DILLINGER (1973) **

The best scene in John Milius’ Dillinger is the first one.  Warren Oates, mean, scowling, and dangerous as John Dillinger walks into a bank and approaches the teller window.  The camera is positioned so that we are seeing the teller’s point of view.  He addresses the audience in such a way that it feels like we are being held up ourselves.  It’s a startingly effective sequence.  Too bad the rest of the movie never comes close to matching it.

From there, Dillinger and his gang go around finding more banks to knock off.  Along the way, he fancies a young woman (Michelle Phillips from The Mamas and the Pappas) and romances her.  Well, in the only way a guy like Dillinger knows.  Meanwhile, dogged G-Man Melvin Purvis (a fine Ben Johnson) is on Dillinger’s trail, staying one step behind him and his crew.  

After the gripping opening, the film soon falls into a repetitive pattern.  After about the third shootout it gets to be a bit numbing.  Not only was Dillinger meant to capitalize on the success of Bonnie and Clyde, it had to compete with The Godfather too.  That means the various tommy gun deaths are long, drawn-out, and bloody.  That doesn’t really make up for the lack of story and engaging characters though.  

Oates softens up as he goes along, but it’s hard to sympathize with his character or his romantic subplot.  While Bonnie and Clyde may have robbed banks, they were likeable folk hero outlaws.  Oates, who is nevertheless very good in the role, keeps the audience at arm’s length, which makes it difficult to get a handle on him.  The scenes with Johnson work the best.  He has a good gimmick of lighting up a cigar before rubbing out a robber.  It’s a small, but crucial touch that Dillinger’s character doesn’t really have.  

In the end, none of it really gels.  You can, however, bide your time watching the colorful supporting cast do their thing.  Geoffrey Lewis and Harry Dean Stanton make memorable impressions as members of Dillinger’s gang, and Richard Dreyfuss pops up for a bit as Baby Face Nelson (who probably deserved his own spin-off).

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL (2019) ***

I feel like I’ve been hearing about Alita:  Battle Angel for twenty years.  I remember James Cameron wanting to make this manga adaptation right after Titanic, but he never quite had the technology at his disposal to do it justice.  Once he got into the Avatar business full time, Cameron decided to hand the directorial reigns over to Robert Rodriguez while still staying on as a producer and co-writer. 

I’m happy to report Alita:  Battle Angel is exactly what you’d think a Rodriguez version of a Cameron movie looks like.  It may have big ideas and a lavish budget, but it keeps Rodriguez’s scrappy B movie spirit.  One can only imagine what it would look like if Cameron was at the helm.  As it stands, it’s an enjoyable, breezy sci-fi action hodgepodge.

A broken robot (Rosa Salazar) is found in a scrap heap by Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz) who restores her and names her Alita.  As she tries to remember her past, Alita explores the city, finds love, and becomes a bounty hunter.  She also finds time to become a Motorball star and uses her newfound popularity to stick it to Nova (the futuristic version of “The Man”), an omnipotent alien who lives in a spaceship hovering over the city and likes to play God with its citizens.

I know Cameron had been developing this for over twenty years, and sometimes it really shows.  It often feels like a ‘90s movie.  With chintzier CGI and action, it would’ve looked right at home on a double bill with The Matrix.  Heck, even some of the brand-new effects are a little on the cheesy side.  (The attempt to make Alita have enormous anime-style eyes isn’t quite successful.)  Even the sport of “Motorball” (a mix of Rollerball and NASCAR) is firmly stuck in the ‘90s as the contestants wear motorized rollerblades, and folks, it doesn’t get much more ‘90s than rollerblades.

I’m not going to lie.  There are some clunky bits, especially in the late stages of the film.  You could probably make a drinking game for every time Jennifer Connelly’s character conveniently shows up to stir the pot.  I’m not sure if even Cameron could’ve made her scenes work.

Alita also suffers from weak finale.  The final confrontation lacks sparks and it tries too hard to set itself up for a sequel.  Instead of a proper ending, we just get a half-assed cliffhanger, which sends you out of the theater with a bad taste in your mouth.

Despite the disappointing ending, there’s enough invention and fun here to fill two movies.  Rodriguez is clearly having a blast playing in Cameron’s sandbox as he delivers some truly eye-popping visuals.  The action is top notch too as the various swordfights and chase scenes are finely executed.  The Motorball sequence is a real doozy too and sort of plays like a meaner version of one of those video game scenes in Spy Kids 3-D.

Speaking of 3-D, the 3-D effects are just alright.  Not a whole lot pops out at the screen, so you’re probably okay to check it out in 2-D.  The only things that jump out at the audience are:

·         3-D Hands

·         3-D Blades

·         3-D Blowtorch

·         3-D Claws

·         3-D Molotov Cocktail

Salazar has a lot of spunk and screen presence and makes for an ideal lead.  She holds her own with Waltz and is quite convincing in her action sequences.  The supporting cast (most of which play robots or cyborgs) is almost unrecognizable (including the surprise reveal of Nova, which I won’t spoil).  All I’ll say is that for all its faults, Alita:  Battle Angel gives us a scene in which Jeff Fahey plays a grizzled cyborg cowboy who owns a pack of robot hunting dogs.  If that doesn’t make you want to see it, nothing will.

THE SINGING DETECTIVE (2003) **

Robert Downey, Jr. stars as an author hospitalized with a debilitating bout of psoriasis that covers most of his body.  He refuses pain medication, choosing instead to live inside his own head as his literary creation, the fictional title character.  As the doctors endlessly assess his predicament, Downey’s detective alter ego desperately tries to solve a mystery.

A detective molded in ‘40s film noir who sometimes lip syncs to ‘50s pop music inhabiting a Johnny Got His Gun-style wraparound was going to be a tough sell.  I will say director Keith (The Chocolate War) Gordon’s opening, which sets up the premise is sterling.  It establishes the concept in a brisk and effective manner before allowing Downey to cut loose and do his thing.

Unfortunately, it sort of yields diminishing returns as it rambles on.  As Downey heals, the less interesting his character (and the movie, honestly) becomes.  The gimmick of having his fiction creeping into his reality is uneven too.  Sometimes, the results are gripping (like when his doctors stand around gawking at him oblivious to the fact that he can hear them clearly), while others come off clunky (especially the way Downey’s mother and wife become characters in his fantasy). 

Downey is excellent.  I don’t know many actors who could’ve pulled this off this well for this long.  Even he can’t save the movie.  The supporting cast are pretty much left in the lurch, mostly because they’re given stock characters to play that have no real substance.  An unrecognizable Mel Gibson seems to be having the most fun as Downey’s cantankerous doctor.  His out-of-the-box performance alone is worth a look.  However, the rest of The Singing Detective is much too uneven to be considered a success.

THE LAYOVER (2017) **

Kate Upton and Alexandra Daddario are best friends whose flight to Florida gets redirected due to a hurricane.  On the plane, they both become infatuated with a hunk (Matt Barr) sitting next to them.  The trio then decide to take a road trip down to Florida and the two friends soon become bitter rivals as they compete for his affections. 

Director William H. Macy (yes, THAT William H. Macy) tries to make a raunchy R rated comedy with the gender roles reversed (which is an OK idea, I guess), but with only marginal success.  I’m a big fan of all involved.  Daddario and Upton are charming as always and seem to be having fun playing Girls Behaving Badly.  Sadly, they aren’t given much to work with.  The script by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s David Hornsby and Lance Krall feels like a leftover It’s Always Sunny script.  That might not have been so bad if there were some genuine laughs here.

Macy is one of the greatest actors of his generation.  As a director, he doesn’t have much in the way of style.  It’s hard to see what drew him to the material in the first place as most of the gags revolve around poop, burping, sex, and drugs.  Some enjoyment can be found from seeing Upton and Daddario being totally willing to make a fool of themselves, but they really deserved a vehicle worthy of their talents. 

COLD PURSUIT (2019) ****

I know y’all aren’t watching Liam Neeson movies anymore, and that’s a damn shame because Cold Pursuit just might be the finest film of his latter-day career.  It hits all the notes you want to see from a Neeson revenge picture, but there’s a lot more going on here than just that.  It starts simplistically enough (Neeson is a snowplow driver who is out to avenge the death of his son by some unscrupulous drug dealers) before slowly revealing a grand canvas of violence begetting violence until the bodies begin piling up like cordwood.

It’s a terrific showcase for its supporting cast of colorful characters.  Many of these actors I have never heard of, but all of them shine brightly and leave memorable impressions in their brief screen time.  The best was the ever-reliable William Forsythe as Neeson’s ex-con brother.  

I also wasn’t expecting it to be so damned funny.  There are more laughs here than most recent TV comedies have in an entire season.  Imagine if the Coen Brothers, or maybe even ‘90s era Quentin Tarantino made a Liam Neeson actioner and it might’ve looked a lot like Cold Pursuit.  It’s full of quirky characters, surprising bursts of violence, and colorful dialogue.  The best part is the monologue by one of the villain’s goons about maids in hotels. 

Don’t fret die-hard Neeson fans.  The straightforward revenge stuff is still great.  Director Hans Petter Moland is smart enough not to skimp on the good stuff.  I especially loved how Neeson isn’t very good at killing people in the beginning.  When he murders a guy in a parking garage, he parks so far away that he has to drag the body a long way before putting it into his van.  Later, it takes him multiple tries to strangle a guy to death. 

He gets good at it really quick though.  Neeson gets this one guy all alone, pulls a gun on him, and proceeds to punch him with the gun.  That’s right, folks.  This movie features gun punching.

There are no wasted moments in Cold Pursuit.  Every scene builds on the last.  Each scene is surprising, unique, and morbidly funny in its own way.  By the time Neeson’s using heavy machinery to plant trees in the villain’s Tesla you got to tip your hat to the filmmakers.  They have taken a thoroughly standard action template and turned it into a fascinating, absurd, and unforgettable masterpiece.

PIRANHA (1995) ***

Long before Alexander Aja’s wild and wooly Piranha remake, we got this remake of Joe Dante’s classic from director Scott (Midnight Tease) Levy.  It was part of Roger Corman Presents, a Showtime series that consisted mostly of remakes of Corman’s old titles, with a few originals tossed in there to pad out the season.  The remakes that tried to revamp the classic Corman movies were met with varying degrees of success.  For every ho-hum entry like the Humanoids from the Deep remake, there was a fun one like Wasp Woman to balance things out.  This is one of the good ones.

The cast for this thing is pretty phenomenal.  We have William Katt, Alexandra Paul, Mila Kunis (making her screen debut), Monte Markham, Soleil Moon Frye, James Karen, Lorissa McComas, Leland Orser, and Don Pedro Colley just to name a few.  Even if all of this feels overly familiar (ever the thriftster, Corman even recycled the fish attack scenes from the original movie), the cast alone keeps you watching.

Scream Queen McComas plays the skinny-dipping first victim who who makes an Attack of the Crab Monsters reference before being eaten.  Paul is the private investigator sent to look for her.  She teams up with tracker Katt and together, they stumble upon the Army test site where the piranhas were being experimented on.  They accidentally unleash the deadly fish into the river, which just so happens to lead to a summer camp where Katt’s daughter (Kunis) is attending.  

As far as the Piranha franchises goes, this is somewhere in the middle of the pack.  It’s missing the out and out fun of Dante and Aja’s pictures and lacks the goofy charm of James Cameron’s Piranha 2 and John Gulager’s Piranha 3DD.  It’s still a fairly enjoyable time waster.  It moves at an acceptable pace and the piranha attacks occur at a steady clip.  The highlights include a gnarly scene where a fisherman gets his feet bitten off, a golden retriever being turned into Dog Chow, and a skinny-dipper losing an arm.  

Levy’s direction is a little workmanlike, which prevents it from really cutting loose.  While it all might suffer in comparison to the other Piranhas, it does contain a scene in which Punky Brewster gets eaten by killer fish.  You can’t say that about any of the other films in the series, that’s for sure.  Because of that, this Piranha is OK by me. 

Jim Wynorski was credited as a “Piranha Wrangler”.  

AKA:  Piranha 3.  AKA:  Piranha ’95.

FREEWAY 2: CONFESSIONS OF A TRICKBABY (1999) ** ½

Matthew Bright’s wild Freeway played like a crazy modernized version of Little Red Riding Hood.  This one is more like Hansel and Gretel.  It’s not as consistently entertaining as the original, but it still has that same batshit insane DNA running through its veins.  

White Girl (Natasha Lyonne) and her serial killer cellmate Cyclona (Maria Celedonio) escape from juvie and head to Mexico.  Along the way, Cyclona goes off her meds and kills a bunch of people.  They’re kind of like Hansel and Gretel, only instead of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, they leave a trail of crack.  Some crackheads come along and steal the crack rocks and our heroines wind up getting lost in the woods.  Eventually they wind up in Tijuana where they meet the nun (Vincent Gallo) who raised Cyclona.  The girls realize all too late that the sister is actually a demented cannibal pedophile.

Bright only made a handful of films, which is unfortunate because every one of them I have seen has been unique, unpredictable, and kinda crazy.  Even this one, which isn’t exactly great has its moments of inspired weirdness.  (The first twenty minutes has more scenes of bulimic girls puking than you can shake a stick at.)  It’s not a patch on the original, but there’s enough craziness here to make me kind of wish Bright made another sequel.  

Gallo turns in one of his weirdest performances.  He dials his trademark arrogant persona way down, which sort of works against him.  It’s certainly something to see, but his half of the movie is easily the weakest.  It’s definitely more fun when Lyonne and Celedonio are on the run.  The supporting cast, which include David Alan Grier as Lyonne’s lawyer and John Landis as an incredulous judge are a lot of fun though.

Fun Fact #1:  According to IMDb, this was originally going to be directed by Doris Wishman, which would’ve been… something.

Fun Fact #2:  George Erschbamer, director of the Snake Eater trilogy, was the second unit director. 

AKA:  Freeway 2:  Highway to Hell.  AKA:  Trickbaby (Freeway 2).