Netflix And Chill: Runaway Jury (2003)

Note: I watched this film yesterday on UK Netflix, ready for thos review to be written today. Yesterday was the last day that Runaway Jury was available on the service here in the UK. Such is the fickle nature of streaming services.

Like many films from the '90s and 2000s, Runaway Jury now feels like a more comforting watch today than it did when first released. It's based on a John Grisham novel, coming along as seemingly the last major attempt to wring more money out of his legal thrillers (until they inevitably come back into fashion at some point), it has a fantastic ensemble cast anchored by two star turns from a couple of acting legends, and it delivers some tension and thrills without needing to shoehorn in any major action set-pieces.

Everything revolves around a trial that sees a woman trying to win a case against a firearms company. Nobody ever wins when they take on the gun industry, but some people hold on to the hope that this case could turn the tide. The one with the most hope is attorney Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), although that becomes harder to hang onto as he battles against tactics used by jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman). Fitch and his team are bemused by one particular juror though, Nick Easter (John Cusack), and it soon becomes clear how important he is when they are contacted by a woman (Marlee, played by Rachel Weisz) who claims that she can deliver whatever verdict is needed for a big fee.

Adapted into screenplay form by Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Rick Cleveland, and Matthew Chapman, Runaway Jury is full of enjoyable lines of dialoge that are uttered with plenty of energy and power by leads clearly enjoying themselves in their roles. Director Gary Fleder may not put any stamp on the visual style of the film, but he does well to simply stay out of the way of his cast as they do their thing.

What can be said about Hackman that hasn't already been said many times over the years? The world of cinema was undoubtedly better while he was a part of it, and he's absolutely fantastic as the devious and relentless Fitch. Hoffman steps up his game for the scenes shared with Hackman, but he also spends a lot of the runtime focusing on his accent and trying to be almost childishly idealistic. Cusack is a lot of fun in what may well be the last film to make good use of the charm and wit that he used to have in every role, and Weisz enjoys herself in scenes that show her scheming and working hard to maintain an advantage against the powerful people she is dealing with. I won't go into detail on their characters, but the supporting cast includes the likes of Bruce Davison, Bruce McGill, Jeremy Piven, Cliff Curtis, Nick Searcy, Rhoda Griffis, Leland Orser, Nestor Serrano, Jennifer Beals, Gerry Bamman, Bill Nunn, Rusty Schwimmer, Orlando Jones, Luis Guzmán, and Dylan McDermott. If you don't recognise all of those names, trust me, you should recognise most of their faces.

Okay, it's not the best of the Grisham blockbusters (I think we all know that the "first wave" of movies adapted from his work gave us the best films), but this is a fantastic bit of entertainment. It's polished, it's intriguing, it has some obvious twists and turns that prove satisfying by the time everything is resolved, and the 127-minute runtime never drags, thanks in no small part to the feeling that you're never too far away from another great moment for Hackman, Hoffman, or Cusack. It's not one I think about too often, but it's one I am surprisingly happy to rewatch whenever the opportunity arises.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Carrier (2014)

There may be some people out there who like the sound of The Carrier AKA The Bag Man, a neo-noir crime flick that features a cast of familiar names - John Cusack, Robert De Niro, Crispin Glover, Dominic Purcell, Rebecca Da Costa, Martin Klebba, and Sticky Fingaz. I advise you now to push that positivity aside. This is a horrible mess of a film, and it's clear that most of the people in front of the camera turned up for a paycheck that they knew wouldn't require them to break a sweat.

As much as it pains me to do so, I'll give a very brief plot summary here. Cusack plays Jack, the carrier of the title. He's transporting and taking care of something on behalf of Dragna (De Niro). The only rule is that he cannot look to see what's inside the package. Hiding out at a remote motel, manned by a curious man named Ned (Glover), Jack soon gets himself mixed up with some trouble swirling around Rivka (Da Costa).

Apparently written by James Russo, and then worked on by Paul Conway and director David Grovic, this is about as painfully lazy and irrelevant as it's possible for a movie to be. It feels as if it would have been easier to slightly enjoy back in the mid-1990s, but this was released two decades later. None of the cast are on top form, with one or two acting as if they're trying to give a career-worst performance, the dialogue could have been written by someone who was handed a variety of soundbites snipped from a variety of much better crime movies, and the 108-minute runtime is at least 20 minutes too long.

Few people have squandered their talent in the latter part of their career more than Cusack, who has given many performances by now that convey his complete disdain for his main career. This performance belongs in that category, although I don't blame him for being unable to work up any enthusiasm for the material. Da Costa has to look lovely, and occasionally be in danger, which she does. I'm not any big fan of her, but she does okay with what she's given. The best person, and someone who brings some fun to the proceedings, is Glover though, and the film is good whenever he's around. Purcell also does pretty good, it's a shame that he's not in the movie more, and both Klebba and Mr. Fingaz are perfectly fine. De Niro, sadly, is not. He doesn't seem to loathe the thing as much as Cusack, but he certainly doesn't do more than the bare minimum. 

It's odd to think of how much work had to be done here to make this as bad as it is. The screenplay is dire, but it could have been saved by a charismatic lead performance. The charisma isn't here. Cusack actually inverts any charisma he once had, creating some kind of monochromatic negative photo version of himself. And I'll eat my own hair if I encounter anyone who feels invested in this long enough to care about how the third act plays out.

The only good thing I have to say about this is that I at least hope to never have to rewatch it. 

2/10

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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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One Crazy Summer (1986)

Another teen comedy that pairs director Savage Steve Holland with John Cusack, One Crazy Summer may not hit the heights of their best work (no matter what Cusack might think of the one I prefer), but it's a fun time for fans of many of the main cast members. And there are a few stars given some time to shine in this.

Cusack plays Hoops McCann, a young man who seems to be a bit lost after the end of his high school days. He does a decent job of creating cartoons, but that's not necessarily the way to set himself up for a great future. Or maybe it is. Anyway, Hoops ends up spending a summer holiday on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in the company of a bunch of outcasts who will be there to help when the time comes to teach a lesson to the irritating and smug Teddy Beckersted (Matt Mulhern).

Savage Steve Holland just knows how to make me happy, whether or not he's successful in everything that he tries to do. This film feels like much more of an ensemble piece than a controlled and focused directorial vision, although that's maybe just the feeling you get when all of these people are together and having fun with each other, but it's certainly none the worse for it, with Holland making the most of his assembled talent to craft some fun narrative strands and enjoyable set-pieces (one Godzilla homage is so hilariously set up that it gives the entire film an entire bonus point for goodwill).

Cusack doesn't have to stretch himself here, nor does he, but this is in line with many of his other roles from the decade, which means that fans of his work from this era should enjoy themselves. Demi Moore is very easy to like, playing a travelling musician named Cassandra, and I think this film does more to show her screen presence than anything in the fairly dire St. Elmo's Fire, and both Joel Murray and Bobcat Goldthwait are good fun for anyone who appreciates that they are very much an acquired taste. Curtis Armstrong is another member of the gang, and I always enjoy him onscreen, and there are enjoyable, but brief, turns from Taylor Negron, Rich Hall, Jeremy Piven, and William Hickey. Mulhern is a suitably douchebro baddie, Mark Metcalf and Joe Flaherty play two different, but somehow equally problematic, fathers, and Kimberly Foster creates some extra tension as the other female in the midst of all of the hormonal men.

Not the best of the teen comedies from this decade, and you could argue that it doesn't really count anyway (the main characters all feel just a bit older, although none the wiser, compared to those in the big movies you would think of in that sub-genre), but this has plenty of little chuckles in between the few big laughs. Holland is a hell of a talent, wonderfully surreal and anarchic with his approach to familiar material, and I hope he comes along one day with another film that recaptures the energy and wit of both this and Better Off Dead.... That's unlikely, but I'll keep my fingers crossed anyway.

7/10

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Noir-vember: The Grifters (1990)

Roy (Joan Cusack), Lilly (Anjelica Huston), and Myra (Annette Bening) are three con artists, and they're working on different levels. They're also connected in ways they might sometimes wish they weren't. Lily is Roy's mother, although she hasn't been in his life for many years, and Myra is his girlfriend. There's trouble brewing when these three end up in the same space together, and a chain of events start to unfold that is both dark and tragic, and also sadly inevitable.

Directed by Stephen Frears, The Grifters remains one of my favourite neo-noirs and one of my favourite con movies, and I do love me a whole load of con movies. I was absolutely blown away when I first saw it, over two decades ago, and the passing of time has done nothing to dull the power of the final scenes.

Based on a book by Jim Thompson, the script by Donald E. Westlake (no stranger to writing some gritty crime fare himself) manages to consistently entertain and inform while viewers also see (and hear, thanks to the great score from Elmer Bernstein) those big storm clouds gathering. Even the earlier moments of darkness, such as a character receiving a blow to the stomach so hard that he develops some internal bleeding, have a lighter touch before the world that these characters inhabit starts to oppress and restrain them further, trying to forcefully imprint on them the fact that there's no escape for anyone who has spent so long living that lifestyle.

Despite his many iconic roles over the years, Cusack gives a performance here that easily sits alongside his very best, and it is always a pleasure to be reminded of the time he used to seem to care about his work. His effortless cool is tempered by his baby-faced looks, allowing him to maintain an innocent and friendly manner with anyone he decides to try and wring some money from. Bening is just as smart and savvy, in many ways, but uses her looks and sex appeal to get what she wants, and she also delivers a top performance. Then you have Huston, a veteran who knows that her days may be numbered. How much can she put away before then? Is it even possible for her to get out? This constant scheming, and desperation, informs the superb performance from Huston, and Lilly is one of many brilliant characters she's given us over her career, a devious monster that will turn your stomach by the time the end credits roll.

Stephen Frears seems to enjoy leading viewers into the world of these characters, showing us the art of the cons with no small amount of admiration for those with the skill and, well, confidence to pull them off. It feels like most of the work has been done before the cameras even started rolling, between the superb casting and the choice of everyone working behind the camera, from the writer to the editor, etc, and the final product falls just shy of being a flawless classic.

As a major bonus, you also get supporting turns from Pat Hingle (playing the boss Lilly works for), J. T. Walsh, Charles Napier, and small amounts of screentime for Stephen Tobolowsky, Sandy Baron, Xander Berkeley, and Jeremy Piven (blink and you may miss him though).

A tough film to recommend to people, due to the dark nature of the content, but I do so anyway. You won't be grinning and ready to skip back to the real world straight after you've watched it, but you may well find that you have a new favourite film.

9/10

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Sixteen Candles (1984)

Ahhhhh, Sixteen Candles. It's a film I have very fond memories of. I have owned it on VHS, I have owned it on DVD, and now I own it on a shiny blu-ray. And others feel the same way. It's also one of the most problematic '80s teen movies that isn't focused on sex (those films are on a whole other level, and I'm not wanting to get into an argument about them at this time). I'll get into all that soon enough.

Let me start by saying that I can accept what Sixteen Candles is, just as much today as I did back when I first saw it in the 1980s. It is a teen film that speaks to a certain demographic of teens, and features a cast impressively made up of many actors who actually were at the same age as their characters. Molly Ringwald is decent in the lead role, Samantha, and the plot revolves around the devastating (when you're that age anyway) fact that her family have forgotten that it is her 16th birthday. They're all busy prepping for her big sister's wedding. Samantha also pines for older hunk, Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), and has to fend off the attention of a young geek credited as Geek (Anthony Michael Hall). Although she doesn't know it yet, Jake has taken an interest in Samantha, although he's currently going out with the gorgeous and popular Caroline (Haviland Morris).

With a great soundtrack, decent performances from the main cast members (Hall has always been my favourite though, and I also love the silly performances we get from Gedde Watanabe, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, and even a number of the adult characters), and the standard moments of wish-fulfilment, this is a template-setting directorial debut for Hughes, who was largely responsible for the stardom of Molly Ringwald in this decade, as well as the chart success of a number of musicians featured on the soundtracks of his movies.

Sixteen Candles still makes me laugh, although I laugh less than I used to. It bounces along from one almost-surreal moment to the next with so much energy that it's almost hard to think too critically about it as it plays out. Much like any big party you attended while at high school, things take on a different hue when you are recovering after the main event.

So let's discuss the problems with Sixteen Candles, problems that seem way more obvious now, but should also have been pretty obvious when it was first released.

A lot of people mention the fact that Jake is willing to give away his drunken girlfriend as if she's a) just a piece of his property he no longer has any use for, and b) deserving of whatever happens because of her drunken state and sexual confidence. They also mention the cringe-inducing inclusion of an Asian character named Long Duk Dong (name often accompanied by a gong sound, yes . . . a gong sound). The horribly inappropriate grandparents, the horny geek who won't take no for an answer, you've probably heard about these problems already. There are other problems though, some that we are perhaps only more attuned to nowadays. Like the following exchange -

Randy: And a big Trans Am in the driveway with a ribbon around it. And some incredible gorgeous guy that you meet like in France. And you do it on a cloud without getting pregnant or herpes.
Samantha: I don't need a cloud.
Randy: Just a pink dress and the guy, right?
Samantha: A black one.
Randy: A black guy?
Samantha: A black Trans Am, a pink guy.

That may look light and amusing enough,  but watch the film and the shock of Randy when she thinks her friend is on about "a black guy" and it just feels like an unnecessary reminder that writer-director John Hughes delivered films that were almost uniformly sliced up chunks of whiter-than-white Americana, no matter what bitter pill may have been slipped into some scenes. And that's not even mentioning the moment that has Jake Ryan gaslighting his girlfriend as he dances with her while thinking about Samantha.

It was always clear, I think, that Hughes was writing for a specific target audience. The lack of diversity in his cast (beyond class and clique archetypes) now sticks out like a sore thumb, although I am not sure I would ever want to hear him try to lend his voice to a central African American character. He wrote for those he felt he could identify with, or at least give a voice to.

Which is why, despite the problems, Hughes movies will always hold a special place in the hearts of those who discovered them at just the right age. As silly as it may seem, he wrote teen characters in the way we wanted them to be. They were very rarely realistic, or able to see beyond their own selfish problems that seemed huge, but there was a truth to the core of many of them. Because we always wanted to be better than our reality anyway, whether that means being the coolest rebel, the prettiest girl, the edgiest outcast, the nerdiest of the nerds, or any other pigeonhole we could fully inhabit and call our own. And when it comes to not being able to see beyond selfish problems that seem huge, that is most of our teenage years. Sadly, thanks to my arrested development, I think that lasted right up until my late twenties. I am glad that nobody was around to record the many conversations I used to have with friends when we thought we knew about love, life, sex, and heartbreak.

I've waffled on a bit more than I intended to, mainly because I didn't initially want to give as much time to addressing the aspects of the film that more enlightened modern viewers may take issue with. But I think it is important to remember that, taken as a whole, Hughes was trying to do something good, in giving teens their modern cinematic dream scenarios, and also giving young females a number of role models, even if they often ended up just wanting to end their school term with a perfect date/Prince Charming. We've moved on a lot since then, in many ways, but teenagers still spend an awful lot of time thinking about these things. We just forget how many hours in the day were spent dwelling on such issues, because we grew up and realised that our lives would more likely be directed by Mike Leigh than John Hughes.

7/10

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Singularity (2017)

There are two ways to view Singularity, funnily enough. On the one hand, it's an uninspired and unoriginal slice of sci-fi that focuses on the development of sophisticated A.I. On the other hand, it's yet another nail in the coffin of John Cusack's film career, an actor who can no longer seem to appear in anything without looking either completely bored or like he's forgotten how to actually do the main thing that has paid his bills for decades.

The actual story is . . . well, it's really dull. Cusack is a powerful CEO who introduces his latest creation to the world, Kronos. Kronos is designed to end all wars and protect the planet from threat, and it then decides that all humans are the biggest threat. Moving forward a number of years, we then journey along with a young man named Andrew (Julian Schaffner) and a young woman named Calia (Jeannine Wacker). Calia is quite wary and wonders about Andrew, but does she have good reason to?

Written and directed by Robert Kouba (from a story he shaped with Sebastian Cepeda), this is a film that feels like the work of a first-timer and, lo and behold, it is. Kouba has a number of shorts to his credit, but no features, from what I can see. He obviously had faith in the idea at the centre of Singularity and it's no surprise that he couldn't really see all of the big mistakes he was making along the way, either because he was too close to the work or because he lost track as one compromise was made after another. What IS surprising is how he convinced enough people to get on board with what must have been, I can only imagine, a flimsy pitch. Because there's nothing much here, despite Kouba attempting to fill the runtime with unnecessary moments to make you think that smart sci-fi is being served up.

I've already mentioned the rigor mortis that has almost completely taken over John Cusack, but that wouldn't be so bad if the leads were better. Let's face it, Cusack isn't given much screentime here and received his pay for a day of work that would allow Kouba to use his name. Unfortunately, the leads aren't all that good either. Wacker is the better of the two, and she tries her hardest with the weak script, but Schaffner is just poor, and there's a supporting role for Carmen Argenziano that doesn't show his skills off in a good light either.

There are a lot of good sci-fi movies out there, many of them from the past decade. Some have a lot of money poured into them, some don't. Scour the shelves of whatever virtual "video store" you use nowadays and pick a few, the chances are that you'll have something better than this one. This is awful, despite a level of technical competence that lifts it from the very bottom of the barrel.

2/10

Americans can punish themselves by buying this disc.

1408 (2007)

A movie based on the work of Stephen King about a writer possibly losing his mind as a haunted hotel causes him no ends of problem, it is almost inevitable that you can't watch or review 1408 without thinking of The Shining. However, it is to the credit of the author, the screenwriters who adapted his tale and director Mikael Hafstrom that 1408 manages to take fairly familiar material and make it feel fresh and interesting.

When I first saw 1408 I wasn't impressed. I'm still not completely won over by it but I have to now admit that it deserves a lot of credit for many of the little touches scattered throughout. The basic premise is simple enough, John Cusack plays a writer who visits haunted locations and writes about them. It's not great literature but it's a job. When he comes across the history of the titular room in The Dolphin Hotel, however, he views it as an essential experience and refuses to be dissuaded by the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson). But nobody has lasted more than an hour in room 1408 and there have been 56 deaths. Will there be a 57th?

The most impressive thing about this movie is how it takes the source material and expands upon it without losing the essence of the story or ever feeling padded out. This is down to a mixture of good writing, great performances and every trick in the book being used to keep things visually interesting onscreen.

John Cusack is superb in the central role as a man who starts off cynical and selfish and is pushed over the edge into an abyss of potential insanity and dread. Going through a whole range of emotions, from depression to elation to all-out rage, Cusack acquits himself very well. Samuel L. Jackson is also very good in his small, but crucial, role. Then we have support from Mary McCormack, Tony Shalhoub, Len Cariou, Jasmine Jessica Anthony and a number of other people who all do great work.

Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski deserve credit for their work in adapting the short story into something that holds your attention and builds up an atmosphere of real horror. There may be a few jump scares here and there, and there may not be enough here to please fans of gore and/or more standard scares, but the film develops into something very unsettling and decidedly . . . . . off-kilter as the room does all it can to affect Cusack's character.

Director Hafstrom hasn't done anything else quite as good as this since but that's okay. It's not that his other movies have been terrible, the fact is that 1408 is a rather simple, but also rather great, modern horror.

"Stay scared".

8/10.

http://www.amazon.com/1408-Two-Disc-Collectors-John-Cusack/dp/B000UNYJLS/ref=sr_1_4?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1400011153&sr=1-4&keywords=1408