Chasing Mavericks' and the Sad History of the Surfer Movie

Chasing Mavericks (2012) 

Directed by Curtis Hanson, Michael Apted

Written by Kario Salem

Starring Gerard Butler, Jonny Weston, Elisabeth Shue, Abigail Spencer

Release Date October 26th, 2012 

Fact, there has never been a great surfing movie. For all the popularity of the sport of surfing, Hollywood has never been able to take it seriously or treat with comic distance in any memorable. Sure, a few documentaries have approached the subject and come away watchable but when you have to go back to the late sixties hippy surfer doc "Endless Summer" to cite an example of a modestly entertaining surf movie, you're really proving the point of this article.

With the surfer drama "Chasing Mavericks" riding the curl into theaters this month it's a good time as any to reflect on the forgettable history of the surfer movie.

Frankie and Annette

The first inklings of surfing on the big screen came in the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funnicello beach movies of the early 1960's. Granted, it's a stretch to call these surf movies, as surfing as only glimpsed and not truly the subject, we can see the surfer archetype taking shape in these films and for that they are notable here.

Point Break

There is a fair argument to be made that "Point Break" starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves is the best-known surfing movie of all time. Yes, the film is really about bank robbers who happen to be surfers but ask a modern movie fan about surfing in movies and you will inevitably raise the topic of "Point Break." That "Point Break" is also best known as the smelliest of B-movie cheese only serves to underline my point about surfing movies.

Maudlin Drama

While I can't say for sure that "Chasing Mavericks" falls into the category of maudlin drama, the film's trailer does hue in that direction. The maudlin drama is a popular form for the surfing movie yielding the 1987 tear-jerker "North Shore" and the 2011, based on a true story, heart-tugger "Soul Surfer as well as the least interesting parts of the Kate Bosworth eye candy flick "Blue Crush." Notice that none of these movies rises immediately to mind even as they are the rare movies to take surfing seriously.

The Best Surf Movie?

The one film that ever approached being a good surfing movie happens to be an animated movie about penguins. "Surf's Up" featuring the voices of Shia Le Beouf as a wannabe surfer and Jeff Bridges as his grumpy yet goofy mentor is at the very least fun to look at with bright colors and fluid animation (pun intended). "Surf's Up" is probably the best surfing movie since "Endless Summer," even as that doesn't ring up as high praise. "Surf's Up" is achingly conventional and eye-rollingly predictable but in the surf genre it's not hard to set the bar.

Director Jeremy Regimbal Talks About His Thriller 'In Their Skin'

In Their Skin (2012) 

Directed by Jeremy Regimbal

Written by Joshua Close

Starring Selma Blair, Joshua Close, Rachel Miner, James D'arcy

Release Date September 11th, 2012 

The thriller "In Their Skin" evokes the cult thriller "Single White Female" and the creepy notion of envy turning to murderous obsession. "In Their Skin" stars Selma Blair and Joshua Close as a married couple recovering from a parent's worst nightmare, the loss of a child. In their first family vacation since the death of their daughter, they have taken their young son to a vacation home in the woods.

As horror film fans we know that a house in the middle of the forest is a recipe for disaster and when a family claiming to be neighbors, despite their being no neighbors for miles, happens by early one morning, the eerie stage is set for a horrific fight to the death. James D'Arcy and Rachel Miner are the bad guys eager for a new life, the lives belonging to Blair and Close.

Jeremy Regimbal directed "In Their Skin" and he was kind enough to sit for an interview to discuss the motivations of this story, the creepy setting, and his various sources that he drew upon for "In Their Skin"

Sean Patrick - Jeremy, thanks for joining us. Let's talk about "In Their Skin" talk about telling this story from the perspective of this troubled family.

Jeremy Regimbal - For sure, you know we wanted to focus on the relationship of the family you know and it just set it against a thriller, kind of horrific backdrop but the biggest, our big focus was to focus on this family's relationship going through these horrific events kind of making them become present and fall back in love.

SP - Let's talk about your cast. Selma Blair is terrific in this movie.

JG - Yeah absolutely, no she's, she was great to work with we were so lucky that she was one of the first people to become interested in the script which was, you know, amazing and helped us make it happen. Josh, I don't know how much you know about Josh, he was the writer of the screenplay and is a close collaborator of mine, he and Justin, his brother are both my business partners, we work very closely. Yeah, it was a great cast, we had 16 days to shoot so having such a great cast allowed us to be flexible and to try things and try things on the spot and that was great.

SP - Let's talk about your inspirations. In watching the film I can see a touch of Brian De Palma, what inspirations did you bring to the film?

JR - I don't know; it's funny I've had a lot of conversations about this. It's weird, me and the cinematographer (Norm Li) took a lot of stills from films and photography and different stuff that we really liked and that inspired us. But, I just in general, (David) Fincher is one of my favorites, I'm not saying this film is 'Fincher-esque,' you know because we tried to avoid camera movements at all cost, that was our goal going into it. There were lots of different (influences), "Little Children" was a film visually that we kind of referenced, "Seven," and I like Michael Haneke's style of sparse editing and stuff like that, but a lot of the behind the head stuff could have been inspired by "The Wrestler" and (Darren) Aronofsky, I love how he tends to do that as well.

SP - Lets' talk about that house in the woods; it's a terrifically creepy setting and almost like another character in the film in the way you use the space.

JR - We were so, so lucky with that location, you could really say that was anywhere. We lucked out that we found that in Canada, in the middle of nowhere, in this old school farm. The house was one of the most important characters of the film so it was really important that we found the perfect place.

SP - The film is very creepy in its simplicity….

JR - Definitely, I feel that makes it kind of relatable, that this set up could happen to anyone. I felt like Mark, part of his problem with his relationship and everything was that he was not very proactive and he doesn't take initiative so I felt that it (the story) was mirroring his relationship.

SP - Being in this situation forces Mark and his to re-engage in their life and family…

JR - Yeah absolutely, they're forced to come back together and work as a unit like they did when they were in love at the beginning of their marriage and that was a big focus of what we wanted to put them through is make them live in the present, make them live in the now and don't take what they have for granted because it could be gone very quickly.

SP - This is a genre film, a thriller what's your take on the genre?

JR - I'm a huge fan of thriller films. I love that kind of stuff and I think it's so important to slowly be revealing information whether it's the relationship or the danger and to slowly giving a little piece of information every scene and the way we did that, we had a great sound designer (Kirby Jinnah) and composer (Keith Power) and also the editor (Austin Andrews) did a great job, I'm an editor by trade so we spent a lot of time trying to under-edit the film.

"In Their Skin" opened in limited theatrical release on November and is available via Amazon Instant Video now. Yahoo Movies gives the film's title as "Replicas" though the title via the director and other sources is "In Their Skin."

A Handy Guide to the Villains of the DieHard Franchise

Published February 12th, 2012 

Bruce Willis is bringing one of the great action heroes of all time back to the big screen as John McClane battles terrorists alongside his son in "A Good Day to Die Hard." Of course, a great movie hero is only as great as his nemesis. In four previous outings John McClane has faced off against a who's who of terrific villains. Here's a closer look at John McClane's best bad guys.

Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) "Die Hard"

When terrorists take over Nakatomi Plaza amidst a company Christmas party they playact the role of terrorists out to punish the Nakatomi Corp for its greed. The sinister reality as laid out by terrorist leader Hans Gruber is that the terror plot is merely cover for the theft of $640 million dollars in bearer bonds. Alan Rickman plays Hans Gruber as a brilliant but arrogant criminal with a barely concealed admiration for the New York City cop with the uncanny ability to disrupt his well-oiled machine of a plot. Rickman's well-dressed smarm and charm thief was the perfect foil for Willis's blue collar hero.

Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) "Die Hard 2: Die Harder"

One of the many reasons "Die Hard 2: Die Harder," aside from the awful subtitle, comes up far short of the original "Die Hard" is the lack of a great villain. No offense to character actor William Sadler who brings a veteran's capability to the sneering, sniggering traitor Colonel Stuart but he's no match for Rickman's Hans Gruber in the charisma department. The proof of Sadler's lacking is everywhere as two more villains are brought in on top of Colonel Stuart to try to make up for the deficit; Franco Nero's South American drug kingpin General Esperanza and John Amos as turncoat Major Grant. Even with three top villains, "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" remains the least of the "Die Hard" franchise.

Simon Peter Gruber (Jeremy Irons) "Die Hard with a Vengeance"

The true sequel to "Die Hard" came in 1995 with the release of "Die Hard with a Vengeance" featuring the return of the Gruber name as a worthy foe to Willis's John McClane. With the plot shifted to New York City, Simon Peter Gruber attempts to pull off the same heist his brother died trying in the original "Die Hard," a multi-multi-million dollar heist disguised as a terror attack. Of course, the plot is given a real edge by Simon Peter Gruber's intent to take revenge on John McClane for the death of his brother Hans. Jeremy Irons is expertly cast as Simon with an accented charm that perfectly evokes Rickman's Hans and a wealth of devilish charm; also reminiscent of the series seminal villain.

Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) "Live Free or Die Hard"

Having abandoned any pretense of reality by having John McClane once again happen accidentally into a terror plot, the makers of "Live Free or Die Hard" nevertheless chose a timely, relevant villain for its outlandish action. Thomas Gabriel is a former State Department analyst turned cyber-terrorist who roils the national and world financial markets with cyber-attacks while paralyzing the seats of power in the U.S by tying up power and traffic grids. Timothy Olyphant is maybe a tad too handsome to be believed as a guy whose spent years at a keyboard but like Hans and Simon Gruber before him, he doesn't lack in the charm department. Gabriel is maybe a tad more strident and political than the Gruber's who were more defined by their greed, but he makes up for it by being a shade more evil than the Gruber's forcing McClane to ever more insane levels of action including flying a jet and driving a car into a helicopter.

Alik (Rasha Bukvic) "A Good Day to Die Hard"

"Taken" bad guy Rasha Bukvic is saddled with the task of living up to the standard set by Rickman and Irons as the big bad of "A Good Day to Die Hard." Bukvic plays Alik the top henchman of a high ranking Russian politico eager to murder a whistleblower who is under the protection of the CIA, led by none other than Jack McClane ("Spartacus" star Jai Courtney), son of our hero John. Can Bukvic bring the chilling charm and evil of Rickman and Irons, or at the very least, the handsome evil of Olyphant? We will have to wait and see when "A Good Day to Die Hard" opens on Valentine's Day across the U.S.

Classic Movie Review The Crow

The Crow (1994) 

Directed by Alex Proyas 

Written by David J. Schow, John Shirley

Starring Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, Michael Wincott, Bai Ling, Michael Massee 

Release Date May 13th, 1994

Published May 21st, 2024 

The Crow is a haunting experience in more ways than one. It's a beautifully told tragic love story of grand ambition and a memorable goth aesthetic. But's also a virtual tomb for star Brandon Lee. Lee was killed in an on set accident that haunts every single frame of the movie. The dark coincidence of Lee dying while playing a character who was already dead adds a chilling layer to the movie that was, obviously never intended. And yet, the tragedy also deepens our connection to the character of Eric Draven and the romantic tragedy that was supposed to be his defining characteristic.

In Detroit, Devil's Night is a tradition in which the criminal underworld rises up to remind the populace who is really in charge of the city. This is a city of criminals, mercenaries, and crime lords who assert dominance through violence. Making people afraid is good for business and thus, when Shelly, a lovely young, soon to be married young woman complains about the condition of the apartment she shares with her soon to be husband, Eric (Lee), reprisal is needed to show her and everyone else that the apartment owner is not to be trifled with.

It's genuinely unknown if the criminals who attacked Shelly on Devil's Night intended to kill her or just violently terrify her into silence. Regardless, when Eric arrives and interrupts the violent encounter, the stakes go up and Eric is killed. Shelly will die soon after from the horrific injuries inflicted upon her. The pure agony of these deaths are a wound on the universe. It's as if the price paid by Shelly and Eric was so out of proportion to the good in the world that the universe needed to offer a correction of some sort. Therein lies The Crow.

A year after his death, with the despair and agony of his death still lingering over the people who knew and cared about he and Shelly, Eric Draven rises from the grave. A singular crow stands atop his grave and will guide Eric on his brief sojourn back into the world of the living. The bargain the universe has made to balance the scales for the death of Eric and Shelly, is to have Eric return to the Earth to kill the men who killed Shelly. This includes everyone who attacked Shelly in the apartment and the man who orchestrated the attack, a crime boss nicknamed Top Dollar (Michael Wincott).

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal. 

Movie Review Back to Black

Back to Black (2024) 

Directed by Sam Taylor Johnson

Written by Matt Greenhalgh

Starring Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Leslie Manville, Eddie Marsan 

Release Date May 17th, 2024 

Published May 21st, 2024 

Why did director Sam Taylor Johnson want to tell this story? Is she a fan of Amy Winehouse? It's hard to say based on Johnson's new movie Back to Black. This is nothing biopic that offers no insight on Amy Winehouse, her art or her tragic death. The emptiness of Back to Black reminded me more of Johnson's Fifty Shades sequel than her slightly more accomplished John Lennon movie, Nowhere Boy. In that film, at the very least, we sensed that there was joy in the discovery of artistic talent and the forming of bonds that would become legendary. Back to Black carries little joy beyond playing Amy Winehouse's music. I could have gotten the same insights sitting at home next to my record player. 

Back to Black opens on an odd image. Amy Winehouse, played by Marisa Abela, is running down a London Street alone. The camera is shooting down at her from overhead. If this were a male director I'd want to ask why they have decided to aim the camera in a way that centers Marisa abela's cleavage as it bounces while she runs. The odd angle is perhaps, if I were to stretch a little, a visual comment on the strange way we view celebrities, but that's a pretty big stretch. Realistically, I can't think of a good reason for this visual. It's also a piece of a scene that unfolds later in the movie, not the end, it's not a preview of the end of the movie, it's a piece from around the end of the second act. So why does the movie start with this? I can't think of a reason. 

From here, we bounce back in time. A family party has Amy showing off her love of Jazz standards a mind for memorizing classic songs that she can repeat with out accompaniment. For someone as young as Amy to have memorized songs by Jazz legends speaks not only to her influences but her talent for adapting that style into her own remarkable pop styling. This, again, is an observation I could have made from listening to an Amy Winehouse record, but whatever, Marisa Abela sounds great and she has a big presence to her, reminiscent of Winehouse's outsized personality. 

Find my full length review in the Beat Community on Vocal Find my full length review in the Beat Community on Vocal 

Classic Movie Review Wait Until Dark

Wait Until Dark (1968) 

Directed by Terence Young

Written by Robert Carrington, Jane Howard-Carrington

Starring Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. 

Release Date October 26th, 1967 

Published 

Wait Until Dark opens on a close up of a piece of sill being surgically sliced. A pull back reveals a man opening up the back of a doll of some sort, a plush baby doll, filled with cotton. A woman stands near the man, fretting. Her name is Lisa (Samantha Jones), and she has a plane to catch. She's waiting on the elderly man to open the doll, place several kilos of Heroin inside the doll, and sew it back up. The doll is our MacGuffin, the Hitchcockian thing that everyone in the plot wants, has, or unknowingly possesses. As Lisa rushes from the elderly man's apartment with the Heroin filled dolly, he watches her through the window as she rushes into a cab. 

Director Terence Young was well into a lengthy, prolific, and not particularly memorable directorial career when he made Wait Until Dark. His best-known works were three of Sean Connery's James Bond movies, Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Thunderball. If you enjoyed James Bond, you likely enjoyed those movies. Beyond his Bond work however, Young wasn't particularly noted. He did direct movies for 40 years, starting in 1948 and ending in 1988 but by 1988 he was working with the likes of Franco Nero rather than people like Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. 

Young is a utility player to borrow a baseball term. Plug him in on a day when someone needs a rest, and he will play the field well and perhaps not be an automatic strikeout at the plate. He started during the days of studio pictures when guys like him could manage a few movies per year, rarely pausing between films, not particularly worried about the post-production part of the movie. This might sound mean-spirited, like I am diminishing a man who worked in Hollywood for literally 40 years as a director, but I assure that is not my intent. Indeed, one of my favorite directors of all time was very similar to Terence Young. Like Young, Michael Curtiz was a studio director. He knocked out movies on time and on budget and bounced from one project to the next unconcerned about what the studio did with the movie. Michael Curtiz made Casablanca under that system. 

Terence Young doesn't exactly have a Casablanca on his resume but, Wait Until Dark is a good flick. Written by Robert and Jane Carrington, adapting a play written by Frederick Knox, Wait Until Dark follows that heroin filled doll from Canada to New York City where Lisa passes the doll off to an unwitting accomplice, Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Sam is a photographer headed home to his lovely wife, Susy (Audrey Hepburn), who happens to be blind. Naturally, there are dangerous men who want that doll for what is inside of it. These include a pair of con artists, Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston). And working with and against the con artists is the most dangerous man of all, Harry Roat (Alan Arkin). 

Structurally, we've reached the fun and games portion of the movie. With Sam sent off to a photography assignment in New Jersey, secretly arranged by Harry Roat, Susy is home alone and vulnerable. The plan has Roat manipulating his new accomplices Talman and Carlino to get inside Susy's apartment and convince her to give them the doll. This involves convincing her that Sam is involved in the death of Lisa, the woman who brought the doll to New York and gave it to Sam. She was killed off screen by Roat who then framed Talman and Carlino in order to blackmail them to help him roust Susy. Unfortunately, Susy has no idea where the doll is. She knows Sam brought it home but where it went from there, she has no idea. 

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010) 

Directed by Nicholas Stoller 

Written by Nicholas Stoller

Starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Elisabeth Moss, Sean Diddy Combs, Rose Byrne

Release Date June 4th, 2010 

The character Aldous Snow was created for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall by producer, screenwriter and star Jason Segal. However, when the role went to British comedian Russell it became entirely his. No one could play the debauched rocker as well as Brand has and now playing Aldous Snow in a lead role in Get Him to the Greek, Brand further expands the character and his mastery of him.

Rocker Aldous Snow has hit rock bottom. His latest record, African Child, has been unfavorably compared to famine and genocide while the ludicrous, highly pretentious music video is the subject of vast derision. Worse yet, his longtime, kind of, sort of, girlfriend Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), the mother of his son, has left him for a string of Hollywood bad boys. The loss leads Aldous back to his drugged out, debauched old self after 7 years of sobriety. It's also led to the near complete destruction of his career. 

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Aldous's record company has an idea to give Aldous a comeback. A junior exec named Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) wants to bring Aldous to L.A and the Greek Theater where his live record became an instant rock classic a decade ago. Charged by his boss Sergio (Sean P. Diddy Combs) to bring Aldous to L.A in three days, Aaron finds himself navigating the rapids of sex, drugs and massive egos with one of the last real rock stars in the world. What's supposed to be a trip to L.A with a quick stop in New York for the Today Show, quickly turns into a drug fueled rampage from London to New York to Las Vegas and maybe Los Angeles.

Whether Aldous Snow makes his big return to the Greek Theater stage is a moot point. It's all about the brilliantly funny journey and Russell Brand makes the journey constantly hysterical. Brand's style is a riffing, improvised style so off the cuff you will be hard pressed to figure what was in the script and what was in the moment. The style gives Get Him to the Greek a comic edge that few other actors could give it.

Russell Brand brings an unexpected authenticity to Aldous Snow in both his rocker debauchery and his charming narcissism. Brand embodies the rock star image like few non-rock stars ever could. He is believable on-stage singing oddball tunes like The Clap, Inside You and the completely brilliant Furry Walls and off stage with all the drugs, sex and privilege old school rock stars are known for. Jonah Hill hangs well with Brand and grounds the film in its alternate universe reality. As the nebbish Aaron, Hill is perfectly at home getting wasted with Aldous or sparking sweetly with Aaron's girlfriend played by Mad Men star Elizabeth Moss. While Russell Brand presses the limits of Aldous's likability, Hill's Aaron gives the film the human element it needs for the outrageousness to build into bigger and bigger laughs.

Russell Brand, Jonah Hill and the scene stealing, Sean Combs, pile one big laugh on top of another while also delivering characters we like and want to spend time with. Dramatic moments involving Aldous's drug problem and his ex-girlfriend are perfunctory and stop the movie cold for a few minutes, but these scenes are brief and easily forgiven because what leads to and follows those scenes is so hysterically funny. Get Him to the Greek is easily the funniest film of 2010 so far and a good candidate to stay at the top for the rest of the year. Parents should be advised however that the film earns its R-rating. Drugs, sex, brief violence and plenty of raw language make Get Him to the Greek adults only fare.