Flick of The Day: After Hours

Many great directors have oddities in their back catalogue, films that don't feel like their by the same director, that don't sit amongst the director's body of work. 1941 has long stood out on Steven Spielberg's list (a Comedy!) while Ridley Scott directed Thelma & Louise and Tim Burton's ill fated Planet of the Apes remake does not immediately seem like something you would expect him to create. Often these films stand out because they are of a lower quality than the rest of the director's work but sometimes there is a decent film there that just feels out of character. For Martin Scorsese, his 1985 dark comedy After Hours is such a film. This is perhaps because of the circumstance which surround its creation. A film which the great director very much fell into when his take on the The Last Temptation of Christ was cancelled by the studio just days before he was due to begin shooting, it is borne out of his need to make something and is all the better for it.

After Hours

Paul, played by Griffin Dunne, is a jobbing word processor who after a long day at the office bumps into a quirky and pretty girl named Marcy in a New York cafe. Later he decides to venture out of his upper east side apartment in search of Marcy and her SoHo residence. So begins a nightmarish journey to the dark side of the city. After a manic taxi ride during which he loses all his money to a gust of wind, he arrives at Marcy's  down at heel part of town only to find that there is little chemistry and Marcy is at best a little odd. Marcy lives with an equally eccentric character, a sculptor named Kiki played by Linda Fiorentino. Paul decides to flee the apartment and heads for home on the subway, or rather he would have but for his shortage of funds. Facing a walk home in the teeming rain, he makes for an empty dive bar where the bartender, played by John Heard offers to spot him the train fare if he goes to his apartment to set his burglary alarm. Of course, Paul is mistaken for a thief and is soon being pursued by a murderous mob of vigilantes. Paul is soon running for his life and his night goes from bad to worse as a series of increasingly bizarre events conspire to stop him from getting home.

While the events of Paul's night in SoHo are decidedly bizarre, they always feel plausible and knit together with a veneer of truth. This credibility is necessary to keep the viewer engaged as things go from bad to worse. The character of Paul himself bares each new event with a charm that would be beyond most people and gives him an endearing quality which carries the film to its end.

This kind of dark black comedy is not something which Scorsese would be known for and it would be hard to imagine him making such a film today. That said, the film is replete with the kind of visual displays of talent for which he has long been famed. At one point a set of keys are thrown to Paul from a height, Scorsese shows us this from the point of view of the keys plummeting toward Paul. It is at all times a stylish movie, the director knows his surroundings well and does his best to show this part of the city off. This is New York during the dark days of the 1980's before the mayorship of Rudy Giuliani sought to clean the streets of crime and grime. This is a film very much of its time. The noir elements suit the mood of the film and heighten the feeling of a journey into the unknown for the relative Milquetoast that is Griffin Dunne's Paul.

While Martin Scorsese would go on to bigger and better things, there is much to enjoy in this mid career character piece. It captures both a time and a place which have come to be culturally significant since the film was made. The story, bizarre as it is never feels like an elaborate con job on the audience and if anything holds its own in the manner of many bar tales that begin, "You won't believe what happened to me last night...".

Not The Flick of The Day: Rock of Ages

Hey YOU! Do you like spandex? Do you like poodle haired soft rock from the 1980's? Do you enjoy the particular visual triumph of singing sunset strip hookers? Wanna see Alec Baldwin (now) in the denims he wore in the 80's? Do you think Tom Cruise can play whatever role he wants? Well Hollywood has the movie for you, Rock of Ages, the big screen adaptation of the boundlessly popular stage musical.

 Rock of Ages

With a plot seemingly taken from an old Guns n Roses video (I am being facetious of course, Axl Rose would never use a plot so mundane when swimming with dolphins was an alternative), a pretty young thing named Sherrie played by Julianne Hough of the recent and even more risible Footloose remake arrives in Los Angeles (On a Greyhound no less) seeking fame and fortune. Unfortunately her baggage  is robbed almost as soon as she arrives and penniless she gets a job working at a famed rock club owned by Alec Baldwin's Dennis Dupree. It is harsh doses of reality like this which give this film its best moments. Ah, I remember the time I was mugged, Alec Baldwin gave me a job too and then sang a great Foreigner tune. Anyway, Sherrie meets  an equally vacuous male companion in the form of Diego Boneta and before long the pair are an item. Of course, there is trouble in paradise in the form of right wing mayor Mike Whitmore, played by a slumming it Bryan Cranston and his batty wife Catherine Zeta Jones. Together they plan to clean the city of its undesirable elements starting with migrant workers. Oh wait, that's real life sorry, no they want to start with the poodle haired rockers. Into this veritable feast of nonsensical bullshit steps quite aptly Tom Cruise. Tom is Stacee Jaxx, a rock god of the confused variety. Cruise plays Jaxx as a kind of perma-stoned demonic messiah who exudes befuddlement and craziness in equal measure. This is Tom Cruise by the way. No irony there at all.

At one point a reporter asks Stacee what the real him is like which causes him to burst into a version of the old Bon Jovi number "Wanted Dead or Alive". This happens quite a lot in Rock of Ages. In lieu of actual plot development characters burst into another soft rock classic. Perhaps this is how modern musicals are supposed to be. Maybe somewhere in the world somebody is sitting in a theatre waiting for a musical to start and saying to their partner "Thank god there is none of that difficult plot stuff, just songs". There is nothing wrong with the musical numbers, nobody makes a fool of themselves, well not any more of a fool, but it just seems at times likes many of the songs are shoehorned in for no good reason other than: 

"Ooh, we've paid for that Journey song, better use it here. "

"But it's a scene where somebody is throwing up?"

"Yeah, a bit of Don't Stop Believing will work"

Maybe I'm just not being fair? Maybe this is exactly what the people of earth wanted to spend their 7 quid on? Maybe the world hasn't tired of Russell Brand? Maybe the world wants to see Tom Cruise singing "I want to know what love is" while face to face with a woman's rear end? That being the case, this is your film world, enjoy it.

Anyway it all comes to a climax in an orgy of Journey and Starship tunes. I know, Starship! I thought they were tied up in a basement somewhere for crimes against music. If there is a ray of light in an otherwise depressing two hours of my life, Paul Giamatti is excellently sleazy as Stacee's manager.
To finish then, rather than the usual trailer which would give this risible trash too much credit, below is Starship's We Built This City (On Rock and Roll) in full.

Flick of the Day: The Burbs

The cinema of your youth can retain a powerful hold over your imagination even years later. For a younger me, there was nothing better than The Goonies or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or today's flick of the day The Burbs. I think their appeal lay in a sense of adventure and a touch of danger which appeals to all children. The Burbs, directed by Joe Dante is an over the top satire on the idle speculation which can grip a suburban cul de sac.

The Burbs

Tom Hanks, playing one of the many comedic roles which were his bread and better in the early part of his career, is Ray Peterson, an average suburbanite on a week off from work. With little to do, he spends his days hanging out with his dim witted but paranoid neighbour Art played by Rick Ducommun. Together with  their other neighbours, an ex-military man played by Bruce Dern and layabout stoner Ricky played by Corey Feldman, he quickly develops an obsession with the new neighbours who have moved in next door, the Klopeks. To say the least the Klopeks are odd, coming and going at all hours of the night while loud noises emanate from the basement of their decrepit house however are they the axe-wielding murderers Ray imagines them to be?

It is easy to forget how could Hanks was at comedy given the Oscar laden career that came afterwards in more serious roles. He brings a likeable charm to the role of Ray. This could be your street, well it could be were it not for the out-sized personalities that inhabit it. Ray aside, the neighbourhood is populated by the familiar tropes of American suburbia. That's not to say they aren't funny, but the film relies more on its charm than the kind of off-kilter humour which Dante perfected in his earlier effort Gremlins. 

Art: I think the message to, uh, psychos, fanatics, murderers, nutcases all over the world is, uh, "do not mess with suburbanites". Because, uh, frankly we're just not gonna take it any more. Ya know, we're not gonna be content to look after our lawns and wax our cars, paint out houses. We're out to get them, Don, we are out to get them. 

The paranoid humour is played for full effect when it comes to the Klopeks. They are creepy well drawn oddballs played by familiar faces like Henry Gibson and to a child appeared genuinely menacing.

 After a fashion, the film moves to its inevitable ending where the quiet townsfolk take the law into their own hands. Are they right or have they fatally misjudged their new neighbours? It's fun for what it is and still remains an enjoyable romp for my adult self.
If their is a weakness in the film, it is that it makes little or no effort to develop some of the roles beyond a single dimension. Carrie Fisher is criminally underused as Hanks nagging wife. Perhaps the oddest thing about that is the idea of Carrie Fisher playing the wife of Tom Hanks, whether due to the unfairness of gender politics or not, can you imagine an actress of a similar age being cast opposite Hanks today?

All in all, this is a decent 80's comedy that relies more on charm than laughter to carry itself. It has a fine cast of comedy actors including a star turn from Tom Hanks that hints at the depth of talent that would come to the fore in the early 90's. Still worth a go today.

Flick of the Day: The Long Good Friday

One of the all time greats of British cinema, Bob Hoskins was a relative latecomer to acting not garnering his first screen credit till age 30. Over the years he has developed a reputation for being a hard working character with an eye for a gritty role. Perhaps his breakthrough role and certainly one of his best was as London gangster Harold Shand in today's flick of the day, The Long Good Friday.

Playing on many of the fears of the general populace in late 70's Great Britain, John Mackenzie's film is built around a single weekend in the life of old style gangster Harold Shand. Shand is an ordinary decent criminal who doesn't deal in narcotics and using his control of the London underworld for leverage he is attempting that most difficult of cinematic clichés, to go legitimate. In this vein, he has a grand plan in mind involving a corrupt local councillor and a massive development of the then derelict docklands area of the city all financed by American mob money. To impress his American counterparts, he has pulled out all the stops for their weekend visit with a grand reception aboard his yacht all coordinated by his steely eyed wife Victoria played by that other British institution Helen Mirren and his top lieutenant Jeff. However all is not well, for reasons unknown to Harold, somebody is attempting to put him out of business permanently as a spate of bombings and killings hit his empire. As the weekend progresses, Harold struggles to hold his deal together and keep his empire in tact while getting to the bottom of this mysterious vendetta.

From the minute the classic theme tune by Francis Monkman starts up, this excellent thriller goes off at a great pace and never lets up till its denouement outside the Savoy Hotel. A classic of the genre, it blends a great performance from Hoskins as Shand with an intricate plot which combines police corruption, gun running and the IRA to illustrate the changing face of a city and its criminal element. This rich plot and the suspense which John Mackenzie manages to build with each scene are a joy to behold.

Harold: Who's having a go at me? Can you think of anyone who might have an old score to settle or something? Razors: Who's big enough to take you on? Harold: Well, there were a few. Razors: Like who? Harold: Yeah, they're all dead. 

It is is difficult to overstate how much Hoskins carries the film. It is a bravura performance in which he almost revels in the east end mannerisms and speech patterns of Shand and creates a character that is both endearing and misanthropic. He is joined in this by some great character actors who if you have any knowledge of British TV will have you thinking "I know that face" including a turn as "1st Irishman" from an impossibly young Pierce Brosnan.

In spite of all these great performances, the film was almost never released and even than only had a limited run on its release in 1980. Produced for less than £1m and financed by Lew Grade's production company for transmission on the ITV network, it's supposed glorification of the IRA angered Grade and the film was to be heavily edited before George Harrison's Handmade Films came to the rescue and brought the picture for less than the cost of making it while financing a cinema release.

Given the difficulty the British film industry has had in the last three decade of producing commercial mainstream cinema at a profit, for such a great film to be so shabbily dealt with is incredible but not unexpected. In any case, the film was critically lauded when it eventually made it in into the big bad world and Bob Hoskins would go on to forge a solid career in Hollywood.

Flick of The Day: King of New York

I have looked at the decline of New York City in the 70's and 80's previously in my reviews of  Scorsese's Bringing Out The Dead and  James Gray's We Own The Night and it is indeed a rich canvas for filmmakers to work with. Abel Ferrara has long used this as his milieu with some successes such as 1992's Bad Lieutenant and  some notable failures such as today's flick of the day, King of New York. During its premiere at the 1990 New York Film Festival, much of the audience walked out including Ferrara's own wife. In the years since its release it has come to be seen for what it is, a stylish b-movie oddity with an uneven script that is held together by a towering performance from Christopher Walken as the drug kingpin of the title.

King of New York

Opening with the release from prison of Frank White, played by Walken, the film depicts the grimy underbelly of New York from the backseat of a limousine in a memorable opening sequence. After his stint behind bars Frank is acutely aware of how his exploitation of society as a drug trafficker had made him a wealthy man. Determined to give something back to the neighbourhood, he sets out to reclaim his throne and finance the construction of a hospital with his ill gotten gains. To do this he needs the help of the various factions which control the city. Much like an episode of the PlayStation series Grand Theft Auto, each of the gangs are represented along racial lines. There are Asians, Italians, Colombians and African Americans each nastier than the last and again much like a computer game, their refusal to bow to Frank leads to scenes of highly stylised violence usually led by Frank's right hand man Jimmy Jump, played with manic abandon by Laurence Fishburne. Ultimately Frank's attempts to do good lead to a major gang war where even hard nosed cops led by David Caruso are out to get him before a dramatic bullet riddled finale in Times Square.

It should be plain by now that I don't view this film as a classic by any means but that is not to say it doesn't ask some interesting questions about the effects of the drug trade on a city and its people. Released at the end of the Reagan 80's when the war on drugs became front page news, this film pointedly shows how much of a failure these efforts had been. Frank views himself as a businessman and as he puts it:

"You think ambushing me in some nightclub's gonna stop what makes people take drugs? This country spends $100 billion a year on getting high, and it's not because of me. All that time I was wasting in jail, it just got worse. I'm not your problem. I'm just a businessman. "

This could have been a thrilling examination of one man's rise and fall but too often the script resorts to stock cliché's from Gangster 101. Ferrara's visual flights of fancy while stylish and beautiful often detract from the film, giving it a cartoonish air, something enforced by the sheer frivolity of characters like Jimmy Jump and bullet strewn scenes that don't serve to move the plot forward. Very much a missed opportunity.

If the film has a redeeming factor it is the performance of Christopher Walken. A real talent when it comes to playing menacing villains, he shines throughout as Frank. Imbuing the character with a sociopathic streak while still making a case for him being the most sane character in the film, Walken carries the film when the script lets itself down.

Roy Bishop: You expected to get away with killing all these people? 

Frank White: I spent half my life in prison. I never got away with anything, and I never killed anybody that didn't deserve it. 

Roy Bishop: Who made you judge and jury? 

Frank White: Well, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

While far from the car crash its premiere would have suggested and not worthy of the opprobrium heaped upon it on it release, this is a deeply flawed film with an uneven script and visual tone. Walken is strong enough to make the film watchable but it is no more then that. As a time capsule it takes some beating though, capturing a city and a period that has long since passed into the realm of urban myths. The New York underworld during the 80's? No it was never as stylish as even Abel Ferrara imagines but then what is?