Frequency: Feel-good science fiction

Though many concepts in science-fiction are ones we wouldn’t want to see played out in reality (would you really want to be cloned, or to live on another planet?), time travel has a wide and irresistible appeal. Rod Taylor’s adventures in The Time Machine linger on in the memories of those weaned on the late, late show, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which is, after all, an odyssey through one man’s past, present, and future, comes back to haunt us every Christmas Eve. Even the crew of the Starship Enterprise reached their widest audience (one that included more than Trekkers) with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in which Captain Kirk and company returned from the future to visit present day San Francisco. The opportunity to once again see long dead loved ones, relive past pleasures, and rectify mistakes satisfies almost every yearning we have.

Yearning is at the heart of Frequency, directed by Gregory Hobbit from a screenplay by Toby Emmerich. It avoids the cliches of most time travel stories (there are no amusing scenes of the hero grappling with modern morals or technology), and goes most of them one better by having a believable and quite moving family relationship at its center.

The film opens in October 1969, a period quickly established with references to some of the year’s keystone events: the Mets are in the World Series (and would win in an amazing come from behind victory), and, when Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid) dances in his kitchen with his wife, Julia (Elizabeth Mitchell), it’s to the accompaniment of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” the recording that put the King back on his throne at the top of the pop charts. Frank dotes on his son, John, singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to him every night before bedtime, and he unwinds from the pressures of his job as a firefighter by endlessly puffing Camels, following his beloved Mets, and communicating with strangers on the other side of the airwaves on his pre-Internet ham radio.

Thirty years into the future, his son John is a 36 year-old cop, estranged from his girlfriend, immersed in the pursuit of a serial killer, and generally dissatisfied with life. Now living in his childhood home, he begins tinkering with his late father’s ham radio, and while discussing the Mets one night with a stranger on the airwaves, he tunes into the past. The baseball fan with whom he is speaking is not a stranger at all, but his father, alive and kicking in the year 1969. It is the day before his death in a warehouse fire.

Needless to say, the son warns his father of his impending doom, and the tragedy is avoided. But one does not change the past without impacting the future, and though Frank’s life has now been lengthened by twenty years (lung cancer from his cigarette habit is now set to claim him in 1989), disaster looms for others, including Julia, in the form of the Nightingale Killer, a psycho who has been murdering young women.

At this point, Frequency turns into a thriller, and a rather predictable one at that (spotting the killer is a piece of cake), but the thrills are well-handled by director Hobbit, and you’ll likely tighten the grip on the arm of your chair as father and son go head to head with the killer. More importantly, the tenderness of the father-son relationship is never overwhelmed by the plot’s many twists and turns, or by the action that almost dominates the film midway through. It is the tenderness that gives Frequency a special glow that is maintains from the first reel through the amusingly memorable and touching climax.

There are nice special-effects, but they are limited. It is the humans who take center stage. Dennis Quaid is excellent as usual, bringing an “average guy” vividly to life without resorting to condescension or sentimentality. Caviezel is equally good, and though Elizabeth Mitchell’s Julia has comparatively little screen time, she uses it well, conveying the strength of a woman who deeply loves her family, and whose love is abundantly returned. Andre Braugher, the fiery cop of TV’s “Homicide,” is less fiery here, but he provides a solidity that helps keep this imaginative yarn grounded in reality.

Frequency is a “feel good movie,” but one mercifully lacking the innocuousness that such a description often implies. Like time travel itself, Frequency casts a spell that is hard to resist.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal
© 2001 Brian W. Fairbanks


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A.I.: When Stanley Met Steven

Steven Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick had at least two things in common. Both are names associated with world class film making and both embraced science-fiction, a genre shunned by respectable filmmakers until Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey redeemed it from its B movie associations in 1968. Otherwise, these two directors are known for radically different styles. For Kubrick, people were often less important than their environment. Most of his films present characters dwarfed by their surroundings, be it space (2001), or a snowed in hotel with an ominous past (The Shining). The cold landscapes of such films led many critics to charge him with misanthropy. No such charge has ever been made against Spielberg whose films often reek of sentimentality and even cuteness.

It's hard to imagine two more unlikely bedfellows, but now we have A.I (Artificial Intelligence), a film that the notoriously slow Kubrick (only 13 films in five decades) planned to direct with Spielberg producing. Kubrick's death in March 1999 put the reins in Spielberg's hands (Kubrick is now listed as a producer) and the result is a curious credit for both. With cloning so much in the news, the subject matter is timely, although it's set in the post-apocalyptic future and deals not with clones but robots. No matter how lovable and cuddly David (Haley Joel Osment) may be, he is still a machine, adopted by a couple whose own son has died but has been frozen in the hope that science can resurrect him. David adapts well to the household, giving and receiving love like the best of children, but when the son is revived and returns home, David is suddenly an outsider who suffers from the lack of attention that is now bestowed on the "real" son.

Abandoned, and accompanied only by Teddy, a walking and talking "super toy," he now roams a world hostile to the robots that were mass-produced to such an extent that they threaten to outnumber the humans. Taking up with Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), a fellow robot, he eludes those intent on destroying him because, as the first and only child robot, he is, as he says himself, "unique and special." But David's quest seems an impossible one: to find the Blue Fairy from the story of Pinocchio (which his adopted mother had read to him) whom he believes can turn him into a real boy worthy of his mother's love. David may not have to eat, sleep, or die like a mere mortal, but unlike the fully grown robots in his midst, he can be hurt just as he can love and be loved.

At times, you can spot Kubrick's influence, especially in the cold world of the Flesh Carnival, an organized rally in which humans delight in destroying the captured robots, but it is Spielberg's more humanitarian imprint that dominates. Some critics have even taken him to task for what they call a "happy ending," but I found the conclusion wistful and sad. However one views the finale, A.I provides plenty of food for thought at a time when it is now possible to create life in a laboratory. It also offers a moving John Williams score, and plenty of dazzling visuals, none of which overpower the remarkable performance of Haley Joel Osment. Even more than Spielberg or Kubrick, this film belongs to him.


Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal
© 2001 Brian W. Fairbanks



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Ed Wood: A great movie about the world's worst director

Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood is a superb piece of work; a love letter to movie lovers. You can’t help but chuckle at the irony that this film about the man dubbed "the worst director of all-time" was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning in each of its categories. Edward D. Wood, Jr., a man whose work guaranteed that he would never collect an Oscar, was honored, if only second-hand, by the Academy sixteen years after his death at age 54.

Wood’s low-budget films are now legendary for their ludicrous writing, inept production, and amateurish acting. Cardboard tombstones may topple over, walls may shake and nearly collapse with the opening of a door, and scenes of stampeding buffalo may appear out of nowhere, but such disastrous moments represented nothing more to Wood than the suspension of belief. For all his incompetence, however, Wood did not really warrant the title of the world’s worst film director. That title would more accurately be slapped on a filmmaker who bores his audience. Wood can be accused of many cinematic crimes, but boring his audience is a charge for which any viewer of Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and his masterpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space will certainly clear him. Wood’s films are generally hilarious, a distinction that redeems his otherwise misguided productions.

It’s clear from Tim Burton’s treatment of Wood’s unusual story that the director of such offbeat, big budget hits as Batman, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas, likes his subject. As portrayed by Johnny Depp, Ed Wood is a charmingly good-natured innocent who is madly in love with movies.

"All I want to do is tell stories," he says, and though his talent is not equal to his ambition, Wood told stories--poorly, perhaps, but with a sincerity that make them hard to resist.

Wood’s love for his craft is strong, however, too strong to reject even though he is repeatedly rejected by critics, studio heads, and even some of the oddest oddballs in the underground exploitation market of the movie business with whom he is forced to do business. Along the way, he must also compromise his integrity, if he has any, by making changes in the cast lineup to include an investor’s son, and even changing the title of his film, Grave Robbers From Outer Space, to Plan 9 from Outer Space to accommodate the conservative Christians who finance Wood’s bizarre epic about alien invasion.

Unlike the Medveds, Harry and Michael, whose Golden Turkey Awards brought about Wood’s resurgence, Burton’s film is not smug. It doesn’t patronize its subject, but instead celebrates Wood’s love affair with film, a love no doubt shared by the maker of Ed Wood. That passion for the magic of moviemaking is evident throughout the film, and is what makes it a surefire candidate for cult status in the years to come. This is a film buff’s movie, hence its failure at the box-office when released in time for Halloween 1994. To fully enjoy Ed Wood almost requires an all consuming passion for the movies, good and bad movies alike.

The sets and black-and-white photography are beautiful to behold, the script by Rudolph Grey and Scott Alexander is fresh and alive with many memorable moments, and the performances are first-rate. As the angora sweater wearing Wood, Johnny Depp is simply wonderful. Jeffrey Jones nails phony psychic Criswell to a T, Bill Murray is his always delightfully insincere self as Bunny Breckinridge, the effeminate member of Wood’s ensemble who is obsessed with having a sex change operation, and Lisa Marie is sexy, stunning, and arrogantly aloof as horror movie hostess Vampira. Sara Jessica Parker also shines as Wood’s long suffering girlfriend, as does Patricia Arquette as her replacement for Wood’s affections, and Juliet Landau as the most ambitious member of Wood’s ragtag repertory company. Even the great Orson Welles is briefly resurrected from the grave, seems to be, anyway, thanks to Vincent D’ Onofrio’s magical cameo as Wood’s idol.

Then there’s Martin Landau’s Oscar winning portrayal of the tragic Bela Lugosi. Spouting profanity laced insults at his rival Boris Karloff, admiring the "jugs" on Vampira, and pompously but artfully reciting Wood’s generally atrocious dialogue, Landau does not merely inhabit some very impressive makeup, he appears to serve as a medium for the long dead actor’s spirit. Prior to the film’s release, Landau stated that he wished not only to portray the screen’s legendary horror star, but to give a great Lugosi performance. He succeeds on both counts.

Everything about Ed Wood clicks perfectly. The film pays tribute not only to Wood, but to the era - the 1950’s - in which he made his very unique mark. It conjures a mood similar to Joe Dante’s Matinee, but even more delightfully. Ed Wood, a tribute to the man who made some of the worst movies in history, is one of the best pictures of 1994, and one of the greatest films ever made about the movies.

Brian W. Fairbanks

© 1994 Brian W. Fairbanks


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A Perfect World

When A Perfect World opened in American theaters in November 1993, the folks at Warner Bros. no doubt believed their world was perfect. After all, if a movie starring double Oscar winners and box-office champions Kevin Costner and Clint Eastwood isn't a sure bet with audiences, what is?

The answer: Robin Williams in a dress.

A Perfect World opened the same day as Mrs. Doubtfire, and while the latter mined gold at the box-office for several months, A Perfect World fizzled out after making a comparatively grim $30 million. Yet this film that marked Clint Eastwood's first directorial effort since winning a pair of Oscars for producing and directing Unforgiven, is one of Eastwood's best efforts, and features the most commanding performance Kevin Costner has ever given.

A Perfect World centers around Butch Haynes (Costner), an escaped convict who abducts a small boy (T.J. Lowther) whom he nicknames Buzz. The boy was abandoned by his father and finds in Haynes a surrogate, albeit one who thinks nothing of putting a bullet through the head of a fellow escapee. As they roam Texas, the two establish a bond. Abused as a child, Haynes is determined to provide Buzz with the father figure neither of them had, but Haynes' conception of fatherhood is twisted as a result of his having lived a life of crime since he was his captive's age. Tragedy is not far behind, nor is Red Garrett (Eastwood), a Texas ranger who, with his deputies and a criminologist (Laura Dern), is tracking Haynes in a camper slated for use by President Kennedy during his upcoming visit to Dallas. The time is November 1963.

Like most of Eastwood's directorial efforts, A Perfect World takes its time - 138 minutes - getting to where it wants to go. The pace is leisurely and the acting is exceptional, especially by Costner who, shedding his clean good guy image, gives his best performance to date. His facial expression as he watches a young boy get slapped by his father is particularly memorable, conveying the pent up anger he feels about his own misguided upbringing. Lowther is equally good, on hand as an actor, not just a cute kid. Eastwood, in a supporting role (in which he takes second billing for the first time since appearing with Shirley Maclaine in 1970's Two Mules for Sister Sara), lets Costner and Lowther take center stage while Dern is shoved into the background so much that her role is superfluous.

For its first two hours, A Perfect World is a compelling drama. Unfortunately, those final eighteen minutes, featuring one of the longest death scenes ever filmed, are so melodramatic as to be ludicrous. Because of that, A Perfect World misses the bullseye after spending so much time precisely on target. Still, Costner and Lowther make such a terrific team, and their misadventures are so believably rendered, that A Perfect World, though not perfect, is very good, indeed.

Brian W. Fairbanks

© 1993 Brian W. Fairbanks


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Insomnia: Pacino keeps you awake

In the tiny coastal village of Nightmute, Alaska, the sun never sets but bursts through the clouds and the blinds of Los Angeles detective Will Dormer's room twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day. But is it the sun that is keeping him awake or his conscience?

Insomnia, a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film, lets its troubled 'hero' face his dark night of the soul in constant daylight as if to taunt him with the knowledge that every secret, every dirty deed, will be brought to light, sooner or later.

Dormer (Al Pacino) is a good cop with a sterling reputation whose cases are studied in police academies. But he carries his commitment to justice too far by planting evidence, once to ensure that a child killer would not escape conviction. Now, with the Internal Affairs division of the LAPD digging into his past cases, he's been sent with his partner to Nightmute to help the local police solve the murder of a teenage girl.

With his nerves already frayed from the pressure he's under back home, Dormer stumbles around in a perpetual state of unease, rarely sleeping as he piles blankets, pillows, and anything handy against the windows to block out the midnight sun. With his partner, he pursues a suspect through a thick daylight fog, and, unable to see, makes a major mistake which he compounds by trying to conceal it. Unfortunately, the suspect, a writer of dime store mystery thrillers named Walter Finch (Robin Williams) who is, in fact, guilty, witnesses Dormer's deed and blackmails him into silence.

Insomnia then becomes a cat and mouse game, a battle of wits between two guilty men, both of whom try to justify their actions but fail miserably in the attempt. But who is the guiltier of the two? Finch, a cold blooded killer, or the unethical but well-intentioned Dormer who is caught in a trap of his own design with two possible means of escape: compromise the truth still further, or destroy his reputation by owning up to his mistakes.

Directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento), Insomnia gives Al Pacino his best role since 1995's Heat. Bleary-eyed and operating on a sleep deprived brain, he suffers hallucinations as Finch claws through his crumbling conscience. Despite the almost Shakespearean tragedy of his character, Pacino avoids the scenery chewing he has engaged in too often of late, and gives his best performance since The Godfather films.

In a welcome change of pace from the sweet and maddeningly coy roles he usually plays, Robin Williams is also effective as Finch. Ditto Hillary Swank as the novice Alaskan cop who idolizes Dormer. The Alaskan setting is a compelling character in itself. Its icy beauty and almost barren landscape create an isolating effect as symbolic of Dormer's life as that ever present daylight is of his nagging guilt. Although Insomnia has the obligatory chase scenes, it is not an action film. It is a character study and an exceptionally fine one.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal
© 2002 Brian W. Fairbanks


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Boat Trip: Not so gay comedy

When people talk of an Oscar curse, they might point to Cuba Gooding, Jr's career as proof that it does indeed exist. Since winning the gold as best supporting actor for 1996's Jerry Maguire, the affable African-American actor's work has been so unimpressive that the actors he defeated in that Oscar race - William H. Macy, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Edward Norton, and James Woods - should demand a recount and perhaps plot a daring Ocean's Eleven-like robbery to remove the gold statuette from his mantel.

The latest mediocrity to which Gooding Jr is attached is Boat Trip, a waterlogged comedy that might have sailed smoothly if they had patched up the holes in the script with some genuine laughs.

The plot is right out of a TV sitcom. Jerry (Gooding Jr) and best buddy Nick (Horatio Sanz), depressed about the sorry course their love lives have taken, sign up for a singles cruise, hoping to meet the loves of their lives, or at least partake of some meaningless sex. When booking the cruise, they offend the gay travel agent (Will Farrell) who - get ready for some big laughs - sends them off on an all male GAY cruise! Just imagine the hilarity that could result from that scenario. Unfortunately, you'll have to imagine it because there is nary a chuckle to be had from the stale script, so hoary it might have been salvaged from the garbage pail in which producers tossed story ideas deemed too juvenile for The Love Boat.

Of course, it's obvious that the cruise is populated by gay men, after all, the cruise is populated almost exclusively by males, but it's not obvious to Jerry and Nick because, as in most bad comedies, their ignorance concerning their situation is supposed to be amusing. Instead, it just makes the characters look dumb. Suffice it to say, they catch on eventually, and Jerry, smitten with one of the few females on board, a man hating dance choreographer played by Rosalyn Sanchez, takes advantage of her belief that he's gay to get close and woo her.

The acting is strictly adequate, but then adequate is about all Gooding, Jr. has ever been. Charming and likeable, but not noticeably talented, he suggests that Oscar is a curse only to those who win undeservedly. Sanchez is attractive and should appeal to the heterosexual males who would consider seeing a film with a gay theme.

The only other bright spot in the cast is former 007 Roger Moore as a homosexual who develops the hots for chubby Nick, who, for all of his homophobic behavior, realizes he's gay in the end. This is nothing but politically correct slop meant to endear the film to gay audiences after the film has spent so much time having fun at their expense. Most of the homosexuals in the film are swishy stereotypes. That seems to have offended some gay critics, but since drag queens and other gay stereotypes can be found in abundance in gay bars and pride parades, the only thing really offensive about Boat Trip is that it fails as a comedy. It isn't funny. Neither is the course of Cuba Gooding, Jr's career.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal
© 2001 Brian W. Fairbanks


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The Band (and Dylan) in The Last Waltz

The Last Waltz is Martin Scorsese’s glossy souvenir of The Band's final concert on Thanksgiving night 1976 at San Francisco's Winterland Theater. With a major auteur behind the camera, The Last Waltz has more of the weight of a "real movie" than most rock documentaries, the majority of which have been made on the cheap, in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for theatrical distribution. Filmed in 35mm, Scorsese’s film looks more professional, but like most rock docs, it will likely appeal only to fans of its main subject.

The Band came to prominence in 1966. They were still known as The Hawks when they provided Bob Dylan with an electric arsenal that wowed and enraged his fans on a tour of Europe, preserved by Columbia Records on The Bootleg Series Volume Four: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (actually recorded in Manchester, hence the quotation marks) belatedly released in 1998. Following Dylan’s motorcycle accident, they holed up with the bard in Woodstock and made the series of delightfully crude recordings that came to be known as The Basement Tapes. The Band’s Dylan connection meant the world was listening when they released their debut album, Music from Big Pink, in 1968.

Dylan appears near the finale performing "Forever Young," "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down," and leading an all-star lineup on "I Shall Be Released."

In between the musical numbers with the other guest performers (Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Dr. John, and even Neil Diamond), there are interviews with The Band, most prominently Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson, in which they reminisce about music and light too many cigarettes. For the avid fan, this may be fascinating stuff. For the rest of us, it’s mildly interesting.

The Last Waltz was billed as The Band's "Farewell Concert” which may have inspired all those other rock bands, such as The Who, in the dozen or so “farewell” tours they embarked on in the years to come.


Brian W. Fairbanks

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks


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