Guilty Pleasures (or, Bad Movies We Love)

From Dusk Til Dawn (1996, Dimension/Miramax). An early screenplay that Quentin Tarantino sold for $15,000 finally comes to life, so to speak, in this half road movie, half gore fest from Desperado director Robert Rodriguez. George Clooney and Tarantino (who never would have gotten this part if he hadn't written it and was in tight with the Miramax Mafia) are Seth and Richie Gekko, two bank robbers, one of whom is a sex offender (I'll let you guess which one), on the lam and despreately trying to get over the Mexican border so they can lay low with their most recent score. Seth has a friend in El Rey (Cheech Marin, playing one of three roles) who recommends a bar to hang out in until they meet the next morning. In order to get over the border, they hijack a family traveling in an RV (including Harbey Keitel and Juliette Lewis) and use them as cover From there, all hell breaks loose, literally. Rodriguez was the perfect person to direct this movie, as he already stages fight scenes and shootouts in outgrageous fashion. But with this subject matter, he was able to be deliriously cartoonish. Ridiculously viloent, emotionally hollow, and absolutely hysterical.

Independence Day (1996, 20th Century Fox). Redefining the summer Event Movie with the cash cow of 1996, ID4 was, despite its completely absurd premise, marketed better than any movie I've ever seen. The teasers started in the second half of the Super Bowl that year. One small shot of the White House being blown to smithereens, and I was hooked. When the movie finally came in July, I was foaming at the mouth to see it. Opening night, a rowdy packed crowd, and after the ten minute special effects orgy where New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC are decimated, I was so blown away that I didn't even notice how laughable the dialogue and plot devices were. Nobody goes to see movies like ID4 looking for realism (I mean, come on, uploading a computer virus onto the mother ship?), and that is why I still stand by Independence Day director Roland Emmerich for building great tension up to the annihilation sequence, for putting together some mind blowing special effects, and for creating one of the best movie experiences I've ever had. Not the best movie, mind you, but the best experience watching a movie.

Con Air (1997, Touchstone). Apparently, Jerry Bruckheimer thought his previous efforts (Crimson Tide, The Rock, Bad Boys) didn't have enough testosterone in them, so he creates Con Air, a movie so loaded with homoerotic moments that it makes Top Gun look like Little Women. Nicolas Cage is Cameron Poe, an Army Ranger sent up the river for eight years for killing a man in self defense. On the day of his parole, he is sent home on a flight filled with incorrigibles being transferred to a new maximum security prison (John Malkovich,the excellent Ving Rhames, and… Steve Buscemi?). Wouldn't you know it, the bad guys have a plan to take over the flight, and Poe teams up with a Federal Marshal (John Cusack) to bring them down. The scene where Cage takes care of a friend who's in dire need of some insulin (Mykelti Williamson) is far more touching than any of the scenes between him and his wife (Monica Potter). Cage's southern twang is way off base, which is odd given that he did quite well with one in Raising Arizona. Buscemi gets most of the laughs in Scott Rosenberg's snappier-than-typical-action-fare screenplay, but his actions deeply compromise his characters (for such a dreaded killer, why did seem like such a wuss?). Malkovich can do this stuff in his sleep now. Cusack, however, is exactly the kind of actor Con Air needs: He brought a level of believability to a movie whose last twenty minutes border on downright stupid. Despite all of these complaints, I thoroughly enjoyed Con Air. Classic Jerry Bruckheimer escapist fun.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996, New Line). Shane Black was paid $3 million for the script for The Long Kiss Goodnight, which is roughly the budget for Trainspotting, but I digress. Geena Davis stars as a mild mannered housewife do gooder who can only remember the last eight years of her life. She hires a down and out private detective (Samuel L. Jackson, who rises above any material he works with) to try and find out who she used to be. What he discovers, unfortunately, is that she used to be a ruthless assassin for the government, who was seemingly left for dead. Now that the bad people have found out she's still alive, Davis is soon running for her life, with her killing ways slowly coming back to her. This movie all but buried director Renny Harlin's fledgling reputation is the Finnish Spielberg (a claim I always thought to be extremely generous, despite his talents), and it also proved to be the last time Davis and Harlin worked together professionally and personally (the couple divorced soon after this movie's release). But if you go into it with the right frame of mind, you'll find that this movie has some spectacular stunts, one pretty nifty explosion scene and has a decent sense of humor, even if some of it is pretty nasty and mean spirited. It also contains one of the most famously bad lines of dialogue ever written: When Davis has showdown with her nemesis, she utters the classic "Suck my dick." Imagine my surprise when, ten months later, Demi Moore says the same thing in GI Jane.

(1997, Columbia/TriStar). Or, as one magazine called it, Melrose Space. Anyone who went into this looking for some serious slice of science fiction was sorely disappointed. They had good reason to expect something more: Troopers director Paul Verhoven was the man behind sci-fi cult classics Robocop and Total Recall (we'll overlook that he also directed Showgirls). This time, however, he took the camp route and delivers a movie with bad dialogue, even worse acting (Did everyone else want to smack Denise Richards as much as I did?), but some of the most amazing battle sequences ever filmed, even if one army was completely computer generated. Loosely based on Robert Heinlein's book about Earth battling the Bugs, a vicious form of arachnid capable of ripping someone in half even after they've lost half their limbs, Verhoven's film is a neo-Nazi wet dream, where the military is the only way to earn citizenship (everyone who doesn't serve is simply a civilian) and everyone wants to join. (The propaganda films scattered throughout the movie encouraging people to join the army are hysterical) Virtually everyone in the cast has a connection to Aaron Spelling (Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Neil Patrick Harris, Richards, Patrick Muldoon), and the "romantic" subplots are useless. But the fight scenes are dazzling, (check out those giant fire breathing beetles) and there are some colorful supporting characters that are fun to watch (Jake Busey, Verhoven regular Michael Ironside). Big, ultraviolent, and incredibly dumb, Starship Troopers is without a doubt the best ** ½ movie I've ever seen

True Romance-(1993, Warner Bros.) Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide), directs an old screenplay of Quentin Tarantino's (Q used the money from selling this to help finance Reservoir Dogs) and turns in the best B-movie he's ever made. It starts with a Detroit kid named Clarence (Christian Slater) with an simple life who falls in love with a call girl, (Patricia Arquette) gets married, and accidentally wins up with a suitcase full of cocaine. From there, they head to Los Angeles to try and get rid of it so they can live the simple life somewhere nicer than Detroit. Arquette is uncannily convincing as the slightly loopy Alabama Wurley, though she has to utter one of the most painful lines I've ever heard (even worse than when Andie MacDowell says "Oh, is it raining? I haven't noticed," in Four Weddings and a Funeral). When she finds out that Clarence has offed her pimp (an amazing performance by Gary Oldman, a British guy playing an American guy who acts like a black guy), Alabama tells Clarence "I think what you did was so romantic," and smothers him with kisses. It's nearly unbearable. But the scene comes early, and is quickly forgotten. With one of the biggest and best supporting casts ever assembled (Oldman, Samuel Jackson, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, Michael Rapaport, etc.), this movie is worth seeing if only for the scene with Slater's father (Dennis Hopper, in a piece of inspired casting) and a local drug goon (an ice cold Christpoher Walken). Luckily for us, the rest of thje movie is just as solid. Tarantino's screenplay is funny, action packed, (director Scott shows off his Top Gun-ish technique during a roller coaster sequence) and riddled with bullets, ending with a Tarantino tradition, a Mexican Standoff, though few have the same twist that this one does. A movie, like the first Terminator, that didn't do well in the theaters but took off on video.

While summer audience were blown away by Twister and Independence Day, New Zealand's Peter Jackson put together a completely different kind of thrill ride. He made The Frighteners, which had a horrible title but was actually my favorite movie of that summer (Trainspotting running a very close second). Picture Tim Burton with a mean streak, and you’re almost there. The story starts with Frank (Michael J. Fox), a con artist of sorts who works under the guise of ridding houses of unwanted guests (as in, ghosts). The thing is, he can see spirits, due to a previous traumatic experience that killed his wife, and he and the spirits work together to make the scam look convincing. Things get weird, however, when people start dying inexplicably all over town and Frank looks like the prime suspect. The culprit is another ghost, cloaked ominously like the Grim Reaper, but since only Frank can see him, everyone else thinks he’s making it up. Universal marketed this as a horror movie, and I suppose it is, but it’s more creepy than scary (nothing like the first twenty minutes of Scream, at least) and very funny as well. And Jackson is a master with special effects. The scene where Frank is chased by the Grim Reaper is stunning. The supporting cast was giddy fun as well. (Jake Busey looking more like his dad than ever, and a hilarious R. Lee Ermey as a dead Marine Sargent) The Frighteners is a unique film that never really fit into any specific genre, and because of that wound up being overlooked by everybody. But I got a big kick out of it. Rent it over Halloween if you want to be thrilled more than scared, and get a few laughs at the same time.