Saturday, March 06, 2004
Cliffhanger (1993)
By Nicholas Stix
Since I am writing this review, I am also publicly confessing to having spent two hours watching Cliffhanger. After this, nothing I suffer in life can be a humiliation.
This movie received four Razzie nominations: Worst picture of the year, worst screenplay (Sylvester Stallone), worst supporting actress (Janine Turner) and worst supporting actor (John Lithgow). There are a couple of injustices here: Stallone was denied his rightful, annual Razzie nomination for worst actor. The jury must have been stacked with Stallone fans that year. And I enjoyed Lithgow’s over-the-top turn as the leader of the crooks.
But you can’t argue with Janine Turner’s (then in Northern Exposure) nomination: I could have given a better and sexier performance as a female, in spite of being a bit, shall we say, well-nourished, and having a mustache.
This movie made a ton of money, which also makes sense. It’s entertaining. Director Renny Harlin knows how to make action thrillers. In this one, the Treasury Department is transporting over $150 million in $1000 bills via plane; a band of crooks aims to rob the couriers. The money ends up on the snowy side of a mountain, so the crooks kidnap world-class mountain rescue experts Sylvester Stallone and Michael Rooker, to track it down.
The cinematography is breathtaking, the stunts are truly death-defying, and some of the actors are good, most notably Rooker, Ralph Waite (as a rescuer), Lithgow and Rex Linn (as a treasury agent).
Since we live in a therapeutic society, I can’t take responsibility for my actions -- it was all my 3-year-old son’s fault. The movie came on late at night, after he had woken up (and while I was supposed to be working), and he insisted we see it together. It turns out, his judgment was excellent, as Cliffhanger is perfectly suited for the sensibility of a three-year-old boy.
In case you have too much money on your hands, you can order this from a video company. If your neighbors see you taking the video package from your mailbox, you can just say, “Oh, I thought I’d finally give Gone with the Wind a shot.”
Should you decide, instead, to rent Cliffhanger from a video store, you might try a trench coat, dark glasses, and a hat pulled down low on your face. Or as with other pornographic films, you could say to yourself, “What the hell, my neighbors are buying the same trash,” and go in as you are.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Weeds (1987)
By Nicholas Stix
When Weeds opened in late 1987, I saw it with a date, and we expected it to be nominated for a slew of Oscars, starting with star Nick Nolte. We wuz wrong; Weeds bombed. But the reason we expected such industry acclaim has not changed. Nick Nolte carries this story, which starts out as a black comedy about convict lifer Lee Umstetter’s failed attempts at suicide. Lee starts to read, and writes jailhouse plays. When he gets paroled, thanks to a pretty reporter’s campaign, the movie turns into a road story, as he and his old penitentiary buddies travel to college campuses (and penitentiaries) around the country, performing, backsliding, and getting to know their share of pretty, pampered, radical co-eds. The story is at turns poignantly dramatic, darkly comedic, and just goofy fun. Nolte is aided and abetted by a marvelous cast, most notably, Rita Taggart, William Forsythe, and Ernie Hudson. (Only years later would I discover that that face, so ubiquitous in pictures, was Hudson’s.)
Why did Weeds bomb? For all of his personal problems, once the camera is running, Nick Nolte is a treasure. And though he was initially a national sensation in his role as Tom Jordache in 1976 in Rich Man, Poor Man (which prior to Roots, was the miniseries to end all miniseries), and had some early screen hits, the moviegoing public never fell in love with that rough, once-boyish face of his. That’s a shame, because his performance as Ray Hicks in Karel Reisz’ Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978), gave us one of the great tragic heroes in all of moviedom in an intense, violent picture that has more depth than any ten slow, European art house flicks combined. He is brilliant as a racist cop in a terribly dishonest movie, Sidney Lumet’s Q & A (1990). His depressed coach Tom Wingo, in The Prince of Tides (1991), was as good a portrayal of a wisecracking, but ultimately sensitive, disturbed character as you’ll ever see. He’s a riot as the homeless guy who makes out, in Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986). He carries the dark masterpiece, Mother Night (1996), which also bombed at the box office. And he is powerful as a man going to hell, in Affliction (1997), an otherwise overrated, pretentious movie. But that’s the way it is. If he’d only been an obnoxious radical, a la Susan Sarandon, he’d have a fistful of nominations and an Oscar by now. Fortunately, savvy directors continue to give him good roles, if he can stay out of jail, and movie lovers can still buy or rent Who’ll Stop the Rain, The Prince of Tides, Mother Night, Down and Out in Beverly Hills and … Weeds.
