A great film about 'Bad Times at the El Royale'

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm, Lewis Pullman, Dakota Johnson, Chris Hemsworth, and Cailee Spaeny
Director: Drew Goddard
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Four people (Bridges, Erivo, Hamm, and Johnson) check into the El Royale, a motel built across the California/Nevada state line. Each one of them has secrets, including the motel... and before the night is over, all those secrets will be revealed and writ large in blood.

Some films are nearly impossible to review without spoiling them... and "Bad Times at the El Royale" is one such picture. While it's visually gorgeous and expertly filmed; while the set design is perfect; while every actor gives a great performance, surrounded and supported by perfectly designed sets, which combine to bring to life a tightly woven tale about the most consequential night in the lives of the main characters... while all those things make the film worth watching, the real excitement comes from seeing the secrets come to light and discovering who these people really are. And if I were to comment on those, I would rob you of the greatest pleasure this film has to offer.

The clearest evidence that it's the revealing of secrets that drives this film is the way the film seems to slow down when Chris Hemsworth's character (Billy Lee) arrives on the scene, during the final act. It's a character that's pivotal to the story, and closely tied to the secrets held by a couple other characters, but Billy Lee himself has no hidden aspects to show. Further, his role in the story as the final catalyst to bring everything to a head is plain even before he arrives at the motel, so, even though the action around him is tense and thrilling, I found myself wishing the movie would get going toward the conclusion that was already foregone at that point. (Yes... there could have been another twist or two--and there was a split-second where I thought writer/director/producer Drew Goddard was going to introduce one--but he didn't.)

Hemsworth and the sequence involving him were absolutely necessary--this is a movie where EVERY second of screen time matters and is used to its fullest extent--it just isn't as engaging as what's led up to it, because there isn't any "oh wow!" moments in it. In a movie where even a motel has multiple secrets to surrender, the guy who is completely transparent is just a little dull, no matter how dangerous the character is, nor how brilliantly he is brought to life the actor.

Although I just spent who paragraphs being negative, I want to stress that this is the only thing I can be negative about with this movie without engaging in some serious nitpicking. If you like the film noir genre, if you like well-done and creatively executed thrillers, then I think you absolutely must see "Bad Times at the El Royale". Heck, this is a movie where even the title is perfect... it refers not only to the night the main characters are about to have, but to the decline of the motel itself.

'Modesty Blaise' is fun, but not much like source

Modesty Blaise (1966)
Starring: Monica Vitti, Terence Stamp, Clive Revill, Dirk Bogarde, Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, and Rosella Falk
Director: Joseph Losey
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Adventuress Modesty Blaise (Vitti) and her sidekick Willie Garvin (Stamp) are lured out of semi-retirement by the British government with a promise of a massive payday if they stop an unknown enemy from interfering with a shipment of diamonds promised to an eccentric Middle Eastern leader (Revill) in exchange for "oil considerations." However, the mysterious opponent is Blaise's old enemy Gabriel (Bogarde)--a crime lord who secretly funds his underground empire with his mother's money--and he's not only familiar with all of Blase's tricks, but he's two steps ahead of everyone.

"Modesty Blaise" is one of those movies I wish I could like more than I do, because there is alot to like about it. First of all, it's got a timeless adventure tale at its heart with the Mid-East/West relationship and how the characters interact as relevant today as in 1966; Modesty and Willie's partnership and how they know each other so well they can predict just about everything the other is going to do is fascinating and completely free of the sexual tension that filmmakers usually insist on tossing into a male/female partnership; the villains manage to be creepy and funny at the same time--not to mention they were ripped off for the James Bond flick "Golden Eye"; and every actor featured puts on an excellent performance.

On the downside, there are many things that the filmmakers included intentionally that undermined by enjoyment of the film. The worst of these were elements of absurdity that made served no story purpose and made no sense no matter how you looked at them, such as the way Modesty Blaise would change hair color and clothes in an instant, sometimes as we watched her on screen and the ridiculous costumes they had her dressed in on a couple of occasions. I suspect the filmmakers thought this added to the lighthearted, goofy tone of the film, but it was actually just stupid and nonsensical.

An unintentional weakness is that the film features some of the absolute worst fight scenes ever put on film. Not only are they badly choreographed and lame--your average SCA members or even nine-year-olds used to playing "Cops and Robbers" in the backyard could have done better jobs--and has stunt doubles so badly matched to the main actors that I'll never mock those who appeared in some of Steven Seagal's movies ever again. There simply isn't a single melee fight that even approaches believeable or exciting in this film, and the only reason the big battle at the end works is that it's played for laughs.

I imagine that hardcore fans of the classic "Modesty Blaise" comic strip by Peter O'Donnel and Jim Holdaway were mighty upset with this goofy movie was released. I imagine many of them get upset today. I can understand that a little bit... I have fond memories of reading those strips and in compilations some 25-30 years ago. However, this is a fun movie, no matter how unserious it is. It could have been a great movie--and there are some great things about it that make it worth seeing even 40 years after its initial release--but the filmmakers went overboard on their silliness and ended up weakening their end product.

I think the film is worth seeing, but it's not necessarily one for which you should pass up for something else that looks interesting.

Your marital problems ain't nuttin'

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2006)
Starring: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
Director: Doug Liman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

John and Jane (Pitt and Jolie) meet by chance while both are on business in Bogota, fall in love, and get married a few months later. However, their separate professional lives and the secrets they are keeping from each other soon take a toll on their marriage, as they are both professional assassins working for competing firms. The truth comes out when they are both assigned to take out the same target.


"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a fun action movie that manages to dish out quite a bit of commentary on marriage, love, and friendship in between shoot-outs and chases. The film's a bit slow in its wide-up, but once it gets going it keeps you engaged. The action's okay and the jokes are funny. (The freeway mini-van chase is particularly exciting AND amusing.)

Pitt once again shows that he's one of the funnest actors working today, and Jolie pulls off a great assassin-turned-suburban housewife routine. Both stars also manage to present characters that are both tough and vulnerable (at least as far as one another are concerned).

There's no deep messages here, and the action scenes aren't groundbreaking, but aside from a slightly sluggish start, there's nothing particularly bad about the film. It's one of those where you can just turn off your brain and laugh at the mayhem.

'High Anxiety' is a Mel Brooks masterpiece

High Anxiety (1977)
Starring: Mel Brooks, Madeline Khan, Harvey Korman, and Cloris Leachman
Director: Mel Brooks
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When psychiatrist Richard Thorndyke (Brooks) takes a new job as director of the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous, he finds that something is amiss. Before he can take action, he is framed for murder and set on the run. In order to clear his name, he must face his own neurotic condition, "high anxiety."


In "High Anxiety", one of cinema's greatest satirists takes on the works of Alfred Hitchcock, and he does so beautifully. In theory, this should be a movie that doesn't work, because making a satire of a body of work that's already rich in comedy--Hitchcock's movies mostly mix suspense and humor in near equal amounts--but Brooks manages to deliver a film that keeps viewers chuckling, giggling, and issuing full belly laughs in order to clear his name. Fans of Hitchcock will be laughing especially loudly and consistently, as Brooks not only offers spot-on spoofs of some of Hitchcock's most famous scenes, but provides affectionate mockery of many of his most-used stylistic flourishes. (And when Brooks isn't spoofing Hitchcock, he's delivering random insanity, such as Leachman's Nazi nurse character.)

And then there's the catchy tune of the theme song. Some twenty years after first seeing the film, the melody still stuck with me, and now that I've heard it again, it'll probably be in my head for days. (I find myself humming it as I type this review!) It's also nifty how it gets used in Bernard Hermann music score parodies in the film, too.

Lovers of well-done satires should get a big laugh out of this suspense movie spoof, and fans of Hitchcock's work absolutely must see this loving send-up.



For reviews of some of Hitchcock's actual films, click here for the ones I've reviewed at the Shades of Gray blog. (For ones reviewed here, click on the Alfred Hitchcock tag at the bottom of this post.)

You can read reviews of other Mel Brooks films by clicking here to Cinema Steve, the hub for all my review blogs.

'Machete' is a well-made exploitation retread

Machete (2010)
Starring: Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro, Cheech Marin, Michelle Rodriguez, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan, and Steven Seagal
Directors: Ethan Maniquis and Robert Rodriguez
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A former Mexican police officer (Trejo) is betrayed by corrupt superiors to a powerful drug kingpin (Seagal). He ultimately flees to the United States, crossing the border secretly and disappears into the semi-hidden underworld of illegal aliens. Yet, Fate draws him into conflict with the drug lord once again, when a sinister political operative on his pay-roll(Fahey) attempts to make him a patsy in a staged assassination of a state senator whose career is in trouble (Di Nero).


This seems to be the summer of throwbacks. First there was "Predators", the movie that took the "Most Dangerous Game"-hunting aliens back to their jungle roots. Then there was "The Expendables", which set out to recreate the feel of a late 1980s action flick. And now there's "Machete", a film that casts itself in the mold of a 1970s exploitation flicks. While there hasn't really been much new under the sun since circa 1965, I don't know that "hey, we have nothing original to offer!" has ever been quite such a marketing point.

Not that it's necessarily bad, at least in the specific cases of the three films mentioned above. All three succeed quite well at what they set out to do--which was to be entertaining yet not-terribly-original action films. So long as the movies are good, and the audience is warned up front that there's nothing fresh between the main title card and the end credits crawl, I have no issue with them being derivative.

And "Machete" is about as derivative as they come. It's like one of the sleazier blaxploitation flicks where small-time hoods or drug-pushers were glorified and set up as if they were heroic figures, because, in this one particular story, they were actually pitted against bigger scum-bags than they were--more evil criminals and corrupt politicians and cops. (And the only way I could fully root for The Network, the group dedicated to smuggling illegal aliens across the United States border with Mexico and find them crap jobs just one step up from slavery, so a select few might be able to work their way into a decent living, is to ignore the fact that the reason they come into conflict with Steven Seagal's drug kingpin is the detail offered in passing that The Network itself is funded by illegal drug smuggling and the money generated by it.)

As for the acting, it's also in line with what you'd expect in a movie derived from the 1970s exploitation/blaxploitation films. Almost everyone is being overly dramatic and chewing up the scenery to a degree that would have you rolling your eyes if they were doing it in any other kind of movie.

Robert Di Nero, Jeff Fahey, Michelle Rodriguez, and Danny Trejo--even if that last one goes without saying--all give over-the-top performances that are in perfect keeping with the genre. Cheech Marin, Don Johnson (even if I'm not sure I get the "introducing Don Johnson" joke in the credits), and Steven Seagal are also fun to watch, each giving performances of the kind we know they're capable based on some of their best previous work. Heck, the directors even manage to make Seagal look good, even if it's plain to the sharp observer that he isn't doing much in the way of physical activity; he was probably wise in choosing this project over Stallone's as he gets to have a big dramatic final scene. Maybe he'll be smart and trade in the acting for strictly behind-the-scenes functions... we can almost see the old Steven Seagal--the guy who was in "Marked For Death" and "Under Siege"--in the performance he gives here. It would be nice if he would let this stand as his final acting job.


Of the major featured players, only Jessica Alba and Lindsay Lohan disappoint.

Perhaps I can't say that Alba disappoints, because she is as good here as she was the last time I saw her, in "The Love Guru." But she's completely out of place. Alba seems to be the only performer who isn't "playing to the gallery," who isn't going way over the top. Her performance would be far better suited on an episode of "Law & Order" than this film. (Actually, as I think about it, the only time I remember really liking Alba in a part was "Into the Blue". Maybe all the bare flesh addled the brain?)

As for Lohan, she serves no purpose in the film other than to appear as a slutty character that seems to fit right in with the image she's developed over the past few years. It's the sort of part the likes of John Carradine took during the 1970s at the end of his career, parts that were little more than glorified cameos, parts that didn't add anything to the film but merely traded on Carradine's name. The film would have been better without Lohan's character, because it adds nothing except the opportunity for everyone to chuckle at Lohan and perhaps reflect on wasted potential.

The only other problem with the film is uneven, choppy pacing. There are times, usually during or leading up to unimpressive scenes with Lohan and Alba, where the film drags. Sometimes these slow points arise from badly conceived comic relief (such as the two security guards exchanging sage views on Mexican gardeners), and other times they are pointless scenes of expository dialogue that I'm sure the writers and directors believed were "character development" (such as when Alba's I.C.E. agent character finds The Network's headquarters) but whenever they occur, you will start to be very bored and wish that the film would get back to the shootings and stabbings.

Speaking of shooting and stabbings, this is ANOTHER movie that features computer-generated blood-splatter. It even features computer generated bullet impacts--and badly matched bullet impacts at that, as we're shown the top of a church pew get riddled with bullets in one shot, yet no pews are damaged in later ones. The effects are a little less obvious than they were in the low-budget films that pioneered this technique (or in recent big-budget ones like "The Expendables" or "MacGruber"), but you can still tell cartoon gore from old-fashioned syrup-spray.

Bottom line, this is not a perfect movie. Then again, neither were the films it is trying to emulate... even if those old timers could probably have made 20 movies on the budget of this single film. It's worth checking out if you enjoy blaxploitation flicks--because that's what this is exactly like, only with Mexican illegal aliens and others of Mexican descent standing in for the black characters.





Fun Fact: Exactly 20 years ago, Steven Seagal's character beat the hell out of Danny Trejo's character in the opening scene of "Marked For Death". This has been a rematch long in the making.

'Our Man Flint' kicks Austin Powers' ass

Our Man Flint (1966)
Starring: James Coburn, Lee J. Cobb, and Gila Golan
Director: Daniel Mann
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When the world is threatened by a mysterious cabal who has the abilit to trigger natural disasters at will, only super-spy Derek Flint (Coburn) can save it. But will even his mastery of karate, fencing, bio-chemistry, world cuisne, and countless dance styles; his trick lighter with 80+ functions and weapons; his complete mastery of all his bodily functions; and his powers of seduction be enough to overcome the sinister briliance and beauty of his female counterpart (Golan)?


"Our Man Flint" is a hilarous spy comedy that derives its laughs from the fact that it's played completely straight (unlike "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" and its progressively worse sequels, which goes out of their way to be goofy). Flint is an outrageously over-the-top James Bond-type character who can do pretty much everything, and who knows everything, but who is so perfect that he will humbly say that there are many things he doesn't know. His "man-of-peace" attitude (until his friends and acquaintances are threatened), gentlemanly nature combined with his swingin' Sixties lifestyle (with his super-bachelor pad and four live-in girlfriends/personal assistants) make him an even more interesting and funny character.


The storyline is fast-paced, the jokes are funny, and the story is fun, flippant super-spy fare. I think lovers of comedy and James Bond-style spy movies will something to like about "Our Man Flint."

Double Feature: Sandra Bullock does 'Speed'

Lovers of actions movies should keep the following in mind when it comes to the "Speed" cinematic duology: The first one is a must-see, and the second one you should pass on unless it's the very last rental at the video store.

(Both films can be had in a single package, even if that version is out of print. If yuou can find it, it's the only way I'd get "Speed 2" if I were so inclined, because that way I could at least just consider it a bonus feature.)


Speed (1994)
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, Sandra Bullock and Jeff Daniels
Director: Jan deBont
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

When SWAT officer Jack Taven (Reeves) foils a mad bomber's (Hopper) extortion plot, it becomes personal. He traps Jack and along with a dozen passengers onboard a bus that is rigged to explode if its speed drops below 50 miles per hour. While the police try to figure out where the bomber is hidden, Jack must attempt to keep the busload of passengers calm while trying to find a way to save both them and himself.


This is one of those pressure-cooker action movies where things go from bad, to worse, to really bad--and the final bit of villainy from the bad guy gives the third act a twist that truly rocks. Aside from some hackneyed dialogue, "Speed is well-paced, well-filmed, and all the actors give excellent performances. Reeves, who usually annoys me, is even good, and Bullock (as Annie, a particularly resourceful bus passenger) also shines as her usual Girl Next Door character, even if she spends virtually all her time on-screen behind the wheel of the doomed bus. Dennis Hopper plays his part with a gleeful evil that is great fun to watch.



Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Wilhem DeFoe and Jason Patric
Director: Jan deBont
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Annie (Bullock) goes on a cruise with her new boyfriend (Patric) only to find the ship hijacked by a mad-dog murderous terrorist (DeFoe) who is bent on crashing the ship into the harbor going at full speed. Much mayhem and property damage ensue... but very little that's particularly interesting or suspenseful.


Everything that director deBont did right in the original "Speed" he does wrong here. The setting is too open, the villains don't seem sinister enough, and whenever the story starts to build a little tension, it is dispelled by a ludicrous action sequence for the same of action, an unfunny bit of attempted humor, or something inane that defies description. I suspect that the writers and marketeers thought the subtitle "Cruise Control" was really clever ("it's set on a cruise ship, and it's under the control of bad guys, and it's a pun on cruise control in vehicles... get it, huh, get? [giggle-giggle]"), but instead it stands a description of how this exceedingly bad follow-up to an excellent movie was made: The creative and production staff were operating on cruise control, not really paying attention to what they were doing.

Kenau Reeves was smart to pass on this one. I wish Bullock had too, because her talent is completely wasted in this stinker. In fact, all the principles give decent performances, given what they have to work with, so they're all pretty much wasted.






For more reviews of awful movies, check out the companion blog Movies to Die Before Seeing.

'Die Hard' brings explosions to Christmas

Die Hard (1988)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia
Director: John McTiernan
Steve's Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Hardboiled New York City cop John McClaine (Willis) is struggling to cope with the long-distance relationship his marriage has become since his wife (Bedelia) took a job at the offices of a Japanese company in California. He travels west for Christmas Eve and the company's Christmas party, but soon finds himself in a situation far more explosive than his marriage will ever be: A group of terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Rickman) has taken the company executives (along with John's wife) and are threatening to kill them one by one unless a series of rediculous demands are met. With much more than his marriage at stake, John sets about defeating the terrorists single-handedly... but will he be fast (and deadly) enough to stop Hans Gruber's real master plan?


"Die Hard" is perhaps the perfect "hero with no way out, surrounded and outnumered by bad guys, and the situation keeps going from bad to worse"-movie. The script careens toward the film's explosive climax at breakneck pace from the very beginning, and yet it still manages to work in enough characterizations, subplots, and reversals that the viewer is invested in the characters and kept guessing how things might turn out up to the very end.

Rickman and Willis are excellent as the film's coldhearted villian and very vulnerable hero--unlike the heroes protrayed by the likes of Schwarznegger and Segal, Willis' John McClaine actually bleeds when hit, shot, or cut--and a fantastic supporting cast lets them both shine ever brighter. The cat-and-mouse game between McClaine and Gruber should stand as one of the greatest battles of wits and weapons in cinematic history.

If you haven't seen "Die Hard," add it to you list of Christmas viewing. At the very least, you'll be able to say that no matter how bad getting together with the relatives is. At least none of them are shooting up the Christmas tree with uzis or blowing up skyscrapers with all of you still inside.