The Screengrab : abel ferrara

Reviews By Request: King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Once again, thanks to Scott Tobias from the Onion AV Club for recommending this film, which he previously selected for his weekly column “The New Cult Canon.”

One of Christopher Walken’s greatest assets as an actor is his unpredictability. Watching Walken onscreen, it’s hard to tell how he’s going to deliver even the most mundane bit of dialogue, much less predict how his characters will behave under pressure. But while Walken’s off-kilter presence has garnered him a sizable cult following, it’s easy to overlook what a fascinating actor he can be in more complex roles. In many of his character roles, Walken has fun with his image, but he’s not afraid to play it straight when the part calls for it. Abel Ferrara’s King of New York is one of those parts, and consequently one of his best performances.

Frank White, the crime lord Walken plays in King of New York, is one of the most frightening criminals I’ve ever seen in a movie, due in large part to the unpredictability that Walken brings to the role. From the first time we meet Frank, he seems to be capable of anything, which gives him an edge in his criminal endeavors. Most of his competition sticks to hard and fast traditions, the most important being that the bigwigs keep their hands clean while the foot soldiers fight the wars. Frank has no use for such traditions- when he needs someone killed, he’d just as soon do it himself. There are many possibilities as to why Frank would do this, but I think it’s because he wants people to think he’s the baddest, scariest man in New York. And when he follows the killing of a rival gang leader by inviting his underlings to join his gang, it sends a very specific message- if you’re crazy enough to follow a guy who does this, I want you on my side.

Consequently, many of Frank’s foot soldiers are as volatile as he is- and some even share his flair for the theatrical, as when one storms into a hotel room shootout screaming, “room service, motherfuckers!” In addition, Frank’s gang could be called “post-racial”- whereas Frank’s rivals generally adhere to ethnic boundaries, such concerns are beneath Frank. Most of his underlings are African-American- two of his most prominent foot soldiers are played by Laurence (then Larry) Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito- but Steve Buscemi also turns up as Frank’s in-house drug tester. And Frank’s own ethnicity- just look at his name- allows him an entry in legitimate society that would be more limited to other criminals of his stature.

It’s this air of near-legitimacy that rankles the NYPD, especially a trio of cops played by David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, and Victor Argo. Whereas the power of the city’s other top criminals is relatively contained to the underworld, Frank hobnobs with New York’s elite, turning up at black-tie parties and charity events. “He’s a movie star,” says Caruso, who bemoans the fact that Frank is running roughshod over the city while he and his partners are only bringing in a modest policeman’s salary. But how to stop him? Caruso and Snipes determine that in order to catch Frank, they need to be as crazy as he is. It isn’t until it’s too late (when Frank crashes one cop’s funeral to kill another one) that that discover that crazy isn’t enough- one must also be lucky.

Argo’s Roy Bishop is the one exception to the film’s cycle of brutality- the one “good cop” who sticks to his principles and hopes to bring Frank in not by sneaking around but by nuts-and-bolts police work. We see him sitting at home in front of his computer, sifting through police files in an attempt to make a case. Throughout the film, Ferrara contrasts Roy’s steadfast adherence to old-fashioned morality with Frank’s more slippery kind of ethics, and Frank understandably sees Roy as his biggest threat. I found it interesting to see Argo, who usually played wiseguys, playing the closest thing this film has to a steady moral compass.

King of New York is one of the bleakest crime movies I’ve ever seen, with one scene of unsparing violence after another. But it’s stylish enough that it’s anything but a slog- like GoodFellas and Scarface before it, it’s amassed a considerable cult, even serving as an inspiration for the late Notorious B.I.G. I’ve only seen a handful of Ferrara films to date, but one thing that’s impressed me about them is how stylish his films can be despite their budgetary limitations. In King of New York, Ferrara uses the low budget to his advantage, setting scenes in scruffy back-alleys and abandoned buildings to give the film a grittier feel than most movies of its kind. I also liked that Frank’s home isn’t an expansive estate but a suite at the Plaza, which combines a location in the heart of New York (perfect for shots of him overlooking the city) with a kind of rented luxury that says everything about the mystique Frank wants to create for himself.

At the center of it all is the enigma of Frank White. Throughout the film Ferrara and Walken invite us to ask the question, what drives this man? Late in the film, he confronts Roy in his apartment and tells him that he considers himself a businessman rather than a criminal, and states that “I never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.” But how to reconcile that with the charge he seems to get from his power? Or for that matter, what of his efforts to save a children’s hospital in a poor neighborhood? One thing’s for sure- he’s hooked on his sense of power. When he says he wants to run for mayor, everyone laughs until Frank tells them he’s serious. Is he? Who are we to question him?

You Can Run, but You Can't Hyde: Abel Ferrara Jumps on Mad Scientist Bandwagon

Phil Nugent — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Hot on the heels of the announcement that there are two movies based on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the works--a modern retelling with Keanu Reeves and a more faithful adaptation that Guillermo del Toro may get around to one of these years--comes news that Abel Ferrara is also jumping in with both feet. Ferrara's movie, to be called Jekyll & Hyde, will also be a "contemporized" version of the tale, which has to be a hard blow to anyone who was looking forward to seeing what it looks like when the director of Bad Lieutenant instructs a woman dressed like Polly Peachum to stagger through heavy ground fog up to the camera and say, "'Ere, Guv'ner, yew look like a fine figger of a man now, don'tcha, what do you say to a walk around the block wit' a girl what could show even a educated gentleman such as yourself a thing or two, she could, she could?" The part of the conflicted scientist will be split between Forest Whitaker and Curtis Jackson, A.K.A. 50 Cent. Presumably Whitaker will play the half that has the weird eyeball thing going on, while 50 Cent, expanding on his breakthrough performance in Jim Sheridan's Get Rich or Die Tryin', will represent the younger, hotheaded personality that nobody wants to see in a movie.

Luc Roeg, one of the executive producers on Ferrara's movie, says, "The combination of such formidable talent in front of and behind the camera will turn this wonderful gothic story into a modern classic for a whole new generation." This is not the first time that Ferrara has tried his hand at updating a classic horror fantasy: his 1993 Body Snatchers, the third movie derived from Jack Finney's 1955 sci-fi serial, which also featured Forest Whitaker, has the special distinction of having been perhaps the most incomprehensible movie of the director's career, which is no small claim. The Jekyll and Hyde story has already been around before not so long ago, in the form of Stephen Frears's 1996 adaptation of Valerie Martin's novel Mary Reilly, a movie that established that the sight of Julia Roberts wrestling with an eel does not make for good box office. Rumors that Sean Penn and Benecio del Toro will soon team up to star as a pair of magpies in the $60 million live action feature Heckle and Jeckle, with Tim Burton directing from a script by David Mamet, remain unconfirmed at this time.

Werner Herzog Remembers the Good Old Days in Peru, the Bad New Days in New Orleans

Phil Nugent — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Fitzcarraldo, the 1982 epic that Werner Herzog shot in the jungles of Peru, using a team of locals to pull a 320-ton steamboat up a mountain, may have been the most troubled production of the director's long and adventurous career, though the competition for that title is fierce. (Herzog had shot an estimated forty percent of the film when his star, Jason Robards, was sidelined by amoebic dysentery, after which his co-star, Mick Jagger, had to abandon the project to fulfill a commitment to tour with his day job, the Rolling Stones. Herzog wrote Jagger's role out of the script and replaced Robards with Klaus Kinski, the only known instance in movie history of someone bringing Klaus Kinksi in to stabilize a situation.) It's probably the most well-documented production in Herzog's career, though. The director Les Blank recorded it all in his won 1982 feature documentary Burden of Dreams, and now it's reported that, in June, Ecco Press is bringing out Herzog's journals written during the production, under the title Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo. For those of you who can't wait, The Paris Review has a selection in their Spring 2009 issue. ("These texts are not reports on the filming --of which little is said. Nor are they journals, except in a very general sense. They might be described instead as inner landscapes, born of the delirium of the jungle. But even that may not be entirely accurate--I am not sure." Coming from anyone else but Werner, this sort of thing would count as discouraging.) The excerpt isn't available online, but hey, it's a good magazine, so throw them twelve bucks if you're so inclined.

Herzog also just checked in with John Patterson, giving him a quick rundown of the current busy state of his movie career at his Laurel Canyon home, because he still considers himself to be a filmmaker and all this "man of letters" business is making him nervous. Herzog, who credits his global viewpoint to the fact that he "had seen much of the world before I was 20, and I had experienced it in a very fundamental way - being on foot, in Africa, in danger," actually had to take his age into account--he's now 66--when deciding not to imperil his life by shooting some icy underwater footage himself on his Antarctica documentary Encounters at the End of the World. However, he braved New Orleans, Nicolas Cage, and the wrath of Abel Ferrara on the movie he recently finished, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Werner insists that, previous reports to the contrary, this is not a remake or a reboot of or a sequel to Ferrara's 1992 scuzzball classic, which came complete with rape on a church altar, visions of Jesus, and full-frontal Keitel. It seems that producer Ed Pressman owns the rights to the title and just wanted to use it on a new project. "I was assured," says Herzog, "that this was not related to another film of a similar name. I told them, 'If you swear on the heads of your children.' I also had hints from Nicolas Cage that he wouldn't sign unless he knew I was directing, which is a good way to start a film." Herzog was keen to shoot in New Orleans "because, after Katrina, you were in a situation where civil life came to a breakdown. Not merely because the hurricane caused a lot of material destruction, but it also created a collapse of civility - looting and, by the way, the police were heavily involved in that, too." And the producers were hot to shoot there too, because of "the tax incentives."

Herzog is "also in the process of wrapping up another film, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, produced by David Lynch and loosely based on a gruesome matricide in San Diego in the 1980s, starring Michael Shannon...This being a Herzog movie, the suburban footage is interspersed with scenes - visions, perhaps - captured in Central Asia and Peru. He calls it 'sort of a horror movie'." This all amounts to the most time Herzog has spent working with actors and scripts for quite some time, now; most of his filmography for the last several years has been devoted to nonfiction filmmaking. (The biggest and most recent exception, 1996's Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale, was based on the same story that Herzog had already used a decade earlier for his documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly.) Not that he sees much difference, of course; this is a guy who, in 1991's Lessons of Darkness, presented footage of the smoking, apocalyptic aftermath of the Gulf War as a science fiction film, and who later, in 2005's The Wild Blue Yonder, intercut NASA footage with film of the actor Brad Dourif improvising a monologue recounting his life as an extraterrestrial immgirant. "The distinction between fiction and documentary," says Herzog, "is the last thing I would spend a sleepless night over."

Related stories: Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea

Strangers in a Strange Land: Special All-Herzog Edition

Screengrab's Ultimate Exploitation Films!!!!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:30:00 GMT

GLEN OR GLENDA? (1953)

By high school, I’d seen plenty of artsy foreign films and indies (not to mention a decade's worth of Saturday morning creature double features on UHF), but I’m pretty sure Glen or Glenda? was the first real exploitation flick I ever saw (at least on the big screen), followed by a half dozen more during a day-long marathon at the late-lamented Off The Wall Cinema in Central Square, Cambridge. Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s impassioned fauxcumentary -- about a man (Wood himself) who can work better, think better, even play better, and be more of a credit to his community and his government, in satin undies, a dress and a sweater of finest angora -- was unlike anything I’d ever seen, less a work of art than a Rorschach snapshot of a fringe perspective far beyond mainstream standards of taste, commerciality and talent (in...uh...the traditional sense). Before long, I knew everything about Ed Wood, Jr. and his merry band of misfits, but few cinematic experiences in my life, before or since, have been so bizarrely disorienting as my baffled first encounter with the spectacle of stampeding buffalo superimposed over Bela Lugosi’s impassioned command to “PULL THE STRING!” Wood may have only been exploiting himself (and, I suppose, Lugosi), but respectable Hollywood movies are rarely this fascinating, sincere or unique.

THE TRIP (1967)

Roger Corman was never slow to jump on a trend, so it’s no surprise that he was first out of the gate when the LSD craze hit in the 1960s. Ever the consummate professional, Corman sampled the drug while camping at Big Sur and by his own account, had a mighty fine time doing so. Nevertheless, in the course of his diligent research he had come across some mentions of what the hippies termed “bad trips,” and felt compelled to present a more balanced picture of the hallucinogen’s effects than his own experience had provided. Peter Fonda stars as TV commercial director Paul Groves, a straight-arrow type who decides to take an acid trip as a means of dealing with his pending divorce. Even for a novice like Groves, certain ground rules should be self-evident, the primary one being: when tripping for the first time, you do not want Bruce Dern to be your guide. The man is not possessed of a soothing bedside manner, to say the least. All seems to be going well for Groves at first; he stares at his hands and entertains deep thoughts about the significance of the phrase “living room,” and experiences vivid hallucinations in which he runs around the sets from Corman’s old Poe movies. (Even while experimenting, it seems, Corman never took his eye off the bottom line.) Groves’ trip takes a turn for the worse when he convinces himself he’s killed his creepy guide and, panicked, races out into the Hollywood night. He proves to be an even worse judge of character than we’d previously suspected when, at the height of his freaked-out paranoia, he turns to Dennis Hopper for solace. He also has a proto-Robert Downey Jr. moment when he wanders into a Hollywood Hills mansion and watches TV with a little girl until he is chased away. None of this strikes me as a ringing endorsement of the drug, but apparently it was still too ambiguous for distributor AIP, which added a “shattered mirror” effect to the film’s final shot of Fonda, against Corman’s wishes.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)

Wes Craven’s later successes made him a genre icon, but it’s the director’s early, bare-bones efforts that delivered his canon’s most inspired chills. That’s certainly true of his skuzzy, deranged calling card The Last House on the Left, which commingled camp, dirt-under-fingernails brutality and one stunner of a twist. Spitting in the face of the peace-and-love generation’s idealism about humanity’s goodness (and rife with hoary urban panic), Craven’s debut mimics Bergman’s The Virgin Spring save for that film’s happy ending, its initially goofy amateurishness – full of ham-fisted cross-cutting, silly songs, and a group of fiends who seem better fit for a sitcom – soon giving way to stark, vicious brutality. After two girls are slaughtered for trying to procure some pot, their murderers coincidentally show up at the house of one of the victims’ parents, who quickly deduce who the strangers are and what they’ve done, and decide to do something very, very violent about it. Cheap, graceless and often shocking, Craven’s film is in many ways quite inept, but it’s the memorable carnage that’s truly, intentionally awful.

IT'S ALIVE (1974)

Ever want to have a baby? If so, make sure to avoid Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, which trumps Rosemary’s Baby as the ‘70s horror gem most likely to turn couples permanently sour on the notion of procreation. Though the director’s first mainstream success, few scary movies have been as underrated as Cohen’s masterpiece, an undeserved fate one can only assume has something to do with the corniness of its creature’s rubbery appearance and two sequels that did little to enhance its reputation. With a no-frills, slightly surrealistic approach that heightens his tale’s emotional immediacy, Cohen blisteringly exploits the myriad anxieties that accompany the impending birth of a child, which in this case proves to be a mutant monster begat by a middle class couple. A physical expression of its parents' neuroses (as well as ecological ruin), the creature’s rampage is stoked for typical genre scares, but Cohen doggedly keeps the focus first and foremost on the inner conflict of the creature’s father (John P. Ryan), torn between an instinct to care for, and a burning desire to kill, his unholy progeny.

MS. 45 (1981)

Few exploitation cinema auteurs are as skilled as Abel Ferrara, and few exploitation films are as grimly proficient as Ms. 45, the director’s nasty, nimble tale of a female avenger taking her fury out on NYC’s chauvinistic male population. Ferrara’s down-and-dirty aesthetic lends some high-voltage seediness to his story about a mute seamstress (Zoë Lund) who’s raped by two different men in one afternoon and responds by going Charles Bronson on any guy unfortunate enough to cross her path. Her feminist fury unleashed, Thana becomes a simultaneously sexy and scary angel of death, singlehandedly embarking on a campaign of terror that ultimately leads to a mesmerizing finale in which she carries out her bloody work in a nun’s costume. Far from merely an exploitation hack, Ferrara arranges his frame with a master’s eye, conveying his story’s central gender conflict in a raft of expertly orchestrated compositions, all while addressing his own Catholic hang-ups and – as implied by his cameo as her maiden, masked attacker – taking a decidedly ambiguous stance towards his anti-heroine’s rampage.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five & Six...insurance policies are available in the lobby!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager

Screengrab's 2008 Person of the Year

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Next to People's Sexiest Man Alive, there is no more coveted honor in Hollywood than Screengrab's Person of the Year. At least, that's what we're hoping; we've never actually done it before. After combing the archives over the past year, I have determined the five individuals who recieved the most coverage - for good or for ill - here at our humble blog. Can you guess Screengrab's Person of the Year? The top five, after the jump:

5. Zooey Deschanel

Described by our Phil Nugent as "the unofficial muse of the Screengrab," Ms. Deschanel has an open invitation to our New Year's Eve party. We celebrated her SXSW performance, her survival of the Shyamalan bomb The Happening, her role in the surprisingly influential All the Real Girls, and her "Sweet Ballad" in Yes Man. Call us, Zooey!

4. Werner Herzog

The year in Werner news began with the director reminiscing over his gravedigging days with Errol Morris. Later, Herzog expounded on his many unmellow moods. More shocking developments arrived with the Cannes Film Festival, at which it was announced that Herzog would remake The Bad Lieutenant, a very bad idea indeed. Abel Ferrara agreed, and a celebrity feud was born. Next, Werner signed a cocktail napkin deal to collaborate with fellow weirdo David Lynch. In the end, Herzog redeemed himself with the acclaimed (here, anyway) Encounters at the End of the World.

3. Heath Ledger

Dying at the beginning of the year is perhaps not the most satisfying path toward Screengrab Person of the Year. We ran the breaking news of his death, the initial coroner's report, the Esquire diaries, the fate of Terry Gilliam's Doctor Parnassus and the somewhat unseemly buzz on Ledger's Oscar chances. We'd prefer he was only on this list for his performance as the Joker, but that's life (and death).

2. Uwe Boll

We're a little hurt that our favorite crapmeister hasn't been in touch to thank us for all the publicity. We've covered everything from the petition urging him to retire to his many feuds to the efforts of a gum company to end his career. We've reviewed his Unwatchables Alone in the Dark and BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, and watched as theaters shunned Postal. Heck, Paul Clark even defended the man! Come on, Uwe. Take out an ad in Variety to thank us already.

1. Scarlett Johansson

Oh Scarlett, what would we do without you? I think you can tell the Screengrab is sharply divided over you. Phil Nugent, for one, has little use for you, as you can probably tell from posts like Scarlett Johansson, Yellow Journalism, Grammys Snub Scarlett, Toast Tia, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds: 2 B 2-Gether 4-Ever and Scarlett Johansson Sings! Sings Tom Waits Songs!! Others of us - like me - are more enamored of your attributes, as you might glean from such posts as Scarlett Johansson, Cover Girl, Your Scarlett Johansson Music Video Has Arrived, and the all-time favorite, And Now Scarlett Johansson Making Out with Penelope Cruz. Either way, there's no denying it: Scarlett Johansson, you are Screengrab's 2008 Person of the Year!

Take Five: Bad Cops

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Neil LaBute's new movie, Lakeview Terrace, opens this Friday. Critical opinion is still split, but critical opinion will have its say soon enough about whether the director is returning to the promising form he showed in In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, or whether he's just cranking out a cheap thriller because he wants to buy a new boat. Lakeview Terrace finds Samuel L. Jackson, Hollywood's default angry black man, in the role of a mean-tempered, menacing L.A. cop who takes offense to an interracial couple (played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) who move in next door to him. The idea of crooked cops has always been an appealing one to people who write thrillers; the idea of the very people charged with protecting the innocent being the ones who might hurt them has powerful appeal, and plenty of filmmakers -- Alfred Hitchcock comes immediately to mind -- have put their ambivalent feelings about the police front and center in their movies. By the same token, however, due to the strict content restrictions of post-Code Hollywood, it was a taboo subject for decades; with very few exceptions, a crooked or evil cop was one of the very few things it was absolutely verboten to show on screen. When the code era passed, almost as if to make up for lost time, dozens of scriptwriters and directors began to explore the idea of the cop who betrayed the ideals he was sworn to uphold, and the bad cop genre was born. Here's five of the best.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

John Huston's masterful ensemble picture about a daring, carefully calculated jewel theft gone awry is one of the greatest noir films ever made, with an incredible cast (headed by Sterling Hayden as the iron-willed thug Dix Handley and Sam Jaffe as the brilliant crook Doc Riedenschneider) and a taut, fatalistic atmosphere that keeps you glued to the screen. But it's also a fine example of how movies had to creep around the concept of the bad cop at the height of the Hays Code: although it's made clear that Barry Kelley's Lt. Ditrich is on the make, and that his accepting bribes from hoods helps crime flourish, the idea of a crooked policeman being so plainly presented ran afoul of the Code. So a scene was filmed in which his incorruptible chief set him on the straight an narrow, and the end coda assures the viewer that such crooked cops are an aberration that will always be found out and punished, rather than the norm.

THE GODFATHER (1972)

The Hays Code had been more or less dead in the water for a dozen years by the time Francis Ford Copolla started filming his epic American gangster movie, and those dozen years had seen a lot of wearing away of the notion of the policemen as a friendly, helpful, vigilant and unimpeachable protector of the innocent. But a few taboos still remained on screen, and The Godfather did its not insubstantial bit to overcome them. In the course of the Corleone family's conflict with the slimy drug dealer Virgil Solozzo, Tom Hagen warns that "The Turk" cannot be gotten to because he enjoys the protection of New York police captain McCluskey (played by Sterling Hayden, acting the flip side of his Asphalt Jungle character) -- and that it is simply not done to kill a cop. When young Michael Corleone, who had previously been the victim of McCluskey's bullying, argues "Where does it say you can't kill a cop?", and points out that Hayden is a dirty cop on the make with his fingers in the drug racket, he's not just talking to the family -- he's talking to the audience.

MANIAC COP (1988)

William Lustig's bizarre little thriller, combining traditional police thriller elements with a sadistic slice of slasher-era horror, was the last movie you'd expect to start a franchise. But so it did, and in the the process launched the career of the hulking, iron-jawed Robert Z'dar. The sequels are generally not worth watching, but the original Maniac Cop -- in which a serial killer dressed as an NYPD patrol officer starts preying on innocent victims -- it a remarkably tight and rather exciting (if extremely lurid) piece of cinema that more than justifies its cult reputation. As a director, Lustig doesn't waste time or film, and the movie carries on at a deadly, involving clip; it's abetted by tons of fine performances from respectable character actors like Sheree North, Bruce Campbell, and original That Guy!/friend of the Screengrab Tom Atkins.

BAD LIEUTENANT (1992)

Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant was, at the time of its release, what it still is today: an atom bomb of bad-cop movies. Harvey Keitel, at the peak of his "I must appear naked in every movie I make" phase, plays a nameless New York police detective who is far and away the worst portrayal of a policeman in cinematic history: a brutal, violent drunk, a drug addict, a crook, a thief, a gambling addict, and a whoremonger. But this isn't just shock cinema: Keitel's Lieutenant is not just the worst big-screen cop imaginable, he's also, in many ways, the most complex. Ferrara throws Keitel into a deep, dark hole because he wants to show him the way out of it. Bad Lieutenant is a terrific film, which is why the as-yet-unconfirmed rumors that Werner Herzog is going to remake it with Nicolas Cage in the title role are so bewildering.

TRAINING DAY (2001)

Antoine Fuqua's nasty 2001 Los Angeles gang story hasn't held up spectacularly well in the years since it was made. Co-star Ethan Hawke seems out of place; the plot doesn't hold up particularly strongly, the tone wanders all over the place, and though it's quite well made, it's never spectacular. What does hold up, however, is Denzel Washington's electrifying performance as Alonzo, a narcotics officer so deep on the take that he barely recognizes -- or cares -- what side he's on. In the annals of crooked cop movies, it stands alongside Harvey Keitel's Bad Lieutenant, and skillfully illustrates the way that a bad man can justify his evil by thinking that he's doing good. The role earned Washington his second acting Oscar and his first Best Actor; though he'd deserved it for Malcolm X, this was no mere compensatory gesture, but a well-earned recognition of a stunning performance.

Related Posts:

Take Five: Ride Hard

Take Five: Bring On the Bad Guys

Madonna On Film: Screengrab Celebrates Her Top Ten "Best" and Worst Performances (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

All right, you caught me. I thought the Dostoevsky dust jacket would fool you, but I admit it: I am, in fact, reading Christopher Ciccone’s mordant tell-all Life With My Sister Madonna. (But it’s my wife’s copy! I swear!)

I’m not very far into the book yet, but my wife informs me one of Ciccone's startling revelations is that his sister actually thinks she can act, despite the fact that acting, according to Stanislavski and other noted authorities, requires momentarily pretending to be someone other than Madonna.

Yet, while the Material Girl’s film roles never really stray from her four basic personas (Chanteuse, Dominatrix, Knockabout Brooklyn Gal and The “Real” Madonna), she has, technically, portrayed “characters” in more than a dozen movies over the course of 23 years, and, in the 1991 “documentary” Truth or Dare, she went down on a water bottle as if she still gave head to actual humans, drawing on sense memory (I’m guessing) from at least as far back as Sean Penn, and possibly Jellybean Benitez. So maybe she really CAN act.

At any rate, to celebrate her recent Golden Jubilee, we here at The Screengrab would like to present our very special birthday ranking of Madge’s film performances, from least embarrassing to downright painful.

1. Mae Mordabito in A League of Their Own (1992)

The closest Madonna’s ever come to consistently channeling her own personality into a distinctly separate movie identity, her wise-ass, party girl center fielder is the best thing about Penny Marshall’s distaff sports saga, an indication of the surprisingly charming character actress Ms. Ciccone might have been in some distant, ego-free parallel universe.

2. Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

Coinciding with the first blush of Madonna Mania, Susan Seidelman’s shaggy dog indie caught a lucky break by casting Ms. Ciccone at the moment in her career when it seemed like her big screen success might parallel the success of her small screen videos and catchy dance hits. Little did we know at the time that her Susan was pretty much a one-trick pony. As brother Christopher writes in his book, “...after Desperately Seeking Susan is released on March 29...Madonna receives great acclaim for her performance –- which I still can’t help thinking is just Maddona being herself...”

3. Singer at Club, Vision Quest (1985); Hortense Hathaway, Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989); Breathless Mahoney, Dick Tracy (1990); Singing Telegram Girl, Blue in the Face (1995); Boss #3, Girl 6 (1996); Verity, Die Another Day (2002), Princess Selenia, Arthur and the Invisibles (2006)

Number three on the list is a six-way tie, because these movies all represent the (generally) best cinematic use of Madonna: as spice in fun, no heavy-lifting pop-star cameos (like Milton Berle as comedian Milton Berle in The Bellboy, or those occasional Marx Brothers caricatures in Bugs Bunny cartoons) that briefly juice the movie while maybe giving Ms. Ciccone a chance to favor us with a song (as she did in her humorously mistimed Vision Quest cameo, where two high school buddies wander into a gritty Spokane dive bar and...hey! Look! It’s the most famous pop star in the world, singing her new hit single, “Crazy For You!” (And, yes, her roles are technically longer than cameos in some of these movies, but essentially amount to the same thing, although her performances in Arthur and the Invisibles and Die Another Day do indicate potentially promising future side careers as, respectively, a cartoon voice and a scary CGI robot in future Terminator movies.

4. Nikki Finn in Who’s That Girl (1987)

There are many reasons to hate this movie and Madonna’s performance in it. Most critics found her allegedly endearing portrayal of wacky street waif Nikki Finn screechy and charmless, and film snobs vomited blood at the very notion of the pop star “remaking” Howard Hawks’ 1938 screwball classic Bringing Up Baby as a cynical pop album promotion. Nevertheless (and, to be honest, I have no defense for this whatsoever, except that I was a dumb teenager when I first saw it and haven’t gone back to challenge my original assessment in my older, wiser dotage)...I kinda liked it.

5. Bruna in A Certain Sacrifice (1985) and Sarah Jennings in Dangerous Game (1993)

Okay, to be honest, I haven’t seen either of these movies. Back when I worked at Action Video in Cambridge, Mass. in the '80s, I considered taking A Certain Sacrifice home any number of nights, but the prospect of watching Madonna’s naked dugs in action was never quite motivation enough to sit through what sounded like a very silly movie about sex slaves and Satanic, y'know, sacrifice. But every young person should probably appear in at least one Z-grade exploitation film in their life, and I have to give Ms. Ciccone props for attempting to expand her range by subjecting herself to an Abel Ferrara movie (which, come to think of it, I may have seen and completely flushed from my memory...much like Madonna herself, who apparently said of the project, “Even though it’s a shit movie and I hate it, I am good in it"). Thus, these two performances wind up parked here in the number five spot, neither praised nor maligned: the free space on our little movie ranking Bingo card.

Click here for Part Two: The Stinkers

Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

It’s been a good month for filmmaker feud enthusiasts, with both the Clint Eastwood/Spike Lee dust-up and the Werner Herzog/Abel Ferrara war of words heating up simultaneously. The L.A. Times has taken the opportunity to put together their own rundown of “Directors gone wild,” reminding us of a few directorial battles of days gone by.

By an odd coincidence – or maybe kryptonite is somehow involved – two of the feuds revolve around the Man of Steel. You may recall the aborted Tim Burton version of Superman that was to star Nicolas Cage about a decade ago. Kevin Smith had penned a script for Superman Lives! (you can read it here), but Burton wanted no part of it. Later, when Burton remade Planet of the Apes, Smith accused him of ripping off the ending from one of his comic books. (Why the Clerks auteur would want to take credit for such a widely derided twist remains a mystery.) Burton disagreed, telling the New York Post, “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Smith has been known to sign bootleg copies of the Superman script “Fuck Tim Burton,” though he claims this is done tongue-in-cheek.

Then there’s the case of Superman II, directed by Richard Lester – unless it was directed by Richard Donner. Lester’s cut is the one most of us grew up on, but Donner – who was replaced midway through filming the sequel – recently released his own version on DVD. “Though the sequel was more highly regarded than the original Superman,” says the Times, “Lester’s follow-up Superman III was trashed, leading many fans to believe anything good in Superman II was because of Donner.”

The Times feature also includes Uwe Boll’s feuds with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, proving that feuds taking place entirely within the mind of Uwe Boll are eligible for the list.

Related:
Spike Strikes Back
Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 31-June 6, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

School may be out of the summer, but we’ve still done plenty of learning this week at the Screengrab, on a variety of subjects:

Gender Studies: Heterosexual Males Survive “Sex and the City”

Current Events: When Movies Are Too Timely

Political Science: Harvey Milk and Great Black Presidents

English Literature: No Shit, Sherlock

Seventies Studies: Summer of Sam, The Way We Were and Damien: Omen II

Music Appreciation: OST “Drowning by Numbers”

Statistical Analysis: Screengrab Underestimates Ladies

Social Studies: Taverns on the Screen: Top 10 Barroom Scenes

Comparative Research: Coffy vs. Foxy Brown and Herzog vs. Ferrara

Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Last time we checked in with the developing saga of Werner Herzog’s planned remake of The Bad Lieutenant, the original film’s director, Abel Ferrara, had extended his best wishes for a fruitful collaboration between Herzog and star Nicolas Cage. Either that or he wished they’d die in Hell, I forget. Herzog himself has been mum on the subject, but now he’s broken the silence to clear the air. Or something like that.

Ostensibly interviewing Herzog about his new documentary about life in Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World, those pranksters at Defamer couldn’t resist asking a few questions about the Bad Lieutenant remake. First of all, says Herzog it’s not a remake. “It's like, for example, you wouldn't call a new James Bond movie a remake of the previous one — although the name of the bad lieutenant is a different one, and the story is completely different.”

While Harvey Keitel’s tormented cop roamed the streets of the New York, Herzog has a different setting in mind. “And it's going to be in New Orleans, which is a fascinating place. Part of it was the decision of the producers for tax incentives — which is totally legitimate. However, I thought to myself: ‘We have seen a lot of New York in movies; we have not seen New Orleans in feature films.’ Or very few feature films. After Katrina it's a particularly interesting set-up.”

As for Ferrara, Herzog is delighted with the angry auteur’s wish for his fiery demise, although he professes not to actually know who he is. “Maybe I could invite him to act in a movie! Except I don't know what he looks like.”

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Herzog’s remake is actually a continuation, except it’s a different cop with a different name in a different city, but aside from that, it’s actually a franchise akin to James Bond. I think I’m more interested now. But I’m not sure.

Related:
Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea
Let's Get Weird with Werner Herzog and David Lynch

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 24-30, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

By the clock on the wall it looks like it’s Happy Hour, so amble on down to one of the Top 15 Bars of Cinema, order a cold one and play the Screengrab Drinking Game:

A shot of whiskey for each of the Five Kinds of Twist Endings

A strawberry daiquiri for Miranda July and a bottle of Night Train for Abel Ferrara

Margaritas for Summer Lovers and a pouch of powdered scotch for Capricorn One

A jug o’ moonshine for Rose McGowan in Chains!

A shoe full of Jagermeister for Jena Malone

Heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin for Mad Max

A six-pack of Fosters for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia

A Mai Tai for Sharon Stone

And one for The Road

Abel Ferrara Would Like Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage to Please Die in a Fire

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

When we first brought you the news of Werner Herzog’s planned remake of The Bad Lieutenant starring Nicolas Cage, we wondered whether the director of the original version, Abel Ferrara, was cool with his intensely personal vision being monkeyed with. Now we have an answer, which appears to be: not so much.

According to Spoutblog, Ferrara addressed the issue during his Cannes press conference for his latest effort, Chelsea on the Rocks. “Ferrara twice talked about Werner Herzog’s alleged Nicolas Cage-starring remake of his Bad Lieutenant,” writes Karina Longworth, “once in response to a question from a reporter, and once just because he apparently felt like he needed to vent. First, Farrara tagged a comment about the remake on to his answer to a question about working outside the Hollywood system. ‘As far as remakes go, Harvey [Weinstein? Not mentioned in this Variety story in connection to the project. Keitel, who starred in the original? Hmmmm....] begged me not to say anything mean, or stupid. [pause] But I wish these people die in Hell. I hope they’re all in the same streetcar, and it blows up.’”

So yeah, he seems pretty cool with it. Later a reporter mentioned the remake and Ferrara responded, “It hasn’t been remade yet.” When told that it would be, he said, “Don’t count on it.” Could there be litigation in the future? But they’ve already gone to the trouble of making this handsome poster!

Cannes Rundown, Days 10 and 11- I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool.

Paul Clark — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT

As the Cannes Film Festival enters its final days before the announcement of awards on Sunday, here’s one final roundup of reviews. We begin with Charlie Kaufman’s highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Would Kaufman’s inexperience behind the camera cause him to become timid and soften his edge? If reviews are any indication, don’t bet on it.

AO Scott in the New York Times- “Mr. Kaufman, the wildly inventive screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” has, in his first film as a director, made those efforts look almost conventional. Like his protagonist, a beleaguered theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, he has created a seamless and complicated alternate reality, unsettling nearly every expectation a moviegoer might have about time, psychology and narrative structure.”

But not all were so impressed. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice- “Collapsing in sodden self-reflexivity after a promising 40 minutes, Kaufman’s arch, interminable phantasmagoria—with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Job-like theater director—retroactively improved all but the most miserablist movies I saw at Cannes.”

Other competition titles:

Jeff Wells on Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo- “I knew I was seeing something intensely audacious and stylistically exciting, but the political arena it depicts is so dry and complex and wholly-unto-itself that gradually the film makes you feel as if you're lying in an isolation tank.”

Laurent Cantet’s The Class/Entre Les Meurs, according to Time Out’s Geoff Andrew- “Everything rings absolutely true in this film, and everything is utterly engrossing from start to finish, despite the apparent lack of a straightforward narrative during the first hour… There are no easy answers proffered to the various questions raised about education, schools and society, but the film makes for admirably lucid, subtle and thought-provoking drama throughout. And the kids are terrific.”

Cinematical’s James Rocchi tears into Wim Wenders’ latest, The Palermo Shooting- “After Palermo Shooting ended (with a title card offering the film as a tribute "To Ingmar (Bergman) and Michelangelo (Antonioni)," which made me imagine Bergman and Antonioni saying Uh, thanks, but. ... from the next world), the Cannes press audience booed and laughed and stumbled out into the streets for detailed digressions and discussions on how, exactly, Wenders had, as our British friends say, lost the plot. Palermo Shooting goes fairly off the mark, or fires blanks, or has a damp fuse; I'm not sure about which firearm metaphor applies here, and if Wenders can't be bothered to have any cohesion to his signs and symbols, why should I?... It's still a little sad to see a major filmmaker make such a series of major mistakes in the name of a fairly minor film.”

While I certainly admire Cannes’ devotion to Wenders, perhaps the competition would be better served if, instead of reserving spots for ex-Palme winners past their prime, the selectors would give some love to gifted up-and-comers who deserve a higher profile People like, say, Kelly Reichardt, whose Wendy and Lucy played in Un Certain Regard. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Mike Goodridge- “Reichardt's films are quiet and detailed, and in Wendy And Lucy , she provides an all too believable picture of how fine is the line between getting by and becoming homeless and destitute… Unlike Old Joy, which was a two-hander, Wendy And Lucy is told entirely from the point of view of one character - and her dog, of course. The beauty of the film is not only in telling a story with so few words but in showing the wordless tenderness that exists between woman and dog in a society which has cast her onto its fringes. “

Also of note was the Un Certain Regard prizewinner, Tulpan. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Jonathan Romney on the film- “Shy courtship, stark landscapes and a spirited supporting cast of livestock make Tulpan a vivid, intensely enjoyable debut feature from former documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoi. The Kazakhstan-set film hardly breaks new ground, in both setting and mood pitching its tent very close to The Story Of The Weeping Camel. But it similarly blends intimate, gentle fiction with a strong dose of ethnographic observation, to immensely charming effect.”

Justin Chang in Variety on Albert Serra’s Birdsong- “Patience was no doubt required of the Three Wise Men as they made their way toward Bethlehem, and the same will be required of auds who seek out "Birdsong," Albert Serra's minimalist reinterpretation of the Magi's journey. Hushed, contemplative but often quite droll experiment offers beautifully sculpted images on a black-and-white canvas across its sometimes hypnotic, sometimes tedious runtime.”

Wendy Ide praises Eldorado in the London Times- “This off-beat tragicomic road movie from Belgium is one of the sleeper hits of the festival. Screening in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar, it’s a far cry from the dour, grey perception of Belgian cinema fostered by the work of people like the Dardenne brothers…The landscapes and soundtrack choices evoke American road movies of a bygone era; the sensibility is definitely European.”

Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, according to Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times- “Abel Ferrara's new film, "Chelsea on the Rocks," represents a kind of homecoming for the Bronx-born director and longtime chronicler of the New York City underbelly. Ferrara, best known for urban tales of damnation such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," moved to Italy several years ago, fleeing a city transformed by the Rudolph W. Giuliani regime and the Sept. 11 attacks, not to mention a cultural and economic climate that had grown more hostile to maverick filmmakers.”

Finally, here’s a link to Karina Longworth’s live-blogging of Quentin Tarantino’s Film Lecture at Cannes. I’ve seen how fast that dude talks, and my fingers are hurting just thinking about it. Bang-up job, Karina.

Slate's New Holiday Classics

Peter Smith — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Slate's writers offer a long and timely selection of "overlooked Christmas movies", including Yogi's First Christmas ("A surprisingly touching ode to ursine innocence"), Silent Night Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!, Harold Ramis's venture into hard-boiled nihilism The Ice Harvest, and Abel Ferrara's beyond-belief 'R Xmas (in which a crooked undercover cop played by Ice-T intereferes with a young drug-dealing couple's feverish attempt to obtain a much-desired "Party Girl" doll for their daughter's Christmas stocking). At this point, alert ScreenGrab readers may have noticed a family resemblance to our own beloved "New Holiday Classics" feature, except that most of the movies in Slate's round-up are a lot more fun to write about than they are to watch. But Timothy Noah is to be saluted for mentioning the best Christmas morning scene ever caught on film: the one in The Thin Man where Nick Charles (William Powell), lounging in his PJ's, shoots the ornaments off the tree with the handy little air-pistol that Santa brought him. (Not coal? Santa must have a lax policy towards creeping alcoholism.) That movie also has what may be the best Christmas party scene on film, with all the guys Nick once put in the joint streaming into the Charles's hotel room to show there's no hard feelings. The biggest, plug-ugliest one of all is found drunkenly sobbing because "I want to call my Ma and wish her a happy Christmas." "Well, why don't you?" asks Nick. "I. . . I haven't got a dime." — Phil Nugent