|
KEEPING MUM 2005
Written by Richard Russo and Niall Johnson.
Directed by Niall Johnson.
Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Rowan Atkinson, Dame Maggie Smith, Patrick Swayze, Tamsin Egerton and Tobey Parkes.
If you ever want to smile yourself to sleep, Keeping Mum is the sort of thing that could help you along.
Gloria Goodfellow (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an unhappy woman. Her husband Walter (Rowan Atkinson), the vicar of the tiny English town of Little Wallop, is boring, a bit dull witted and hasn’t touched her in a long while. Her daughter Holly (Tamsin Egerton) is sleeping with a series of losers and thinks Gloria is a total bitch. Her son Petey (Tobey Parkes) is a socially undeveloped Mama’s Boy. She can’t even get any sleep because the neighbor’s dog just will not stop barking. Gloria finds her life so unpleasant that she seeks release in a flirtatious, pseudo-affair with the local golf pro (Patrick Swayze), an American who speaks almost exclusively in double entendres. But just as Gloria is ready to throw her life away and run off with her not-quite-lover, a new housekeeper arrives. Grace (Dame Maggie Smith) is a perfect, little, English old lady…except for the fact she spent the last 43 years in an asylum for the criminally insane after she killed her husband and his mistress, cut up their bodies and stuffed them in a trunk. Grace, it seems, has never understood that you can’t just kill anything that annoys you. Now, she’s bringing that attitude to Gloria’s life, fixing all the little things that annoy her like Mary Poppins with a hockey mask and a machete.
Keeping Mum is a funny but very, very sedate movie. There are a few out loud laughs, such as seeing Patrick Swayze in a banana hammock, but this is a film that leaves you smiling much more often than guffawing. For a story about a serial killer, everything is very gentle and laid back. Gloria is unhappy but she isn’t really miserable. She cozies up to the golf pro but never actually cheats on her husband. Her daughter’s a slut but in a harmless fashion. He son is bullied at school, but the bullying is never worse than some boys dumping him over a very low wall. Rowan Atkinson, in particular is much, much more low key in this film than in most of his roles.
I supposed you have to call any comedy about a senior citizen serial killer a “black comedy”, but Keeping Mum lacks any of the bite you associate with the genre. The filmmakers don’t even try and be edgy or provocative. They set out to make a feel good movie about multiple murder and they mostly succeeded.
If you’re looking for high energy laughs, Keeping Mum is not the place to find them. But if you’d like a pleasant little day dream about how all your mundane problems could be solved if you could just get around that whole “Thou Shalt Not Kill” thing, I think you might enjoy this film.
KETTLE OF FISH 2006
Written and Directed by Claudia Myers.
Starring Matthew Modine, Gina Gershon, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Christy Scott Cashman, Fisher Stevens, Kevin J. O’Connor and Ewa Da Cruz.
Kettle of Fish is a romantic-comedy that contains neither romance nor comedy. By no romance, I mean the lead characters and their various paramours have the same sexual chemistry as Spam and grape juice. By no comedy, I mean it’s at least 40 minutes into the film before there’s even a vague, unsuccessful attempt at humor. This is the sort of movie where you start to wonder when exactly the people involved in making it realized what a leaden fiasco it was. I can’t imagine anyone reading this script and thinking it deserved to make it onto the screen, but surely somebody must have figured out what a mistake they were making before they were halfway finished shooting. What must it have been like to spend hours and hours editing this thing only to finally realize no matter how you tried to cut and splice it, Kettle of Fish was never going to be more than a piece of crap?
Mel (Matthew Modine) is a professional musician who normally plays the saxophone in a jazz band headed up by his friend Freddie (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). Mel is 40somthing and looks it, particularly around his saggy neck, but still manages to land a bevy of beauties because in this film’s reality, there’s nothing chicks dig more than middle-aged jazz men who still live like poor college students. As the story begins, Mel is having a mid-life crisis and impetuously decides to move in with Inga (Ewa Da Cruz), his 20something Swedish girlfriend. Mel sublets his apartment to Dr. Ginger Thomas (Gina Gershon), an English scientist who researches the reproductive patterns of frogs. Inga quickly kicks Mel out for being a douchebag, so he weasels his way back into his old apartment and splits the rent with Ginger until she can find her own place.
Mel then becomes smitten with Diana (Christy Scott Cashman), a woman he meets on her wedding day, and becomes so fixated on her that he abandons his music career to be the elevator operator in Diana’s building so he can see her for a few minutes each day. This movie treats that behavior as wistfully charming. In real life, it would qualify as deranged stalking.
As I’m sure you can guess, Mel chases after Diana while he and Ginger fall in love without either of them admitting it to themselves. What passes for clever in this screenplay is that Mel and Ginger bond over Mel’s pet fish. It’s only when Diana is so neglected by her husband (Fisher Stevens) that she throws herself at Mel that he realizes his feelings for Ginger and blah, blah, blah. There isn’t a single original plot development in this entire movie, so if you’ve seen one romantic-comedy then you know exactly how this one goes.
What’s most noticeable about Kettle of Fish is how Matthew Modine has absolutely no emotional connection to any of the actresses in the cast. It’s almost like they all did their own roles in separate rooms and were then combined on screen via computer. The only believable relationship in the entire film is between Mel and Freddie, but that’s of little use since this isn’t about Mel coming to grips with his latent homosexuality. I mean, I’ve always found Modine to be a diffident performer but he might as well be a cigar store Indian for all the attachment he shows to either Ewa Da Cruz, Christy Scott Cashman or Gina Gershon.
Not that Da Cruz, Cashman or Gershon are any better. Inga is less like a woman in love and more like a woman with a learning disability. Diana reacts to both Mel and her husband like she were heavily medicated. When the plot needs to kill time by having Ginger trifle with the affection of a fellow research scientist (James O’Connor), Gershon gives it the same level of feeling as if she were testing the pH level in her swimming pool.
Gershon’s lips are also constantly parted in this film like her teeth were trying to escape from her jaw. Even when her mouth is supposed to be closed, there’s a gap in the middle as though she can’t unpucker. You don’t notice it right away. When you do, though, you can’t stop looking at it.
When I was finished watching Kettle of Fish, I clicked over to the behind-the-scenes feature on the DVD. I only needed to look at it for 25 seconds before knowing everything there is to know about this film. Writer/director Claudia Myers says this was the first script she wrote in film school and it was inspired by movies where people fall in love at first sight. In other words, she didn’t know what the hell she was doing when she wrote it and it’s not based on anything real or meaningful from her own life.
This is one of those rom-coms where the plot is arduously predictable and the actors look like they’d rather be doing commercials for acne medication. Skip it.
KILL BY INCHES 1999
Written and Directed by Arthur Flam and Diane Doniol-Lacroze.
Starring Emmanuel Salinger, Myrian Cyr, Marcus Powell and Christopher Zach.
If you really enjoy films where virtually nothing happens and there’s almost no dialog, Kill By Inches should definitely be on your list of “must-sees”. If you’re more like me and prefer movies where people actually do things and say stuff, avoid Kill By Inches like the plague.
This story is all about Thomas (Emannuel Salinger), an old fashioned tailor in a big city who lives in a rundown apartment above his dilapidated shop. Thomas’ father (Marcus Powell) is also a tailor, but he has little use for his son. Thomas, you see, is terrible at taking measurements. Thomas’ sister Vera (Myriam Cyr) is a much better tailor and is much closer to their father. When Vera returns to the city and starts living in Thomas apartment and working in his shop, her talents only emphasize Thomas’ limitations. Then a weird sewing machine repairman named Hector (Christopher Zach) shows up at Thomas’ shop and starts flirting with Vera.
Here is literally everything else that happens in the film. An endless series of people come in for measurements. There’s an even more endless stream of scenes where Thomas is walking. Vera huffs into a plastic bottle and smears black stuff over her chest. Two terrible things happen and then Thomas wins the measurement competition at the annual Tailor’s Ball. Oh, and Thomas silently stares at everybody.
Now, you may think I’m leaving something out, because how could all of that add up to any sort of story? Well, I haven’t and it doesn’t. Kill By Inches is like a weird, 8 page story written by one of those manic-depressive authors of the 19th century that’s been stretched out on a taffy-pulling machine until it filled up 85 minutes of screen time. If David Lynch had a retarded brother, this is the kind of movie the brother’s even more retarded friend would make.
This film doesn’t even deserved to be called bad, because that would imply there’s something there to be judged. This movie is a void, an overly mannered abyss. I can’t see any point in anyone watching this film. I can’t see what the point was of making this film.
Now, there could be some meaning or symbolism to Kill By Inches that I just don’t get. If there is, though, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to get it and am not missing anything by not getting it.
KILLER FLICK 1998
Written and Directed by Mark Weidman.
Starring Zen Todd, Christian Leffler, Fred Dennis, Creighton Howard, Kathleen Walsh and Emmett Grennan.
While getting ready to write this review, I bopped around the internet to find out a little about Killer Flick writer/director Mark Weidman. He was apparently somewhere in his mid to late 30s when he made this movie. Weidman had no real experience in film except for writing a few scripts that attracted some interest but never made it to production. Somehow, though, he was able to cobble together the financing to make this thing, which never made it out of the film festival circuit and was finally belched out on DVD several years later.
Now, I suppose a lot of people would look at Weidman’s story and find it inspiring. He didn’t go to film school or even really have a career in filmmaking, yet he was able to persevere and see his dream made into reality. However, anyone who finds something heroic or noble in all that would be very, very wrong. The tale of Mark Weidman and Killer Flick is actually a tragedy. A minor one to be sure, but still tragic. It’s story of a guy with little talent and less skill wasting somebody’s money and everybody’s time creating a worthless piece of cinematic garbage that’s now buried like a landmine on video store shelves across the nation, waiting for some unsuspecting person to rent it and see their time and hard earned money vanish in an explosion of nearly unwatchable gunk.
This movie is a postmodern, deconstructionist take on independent filmmaking where a troop of aspiring movie makers that look a lot like a Red Hot Chilli Peppers/Soundgarden cover band drive through the dessert filming their violent, criminal rampages. They’re on their way to Los Angeles to abduct their favorite B movie actor and force him to be in their production. That doesn’t seem like such a terrible concept, does it? It’s easy to imagine doing a lot of crazy, fun and provocative stuff with that idea. Unfortunately, you have to imagine it because what Weidman does is stupid, annoying and pretentious.
Weidman tries to pull off a trippy metanarrative where the film these guys are making becomes the film we’re watching and becomes the reality they’re living. They’re both making a movie, living the movie they’re making and are aware that they’re living the movie they’re making. That’s what Weidman tries to pull off but because he obviously doesn’t understand what he’s trying to do, it never amounts to anything. There’s really nothing trippy or “meta” about Killer Flick at all. It’s just an ordinary, very linear and poorly assembled story where the characters break the 4th wall all the time for no particular purpose.
In fact, the phrase “no particular purpose” applies to just about everything in and about this film. Switching from color to black-and-white, shifting from being a movie to being a movie-within-a movie to being a movie about a movie-within-a-movie, a gay love scene, self-referential commentary about the politics of cinema…it all happens randomly and without purpose. It’s like this cast and crew got together and filmed weeks and weeks of bad improv where they didn’t even remember what they did from hour to hour, then edited it all down to 93 minutes.
We have a habit in America of telling our children that anyone can grow up to be President. That’s not true. Not just anyone can be President. Not just anyone should be President. Well, not just anyone should be able to be a filmmaker either, no matter how much they want to. When just anyone can be a filmmaker, punishing dreck like Killer Flick is the result.
KILLER IMAGE 1992
Written (and I used that term loosely) by Stan Edmonds, David Winning and Jaron Summers.
Directed by David Winning.
Starring John Pyper-Ferguson, Michael Ironside, M. Emmet Walsh, Krista Errickson and Paul Austin.
I’ve done quite a few movie reviews since I started doing this blog. Some were movies I loved, some I just liked, some I hated and some to which I was fairly indifferent. Killer Image is the first film I’ve watched, though, that honestly doesn’t deserve a review.
Bad, lame, boring, pointless, useless…none of those words even begin to describe this story of brothers who both happen to be photographers and get caught up in a political scandal and a convoluted tangle of murder and deception. I’m flabbergasted that this cinematic void has actually been re-released on DVD. I mean, I know it can’t be that expensive to crank out a batch of DVDs and ship them to video stores across the country in the hopes of getting some ignorant folks to plop down money and rent something like Killer Image. But whatever it did cost, that money definitely should have been spent on something else.
I know there some people out there who actually read this stuff, so for you I’ll say this about Killer Image – if you’d like to see M. Emmet Walsh with his shirt off, this is your kind of movie. If you’d like to see Michael Ironside with one of those little, douchebag ponytails, this is your kind of movie. For everyone else, if you see Killer Image sitting on the shelf in your local video store, do not pick it up. Just back slowly away and get something else, even if the only other thing in the story is a Pauly Shore-Angela Landsbury sex tape.
THE KILLING FLOOR 2007
Written by Gideon Raff and Ryan Swanson.
Directed by Gideon Raff.
Starring Marc Blucas, Shiri Appleby, Jeffrey Carlson, Reiko Aylesworth,John Bedford Lloyd, Joel Leffert and Derek Cecil.
There are some elements of The Killing Floor that are quite good. There are far more things that are solidly mediocre. Then there’s stuff that gets worse and worse the more you think about it. Co-writer/director Gideon Raff competently assembles it all but fails to spice up the mediocre or camouflage the worst, producing a movie that falls just short of being okay.
David Lamont (Marc Blucas) is a literary agent in New York City. He’s the sort of guy who lives his life in fast forward, with no time or use for pleasantries unless he’s trying to get himself laid. But he’s also the sort of guy who’d never think of banging his hot secretary Rebecca (Shiri Appleby) because she’s only a secretary.
David has just bought himself a three story penthouse and started to flirt with his beautiful neighbor from downstairs Audrey (Reiko Aylesworth), when weird things start happening. Someone shows up claiming to be the son of the man who used to own David’s penthouse, insisting that he’s the one who owns it. An envelope of photos shows up that seem to show murdered bodies in David’s home. A video tape arrives that shows the police dealing with a triple homicide in the penthouse, but David can’t find any other evidence such a crime took place. Then another video tape shows up, shot by someone who got inside David’s penthouse and filmed him while he was sleeping.
All that quite appropriately freaks David out. The only person he can turn to, however, is an oddly apathetic police detective named Martin Soll (John Bedford Lloyd). David slowly loses all semblance of control and begins violently lashing out against the mysterious forces tormenting him, leading to a deadly resolution and the even more perplexing reason for everything that’s been happening to him.
The Killing Floor gets off on the wrong foot immediately by establishing David Lamont as dick with no redeeming qualities. But he’s not such a colossal dick that you can enjoy seeing terrible stuff happen to him. He’s the sort of garden variety dick where you’re simply unmoved when you watch him being put through the emotional wringer. That’s unfortunate, because Marc Blucas’ performance as David is pretty good. He not only perfectly portrays a dick but when the story start to tear David’s life apart, Blucas responds with a weave of anger and fear that makes the character seem a lot more realistic and proactive than you usually get in this sort of movie. Aside from staying in the penthouse for too long after the craziness kicks in, Blucas gives David reactions that are much more like what a real person would do in his situation.
The other exceptional thing about The Killing Floor is that it manages to keep you guessing as to what’s happening to David and why. Every thriller tries to do this. This movie is one of the few that succeeds. Unfortunately, that leads you to another of the very bad things about this film. It keeps you guessing because the scheme at work is so unrealistic in every practical way that no one could anticipate it. There’s also at least one occasion, and maybe more, where it doesn’t provide the perceptive viewer with the information they’d need to figure things out. In other words, the movie basically cheats at its mystery.
The other plot machinations, acting and direction are all relatively effective but never noteworthy, except for a stretch toward the end where David has to confront the awful things he has done in the course of the story. Powered again by Blucas’ fine work, these scenes are much smarter and more substantive than anything else in the film.
I do have to register one last complaint. There are two sex scenes in this R-rated flick but neither has any genuine nudity. It’s all faux nudity where the naughty bits are always kept strategically covered up. I can appreciate that actors and actresses, especially actresses, may not want to disrobe on camera. However, a sex scene in an R-rated movie ought to have actual naked people in it. If you can’t pull that off, what’s the point in having a PG-13 rated sex scene in an R-rated movie? You might just as well take the high road completely and fade to black.
With a more sympathetic main character, a slightly more believable plot and a good dose of legitimate nudity, The Killing Floor might have been trashy fun. Without those, there isn’t enough right with this movie to overcome all the wrong. There’s certainly lesser films out there you could have the misfortune of seeing, but there’s just as many better films that deserve your attention.
|
