Only now does it occur to me... CHASERS (1994)

Only now does it occur to me... that Dennis Hopper slides a nice little homage to his friend and collaborator David Lynch in his "THE LAST DETAIL-reimagined-as-a-90s-comedy" road movie, CHASERS. The homage in question is an extended shot of a logging truck, just like in TWIN PEAKS.

That's not all: this thing is packed with Lynch collaborators, including BLUE VELVET and DUNE's Dean Stockwell as a car dealership owner:

"Here's to your fuck, Frank!"

WILD AT HEART's Crispin Glover as a put-upon sailor who's been pushed around for too long:

"I'm making my lunch!"

and LOST HIGHWAY's Gary Busey as a marine who clearly is improvising all of his dialogue:



Hopper himself appears as a lingerie salesman with a fake-Karl Malden nose, for some reason:


"Heineken? Fuck that shit!"

Anyway, what we have here is an episodic, charmingly rambling, critically maligned road movie that is better than I expected it to be. Tom Berenger, doing kind of a whisky-ravaged Tom Waits/BEETLEJUICE voice is a hardboiled career member of Shore Patrol, transporting Navy prisoners across the country.

William McNamara (a likable man-génue who deserved a better career––you may have seen him in SURVIVING THE GAME, DREAM A LITTLE DREAM, EXTREME JUSTICE, or Argento's OPERA) plays a young sailor on his last day before discharge. 

 

He's enlisted to help Berenger out with a prisoner transport––though due to a clerical mix-up, the prisoner is unexpectedly a woman.

Played by Erica Eleniak (former BAYWATCH cast member, UNDER SIEGE cake-jumper, and co-star of BETRAYAL and BORDELLO OF BLOOD), she actually brings pathos and humor to a role that could have easily been a caricature. As the unlikely trio crosses the country and bonds with one another (again, THE LAST DETAIL is the point of origin/departure), we meet the whole host of character actors I have already detailed, as well as zany waitress Marilu Henner (TAXI, PERFECT):

and creepy-ass trucker Frederic Forrest (APOCALYPSE NOW, FALLING DOWN):

Born to play a creepy trucker

In the end, CHASERS was Dennis Hopper's final feature as a director, and it's a weird, pleasant relic of the "EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS" era, worth a look for character actor and Americana aficionados. I can probably sum it up best in guessing that Wim Wenders probably loves the shit out of this movie.

Film Review: DEAD MAN (1995, Jim Jarmusch)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 121 minutes.
Tag-line: "No one can survive becoming a legend."
Notable Cast or Crew: Johnny Depp (CRY-BABY, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS), Gary Farmer (ADAPATION, GHOST DOG), Crispin Glover (BACK TO THE FUTURE, WILD AT HEART), Lance Henriksen (NEAR DARK, ALIENS, PUMPKINHEAD), Michael Wincott (THE CROW, ROMEO IS BLEEDING), Eugene Byrd (SLEEPERS, THE SUBSTITUTE 2: SCHOOL'S OUT), John Hurt (ALIEN, I CLAUDIUS), Robert Mitchum (CAPE FEAR, OUT OF THE PAST), Iggy Pop (TANK GIRL, ROCK AND RULE), Gabriel Byrne (THE USUAL SUSPECTS, MILLER'S CROSSING), Jared Harris (NATURAL BORN KILLERS, THE WARD), Billy Bob Thornton (ARMAGEDDON, TOMBSTONE), Mili Avital (STARGATE, THE END OF VIOLENCE), Alfred Molina (RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, SPECIES).  Music by Neil Young.  Cinematography by Robby Müller (REPO MAN, DANCER IN THE DARK, BODY ROCK, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., and PARIS, TEXAS).
Best One-liner: "That weapon will replace your tongue. You will learn to speak through it. And your poetry will now be written with blood."

Welcome to DEAD MAN, the metaphysically brutal 90s art-acid-Western you didn't know you needed, and quite possibly the enduring masterpiece of indie auteur Jim Jarmusch.
 
You could call it 'the ERASERHEAD of Westerns,' or perhaps 'Franz Kafka-by-way-of John Ford,' or maybe 'an Ansel Adams horror movie.'  It shuns Western nostalgia and renounces Hollywood aesthetics. It's tangibly authentic and usually frightening.  A collage of dirty, vintage Americana set to squealing Neil Young soundscapes.  A movie of dark textures, of grease and grit and gristle, of cesspools and ink wells and open wounds, of smoke and gears and timber and bone.






It goes without saying that cinematographer Robby Müller (REPO MAN, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., BARFLY; PARIS, TEXAS) really outdoes himself here.  And for reference, let me remind you that the Academy Award for cinematography that year went to John Toll, for BRAVEHEART.

Our story follows the accountant William "no, not that William Blake" Blake (Johnny Depp) as he journeys from Cleveland to a job out west in the company town of Machine.
 
In a twist that would feel at home in THE TRIAL or THE CASTLE, there is no job––only an endless stream of bureaucratic contempt, paranoid behavior, and existential menace.

Said stream is initiated by an aggressively weird and soot-covered Crispin Glover:

continued by a surly, greasy John Hurt:

and brought to a crescendo by a latter-career Robert Mitchum who, naturally, continues to not give a damn.

My only question is: who got to keep that painting after the shoot wrapped? I'm only asking, cause there happens to be a Mitchum-painting-sized empty space on my living room wall.

Quite obviously, to anyone with even a vague conception of my interests, I think this is magnificent––and we're only about twenty minutes in.

After Blake is forced by circumstance to become a murderer (of Gabriel Byrne, no less!),

he goes on the lam

with a man named Nobody (Gary Farmer), a Native American who came of age after being kidnapped by a "savage circus" traveling show.
 
 Gary Farmer, pictured here doing a Slash impersonation.

The film at this point develops into an episodic, memento mori-style picaresque; an extended meditation on death and dying.  Jim Jarmusch thrives on textural juxtapositions and combinations of actors with different flavors (see also:  MYSTERY TRAIN, NIGHT ON EARTH, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES), and DEAD MAN treats us to several of these bizarre tableaux.  For instance, in one scene, Iggy Pop (wearing a LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE dress),

a molest-y Billy Bob Thornton,

and Jared (son of Richard) Harris share a campfire with Johnny Depp, in turns petting him and being generally terrifying.


Perhaps my favorite element of this scene is that Iggy Pop makes no attempt to conceal his conspicuous Detroit accent.

Elsewhere, we have Hurt, Mitchum, Michael Wincott (THE CROW, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY), Eugene Byrd (SLEEPERS, THE SUBSTITUTE 2), and Lance Henriksen sharing the screen together,


an event that is clearly historic (and possibly on par with this Bill Murray/Robert Mitchum/John Glover shared scene).

I must give special mention to Lance Henriksen, whose résumé already boasts an entire rogue's gallery of frighteningly committed psychos.

He evolves into the film's major antagonist, death-angel of inevitability, a bounty-hunting cannibal of unimaginable cruelty who "fucked his parents," according to the gossip mill.

Perhaps needless to say, Henriksen is scary-good.  He has the look of a boogeyman who wandered beyond the confines of a cursed daguerreotype, and he fully embodies the role.  I'm reminded of the stories of from behind the scenes of NEAR DARK, when the method-acting Henriksen wandered the Southwest for real and picked up hitchhikers, all while in character as a Civil War-era, serial-killing vampire. Yikes! I really hope they had an SFX guy on set for the cannibal scenes...

Lance enjoys some takeout.

Perhaps betraying his Henriksen fandom, Jarmusch inserts a scene where a character says "God damn your soul to the fires of hell!" to which another replies, "He already has," which is a direct line from PUMPKINHEAD.

In connection with Henriksen, I also must make special mention of the film's unique visceral aspects. This isn't quite a gorefest, though there are some exceptionally vivid moments of violence that I remembered with terrible clarity.  That's especially surprising since this was only my second viewing, and my first must have been in 1996 or 1997, shortly after DEAD MAN hit the VHS rental shelves.
 
There is a brutal, dangerous beauty at play here, and the experience lays somewhere between "suffering from fever dreams" and "perusing a haunted taxidermy shop."  Depp, whom I've essentially neglected to mention thus far, brings it all together with a lyrical detachment worthy of his poetic namesake.  Five stars.


P.S.––Note the in-joke of two Johnny Depp-hunting marshals named "Lee" and "Marvin,"
 
a nod to Jarmusch's intense Lee Marvin fandom and notorious secret society, "The Sons of Lee Marvin."



–Sean Gill

Junta Juleil's Top 100: #45-41

45. THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALD DE LA CRUZ (1955, Luis Buñuel)

One of the wildest and weirdest films in Buñuel's entire oeuvre. Often, cineastes delve into Buñuel from one end or the other (either from his early, surrealist works like UN CHIEN ANDALOU and L'AGE D'OR, or from his latter-day international arthouse successes like THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE or BELLE DU JOUR) and neglect the lesser-well-known films of his Mexican catalogue (roughly 1947-1960). There's some real gems in there, films like EL, FEVER MOUNTS IN EL PAO), SUSANA, NAZARIN, and THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALD DE LA CRUZ. Following a daydreaming milquetoast who believes himself responsible for a series of murders (and maybe he is...), the film delves deeply into thought crimes and 'the murderous urge.' Is it aberrant? Perverse? Can it be healthy if not acted upon? Toss in some insane, uncomfortable imagery and a wicked sense of humor and this is one of Buñuel's finest works.


44. KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995, Noah Baumbach)

I first watched KICKING AND SCREAMING the weekend before I graduated from college. I thought it was funny and quotable, sure, but I can't say it had too much of an impact. Then I watched it again about eight months after graduation, and suddenly it was relevant, it was poignant, it was real and it was true. I can't really think of a better example of a film that improves with real-life context, and perhaps it can all be summed up in one critical line of dialogue: "What I used to be able to pass off as a bad summer could now potentially turn into a bad life." But it's hilarious, too, and the whole pre-SQUID AND THE WHALE Baumbach gang is here, and in top form: the deadpan, crossword puzzling Chris Eigeman who at one point faces off with his trashy teenage girlfriend against a man who "ALREADY would rather be bow-hunting," Carlos Jacott's propensity for pajama tops and hiding from the cookie man, Eric Stoltz as the aging perpetual-college-student-bartender dispensing nuggets of wisdom and overseeing an awkward two-man book club, Baumbach himself accusing you of cow-fucking. We've got Parker Posey as the typical (but always welcome) lovably bitchy character that she plays, Elliot Gould as another cypher for Baumbach's own father, and Josh Hamilton and Olivia d'Abo as a doomed(?) couple that forms the emotive core of the picture. In the end, it seems that either you'll connect with the subject matter in KICKING AND SCREAMING, or, like the cacophony of anti-Baumbach voices that accompanied it when it entered the Criterion Collection, you plainly just won't get it. But it doesn't matter– for its target audience, KICKING AND SCREAMING (like other early Baumbachs like HIGHBALL and MR. JEALOUSY) initiates you into a devoted cult where the members say things like "Ding!" and "Gotta have id" and "There's food in the beer" and then chuckle and remember how damned good this film really is. Alright– two last selling points: it features Dom DeLuise's son as a bouncer and the line "Is that copy of DR. GIGGLES letterboxed?" is uttered. Okay, I'll stop now.

43. SEVEN BEAUTIES (1975, Lina Wertmüller)

I don't know what happened to Lina Wertmüller. In the 1970s, she was a top dog in the art film world, she became the first woman ever nominated for the Oscar for Best Director, and her films were adored by critics. In 2011, when I try to have a discussion about her, invariably I have to mention that she did the original version of a terrible Guy Ritchie/Madonna movie (SWEPT AWAY) before I see a flicker of recognition. It's a goddamn shame, because SEVEN BEAUTIES (her masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned) is one of the finest films ever made about the Second World War. Giancarlo Giannini (who would be Wertmüller's De Niro if she were Scorsese) is Pasqualino "Seven Beauties," a pompous, struttin' two-bit hood with seven ugly sisters who becomes wrapped up in a picaresque plotline which ferries him from vicious murder to an insane asylum to a conscription in the Fascist army to the shivering, cold, hard realities of a concentration camp. Darkly comic throughout, it frequently meanders into the grotesque– a starving man must seduce an obese Nazi Shirley Stoler, whose character is based on the notorious "Bitch of Buchenwald;" Buñuel-crony Fernando Rey gives a partly hilarious, partly terrifying performance as a concentration camp prisoner who may have the greatest exit line in filmdom ("I go into the shit!"); and Tonini Delli Colli (who worked with Leone, Fellini, Malle, Polanski, et al.) films for us grand, operatic, colorful images (which are occasionally intruded upon by bodily fluids). Could make for a good double-feature with THE TIN DRUM if you're interested in hastening your own suicide. Regardless, it's a bold vision of passion and hate and war and survival, and it really deserves an exalted position in the canon of world cinema.

42. TENEBRE (1982, Dario Argento)

Oh, boy. TENEBRE. How is it possible that I haven't reviewed this? Where do I even begin?? The ludicrously long crane shot around a piece of modern architecture which has curled the toes and blown the minds of the likes of Brian De Palma and Quentin Tarantino? The skillfully crafted twists and turns which make it, alongside DEEP RED, the most exquisite and hilariously twisty giallo ever written? The stylized murders, which eschew the typical expressionist Argento colored lighting in favor of pure imagery– dilating pupils, the black glove, spurts of blood, and Antonioni-style locales of urban alienation? The tough cop who says he only drinks on duty? The mind-blowing, arcade-frequenting Italo-lesbians? Goblin's pulsating disco score, which, with a roll of synthesized timpani somehow nullifies and transcends all of their prog rock roots? The mind-blowing, transgendered flashbacks? Tony Franciosa's amateur detective work and gosh-darned likability? John Saxon's sleazitude? Daria Nicolodi's endless, endless, endless screams? The incredibly and outrageously self-reflexive plot, which begs the question: DOES DARIO ARGENTO ACTUALLY KILL PEOPLE? Yessir, TENEBRE is all this and more. A dark, bold statement from a master of horror who pulls no punches in his dogged pursuit of cinematic truth and, uh... artistic murders of beautiful women.

41. WILD AT HEART (1990, David Lynch)

As I have said before: Magnificent, beautiful, and disturbing, Lynch's Palm d'or-winning adaptation of Barry Gifford's novel, filtered through the emerald lens of THE WIZARD OF OZ, is certainly as fiery and unpredictable as the slow-motion flames that are wont to erupt intermittently from the screen.
A masterpiece of style, a frequent complaint is that the whole is less than the sum of the parts. I can concede that this film is not for everyone. It's not. But how can you say 'no' to a Nic Cage that's so intense, he karate chops the air when he dances and wears thong underwear; a Laura Dern so sultry, she's posing with her hand sweeping through her coiffure for most of the film; a Willem Dafoe so creepy his gums cover half of his teeth (and whose first appearance, a slow stroll amid Christmas lights and morbidly obese porno actresses- is one of the most comically terrifying entrances in film history); a Harry Dean Stanton so endearing he tugs at your heartstrings even as he yips and yaps at hyenas on TV; a crippled, lipstick-smeared Grace Zabriskie who is so goddamned freaky that she'll make your hair curl; or a Diane Ladd whose tremendous performance is punctuated by the real-life mother-daughter relationship? There's a cameo by Crispin Glover that packs more material and layers of performance and meaning in a mere two minutes than most actors can aspire to in a feature. There's John Lurie in a Confederate flag hat. There's Jack Nance with an invisible dog. There's Angelo Badalamenti making the most blood-curdling use of a brass section, ever. There's homage to Jacques Tati (involving a giant red pipe in Big Tuna) and Akira Kurosawa (the feed store dog with the severed hand like in YOJIMBO). It's 124 minutes of exhiliration, dread, and magical Americana. And there's as much oddness, terror, love, and joy as there really is in this world that's so "wild at heart and weird on top," and to give any more away would do the film a disservice. One of the greats.


Coming up next: Magic glasses, nosey noses, and my favorite ghost movie!


-Sean Gill