Prime Time: Identity (2003)

Sometimes people forget some really great movies. They're still around, and they're not derided, but they're not celebrated for being as great as they truly are. Identity is one of those films. It's a great film from James Mangold. It has a great cast. It's a whole load of fun. And you could argue that it was a precursor to the fancier and more sophisticated whodunnits that have achieved more success, and critical acclaim, in recent years. Am I implying that part of the reason for Identity being forgotten/overlooked nowadays is sue to a certain snobbery? Maybe. The film is trashy, but it's absolutely happy to revel in the trashiness while proving to be consistently entertaining for a perfect 91-minute runtime.

A bunch of people all end up at a motel on a dark and stormy night. They don't know one another, but someone seems to know them. People start to die, and each corpse has a motel room key assigned to it. Not necessarily the room that the deceased was occupying. The room keys signify a countdown. 10, 9, 8, you get the picture. The killer seems intent on getting their way until you can state "and then there were none."

Written by Michael Cooney, who seems to have been figuring out the best way to tell this story before he took a hard left turn into writing/directing movies about a killer snowman (Jack Frost and Jack Frost 2: Revenge Of The Killer Mutant Snowman), Identity is a load of pulpy clichés all treated with care and unnecessary seriousness by Mangold and his cast. And, let's face it, as good a director as Mangold is, his cast here take everything to another level.

Who should I spend time praising first? John Cusack before he stopped caring about his work? Ray Liotta having a fine old time, especially when he responds to any potential threat by reassuring those around him that he will shoot anyone or anything coming for them? Amanda Peet being sassy until she starts to pine for some orange grove that she hopes to see in the near future? John Hawkes getting much more screentime than John Hawkes usually gets in something so mainstream? Rebecca De Mornay? Clea DuVall? John C. McGinley? Alfred Molina? Jake Busey? Pruitt Taylor Vince? Nobody does a bad job, even if (in fact . . . especially if) they're allowed to chew the scenery for a while. The material can handle such grandstanding melodramatics, and everyone in the cast is happy to oblige. There are also small roles for Holmes Osborne, Marshall Bell, Leila Kenzie, Carmen Argenziano, William Lee Scott, and one or two others.

I know that I started this review by stating how great this is, and I know that people will have assumed that was hyperbole. They'll be waiting for a bit of balance here, some criticisms to show that I still have my faculties intact. Sadly, that's not ever guaranteed when it comes to me. If the big finale had been played out in a way that felt serious or earnest then the film would have failed completely (just look at something like Serenity), but Mangold and Cooney don't make that mistake. The ending is ridiculous. They know it's ridiculous. They also know that ridiculous can be ridiculously entertaining.

I love the script, I love the music by Alan Silvestri, I love the cinematography by Phedon Papamichael, I really do love everything about this. While I don't expect many to love it quite as much as I do, I implore you all to revisit it. Or, at the very least, remember it for the fine filmic fun it is. With respect to the fine Kenneth Branagh, I'll take this over any star-laden Poirot remake any day of the week.

9/10

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Prime Time: Whipped (2000)

I like many movies from the ‘90s and ‘00s, and I have always been a big fan of Amanda Peet, so a viewing of Whipped was long overdue. I will say right now . . . If you can find any other movie from the year 2000 that feels more like a movie from the year 2000 then I will eat the massively baggy jeans that I used to wear throughout the 1990s.

Written and directed by Peter M. Cohen, what you have here is the tale of three men who consider themselves as players, or wannabe players. Brad (Brian Van Holt) is smarmy, cocky, and selfish. He also has a job that deals with the stock market. He is what you would think of when you think of some douchebag named Brad, or even Chad. Zeke (Zorie Barber) is similar, but his persona also incorporates the sensitive soul of an art lover. Jonathan (Jonathan Abrahams) tries to match his friends, but he isn’t made of quite the same stuff. So he masturbates. A lot. And then there’s Eric (Judah Domke), the married man who wants to continue to find vicarious thrills through the related exploits of his friends. These men are all challenged when three of them end up dating the seemingly perfect Mia (Amanda Peet).

Based much more on dialogue than action, and with characters often taking time to speak directly to the camera as they discuss their various life experiences and dating techniques, Whipped cannot do enough to make you forget that it’s a low-budget character piece. It doesn’t help that only one of the characters is likeable, and it isn’t one of the male characters, so spending time with them is more of a chore than a pleasant distraction.

It also doesn’t help that writer-director Cohen also clearly loved Swingers and decided he could make something just as good. He is far off the mark, but makes his own incompetence much more obvious by constantly reminding you that Swingers exists, is a MUCH better film, and should be something you decide to rewatch instead of sticking with this.

There are moments to enjoy though. An opening sequence sets up the characters with a good bit of humour that allows viewers to laugh AT them. There’s also a very smart little sequence that feels like the typical “guys chatting to one another while playing basketball” moment, a trope brilliantly skewered by the fact that all of the characters here are absolutely terrible at playing the game. Whether it is a clumsy metaphor or another way to undermine the words of the characters with their actions, it works. Sadly, no other scenes in the movie are that clever.

Jokes are set up at random, with punchlines that just don’t work, characters become harder and harder to believe in as real people, bad attitudes don’t really change, and that all means that the film also lacks the sexy cool that it wanted to have (something that Swingers has in spades).

Peet almost makes this worthwhile, portraying another beautiful woman who can hold her own with the men around her, but her male co-stars, suffering both from the writing and their own performances (with Domke, in particular, standing out as someone who answered a call for a very different movie), drag things back down at every turn.

Oh, and as if this review wasn’t enough to put you off, let me warn you that this is another movie that tries to gain some goodwill at the very end by throwing in a number of outtakes. None of them are funny. None.

3/10

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