Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, takes us back to the 1990s — specifically, the year 1991. He’s got some gems from that year to share, so read on!
By MIKE FRIED
DEAD AGAIN
**** 1/2
In 1949, a famous composer is sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. Before he dies, he tells the reporter that “This is far from over.”
Forty-two years later, we meet a woman named Grace who does not speak but who wakes up screaming in terror. She is staying at a children’s home (which used to be stately Wayne Manor) run by the church and the church hires a guy named Mike Church (“A name you can trust!”) to investigate who this woman might be. And it turns out that this man and this woman look just like the composer and his murdered wife. Is this a coincidence? Could this be what was meant by “This is far from over?”
Kenneth Branagh’s smart direction of Scott Frank’s sharp screenplay may give rise to the term “Hitchcockian,” and that’s a compliment. Unlike Brian De Palma films, which actually try to pay homage to scenes by the Master, this movie does not. It’s all about mood, of which there is plenty; and as the story switches back and forth between present day (well, 1991) and the 1940s, the suspense really does ratchet up.
The cast is first-rate. Branagh plays investigator Mike Church and Roman Strauss the composer, and Emma Thompson plays Grace in the present and the doomed Margaret Strauss in the past. They are terrific together — they were married at the time — and Branagh once again evokes Olivier, as he did in Henry V, but this time it’s more the Maxim de Winter of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. The tension between them in the 1940s is borne out of jealousy and in the 1990s it is borne out of true terror.
As terrific as they are together, this film is the sum of its supporting players.
Derek Jacobi is outstanding as Franklyn Madsen, an antique dealer and hypnotist who uses his hypnotic skills to find out about priceless antiques. He tries to help Mike Church find out about Grace — not altruistically, he figures he will be rewarded by her family — and it’s his hypnotism that ties in the story of Roman and Margaret. He really gives an outstanding performance, really one of his very best, a top ten.
Andy Garcia gives one of his best performances as Gray Baker, the chain-smoking journalist who first flirts with Margaret and then covers the Strauss murder, the trial and the execution and was the last one that Roman spoke with. As Baker is still alive in 1991, he becomes a crusty old resource for church and while Garcia plays the intrepid reporter well, he hits it out of the park in his 1991 scenes.
And in a very tiny — but important — role, Robin Williams plays a disgraced psychiatrist who lost his license for sleeping with patients and who is now relegated to being a greengrocer. He’s as sharp as ever and his psychiatric insights really provide assistance to Mike and Grace even if it’s in Williams’ batshit way. Williams insisted on not being listed in the opening credits because he didn’t want people to think this was a comedy and wanted people to be surprised at his appearance. And in three short scenes, he delivers.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention Wayne “Hello Newman” Knight in a small role as Mike’s friend, Pete, who tries to help him solve the mystery, and Hanna Schygulla as Derek Jacobi’s aged mother.
The cinematography is just okay, but that could be the streaming copy I watched. I have already ordered the 4k due out in March based on some positive reviews. The entire movie was filmed in color but during editing, Branagh decided to print the 1940s scenes in black and white. Not that you can notice, but Branagh said that had he made this decision in pre-production the costume choices would have been different.
Patrick Doyle’s score, though, evokes the very best of Bernard Herrmann without mimicking him, especially in the grandiose, bombastic sections of the score.
It is an elegant noir-mystery and, like many noirs, it has some nice twists to it.
It really is a fun and elegant film.
WATCH IT!
SHADOWS AND FOG
****
German expressionism has never been this funny.
Kleinman, a nebbish, is woken up by his neighbors to join in a vigilante mob that is hunting for a serial killer who strangles his victims (and sometimes cuts their throat) on fight nights. When he gets dressed though, the mob is gone. Meanwhile, a circus comes into town. Unfortunately, Kleinman may wind up becoming a scapegoat for three competing lynch mobs.
While nowhere near Woody’s best, this film is extraordinarily distinguished by its production design (the biggest set ever created in NYC) and cinematography which purely echoes Fritz Lang’s M and the story which is right out of the world of Franz Kafka. In fact, Woody is representative of Kafka’s Josef K. He even dresses like Peter Lorre’s Hans Beckert.
It is a treat for film lovers because it just looks so good and combines the very essence of Woody’s comic nervousness with the moody tension of classic black and white crime cinema.
Had this movie been filmed in color it would have been a swing and a miss. But even when the script sags, the look of the film is just so mesmerizing that it draws you in.
This is one of Woody’s most underappreciated works.
“Kleinman, you’re not really a coward or a worm or a yellowbelly?”
No, but keep going. You’re in the right column.
WATCH IT!
RICOCHET
****
A rookie police officer makes a high profile arrest of a psychotic killer, Blake, and gets promoted to detective. Eight years later, Styles, the cop, has graduated law school and is LAPD’s latest assistant district attorney. Blake escapes from prison after kicking the shit out of Jesse Ventura and makes life miserable for Styles by setting him up for various crimes, causing him to be fired. He turns to his childhood friend Odessa, now a gangbanger to aid him.
I can’t rate this movie highly enough. For a potentially cheap exploitation flick, it fires on all four cylinders given mesmerizing performances by leads Denzel Washington and John Lithgow.
I give Washington a lot of credit for doing this movie just two years after winning the Oscar for Glory and one year before his exhilarating performance in Malcolm X. He brings an A-list performance to a really good B-movie and elevates it with great acting chops and a terrific sense of humor. His cocaine and heroin fueled breakdown scene in the district attorney’s office is one of his best performances.
As does Lithgow. A few years post-Oscar nominations (two years straight) and after a couple of bad guy roles from Brian De Palma, Lithgow found his niche playing psychopaths in this film. His Blake is steely eyed and scary. He is single minded of purpose – to get revenge on Styles.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Ice-T whose turn as Odessa, while not stretching his acting abilities, adds mojo to the film.
This is a Joel Silver film and you get all the good and the bad that you get from this type of film; but you get a lot of fun. Written by Steven E. DeSouza, who wrote Die Hard, this takes place within the Die Hard universe (with Mary Ellen Trainor playing Gail Wallens once again) and it has the same acerbic sense of humor emblematic of a Silver picture.
Director Russell Mulcahy gives a nice nod to his prior box office hit, Highlander. See if you can spot it.
The only bad thing is that, stateside, this movie has only received a shitty DVD release and it is deserving of so much more.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
