#just before jack & diane’s ceremony begins

[bobbie-robron]

A little lesson in life, girls. Always keep your friends close… and our Valerie even closer. (Part 3.1)

Diane gives Val an important role in the wedding… walking her down the aisle. Poor, poor Andy… a watcher from afar. Louise is surprised to see Val, what nerve, but Diane has her reasons. Danny notices Robert SMIRKing at Rodney 😂. Robert winding up Jack. Val has a chat with Andy how things will change in time.

21-Sep-2004

[undertheinfluencerd]

https://ift.tt/2X2MXow #

After making her screen debut in 1989, Sandra Oh has enjoyed a remarkable career in both film and television. Although the versatile talent and 12-time Emmy nominated actress is best known for her iconic roles as Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy and Eve Polastri on Killing Eve, Oh has also worked with some of the finest movie directors, including Alexander Payne, Steven Soderbergh, Mina Shum, John Cameron Mitchell, and more.

RELATED: Killing Eve – 10 Best Quotes From The Show

As fans continue to enjoy Oh’s new hit Netflix sitcom The Chair, it’s worth recollecting her best movie moments for those who want to see more of the talented actress on the big screen.

10 Defendor (2009): 6.8

Peter Stebbings’ dark offbeat superhero comedy Defendor stars Oh as Dr. Ellen Park, a psychiatrist who gives hilarious facial and verbal reactions to the outlandish story relayed to her by Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson), an ordinary man moonlighting as a vigilante crime fighter.

Cut from the same genre-bucking, irreverent cloth as James Gunn’s Super, once Arthur confesses his secret life to Dr. Park, she convinces the judge to go easy on him and allow him to continue his heroic activity. When tragedy strikes, Oh shows how much heartfelt pathos she can portray by attending a touching ceremony for her patient.

9 Under The Tuscan Sun (2003): 6.8

Written and directed by the late Audrey Wells, Under the Tuscan Sun is a delightfully uplifting rom-com about Frances (Diane Lane), a writer who ups and leaves her life in San Francisco to live in Tuscany after discovering her husband’s infidelity. Oh plays Patti, Frances’ best friend who encourages her to travel to Italy.

RELATED: Sandra Oh – 10 Best Roles, Ranked (According To Rotten Tomatoes)

In addition to the gorgeous locations, breezy tone, and rich cinematography, Oh adds complexity to the story as Patti, a lesbian expecting a child even after her lover Grace (Kate Walsh) has left her. It’s Patti’s visit to Tuscany when she’s nine months pregnant that helps Frances find the courage to pursue true love despite the painful past.

8 Double Happiness (1994): 7.0

Oh made her feature film debut in Mina Shum’s must-see coming-of-age tale Double Happiness, in which she plays the lead role of Chinese-Canadian Jade Li. The intensely personal semiautobiographical drama shows how divided Jade is between her traditional Chinese upbringing and her modern Canadian lifestyle.

With a natural performance by Oh matched with the authentic, well-observed writing of Shum, the movie is a universally relatable tale of a person grappling with their own identity while trying to appease the expectations of loved ones. In her first film performance, Oh won the Genie Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, proving what a titanic talent she has been from the start.

7 Rabbit Hole (2010): 7.0

John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole is a bruising account of a family dealing with the death of a young child at the hands of a teenage driver. Nicole Kidman gives a memorable and towering performance as Becca, a mournful mother who begins to find solace by interacting with Jason (Miles Teller), the driver who accidentally took her son’s life.

Although she has a smaller supporting role, Oh plays Gabby, a fellow grieving parent who helps Howie (Aaron Eckhart) deal with his loss at the group therapy sessions he and Becca attend. With profound empathy for Howie, she becomes instrumental in his healing process.

6 Meditation Park (2017): 7.1

Twenty-three years after working with Mina Shum for the first time, Oh reunited with the filmmaker for the sweet-natured drama Meditation Park in 2017. The story concerns Maria Wang (Pei-Pei Cheng), an aging woman in the throes of an existential crisis upon suspecting her husband’s infidelity. Oh plays Maria’s daughter Ava, a mother of two who encourages Maria to reconcile with her estranged brother ahead of his wedding and break free from her husband’s hold.

RELATED: Asian-American Movies to Watch If You Loved Crazy Rich Asians

As another trenchant glimpse at the immigrant experience and a statement about the importance of women finding their own voice, Shum’s film is tender, touching, and triumphant.

5 Hard Candy (2005): 7.1

David Slade’s Hard Candy is a deeply unnerving glimpse at a predatory pedophile (Patrick Wilson) getting his just deserts when a teenager (Elliot Page) tricks, traps, and tortures him in his apartment. Oh plays the man’s neighbor, Judy Tokuda, admitting she only took the role due to her working relationship with Page, a fellow Canadian she worked with on Wilby Wonderful the year prior.

With most of the action set inside the inescapable apartment, the visceral terror of the violence that Hayley (Page) exacts on Jeff (Wilson) is met by the suffocating sense of claustrophobia, making for a really upsetting experience. However, the hugely satisfying conclusion helps atone for the squeamish and uncomfortable moments of carnage.

4 Last Night (1998): 7.2

The most unheralded of Oh’s top films happens to be Last Night, a mordant pitch-black comedy about the impending apocalypse and the rag-tag band of Canadians with differing views on how to react. With the end of the world set to strike at midnight, Sandra (Oh) tries to make it out of her stranded position in Toronto and reunite with her husband, Duncan (David Cronenberg). One bad thing after another ensues.

Weird, wild, and ultimately winning, Last Night boasts writer/director Don McKellar’s signature brand of dark humor and anarchic energy. As such, the film has become an unforgettable cult classic among those who’ve seen it.

3 Raya And The Last Dragon (2021): 7.4

With great respect and honor for the rich historical traditions of Southeast Asia, Raya and the Last Dragon is one of Disney’s most beloved recent animated movies. Sandra Oh lends her voice to the commanding role of Virana, the Fang chieftess and mother of Raya’s main rival, Namaari (Gemma Chan).

RELATED: Raya And The Last Dragon – What The Voice Actors Look Like In Real Life

With a moving story, spellbinding animation, and characters never before seen, Raya and the Last Dragon continue to soar in the hearts and minds of viewers.

2 Sideways (2004): 7.5

Directed by her then-husband Alexander Payne, Oh demonstrated her hilarious comedic chops in the indie darling Sideways, a character study of a failing writer at an existential crossroads. The boozy road trip follows Miles (Paul Giamatti), an uptight novelist, and his lecherous pal Jack (Thomas Hayden Church), as they hit Santa Barbara wine country on a tasting tour.

Praised for its excellent performances and light tonal touch between comedy and drama, Oh gives a standout turn as Stephanie, a cool sommelier who has a steamy love affair with Jack (whom she does not know has a fiancee). When she finds out, she goes absolutely ballistic in one of the movie’s funniest moments. The story is so sharply penned that it won an Oscar for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.

1 The Red Violin (1998): 7.6

Despite playing a bit role as Madame Ming in the fifth and final chapter of The Red Violin, the ambitious epic ranks among Sandra Oh’s most well-received movie to date. The film traces a famed 17th-century Violin from its creation in Italy to its auction in modern-day Montreal, and all that the instrument endured in creating some of the most beautiful music the world has ever heard.

Praised for its sumptuous set decorations and costume designs, Oscar-winning original music, intelligent story, and a throwback style of filmmaking that calls to mind the grand epics of the past, the resonance of The Red Violin is still felt today.

NEXT: Steven Spielberg’s 10 Best Historical Epics

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[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior November 6, 2020 – LET HIM GO, JUNGLELAND, KINDRED, PROXIMA, THE INFORMER and More!

It’s November, which under normal circumstances, would be the holiday season, the thick of awards season, the beginning of the end to the Oscars, but this year? Not so much. Instead, we’re suffering the after-effects of a hugely close and contentious election, although thankfully, there’s quite a few decent movies to check out as we still wait for the whole COVID pandemic to settle down with no end in sight. (And as promised, I got this down to six reviews this week. I wouldn’t expect that next week.)

The biggest wide release this weekend (into 2,200 theaters plus) is Thomas (The Family Stone) Bezucha’s thriller LET HIM GO (Focus Features) starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Montana ranchers George and Margaret Blackledge, who after losing their son James, must try to rescue their young grandson Jimmy, who has been taken to North Dakota to live with his stepfather’s dangerous family, led by matriarch Blanche Weboy (played by Lesley Manville).

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie. The commercials I’ve seen sell it like a straight-up revenge thriller ala the recent Honest Thief, which also isn’t necessarily a straight-up genre film. (Odd coincidence is that this one also has Jeffrey Donovan playing a jerk – I hope it’s not type-casting.) The movie was adapted by Bezucha from a novel by Larry Watson, and it puts Costner into another role where he’s able to ride horses. If you’re a fan of Costner, that might be enough to watch the film, but he gives also gives a typically strong performance as does Lane, as Bezucha reunites Ma and Pa Kent from Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel.

At first, this is more of a family drama where we don’t learn too much about their son before he’s killed – nor do we ever find out who actually killed him. Instead, this is about caring grandparents who worry about how their young grandson might be raised by his new stepfather and his family. It’s particularly suspect when Jimmy’s stepfather leaves for North Dakota in the middle of the night, taking his new wife and stepson with him. It’s enough to make anyone suspicious.

It starts fairly slowly as things are set-up but it leads to more than a few crazy and violent moments including the last act where things really come to a head. Oddly, it isn’t Costner acting like the “tough guy” so much trying to get back Jimmy, despite his background as a sheriff. Instead it’s Lane who impresses with her ability to act super-sweet one moment in order to get results but then fully throwing herself into the film’s violent climax. Oddly, I wasn’t that into Manville’s performance as a malevolent matriarch, and that really surprised me. I do have to call special attention to the amazing Booboo Stewart who plays a Native American lad who helps the couple, this being his second great role/performance of the year after The Grizzlies.

Despite Costner’s presence, Let Him Go feels much more like some of the recent Clint Eastwood movies, and while it has a few issues in terms of tone and pacing, Lane and Costner are more than enough to make this quite enjoyable for what it is.

Even so, that isn’t this week’s “Featured Flicks”…

No, that would be Max (Ceremony) Winkler’s JUNGLELAND (Paramount), an amazing drama starring Charlie Hunnam and Jack O’Connell as brothers Stan and Walter “Lion” Kaminski, the latter who is a brilliant bare knuckle boxers who is constantly dealing with his older brother Stan getting them into trouble with his gambling debts that have left them near to poverty. When Stan gets further into debt with the loan shark Pepper (Jonathan Majors), he agrees to go on a road trip to a big underground no-holds-barred boxing match in San Francisco, but along for the ride is a young woman named Sky (Jessica Barden) who the brothers need to drop off in Reno to the despicable man from whom she ran away in the first place.

This ended up being a far more complex and emotional movie than I expected, although as a huge fan of the movie Warrior, I was interested in seeing how this one diverged from what was one of my favorite movies the year it was released. Well, Winkler does not disappoint, as he finds a way to create a “boxing movie” that’s unlike any other due to a number of elements. We’ve certainly had a few “brother fighters” movies, but what separates Jungleland is that it’s the younger brother played by O’Connell who does all the fighting, his brother acting more as a domineering manager who makes all the decisions for them. You can really feel the love between these brothers and the interesting dynamic that Barden’s Sky brings to the mix.

Maybe you can figure out that there will be some sort of romance between Lion and Sky, but they’re such unique individuals due to the performances by always great O’Connell and an actress who I’m not as familiar with but insures that Sky is not just introduced merely as “love interest.” Sky is bratty and sassy, and she isn’t going to just do what Stanley says even though he always acts like he’s the smartest of the trio, and it’s that attitude that brings so much to the dynamics between the three of them.

There’s a lot of tension leading up to the final fight, as well as a lot of emotion, all enhanced by a gorgeous score from Lorne Balfe that bolsters the performances rather than overpowers them. The way Winkler uses Bruce Springsteen’s cover of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” is the perfect punctuation to a film that keeps you enthralled from beginning to end.

This is just a wonderful film from Winkler, one that really shows his tremendous growth as a filmmaker, and it’s very much the kind of movie that I absolutely love, especially because it’s always going in different directions from the typical boxing movie.

Another nice surprise this weekend was Joe Marcantonio’s psychological thriller KINDRED (IFC Midnight), starring Tamara Lawrence as Charlotte Wilde, who discovers that she’s pregnant by her boyfriend Ben, but when he dies suddenly, Charlotte finds herself trapped in the large estate of Ben’s mother Margaret (Fiona Shaw) and Ben’s creepy half-brother Thomas (Jack Lowden). She soon realizes that Margaret plans on keeping her trapped there in order to keep control of her son’s baby.

I went into this British thriller not really knowing much about it other than its small cast including the generally decent Shaw and Lowden. I wasn’t familiar with Tamara Lawrence at all, but she does a pretty amazing job carrying the film as a woman trying to deal with some sort of pre-natal depression on top of mourning for her ex while also feeling trapped, probably rightfully so. The dynamics between the three people – this is very much a three-hander – is what keeps Kindred so interesting, because Margaret probably blames Charlotte for her son’s death, but Thomas seems to have more lecherous intentions. The whole time, Charlotte has dreams and visions, sometimes horrifying ones, about birds.

Over the course of the film we learn more about Charlotte’s background and her own mother’s issues dealing with “perinatal psychosis,” which could be a big clue to what is happening with Charlotte. Lawrence is absolutely amazing at giving the film a strong heroine who works hard to try to outsmart her captors, and it’s a film that never really goes far into the most expected realms. Marcantonio’s direction works well at maintaining a steady pace, and the musical choices greatly add to the tension even the few times it’s using overused stock classical musical themes.

Kindred works quite effectively as a tense psychological thriller in the vein of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? I expect we have not seen the last of either Lawrence or director Marcantonio.

Eva Green stars in Alice Winocour’s PROXIMA (Vertical) as Sarah Loreau, an engineer and astronaut who has gotten the plum assignment to spend a year aboard the International Space Station. Unfortunately, that would mean being apart from her young daughter Stella for a year, and the film deals with Sara’s tough battle to get through the training necessary while dealing with her emotions over being separated from her daughter.

For some reason, I had lost track of Winocour since her amazing breakthrough film Mustangs, and though it’s odd that this would premiere at the same TIFF as Natalie Portman’s Lucy in the Sky, it’s quite a different movie despite a few similarities, mostly that they’re both about women astronauts. Oddly, Lucy in the Sky is based on a true story, although Proxima feels far more grounded, both literally and figuratively. Much of that is because we only see Sara’s journey before getting on the rocket into space.

In many ways, Proxima means to show how tough training for a space mission is on women, particularly having to leave their children behind, and Green does an amazing job in the many demands of the role. Part of Sara’s issue is that she’s dealing within a very heavily competitive male-dominated environment, as typified Matt Dillon’s Texan astronaut Mike, but there’s also the aspect of her not wanting to show any signs of weakness. (It’s a rarity for women, particularly a French one, to have this opportunity.)

Much of what’s keeping Sarah from giving up is because she wants to be a great role model for her daughter, and honestly the scenes between Green and young Zélie Boulant are so wonderful they almost make the movie in themselves. It’s to Winocour’s credit that she continually shows how well she does at casting younger and newer actresses. I’d be neglect if I didn’t mention the gorgeous score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who seems like such a great get for Winocour, being that he hasn’t scored as many movies in recent years.

Winocour has created another beautiful film, one that really sticks with you because she and Eva Green manage to convey the story of a woman we rarely get to see in movies in such a truly authentic and emotional way. Sadly, Proxima isn’t getting a theatrical release, but it will be on digital and VOD this Friday.

Bryan Bertino, director of The Strangers, returns with THE DARK AND THE WICKED (RLJEfilms/Shudder), an eerie horror thriller mostly set on a farm where sister and brother Louise and Michael (played by Marin Ireland and Michael Abbott Jr.) return to see their dying father only to find their mother  (Julie Oliver-Touchstone) behaving erratically. They soon learn that there’s something dark and wicked (hence the title) holding sway over anyone who enters the place.

I was pretty excited to see this movie, because while I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Stranger, I could see from his debt that Bertino definitely had talent as a director in terms of creating a mood and tone that can keep an audience on edge. While I haven’t seen his other two films since then, The Dark and the Wicked proves that my earlier instincts were correct.  With a fairly simple premise, location and relatively small cast that’s usually one or both of the two main actors, Bertino has created an enigmatic and eerier horror-thriller that does both the two elements that makes for good horror – create interesting characters with depth and then proceed to totally fuck with them in any way possible.

In this case, the set-up might seem slow to match its Southern setting, but this is one of those rare cases where slow isn’t necessarily bad. Ti West’s The Innkeepers and House of the Devil is a pretty gauge for whether this is your kind of horror. If you liked those, you’ll probably like this.

Once the gory and quite disturbing stuff starts happening, Bertino rarely lets up. Although some of the imagery isn’t as original – a woman chopping off her fingers for the third time this year! – there’s just a lot of things that are done in such clever and unique ways. There’s little question that Bertino knows how to creep viewers out and put them on on edge, but it’s all greatly helped by the two main actors who really sell the scares. I won’t get too into what the evil is that’s causing people who enter the house to savagely mutilate themselves, but it is of a demonic nature

While at first, this might seem to be in the vein of the recent Relic, of which I wasn’t too big a fan, it also delves into territory ala The Witch (without the historical setting), and that might in fact be the best barometer to decide whether Bertino’s latest is for you. Be warned that like this year’s The Lodge, The Dark and Wicked lives up to its title because you witness a lot of truly awful things, and you should not expect it to end cheerfully. (I also want to give credit to Bertino’s DP, since I’ve watched so many horror movies this year that are so dark, you cannot make out what’s going on, which isn’t the case here.)

A movie that was supposed to be released way back in March by Aviron Pictures is finally coming back via Vertical, Noriva as Andrea Di Stefano’s THE INFORMER finally sees the light of day in the U.S. after being released all over the world. It stars Joel Kinnaman as Peter/Piotr Koslow, a Polish assassin and mercenary, who has been working as an undercover FBI inside man to help them bust criminals. Rosamund Pike plays his handler, Agent Wilcox, while Clive Owen is her immediate supervisor. After a drug bust that gets an undercover cop killed, Piotr finds himself being investigated by a local detective, played by Common.

The Informer starts as as a fairly typical crime-thriller that seems to be inspired a little too much by Breaking Bad, but in fact, it was adapted from a Swedish crime thriller called 3 Seconds, written by Anders Roslund and Borge Hellström. What’s interesting is that it transforms itself from being a passable but bland entry in one of the most overused movie genres ever into something halfway interesting when Peter is sent back to jail to get closer to the drug kingpin known as The General.

If you’re a fan of Joel Kinnaman, then maybe you’ll enjoy this, but I don’t think Kinnaman has very much charisma as an actor and that really hurts the first half of the movie where he’s required to do a lot of heavy-lifting, especially opposite Pike. But it takes a while to adjust to the fact that everyone in this movie, other than Common – showing less range than usual – has taken on some sort of accent. It’s certainly a decision, though I’m not sure it’s the best one.

I have to admit that I didn’t fully understand the dynamics between the characters, and it didn’t get much easier once Peter goes back to prison, but in general, I felt like there was a lot of talent wasted here, particularly Ana de Armas as Peter’s wife. It also is a little devoid of thrills, but again, that’s mostly through when the movie turns into a prison drama, which is where it gets quite a bit better. That said, I’m still not sure if Common is supposed to be one of the good or bad guys…

The Informer may not be the most inspired crime-thriller, and Kinnaman’s typically stiff performance doesn’t help, but there’s some good moments towards the end that makes it not feel like wasted time to watch it.

Opening in 200 theaters this Friday is True to the Game 2 (Imani Media Group), which as you might guess is the sequel to movie called True to the Game, which I have not seen. It’s a street level gangster crime thriller that begins with a lot of black people shooting at each other, which seems rather ill-timed for the current situation in the country (and New York in particular). The movie stars Erica Peeples as Gina, the love interest of Quadir Richards, a drug dealer murdered in the first movie, who decides to leave Philly to recreate herself as a New York journalist. While in L.A. on an important assignment, her past in Philly follows her as Quadir’s killer Jerell (Andra Fuller) wants revenge for a hit against his crew in revenge for them getting revenge for Quadir. Oh, the movie also stars Vivica A. Fox as a woman named “Shoog.” I’m not going to review this, partially because I don’t think I’ll have much to say without having seen the first movie, but this is also not my kind of thing nor am I the target audience for it, so writing a review might just be a waste of all of our time. (Hint: It isn’t a good movie.)

Jeff Roda’s 18 to Party (Giant Pictures) is set in a small town in 1984, as it deals with a group of 8th graders who have been dealing with UFO sightings, missing parents and recent suicides as they try to get into a club despite being underage. Boy, does this have a lot of ‘80s references, so it should really be my thing. Sadly, it’s very talkie and not particularly well-written while being derivative of so many other things like Stand By Me and the It movies as filtered through Richard Linklater. Roda does get some points for his choice in music that includes Big Audio Dynamite and one of my own ‘80s favorites, The Alarm. (And yes, U2 DID steal much of its sound and schtick from the Alarm, so kudos for the movie acknowledging it.) Unfortunately, it’s used as awkwardly as most of the interactions between the kids, and yet, I still didn’t hate this. 18 to Party will open via virtual cinemas on Friday through the Laemmle in L.A. in Alamo on Demand (New York and other cities) but then will get a VOD release in North America on December 1.

From Sweden – running the gauntlet of almost every single genre festival since its release overseas in the summer of 2019 -- comes the dark fantasy-horror Koko-Di Koko-Da (Dark Star Pictures) from filmmaker Johannes Nyholm, about a couple terrorized by a sideshow artist and his entourage in the woods. I honestly didn’t get too far into the movie, because like many Swedish movies, this one is so dark and grim that it starts with the couple losing their 8-year-old daughter in the first ten minutes and when the horror element shows up, I just couldn’t get too far. Maybe I’ll give this another chance when I’m in a better head.

Similarly, I saw but don’t have much to say about Alastair Orr’s Triggered (Samuel Goldwyn Films). It’s a stylized horror-thriller in the Saw vein where a group of nine friends are out camping and partying in the woods when they wake up to find suicide bombs strapped to their chests with different countdown clocks, but in order to survive, they need to kill their friends to get more time on their clocks. It’s another high-concept thriller ala the recent No Escape and considering how much I hated that movie, I knew this wouldn’t be my thing either. I’m a little surprised that it’s being released by Samuel Goldwyn since they normally focus on more arty films and not C-level genre fare.

At my beloved local theater, the Metrograph, which I miss deeply, they’re continuing their “Robert Kramer Retrospective,” now showing Milestones from 1975, while Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli’s So Pretty will run through Thursday night. This Friday, the terrific doc Decade of Fire, directed by Gretchen Hildebran and Vivian Vazquez Irizarry, will debut as part of Metrograph’s Live Screening series, and I have to say tht this is quite a fantastic doc about the series of building fires that decimated the Bronx in the ‘70s. Monday will see the debut of the 1974 doc Frame-Up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre, directed by Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher and Howar Blatt, and I remind again that the Live Screening series can be accessed with an annual Metrograph membership, which is still just $50 a year or $5 month-to-month, and you cannot get a better deal right now within the world of Virtual Cinema with the number of movies being offered for that price.

Metrograph has also begun a “Ticketed Screening” series where you can pay per film, and the second one in that series is the 1965 French anthology Six in Paris (Icarus Films), that has the likes of Chabrol, Godard, Pollet and Rohmer telling short cinematic stories set in Paris, which is a must-see for fans of the French New Wave of the ‘60s. That’s available for $8 for members and $12 for non-members, so being a member is STILL a pretty good deal.

Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema continues King Hu’s Rain in the Mountain, Frederick Wiseman’s City Hall and more, joined by a double feature of Fellini’s Toby Dammit (1969) and Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962) (the basis for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys) starting Friday.

Also, just want to throw a quick shoutout to my much-missed neighbors uptown at Film at Lincoln Center, who also have a fairly hearty Virtual Cinema going with new and repertory offerings.

Also, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[myhahnestopinion]

The Night A TREMENDOUS, BIG-LEAGUE, SKEWERED ATHLETE Came Home: FATAL GAMES (1984)

1984’s Fatal Games is not a sequel to 1981’s Graduation Day, but it very easily could have been. Both films revolve around a team of athletes being picked off one by one in sport-related deaths. Both films are also dreadfully inept, revolving around a series of illogical contrivances, and an easily predictable, yet still consistently confusing murder mystery. The true highlight of Graduation Day, though, was its absurd physics-and-logic-defying kills, including the pole vault bed of spikes and the infamous impaling football sword.  Nothing in Fatal Games quite lives up to the ridiculous terribleness of those, but what Fatal Games does have going for it… is a lot of winning. Oh yes! We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning! And you’ll say, “Please, please! It’s too much winning! We can’t take it anymore, Mr. Fatal Games, it’s too much!” And Fatal Games will say, “No, it isn’t! We have to keep winning!”

So, let’s get to winning. Much like Graduation Day, Fatal Games begins with a lengthy montage of athletic activities, set to the inspiring sounds of the original song “Take It To The Limit,” a generic work-out song which was clearly not only rejected from every single Rocky sequel, but every Karate Kid and Air Bud film as well. After this extended montage of athletic events that is neither terrifying nor all that impressive, the film opens with a nondescript awards ceremony, where seven students of the Falcon Academy of Athletics are awarded with medals, to the sound of applause of an off-screen audience. The camera never pans around to show us who exactly is attending this event, but, oh, let’s just say that it was the largest crowd ever to witness a medal ceremony, period (and not just a sound clip for a nonexistent crowd because this film can’t afford more than 10 people.)

At a honorary dinner following this awards ceremony, a man takes the stage to give a speech all about how athletics can only be pure if it is free from government handouts, then a few minutes later notes how “sports are beyond politics,” Some of you may be confused about a man directly contradicting himself within the span of just a few sentences, but you have to learn that he’s just telling it how it is! 

The dinner also features a bizarre moment where the teachers realize that they forgot to buy napkins, and send one of the students to grab some paper towels. The student unrolls the towels as he walks around the table, keeping it all as one long string. Yes, it may be an entirely impractical and unheard of way to distribute napkins to a large table, but it allows the dinner to break out into a spontaneous game of tug-of-war, presumably to show us how competitive these characters are. So much winning! 

We’re then introduced to the lives of these athletic champions. The athletes are placed into a stricter work-out routine as a result of qualifying for “Nationals,” which sets them on track to be in The Olympics. Part of this work-out involves physical training under the supervision of Coach Jack Webber and Nurse Diane Paine. Another part involves showering. Lots of showering. The athletes spend much of this film in their respective locker rooms, the men usually wearing at least underwear, while the women are always fully nude, presumably because this gender dynamic is a complicated method for better athletic performance, and not a failure of equal-opportunity gratuitous nudity.

Their showering techniques are also unusual for the fact that no one uses water. Sure, there’s a sound effect of water pouring out, and the athletes scrub their bodies with soap under the spouts, but there’s never any water coming out. Must also be a complicated athletic method for more effective washing.

The final part of this regimen involves… doping… with some drugs from Dr. Jordine. “The Europeans and Russians have been unlocking the potential of the human body for years,” Dr. Jordine explains, in response to someone questioning his use of drugs. Yes, athletics must be kept free of government handouts to be pure, but, eh, drugs are fine! After one of the students missed a routine check-up, Dr. Jordine chastises him saying, “Continuity is a very important part of this whole program.” That may be, but continuity is certainly not very important to this movie.

Case in point, I’m honestly not sure what the names of the characters in this film were supposed to be. I thought that one of the athletes was named Craig. I swear that multiple people called him Craig in the movie. I even repeatedly wrote down his name as Craig in my notes. Turns out his name was Frank. 

So, according to the credits of this movie, because I can no longer trust my own ears, the gymnast’s name is Frank. Frank is dating swimmer Lynn, who shouts all of her lines with the same inflection. There is also track star Phil, dating another gymnast Annie. Then there’s Donna, a weightlifter, and Sue Allen. We never really get to find out what sport Sue Allen is involved in. All we learn is that it involves spending a lot of time naked in a sauna, which I guess Fatal Games figures is the only real important part. Finally, there’s Joe, a javelin thrower. While Coach Webber may yell at Joe for his subpar performance a lot, he’s actually a pretty consistent javelin thrower… though that could be because the film continues to reuse the same footage of his javelin every time he throws one.

Repetition is an important part of athletic training, and so Fatal Games essentially falls into a pattern for much of its runtime. There’s a scene of one of the athlete’s winning at Nationals, followed by the death of another of the athletes, followed by the adults gathering to figure out why another student has gone missing and proceeding to do nothing about it. 

Following the latest work-out, Nancy decides to stay at school late to practice more. I don’t really see why Nancy decides to do so, considering that she is already a highly impressive athlete. She is both strong enough to lift nearly twice her body weight… and weak enough that, when she is suddenly impaled by a javelin thrown by a hooded figure, she is sent flying backwards and ends up pinned to the wall. 

Afterwards, Lynn and Phil win at their respective events. So much winning! Somehow they know that they’ve won the competition before the judges even make their verdicts… as if they’ve read the script or something.

Following another grueling day of practice, Sue Allen decides to once again spend some time naked in the sauna, when the hooded-track suited killer shows up. Somehow, despite running naked through the hallways of the school for a good five minutes, Sue Allen winds up on the second floor of the school instead of, you know, heading outside. She pounds on the windows to try to grab someone’s attention, before running straight into a javelin and dying. 

Later, Frank/Craig ends up breaking his ankle trying to land after his gymnast routine, and is no longer able to compete. “You can win for both of us,” he says to Lynn, but she can’t. Both because that’s not how winning works, and because, later, she is skewered by a javelin while swimming alone, in a truly bizarre kill. One may question why the killer felt the need to don scuba gear, somehow sneak underwater after Lynn was already in the pool, and forced themself into a position where they had to build up enough momentum to combat the resistance of the water in order to properly spear Lynn with the javelin , but, hey, if your whole conceit is just killing several people with a javelin over and over again, you have to find some ways to shake things up a bit.

We haven’t gotten a good mystery killer yet during this year’s The Night X Came Home… and we still won’t. You see, the film really wants you to suspect that Joe is the one who is killing people, given that, you know, he is the one who throws javelins. But, given that every time Joe shows up on screen, the soundtrack switches from its generic inspirational tunes to a suspiciously sinister synth score, it was immediately obvious that Joe was too obviously suspect to be the killer. And lo, as if in response to my unjustified pride at figuring out this film’s poorly-written murder mystery, the film decides to immediately give up on this subplot, with Joe also being impaled by a javelin. 

Without its obvious scapegoat, the film scrambles to provide a suitable replacement suspect. Could it perhaps be Dr. Jordine, who is seen impaling a bug with a pin, perhaps implying that he thinks humans are like insects to his great mind? Nah, too sensible. 

Could it perhaps be Coach Jack Webber, who goes to the bar with Diane and rants about how unmotivated the athletes are? Nah, too unsubtle. 

Could it perhaps be one of the remaining students, driven mad by Dr. Jordine’s drug, as suggested by numerous scenes where Dr. Jordine and Diane have vague conversations about the drugs having potentially dangerous results? Probably not, considering that this subplot is never mentioned again after the half-way mark. 

Could it be Coach Drew, a character that barely registers as such, a character so insignificant that I honestly didn’t know that there was another coach until I read the cast list following the movie? Um, not likely. 

So, could it be Diane Paine, who, when tending to Annie for a stomach ache, goes on a long, tangential monologue about how her mother pushed her to be an athlete, how she never was good enough to make it the Olympics, and specifically notes how her mother is not actually dead in an ominous tone? A monologue that is both seemingly irrelevant, yet demands attention by the film? 

Disregarding its pitiful attempts at building suspects, the film tries once again to heighten the tension by narrowing the list of potential killers. After Lynn becomes the fourth student to disappear without a trace, Coach Webber, Coach Drew, and Diane gather in Dr. Jordine’s office, who shows them a photo he found of the athletes, with an “x” over the faces of the deceased. One does have to wonder why this killer would feel the need to start marking off the dead students on this photo of them? I mean, there’s seven of them. You think you could keep track of which ones you killed mentally or something. “This happened last night,” he states. “Only the four of us have keys to this office.” And so, despite the killer being already obvious, this reveal brings us down to four suspects.

Or maybe not, because immediately following this scene, Frank sneaks into the school late at night, enters Dr. Jordine’s office by neither using a key nor breaking-in, and rifles through his desk to try  to find answers about what happens to Lynn. Come on, Dr. Jordine! You were supposed to be the one concerned with continuity, and you can’t even decide if your door is locked or not from one scene to the next! Anyway, the killer appears, and Frank is chased for many, many minutes through pretty much every hallway of the school, and the chase has all the intensity one expects from a chase involving a man on crutches for a broken ankle. 

Frank ends up in the school’s basement, where he discovers that the killer has been storing their victims in lockers, because apparently, with everyone concerned about the students disappearing around school, no one managed to discover and/or smell their decaying bodies in the school the whole time. And so, Frank ends up impaled on a javelin as well.

Now, while the reveal of the killer’s identity was something easily foreseen, I unfortunately did not foresee the secondary twist that the film had in store. After Annie follows Frank into the school, also searching for answers, she is attacked, but not killed by the hooded person. Phil shows up as well, and carries her to the office of Nurse Diane, who apparently left her office lights on when heading off to murder people, because she’s really not good at this whole secrecy thing. Yes, if you didn’t already guess, the killer was Diane all along. It’s an acceptable twist, I suppose… or, at least it would have been, had the film not felt a need to add onto this. 

When Annie is in Diane’s office, she spots a newspaper on the ground, with a headline revealing that, in the past, Diane had “a sex-change operation.”

Sigh. 

And make no mistake about the movie’s intentions here. It is exclusively seeing this newspaper headline that tips Annie off to the fact that Diane is the killer. She doesn’t stumble across a blood-stained javelin or catch Diane in the act. No, she just finds out about the surgery, and instantly knows that Diane is the killer.

It’s a completely unnecessary twist, added only as a cheap attempt to prey off of dangerous systemic fears. The film’s subsequent treatment of this reveal doesn’t really bear relaying. It’s handling of it would be almost comical in its ignorance, if it weren’t for the fact that this is another film in a long list, including last year’s The Night X Came Home entry Sleepaway Camp, whose portrayal of the transgender community has caused actual harm to lots of real people 

But while this twist is regrettable, there’s still fun to be had at this movie’s expense! Annie runs off, and is pursued by Diane, who raves about how she must punish anyone who wins at athletics, because she could never win in the Olympics. After another extended chase through all the hallways of the school (meaning that about a third of this film’s runtime has now consistent of such scenes), Annie decides that the best way to escape the school is not through the front door, like some loser, but up some scaffolding onto the roof, like a winning athlete. 

This scaffolding was, of course, established in a completely subtle scene earlier, where two painters move it into position in the gym, mumble something about having to paint the ceiling, and then walk off, never showing up in the movie again. Could we have spent some more screentime establishing this set piece instead of having more naked water-less shower scenes? Of course not! 

And so, after somehow moving from the gym floor to the school roof in the blink of an eye, Diane attacks Annie on the scaffolding, but falls off, and is impaled by a trophy. You see, it’s symbolic! It represents that she finally won… or she lost and Annie won… or that athletes should care less about winning… or something. It certainly represents something. I’m sure of it. After this, Phil and Coach Webber run in, and the film abruptly ends, with us never finding out if that ceiling ever got repainted by those two people! Man, I was so invested in the subplot! Oh, and also we never learn if any of the remaining students went on to win at the Olympics...  

Presumably, Annie and Phil went on to win at the Olympics, because if there’s one thing to take away from this movie, it was that Fatal Games was simply too much winning. It was too much winning, and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t handle the winning production quality, that were too cheap to afford an actual awards ceremony audience, any decent actors in general, or even water for their showers. I couldn’t handle the winning murder mystery, in all its easily predictable glory. I couldn’t handle the winning death scenes, with all the variety one can expect from a killer dead-set on using solely javelins for inexplicable reasons. I couldn’t handle the winning characters, because I still swear that Frank was actually called Craig! He was Craig I tell you! I couldn’t handle the winning.  It was simply too much winning! And I said, please, Fatal Games, it’s too much winning, but Fatal Games wasn’t done, delivering an offensive addition to what would have otherwise been a perfectly satisfying twist. And so, I must disqualify Fatal Games from being in contention for a good use of your time.

Fatal Games is available on DVD.

NEXT: The Night A GORILLA-WORSHIPING, TOAST-CRAVING, SPOILED BRAT Came Home...