Review #49 THE LAST HARD MEN (1976, Andrew V McLaglen)

 

* * *

The retired lawman who put away a violent criminal must again track him down when he escapes.

Starring  Charlton Heston, James Coburn, Barbara Hershey, Jorge Rivero, Michael Parks, Larry Wilcox

Written by  Guerdon Trueblood   

Produced by  Walter Seltzer, Russell Thacher   

Duration  98 minutes   

 

What are the great cinematic face offs? What about FACE/OFF itself? Nicholas Cage and John Travlota: the battle of the scenery-chewers. That turned out pretty good.

Still, there were plenty of missed opportunities. The obvious one was Arnie vs Sly, but Van Damme vs Seagal would also have worked; ditto Bruce Willis vs Mel Gibson. But if I had to choose, I’d’ve gone for Danny DeVito facing off against Bob Hoskins. Short and bald vs bald and short.

Alright, fine, but THE LAST HARD MEN is a western. Well, there have been plenty of one-on ones in that territory. My limited knowledge of the genre means that I’m not about to trawl through IMDb to come up with multiple examples; let’s just mention Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in the 3:10 TO YUMA remake (2007) and Pierce Brosnon and Liam Nesson in SERAPHIM FALLS (2006) and be done with it.

And so that brings us to Charlton Heston vs James Coburn. Pitting them against each other? Sure, makes sense. Couple of rugged stars with genre bona fides. OK, sure, but this movie makes a pretty bold claim. What could have inspired their casting not just as men, but as hard men – and the final ones, no less?

Let’s see, then. First of all, is there anything in the pair’s private lives to suggest they were hard, and is it clear which of them was, indeed, the hardest?

Well, they were both in the army. But while Charlton served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 bomber, probably wincing from the sounds of planes blowing up all round him while risking his own skin, James had a more low-key time of it: he was a truck driver and a DJ on an Army radio station in Texas. Hardly life-threatening.

On the other hand, Coburn was a close friend of Bruce Lee’s and learnt Jeet Kune Do from the master. Heston doesn’t appear to have got any comparable training; the closest comparison is his stint as the president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 until 2003, which is far less impressive.

So, honours even so far. How about their experiences on screen, prior to this film?

Well, blimey. Heston was only bloody Moses, in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)! You don't go about parting the red sea without some moxy. He’s no slouch in his other most famous Biblical epic BEN-HUR (1959), either. And in PLANET OF THE APES (1968), he delivers the classic "Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape!" to his primate captors – on their planet! (Except – spoiler alert – it’s actually not.)

Coburn obviously can’t beat his rival for iconic manly roles. But still, he was one of only three who managed to actually escape in THE GREAT EACAPE (1963); he played a smooth Bondian spy in OUR MAN FLINT (1966 and a sequel the following year); and he was the one blowing everything up in Sergio Leone’s A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE (1971).

Hmm. So it’s actually rather hard to choose from the two when it comes to being hard.

What about during THE LAST HARD MEN itself? Well, the younger actor at first has the edge. Coburn enters as part of a chain gang out in the desert, laying railway tracks. He grabs the guard’s shotgun and blasts him in the chest; now left unsupervised (one guard?), he goes about setting everyone loose.

"What I think up here," he tells his accomplices while tapping his forehead, "I’m two or three minutes ahead of you. And that’s what counts." So, he's a hard thinker, too.

The getaway includes hanging onto the bottom of a moving train and later stabbing a disloyal accomplice in the back, right after showering the man with compliments. Brutal.

And the whole escaping thing was just so he could get his revenge on Heston’s character, which he does by kidnapping the man’s nubile daughter (Barbara Hershey) and holding her hostage with his predatory gang out in the hills, in a bid to lure his foe into an ambush.

Heston, meanwhile, is not immediately promising. He’s a retired captain who sports an impressive moustache and mutton-chops combo, so that’s a plus, but he also lets the sheriff, a baby-faced Michael Parks (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, KILL BILL), smartmouth him.

But he soon snaps back into form and shows everyone who’s really the boss when Coburn re-enters the scene. Charlton’s the man who sent our James down, you see, and he wants to repeat the trick. "I ain't dead, I'm retired," he growls.

Turns out his is more of a simmering rage, kept dormant for a while and now about to erupt. And so, battle commences.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the right side of the law prevails. But does that mean Heston was truly harder? I have to say, just about. He gets shot like six times by Coburn before flinging his  adversary off a cliff, and yet seems to survive. So, let’s say it’s a win on points.

Still, in the annals of cinema, Coburn did come back 20 years later with one of the hardest characters ever: Nick Nolte's abusive, alcoholic father in 1997’s AFFLICTION. Put him against the Heston character in THE LAST HARD MEN and I think the outcome would have been very different.

Three stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Not really – many more hardman actors were still to come. Heck, even in 1976, there was plenty of work going for Clint Eastwood, Robert Mitchum (whose son Christopher is in this film), Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen …

What would a movie called THE FIRST HARD MEN be about?  Well, Louis Cyr, a Canadian bodybuilder who died in 1912, was known to be ‘the strongest man who ever lived’. You certainly wouldn’t accuse someone like that of being a big softie. (And he presumably had plenty of hard mates, too.)

Previously:  LAST PASSENGER

Next time:  THE LAST DETAIL

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #48 LAST PASSENGER (2013, Omid Nooshin)

 

* * *

Six commuters have more than leaves on the line to worry about – the train’s out of control, the driver’s uncontactable and they’re not slowing down.

Starring  Dougray Scott, Kara Tointon, Iddo Goldberg, David Schofield, Lindsay Duncan

Written by  Omid Nooshin, Andrew Love, Kas Graham

Produced by  Ado Yoshizaki Cassuto, Zack Winfield 

Duration  93 minutes 

I don’t think about LAST PASSENGER star Dougray Scott very often. When I do, it’s usually on one of two occasions. 

One is that TWIN TOWN is on TV, where he plays a Glasgow Rangers top-wearing total bastard corrupt cop, who clashes with Rhys Ifans (in his breakout role) and his brother.

The other occasion that prompts me to think about Dougray Scott is when there is mention of famous casting decisions that never were. Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones. Nicolas Cage as Superman. Sean Connery as Gandalf. All of those meant that the actor missed out on increased fame or a huge payday, or both.

But none are as notorious as Dougray Scott's near-miss: Wolverine. 

He had the role in 2000's X-MEN movie, but reshoots on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 meant that he couldn’t commit. Talk about life-changing – just compare his and Hugh Jackman’s career trajectories from that point onwards.

And so here we are 13 years later, with Dougray finding himself starring in little-known but pretty decent low-budget British thriller LAST PASSENGER. (For context, Hugh was about to make his seventh appearance as the retractable-clawed superhero.)

The first thing one notices when watching this movie is that the locomotive looks well out of date for 2013. I’ve long suspected that there's a decommissioned fleet of last generation London trains (and buses) that are kept in a depot somewhere for filmmakers to use. I mean, the ones here still have doors you can open between stations and windows that go all the way down! Those went out in the late ’80s, around the time that seat belts in cars became mandatory.

Anyway, Scott is on one such train this particular evening heading out of the capital (to Glasgow? Would be a long trip, but he is using his native accent), with his seven-year-old son in tow. My initial expectation that the anachronistic train was due to the story being set 30 years ago was dashed when he gets a call on his mobile: he has ‘Deck the Halls’ as his ringtone, so we must be approaching Christmas. The numerous piss-heads jumping about on the seats implied as much, but then again that could be any night on a British train journey. And the script shoehorns into his phone conversation that Scott’s character is a doctor, so you know someone’s going to need medical attention down the line.

Kara Tointon, at that point not long off soap opera Eastenders, is the flirtatious young woman he meets in his carriage. She has an appealing presence and could easily occupy the place Lily James currently holds in our lives, or play her sister or something. Anyway, Scott starts to notice suspicious things, both inside and outside the train, and she’s the only one who believes him. Soon, they realise they’re among only half a dozen passengers left – and they might not be making their final destination. Let’s just say that those fully operational doors and windows are going to be needed as the remaining passengers explore the speeding train inside and out, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks ‘train-set thriller’ is THE LADY VANISHES (1938). That’s not only one of the great confided-space suspense yarns, but one of Hitchcock’s very best from his post-sound, still-British period. We’re not expecting that, of course, but LAST PASSENGER is still a solid little flick. 

And while it also can’t compete with existential masterpiece RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985) or the original THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974), it’s definitely better than weak slasher TERROR TRAIN (1980) or the overrated pair of SNOWPIERCER (2013) and BULLET TRAIN (2022) – the latter of which being one of the worst films I have seen in a long time.

I’d put LAST PASSENGER on par with Steven Seagal’s UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY (1995) and South Korean zombie horror TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016). In other words:

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As I said in the review, Scott teams up with a handful of other misfits and it’s no spoiler to say that they don’t all die. So, pluralising here would have been more accurate.

What would a movie called FIRST PASSENGER be about?  Someone who got up extremely early to catch the train, just so they can get their favourite window seat.

Previously:  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

Next time:  THE LAST HARD MEN

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #47 THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988, Martin Scorsese)

 

* * * * *

Jesus of Nazareth faces the ultimate existential crisis: being the son of God (and knowing His plans) while having human desires.

Starring  Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie

Written by  Paul Schrader

Produced by  Barbara De Fina  

Duration  163 minutes     

I’ve argued on this blog that Ridley Scott has never made a genuinely great film, despite the inexplicably elevated position he inhabits for some.

The question that occurs to me now is, has Martin Scorsese ever made a bad one?

Across 26 features, there are six that have most regularly come in for criticism, or are just simply not as well known. So are these 'lesser Marties' deserving of their status as outliers? Let’s see!

– WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR (1967):  The director's debut, an Italian-American New Yorkers' tale and precursor to MEAN STREETS, it's appropriately rough around the edges. But the talent is there up on the screen and as far as first features go, it certainly makes you intrigued for what this young man might do next.

– BOXCAR BERTHA (1972):  Scorsese was one of several fledgling directors to cut their teeth under producer Roger Corman, such as (deep breath) Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles and James Cameron. He made BERTHA for Corman's American International Pictures, and the film is a trashy female gangster flick that’s a lot of sleazy low-brow fun.

– ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974):  Probably Marty’s most unfairly overlooked film. Central is a powerhouse performance by Ellen Barkin (who won an Oscar), and this affecting drama also has memorable turns from the pre-TAXI DRIVER pair of Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel.

– NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977):  I'm never going to be subjective about a musical; a jazz musical, no less. Moving on.

– KUNDUN (1997):  Um ... I’ve seen it. It exists. It's probably most remembered for that bit in The Sopranos where Christopher Moltisanti spots Scorsese in a crowd and yells out "Marty, KUNDUN! I liked it!"

– GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002):  This one is a bit of a slog. Leo was still maturing from teen heartthrob into proper leading man. Diaz was miscast. Day-Lewis was enjoyably big, but also distractingly so. Ultimately, it was never able to recover from all its production troubles. I do like the U2 song that plays over the end credits, though.

(In addition, THE KING OF COMEDY and AFTER HOURS didn't do much business when they were released but have both since been reassessed; I like the former but have never really warmed to the latter.)

 

So yes, I would say Scorsese has a batting average superior to most big-time directors, even plenty of those names listed above. And LAST TEMPTATION is firmly in the ‘definitely great’ camp.

The film was controversial for its depiction of a flawed Jesus. But anyone who bothered to absorb the opening crawl should have known to proceed with leniency: "This film is not based upon the Gospels but is a fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict."

(They should have put "based on a true story" – that would have really stirred the pot.)

Marty was using Jesus Christ the man as the starting point for an exploration of the struggles we all go through – heightened, of course, by JC's unique internal wrestling match between being both a deity and a flesh-and-blood human.

In short, he's a flawed hero who goes through a journey – an 'arc', to use a term that the KUNDUN-approving wannabe-screenwriter cousin of Tony Soprano would understand. Which should tell you everything: this is a movie, where Jesus Christ is the protagonist. It’s not a sermon; it’s not a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It has thematic depth and spiritual resonance, but it also needs to move and entertain us. And it does.

JC is cut from the same cloth as other Scorsese leading men. He suffers the sexual distractions of RAGING BULL’S Jake LaMotta. He is miffed by a world full of sin, like Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. He appears to die at the climax but then doesn’t really, like Ace Rothstein and his exploding car at the start/end of CASINO ( ... er, OK, that one might be a stretch).

Let’s talk about casting. First, the obvious question: why not de Niro as Jesus? Ironically, at the time of filming he may have been busy off elsewhere playing the devil for Alan Parker in his movie ANGEL HEART.

Or why the hell not Harvey Keitel? He was on set and everything, playing Judas Ascariot (dyed ginger, for some reason). Yes, he's still second-billed and yes, Judas is pretty much the antagonist and a meaty role in itself. But come on, Harvey would have been amazing! Just look at what he managed to do shortly after as a tormented soul, sometimes in a religious setting, in Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT.

Anyway, the final casting choices do work well and are leftfield enough to fit in with the movie's slanted take on its subject matter, as is having many characters talk in anachronistic Noo Yoik accents. Willem Dafoe as the man (of God) Himself is as committed as you’d expect (and surely influenced Ewan McGregor); David Bowie is an icily callous Pontius Pilate; Barbara Hershey a suitably sexy Mary Magdalene. And putting Harry Dean Stanton in your movie (as Saul/Paul) never fails to elevate it.

So, another tick for Mr Reliable Marty. And SILENCE, his questioning-faith companion piece from 2016, is also excellent.

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  On Earth, yes. Up in Heaven? Not sure it’s that kind of place.

What would a movie called THE FIRST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST be about?  Who can be sure that the temptations depicted here hadn't been part of Jesus's life for years already? The Bible is famously light on details about his teens and 20s, after all.

Previously:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Next time:  LAST PASSENGER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #46 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971, Peter Bogdanovich)

* * * * *

Teenagers in 1951 come of age in their dying Texas town.

Starring  Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn

Written by  Larry McMurtry, Peter Bogdanovich

Produced by  Stephen J Friedman

Duration  118 minutes

I can’t talk about THE LAST PICTURE SHOW without starting with Stephen King.

In his novel Lisey's Story, titular protagonist Lisey has recently lost her husband, Scott, and is going through his journals. She learns from them that when her hubby used to stay up late and drop off in front of the TV, he would fall into a catatonic state and be literally transported to a magical alternate universe, where he found peace and healing from his debilitating mental health issues.

But it wasn't any old programming that used to whisk him away. The Shopping Network or repeats of Magnum PI wouldn't do it – in order to travel to that wonderful healing place, Scott had to be watching his favourite movie, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

(And if you think I’m going to now delay getting to the actual review by going off on a tangent about Stephen King books, constant reader, you’ve got another thing coming. So not my style.^☆)

Now, I can't be sure exactly why King gave this particular film the power to mentally teleport people to a far away land; he never makes that explicit. But since the reason Scott would embark on those journeys was to recuperate, 1950s-set coming of age classic THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is therefore portrayed as a vessel with which to break free from inner torment.

So, is this movie ‘escapism’? I've always found that a bit of a limiting term, usually eluding to fantastical, good vs evil battle stuff, or love-wins-in-the-end fairy tales. Forget your troubles and immerse yourself in something idealised and totally removed from reality for a couple of hours.

But there’s another kind of escapism: a wallowing kind, when you reach out for something that affirms the pain you’re going through. Diversions like the type in the previous paragraph can feel like they’re taking the piss by portraying something unobtainable; what you really want is a Radiohead album on repeat and MELANCHOLIA or REQUIEM FOR A DREAM playing with the sound off.

In the case of PICTURE SHOW, it doesn’t put the viewer in a world of orcs and elves or shiny romcom land. But it does take them somewhere: back to the ’50s, that lost time of Boomer nostalgia so frequently visited by the generation of King (most notably for IT), Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE), Steven Spielberg (THE FABELMANS), and many other creatives born following WWII. But PICTURE SHOW'S tone is far from carefree and enchanting; instead we get moribund, ennui-laced melancholy. The opening goddamn shot is a pan through a deserted town with dust blowing everywhere, a place that makes the shithole from LAST MAN STANDING look cheerful and prosperous. The very first words spoken are "you're never gonna amount to nothin’!"

The local kids we meet are thoroughly disillusioned. They have none of the collegiate spirit that their elders expect, shirking tackles on the football field and only singing the school anthem mockingly while driving away from it. They pass the time making out in the back row of the town’s only cinema, being sure to take out their chewing gum first. They experience fleeting liberty by skinny dipping at unsupervised parties, in a famous scene with Cybil Shepherd that discloses to the viewer the exact moment when director Peter Bogdanovich decided to ditch his wife (who was working on the crew!) and run off with her.

It’s a not a film that's heavy on plot. It’s more of an atmosphere piece punctuated by minor incidents, a few shattering events and a whole bunch of loaded exchanges heavy with unspoken emotion, moving forward like the unhurried flow of water, lapping over you and soaking into your bones.

That Ben Johnson and Clois Leachman bagged acting Oscars for so little screen time (10 and 16 minutes respectively) tells you all you need to know: as we all learned in Physics class, pressure equals force over area. Their strong performances delivered within such brief pockets of time create a huge impact, and I'd say the effect has only ever been bettered by Judi ‘eight minutes’ Dench in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.

What I’m getting at is that the movie is dreamlike – at once intense and casual, amorphous yet precise, and, ultimately, transporting.

I think I see now what King was going for.

Five stars out of five.

^☆ … What? OK fine, since you won’t stop going on about it. The masterpieces are IT, The Stand and the Dark Tower series; other personal favourites are 'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Roadwork, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Dark Half, Duma Key, and pretty much all of the short story collections.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  That’s how the movie finishes: the town cinema that was one of its few features is forced to close down due to lack of business. Final screening: RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.

What would a movie called THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW be about?  Same thing as Scorsese’s HUGO? Something about Georges Méliès, certainly.

Previously:  FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST 

Next time:  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #45 FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST (1992, Bill Kroyer)

 

* * * 

Deforestation threatens the creatures who dwell within the magical realm of FernGully.

Starring  Samantha Mathis, Christian Slater, Jonathan Ward, Robin Williams, Tim Curry 

Written by  Jim Cox

Produced by  Peter Faiman, Wayne Young   

Duration  76 minutes

    

Myth: Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis have only co-starred in two feature films.

Reality: Between teenage rebellion fable PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990) and muted but fun John Woo actioner BROKEN ARROW (1996), they both lent their voices to FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST. Slater and Mathis play a pair of fairies, zipping in mild flirtation around an idealised rainforest of bright colours and anthropomorphised animals.

Mathis (the lead) plays the stock kids’ animation character of the youngster who dreams of a life outside their restricted community. Seriously, when will they drop this trope? It’s still going strong today, in things like SMALLFOOT (2018) and STRANGE WORLD (2022).

In this particular case, despite being warned to "never go above the canopy", Mathis can’t resist wondering what’s really out there and takes regular peeks, specifically wondering if human beings really exist or if they are merely the stuff of bedtime stories.

Slater, meanwhile, gets the short shrift in a disappointingly small part – he should have insisted on the role ultimately played by Jonathan Ward (see below).

Myth: FERNGULLY has an ecological subtext.

Reality: What’s it called when the subtext is actually on the surface and not at all buried underneath? Oh, that’s right. No, there’s no ecological subtext here – it’s FERNGULLY’S actual text.

You see, it had been assumed by the forest-dwellers that if human beings were actually real and not just the stuff of legends, they would be no threat to them. Then reality comes crashing through in the shape of enormous bulldozers, hellbent on reducing the trees that the adorable (and in some cases make-believe) creatures use as homes into someone’s dining room set.

Myth: Robin Williams made his animated debut playing a hyperactive genie in ALADDIN.

Reality: Before he signed on to be the blue lamp-dweller, he’d already agreed to play Batty Koda in FERNGULLY, a bat who knows that humans do exist because he's come from outside the forest where the two-legged ones have been using him as a lab rat.

Williams is (surprise surprise) the comic relief, and definitely used this as a warm up for the higher-profile part – he's all non-sequiturs, celebrity impressions, shouting, accents and anachronistic pop culture references.

Mercifully, his performance never reaches the irritating ‘heights’ of his more famous Disney role, where he would display so many symptoms of ADHD you wanted to force-feed him Ritalin through the screen.

 

Myth: Only Bart Simpson was saying ‘don’t have a cow’ in 1992.

Reality: Jonathan Ward, as a human lumberjack on whom Mathis uses her forest powers to shrink down to fairy size when he accidently wanders into FernGully, sprouts this nonsensical catchphrase at least once. He also has wavy blonde hair, rides a leaf down a tree trunk like a snowboard, and uses words like ‘bodacious’ and ‘tubular’.

Did I mention that this film was released in the early ’90s?

Myth: FERNGULLY is an American feature.

Reality: Actually, it was a co-production between the USA and Australia; primarily Yank voice talent but set in an Aussie rainforest.

It joins the ranks of other lauded Australian animations, in the great tradition of ... um ... well … did they ever do a cartoon version of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo?

Myth: Tim Curry essayed a wide variety of roles in ’90s movies.

Reality: He always played a snooty shit.

And unlike the meddling hotel concierge in HOME ALONE 2 (1991), or Cardinal Richelieu in THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1993), or Mr Jigsaw in LOADED WEAPON 1 (also 1993), or the duplicitous Romanian philanthropist in CONGO (1995), or Long John Silver in MUPPETS TREASURE ISLAND (1996), here he is literally the embodiment of evil: a dark spirit of the forest or somesuch, resembling a sentient oil spill in appearance, whose role in this affair is to encourage the humans to destroy FERNGULLY ... for reasons I never quite discerned.

As ever, Curry has a great time hamming it up as the dastardly antagonist, and even gets to belt out a musical number like he’s still in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

Myth: DANCES WITH WOLVES was James Cameron’s biggest influence for AVATAR.

Reality: Plot-wise, AVATAR is DANCES, for sure. But the same basic story is present in FERNGULLY, with the addition of the tree-hugging sensibility. Although it comes from a different perspective this time: we follow one of the natives, not the interloper.

Fellow animated effort EPIC (2013) is also cut from the same cloth, as is Ed Zwick’s 2003 Tom Cruise-starring THE LAST SAMURAI.

Myth: FERNGULLY was a flop.

Reality: It actually did modestly well, plus it birthed a no-stars sequel.

And there were rumours recently of a live-action remake, allegedly set to feature Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jim Carrey and Emma Thompson, which turned out to be bollocks. But someone went as far as to knock up a fake poster, so the desire is clearly out there.

Myth: FERNGULLY is a pretty mediocre and inconsequential cartoon feature film.

Reality: Look, it’s no THE LION KING or BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, or even a ROBIN HOOD or a THE SWORD IN THE STONE. And yes, it piles its agenda on with a shovel.

But it’s a charming enough yarn that has more on its mind than the standard be-yourself-and-find-your-own-path tedium that represents the usual thematic depth that young viewers get targeted at them.

And so, when it ends with a title card saying, ‘For our children, and our children's children,’ the sentiment feels properly earned.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I’m all for using hyperbole to help make a point and deforestation is clearly a very real thing. But there are definitely still at least some rainforests left out there.

What would a movie called THE FIRST RAINFOREST be about?  According to the National Science Foundation (that nation being the USA): "Ancient Denvers [was] the first rainforest. Time period: 64 million-years-ago in the Early Paleocene (Cenozoic)." Little chance that it was under much threat from JCBs back then.

Previously:  THE LAST HOUSE

Next time:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #44 THE LAST HOUSE (2019, Samuel Farmer)

 

* 

An elderly (but tooled up) widow won’t give up her house to land developers because "it ain’t right". They, however, insist "she’s fer sure sellin". There is a clash. 

Starring  Camille Keaton, Scott Peeler, Karen Konzen, Eric Dooley, Christopher James Forrest  

Written by  Samuel Farmer

Produced by  Corina Seaburn, Jonathan Shepard

Duration  74 minutes    

   

In 2015, John Carpenter won a plagiarism case against fellow filmmaker Luc Besson concerning the movie LOCKOUT, which three years earlier the latter had produced. The film – starring a beefed-up Guy Pearce and featuring Maggie Grace getting kidnapped, just like she did in Besson's TAKEN – was a fun-enough sci-fi action romp, mid-budget and delivering middling thrills. Easy to pick up, watch while scrolling your phone, and then forget.

Except Carpenter was paying attention; he or one of his people, anyway. The movie was accused, and ultimately found guilty, of hewing far too close to the director’s own sci-fi action romp, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981). The rescue mission; the penetration of an impenetrable prison; the anti-authoritarian antihero. Consequently, its writing credits expanded to include JC and his ESCAPE co-writer Nick Castle, and those creative originators received enough compensation for Carpenter to be able to afford a lifetime season ticket to his beloved Milwaukee Bucks, and then come home and blissfully play his favourite PC game Dead Space long into the night without worrying about the electricity bill.

Now, when I watched LOCKOUT, not long after it came out, I didn't think about ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK at all – and I think about John Carpenter movies a lot. I as much equated the two films as I do Ed Sheeran’s 'Thinking Out Loud' to Marvin Gaye’s 'Let’s Get It On'. (An example of an unsuccessful plagiarism case.)

On the other hand, in the summer of 2008 I had sat in the cinema watching Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY with my mouth agape at how flagrantly it was ripping off ESCAPE. The hero of that movie even has a Snake Plissken eye-patch! And yet DOOMSDAY has remained free of litigation.

And while we're on the subject, what about all those cheapo Italian rip-offs that came out during the ’80s? Why did Carpenter, MAD MAX director George Miller and THE WARRIORS’ Walter Hill never team up and file a class action suit against (among others) 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX and THE EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000, forcing directors Sergio Mantino, Enzo Castellari and Guiliano Carnimeo to cough up billions of their ill-gotten lire?

So, coming to a grisly revenge movie called THE LAST HOUSE, I was fully expecting it to be a THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT rip-off. But it turns out I was wrong – albeit not entirely.

Because despite the title, this film wants to remind you of another grimy, ’70s exploitation flick. What it actually has its sights on is I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) – and the poster makes this plenty explicit. THE LAST HOUSE stars that film’s Camile Keaton in another avenging angel role, and wants to do for her what David Gordon Green attempted so earnestly with Jamie Lee Curtis in his ill-judged HALLOWEEN legacy trilogy. This despite there already being an I SPIT ON remake (with sequels!), not to mention that Keaton herself appeared in the direct sequel to the original, subtitled DEJA VU.

But in reality, THE LAST HOUSE skews closer to the truly limp attempt to honour the ‘final girl’ from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in the 2022 edition of that franchise.

(Sidenote: CHAINSAW 2022 is actually quite fun! Its main target is Gen Z and their attempts to gentrify Leatherface's hometown. Anyone holding a mobile phone aloft to film the chainsaw-flailing maniac's rampage gets their arm severed before getting the chance to post their video on TikTok! I recommend it.)

So, yeah. A class act THE LAST HOUSE most definitely is not. The company names that lead the opening credits do not bode well: "Chance in Hell Productions"; "Bad Man Pictures". Neither does its alternate title: CRY FOR THE BAD MAN.

It’s a home invasion flick. It’s also a ‘sell us your land or we’ll force you off’ story. But what it really feels like is a short film that’s been expanded into a feature – except in length only, with nothing added to its breadth or depth. It feels interminably long for a 74-minute feature, like all they did was take scenes that used to last 20 seconds and pad them out to 15 minutes.

The dialogue feels improvised, but not in an inspired way, more like no one bothered to memorise the script (or was never given one in the first place?), so instead just mumbled out semi-relevant phrases half-remembered from old TV shows and better movies.

The colour is ugly and oversaturated, like the whole movie is the final scene of TAXI DRIVER – except about a hundredth as good as that sounds, since this director handles action like he’s trying to flick a light switch with a broom. 

In a word: avoid.

So are there any genuinely new ideas left in the world? Or are we all just scrapping around the same drying-out pool of inspiration? One thing is for damn sure: there will always be a difference between good execution and total piss-poor fumble-job.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  It’s one of those middle-of-nowhere gaffs with no neighbours, so it’s the last house on the left and on the right.

What would a movie called THE FIRST HOUSE be about?  Let’s go for a documentary about the origins of house music in the club scene of early-’80s Chicago.

Previously:  LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

Next time:  FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #43 LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021, Edgar Wright)

 

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London, 2021. A fashion student with kind-of clairvoyant powers moves to the city and forms a cross-time connection thing with a young woman from the 1960s.

Starring  Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg

Written by  Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Produced by  Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Edgar Wright

Duration  116 minutes

I really wish I enjoyed Edgar Wright’s stuff more. I mean, I should do: I’m in the ideal demographic and generation; his interests overlap with my own; his movies are well-structured, competently made and high in entertainment value. And I was 16 when his breakthrough TV series Spaced was first aired and absolutely loved it.

But somehow, the word that comes to mind when I think of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD and BABY DRIVER is ‘overrated’. None of them are as good as people babble on about, with SHAUN in particular elevated onto a pedestal that puts it above criticism and seemingly giving Wright a pass for life. That film is good, don't get me wrong, but come on: as far as horror-comedies go, it falls short of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, BRAINDEAD, EVIL DEAD II, GREMLINS, CRITTERS, TREMORS, GHOSTBUSTERS, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, BEETLEJUICE, RE-ANIMATOR or THE LOST BOYS.

I do like THE WORLD’S END. That’s the only one that feels like it was made by an adult for adults, where Wright transcends his juvenile dedication to style over substance. He’s similar to Robert Rodriguez in that way, but I’d say I’ve got more out of the cinema of Rodriguez over the years – although to be fair to Edgar, Robert’s own idea of ‘grown up’ is SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO? I’m afraid it's another entry in Wright’s oeuvre of ‘meh’.

We're introduced to Thomasin McKenzie’s Eloise dancing around her bedroom in some kind of homemade dress to Peter & Gordon's ‘World Without Love’, indulging her twin fantasies of becoming a clothing designer and living in the 1960s. She has a goal, she has a passion – but she’s also socially awkward and clumsy in the best Bridget Jones/every-romcom-ever tradition, colliding with her record player (of course she uses vinyl). She also sees her dead mother in the vanity mirror, sowing a supernatural seed into the plot. I’d call this opening sequence an effectively economical bit of scene-setting, if the whole thing didn’t feel so vaguely irritating.

"It's not what you imagine, London. You've got to look out for yourself!" warns her gran when Eloise receives a letter admitting her into the city’s premier fashion college, giving me echoes of those poor girls in THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT who also made the fatal mistake of visiting a major metropolis.

Thankfully, Wright doesn’t have anything nearly as nasty/daring in mind for young Eloise. The next morning, she’s staring wide-eyed out the window of a cross-country train away from whatever backwards but safe hamlet she's from, oversized headphones blasting the reassuring sounds of ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’ by The Searchers.

She’s barely out of King's Cross St Pancras before she's forced to endure rapey innuendo from a pervy black cab driver on the way to her dorm. Therein lies further danger in the shape of her roommates/antagonists-in-waiting, who overuse the word ‘babes’, drill her with some exposition-inducing questions and take her to the pub for her first experience of alcohol (which of course they don't have in the countryside) and of hiding in a toilet stall overhearing people she had thought were her friends slagging her off.

Fortunately, Diana Rigg enters the picture as a kindly landlady who offers an escape from the Bitch Patrol by way of an attic room for rent. Eloise moves in quick-smart and, despite the constant flashes of red and blue from a sign outside making it look like she’s in SUSPIRIA (nice try, Edgar), she falls asleep peacefully to ‘You're My World’ by Cilla Black.

(At this point, I started to wonder if Wright had one eye on flogging vinyl-pressed soundtracks to hipsters and misty-eyed Boomers when he came up with this project – and yes, Barry Ryan’s ‘Eloise’ does get an airing.)

During her slumber, our Eloise finds herself embodying Anya Taylor-Joy’s independent-minded singer Sandie in the Big Smoke of the Harold Wilson years. As these flashback-dreams roll on nightly, her EYES OF LAURA MARS psychic-connection to such an empowered female gifts Eloise a renewed confidence during her waking life, demonstrated by how she struts down Carnaby Street with a new hairdo towards college where she wows her teacher with her clothing sketches. But when Sandie realises that all the men she trusted are bastards and have put her on a collision course with coercion, exploitation and murder, the ghosts of the past start to impact Eloise's present and she must truly shake off her passivity once and for all.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO isn’t exactly terrible, but it is a promising concept still in search of a solid film. I keep reading that it's a 'psychological horror' – Edgar's doing his Argento impression, but where's the psychology at? Everything is cartoony and one-dimensional; perhaps the pandemic rushed it into production before the script had gone through sufficient redrafts. McKenzie does her best with her deer-in-the-neon-headlights role, but between this and M Night Shyamalan’s OLD she might want to tell her agent to only give her screenplays that are populated by recognisable human beings.

And the weird anti-London sentiment that Wright (born in Poole, Somerset) peppers throughout really grates, with pearls like "London can be a lot" and "London’s a bad place" – maybe don't spend all your time in fucking Soho, then. (I did however chuckle at Michael Ajao’s bashful, non-threatening love interest admitting that he found hopping over the Thames to the north of the city a really daunting step.)

One definitely pandemic-influenced touch and probably the highlight for me: the John Carpenter-style Panavision shots of empty central London streets during the end credits.

Hmm, now where's that old DVD of HALLOWEEN hiding ...

Two stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As things wrap up, Eloise is well on her way to fashion-designing success, so it seems unlikely that further evenings in the West End aren’t upcoming.

What would a movie called FIRST NIGHT IN SOHO be about?  Probably dodging so many tourists that eventually you get pissed off and jump on a train to do a reverse-Ajao and have a much better time somewhere south of the river.

Previously:  SAFETY LAST!

Next time:  THE LAST HOUSE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com