Prime Time: The Usual Suspects (1995)

An astonishingly accomplished second film from director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie, who had previously worked together on their debut, Public Access, The Usual Suspects holds up as well today as it did when it was first released. Almost.

The story concerns five criminals who end up brought together by the police during an investigation. They are Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), Hockney (Kevin Pollak), McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Verbal (Kevin Spacey), and all five end up working together on a job that seems quite simple and profitable. Things soon become more complicated, however, when they are all informed that they have unwittingly crossed paths with a major criminal figure known as Keyser Söze. They now owe Söze, and he has a big job planned for them. This is all told to the viewer through flashbacks, with us hearing the tale as Verbal tells it to a tenacious cop named Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri). What starts off as the investigation of a heist gone wrong soon turns into a determined quest to uncover the real identity of Keyser Söze.

There's still a LOT here to enjoy, if you're a film fan or a noir fan, but rewatching The Usual Suspects is a way to savour many little details (mainly the nuances in the great performances from the ensemble cast) and pick apart a number of threads that don't seem to make sense. McQuarrie's script puts the emphasis on cool ahead of believability, but that's not a terrible thing when the dialogue is as crackling with energy as this is.

Singer directs with an assured hand, but he has such great source material to work with. The script is matched by the cast, and everything is lifted up by the editing and score from John Ottman. As much as I have enjoyed many films from Singer, he helps himself a lot by often combining the best cast with a good script (and we've subsequently seen the messy result when one of those elements isn't as strong as it could be).

Spacey is excellent as the figure at the centre of the spiderwebbing plot, a man forced into telling a tale to authorities that he hopes to use to avoid major jail time. Keaton lends weight to the central motley crew, the most serious figure forced to work alongside a group of skilled crooks who are more likely to land themselves in hot water than a big payday, and Pollak, Baldwin, and Del Toro are all excellent, with the latter having particular fun as he delivers his lines as unintelligibly as possible. Palminteri is enjoyably stern and tenacious, the cop probing even further as he feels himself getting increasingly closer to the full truth of the situation, and there are fun turns from Dan Hedaya, Peter Greene, Giancarlo Esposito, and Pete Postlethwaite, as well as one or two others (Suzy Amis is one of the few female characters, but she's given very little to work with).

Very rewatchable, and a lot of fun from start to finish, this remains a pretty great film. It just loses some power when you know what's coming, and when you can some time mulling over some of the more improbable plotting. Still highly recommended though, and certainly one that you need to watch if you've somehow not yet got around to it.

8/10

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Shudder Saturday: Slapface (2021)

Written and directed by Jeremiah Kipp, Slapface is a feature adaptation of his 2017 short film, and I would argue that, like some others, it perhaps worked better as a short than it does as a feature. Not that I have seen the short film yet, but I aim to.

The film is all about young Lucas (August Maturo), who lives with his brother, Tom (Mike Manning, also a producer on the film). The two have been scrambling to figure out their way through life after the sudden death of their mother, and part of their coping mechanism is to use a "game" named Slapface to question and test one another. Lucas doesn't really have any friends, but that changes when he encounters a legendary local monster (played by Lukas Hassel).

On the one hand, and most importantly, Slapface shows the life of a child that will be horribly familiar to anyone who has grown up relatively unsupervised in their home. You have that element of fun and freedom, but it comes with the major price of also not having that support, you don't have anyone to help you course correct or learn some more social defence mechanisms, which makes it easier to end up on the end of different forms of bullying. This is a film that hones in on that point better than many others, and that's partly thanks to the lead performance from Maturo.

Unfortunately, the horror element mixed in doesn't quite work, not for me anyway. The monster always feels too . . . monstrous, making it impossible to consider young Lucas making a connection with the creature. It's clear what Kipp is aiming for here, it just doesn't ever work as well as he thinks it well. Having said that, I seem to be very much in the minority with that view.

Maturo gives a great performance, introverted and withdrawn in a way that clearly shows how his childhood has been impacted by a traumatic loss. Manning is also very good, a big brother who tries, but isn't really ready, to be the parental figure. Libe Barer and Mirabelle Lee both put in good turns, playing two young women who view Lucas very differently, and their view of Lucas, and his relationship with his brother, is an important reminder of the different ideas that people can have when they are observing from an outsider's perspective. Dan Hedaya also has a small role, playing a local Sheriff, and is as good as ever.

I really wanted to like this more than I did. There's a very good idea at the heart of it, and it sometimes comes very close to being great. It ultimately never worked as well as it should, sadly, but I'd really like to see Kipp explore this territory again, committing himself to a journey that keeps him away from the middle ground. This either needed additional horror content or no extra horror at all, with the damaged child at the centre of it all arguably going through enough horror in his daily life. 

Good intentions, nicely put together, and with some great performances, this falls just short of being one to recommend to people. But I do recommend keeping an eye out for whatever comes next from Kipp.

6/10

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Prime Time: Swimfan (2002)

A teen version of Fatal Attraction, but without any leads that come near to the star power or talent of Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, Swimfan is the kind of trashy fun that will have you both rolling your eyes and smirking with amusement.

Jesse Bradford is Ben Cronin, a young man who has managed to overcome his troubled past and put his energy into excelling in the school swimming competitions. He has a happy life, and a very lovely girlfriend in the shape of Amy Miller (played by Shiri Appleby). So it's a real puzzle why he would risk all that when a new girl (Madison Bell, played by Erika Christensen) comes along, makes big eyes at him, and quickly shows herself to be more than capable of making trouble for him if she cannot have him all to herself. Everything escalates at great speed, making the attempted building of tension inadvertently hilarious as things go from bad to worse for our flawed lead.

Directed by John Polson, who would next direct a much-maligned horror (that I quite enjoy), Hide And Seek, before one other film and then a solid selection of work on various TV shows, Swimfan seems to know exactly how silly it is. The script, by Charles F. Bohl (credited without the middle initial) and Phillip Schneider, doesn't waste any time in bringing the characters together and starting to develop the danger, and madness.

The cast are all just right in their roles, even if they're not always acting in the same movie. Christensen, for example, is absolutely revelling in the self-delusion and psychopathy of her character, while both Bradford and Appleby could be dropped into pretty much any teen drama from this time. Clayne Crawford and Jason Ritter struggle to make an impression with their limited screentime, but old pro Dan Hedaya has no such trouble, of course, and James DeBello does well in a role that doesn't rely on him to use the kind of exuberant, brash persona he had front and centre in a number of his other performances. Kate Burton should have been given more to do, playing the mother of Bradford's character, and enlarging her role could have helped to add some tension to the third act (this could have been much more entertaining with more people available to be terrorised and harmed, or even killed).

This remains a distracting bit of fun because of it so obviously riffing on something much better. As a standard teen thriller, however, it falls below so many others. I've not seen all of the titles available in this market, but I've seen enough to have a good overview. And I'd put Disturbia, Disturbing Behaviour, Gossip, and maybe even The In Crowd ahead of this, even if some of them are a very close call.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

The First Wives Club (1996)

Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler star in this very enjoyable comedy about three women who decide to exact revenge upon their greedy, selfish husbands by hitting them where it hurts - right in the wallet.

After the suicide of their old schoolfriend (Stockard Channing), three women reunite after too many years of no contact. Annie (Keaton) is in denial while her husband works through commitment issues, Elise (Hawn) is about to see half of her stuff handed over to her husband in an unfair divorce settlement, and Brenda (Midler) is trying to keep a brave face on things as she watches her husband (Dan Hedaya) spoiling his new, younger, girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker). While considering how much they have given up for their men, and how badly they have been treated, they decide to work together to create a satisfying plan to help them feel better, and also help all women who have been put in similar situations.

Based on a novel by Olivia Goldsmith, the male screenwriter (Robert Harling) and male director (Hugh Wilson) don't ever work against the material as it best complements the female leads. It may be men behind the camera but in front of the camera this is, as you'd expect, all for the women. And they're all great in their roles. Keaton does her strait-laced, uptight thing, Hawn has almost as much fun playing on the vanity of her character as she did in Death Becomes Her, and Midler just reminds everyone of how brilliant and hilarious she can be. Parker is a lot of fun playing young and shallow, Elizabeth Berkley and Marcia Gay Harden both have fun in small rolers, and Maggie Smith is on top side-eye form. A few of the main male characters are quite immediately forgettable, which is fine, but there are a number of good scenes involving Dan Hedaya, and the talented Bronson Pinchot gets to have a lot of fun as an interior designer helping the women to execute their plan.

There's nothing unpredictable here, considering the title of the film and the target audience demographic. You have one or two montage moments, you have friends singing one of their favourite songs, you have a mix of determined scheming and wistful recollections of dissipated romance. The leads lift each other up, they have insults ready to put down their enemies, and you get a typically lively, and often harmlessly bland, soundtrack.

I'm not sure how the majority of female viewers find this (judging by the reaction of my wife, I have to assume that most enjoy it) but it's hard to see how this would upset anyone too much. It's a one-two punch, basing everything on lead characters who are both female and a bit beyond their mid-20s, and that adds an interesting, positive, aspect to material that could have easily been a lot lazier, or twisted into something much more bitter.

7/10

You can buy the film here.
Americans can buy it here.

Freeway (1996)

Written and directed by Matthew Bright, Freeway is a deliriously demented riff on Little Red Riding Hood. It's sleazy, often ridiculous, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Reese Witherspoon stars as Vanessa Lutz, a young woman travelling to stay with her grandmother after her mother and stepfather are once more carted off to jail. Vanessa accepts a lift from a pleasant man named Bob (Kiefer Sutherland), but it's not long until friction develops, and Vanessa finds herself in a whole lot of trouble.

As entertaining as it is crude and obvious, Freeway is often tasteless, occasionally tense, and darkly comedic throughout. It's also polished enough to make it all more palatable, considering just how potentially dark a number of moments are. You may forget how many boxes are checked off by the time the end credits roll, but Bright includes drug addiction, prostitution, child molestation, and much more on this winding journey to grandma's house.

Witherspoon is on top form in the lead role, alternating between unbelievable naivete and tough sassiness, depending on the situation. It's a performance on a par with her turn as Tracy Flick. Sutherland is equally enjoyable, initially charming and kind before revealing a more predatory nature within. Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison are both fun as a pair of cops trying to find a serial killer, Brooke Shields does a great job as a protective wife, and Brittany Murphy adds another slightly kooky role to her long list of slightly kooky roles. In fact, with Amanda Plummer also here in a small role, the movie could easily overbalance into twitchy lunatic mode, but it doesn't.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Bright is smart enough to tie everything in to the fairytale that he's working from without overdoing everything. Most of them are hard to miss - the red jacket worn by Vanessa, the surname of a character clueing you in to their role in the story - but others are . . . . . . . okay, also hard to miss, but that doesn't matter. Overlaying the original tale with a layer of trashy fun allows it to feel enjoyably unique, even as it hits a lot of obvious beats.

Freeway isn't a film to recommend to everyone, but I recommend it to everyone anyway. If you dig it then you will REALLY dig it. If you don't then I'm sure it won't be the worst that you've sat through.
                                                                                                                                                       
9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freeway/dp/B0000517CV/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1402535501&sr=1-3&keywords=freeway

Blood Simple (1984)

Blood Simple is the fantastic neo-noir that announced the arrival of the Coen brothers as a fantastic talent to keep an eye on. Joel and Ethan shared writing and directorial duties (although Ethan is uncredited in the latter department), and their working M.O. hasn't really changed in the near-thirty years since. Which, when the results are so often this good, we can all be thankful for.

Dan Hedaya is the wronged husband who hires a sleazy detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to deal with his wife (Frances McDormand) and her lover (John Getz). What unfolds is a tale of treachery, confusion and mistaken identity, all shown in scenes that deliberately take time to dwell on the nastier moments. This isn't a gratuitous movie, but it's also not a movie wanting to gloss over any pain or death that could otherwise just be used as a stepping stone from one cool moment to the next.

The script is pretty lean, but has a few great lines of dialogue in there (especially from Walsh), and the direction is impressive in the way it chooses to show the events in a manner that's almost cold and clinical at times. This is noir with a roughness, slick in the way it is all played out, but also slick with blood.

John Getz is a little bit bland in his role, but he's just a man caught up in the midst of a very bad situation. Nobody here garners a great deal of sympathy, especially not Hedaya or Walsh, so Getz is someone to root for by default, not by his character or moral compass. McDormand is aloof at times, with the Coens enjoying playing with viewers who will wonder whether she's a classic femme fatale, or also just a victim of circumstance.

It's also worth noting that one Mr. Barry Sonnenfeld worked on Blood Simple as the DP (a role he would fill again for the Coens with work on both Raising Arizona and, arguably his best, Miller's Crossing).

The film looks fantastic, especially for a debut feature, contains some great performances and some of that pitch black humour that the Coens have since become famous for. If you like their work then you'll certainly enjoy this. Simple.

8/10

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