Review #57 LAST RIDE (2009, Glendyn Ivin)

 

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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, if I’m to trust teenage viewings of Australian 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)

 

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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