We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
THE BELIEVERS (1987)
There’s no use crying over spilled milk, but spilled milk does give Martin Sheen’s The Believers character Cal Jamison plenty to cry about when it causes his wife to be electrocuted to death by a faulty coffee maker. While grieving their lost loved one, Cal and his young son Chris (Harley Cross) move from Minneapolis to New York City, where they rent a home from landlady Jessica Halliday (Helen Shaver). That’s a good move for Cal’s love life, since Jessica becomes his new romantic interest, but a bad move for their safety, because Cal and Chris have arrived in New York just as the city is being hit by a series of child murders being carried out by a cult that practices a black magic version of brujería requiring human sacrifice. Of course, Chris will eventually be targeted by this cult.
Directed by John Schlesinger from a screenplay by Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost (whose script was based on a Nicholas Conde novel called The Religion), The Believers has plenty of crazy stuff to show us before we get to the sequence where the cult attempts to sacrifice Chris, with Cal trying to stop them with the help of his gun-toting lawyer Marty Wertheimer (Richard Masur) – who may be the best lawyer a person could ever possibly have, since he’ll raid a location full of homicidal cultists right beside you. Jimmy Smits plays police officer Tom Lopez, who has a really intense, creepy brush with the cult, while Carla Pinza plays Cal’s housekeeper Carmen Ruiz, who tries to do some brujería of her own to counteract the cult’s activities. Robert Loggia is Lieutenant Sean McTaggert, the lead investigator... and, like Tom Lopez, he has a really bad experience because of the cult. Jessica goes through her own horrifying ordeal because of them – and what happens to her is based on a popular urban legend.
It’s surprising that The Believers is so obscure these days, because the movie feels like the sort of prestigious genre film that could stand alongside the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, etc. I don’t think it’s quite as great as those movies, but it is very good, and deserves to have more attention directed its way. I may not have ever even heard of it until my JoBlo co-worker Eric Walkuski did a “Best Horror Movie You Never Saw” write-up on it... which is very strange, considering the high profile names that were involved with it.
There’s also a special treat for Return of the Living Dead Part II fans in this movie, as J. Peter Robinson composed the musical score for both films and there are moments where the music is reminiscent of his music from the zombie movie. (If you want to compare them, just beware that there are copies of Return of the Living Dead Part II where Robinson’s music was replaced.)
PRISCILLA (2023)
The Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla was written and directed by Sofia Coppola, but she was pulling information from what one would assume to be a reliable source: Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, which Priscilla wrote with Sandra Harmon. Priscilla is also credited as an executive producer on the film, so it would seem that she approved of what Coppola was bringing to the screen, even though the daughter she had with Elvis definitely didn’t approve of it. An email from Lisa Marie Presley to Coppola leaked online, showing that Lisa Marie had the following reaction to the Priscilla script: “My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative. As his daughter, I don't read this and see any of my father in this character. I don't read this and see my mother's perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don't understand why?”
It’s understandable that Lisa Marie would be concerned, because Elvis – as played by Jacob Elordi – does not come off well at all in this movie. I haven’t read Priscilla’s memoir, so I don’t know what was or wasn’t actually in there, but if the movie reflects things as they were, Elvis was not a good partner to her at all. The Priscilla movie is basically a 113 minute string of scenes where Elvis exhibits either questionable or appalling behavior. He enchants Priscilla (believably played by Cailee Spaeny throughout, from ages 14 to 27) when she’s 14, living on an Army base in Germany with her parents, and he’s 24, serving in the military. Once he gets out of the Army, he moves Priscilla to Tennessee with him and enrolls her in school, making sure she’ll finish her education while also apparently waiting until she’s of age before he’ll let their bedroom makeout sessions go all the way. Her underage days aren’t the only times when he rejects her advances; judging by this movie, Priscilla’s memoir must have contained frequent complaints about a lack of sex in their relationship, as Elvis turns her down multiple times for multiple reasons as the movie goes along. Eventually they’re married and have a child, but Elvis cheats on her on more than one occasion and is often a total jerk to her. He grooms her, he drugs her, he breaks her heart. Elvis is awful in this movie.
Elvis Presley is called the King and held up as one of the greatest stars who ever lived, but anyone who watches Priscilla is going to be left with the impression that he was a total creep. Whether or not he was, well, I guess only Priscilla knows.
STARDUST (2007)
I never really watched director Matthew Vaughn’s 2007 fantasy film Stardust, which is based on the book of the same name by Neil Gaiman. I think I put it on when the DVD was first released back in the day, quickly lost interest in it, and barely paid attention to it, focusing on something else as it played out. But then I was assigned to cover the film for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel last month, so I had to finally give it a fair chance. Trying it again sixteen years later, I found that it is a decently entertaining movie. The problem this time was, I made the mistake of reading Gaiman’s book before watching the movie... so then when I did watch Stardust, I was disappointed by how different it was from the source material and had to adjust to it.
Gaiman’s book is a fantastic adventure that could have been turned into a film along the lines of classics like The Wizard of Oz and Labyrinth. In fact, my favorite character in the book was someone who’s most often referred to as the “little hairy man” and reads like he would have fit right in with the creatures of Labyrinth. But Vaughn wasn’t interested in making a movie like those. He wanted to take a more grounded approach to the adaptation he wrote with Jane Goldman, never wanting to go too far into magical fantasy territory. Even when characters use magic, he wanted to find a want to have some reality to it. So Stardust is a much more down-to-earth film than I anticipated... and Vaughn and Goldman decided to leave out the little hairy man completely.
Charlie Cox stars as Tristan Thorn, a young man who lives in an English village called Wall, so named because of the wall that runs along the edge of town, separating it from the magical land of Stormhold. Tristan is infatuated with local girl Victoria Forester (Sienna Miller), who is out of his league and close to getting engaged to a guy played by Henry Cavill. But Tristan gets her to go out with him one night – and when they see a falling star, Victoria makes a deal with him: if he retrieves that fallen star for her, she’ll marry him. So Tristan crosses the wall in search of that star... not away that the fallen star is actually a humanoid being, Claire Danes as Yvaine. Or that the star fell out of the sky because it was hit by an enchanted necklace sent out by the dying King of Stormhold (Peter O’Toole), who has told his sons – including Mark Strong and Jason Flemyng – that whoever finds the necklace (which, unbeknownst to them, is now worn by Yvaine), they will become the next King. Tristan also doesn’t realize there’s a witch called Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) searching for the star, because if she cuts out the star’s heart and consumes it she’ll be restored to youth. So he’s in for a much bigger, more complicated journey than he could have imagined.
Witch encounters and swordfights ensue, and Robert De Niro also shows up as the captain of a flying ship with a crew that captures lightning bolts to sell to a fellow played by Ricky Gervaise.
Stardust is very different from the book, but it does retain some of the heart of the book and drops more action into the mix. It makes for a fun viewing experience, if you can settle into the right mindset and see it as something separate from what Gaiman wrote.
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