Review #58 THE LAST EXORCISM (2010, Daniel Stamm)

 

* * *

A phoney exorcist is out of his depth when he takes on a case that may be the real deal.

Starring  Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Louis Herthum, Caleb Landry Jones

Written by  Huck Botko, Andrew Gurland   

Produced by  Eric Newman, Eli Roth, Marc Abraham, Thomas A Bliss   

Duration  87 minutes   

There are certain types of movie which have that one shining example that’s just so definitive, so representative, so brilliant, that filmmakers are on a hiding to nothing if they try to take a fresh stab at it.

Disaster movies, for instance. No one’s ever really topped THE POSIDON ADVENTURE (1972). THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974) came close, and from the ’90s resurgence, INDEPENDENCE DAY will always be up there. But you can’t beat the rugged reliability of ’70s Gene Hackman and the smirk of Ernest Borgnine, backed up by Shelley Winter’s hysteria and Roddy McDowall's preening.

Forbidden love? It’s never been depicted more heartbreakingly than in BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945). Especially Celia Johnson's voiceover, where she confides to us that her husband would actually get along with the man who is tempting her – while knowing that the three of them all becoming friends is impossible.

Gangster rise and fall? The 1982 SCARFACE is the final word. How do you match the definitive over-the-top Pacino performance in a career defined by them? Or Oliver Stone’s highly quotable script, set to Georgio Moroder's moody synth-dread score?

And here’s one more for ya: THE EXORCIST.

There have already been various poor sequels to cinema’s seminal work about possession (although number three wasn’t bad) and, recently, David Gordon Green’s reboot (which I’m yet to see, but is supposed to be awful). The exorcism sub-genre has been dragged through the mud somewhat, the nadir being 1990 satire REPOSSESSED, which brought back original demon host Linda Blair and paired her with spoof king Leslie Nielsen.

Nonetheless, the makers of THE LAST EXORCISM decided to give it a go – possibly emboldened by a turn in the fortunes of exorcism movies in more recent years. THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE was a success five years before, and similar efforts like THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT (2009) had also done well.

But while I don't personally love the original EXORCIST as much as some people do (notably critic Mark Kermode), the cultural impact of that 1973 hit is such that no number of similarly-themed efforts will ever be able to swerve the comparison.

Nevertheless, I myself will conduct this review with complete objectivity and not mention THE EXORCIST again. So, alright then: is THE LAST EXORCISM any cop?

At first, when a pre-BETTER CALL SAUL Patrick Fabian (AKA Howard Hamlin) is being videotaped at home, the movie appears to be found footage. OK, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a choice that elicits caution in the viewer.

But wait! An establishing shot? Title cards? It’s not found footage at all, it’s a mockumentary! In the great tradition of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, the BORAT movies, and the first part of DISTRICT 9, before they gave up on the idea. Plus, in 2010 the US Office was still on and Parks and Recreation had just started, so I guess mockumentaries were currently in vogue.

This aesthetic decision is especially interesting when you consider that the director of THE EXORCIST himself, William Friedkin, started out making actual documentaries – including THE PEOPLE VS PAUL CRUMP (1962), about a death row convict who Friedkin believes is innocent. Obviously, THE EXORCIST is not a docu or a mocku, but nevertheless the clinical, unfussy style Friedkin developed from his days with non-fiction helped give that classic its raw power.

Shit. Three paragraphs later and already I'm back making comparisons to THE EXORCIST.

Well, anyway, in LAST EXORCISM, your man Fabian plays our documentary subject, a flamboyant preacher who comea from a long line of them. And it turns out his is also a family of exorcists, with demon-extraction being something else he has followed ‘Daddy’ (this is Louisiana) into, as he tells us while proudly showing off the clipping "Aged 10, local boy delivers first exorcism". And LAST EXORCISM not only uses the ‘E’ word in its title, but even positions itself in a world where that famous film exists. "It's not just the Catholics who perform them," Fabian explains, "but, you know, they got the movie, so ..."

And soon, we get the revelation that our so-called man of God doesn’t even believe in the spirit world; that he has gone through with however many so-called exorcisms without seeing any actual evidence. Thus, the point of him partaking in this documentary: he's heading out to families who've written to him about ghosts they need busted, the idea being he'll show the docu filmmakers how truly bollocks the whole thing is.

So on the road we go, to rural Texas, where a farmer claims that his daughter has been romping around at night and slaughtering the cattle, in a state of not being all herself. And would you believe it? Cocky old Fabian’s charlatan antics end up colliding with his first ever genuine paranormal incident!

(Beyond plot predictability, casting the creepy Caleb Landry Jones as the girl’s brother is an immediate red flag. See also ANTIVIRAL, HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT, GET OUT ...)

But flippancy aside, it’s not a criticism to call the direction the story takes unsurprising – that would be like chastising an action movie for having fights and car chases and explosions. The skill is in the execution.

And it’s pretty good! There are creepy performances and startling images; Fabian gets increasingly out of his depth as the family’s unseemly past comes to light; the documentary crew come out from behind the camera and get involved; and it all reaches a suitably bonkers climax, reminiscent of the brilliant KILL LIST, released the year after.

So, I ended up being glad that director Daniel Stamm refused to be over-awed by history and gave his own vision a go. Watch this space to see whether the confusingly titled sequel, THE LAST EXORCISM: PART II, warrants the same praise ...   

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  If anything, discovering a real case of possession will mean that the exorcisms are gonna just keep on coming.

What would a movie called THE FIRST EXORCISM be about?  Friedkin passed away in 2023, so that’s a good excuse to check out the original movie. And might I also suggest THE GUARDIAN (1990), his return to horror and a masterpiece of so-bad-it’s-goodness?  

Three stars out of five.

Previously:  LAST RIDE 

Next time:  TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #57 LAST RIDE (2009, Glendyn Ivin)

 

* * *

A young boy accompanies his fugitive father across Australia.

Starring  Hugo Weaving, Tom Russell

Written by  Mac Gudgeon

Produced by  Antonia Barnard, Nicholas Cole, Anthony Maras   

Duration  101 minutes   

Sometimes a film comes along that you don’t like overall, and yet it possesses one element that really leaves an impression.

It could be memorable dialogue, that you find yourself repeating from time to time or which contains sage advice. There may be one classic scene, or breathtaking cinematography. Or it could be more to do with the story, that it poses some kind of poignant dilemma. It may be the score, a theme that you find yourself regularly humming, to the point that you simply have to buy the soundtrack – despite not actually owning the film itself.

Another of these standout elements may be the performances, or one performance in particular. This happened to me once regarding Hugo Weaving, star of LAST RIDE.

The film in question is THE MATRIX.

I used to consider THE MATRIX one of the most overrated movies of the ’90s. As the years have gone by, my opinion has changed. I've now come to think of it as one of the most overrated movies ever.

I don't think I've ever been so disappointed or so confused by the hype as I was when I left the Odeon cinema Bromley aged 16 in June 1999. I tried watching this supposed masterpiece again, first on VHS, then on TV, then on DVD. And each time my opinion of the movie only went further south.

The most frustrating thing about THE MATRIX is that not only is it one if those films that has infected popular culture to the degree that any criticism of it is considered blasphemy, but it has subsequently had sequels that it is OK to slag off. This has insulated the first film from criticism – despite the fact that all of the things people didn’t like in the follow-ups were already there from the very start.

So, whenever you suggest that maybe THE MATRIX is tediously self-serious and full of not very clever or original philosophising, that it's way overlong in the middle with too much time spent with annoying secondary characters, and that its action sequences contain all the thrills and peril of PlayStation 1 cut-scenes, the recipient of your views never engages with you.

Instead, they just automatically trot out a boilerplate reply: "Oh yeah, the sequels were bad. But the first one, that's a classic!" This answer is always the same, no matter who you ask, as if the person is actually an AI, programmed to only ever give that response. (Gasp – maybe we are living in the Matrix! Wouldn't that be ironic! Gosh, now I have something really deep and challenging to go away and think about.)

The original MATRIX is not only mediocre, it also had a negative effect on future films. Its success is directly responsible for all the tension-free, superhero or superhero-inspired, young-skewing garbage that passes for action movies these days. In some ways I actually prefer THE MATRIX RELOADED, which teased some interesting directions; but they definitely then went and lost all their good will with number three. And that recent legacy sequel – despite a strong start – brings new meaning to the word ‘smug’.

But there was one diamond in THE MATRIX: Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. His mannered, memorable, stern to the point of near-camp performance was a joy. Some of his monologing will stay with me forever, like when he explains how humans rejected the first iteration of the Matrix for being implausibly perfect, or his delivery of the line "You're going to tell me, or you're going to die."

(It would be remiss of me to not add that Joe Pantoliano is equally great in THE MATRIX, but he always is. And also, I must state that I am a big fan of the Wachowski siblings’ debut, 1996's BOUND.)

Weaving hasn’t quite had the Hollywood career of his Aussie contemporaries, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce – I wonder if he was the only one to turn down LA CONFIDENTIAL? I guess he was in LORD OF THE RINGS in some capacity, but that didn’t exactly see him ‘do a Viggo’ and get catapulted to leading man.

His movies tend to fly under the radar, apart from things like V FOR VENDETTA (where he’s hidden behind a mask) and villain duties in one of those Marvel movies, but it doesn’t mean he hasn't been doing good work. And that includes LAST RIDE, produced back on his native turf (Weaving was born outside of Australia but spent most of his childhood and early career there).

LAST RIDE sees our Hugo as a rougish ex-con, taking a no-budget, sleep in the car or outside in ‘the bush’ road trip with his pre-teen son, Chook (slang for chicken, as far as I remember from soap opera Neighbours). It's a journey that will have significant consequences for both of them. And let's just say that the trip is less about where they're going to and more what Dad is running away from.

The movie is slight: not bad, not amazing, watchable enough. I was irritated by the intrusion of the non-skippable ads on the ITVX ‘free’ streaming service, but not enough to turn off, so it passed that particular test. (My time is not free, and they’re wasting it with commercials.)

And ‘slight’ is still more than slightly better than THE bloody MATRIX. Then again, so would be sitting through a back-to-back stream of ITVX’s adverts, punctuated by clips from the film that only feature Weaving's Agent Smith.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Spoiler alert: for the father, yep.

What would a movie called FIRST RIDE be about?  For me, our first family car was a Saab 9000, if I remember correctly.

Previously:  THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH

Next time:  THE LAST EXORCISM

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #56 THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH (2017, Danny Huston)

 

* * * * 

When a treasured memento is stolen, a man has to once again face the pain of losing his son in tragic circumstances 15 years ago.  

Starring  Danny Huston, Sarita Choudhury, Stacy Martin, Jonah Hauer-King  

Written by  Simon Astaire

Produced by  Simon Astaire, Farah Abushwesha, Julia Rausing

Duration  86 minutes   

   

 

Nepotism. Is it bad? Of course it is. If the CEO of a major corporation gives his unqualified and inexperienced college-dropout son a plum six-figure salary, it’s going to ruffle some feathers.

But is nepotism always bad? No one criticises the vague concept of ‘going into the family business’, like when a teenager whose father owns a construction firm begins laying bricks on one of the old man’s sites, or if a greengrocer's kid comes to work in the shop.

The entertainment industry, on the other hand, regularly comes under scrutiny – the fashionable term being ‘nepo baby’. But no one goes to see a film because the relative of a popular actor is in it; the actor in question has to build their own reputation and following. 

Yet it’s inarguable that many have used their family to get a leg up with that crucial and elusive 'big break', and while they may then have then needed their own talent and hard work to keep their career going, would they have got their chance in the first place if not for a famous surname?

The Hustons – of which THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH’s Danny is one – have arguably the most prestigious lineage in all of Hollywood. Walter Huston was an actor, directed by his son John Huston to Oscar glory in THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948), with John also bagging statues for helming the film and for writing it.

John was a sometime actor himself, too, most notably playing the villain in CHINATOWN (1974); but he’s definitely better known for being on the other side of the camera. His work includes directing another family member to an Oscar: his daughter Anjelica Huston, in PRIZZI’S HONOR (1985). He never directed his son, Danny Huston, but Danny did embarks on his own directing career – as did sister Anjelica. Meanwhile, they have another sibling who is an actor, Tony Huston, whose son, Jack Huston, is (wait for it) ... also an actor.

Other notable acting/filmmaking dynasties include the Barrymores (Lionel, Ethel, John, John again, Drew); the Fondas (Henry, Peter, Jane, Bridget); and the Coppolas (in their case not all making use of the family name: Francis, Carmine, Sofia and Roman did, but you also have Talia Shire, Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman).

Sometimes these families play families onscreen. I’ve never seen the awful-sounding Kirk, Michael and Cameron Douglas movie IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY, from 2003. But I would like to see a hypothetical comedy starring the Baldwin brothers – Alec, Stephen, William and Daniel – where, let's say, they kidnap fellow actors but not-in-fact-actual-relations Adam Baldwin (FULL METAL JACKET) and A. Michael Baldwin (PHANTASM) and recruit them into a villainous scheme for world domination.

THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH only has Danny representing the Huston clan, albeit pulling double duty as both director and lead. And it may not star any other members of his family, but the story is certainly about family.

It’s 2003. Danny is Tom, an American living in the UK, running a bookshop in Chelsea, West London. One day, his bag is stolen by a cameoing Jaime (daughter of Ray) Winstone, sending his life into what the promotional materials (and, at one point, he himself) describe as ‘a tailspin’ when he realises he’s lost his most treasured possession: a photograph of he and his late son from the last time they were together, 15 years ago.

And ‘tailspin’ is the accurate word, being that in its literal definition it refers to a crashing aircraft. Because 15 years ago, Tom's son died on the real-life ‘Lockerbie bombing’ flight: the Boeing 747 from Heathrow Airport to JFK that crashed into the Scottish Town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, after a bomb exploded on board.

So, what we have here is a rumination on grief. And a powerful one. Huston’s raw, genuine performance is a big factor: he legitimately earns the family name. The scene where he struggles to absorb being told "Sir, there were no survivors" is a masterclass in blind hope being dragged through stubborn denial into numb acceptance.

As director, Huston mixes in real-life news footage from the plane crash – featuring '80s big glasses (back in fashion today) and drab wallpaper (never to be popular again) – with two timelines: the then-present and flashbacks to father and son in 1988. A tragedy, Huston is demonstrating, doesn't just happen once; it hits us repeatedly, years later, unannounced and just as raw. His point is underlined by occasional (but never overdone) mentions of 9/11, the spectre of which was still fresh in our shared consciousness in 2003.

The only real criticism I have of THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH is that I wasn’t too keen on the actor playing the flashback-glimpsed son. We needed to miss the boy ourselves as Tom does, whereas I found his segments to be a bit too saccharine, especially while they explored his burgeoning relationship with soon-to-be-tragic first love, Stacy Martin (from Lars Von Trier’s NYMPHOMANIAC).

What we could have done with was some of that old nepotism coming into play: I wish Danny had rung up his nephew Jack Huston, who was so impressive as a disfigured WWI vet in TV show Boardwalk Empire, to play his character's son, instead of using this nondescript guy Jonah Hauer-King.

Wait, hold on. ‘Hauer’ ... let me just check something. Nope – his dad isn’t Rutgar Hauer, the actor from BLADE RUNNER. That extra bit of nepotism would have tied this review together far too neatly. Although Jonah’s mother was a theatre producer, apparently, so maybe ...

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  In a rare instance of total literal accuracy: yes.

What would a movie called THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH be about?  Art in Context informs us: "The world’s first permanent photograph was taken in 1827 and was titled 'View from the Window at Le Gras'. The first photo in the world was created by an inventor from France named Nicéphore Niépce."

 

Previously:  LAST SURVIVORS

Next time:  LAST RIDE 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #55 LAST SURVIVORS (2021, Drew Mylrea)

 

* * 

A man and his son's isolated existence deep in some snowy woods is threatened when the boy becomes curious about the outside world.   

Starring  Stephen Moyer, Drew Van Acker, Alicia Silverstone

Written by  Josh Janowicz   

Produced by  Shaun Sanghani, Sunil Perkash, Akaash Yadav, Michael Jefferson   

Duration  98 minutes   

You know when you see an actor who's new to you and they make such an impression that you always associate them with that performance? That’s how I feel about Stephen Moyer.

You see, back in 2001, I stumbled upon him in a two-part TV miniseries on Channel 4 called Men Only. The show caught my attention because the five friends at its centre all supported my beloved Crystal Palace Football Club. Moyer played a real sleazy bastard, who enjoyed taking clandestine photos of women during sex using an attachment on his Game Boy Color (!) And it’s been a struggle for me to picture Moyer as anything other than a misogynistic date-raper ever since.

I’m well aware that the vast majority of people have never even heard of this obscure acting credit, especially outside of the UK, even though it also starred Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins in THE HOBBIT) and Marc Warren (WANTED, GREEN STREET). But many more viewers will be familiar with him from another TV show, True Blood. I tried watching that one and couldn't get into it, but for a lot of people out there, they won’t be able to see Moyer pop up in something without picturing him in some kind of sexy vampire blood-letting scenario.

This must be why until recent years (like, before The Sopranos) movie stars shunned TV: you don’t want to get tied down to one character, to the point that no one can accept you playing anything else.

Alicia Silverstone has suffered a similar fate in her career – worse, in fact. And not from a TV role, but from a breakout movie: playing teen socialite Cher in CLUELESS (1995).

Back then, Silverstone probably thought her career was going well and that there was no way she would end up being known only for one role – and then she did BATMAN AND ROBIN, in 1997. A movie disaster-zone that derailed not only her career, but, to a higher or lesser degree, those of co-stars George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman and Elle Macpherson, as well as director Joel Schumacher and the character of Batman on the silver screen.

Anyway, LAST SURVIVORS sees Moyer and Silverstone in the same project and trying yet again to embed a different memory of themselves in the viewer’s mind. They're co-starring in a ... oh joy, it’s another post-apocalyptic movie.

You can see why this type of flick appeals to the budget filmmaker. You don’t need a big cast; in fact, you can get away with having just a handful of characters moping about the place (unless you’re trying to do something like the MAD MAX sequels). You can get away with being extremely vague about what happened pre-apocalypse, so you don’t even have to properly think your scenario through. And settings can be places that it’s easy to hire outside of business hours and which you can readily make look in a vague state of abandon: schools or offices or even private homes – they just need to be left a little untidy to give the impression of being neglected for however long you want to imply. The more isolated the locations are, the better.

LAST SURVIVORS ticks every one of those boxes. It also demonstrates another tired trope with its opening music: a dreary, almost nursery rhyme-style ballad, like when they take a well-known song and slow it down and draw out its familiar melody for a trailer; or, if it’s a legacy sequel or new adaptation of ages-old IP, doing the same to that franchise’s well-known theme song (see: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, JURASSIC WORLD, SUPER MARIO BROS. THE MOVIE, etc).

And I wish LAST SURVIVORS got better from that first impression, but, alas ...

We open on a young man, outside in a snowy wilderness gathering animals from traps. He lives with his old man (Moyer) and it’s just the two of them in a rundown cabin, lighting fires, hunting, surviving. Bantering competitively about who can cut down the most trees in one day – hey, with no internet or PlayStation 5, you've gotta amuse yourself somehow.

They got guns. Don’t you worry about that – and not just for huntin’, neither. A few shots from afar while they’re bringing home the wood send Dad hurtling out to investigate, with an order for sonny to "shoot in the face" anyone who approaches their home.

Dad pops a wannabe intruder out in their yard, with son expressing his frustration about getting sentry duty rather than being allowed to pump a few rounds into something bigger than the usual rabbits and pheasants.

But uncertainty has started to curdle in the youngster’s mind. The man his dad shot grabs him and splutters, "Tell my daughter I love her." Yet his old man told him that all those ‘outsiders’ were nothing but callous murderers who need to be killed before they get their chance to do the same. And then, when sonny is forced to venture further afield to get some antibiotics for his sick pa, he encounters the matronly Silverstone – whose kindliness puts into doubt everything that he had been led to believe, and sets him on a path to realising that maybe his dad ain't been totally truthful about what’s really beyond the woods.

So basically, what we have here is that someone saw M Night Shyamalan’s THE VILLAGE and said, "Let’s do that again, but on a smaller scale and with colder weather!"

Moyer and Silverstone are both fine. He certainly isn’t any kind of sexual predator this time (possibly owing to a lack of opportunities and a diminished libido from near-starvation); she doesn't wear any designer gear or ever say "Like, totally, whatever."

But sadly, this forgettable film is unlikely to change how people perceive either actor. Or, to be honest, have any kind impact at all.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Not to spoil the twist for anyone who hasn’t seen THE VILLAGE, but … no.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SURVIVORS be about?  Once you know that twist, that opposite title would work for this film equally well.

Previously:  LAST FLAG FLYING

Next time:  THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #54 LAST FLAG FLYING (2017, Richard Linklater)

 

* * * 

In 2003, three buddies and veterans of the Vietnam War reunite to bury one of their sons, himself a Marine killed in the Second Persian Gulf.

Starring  Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Yul Vazquez, Cicely Tyson

Written by  Richard Linklater, Darryl Ponicsan

Produced by  Ginger Sledge, John Sloss   

Duration   124 minutes

What makes an artist? Finishing things.

Anyone can start a creative project, but you only become an artist by finishing; until then, you’re just toying with ideas.

Richard Linklater is a finisher. He perseveres, no matter how long it takes. As was well publicised upon its release in 2014, the director's BOYHOOD entailed 12 years of on/off filming. At any point he could have called it quits it and just edited whatever footage he’d got so far into a final cut. But he didn’t compromise, he got to the end. He finished it.

Not content with committing to a decade-and-change for a movie, Linklater is currently working on MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, touted to take 20 years – in reverse chronological order, apparently, however the hell that’s going to work. As ambitious and bonkers as it might sound, few would bet against him delivering. BOYHOOD was not a one off: his BEFORE trilogy spanned 21 years, even if that scope wasn't planned at the outset.

Now, I don't know if the Texan filmmaker saw Hal Ashby’s THE LAST DETAIL when it first came out – he would have been 13 at the time. But considering he debuted as a feature director in 1988 and that there is a 44-year gap between LAST DETAIL and LAST FLAG FLYING, it’s fair to say that Ashby's film had been on Linklater’s mind for a while, and he'd bided his time: until he could secure the rights, until he felt ready, until the moment had come. And when it did, he got it made.

What he turned in is what’s known as a ‘spiritual sequel’. Which is what? Well, it’s not an official follow-up, but if you squint a bit, you can imagine that it is.

People loved Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan on the end of telephones in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, so they were paired up again to exchange clunky ’90s emails in YOU’VE GOT MAIL. Gene Hackman was iconic as a paranoid surveillance expert in THE CONVERSATION, but what if that picture had been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Tony Scott and had a ridiculously stacked cast? You’d get ENEMY OF THE STATE.

Sometimes the spiritual sequel is even helmed by the same person. CARLITO’S WAY, for example, feels like De Palma exploring the fate of SCARFACE’S Tony Montana if he’d stayed alive and tried to go straight; whereas Scorsese has as good as admitted that CASINO is GOODFELLAS 2.

In the case of LAST FLAG FLYING ... well ... it's all a little complicated. I’ll let The Seattle Review of Books do the work for me:

LAST FLAG FLYING is a spiritual sequel to THE LAST DETAIL, but it’s not a direct sequel. Both films are based on novels written by Darryl Ponicsan, and both feature three military men on a road trip. But the men in LAST FLAG are Marines, not Navy; the names of the characters are different; and the timelines of the films don’t quite line up evenly. Still, LAST FLAG picks up the spiritual threads of LAST DETAIL and spins them out into a [new] story.

That’s cleared that up, then.

So was it worth it for Linklater to finish making LAST FLAG and for the viewer to sit down and finish watching it? Er ... I suppose. Just about. It's not one of his strongest, that’s for sure, certainly not joining the ranks of DAZED AND CONFUSED or the abovementioned decades-spanning projects. And it falls short when compared to LAST DETAIL, lacking its kind-of predecessor’s raw power, skewing as it does toward the sentimental and rote, rather than the looseness and cynicism Ashby delivered back in ’73.

It’s a mostly sombre mediation on friendship, duty, honour, God, war, the passage of time and the decisions we make. Which is fine and everything, but despite a welcome streak of humour, it can get a little heavy handed. And some of the levity misses the mark: the story is set in 2003 and boy are we not allowed to forget it, with multiple characters proclaiming amazement about how much you can find out on the Internet and a running gag about what a revelation mobile phones are, references that would have seemed trite even back in the early ’00s.

It survives on the likability of its cast. As the bereaved father, Carrell is poignant and proves again that he’s just as at home in drama as with comedy; Fishburne manages to have both a moral centre and a devious twinkle in his eye; and the roguish Cranston does Jack Nicholson proud and then some, more evidence of how lamentable it is that his career didn't quite kick on post-Breaking Bad.

So LAST FLAG FLYING turns out to be a solid if unspectacular watch, from start until – yes – finish.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Hundreds of millions of flags are flying aloft all over America at this very moment, so no. 

What would a movie called FIRST FLAG FLYING be about? Debate presumably rages in expert quarters, but according to this site, it was probably either Scotland, Austria, Latvia, Denmark or Albania. However, I prefer to instead imagine a slapstick comedy about a hapless Naval recruit who is struggling to hoist the stars and stripes up its pole, having never before been asked to do so.

Previously:  LAST VEGAS

Next time:  LAST SURVIVORS

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #53 LAST VEGAS (2013, Jon Turteltaub)

 

* * * 

These guys might be old, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still party! Specifically, by heading to Vegas after the last bachelor among the group finally gets engaged.

Starring  Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen

Written by  Dan Fogelman

Produced by  Laurence Mark, Nathan Kahane, Amy Baer, Matt Leonetti   

Duration  105 minutes

   

Here we go: oldies doing youthful things movies. Did Clint Eastwood’s SPACE COWBOYS (2000) popularise the trend? Or was it Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas with TOUGH GUYS in 1986?

No, wait, there was GOING IN STYLE back in 1979 (also remade in 2017), which is part of the ‘pensioners pull a caper’ sub-genre – see also KING OF THIEVES, THE HATTON GARDEN JOB, THE LOVE PUNCH, GOLDEN YEARS, etc.

Whichever way you cut it, these films are comparatively rare; the older crowd isn’t traditionally catered to by Hollywood and its four-quadrant obsession. This despite the fact that pensioners go to the movies a lot – I know if I was retired, I'd be going two or three times a day. But the success of CALENDAR GIRLS and then those MARIGOLD HOTEL pictures seemed to make something click in studio boardrooms, and we were suddenly inundated with attempts to snag the ‘grey pound’.

The trend was at its peak when LAST VEGAS came out in 2013, sandwiched as it was between the two MARIGOLD films. I’d need to have seen more of these things to accurately benchmark VEGAS against its peers but, judged on its own merits, it's serviceable enough.

Failing to act their age this time are Michael Douglas (69 at the time of filming), Robert De Niro (70), Morgan Freeman (76), and Kevin Kline ('the baby' at 66 – although none of them are as young as Mary Steenburgen's 60, so they still managed to keep the female love interest younger, as is par for the course).

The film opens by leaning heavily into nostalgia with a quick flashback. You got the kids cast for their resemblance to our stars, crammed into a photo booth for a montage of snaps over the credits. You got the four friends standing up for each other in the face of older greasers, soundtracked to ’50s pop. You got a glimpse of a rivalry between young De Niro and young Douglas.

Then: bam! Fast-forward fifty-eight years. Kline is taking part in water aerobics while quipping about how close to death everyone around him is. Freeman has an overprotective son, or it might have been grandson, that scene was kind of rushed. De Niro falls asleep in front of daytime TV and dodges his Millennial neighbour’s attempts to set him up with her grandmother. Michael Douglas is wildly successful, judging by his Malibu beachside home and bikini-clad 30-something partner (what a shocker: the evidently proud sex-addict Douglas is playing the lothario), and it is he for whom the Vegas stag do that gets the four back together is organised. 

The music starts to sound like David Holmes' score for OCEAN'S ELEVEN; the oldies struggle with their suitcases, their rented cars and navigating flights of stairs; De Niro kills five minutes of screentime in post-MEET THE PARENTS curmudgeon mode with his reluctance to join the party; and before you can say "Let's have another joke about old people living in Florida", we're in Vegas ( ... baby)!

In terms of an actual plot, beyond just stretching an amused-with-itself setup to feature length, only the abovementioned De Niro/Douglas tension really qualifies – and I'll give writer Dan Fogelman credit for not making it turn out to stem from the latter stealing the former’s girl, despite likely pressure from Douglas at the scripting phase. Kline spends the film trying to pick up younger women, having been given a free pass by his wife (until, inevitably his conscience intervenes), and Freeman cuts lose on the games of chance now that he is unshackled from his mollycoddling son/grandson.

Other than that, it's mostly a series of comic set pieces: the gang judging a bikini contest; that curly haired DJ bloke from LMFAO gyrating his crotch in Robert De Niro's face; the oldies blagging their way into VIP areas; dancing to EDM drunk on vodka Red Bulls; Turtle from Entourage being an asshole, then getting his comeuppance when the old guys pretend to be aged Mafia bosses on the warpath. You get the idea.

Best in show actually turns out to be Steenburgen, whose lounge singer/Vegas chaperone contributes a wry and charming energy, although Fogelman could have done with gifting her some dialogue that goes beyond reactionary one-liners.

It's the kind of film that was made for half-watching on a Sunday afternoon. It doesn't demand too much from the viewer, so it would be churlish to demand too much from it.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Everyone had a good time and successfully completed their story arcs, so that's probably it for trips to the gambling Nirvana in Navada.

What would a movie called FIRST VEGAS be about?  Obviously if you go back too far, it’s just a town in the middle of the desert. Probably better to think of the 1960s/70s, the era of Frank Sinatra or DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: plenty of gambling, but not yet full-on gaudiness.

Previously:  THE LAST SUPPER

Next time:  LAST FLAG FLYING

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #52 THE LAST SUPPER (1995, Stacy Title)

 

* * * * 

A group of liberal grad students start inviting extreme right-wingers to dinner and murdering them after the inevitable clash of ideologies.

Starring  Cameron Diaz, Courtney B Vance, Ron Eldard, Jonathan Penner, Annabeth Gish, Bill Paxton

Written by  Dan Rosen

Produced by  Matt Cooper, Larry Weinberg   

Duration  92 minutes

Movies should be a balancing act between entertainment and art, with the nature of the picture determining in which direction the scales tip.

So where does politics fit in? Used sparingly and subtly, a bit of an agenda can add depth. Rian Johnson, for instance, is one mainstream filmmaker who sneaks rhetoric into their work. This enriched KNIVES OUT and gave an already excellent film more power, but came across as a little preachy in the sequel, GLASS ONION.

Going further back, DR STRANGELOVE is hilarious first and shines a light on Cold War hysteria second. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS alludes to Communist paranoia while still being surface-level chilling. On the other hand, LAND OF THE DEAD is a little too on-the-nose with its Dennis-Hopper-as-George-W-Bush ironic casting. And GET OUT is a pretty bog-standard piece of suspense horror, one that would practically disappear if you took away its subtexts (director Jordan Peele himself instead calls it a ‘social thriller’.)

However, THE LAST SUPPER is a different beast altogether. This film isn't trying to sneak you some politics through the backdoor; the politics are the movie.

LAST SUPPER’S concept is novel, but does have precedents – it’s in the tradition of ‘lefties turn to righty tactics when pushed too far’. A lot of vigilante stuff falls into this trope, with the Jodie Foster-starring THE BRAVE ONE a recent example. But the forefather is, believe it or not, the first DEATH WISH. Early on, Charles Bronson actually says, "My heart bleeds a little for the underprivileged". Then when a couple of scenes later some of those underprivileged attack his family, he decides that he’d prefer to make their hearts bleed ... from bullet wounds!

The liberal fightback in LAST SUPPER kicks off when Bill Paxton’s truck driver gives one of the house-sharing grad students a lift home, following car trouble. They reward him with a meal and he turns out to be an aggressively racist Desert Storm-veteran, whose idea of dinner table conversion is like a checklist of the deplorable: "Everyone hates the Jews", "The Nazis had the right idea" and "My granddaddy said if he’d known them slaves were gonna be so much trouble, we’d have picked the cotton ourselves!" For pudding, he gets a knife to the spine.

Having got away with one murder, the housemates decide that from now on they’ll have a guest round for "lunch and discussion" once a week. Spoiler: they don't invite any wallflowers.

Instead, it’s more like anti-abortionists; Nation of Islam fundamentalists; Charles Durning’s Old Testament vicar ("Homosexuality is the disease and Aids is the cure"); Mark Harmon’s chauvinist rape-apologist ("How often does a woman say no when she really means yes?"); an anti-environmentalist played by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander with a goofy Southern accent; and more, poisoning one and all with arsenic-spiked dessert wine. Meanwhile, the unmarked graves in the tomato patch start to line up like morbid speed bumps.

Having Paxton play the first kill as someone who might as well have horns and a pointy tail seems blandly manipulative at first glance, but is actually a shrewd move. By making the first victim so cartoonishly hateable, LAST SUPPER lures the audience into siding with the protagonists right away. We fall into the trap of seeing things in black and white as they at first do, which makes it all the easier to share in their unease as shades of grey get mixed in.

Despite how it might sound, this is not a dogmatic film; it goes about its business with a clear head and a welcome lack of partisanship. This means it can smoothly and intelligently explore its core ‘what if’: many an impassioned left-instigated debate has felt like it could erupt into violence, so how about escalating to homicide?

And the movie has other things on its mind, too, such as: do the left debate too much instead of acting? If they were as proactive as the right, maybe the world would be less fucked up and they really could ‘make a difference’ for once. In fact, could the only way to really make that elusive ‘difference’ be to eliminate the negative people – the classic would-you-kill-baby-Hitler? debate.

The grads tell each other that they want to give their guests the chance to change their views and avoid becoming tomato fertiliser, but an emerging murkiness about whether the intention is really to educate or if it’s to punish is just one cause of tension among the gang. Then the net starts to close in by way of Nora Dunn’s sheriff investigating an unrelated crime involving one of the last supper victims, and the cracks among the moralistic murderers begin widening into chasms.

Cameron Diaz now stands out as the ‘name’ in the cast, but she was unknown at the time (THE MASK had only just been released) and is part of a genuine ensemble, with every character well-drawn and compellingly portrayed. It all plays out in ways that are at once surprising, logical and satisfying, making it a real pity that director Stacy Title and screenwriter Dan Rosen aren't better known.

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The title is pretty much perfect for where the film’s at: it’s got death, it’s got judgement, but it’s also wryly self-aware.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SUPPER be about? Probably pretty unappetising. Some brambles and such, I’m guessing.

Previously:  THE LAST SEDUCTION

Next time:  LAST VEGAS

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com