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 SEDUCTION (1982)
In the 1983 film 10 to Midnight, Andrew Stevens played a police officer working alongside Charles Bronson to bring down a dangerous stalker – but the year before that, Stevens played a dangerous stalker in the thriller The Seduction, which was sent out into the world by Tourist Trap director David Schmoeller and Hell Night producers Bruce Cohn Curtis and Irwin Yablans. (Yablans is also known for producing and coming up with the initial concept for Halloween.)
Scripted by Schmoeller, who reportedly drew inspiration from a true crime case, The Seduction stars Morgan Fairchild as Los Angeles newscaster Jamie Douglas (Hell Night’s Kevin Brophy plays someone who works at the studio with her), who has caught the obsessive attention of a photographer named Derek Sanford (Stevens) – a man who lives in the house right behind Jamie’s property, with a clear view of the swimming pool that she likes to skinny-dip in. At first, Derek secretly takes pictures of her, calls her on the phone to let her know he has been watching her, and sends her flowers. When she gets upset by all of this unwanted attention, he even delivers a box of candy to her in person (after sneaking into her dressing room) to apologize for the phone calls. And just when he has made things okay between the two of them, he barges into her house to aggressively snap close-up pictures of her. Thankfully, Jamie has a better boyfriend than can usually be found in movies like this, Michael Sarrazin as Brandon, and he shows up just in time to slap Derek around, give him a warning, and chase him out of the house.
But Derek is undeterred, as he’s under the delusion that Jamie has romantic feelings for him. He continues stalking her. Sneaking into her house, watching her bathe, trying to worm his way closer to her by making contact with her friend Robin (Colleen Camp) – and, as expected, things soon become violent and some people end up dead.
The Seduction was not well received when it was released – in fact, it was even nominated for “Golden Raspberry Rewards,” with the Razzies taking unwarranted aim at the performances of Fairchild and Camp. At least they didn’t “win” in their categories. But looking back, it’s an interesting old school slasher that starts out low-key and escalates over the course of its 104 minute running time. It probably could have and should have been cut down to a length closer to 90 minutes, and it could have used a more fitting title because there is no seduction going on here, but it still works as is and is worth checking out. Especially if you have a fondness for ‘80s cinema, as I do.
YOU SEASON ONE (2018)
I have watched a lot of movies and TV shows that were made for the Lifetime network and have enjoyed a good number of them – but none of them have matched the quality of the first season of the TV series You, which was developed by Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble and based on a novel by Caroline Kepnes. Often, Lifetime projects are kind of goofy and cheap – but that is absolutely not the case with You, which is a dark, engaging, well-crafted thriller.
Penn Badgley stars as Joe Goldberg, a charming guy with a dark past who works as the manager of a bookstore called Mooney’s. When college student / aspiring writer Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) comes into his store one day, Joe is instantly smitten... And we quickly realize that Joe does not pursue the women he’s interested in the right way. He cyber stalks Beck, find out where she lives, and soon enough he’s standing outside her apartment at night, watching her through the window, and masturbating right there on the city sidewalk. He gradually worms his way into Beck’s life – and, as you would expect from a stalker, proves to be dangerous.
Joe had a rough childhood, passing through the foster system, and ended up in the care of bookstore owner Mr. Mooney (Mark Blum) – who has been incapacitated by a stroke, but back in the day he was a real bastard who would lock Joe up in the highly questionable glass cage (it’s meant to keep rare books in good condition) in the basement of the bookstore, a way of “teaching him lessons.” When Joe finds out that Beck has been seeing a douchey hipster named Benji (Lou Taylor Pucci), he plucks Benji out of her life and sticks him in that cage. And when Beck’s friend Peach (Shay Mitchell) makes it clear that she doesn’t approve of Joe, he has to find a way to deal with her as well.
The ten episodes of You season 1 is a wild ride with some twists and turns along the way, and what makes it really fascinating is the fact that we see nearly all of the events from the perspective of Joe. We’re with this dangerous stalker every step of the way, hearing his thoughts in a narration excellently delivered by Badgley, we know why he’s doing what he’s doing, and even while we disapprove of all of it, we know where he’s coming from. This has led to something Badgley has felt very uncomfortable with: some female viewers develop a crush on Joe. He had made sure to take every opportunity to tell people that Joe is not someone to be crushed on or admired – but that’s the strength of his performance. The character is a creepy scumbag, but Badgley makes him fun to watch.
It’s also nice that the show makes Beck a complicated character in her own right. While Joe builds her up to be a perfect goddess in his mind, it’s clear to the viewer that she is a troubled young woman whose life is a mess at this point. She has flaws, she makes mistakes. But she did not deserve to have Joe Goldberg come into her life.
There are some great side characters as well, like Paco (Luca Padovan), the young boy who lives next to Joe and has his own troubled home life. Joe takes the kid under his wing, and is exactly a better person to have in his life that either his mother (Victoria Cartagena) or her abusive boyfriend (Daniel Cosgrove). Zach Cherry is fun as Joe’s bookstore employee Ethan, as is Hari Nef as Beck’s fellow student Blythe. Kathryn Gallagher and Nicole Kang play friends of Beck and Peach, Natalie Paul plays another woman who comes into Joe’s orbit, and John Stamos shows up as a therapist who plays an important role in the last episodes. I was also glad to see The Rage: Carrie 2’s Emily Bergl appear as Beck’s stepmother, married to the dad (Michael Park) that Beck tells people has already passed away.
If you’re into stalker thrillers, I highly recommend watching You season 1 – and that you continue watching through the seasons that followed. Lifetime ordered a second season of the show, then backtracked on that order. Thankfully, the series was able to jump over to the Netflix streaming service and complete the five season run its creators had envisioned.
THE SHINING (1997)
Author Stephen King was never shy about the fact that he wasn’t satisfied with director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of his 1977 novel The Shining. Over the decades, King has taken every opportunity to discuss the fact that he thought Kubrick’s movie was a letdown – and since he was so willing to talk about it, interviewers and fans at Q&As have made sure to bring it up regularly. As I mentioned when I wrote a Film Appreciation article on The Shining, King has had some positive things to say about Kubrick’s film. He has said there are things about it that are flawless, beautiful, marvelous... but he has also compared it to “a beautiful car with no engine.” He has said that Jack Nicholson did a wonderful job in the lead role, and yet he has also pointed to Nicholson’s performance as one of the problems, as King felt his character seemed crazy from the start, when the story is supposed to gradually build up to him going crazy. His biggest problem seems to be that he felt he wrote a very “warm” book with what he believed to be sympathetic characters. He loved the people he was writing about. But Kubrick took his story and made a very “cold” film, and the things King loved about his characters didn’t make the transition between warmth and cold. So, it’s not surprising that King took the opportunity to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his book to team up with Sleepwalkers director Mick Garris for a TV mini-series adaptation of The Shining. This project was a big deal at the time, because King and Garris had just had great success with a TV mini-series adaptation of King’s The Stand in 1994 (and that mini-series is one of my favorite things in existence)... but their ‘97 version of The Shining didn’t go over as well as The Stand or as well as Kubrick’s movie.
Kubrick teamed with Diane Johnson to write the 1980 adaptation. For this mini-series, King handled the scripting duty himself, condensing the events of the novel down into scripts for three 90 minute episodes. This time, he got to write the characters exactly as he envisioned them, and worked with Garris to cast the roles just right. He had envisioned Wendy Torrance as a blonde former cheerleader, so Rebecca De Mornay fit the description more than Shelley Duvall had. Casting the role of Jack Torrance proved to be more difficult, as actors were concerned about being negatively compared to Jack Nicholson. Tim Daly and Gary Sinise turned down the offer. Colin Firth was attached to play Jack at one point, but didn’t make it to production. So the role ended up going to Tim Daly’s Wings co-star Steven Weber – and while King always complained about feeling that Nicholson was crazy from the start, Weber has said that it was difficult to figure out where Jack’s mental state was from scene to scene, since, of course, the mini-series wasn’t shot in chronological order. Despite that difficulty, Weber did a fine job in the role, and De Mornay also did some strong work as Wendy.
I hate to say it, the biggest problem with The Shining ‘97 is the casting of Jack and Wendy’s 7-year-old son Danny. It doesn’t feel great to speak badly about a child actor... but Courtland Mead being cast as Danny Torrance is one of the worst examples of casting I have ever seen. Mead’s acting was not up to the challenge, and when he tries to act freaked out by the events that are happening around him (which is quite often), he comes off as deeply irritating. This mini-series had its hands tied behind its back from the start. No matter what King says, The Shining ‘80 is very difficult to live up to. The chances that this mini-series was ever going to be as good as what Kubrick did were slim to none. For me, it certainly didn’t even come close.
Of course, the mini-series gives us the same story as the movie did. Kubrick didn’t drift that far away from the source material. We have Jack Torrance, a failed teacher and struggling writer who is trying to overcome alcoholism for the sake of his wife Wendy and their young son, Danny, who he accidentally injured while drunk. Jack takes a winter caretaker job at an isolated hotel called the Overlook that happens to be packed with restless spirits – entities that little Danny is especially aware of, since he has extra-sensory abilities described as “the shining.” Things get creepier and creepier as the months go by – and when winter hits and the characters are snowbound, the spirits push Jack so far over the edge that he tries to kill his beloved wife and child.
One cool thing about the mini-series is the fact that it was filmed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the very hotel King was staying in when he was inspired to write the novel. It doesn’t look as impressive on screen as the sets Kubrick built for the movie there, but it’s nice that the place that inspired the story in the first place made it to the screen. Still, every scene that plays out in this location that is a version of a scene that Kubrick did just comes off as underwhelming in comparison – and that’s a whole lot of scenes. You get good moments with Weber and De Mornay (and with Melvin Van Peebles as Dick Hallorann, the Overlook employee who also has the shine), then moment after moment of cringe-inducing acting from Mead.
I feel that Kubrick improved on the scares that King wrote on the page, and the way those scares are presented in the mini-series seem to prove me right. The lady in the bathtub isn’t nearly as unnerving in the mini-series as she was in the movie. There are atrocious special effects in the mini-series that show CGI fire hoses with teeth and CGI topiary animals creeping up on characters. Weber has creepy scenes when he goes after his family with a large croquet mallet (rather than an axe like Nicholson used), but that’s pretty much the only scary element that really works. Everything else either falls flat or comes off as laughable.
King got the chance to make The Shining just the way he wanted it, and in my view it has always come off as a failed experiment. Kubrick won this competition.
ELEKTRA (2005)
Elektra is not everything a movie based on the Marvel Comics character Elektra could have or should have been – but I don’t think it deserves the reputation it has of being one of the worst comic book adaptations ever made. I have seen much worse than this one... and to be honest, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for it. It’s not the ideal Elektra movie, but it’s okay for a low-rent martial arts movie. It’s kind of on the same level as the Dolph Lundgren version of The Punisher – although that Punisher movie has cooler action than what can be found in this one. It even has Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa in the cast as the head of an evil clan of ninjas, which is perfect casting for a B action movie throwback.
Elektra basically had its hands tied behind its back from the start. Star Jennifer Garner didn’t want to do the movie, but she was obligated to reprise the role of Elektra Natchios; it was in the contract she signed for the 2003 Daredevil movie. So she had to wedge this project into her schedule between seasons of the TV series Alias, meaning director Rob Bowman would only have a short period of time to bring the script crafted by Zak Penn, Stuart Zicherman, and M. Raven Metzner to the screen. Fox gave Bowman a budget of $43 million and rushed the movie into production... and while Bowman was hoping that critics would be impressed by what he was able to accomplish on a relatively small budget and with a short shooting schedule, that didn’t turn out to be the case. Critics massacred Elektra just as brutally as she murders dozens of ninjas in the movie.
The opening narration informs us, “Since time began, a war has been waged in the shadows between the armies of Good and Evil. It may be fought on a grand scale or within the heart of a single individual - or even a child. The Evil has taken many forms and used the darkest of arts. In our time, they call themselves simply the Hand. The Good follow the way of Kimagure. Its masters can see the future and perhaps even bring back the dead. Legend tells of a unique warrior, a lost soul. This warrior is a woman, a motherless daughter. And it is her destiny to tip the balance between Good and Evil. She is a treasure, and both sides seek her out as a final weapon in an ancient war.”
From there, we catch up with Elektra – who was killed during the events of Daredevil, but quickly resurrected by the blind ninja master Stick (Terence Stamp) of the good ninja clan called the Chaste. Stick trained Elektra and tried to teach her the way of Kimagure, but she was filled with too much rage over her troubled past. So he sent her away from the Chaste and now she has achieved urban legendary status as a highly skilled assassin, taking jobs from her agent McCabe (Colin Cunningham).
When she takes a job worth $2 million, the client insists that she spend some time waiting in a lakeside home. While staying there, she crosses paths with her neighbors, single father Mark Miller (Goran Višnjić) and his teenage daughter Abby (Kirsten Prout), who even invite her over for Christmas dinner. Then the client reveals that Mark and Abby are Elektra’s targets. It’s the old “assassin can’t go through with her job” story – but at least in this case, it was actually a set-up, Stick’s way of trying to teach Elektra compassion. And it works. When ninjas from the evil clan called the Hand show up to kill Mark and Abby because Abby is the aforementioned “unique warrior,” a.k.a. the Treasure, Elektra takes them down. Then she goes on the run with them as a more dangerous group of Hand members, most of whom have mutant powers, come after the father and daughter.
The group on their trail consists of Will Yun Lee as the highly skilled ninja Kirigi; Chris Ackerman as Tattoo, whose tattoos (of things like birds, snakes, spiders) can come alive and peel themselves off his skin to do his bidding; Natassia Malthe as Typhoid, who has a poisonous kiss; Bob Sapp as Stone, who has impenetrable skin; and Edson T. Ribeiro as Kinkou, who doesn’t appear to have any special abilities. Elektra’s confrontations with these villains aren’t the most impressive sights, but it’s cool to see her go up against characters like this nonetheless.
Critics and many comic book fans were clearly very disappointed by Elektra – and, quite unfairly, this movie was used as an example when executives wanted to shoot down the idea of any other comic book movies with a female lead. It’s not a great movie... not even a particularly good one. But if you have an appreciation for B-level action movies and martial arts flicks, as I do, you can still get some entertainment from this one. A badass assassin battling ninjas, including some with mutant powers, is generally a recipe for a good time, and I don’t find anything about this movie to be egregiously horrible. It’s less than what I would have hoped for, but it’s a fine way to spend 100 minutes.
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