Terrifically Terrible Cinema: “Over the Top” (1987)

“The world meets nobody halfway. When you want something, you gotta take it.” ~~Lincoln Hawk* 

First things first: Let’s go ahead and agree that this movie scribble is going to file ”Over the Top,” a lesser-known Sly Stallone gem from the late 1980s, in the supremely overstuffed folder titled “Splendidly Bad Epic ’80s Flicks” (because if the ’80s produced a movie that was not epic in scope and soundtrack, I did not see it). For a movie about the National Arm Wrestling Championships in Sin City that alsom manages to include oodles of dad-like advice, big burly-man semis and a man who chugs Valvoline belongs nowhere if it does not belong in that manila folder.

With its screenplay co-written by Stallone, “Over the Top” (heed the title; it’s damn fine nutshelling) has but one thing to offer its highly specific audience of Sly fans and connoisseurs of Terrifically Terrible Cinema: a marvelous and total lack of sophistication. For Demolition Man, “subtlety” is nothing less than a deplorable dirty word — always has been, save for a “First Blood” here and a “Rocky Balboa” there — and it shows. Not one single element of “Over the Top,” from the smallest father/son moment to The Really Big, Really Intense Showdown, is understated. (Remember about the title? I told you it was important.) Metaphors are painted with big, messy glops and slops; the sweeping montages showcase “Eye of the Tiger”-styled music so loud it drowns out the (ha! as if!) dialogue; the dying mom has a bad case of Sick People Teeth and Too Much Gray Eyeshadow; Robert Loggia acts like his very life hinges on line overdelivery.

There’s bad, alright, but this? This is the kind of movie that’s so bad you have to watch the whole thing.

But more on this plot, so awful it seems overripe for a remake by Trey Parker and Matt Stone: Long-haul trucker Lincoln Hawk (Stallone) discovers his ill wife Christina (Susan Blakely) is rapidly approaching her expiration date and she wants him to have a relationship with Michael (David Mendenhall), the son he left behind. Christina’s underhanded father Jason Cutler (Loggia), who long ago branded Hawk a — gasp! — “loser,” has done his part to keep father and son separated. But soon enough Cutler learns three important lessons: 1) Hawk drives a semi big enough to obliterate fancy porcelain fountains, so don’t piss him off; 2) If you see Hawk’s hat turned backward, he’s already pissed off, so run away; and 3) National arm wrestling competitions are petri dishes that breed entire populations warm, fuzzy dad-and-son moments.

Herein lies the pure trashy fun of “Over the Top”: It’s exactly the movie you expect it to be, only moreso. Everything is loud and bright and dumb and epic and so overdone as to be hysterically funny. Hawk’s arm wrestling competitors alone are priceless, from Grizzly the Valvoline-swigger (Bruce Way) — who learns the only appropriate follow-up to Valvoline is Alka-Seltzer — to the philosopher Bull Hurley (Rick Zumwalt), a man of simple tastes who lives by an easy-to-remember credo: “I drive truck, break arms, and arm wrestle. It’s what I love to do, it’s what I do best.” Hawk himself is something of a soothsayer, a deliverer of gloriously unsubtle advice (refer to the opening quote), and there are moments when Stallone appears to have slipped into a communicative coma while playing him. Mendenhall and Loggia take the opposite approach, injecting so much passion into their Big Speeches that they threaten to become touching. But they do not, and thank Valvoline for that; it would damn near ruin this movie!

So, no, “Over the Top” is not great work of art, or even a paint-by-numbers ripped from Highlights. But it is the finest movie ever made about arm wrestling, and sometimes, well, that’s enough.

*This is clearly a rewrite. The first draft of the line went a little something like this: “There’s no crying in arm wrestling!”

No. 12: “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)

“Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.” ~~Clementine Kruczynski

If it’s true that the course of love doesn’t run smooth, it’s also true that our memories of that trip don’t follow a timeline. In the beginning, there are the obvious landmarks: the first meeting, a tentative investigation; the first conversation; the first kiss. But once affection sours, time goes full Cuisinart on those recollections, scrambling them so hopelessly we couldn’t reorganize them if we tried.

Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) experience this reality not once but again and again in Michel Gondry’s tender and achingly beautiful ”Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a film with a script that mimics the curious effects of time upon our memories of lost love. Here, the end and the beginning bleed together, and they also cloud the way we see everything in the middle because the boundary lines are loose and fuzzy. Charlie Kaufman, who penned the knotty script, seems intent on drawing us in by providing all the answers and letting us ferret out the equation.

What’s so wonderfully original and mesmerizing about “Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind” is that Joel and Clementine are in the exact same position we are. Both find themselves in an odd situation with the facts of the present, yet they have no idea how they got there. And it takes quite some time before we figure out how they did, either. Since their story can’t quite be told in a linear fashion, let’s start somewhere in the muddy middle: On an uncharacteristic whim, timid loner Joel skips work and hops a train to Montauk. The ride back leads him to meet Clementine, a chatty free spirit with unruly blue hair (“I apply my personality in a paste,” she offers brightly) who’s sure she’s met Joel before. There’s an unexpected connection that threatens to become more, and that’s when everything goes pear-shaped: Seems Joel and Clem not only know each other, they used to be lovers. The reason neither remembers this has to do with Lacuna, Inc., an odd little business run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) that specializes in erasing painful memories.

Additional stories funnel into ”Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” involving Patrick (Elijah Wood) and Stan (the invaluable Mark Ruffalo), Lacuna’s memory-vanquishing technicians, and Mary (Kirsten Dunst), Mierzwiak’s receptionist. Their lives intersect with Joel’s because they’re charged with erasing Clementine from his mind, and all three are so wrapped up in their own strange realities that they don’t realize Joel wants to stop the procedure right in the middle of it. Not that his protests matter, really; he’s hidden too far in his own mind to be heard. This makes his anguish all the more wrenching, for who hasn’t let heartbreak lead to a bad choice screaming to be taken back?

There are, perhaps, no appropriate words to describe what Carrey and Winslet bring to this bittersweet examination of love. The kooky plot requires them to anchor their characters in reality, make them human enough for us to suffer their hurts and feel their joy. Carrey quiets himself enormously to play Joel, a lonely man who guards his heart closely. Winslet’s more open but no less touching as Clementine, a woman whose flightiness covers a deep core of insecurity and self-awareness. Together, with their stirring chemistry, they make Joel and Clementine’s love story one of the greatest ever told. 

Worry not, though, that “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is some kind of repackaged epic romance with a comedic twist. Elements of the universal exist, certainly, but with Gondry behind the camera this is love story that feels almost shockingly intimate. We catch glimpses of under-the-cover confessions, lazy afternoon strolls, early dinners uncomfortable in their cold silence — the things no one ever sees. All the shots are so gorgeously lensed, so precisely placed and edited, that what we have is a story told in scattered Polaroids. And sometimes it’s the snapshots, creased and smudged with fingerprints, we keep closest to our hearts.

No. 11: “Blood Simple” (1984)

“If you point a gun at someone, you’d better make sure you shoot him, and if you shoot him you’d better make sure he’s dead, because if he isn’t then he’s gonna get up and try to kill you.” ~~Ray

What is it about best-laid plans crumbling to hell that fascinates us so endlessly? Is it the thrill of watching greed and lust pollute the simplest of schemes, careful blueprints drawn up with what seems like attention to detail? Maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe there’s something comforting about maintaining distance, assuming a stance of superiority that allows us to say — and believe — “I’d never let that happen to me.”

The perverse magic of Joel and Ethan Coen’s stylish, enormously disquieting “Blood Simple,” what shakes us to the core, is that the opposite is true: Easy plots like this get dreamed up by normal people, and they unspool in crazy ways that boggle the mind. For every hairline fissure that surfaces, there are hundreds more underneath, slowly working their way to the top. The bitter end, the Coens understand, is always so much closer than we think.

It is the illusion of control that sets in motion the undoing of most every player in “Blood Simple,” which begins with a seemingly simple plan (code for “something’s about to hit a fan”): Slimy bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) suspects his wife Abby (Frances McDormand in her first big-screen role) is having an affair, so he hires Private Detective Loren Visser (a skin-crawlingly good M. Emmet Walsh) to tail her. When Marty discovers Abby is bedding Ray (John Getz), one of his bartenders, he’s glad to pony up dough for a hit. Marty’s out for blood. Problem is, Visser’s out for money – as much as he can get — and he knows the location of his client’s safe. That was Marty’s first mistake.

Since this is film noir, the initial mistake leads to another … which leads to another … which unleashes a slow-building hurricane of potential and totally unforseen complications. Suddenly nobody, not even Abby, so wide-eyed in her protests of “I ain’t done nothin’ funny,” is able to walk away from this mess without making bloody getaway tracks. There are dead bodies and very-nearly-dead bodies and mistaken identities. The whole business might be downright comical if it wasn’t so damn sleazy.

But wait! This is Coen brothers film noir, so comedy abounds. “Blood Simple” is where the Coens introduced their brand of nefarious tomfoolery, so the jokes sneak up on us like Jack the Ripper. Consider Ray’s summary of what happened on a midnight trip: “He was alive when I buried him.” Gulp. Or Visser’s response to Marty, who says the Greeks beheaded bad news carriers: “Gimme a call whenever you wanna cut off my head. I can always crawl around without it.” Yipes. Humor doesn’t get much blacker (note the song that announces the final credits). Barbed observations like these are the kind that clump uncomfortably in the throat, yet they spotlight human folly too good not to laugh at: Every man thinks he’s gripping the reins, and not one of them actually is. The actors time these lines faultlessly, with Walsh, who sweats menace, and Hedaya, perfectly cast as the fiendish Marty, doing heavy lifting. McDormand, all innocence, shows early promise she’s more than made good on. And Getz might have the best job of all: He shows us how easy it is for the straight man to nosedive into depravity.

More brilliance reveals itself as “Blood Simple” rumbles toward the finish. The staggering cinematography, courtesy of Barry Sonnenfield, transforms the dusty Texas landscape into a character with its own motivations, its own agenda. The desert turns an unforgiving eye on these miscreants, offers not a moment of solace. Behind the camera, the Coens do their part to make their film a dark visual masterpiece. They amplify that desolate feeling with artful, pointed shots: a blood drip here, a thumping ceiling fan there, a close-up of dripping sink pipes. Matter of fact, that last shot pins the film’s thesis, squirming, to the wall: If you’re dumb enough to think something’s just what it seems, prepare to suffer the consequences.

Netflix Pick: “Chinatown” (1974)

Private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) would have us believe that he’s unflappable, as arch as the one-liners he slings at his she-done-me-wrong clients and the cops who snub their noses at him. ”You’re dumber than you think I think you are,” he cracks to Lt. Escobar (Perry Lopez). Comments like this might peg him as a real hardnose if not for his pesky moral code. He wants to ignore it, but he can’t, and it’s the reason he gets swept up in too many tangled stories that don’t end happily.

Truth be told, it is Gittes’ nagging conscience that makes “Chinatown,” Roman Polanski’s gorgeously shot, densely plotted love letter to film noir, more than just a rigorous exercise in mental gymnastics. The fact that this investigator, with his steely, seen-it-all eyes, can’t pull back emotionally from his cases separates him from the pack. That gets him in trouble often enough, and if not the curiosity shows up to finish the job. Since Gittes can’t leave a hunch unexamined, he’s intrigued when a woman (Diane Ladd) shows up in his office convinced her husband, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), chief engineer of L.A. Water and Power, is having an affair. Gittes decides to tail Mulwray and sees fresh water being dumped into the Pacific. Peculiar, since there’s a serious drought. Gittes snaps some money shots of Mulwray and his mistress, and when they wind up front-page news the second bomb drops. The real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) barges into his office, and she’s understandably enraged that Gittes took the case under false pretenses. Gittes, in turn, is none too happy that he’s become someone’s puppet, and he’s hell-bent on finding out who’s pulling the strings.

There is more, much, much more, to “Chinatown” than this. Polanski’s twisty plot continues to uncoil itself slowly, almost languidly. From this point, we, like Gittes, sense that Evelyn is hiding something, possibly something sinister or shameful, and that this Mulwray scandal goes far deeper than the ocean the water’s been dumped into. When Mulwray’s body turns up, lungs filled with salt water even though he was pulled from a freshwater reservoir, that much is clear. Now there’s a scandal and a murder, and the cast of POIs expands to include Evelyn’s millionaire father Noah Cross (John Huston), a man who serves Gittes a head-on fish for lunch and reveals himself to be a man as menacing as he is rich. The pieces start to come together toward the end of Gittes’ topsy-turvy investigation. Or do they? Scriptwriter Robert Towne unloads not one but two shockers, both of which force us to double back and scrounge around for clues we missed. And that’s when we realize Gittes wasn’t the only one trapped in an unpredictable cat-and-mouse game.

Not many scripts can draw in viewers the way Towne’s does. This is complex, captivating writing that manages to keep us guessing until the final moments, and even when the answers are provided, they aren’t necessarily easy or satisfying. Every revelation here is hard-won. Somehow Towne also manages to capture the spirit of 1930s film noir, with its femme fatales (Dunaway in this case), terrible misdeeds of the past and how they infect the present, the detective who’s in over his head but won’t back down. It’s all there, and it’s all executed flawlessly.

“Chinatown,” however, isn’t just a masterpiece because of the script — Polanski’s direction, his keen eye for the shadows-and-fog atmosphere, that sense of weariness, is impressive in the way it recreates 1930s-era L.A. and does so in color, not black-and-white. Mastery, too, exists in the performances of Huston, Dunaway and Nicholson. Huston, with his towering presence, exudes the effortless menace of a man unaccustomed to having his whims questioned. Dunaway’s Evelyn is equal parts fragility and untapped rage; she is exactly as mysterious as she needs to be, and not a drop more. Nicholson’s Gittes is a character for the books. The actor hits a career best here, demonstrating vulnerability he rarely shows. He makes Gittes the moral compass and the heart of “Chinatown,” the kind of man who not only can’t forget what he’s seen but doesn’t want to.

Grade: A

Highbrow, lowbrow mix in disappointing “Halloween II”

Is it me, or is Michael Myers starting to look suspiciously like Leatherface?

A mere 10 minutes in and with some help from a white horse and his kohl-pencil loving wife, Rob Zombie loudly announces his intentions for ”Halloween II”: He’s out to make a thinking man’s movie about Michael Myers. One where the immortal murderer sees his dear departed mum (Sheri Moon Zombie) in spooky, hazy midnight hallucinations and she lays out a master plan for family togetherness that involves dispatching young Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton). She also offers motherly advice about future kills (“now go have some fun”) and strokes her hulking son’s furrowed brow.

In a word: Spare me.

Or perhaps I should say spare us, Zombie-comma-Rob, and by “us” I mean all the Michael Myers fans who have been hanging in since the start, the ones who have seen every petrified crap-pile remake and sequel and meta-sequel with the tiniest shred of hope that this director saw the original, or at least read the blurb on the back cover of the DVD. Zombie’s first attempt, “Halloween,” showed a wee flicker of promise because there was an eerieness there (thanks to Daeg Faerch) that nearly balanced out the gore. Not so with “Halloween II,” a mindless, pointless exercise in blood spillage interrupted frequently by crazy, acid-like dream sequences. So ”Halloween II” isn’t just a stupid movie, it’s pretentious one, too. The fact that Zombie attempts to combine these qualities is about the only original thing this huge, lumbering disappointment has to offer. 

Right off things don’t look so bad, since ”Halloween II” begins where its not-so-bad predecessor ended: Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) has survived the Halloween massacre of her brother Michael (Tyler Mane), but not without serious physical and psychological scars. Now living with her friend Annie (Danielle Harris, whom you might remember from “Halloween 4″ and “Halloween 5″) and Annie’s father, Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif), Laurie’s wracked with nightmares and panic attacks. Her anxiety only deepens when Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) outs her as Michael’s sister and proceeds to turn her name and Michael’s victims into big book sales. Slowly slicing and dicing his way into this storyline is Michael, driven by hallucinations to find his baby sister and stage the kind of family reunion that would make the Firefly family squeal with delight. 

That’s really all that happens in “Halloween II” in the way of plot. There’s some random teen-age sex (in a van, no less) that’s generic in its sluttiness included for good measure, or perhaps because that’s a horror movie requirement, but mostly “Halloween II” is a veritable smorgasbord of crunched bones, split throats, stomped-in craniums and severed heads. It’s crass and pointless, and what’s more it’s not inventive or even terribly interesting. If Zombie’s out to startle us with gore, he more than missed his chance — the “Hostel” and “Saw” movies long ago killed off the shock centers of our brains. What “Halloween II” serves up in the way of violence barely merits a raised eyebrow, let alone a quick dip behind the popcorn bucket or a hands-over-the-eyes maneuver. This is positively run-of-the-mill, and on its own the gore would be enough to make “Halloween II” an average horror movie.

The bigger problem here is that Zombie tries to merge Michael’s self-consciously arty and trippy visions with all the killing, and it just plain doesn’t work. There’s a serious disconnect between these two stories that never gets repaired; in fact, it seems like Zombie wrote two movies and tossed both scripts into the air, grabbing the pages and putting them in random order. Either approach would have made a decently watchable movie, but together these storylines create a big mess.

There’s probably not much point in mentioning the acting, since McDowell is no Donald Pleasance, Laurie’s friends are largely dispensable and Taylor-Compton makes Laurie into a potty-mouthed, whiny Anyteen who can barely keep our interest, much less our sympathy. She does, however, get one good line: “Nightmares are chewing at my head again … they just seem to be getting worse.”

After sitting through “Halloween II”? Yeah, I’d say my brain felt decidedly nibbled.

Grade: D

No. 10: “This Is Spinal Tap” (1984)

“I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn’t believe anything.” ~~David St. Hubbins

Gearing up for his band’s Stonehenge-tinged concert, rocker/dim-bulb philosopher Nigel Tufnel* (Christopher Guest) serves up a delightfully vague introduction about the Druids, so mysterious that “no one knows who they were or what they were doing.” He might as well be talking about Spinal Tap, a heavy metal trio in which the members are legends in their own minds. So enraptured with their own mythology are these lovable dolts that they don’t find it odd they play venues with corridors that lead everywhere but the stage.

This is what Rob Reiner gets so perfectly right in “This Is Spinal Tap,” a satire (albeit a kind one) of giant metal egos wading infinitesimal pools of talent: He gives us an in-depth look at not one heavy metal band, but every larger-than-life band that ever existed. Spinal Tap is Everyband, a motley collection of stereotypes (a band member dead from choking on vomit; a Yoko/Paul-esque conflict that splits the band in half) that turn out to be as revealing and universally true as they are hysterical. The men who head up this band are idiots, but they are our idiots, DiBergi assures us, and through his admiring eyes we cannot help but love Spinal Tap, woman-degrading, glove-smelling album covers and all.

In the opening of “This Is Spinal Tap,” we learn that director Marty DiBergi (Reiner himself) has decided to take time from his dog commercial career to create a documentary of his favorite band, Spinal Tap, a two-decades-old English metal band composed of lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), named after the patron saint of quality footwear; lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Guest), who believes D minor is the saddest key of all; and bass guitarist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), who sees his role in the band as the “lukewarm water” that tempers the fire-and-ice combo of David and Nigel. DiBergi follows Spinal Tap as the band attempts to tour America and reconnect with fans. This is a huge mistake, the band assuming they have fans to reconnect with. Years of LSD trips and perpetually croaking drummers and horrendous albums — one’s reviewed as a “pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms”; another’s summed up simply as “shit sandwich” – have obliterated the American fanbase.

Nearly all of the droll, wonderful comedy in “This Is Spinal Tap” emerges from this tour, which rapidly devolves into a succession of misunderstandings and shabby bookings by their slimy manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra). It’s like “The Three Stooges” meets VH1’s “Where Are They Now?” with razor-edged British humor lobbed in for good measure. Spinal Tap plays second fiddle to a puppet show. The guys ”headline” a military dance and the aforementioned show where nobody can find the stage, so they don’t perform. Making matters worse is David’s shrewish girlfriend (June Chadwick), who clashes with Nigel over who deserves the credit for being Spinal Tap’s “mastermind.” Watching David, Nigel and Derek crash headlong into the reality of their disappearing fame is reason enough to manifest undying love for “This Is Spinal Tap,” with its mix of satire and slapstick. 

The film’s crack team of comedic actors and Reiner’s direction, though, seal the deal. Nobody whips out one-liners with more deadpan perfection than McKean, a blockhead who says things like “it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever” and doesn’t see how those words apply to him. Shearer’s the understudy here, but he makes a definite impression. Guest somehow manages to tap into Nigel’s oddly touching vulnerability and give us a thrash rocker who’s almost childlike in his naivete. Reiner nicely underscores these performances by treating “This Is Spinal Tap” as an authentic documentary, amassing hours of footage, and so we come to see David, Nigel and Derek as wholly human in their cluelessness; we laugh at their antics, but we want them succeed, or find happiness elsewhere. They matter to us, weird as it sounds, because Reiner makes them real people. And that’s the kind of achievement that never gets old.

*That’s Nigel “We’ve Got Armadillos in Our Trousers” Tufnel to you.

Review: “The Lookout” (2007)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt measures life lost to a brain injury in "The Lookout."

Too often thrillers, in the hands of the wrong directors, make one of two mistakes. First, the pacing is too fast, the action too furious, which leaves the characters undeveloped and forces viewers to watch a series of things blow up. Or the pacing is too slow, the action too sporadic, which allows the characters to develop but leaves viewers too bored to care. “The Lookout,” a gripping character study directed impressively by Scott Frank, makes neither of these mistakes. The briskly-paced film, which features another stunning performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, starts off with a literal bang and never lets up … until the slightly deflated end.

The film’s opening credits give viewers a brief introduction to Chris Pratt (Gordon-Levitt), a hotshot college hockey star who’s got everything, including a gorgeous girlfriend (Laura Vandervoort). But a split-second error in judgment violently separates his life into “before” and “after”: Pratt crashes his convertible into a stalled farm combine. The resulting traumatic brain injury ends his career and his charmed existence.

Fast-forward four years. Pratt, now a night janitor at a no-name Kansas City bank, has no life to speak of: He has no girlfriend, his only friend is his sarcastic but kind-hearted blind roommate, Lewis (superbly acted by Jeff Daniels), and he has to record everything he does in a pocket notebook to make it through each day. His memory sequencing problems, mood swings and disinhibition make him reluctant to interact with anyone, including his well-to-do family. Into his gray world comes Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), an ex-classmate who meets Pratt at a bar and tells fumbling loner he once looked up to him – he even dated Pratt’s older sister. The serpentine Spargo plays on Pratt’s insecurities and introduces him to “Luvlee Lemons,” an eager, attractive exotic dancer (Isla Fisher). It’s then Spargo reveals his ulterior motive: He wants Pratt to help him rob the bank whose floors he mops every night. Set all this intrigue against the blank, colorless, obliterating wintery Midwestern landscape — captured wonderfully by cinematographer Alar Kivilo — and “The Lookout” becomes as chilling as it is captivating.

What’s more intriguing is the way Frank, a screenwriter-turned-rookie-director, lets his characters take their time whittling away at our nerves. Goode banishes all memory of his icky-sweet role in “Chasing Liberty” here. His Gary possesses an oily, slightly menacing charm: He’s got a near-psychic (or sociopathic) ability to read people, discover their weaknesses and exploit them for personal gain. And what’s frightening is that he’s a downright likable fellow, the sort of chap who’d buy a round for strangers at the local dive bar. It’s a layered, commendable performance. Creepy, too, is Greg Dunham as Spargo’s right-hand man – he has but four lines of dialogue and exudes ungodly menace. The kind that, if you saw him in line in front of you at Bi-Lo, would make you pick up and move somewhere far away. Like Timbuktu. 

Daniels more than holds his own as Lewis, a wannabe restaurateur (he’s even picked out a name: “Lew’s Your Lunch”) who looks out for Pratt but never coddles him. His comic timing is dead-on (prepare to cackle when he tells Luvlee how he lost his sight), but better is his ability to show Lewis as a no-nonsense man who can peg a phony in a heartbeat. And Gordon-Levitt provides yet more reasons why he’s this generation’s finest working actor. His work here is unshowy and almost heartbreaking in its simplicity. As Pratt, he extracts maximum emotion from the character’s minimal dialogue (observe the wrenching clip where he tells his bewildered father “I can’t play chess anymore”). He looks and sounds like a man on the verge of collapsing beneath the weight of guilt and unfulfilled dreams.

Such commendable acting doesn’t disguise the frustrating flaws in “Lookout.” Fischer’s character does a disappearing act that’s puzzling. The robbery feels oddly out of place, since Frank spends so much time letting us know his characters. And the closing moments are too neat, too simple. Still, it’s not enough to ruin “The Lookout,” which is filled with characters who are anything but simple. 

Grade: B-

Review: “3:10 to Yuma” (2007)

Russell Crowe waxes philosophic -- and wields a mean double-barrel -- in "3:10 to Yuma."

There’s a brief scene early in “3:10 to Yuma”* that cuts straight to film’s conflicted conscience: Outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) sizes up one of his holier-than-thou captors and remarks, “Even bad men love their mamas.” And with that one seemingly junkheap-bound line of dialogue “Yuma” reveals itself to be a different kind of Western – one where the villains are intelligent and adaptable and the righteous are greedy and downright foolhardy in their moral inflexibility. One thing is for sure: a run-of-the-mill Saturday morning cowboys-and-Indians picture “Yuma” is certainly not.

At the heart of this Western is Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a down-on-his-luck Arizona rancher who serves as proof that the good don’t always triumph. (Sometimes they even fail miserably.) Broke, weary and nearly crippled by a Civil War injury, he’s all but run off his land by moneygrubbers who want to cash in on the ever-expanding railroad industry. His oldest son William (Logan Lerman) and wife Alice (Gretchen Mol) don’t believe they’ll survive the season. Then Evans stumbles upon Wade robbing a stagecoach, and his luck begins to change. Soon, he volunteers as part of the caravan scheduled to transport Wade to Contention, where the robber will board a train headed to Yuma prison and end up with his neck getting intimate with a hangman’s noose.

The trip, of course, is far from simple: There’s a misguided attempt to pass through Apache-controlled lands, and Wade’s gang – led by the vicious Charlie Prince (an impressively menacing Ben Foster) – tries to free the infamous robber at every stop. It’s a nonstop ride of violent action and quietly devastating character interaction that trails into an unexpected (and some might say unfulfilling) end.

Ah, the end. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has taken place over the film’s final minutes, with most everyone railing and wringing their hands in frustration. Of course, the conclusion will not be revealed here, but it must be said that the film’s finale is the key to understanding what makes “Yuma” tick. The end offers no panacea – its ambiguity serves a purpose, a big one, and it’s up to viewers to do the mental heavy lifting.

But the end is only a small part of why “Yuma” is such a worthwhile venture. As an action film, “Yuma” is surprisingly bloody and brutal. Set against the unforgiving dustbowl of the searing Arizona desert, the shootouts and mine collapses and top-speed horse chases seem larger than life. (Then again, that’s what Westerns are, in some small part, about – showing the truths of life in unflinchingly hard ways.) But with a small cast studded with high-profile powerhouse actors, the acting in “Yuma” is hardly shabby, either. Legendary Peter Fonda has some fun with his character, Byron McElroy, a mean-as-a-snake bounty hunter who’d just as soon but a bullet in Wade’s eye than deliver him to the station. Alan Tudyk, a wildly underappreciated comic actor, draws a few laughs as Doc Potter, a large animal vet who unwitting gets roped into Wade’s caravan. And a note here about that Ben Foster, who tears into Charlie Prince like a man in throes of demonic possession: What an actor this guy’s turning out to be. 

For the most part, Bale and Crowe run this show, and with good reason. Bale, known for taking darker roles, transforms Dan from a one-note do-gooder into a conflicted character, a man who chooses to do right not because he’s a saint but because it’s all he’s got left. Ben Wade is the kind of role Crowe, who excells at creating laconic, morally amibuous characters, was born to play. With his crooked smile and mirthful eyes, he’s near perfect as Wade, a crook who lives as much by his wits as his pistol. He’s equal parts venom and compassion, and he sees what so few other characters do: Morality is entirely subjective.

Though Crowe alone is almost worth the admission price, there’s another reason to give “Yuma” a chance: Any Western where there is nary a tumbleweed to be seen, well, isn’t afraid to take chances.

Grade: B+

*Readers who have seen the original 1957 film: How does this one stack up?

Cinema of Scare: (My) Big 10

Happy Halloween, everyone! If you’re wondering why I’m saying this today, it’s because every day is Halloween. Or should be. Just think about it: the potential for the world to become a neverending buffet of candy corn, dollar-store cobwebs and glow-in-the-dark skeleton earrings.

Of course, this would increase the possibility that more people would show up to work in clown costumes on idle Tuesday mornings. Hmm. Better give this some more thought.

No more talk of clowns, though. Let’s talk about Bill over at Bill’s Movie Emporium. Connoisseur of scare that he is, he dreamed up something called the Splatter Time Fun Fest Awards (love the title, Bill), and that got me inspired. Well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit, since I’m not sure creating a list of great Halloween movies the day before Halloween is inspired. But I’ve been known to make some noise about being a fan of the cliche, so I will press on with my own collection of movies that ruined me for entering darkened houses, babysitting a child sporting a blonde braids-n-bangs combo, or going camping:

1. “Halloween”

A miniscule budget, no-name actors, almost no blood or gore and a killer who never utters so much as one syllable? Only a genius frightmaster like John Carpenter could take all the reasons why a horror movie should not work and transform them into clear-cut advantages. He mines the bleakest parts of our collective consciousness to bring humanity’s biggest fear — that evil is everywhere, and it’s unstoppable — to heart-stopping life. Brilliant. 

 

2. “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”

Henry (Michael Rooker, who’s blank-eyed perfection) has a pretty practical theory about killing. “It’s always the same and it’s always different,” he tells his buddy Otis. And here he reveals the dark, twisted purpose of John McNaughton’s “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”: to remind us that pure, inexplicable evil wears a human face, and one we never seem to notice until it’s too late to scream for help.

 

3. “M”

When horror movie chatter turns to accomplished serial killer films (see above), Fritz Lang’s distressing “M” is nowhere to be found. Pity that, because it’s a grim, dank, chilly and thoroughly unnerving exploration of a killer stalking Berlin’s children. Peter Lorre makes Hans Beckert (who closely resembles German serial murderer/pedophile Peter Kürten) the kind of soulless villain who’d haunt Hannibal Lecter’s dreams.

 

4. “Nosferatu”

With vampire books and movies and TV shows overwhelming our senses, it’s all too easy to forget about F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” the film that turned these blood-lapping mythological creatures into pop-culture staples. Without benefit of technicolor, special effects or even sound, Max Schreck’s otherworldly Count Dracula creeps into our dreams and stays there, waiting for the chance to lunge. 

 

5. “The Evil Dead”

Before the ultra-campy “Army of Darkness,” with Bruce Campbell cloning himself and playing, well, Bruce Campbell, there was “The Evil Dead,” headed for cult classic status with its no-budget effects. But the original rates highly as a horror staple because of its opening credits — the finest and creepiest ever filmed — and the no-holds-barred performance of Campbell, who makes his terror palpable. And don’t forget that tarty tree branch.

 

6. “Carrie”

“Carrie,” based on Stephen King’s first published novel, is at its heart a pre-”Surviving Ophelia” look at the crushing effects of bullying and how, in the right setting, constant torment can produce murderous rage in the meekest people. Herein lie the chills in “Carrie”: There’s violence aplenty, all of it rained down on fairly deserving and cruel parties, but we’d never see it coming from a girl like Carrie (Sissy Spacek). How profoundly disturbing.

 

7. “Dawn of the Dead”

Horror movies that scare us are in hefty supply, but the ones that squeeze in pointed commentary about mass consumerism and America’s shopping mall mentality are not. George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” is proof positive that scares don’t have to be mindless and blood-soaked; they can spring from the realization that we’ve scaled the roof to escape our problems (or zombies), and now there’s nowhere to go but down. 

 

8. “The Bad Seed”

Kids — it’s all sweetness and innocence, all fun and games until one of them sets a janitor on fire. At least, that’s the image of youth we get in “The Bad Seed,” with Patty McCormack using her blonde braids and sweet smile to disarm her prey. But she’s hiding a whole mess of devilment behind those patent-leather shoes, and the movie’s hiding an ominous warning: Don’t think you know what lurks in a person’s heart.

 

9. “The Shining”

That Jack Nicholson, always with the Cheshire Cat-that-gulped-the-canary grin. He plays bad better than most anyone, but he’s at his baddest (and creepiest) in “The Shining,” a ghoulish thriller that blows the “happy families stay together” concept to smithereens. Jack’s googly-eyed overacting works OK here, but what really shivers the timbers is the inspired camera work and a foreboding, oppressive score that pierces your brain. 

 

10. “The Blair Witch Project”

“The Blair Witch Project” is not a movie that inspires lukewarm reactions. No, this documentary-style thriller, with its queasy footage, unknown actors and largely ad-libbed script, is a love-it-or-hate it kind of movie. Still, there’s no denying this film’s directors accomplish a startling feat: They never show us the villain. And the not knowing what’s threading sticks and piling rocks out there in the dark? That’s the part that’s purely petrifying.

Honorable mentions: “Identity,” “The Omen,” “The Stepfather” (1987 version), “Poltergeist,” “28 Days Later…”

“The Strangers” (2008)

Evil creeps up on Liv Tyler in Bryan Bertino's eerie "The Strangers."

With horror movies, particularly 21st-century ones, sometimes it’s better to ask “is this film effective?” and not “is this film original?” Because truth be told, there’s not much new and different about “The Strangers,” Bryan Bertino’s lean and mostly capable thriller. The whole “we’re not safe in our own homes” concept? It’s been done before better, and we’ve seen these characters creep under windows and cry a thousand times.

So “The Strangers” doesn’t get high marks for originality. But when a horror movie this spare and gripping juices your nerves like electrical wires, innovation’s something of a moot point. What Bertino lacks in originality he more than makes up for in execution. This is a director who understands that fear of the unknown and the tension that fear creates are what keep us up nights starting at every floorboard creak. Bertino builds this anxiety to unbearable levels using horror standards – the face emerging from the shadows, a car rendered useless by flat tires, the old peel-back-the-curtain-and-boo! — that get us squirming uneasily in our seats right up to the purely stupid ending. 

“Tension” – that’s the watchword here. The film’s first act is all about tension, starting with the shaky relationship between Kristen (Liv Tyler, a fine scream queen) and James (Scott Speedman). The pair’s headed to his parents’ remote vacation home, and it’s clear early that something’s a little off-kilter. Things only get more awkward when they arrive at the house — turns out James expected a different answer to his marriage proposal. The house is filled with champagne and rose petals, all the trappings of a giddy engagement. Somehow Tyler and Speedman, B-level actors at best, capture the pain and strangeness surrounding this relationship speedbump beautifully, relying more on defeated facial expressions and body language than dialogue (in short supply here). They’ve hit a wall, they know it and they don’t know where to go next, or if they care enough to keep trying. There’s something sadly universal in that struggle that endears Kristen and James to us, makes them real people and not just bodies to be dispatched messily into the afterlife.

But don’t go fretting that there’s no action here and no bloodshed. After the sometimes-too-languid setup, “The Strangers” packs plenty of thrills, shrieks and spatters into the second half. Bertino brings on mayhem in the form of three masked intruders who proceed to unleash a hailstorm of psychological torment on Kristen and James. These mind games are the film’s meat. It’s the little moments, like the moved smoke detector, the missing cell phone charger and the doorknob rattles, that start to unglue Kristen and James. That sense of security a locked door and a security system provide go all to hell, and we can’t help but get dragged along.

Then ”The Strangers” moves from mental to physical torture, and, well, that’s right about where things go a little sour. The characters start to do predictably illogical, dumb things — some mind-bogglingly so — simply because the plot requires them to. (Perhaps Bertino would have us believe fear makes logical people develop the I.Q. of sea kelp.) There’s more than one let’s-split-up moment that’s laughable. As the end approaches, “The Strangers” starts a downward spiral toward an end that is so outrageously over-the-top and contrived that it feels like it belongs in a vastly different and inferior film. The finale is an insult to our intelligence — except for the strangers’ frightening explanation of why they targeted Kristen and James — and it’s lazy to boot. 

Does the end ruin “The Strangers”? It comes close, damn close, but the movie’s first half works perfectly as an intense psychological thriller, with Bertino shining an unwelcome light on that primordial human fear: that anyone can get to us anywhere at any time. And for much of the film this new director has the good sense to let tension run amock and let his actors run with it. Bertino would do well to revisit this strategy if he hopes to become anything more than a fifth-rate John Carpenter.

Grade: C