Tag Archives: John Heard

1982 Films, Ed Begley Jr., Horror, John Heard, Malcolm McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, Paul Schrader, Ray Wise, Ruby Dee, Thriller

Cat People-1982

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Cat People-1982

Director Paul Schrader

Starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard

Scott’s Review #1,275

Reviewed July 10, 2022

Grade: B+

Cat People (1982) is a mysterious and psychological trip into the strange universe of humans possessing cat qualities, sometimes with a tendency towards vicious limb extraction and other such mauling techniques.

It’s an absurd premise though admittedly clever with an identity all its own. Feeling slightly dated mostly due to the early 1980s synthesizer-like musical score, film style, and the casting of some actors at the top of their game, Cat People is nonetheless enjoyable and sexual.

Especially recommended is a late Friday or Saturday night viewing with as little light as possible for the best ambiance.

Since our rented DVD copy was ravaged by poor visual quality and hard-to-hear sound, a thought is to simply buy the film.

The 1982 version of Cat People is directed by Paul Schrader who is best known for writing or co-writing Scorcese greats Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980). The director also has his share of his films as recent as 2021.

His production is a remake of one made some forty years earlier which I have not seen.

The mood of Cat People is an overwhelmingly sensual and violent horror and thriller tale. The action immediately gets off to a sexually perverse start when during presumably prehistoric days, a wild black panther impregnates a young girl offered to him via sacrifice.

The message is clear that this results in a weird human/cat hybrid being coming into existence.

In present times, Irena Gallier (Nastassia Kinski) harbors a dark family secret that she despises. She reconnects with her estranged brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell) who shape-shifts into a savage beast. He lives in the southern city of New Orleans and has spent time in a mental hospital.

Irena visits the local zoo and finds herself attracted to handsome zoologist Oliver Yates (John Heard), even as her brother makes his incestuous advances toward her. Inevitably, the family curse rears its ugly head when Paul rips the arm off one of the zoo workers played by a young Ed Begley Jr.

I like tremendously how Schrader incorporates New Orleans as the central setting. Having nothing really to do with the story the French-influenced city is nice to look at as restaurant scenes feature Creole style and other southern/European sophisticated little gems.

Ruby Dee is cast as a wacky housekeeper named Female rippling with New Orleans flair and who is aware of the terrible family secret.

Nastassja Kinski is perfectly cast as the provocative and sultry main character and she effortlessly leads the charge. Others like Heard and Annette O’Toole who were A-list stars in the early 1980s provide a time capsule of Hollywood relevancy.

Unfortunately, this also makes Cat People feel like from another time and the 1980s film style is painfully obvious.

The growling and vicious cats feel both scary and fake during close-ups but imagine the trickery of using real-life leopards? The filmmakers did the best they could and this is also obvious.

Some sequences are quite grisly and when they aren’t there are best-remembered scenes of peril and intrigue. O’Toole’s character of Alice (another zoologist) takes a late-night dip in a swimming pool and is harassed by a menacing Irena.

Earlier, a great scene occurs when a prostitute named Ruthie visits her client in a dingy motel room only to realize that her john is a mean leopard. We assume she will be ripped to shreds but this dubious honor is saved for another slutty character who Paul picks up at a funeral.

An attempted triangle between Irena, Oliver, and Alice goes nowhere and bewildering is why the decision was made to even try. The power couple is Irena and Oliver as their smoldering love scenes are sensual and skin heavy professing almost immediate love for each other.

With enough explicit sex and gratuitous violence to keep many viewers titillated, Cat People (1982) has positives and negatives. When it was released I bet it was a pot boil of juicy and relevant intrigue, but the film hasn’t held up quite as well as some others.

1985 Films, Catherine O'Hara, Cheech Marin, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Independent, Independent Comedy, John Heard, Martin Scorsese, Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Will Patton

After Hours-1985

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After Hours-1985

Director Martin Scorsese

Starring Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette

Scott’s Review #1,069

Reviewed October 9, 2020

Grade: A-

After Hours (1985) is a gem of a film.

When thoughts of director Martin Scorsese are conjured, Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), or Goodfellas (1993) are films that immediately spring to mind.

Scorsese’s decision to create a pared-down independent film was met with enormous success and accolades for the very first Best Feature indie film victory and Best Director honors.

The experience is a black comedy set within the gritty and unpredictable underbelly of Soho-New York City in the 1980s.

Mixing comedy with satire, Scorsese leapfrogs from similar content in The King of Comedy (1983) to this film made only two years later.

Any fan of New York City will cheer with joy at the authenticity achieved since the film was shot on location there. The Big Apple in the 1980s was a notoriously violent cesspool so the genuine setting and the use of dark streets and alleys is an immeasurable treat and adds much zest to this unusual film.

A nice guy, Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne), works hard as a computer data entry worker by day and shares an encounter with a quirky young woman named Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette) in a Manhattan coffee shop.

After she gives him her number and leaves, he is unable to stop thinking about her and embarks on a late-night adventure to go and see her at her apartment.

The night does not end how he thinks it will. Not by a long shot, as he spends the rest of the long night meeting various women and other strange characters as he traverses around the city attempting to get back home. He has lost his money and is broke.

The great aspects of After Hours are its bizarre characters and the cinematography that offers a tantalizing view of downtown Manhattan. The film is atmospheric and zany in its gloomy and steamy side streets and odd locales sprinkled with color.

A dingy bar, a sophisticated artist’s apartment, and a man sculpture that follows Paul everywhere are usurped by the film’s strangest and most interesting set, Club Berlin, an “after-hours” club inhabited by punks who want to shave Paul’s head into a mohawk.

I enjoyed this film as a sort of “A Day in the Life of Paul” adventure story, albeit a gothic one. The film concludes wonderfully as the sun begins to rise just as the film ends and thus Paul’s wild night finally ends.

I was chomping at the bit with the thought of what a new morning would bring and the possibilities of reuniting with any of the women he encountered the night before, either dead or alive.

Particularly charming to me while watching After Hours, the decade of decadence well into the past, are the relics once commonplace in everyday life. A phone booth, the traditional yellow cabs, and desktop personal computers are heavily featured.

These items, relevant when the film was made, now seem like throwback niceties that make the film endearing and like a glimpse into someone’s time capsule.

I did not pick up on much authentic romance between Paul or any of the female characters- Marcy, June, Gail (Catherine O’Hara), or Julie (Teri Garr), but maybe that’s the point. While one winds up dead, not one, but two of them pursue him, and not in a good way.

The film is mystical, weird, and energetic. The inclusion of Cheech & Chong only adds to the revelry.

Sadly, underappreciated and too often forgotten, After Hours (1985) is a Scorsese treat worth dusting off now and then. The birth of the Independent Spirit Awards has a lot to owe to this film for grabbing top honors and the admiration works both ways.

For a glimpse at the creative genius that is Martin Scorsese, this film gets an enormous recommendation.

Independent Spirit Award Nominations: 2 wins-Best Feature (won), Best Director-Martin Scorsese (won), Best Female Lead-Rosanna Arquette, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography

2004 Films, Comedy, Jaime King, Jennifer Carpenter, John Heard, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Lowest Rated Films, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Terry Crews

White Chicks-2004

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White Chicks-2004

Director Keenen Ivory Wayans

Starring Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans

Scott’s Review #647

Reviewed May 29, 2017

Grade: D

Anything but high art, though at the time of release (2004), seeming like a clever, yet silly, slapstick farce, White Chicks was a film that I found rather enjoyable.

Watching the film in 2017, some thirteen years later, however, the film feels dated beyond belief and as dumb as can be.

The film also contains Paris Hilton’s gimmick characters and racial overtones that were lost on me when I first saw the film.

Influenced by the drag comedy (and classic) from 1959, Some Like It Hot, the premise sounds interesting and comical.

Kevin and Marcus Copeland (played by the comical Wayans brothers) are a pair of black,  masculine, F.B.I. agents who bungle an undercover investigation and are given one last chance to redeem themselves before being booted from the bureau for good.

They are assigned the task of protecting the mega-rich cruise-line heiresses Brittany and Tiffany Wilson, who are in town (at the Hamptons) from a planned kidnapping plot over Labor Day weekend.

Kevin and Marcus don blonde wigs, and freakish makeup, and awkwardly pose as the Wilson sisters to save their jobs.

As the story goes on, Kevin and Marcus (as Brittany and Tiffany) develop relationships with various characters including millionaire Latrell Spencer (Terry Crews), who takes an interest in Marcus (thinking he is Tiffany, and white).

Other antics occur as the “girls” try their best to form friendships with the heiress’s snotty friends as they attempt to foil the kidnapping plot.

Similarities to the classic Wilder hit, Some Like It Hot, are tough not to notice, and director, Keenen Ivory Wayans, is smart to borrow from a film considered one of the greatest comedies of all time.

Just as Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) go on the lam to escape mafia figures out of desperation, Kevin and Marcus are desperate to keep their jobs, causing both sets of “impersonators”, to suffer from dire circumstances.

Also worth mentioning are similar conclusions in both films as love interest Osgood Fielding III, also a millionaire, as is Spencer in White Chicks, each is not phased by the “big reveal” as the men are de-masked as actually being males.

Clever in 2004, the incorporation of celebrity Paris Hilton, in 2017 now all but faded, seems dated and of the past. In real life being a hotel heiress, characters Brittany and Tiffany (cruise line heiresses) mirror Hilton as spoiled, self-centered, and oblivious to everyone around her.

The aspect was a good idea at the time of the release of the film, but now is irrelevant, not even as a nostalgia gag- perhaps in the year 2037 White Chicks might be appreciated more, but I would not hold my breath.

The overall tone of White Chicks is also fraught with silliness and with one gag after another. Rather than being believable as females, the Wayans brothers look downright frightening and robotic as Brittany and Tiffany.

In comedies, suspension of disbelief is required, but the producers should have done a bit more to feminize the characters instead of playing them as goofs.

The ending of the film is no-frills and formulaic with no real twist or surprise ending to speak of. The ridiculous misunderstandings with Kevin and Marcus’s real significant others, foolishly believing the men are having affairs with other women seem forced and amateurish.

Predictably, when the men profess their love for the girls earnestly, they fall for it hook, line, and sinker and the film wraps in disappointing, standard fashion.

Cute and fresh feeling at the time, White Chicks (2004) now feels stale and tired with racial overtones, deemed amusing back in the day, but now seems mean-spirited and unnecessary.

The film is an attempt at recreating a classic comedy for a younger audience, but I would recommend seeing the original Some Like It Hot (1959) instead- it is much more enjoyable.

1988 Films, Barbara Hershey, Best Film of the Year, Bette Midler, Comedy, Drama, Garry Marshall, Hector Elizondo, John Heard, Lainie Kazan, Scott's Top 100 Films

Beaches-1988

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Beaches-1988

Director Garry Marshall

Starring Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey

Top 100 Films #93

Scott’s Review #352

60011617

Reviewed January 9, 2016

Grade: A

Beaches (1988) is a film that can easily be described as sentimental, sappy, and a chick flick- all in a derogatory fashion- but that regardless, is a treasure to me. I fall for this tearjerker every single time that I watch it.

It is not necessarily a great film, not high art, nor particularly edgy, but a good, old-fashioned, conventional film about friendship.

Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey give the film believability whereas other similar films would appear contrived.

C.C. Bloom (Midler) and Hillary Whitney (Hershey) are lifelong friends from opposite backgrounds. Besides, they could not have more opposite personalities. C.C. is blue-collar, outrageous, and brash, Hillary, is demure, rich, and sophisticated.

We meet our friends as young girls on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, C.C. hiding from her overbearing stage Mom, and Hillary lost and wandering the boardwalk.

The two become fast friends despite their vastly different upbringings and stay connected through ups and downs and life’s trials and tribulations, for over thirty years.

The chemistry between Midler and Hershey is great. I completely buy them as best friends through the years, despite having little in common.

Throughout their tender, emotional scenes, and the knock-down-drag-out fight they have at the mall (a fantastic scene!), there is never doubt about what they have.

They compete over a man, which ordinarily is a lame plot device, but in Beaches, it works because the two stars make it work.

Each actress puts her mark on the individual role. Midler’s C.C. is arrogant, feisty, and interesting as she begins a “have not” and becomes a “have”.

She becomes spoiled and pampered- all of the things she envies about Hillary. She does not handle wealth as well as Hillary because she lacks education. Hillary, an attorney, is classy and graceful.

These characteristics are why it is believable that the women would be at odds.

The last act is a weepy one as one of the women dies, leaving the other to pick up the pieces and move on- alone. This is a sad moment in the film, but the women’s devotion and loyalty are admirable.

Beaches (1988) may not be high art, but boy will it get you reaching for the tissues.

Oscar Nominations: Best Art Direction