A Briefcase Full of Boogers

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. 

Life, death, thrills, and Cage.

THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2024)

I have read a whole lot of Stephen King’s works, but there’s still a lot I need to catch up on – and one piece of King writing I haven’t gotten to yet is the short story The Life of Chuck, which was published in his 2020 compilation book If It Bleeds. Since I haven’t read it, I had no idea what to expect from writer/director Mike Flanagan’s film adaptation... and what I got from it was an odd and sad but also lovely movie.

Split into three acts that are presented in reverse order, the film begins with the end. The end of the story, the end of the world, the end of everything. We see things from the perspective of teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his nurse ex-wife Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan) as it all falls apart. The internet no longer works, and it’s followed by TV broadcasts, mobile phone networks, and finally the electrical grid as sinkholes open up and natural disasters hit all over the planet. Through it all, Marty and Felicia are baffled by these ads they keep seeing everywhere that thank some guy named Charles Krantz for thirty-nine great years. It’s an intriguing and somewhat creepy way to enter the story, and it’s kind of disappointing that nothing about the opening act is at all what it appears to be.

But then we’re on to other acts, where we learn just who this Charles Krantz is. In act two, he’s played by Tom Hiddleston, and this act is all about one awesome, memorable day in his life when he and a stranger, Annalise Basso as Janice Halliday, stopped to dance in front of a busking drummer, Taylor Gordon as Taylor Franck. Through voiceover provided by Nick Offerman (who has a great voice, but I’m not sure he was the best choice for the heartwarming narrator, because he also sounds like a sarcastic jerk sometimes) and moments in the second and first acts, we get an idea of what was happening in the first act, although a good portion of the audience will probably still be baffled about it by the time the end credits roll. Still, the second act is pleasant, and the first is even better.

For the first act, Chuck is mainly played by Benjamin Pajak. The end of the world scenario in the third act was the sort of thing you’d expect from King, and there’s a very common King element in the first as well: raised by his grandparents Sarah and Albie (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill) after his parents died in an accident, Chuck grew up in what was basically a haunted house. There was a padlocked cupola that Albie was scared to go into, as something terrible happened every time. But this “haunted house” element is mixed with a heartwarming childhood story that echoes Stand by Me and the nicer moments of It.

I’ve seen The Life of Chuck described as a “bittersweet tearjerker,” “a beautiful masterpiece,” and “a beautiful, heartfelt drama,” all of which felt accurate, although I’m not quite sure about using the word “masterpiece” for it. It didn’t all come together quite as effectively for me as I hoped it would, but I still found it to be a good ride.

SEVEN (1995)

David Fincher was knocked down by the disappointing experience of working on his feature directorial debut, Alien 3, but he wasn’t knocked out. Soon after that movie was released, a copy of writer Andrew Kevin Walker’s script for a crime thriller called Seven made its way into Fincher’s hands and he set out to prove himself by making this deeply unsettling story his second feature. He pulled it off – Seven is one of the most popular and highly respected films of the ‘90s.

I’ve always appreciated the style and concept of the film, but there’s something (other than the relentless, rain-soaked darkness and bleakness) that has always held me back from taking in multiple viewings of this movie and holding it up as highly as others do: Brad Pitt. I have never been overly impressed with Pitt’s acting skills. He can play cool, he can be funny, but I’ve never bought him when he tries to do something deeper. Although he has gotten better over the years, for most of the ‘90s, I didn’t think he was a very good actor, and I didn’t think he did a very good job in Seven. It didn’t help that he plays a rather irritating character in the movie. So while I respect the movie and own a copy of it, it’s not something I frequently revisit. But when I revisit it, I still enjoy it and respect it, even while wondering, “Couldn’t they have gotten somebody better than that-era-Pitt for that role?”

Other the other hand, Morgan Freeman delivers a brilliant performance as Detective Lieutenant William Somerset, who works Homicide in a crime-ridden city. The job is eating at his soul, so he’s getting out of it, planning to retire in one week and move to the countryside. During his final week in the city, Somerset is partnered with short-tempered young Detective David Mills, who comes from the country and specifically asked to be transferred to the city, a decision that baffles Somerset. And during this week, Somerset and Mills investigate one of the most disturbing murder sprees anyone has ever come across.

A serial killer is knocking off people based on the seven deadly sins. “Gluttony” is force fed until his stomach bursts. “Greed” was forced to cut a pound of flesh from his body. “Sloth” was strapped to a bed for a full year. The murder of “Lust” is particularly troubling. “Pride” is disfigured. The list goes on with “Envy” and “Wrath.” Walker really found an idea that was equally fascinating and disgusting, and he has the story play out in an interesting way, building up to a gut-punch of a twist ending that has been spoiled all over the place for the last thirty years (and I have always felt that Pitt’s acting spoiled it a bit, in a different sense), but I won’t go into that here. I’ll just say that it’s a haunting conclusion, and some viewers have regretted watching the movie because the ending is so troubling. The story takes Somerset and Mills on separate journeys, with Mills becoming broken down by the world and Somerset coming back to the realization that it’s worth fighting for.

Fincher assembled a great supporting cast for Freeman and Pitt to interact with, including Gwyneth Paltrow as Mills’ wife Tracy, Richard Roundtree (Shaft!) as D.A. Martin Talbot, and R. Lee Ermey as the police captain. Of course, Kevin Spacey also shows up in an unforgettable role.

I have never been over-the-moon about Seven, but it does rank up there as one of the great serial killer crime thrillers.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (2023)

Las Vegas resident David Chamberlain (Joel Kinnaman) and his wife have a young son, but their second pregnancy, which would have given their son a little sister, ended in tragedy. Now, David’s wife is in labor again – and just when he arrives at the hospital to join her in the delivery room, a character played by Nicolas Cage gets into the backseat of his car and forces him to drive away from the hospital. And, just as you would expect, having Nicolas Cage as a backseat driver turns out to be a horrific experience.

Cage’s character, credited as The Passenger, makes David drive him out into the countryside, heading toward Boulder City (which is around 26 miles from Vegas) while insinuating that he has specifically chosen David as his driver due to something that happened in Boston some years earlier. Since David is a down-to-earth, bespectacled, expectant father it seems to be a case of mistaken identity, but The Passenger clearly thinks he has the right man in his sights. And if David tries to escape from him, he’ll be putting his family in danger.

The Passenger gets into David’s car right at the beginning of the film and a large portion of the film takes place in and around his car, with director Yuval Adler and writer Luke Paradise doing great work making sure the situation remains interesting throughout the 90 minute running time. David is constantly trying to figure out how to get out of this mess without endangering his family, and The Passenger shows that he is perfectly willing to kill people if there’s any chance they might ruin his plans for the night. Or if he just feels like it.

Although Paradise wrote a solid script and Adler did a good job bringing it to the screen, Sympathy for the Devil wouldn’t work if the casting was off – but thankfully, it was cast perfectly. Kinnaman makes sure we’re on David’s side and rooting for him to get back to his family, and Cage gives another one of his wonderfully unhinged performances, making The Passenger both intimidating and often amusing due to the off-kilter lines he delivers (and off-kilter line deliveries).

Sympathy for the Devil is a good thriller and another fun addition to the Nicolas Cage filmography.

LIES (1983)

Stuart Russell (Bruce Davison of Willard) returns to his mansion home to see that his sister Elizabeth (Julie Philips) and their parents are being held at gunpoint by a duo of burglars. By the time Stuart has managed to sneak into the house and retrieve a weapon from the gun cabinet, the parents have already been murdered – but the burglars are taking extra time tormenting Elizabeth, so Stuart blasts the men down before they can claim a third victim. Elizabeth is so disturbed by the events, she has to be committed to a mental institution.

Actress Robyn Wallace (Ann Dusenberry, best known for Jaws 2) has just walked off the set of a zombie movie because the producer (the great Dick Miller) was trying to force her into doing nudity. (Dusenberry was not as reluctant to do nudity as her character was, because we see her naked in the shower just minutes after Robyn gives up a job because she refuses to do nudity.) Her career isn’t going well, she’s having trouble playing her bills, and her relationship with screenwriter Eric Macklin (Terence Knox of Children of the Corn 2) isn’t ideal – so it seems to be a lucky break when producer Jessica Brenner (Gail Strickland) notices how much Robyn looks like Elizabeth and casts her in a lead role in a movie that will be about Elizabeth’s time in the mental hospital – which ended with Elizabeth committing suicide.

Stuart objects to the idea of such a movie being made, but Brenner pushes forward anyway, filming rehearsal scenes with Robyn... Stuart soon gets his way, though, and the project crumbles. Robyn’s streak of bad luck continues.

All of this happens within the first 30 minutes of the 93 minute movie Lies, a thriller written and directed by the duo of Ken and Jim Wheat, who would go on to work on the likes of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Pitch Black. During those 30 minutes, there are hints that all is not as it seems – and in the remaining hour, there are plenty of twists and turns that prove just that. In an effort to avoid spoiling things, I have even obscured some of the facts in this write-up, just as the Wheats did in the opening stretch of Lies.

Even after the movie project is set aside, Robyn has intriguing interactions with both Sutart and Jessica, and there’s also a shady doctor played by Clu Gulager lurking around. There is a twisted scheme in the works and Robyn has been caught up in the middle of it. And, of course, it all leads to a new batch of violent acts.

The Wheats crafted an interesting story for this thriller, taking things off in unexpected directions more than once. It took more than forty years for Lies to finally come to my attention because it seems to have been largely overlooked as the decades have gone on, but I had a good time finally catching up on it.