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

THE LAST SEDUCTION (1994, John Dahl)

 * * * * 

She’s a woman in a man’s world – and in his pants, and in his wallet. Whatever it takes to get her hands on nearly a million dollars.

Starring  Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, Bill Pullman, JT Walsh, Bill Nunn

Written by  Steve Barancik

Produced by  Jonathan Shestack   

Duration  110 minutes   

Bill Pullman had terrible luck onscreen with women in the ’90s. SOMMERSBY, MALICE, SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE – he doesn’t get the girl in any of them. As if people getting him mixed up with Bill Paxton all the time wasn’t bad enough! Even though that's plainly preposterous (unlike Dermott Mulroney and Dylan McDermott or Kim Coates and Elias Koteas; now, those I can understand.)

THE LAST SEDUCTION was part of Pullman’s luckless streak of cinematic romance, but it isn’t actually his movie. His character's merely one of the men spun into the web weaved by his wife Bridget (Linda Fiorentino), in his case when she pinches the $700,000 he made selling pharmaceutical cocaine and does a runner from their New York apartment. 

Unlike the Pullman/Paxton phenomenon, Fiorentino definitely wasn't getting mistaken for anyone else. With LAST SEDUCTION, she carved a distinct place on the list of classic femme fatales, among Ava Gardner in THE KILLERS, Barbara Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Sharon Stone in BASIC INSTINCT and Kathleen Turner in BODY HEAT – although come to think of it, Fiorentino does sound a bit like the throaty-voiced Turner.

But her Bridget is a true one-off, a whip-smart and resourceful force of nature who gets what she wants, always looks out for number one, and makes sure she has a damn good time along the way.

Peter Berg – just before veering from acting to directing with VERY BAD THINGS, followed by a succession of tepid Mark Wahlberg projects – plays the needy feminine role here. He's Mike, a local from the small town in which our heroine hides out while the heat dies down back in NYC. At first Mike's just a fuck buddy, but Bridget quickly pegs him as more useful as a patsy for a new scheme she’s brewing up.

It's sometimes said that movies need to have sympathetic characters in order to work. Do they bollocks! It’s asinine to criticise a picture for expecting you to side with someone less than angelic; a bland lament trotted out by people unable to process that you can relate to a flawed person while not approving of their behaviour.

In LAST SEDUCTION, Bridget lies, steals, blackmails, curses like Jack Nicholson in THE LAST DETAIL, uses people, has zero empathy ... and we want her to succeed. Why? Because she’s determined and resourceful, she’s quick-witted and smart and she doesn’t take shit from anyone. Most of us are meek and listless in our everyday lives; we respect someone who ruthlessly pursues their goals, even if we don’t like what those goals are.

And hey, guess what – it’s fiction we’re talking about here! Newsflash: we all have less than pure impulses and the realm of fantasy is a harmless place to indulge them, whether that’s just in our own minds or during a couple of hours spent watching a movie. Better like that than actually acting on them.

THE LAST SEDUCTION does still hedge its bets, but rather cleverly. Pullman's character impulsively hits Bridget in the opening scene, framing all her subsequent betrayals as stemming from domestic abuse. So in the viewer’s eyes, not to mention her own, she's the wronged one and spends the movie fighting back. Plus it helps that Pullman forgoes his usual nice guy routine to play the kind of sleazebag Tom Sizemore would have been proud of.

Fiorentino is formidable as Bridget, who remains pleasingly unrepentant until the bitter end. Director John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN, RED ROCK WEST) adds another solid neo-noir to his resume, and we all get to enjoy some time on the wrong side of the tracks, before crossing safely back over to our straight-arrow lives, where we all live like flawless saints.

And for the record, Bill Pullman has been happily married since 1987, has three children, and did in fact get a happy romantic ending in 1995's WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING. So, there's hope for all of us. 

Four stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As Bridget drives away scot-free at the end, it seems highly doubtful that she won’t be using her powers of seduction again on the next hapless male who either gets in the way of what she wants or who can be manipulated into helping her acquire it.

What would a movie called THE FIRST SEDUCTION be about?  Maybe it’s about time we had a Bridget Gregory origin story?

 

Previously:  THE LAST DETAIL

Next time:  THE LAST SUPPER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST DETAIL (1973, Hal Ashby)

 * * * * * 

A couple of sailors make sure that a youthful recruit has a good time on his way to prison.

Starring  Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Carol Kane

Written by  Robert Towne

Produced by  Gerald Ayres

Duration  104 minutes

You will read within the pages of this blog its author banging on about how much he loves the 1980s. But even someone blinkered with nostalgia for the era in which they grew up must accept that the best decade for film was probably the ’70s. (There are counter arguments, of course, but bear in mind that this opinion comes from a place of hating musicals and having a limited tolerance for westerns.)

I mean, let's take a look at the Oscar Best Picture nominees from the year THE LAST DETAIL came out, as well as some from those either side, 1972 and 1974. They include THE GODFATHER, DELIVERANCE, THE STING, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE EXORCIST, THE GODFATHER PART II, CHINATOWN, and THE CONVERSATION.

You can’t tell me the motion pictures of today match that lot, both in quality and the sheer consistency of that quality. THE LAST DETAIL didn't even get nominated for Best Picture, and it’s a Goddamn masterpiece!

There are many elements that make LAST DETAIL great. Lead star Jack Nicholson comes as no surprise. Writer Robert Towne (CHINATOWN, sadly no longer with us as of this week) also isn't a shock. Director Hal Ashby (HAROLD AND MAUDE) is a given. But to me, the revelation in films like this and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is Randy Randall Rudy Quaid. (Yes, that's his full given name.)

I was first introduced to Quaid as boorish Cousin Eddie in the NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION series, especially the annually televised Christmas instalment. Then later in the cinema, as INDEPENDENCE DAY's crazed alien abductee pilot, who gets his revenge on his former captors by going kamikaze ("Hello, boys! I'm baaaaaack!"), or as a goofy Amish bowler in the underrated comedy KINGPIN. And while younger brother Dennis became a conventionally handsome B-list leading man who married Meg Ryan, Randy squandered his talent and slid toward TV movies, eventually becoming more notorious for personal scandals than anything he did on screen.

But in THE LAST DETAIL, a fresh-faced and slim 22-year-old Quaid delivers an Oscar-nominated supporting performance (he lost the statue to John Houseman for something called THE PAPER CHASE). 

Sailors Nicholson and Otis Young are the leads: hard-drinking, self-serving veterans, wary of being given a "shit detail" and adamant that any authority figure should "go fuck themselves". Such a detail does indeed come their way in the shape of escorting Quaid from their Virginia base to Portsmouth Naval Prison for attempting to steal 40 dollars from a superior officer (and not even succeeding), which because of political bullshit is enough to earn him an inflated eight-year sentence. 

The injustice of it all bothers even these most cynical of career sailors, and their brothers-in-arms compulsion to "do right by" the hapless and helpless greenhorn is comedic, full of righteous indignation and finally downright heart-warming.

The trio don't follow a straight line to the Naval prison, instead taking detours to the cities of Washington and Boston. They visit bars; seedy hotels; diners where they'll melt the cheese on your burger if you ask them to; parks for some al fresco-roasted hotdogs; meetings of chanting Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists; pornographic bookstores; pawnshops; ice rinks; groovy after-hours coffee joints; Nixon-bashing, joint-passing house parties (featuring a debuting Nancy Allen, looking even younger than Quaid); and brothels (where the girls look younger still than Allen).

Across these evenings of misadventure, the loose, easy-going naturalistic vibe that typified Ashby’s best work (BEING THERE, the abovementioned HAROLD AND MAUD) sucks you in and never lets go. These are real people, authentic, simply men being men together – with all that entails, for good and for ill.

Cousin Eddie would be proud.

And I’ll resist the urge to close with some snarky speculation about what such a product of the ’70s would look like if done today –  because director Richard Linklater (BEFORE SUNRISE, DAZED AND CONFUSED) actually tried such a thing in 2017. Helpfully for this blog, he even kept a ‘last’ in the title – so watch this space for a review of LAST FLAG FLYING, coming your way real soon, sailor …

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  With regards to their Naval careers, Nicholson and Young describe themselves as "a couple of lifers", so further details are definitely on their horizon.

What would a movie called THE FIRST DETAIL be about?  The one I usually notice is the eyes, although of course I can’t speak for everyone.

Previously:  THE LAST HARD MEN

Next time:  THE LAST SEDUCTION

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HARD MEN (1976, Andrew V McLaglen)

 

* * * 

The retired sheriff who put away a violent criminal must again track him down when the man 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, back there in 1997. 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 dusty 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, unless you hate country music.

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 difficult 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 sheriff who sports an impressive moustache and mutton-chops combo, so that’s a plus, but he also lets the current 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

LAST PASSENGER (2013, Omid Nooshin)

 

* * * 

These 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 ponder 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, in 2013 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 the mid-2010s. 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. Tointon 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 it to 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 very 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

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-playing-himself 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 appreciate. 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 ( ... 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 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

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, 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 cut 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 the place. They pass the time making out in the back row of the town’s only cinema, being sure to remove 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 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