Monday at the Movies - June 11, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Two of “Monday at the Movies,” in which the Cinema King revisits some of his childhood favorites.

Dick Tracy (1990) – Of the two films under consideration this week, Dick Tracy is the one that has not had the same effect on me in the twenty years since I first saw it.  If nothing else, Dick Tracy is as close as film came to translating comics (before Sin City came along, at least).  Its colors are vibrant and its morals are downright Manichaean, making it an easy film to watch.  Director Warren Beatty also stars as the comic strip detective in a yellow coat, but it’s the criminals at whom he fires his signature tommy gun that steal the audience’s attention: Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice, William Forsythe as Flattop, and Madonna as torch singer Breathless Mahoney.  But while the colors look great and lend the film a very intriguing visual style, the film hasn’t aged well in terms of substance.  Some of the performances come across as wooden (though I suspect Beatty is deliberately one-note as the do-gooder, Madonna’s work isn’t captivating), while others (ahem, Pacino) are overly blustery and cringe-worthy.  What sells the movie is that it’s populated by tons of high concepts and interesting visuals, characters with cool faces or wacked-out wardrobes, but Dick Tracy is almost overpopulated, and as a result some elements don’t make sense at the end.  I’d have liked to have seen more of Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles (an apt moniker), but as it is I’m still not certain what motivated a few characters, especially The Blank (“No-Face” in my childhood parlance).  Rewatching Dick Tracy brought back memories (especially of the complete trading card set I collected), but through my rose-tinted glasses I recognize that there is a truly great movie waiting to be made with Chester Gould’s source material.

The Rocketeer (1991) – The Rocketeer, however, has aged remarkably well and remains one of my all-time favorite superhero movies (a list, I suppose, I’ll have to make once I get around to Top-10’ing this site).  It might even be one of my all-time favorite movies, period, if only because I can’t watch it without my mood changing for the better.  If you’ve never seen it, for shame.  Billy Campbell stars as Cliff Secord, who discovers a rocket-pack designed by Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn); with the help of his mechanic Peevy (Alan Arkin), Cliff becomes The Rocketeer to save his girlfriend Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly at her most beautiful) from dashing Nazi actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton).  Really, the only thing preventing this film from being a perfect one is that it’s a little cheesy in parts, but I’ve found that a bit of nostalgia goes great with cheese.  The performances here are solid and endearing, and the 1930s atmosphere is pulled off with such grace that it’s no wonder director Joe Johnston was later asked to helm another period-piece superhero flick, Captain America: The First Avenger.  The Rocketeer is a lot like the Indiana Jones franchise, but with more heart than you might expect; while the superheroics are all top-notch, the movie is surprisingly earnest in its sentiment.  Campbell and Connelly are almost star-crossed as lovers, and the development of their relationship over the course of the film elicited a surprise mistiness in my ocular region.  That’s right, true believers, a more emotional filmgoer might have wept at The Rocketeer.  Even if you don’t cry, The Rocketeer is such delightful fun that you’ll want to watch it again once the credits roll.  Oh, hell:  maybe it is perfect.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Stepfather (1987)

In anticipation of Sunday night's big LOST finale event, I thought I'd go retrospective for a little bit and look at one of Terry O'Quinn's older roles. Having loved The Man Who Would Be Locke (and also UnLocke) in Alias and The Rocketeer, I realized I was long overdue for The Stepfather, probably his highest profile role before coming to that infamous island.

Recently remade with Dylan Walsh (a remake now on my radar), The Stepfather is perhaps best described as a Lifetime movie that acquired sentience and decided to become a mildly satirical horror picture instead. O'Quinn stars as Jerry Baker, the perfect father with the perfect family - a wife (Shelley Hack) and a stepdaughter, Stephanie (Jill Schoelen). It seems like the perfect life because it's Jerry's second attempt; he murdered his previous family when they "disappointed" him but managed to elude police. As Jerry's former brother-in-law closes in on him, Stephanie starts to grow wise to the fact that her stepfather isn't as perfect as he seems.

The premise is, twenty years hence, nothing remarkably fresh (2009 remake notwithstanding). But the script by Donald E. Westlake is at least marginally clever, and it gives O'Quinn a lot of room to really get into Jerry Baker's mental landscape and wreak some gleeful havoc while doing so. The rest of the film is fairly fluffy, and O'Quinn is the only element of the film that doesn't fall into some banal horror film trope. We have the unwitting spouse, the suspicious child who lacks credibility, the helpful doctor who meets a grisly fate, the driven hunter character, the family pet, the gullible next victim, and the one-liners.

Oh, the one-liners. It's here that Westlake's script really has fun with itself, as does O'Quinn. The gags - "I really don't think this house is for you" or "You should call before you drop by next time" - seem corny and overplayed, but the fact that they only appear when Jerry is at his most deranged suggests a commentary on the terrain of horror pictures. There is real horror bubbling under the surface of everyday life, the movie suggests, but Hollywood handles it by laughing at it. Jerry loses a lot of his menace when we're laughing at him; that's why he's much spookier in the "Who am I here?" scene, in which his mingle-mangle of identities begins to catch up with him.

O'Quinn's performance aside, the film is pretty terrible. The other performances just don't measure up, the plot relies on several coincidences that stretch the definition of the very term "coincidence," and the film is on the whole extremely formulaic. If it weren't for O'Quinn's presence and the strength of his performance - really a joy to watch - I'd relegate this one to the discount bin with all the other horror duds (like Prey, some horror movie [which I didn't see all of, admittedly] about lions menacing tourists in Africa. Oy.).
Rated R, The Stepfather comes from an era before the MPAA began justifying their ratings. The film includes some shockingly gory violence, one or two uses of the F-bomb, and two quick scenes of (unnecessary) nudity, both rear and frontal.