Ghost Rider - 2007

"Ghost Rider" - 2007
Dir. by Mark Steven Johnson - 1 hr. 50 min.

Official Trailer (Espanol)

by Clayton Hollifield

2007 was a simpler time. Superhero movies hadn't yet steamrolled everything in sight. Also, you could still shop at a Toys 'R Us. And, you know, do other stuff too, like shaking people's hands or coughing in public. Nicolas Cage was known for making batty movies with even battier acting choices yet, but that was still pre-meme supremacy era. The odds that any given superhero movie was going to be worthwhile was an uneven bet. Hollywood didn't know what to do with this material, outside of individuals who got it right. But studios seemed more willing to take a shot at these kinds of movies.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is a second-generation circus motorcycle stunt rider, part of his father's act. Burton Blaze (Brett Cullen) is his father, a stern man with a dangling cigarette and rockin' sideburns. After another night of getting his ass chewed out (not a euphemism - people didn't eat ass in 2007, at least not as a point of public pride), Johnny discovers some concerning news about his father. In classic fashion, a very fancy man, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) shows up and offers young Mr. Blaze a deal; his father's health for Johnny's soul. Johnny takes Meph up on the offer, and it turns out to be not exactly what he expected it to be. So Johnny bails super-hard, leaving his life (and girlfriend) behind.

Life ain't nothing but bikes and jelly beans

There's a lot to say about this movie, which seems weird, because there's not a lot to this movie. So let's go with the good first. The cast for Ghost Rider is pretty good. Nic Cage is bonkers, and I had no confidence anyone would get this right as a movie, so it at least has his stash of insane line readings to fall back on. But past that there's Donal Logue as Johnny Blaze's buddy, Eva Mendes as the female-shaped object, Sam Elliott doing Undertaker-style promos in a graveyard, Rebel Wilson making the most of her one minute on screen, and Peter Fonda cashing in some motorcycle-movie credit here. Everything interesting in this film comes from actors hamming things up. One problem for me is that the villain, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) was eye-rollingly bad throughout the film, in pretty much every way. If you sat down and thought about what's the worst version of the villain from Hell trope, please believe that Wes Bentley topped that and took home a trophy for how bad his character was. I don't know if it was him, the writing, or an unholy combination of the two, but when the villain just comes off like a try-hard dork, then the hero vs. villain aspect that's supposed to drive the film is going to fail.

The biggest problems with this film is that you can see the Hollywood fingerprints all over it. Part of that is that they had not yet figured out how to consistently nail superhero stories. In the Avengers arc, yes there were romantic elements present, but that's not the thrust of any of the stories. They're oddly asexual in that manner (aside maybe from the first Thor and Natalie Portman's delightful agogness); they're more about rising to the occasion, heroism, duty, honor, and all that stuff. In Ghost Rider, one of the main plot points is Johnny Blaze continually bailing on Roxanne (Eva Mendes), and that part of the story is given more attention than the whole save-the-world-from-Mephistopheles thing. Superhero stories are about looking good enough to get laid, but not about the actual laying. This one falls back on having the basic romance being the thrust, instead of just having Ghost Rider looking badass and scaring the crap out of hoods. There is also the fact that there's not another memorable female character present, which isn't make or break, but is part of the problem here. Roxanne exists not out of her own agency, but basically as something for Blaze to win over.  

But the biggest issue is a problem that we film-viewers are going to have to increasingly deal with: old digital effects look cheesy. I'm not going to hammer on that point, but watching a 13 year old movie that relies on effects is going to have to compete with all the advances that digital effects have made in that time span. I will give some credit; I've been re-reading the 90's Ghost Rider comics lately, and this movie does a good job of replicating the look and feel of those comics. Unfortunately, the people who would be stoked about that would also be annoyed that the main character of the movie is Johnny Blaze, since it was Danny Ketch who was the star of that particular comic series. Comic fans are funny like that.

Chug!  Chug!  Chug!

So look, Ghost Rider was a bad movie even when it came out. I think the main reason this one exists is because Cage was a Ghost Rider fan, and he got to get paid to cosplay, and why would you turn that down? But it's not like there are any great Ghost Rider comics to have drawn upon for inspiration, it's just a character that looks awesome, but no one has really managed to do much with that. Time hasn't done this movie any favors, but the cast is absolutely to my taste. So it wasn't painful to rewatch. It's also pretty unlikely I'll be rewatching it again soon; literally everyone I liked in this movie has other movies that are way better.

1.5/5 - Streaming (HD)

The Limey - 1999

"The Limey" - 1999
Dir. by Steven Soderbergh - 1 hr. 29 min.

Theatrical Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

At this point in his career, director Steven Soderbergh is a well-known commodity, as is his visual and editing style.  Sure, he's done micro-budget indie films that deviate from what people know him for, but this is the guy responsible for the "Ocean's Eleven" films, which pretty much cemented what people expect from one of his films.  When "The Limey" was released, things were a little different.  Soderbergh was known for a decade of indie films like "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," and "The Limey" was his follow-up to the slightly-underperforming (yet completely brilliant crime masterpiece) "Out of Sight."  "The Limey" seemed like a bit of a step backwards into indie-land at the time (although if you look at Soderbergh's career, bouncing between small and large films is a characteristic of his resume), with no huge stars, just people who had turned into character actors over the course of their careers.

"Tell me about Jenny."  This is the the demand that Wilson (Terence Stamp) makes of pretty much everyone's he meets in Los Angeles.  Wilson is a Cockney career criminal, and Jenny (Melissa George) was his daughter, who has perished in a fiery car crash in the hills of L.A.  One of her friends, Ed Roel (Luis Guzman) wrote a letter to Wilson about Jenny's death, and Wilson shows up at his doorstep to piece together what actually happened to Jenny.  The name that keeps popping up is Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), a '60s music producer who had been seeing her.

The plot itself is pretty straightforward: Wilson shows up, figures out who is responsible for what's happened to his daughter, and then proceeds towards a showdown with him.  It's a solid plot with a sense of inevitability that builds over the course of the film.  But it's the execution of the story that makes "The Limey" a special film.  It's probably easiest to discuss the acting; Terence Stamp is riveting in his role, Luis Guzman makes the most out of his supporting role (as he seemingly always does), Peter Fonda is suitably smug and earnest (witness his self-absorbed short scene explaining what the '60s were really like to a barely interested younger lover, who is trying to pay attention from the bathtub), Lesley Ann Warren is a necessary and lively counter-point to the matter-of-fact aggression, playing Jenny's closest friend, Elaine.

Some of the things that Steven Soderbergh's films have become known for are on full-display here; non-linear editing, divorcing dialogue from what's on-screen (in this case, showing actors reacting while their own dialogue flows over top of the footage), a languid pace (even though this story takes place over a relatively short amount of time, it doesn't feel hurried), a certain style of soundtrack (provided by Cliff Martinez, who has worked on other Soderbergh films since), and a matter-of-fact visual approach.  Perhaps the best example of the last point is what I thought was the best scene of the film, involving Wilson showing up at a warehouse, having a violent confrontation, getting kicked out, and then walking back into the warehouse to finish his business there.

The scene in question, subtitled because that's how the internet is.

The unmoving camera shot at the end of the scene is perfect, the scene is perfect, the conclusion is perfect.  Just in case you had any doubts as to whether one ought to mess with Wilson, those doubts are settled by the end of the scene.  Despite the straight-forward nature of the story, the editing style keeps viewers constantly wondering what's happening.  It's not disorienting as much as it feels like a stream-of-consciousness manner of film-making, and by the time Soderbergh starts to work in alternate possible conclusions (as in the party scene), the viewer has been conditioned to know that they're going to have to wait a minute to know if what they're seeing is what's really happened.

Above all else, "The Limey" is a clever film, down to it's marrow.  The choice of casting Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda as adversaries is one that carries cultural weight.  Turning Captain America into a faux-hippie businessman plays off of his past.  As for Terence Stamp, his past is actually interpolated into the film itself - re-using footage from the 1967 film, "Poor Cow," in flashback scenes.  This approach is uncommon, but a deeply clever way to get around flashbacks with actors who are cast largely because of some passing resemblance to the older actor.

The result is that "The Limey" is an exhilarating crime film, one that has a distinct personality and pace, and owes nothing to the elephant in the room in '90s crime films, "Pulp Fiction."  Upon it's release, "The Limey" was pretty much completely ignored, but it's aged well, and remains a powerful, pleasing film.  The distinct approach to the material and the excellent work by the cast elevate this film to an equal (in a creative sense) to the other films that Soderbergh made in this string.  His next three films were "Erin Brockovich," "Traffic," and "Ocean's Eleven."  Considering "Out of Sight" and "The Limey," that's an incredibly strong run of five films, and this one is the one that people are least likely to have seen.  I'd recommend taking care of that oversight as soon as possible.

4.5 / 5 - TV (HD)