense, the actors are all good looking, funny, charming and they are clearly having a blast. It's like watching a group of friends on the most unique vacation video in history.

Not everyone is in on the fun. Poor Lambert Wilson, The Merovingian from The Matrix sequels, is left with the worst part in the film. As the bad guy he is required to act with the least amount of motivation, logic and most of all the least amount of fun. Where Wilson clearly relished his badness in Matrix Reloaded, he seems in pain in Sahara delivering his haughty threats through gritted teeth, his French accent barely concealing his contempt for the words in the script.

The term Deus Ex Machina is latin and means a contrived plot device in a play or novel or in the case of Sahara, the entire plot of a film. Deus Ex Machina is how all of the lead characters in Sahara are able to adapt the exact knowledge needed at exactly the moment it is needed. Or how characters previously unavailable arrive just in time to make dramatic rescues or add a suspenseful twist. Whether Clive Cussler's novel rested so much on contrivance I don't know, I never read the book, but the film Sahara relies on contrivance in nearly every scene.

Deus Ex Machina is forgivable in small doses, but not when it makes up the entire film!

How acrimonious is the relationship between the makers of Sahara and writer Clive Cussler? There is still litigation pending over the changes made from Cussler's book to the movie. Cussler was given assurances by the producers that he would be able to veto any changes he did not agree with. That agreement was made before Breck Eisner came aboard as Director.

Having never read the book Sahara I don't know how extensive the changes were, but given the flaws littered throughout the film version, I would tend to side with Clive Cussler. Sahara it seems did not turn out the way anyone could have reasonably wanted it to, but for Clive Cussler it is now twice that he has felt such extensive disappointment.

Movie Review Rescue Dawn

Rescue Dawn (2007) 

Directed by Werner Herzog

Written by Werner Herzog 

Starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, Jeremy Davies 

Release Date July 4th, 2007

Published July 5th, 2007 

Werner Herzog is one of our filmmaking treasures. As both a director of fiction and a documentarian he has shined a human light through art that few directors can match. A close friend of Herzog was a man named Dieter Dengler. Herzog chronicled Dieter's extraordinary life in the documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly. Now Herzog has fictionalized Dieter's story in the drama Rescue Dawn.

Going from the strict realist perspective of the documentary to the more free form of fiction; one would assume Herzog might take liberties with Dengler's story of his extraordinary escape from Vietcong sympathizers in Laos in 1966. Instead, Herzog is actually more strictly realistic in Rescue Dawn than he was in Little Dieter Needs To Fly and the result is a rather dry and distant recollection of events that should have a more cathartic and human focus.

Dieter Dengler never wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to fly. After seeing American pilots nearly kill him in his world war 2 era home in Germany, Dieter moved to America and pursued his dream to fly in the only place he knew he could get his wings, the Air Force. It was 1966, Vietnam was becoming a hot zone and pilots were in demand to straif the countryside and make way for ground forces bogged down by the unique and challenging jungle battlefield.

For his first mission Dieter was given top secret clearance for a dangerous and controversial mission. Hos squadron is authorized to fly over Laos and take out North Vietnamese supply lines coming from that country. Dengler is shot down and is soon captured by Vietnamese sympathizers. Taken to a POW camp, Dengler finds a hopeless group of fellow POW's whose emaciated bodies made for an atmosphere of desperation.

Dengler would have none of it and his attitude began a brave rebellion that would eventually save his life.

Based on the story told to writer-director Werner Herzog by his friend Dieter Dengler in the documentary Little Dieter Needs To Fly, Rescue Dawn is no action movie take on Dengler's struggle to escape. Rather Rescue is a dry retelling of an extraordinary story. Herzog, maybe because he told this story before, doesn't seem to see much that amazes him about this story, he observes Dieter's actions with a detached, just facts approach.

I'm not saying the story needs embellishment or some invented action, just observing that Herzog's approach here is so irreverent that the real life danger Dieter Dengler faced is reduced to a detached recreation of Dengler's memory of the events.

Christian Bale does what he can to bring life to Herzog's sparse dialogue in Rescue Dawn. Bale infiuses Dieter Dengler with a playful arrogance and serious determination that he would have needed to survive this horrific situation. It is a very real performance by Bale, one of his most fascinating if not his most successful.

Rescue Dawn is simply too far away from this material for it to be really involving. Not until the end, after Dengler has made his escape, is the audience allowed a little catharsis but soon after the film is over, as if Herzog sensed the audience identifying with the material and sought to end that as soon as possible. This arms length approach defines Rescue Dawn and handicaps it.

Rescue Dawn is well made and professional but refuses to let audiences get involved in it. Like the just the facts approach of a classic documentarian, Werner Herzog strives for truth in Rescue Dawn at the expense of the kind of audience identification people expect in a movie. Oddly enough, as Roger Ebert observes in his Rescue Dawn review, Herzog approached his documentary version of this story with some magic realism that softened the story and made it more audience friendly.

Taking Rescue Dawn as it is I can recommend it for fans of Herzog and for you History channel lovers but for those looking for a classic war movie or action flick, Rescue Dawn is not the movie for you.

Movie Review Shattered Glass

Shattered Glass (2003) 

Directed by Billy Ray 

Written by Billy Ray 

Starring Hayden Christensen, Peter Sarsgard, Chloe Sevigny, Rosario Dawson, Hank Azaria, Steve Zahn

Release Date October 31st, 2003 

Published October 30th, 2003 

The New Republic magazine prides itself as the in-flight magazine of Air Force One. Its pretentiousness has been earned by years of literate intelligent discourse on policy and international politics. Appreciate their perspective or not, you have to respect that they get into these subjects that so many average Americans think are boring.

So it was a huge black eye for the storied magazine to find out one of its writers had faked numerous stories. If there is one cardinal sin in journalism, it's lying, and Stephen Glass lied on a scale that dwarfs the lies of your average tabloid rag. The story of Glass's lies and how he was finally caught are the subject of the adroit and fascinating film Shattered Glass.

Hayden Christensen stars as Glass, the youngest writer on a staff whose median age is 26 years old. The 22-year-old Glass is a rising star with a habit of looking into fantastic stories. The stories occasionally raise suspicions but the puppy dog sweetness of Glass disarms co-workers who couldn't believe Steve would make up such a story. For the most part Stephen's stories check out, he has detailed notes and phone numbers from his subjects. Those subjects can tend to be unwieldy for fact checkers, but there is enough verifiable truth to what Stephen reports that the stories go through.

As the film progresses there is a very subtle shift of focus from the character Stephen Glass to the uncovering of Glass's deception, seen through the eyes of Peter Sarsgaard's New Republic Editor Chuck Lane. The shift is signaled almost unconsciously through scenes of Glass working late to cover his lies and Lane at home with his wife and daughter. These scenes allow the audience to choose sides without feeling bad for abandoning poor Stephen.

Coming to the story with a good knowledge of what Stephen Glass did and the type of person he is (his appearance on 60 Minutes earlier this year was the tip of the iceberg as to his serial compulsion toward hiding the truth), I never felt much of any sympathy for Glass. Thus, I came to Shattered Glass with my mind made up about the man and his crimes. There are however many people willing to like Glass as he's portrayed by the gifted Hayden Christensen. His Stephen Glass is a seemingly sweet natured glad hander who remembers everybody's birthday and offers to help you move without being asked.

I read another reviewer who was familiar with the real life players and who thought the film built up Chuck Lane as more pious than he ever truly was. I would disagree with that assessment in the context of the film. Perhaps the reviewer is too close to the real situation to consider the film. Lane as played by Peter Sarsgaard is merely a put-upon editor who happens to have a serious breach of journalistic ethics thrust in his lap. 

He rightfully despises Glass and his crimes and scenes early in the film establish the two characters at odds from the beginning. Personality-wise, it's not hard for me to dislike the serial glad-handing Glass and his childish reaction to anything critical. The character of Chuck Lane communicates a similar dislike throughout the film that makes angry outbursts near the end of the film nearly as personal as professional.

Few films have shone such a clear light on the journalistic process. How a piece goes from the reporter to the page and exactly how flawed that process can be if abused. First time director Billy Ray tells his story on two levels, getting to know the character of Stephen Glass and also showing us the behind the scenes action at a magazine. If only for a moment, it makes you consider all that goes into your favorite magazines.

What really stays with you after the film however is the performances of Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard, who perfectly inhabit their opposing characters. Christensen brings an almost creepy quality to the sweetness that so many people liked about the real Stephen Glass. That creepiness makes it that much easier to dislike him, and is important for audience members who don't understand how he did such a horrible thing. Sarsgaard, despite what others might say, never makes Chuck Lane into a journalistic crusader for ethics. He's a journalist and editor who is doing the right thing and has a righteous outrage toward Glass for the serious damage he did to the credibility of a magazine that made its reputation on credibility.

As a debut behind the camera, Billy Ray shows he knows how to tell a compelling story. His visual style doesn't leave much to the memory but this is a character piece and as such, it succeeds marvelously. Shattered Glass is one of the year’s best films.

Movie Review: Daddy Day Care

Daddy Day Care (2003)

Directed by Steve Carr 

Written by Geoff Rodkey 

Starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, Anjelica Huston 

Release Date May 9th, 2003 

Published May 10th, 2003 

How many times can one actor be written off? If you’re Eddie Murphy, apparently as many times as you can make a movie. Every time Eddie comes out with a film it's greeted by cynics in my profession as his last chance to be a big star. And each time, Eddie comes back. Eddie has found the back door to maintaining a waning career. He has sold his cool action-comedy persona and adopted a kid-friendly persona that has proven to a career salvation. His latest by-the-numbers kid friendly flick is Daddy Day Care, a rote family comedy, factory produced by the Hollywood machine.

In Daddy Day Care, Murphy is Charlie, an ad executive who loses his job after a product he was working on tanks badly with test audiences (how amazingly ironic). Left at home waiting for responses to his resume, Charlie gets to spend some much needed private time with his son Ben (Khamani Griffin). One day Charlie takes Ben to the park and has a conversation with a mom desperate for a new day care center. With this inspiration and the help of a friend who also lost his job, Phil (Jeff Garlin, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Charlie opens a day care center in his home.

Regina King plays Charlie's wife though it's difficult to tell as she disappears as quickly as she's introduced. Steve Zahn rounds out the cast as a doofy assistant with a fetish for Star Trek and a knack for dealing with kids. Speaking of the kids, none of the little actors makes much of an impression beyond being cute.

The setup is so simple it must have taken all of an hour to think of and write down. Well known personality is paired with a group of cute kids. We haven't seen this teaming but, oh, a dozen or so times, and Daddy Day Care doesn't have much of anything new to add to this familiar story. Even the great Anjelica Huston can't do anything to make this film interesting with her role as the film’s villainous pre-school owner Ms. Harridan. Get it, harridan, oh so clever.

Daddy Day Care isn't offensive, it's not poorly made and to it's credit it doesn't overdo the bathroom humor that has become a staple of similar films. Director Steve Carr, who previously directed Murphy in Dr. Dolittle, shows once again that he is a technically proficient director in that he knows where to point the camera and shoot. That said he brings little else to this uninteresting and overly familiar movie.

Movie Review National Security

National Security (2003) 

Directed by Dennis Dugan 

Written by Jay Scherick

Starring Martin Lawrence, Steve Zahn, Colm Feore, Bill Duke, Eric Roberts, Timothy Busfield

Release Date January 17th, 2002

Published January 16th, 2002 

Oh boy. Another mismatched buddy cop movie!

National Security, starring Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn is yet another formula action-comedy, but, for once, the comedy part of the action-comedy is actually funny.

Zahn is an LAPD officer named Hank. One night, he and his partner (Timothy Busfield in an effective cameo) happen upon a break in at a storage facility and, in their attempt to capture the criminals, Hank's partner is shot and killed. Martin Lawrence is Earl, an LAPD trainee who flunks out of the academy for being a little too aggressive. Hank and Earl meet for the first time as Hank comes upon Earl trying to retrieve his keys from his locked car. 

Thinking that Earl may be trying to steal the car, Hank asks for identification and proof of ownership of the car. Earl sees Hank's questions as racist and refuses, leading to a confrontation that is a parody of the Rodney King incident. A guy with a video recorder catches Hank trying to swat a bee that is flying around Earl's head. From the cameraman's perspective, it does look like Hank is beating Earl and, when the incident goes to trial, Earl does nothing to change that perception. Hank is convicted of assault, fired from his job, and is sentenced to six months in jail.

Once released from jail, Hank takes a job working as a security guard while searching for the group of bad guys who killed his partner. As fate would have it, Hank's search leads him to a warehouse where Earl works as a security guard and the two team up in a gunfight against the bad guys. The bad guys, lead by--of all people--Eric Roberts, get away and Earl and Hank are now forced to team up and take them down. Unsurprisingly, they become friends in the process.

Director Dennis Dugan, a master of formula trash (Happy Gilmore, Saving Silverman), is the perfect choice to direct this collection of action clichés and one liners. All you need is a director who can make a certain scene reasonably in frame and you're done.

What makes National Security a little better than most films of its formula is its humor, which deals frankly with race and violence and is funny. Lawrence is particularly sharp with the racial humor and Zahn is a surprisingly good foil. If it weren't for Zahn's ridiculously distracting facial hair I would have loved his performance, but I missed some of it watching his mustache come loose or fall off.

National Security has the feel of Lawrence's other slickly produced action comedies--Blue Streak and Bad Boys--except not as stylish. National Security is technically well produced but is all surface and no depth. In case you were wondering the answer is yes, there is a scene where the heroes outrun a giant fireball. You can't make a formula action movie without a slow motion fireball.