Retrospective: SCREAM 3

…. Originally my plan was to watch a Scream movie every night leading up to the release of Scream 4 this weekend.   The plan started out easily enough.  The first film was a blast & I loved revisiting it & the second film, while flawed, was still a superior feature to most mainstream horror flicks.    Then I came to Scream 3 & well, the troubles started.   The first night I gave the film a shot & only lasted for 30 minutes.   Didn’t even bother trying the following night, instead I decided to enjoy life.   Well, after much struggling I did it- the impossible- I watched the absolutely terrible Scream 3 from start to finish.   …Took a couple of beers & lots of Facebook diversions though.

From the get go Scream 3 is off key & removed from the previous films.  We open on Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) an ancillary character in the series so far, stuck in a Los Angeles traffic jam & he gets “the Call”.  Ghostface is looking for Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) & unless Weary reveals her location he’ll kill Weary’s girlfriend.   There’s no snappy dialogue, funny jokes, cinema commentary, or even any cute visual cues.  Instead, we suffer through those two most cliche of cliches- the Girlfriend has just finished showering & is walking around in only a thin nightie & Weary has to speed across town breaking every traffic law along the way.   There’s no tension, no payoff, & not even any gore!  It’s commonly excepted, as far as horror is concerned that is, if it doesn’t have an attention grabbing opening OR a memorable ending you’re about to suffer through a real slog of a film.   Scream 3 is such a film.

This is as exciting as it gets...

But why?   All the elements are there.  There’s a Killer(s) running about knifing people, Courtney Cox has a new haircut, lots of fresh meat hangs around waiting to be killed, & the film even takes place in Hollywood!   Wes Craven is overseeing the direction, Peter Deming is back on as Cinematographer & Kevin Williamson is…. not behind the screenplay.   In place of Williams there’s this guy Ehren Kruger.  Mmm.. well, the last name’s pretty cool, I guess.  It turns out Kruger is a terrible writer (he personally wrote many of the “best bits” in Transformers 2: I Can’t Remember The Name But Know It Was Poorly Phrased) & it shows in this film.   Despite the mucho potential for humor in the film almost all the jokes fall dreadfully flat. Case in point- since the movie takes place in Hollywood & chronicles the failed production of Stab 3 there are a series of fictional actors playing the original characters.   There’s a huge amount of comedic potential to be made out of this but with the exception of one case (to be talked about at the end) Kruger does nothing original with the idea.  For example, the actor playing Dewey is everything the real Dewey (David Arquette) isn’t- tall, physically perfect, & blonde-… that’s it.   That is the joke.   They even bother giving this dude a part to play, he’s just Attractive Actor Playing Dewey.   Yawn.   At the very least the always-beyond-cute Emily Mortimer shows up playing the ficitional Sidney & she’s nice to look at.

Emily Mortimer & Gun from Another Movie- Me Likey

There’s a lot of lack of development in Scream 3.  Truthfully, the whole affair feels less like a well told narrative & more like a series of Post-It-Notes from the producers at Miramax.  I.E. (A) Let’s see Dewy & Gale become a couple AGAIN.  (B) We need an Explosion here cause our source group shows ‘Splosions are neat.  (C) The Killer needs a magic Voicebox so he can sound like Anyone!  (D) Since you killed off Randy last time bring him back with an oh-so-convenient video taped monologue.  (E) Make sure to give much lip service to other Miramax properties.    Nothing gels in the film.  Even the requisite End of Act 1 Tension-Building-Murder sequence with Jenny McCarthy is a flub with lame dialogue (“Vertigo, hello!”) & another case of the Killer being the world’s greatest psychic.  Perhaps, I’m being overly negative, McCarthy does wear the shit out of her purple napkin/shirt but the whole movie just bugs me so much it’s hard to be generous to anything.   I mean, Wes Craven even introduces GHOSTS into the damn film with Sidney being haunted by the Spirit of her dead mother.  Ugh.  The only good thing to come out of this whole dragged out “Ghost Bit” is a nod to Halloween… one that didn’t need to be made since the original film already had the perfect references.

Me at the Halfway Mark

Sequels never really have a reason to exist but when handled properly they are worthwhile endeavors.  The second film in this franchise was, but Scream 3 doesn’t & it tries to validate it’s existence by turning the whole Scream series into a TRILOGY.  This agenda never works.   (SPOILERS FOLLOW):  The Killer turns out to be the Director of Stab 3- Roman Bridger (Scott Foley), never mind that like Mrs. Loomis in Scream 2 this is another case of “Who?  Oh, that person who was never involved in the story” syndrome, what’s worse is Kruger reveals Bridger is Sidney’s long-lost brother.  Turns out Bridger tried to reconnect with his mother Maureen (who from the sounds of it was the world’s biggest bitch) & when that failed he orchestrated her murder because he’s “A Director”.  Gag.  What’s especially problematic with this approach is it robs the original narrative of a great deal of thematic strength.  So Billy Loomis & Stu weren’t really insane creepos who took their love of violent movies one step too far?  That they weren’t so jaded by movies they decided to take up murder?  Rather, they were talked into it by a jealous “bastard from a basket”?  Lame.   Roman Bridger & everything dealing with his one big wank by Kruger to add depth to the series as a whole but it just backfires.   If Roman hated Sidney enough to want her dead why not just knock her off at the same time he did his Mom?  Why wait for several years & decide to take up mass murder while directing his breakthrough movie?   It’s just dumb.   Scream was always dumb but never childishly dumb.

Anyone buying into this crap?

All in all, Scream 3 is just bad.  The smart dialogue is gone & simply replaced with stupid sight gags & cameos.   I mean the flicks so strung up for ideas they throw Carrie Fisher into a scene & make a big “joke” about her playing NOT Carrie Fisher- an actress who looks just like Princess Leia but didn’t get the role because she didn’t sleep with (seemingly asexual?) George Lucas.  It’s the kind of shit a kid would write- I mean when I was 12 I tried my hand at writing an Alien 5 script that had a character who looked just like Robin Williams & was named Robert William (Spoiler: The script was terrible & ended at page 14).  It’s cliche gags like Not Carrie Fisher that define the flick’s stance on Hollywood.  Also, by moving the action to Hollywood the movie has turned its focus away from MOVIEGOERS & towards the Industry. It’s no longer a film about how movies affect us the audience but becomes one big pointless industry jerkoff.  Sure, Hollywood seems like the natural expected progression for the series but more often than not if something’s too expected than it’s probably not that good (if Expected always had its way there would have never be a Heath Ledger Joker performance).

Jay & Silent Bob even get a dumb as shit cameo in the film!

It’s not all terrible though.   The three returning leads all do their usual good work even if the performances have gotten stale- we do not need to see Dewy & Gale rekindle their romance a third time.  Lance Henricksen as an SOB producer is nice nudge-nudge casting that’s only surpassed by Roger Corman’s blink-&-you’ll-miss-it cameo.  On a technical level the film works, I mean, everything is in focus.  There is one bravura setpiece at the midpoint of the film when Sidney walks onto the Stab 3 set & is chased by Ghostface.  The sets have accurately recreated her Woodsboro universe but a room that was on the third floor is now ground level & walls easily break away. It’s the one moment in the film had some real laughs, scares, & inventive ideas.   If the rest of Scream 3 had been this effective & entertaining there would’ve been a great film here.   Instead, there’s just a big dumb pile of fail.

CLOSING COMMENTS:

MVP Onscreen: There is one truly excellent bright spot in all this mess.  Parker Posey is absolutely wonderful as Jennifer Jolie, the talentless diva who portrays Gale Weathers in the Stab series.   It’s not that her dialogue is funny or all that sharp, it’s just that Posey so commits to her role that every second she’s on screen is so good you can’t look anywhere else.  Posey is the best thing in the series third act.

MVP Offscreen: I honestly despise this film.   I can’t think of anything else that deserves a shout out.  Maybe the focus puller but that’s it.

So that’s it.   I did my first retrospective.  I hope to do a few more of these as the months role on.   The original trilogy is a unique one in cinema & I truly enjoy 2/3rds of it.    Once I find the time, I’ll take a drive over to my local cinema & catch a showing of Scream 4.   I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a film more in line with the first two than the atrocious third entry.

Retrospective: SCREAM 2

“Stab 2? Who would wanna do that? Sequels suck! Oh please, Please! By definition alone, sequels are inferior films!“- Randy Meeks

You said it Randy the Film Geek (Jamie Kennedy).  Thankfully though, being an inferior film does not mean it has to be a bad one & Scream 2 is NOT a bad movie.  In all honesty, it’s a surprisingly good flick, one with a life & class all its own.  Scream 2 doesn’t join in on the list of GREAT SEQUELS- Aliens, Terminator 2, The Godfather:Part II, etc.- but it is one of the better films with a 2 at the end of it’s title.

Two of the people in this frame don't survive to the title credit. Guess who!

Right from the opening sequence, Scream 2 makes it crystal clear the meta-fictional aspect of the first film has not been abandoned so more “casual filmgoers” could enjoy the sequel & not get lost amongst the many movie references.  In fact, the meta-fictional elements have been given a serious upgrade with the existence of STAB, a fictional horror film based off, funnily enough, the events of the first film.  The meta-movie STAB allows Kevin Williamson & Wes Craven the opportunity to parody & examine horror film cliches even more harshly than they did in the first entry.  This is best expressed in the opening scene of Scream 2 when our first victims go watch the theatrical premiere of STAB & watch a recreation of the shocking Drew Barrymore opening. It’s a hysterical concept because the aforementioned scene has now been robbed of all it’s eloquence & realism thanks in part to the presence of EVERY cheesy horror movie cliche- bad acting, terrible dialogue, nudity, & a shower convientely placed in front of a massive show window.   The scene is solid gold as the “Real Life Events” are artificially recreated on the screen for the bloodthirsty fans enjoyment who view it all as “Entertainment”.   It’s a smart bit of commentary on the essence of filmgoing itself especially in regards to the horror genre which loves taking atrocities from real life & plopping them into their narrative (the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre personifies this best).   The cinematic commentary is the best element of the opening sequence, gracefully distracting us from the weak dialogue spoken by the two Ghostface targets- the Black vs. White argument is poorly worded & far too cutesy- & the fact that their murders make absolutely no sense.  The moment Phil the Boyfriend dies is the first real moment I felt Scream abandoned all sense of realism for a mere good kill.  I mean think about it, did the Killer sit in the Bathroom KNOWING Phil was going to have to pee & that the stalls were going to be full AND that he was going to use the stall next to his AND he’d goofily place his head right against the wall of the gross shitter.   It is made clear later on that the murders in the theater were part of a MASTER PLAN (which is casually dropped right after it’s mentioned) so I just got to say the Ghostface killers in Scream 2 must be fucking psychic.  On the bright side, Jada Pinkett Smith’s death soon afterward is nicely handled & it is great to see Craven believes there is some inherent good in people when the audience realizes the murder is REAL & they STOP cheering.  It’s not the perfect pure horror of the opening from Scream but it’s still damn good.

I'm In A Glass Box of EMOTIONS!

Then the movie starts proper.  We’re reintroduced to the cast & they all seem to be doing pretty good except for Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) who has a weird gimp-ish limp that comes & goes.  Naturally, since this is a sequel to a movie set in high school the new movie takes place in Movie CollegeTown #4.  Also since this is a sequel, much of the meta-film references made are in regards to how sequels suck & the reasons why.  A big reason is the urge to be BIGGER. Scream 2 accepts that title & jumps into the murders ASAP.  In the first film, aside from the opening kill & knocking off the Fonz (Henry Winkler), all the mayhem was saved for the third act party.  Not so in the sequel which immediately introduces Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar sadly does not hunt Vampires) so she can look good when she gets knocked off & then proceeds to bring out a scare scene or murder every 10 to 15 minutes.   Some of the inserted scare scenes work & others don’t.  Everything concerning Sidney’s (Neve Campell) role in the university’s rendition of Agamemnon & Greek mythology is merely annoying fluff so the flick could have one scare sequence on stage.  It’s cute & it makes sense a franchise built around turning an eye towards storytelling would eventually focus on Greek mythology… it’s just cheesy in the universe this franchise has created.

Speaking of which, there sure is a lot of CHEESE in Scream 2.  Thankfully it’s the good kind.  The rekindled romance between Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) & Dewey is actually charming & while Jerry O’Connell is very bland as Sidney’s new boyfriend he does bring a certain goofy levity to everything.

If only he played his character from PIRANHA 3D

It’s very charming to see the creators of Scream 2 cared enough about their characters to actually FOCUS on them in the sequel.  More often than not, the first thing to go in a sequel is any sort of genuine character development (how many times can we watch a superhero “refuse the call”?) but this flick actually placed more empathize on the character dynamics than the first one.  I liked that. A lot!   But it’s not all harmless fun in Scream 2. Williamson’s script takes a really wicked turn at the halfway point of the film & actually knocks off one of the key protagonists!  It’s a brave move on the productions behalf & I wish more franchises took risks like that.  It’s a death that shakes the core fanbase enough to make them realize “Oh shit, maybe anyone COULD die!”.

Anywho, attention now must be turned to the Ghostface killers themselves.  (SPOILERS FOLLOW): Sadly, this is where I feel the sequel really dropped the ball.  Once again the film follows the dual killers motif & the culprits turn out to be Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) & Mrs. Loomis (Laurie Metcalf).  I can not tell you how much this reveal disappointed me when I first saw the film back in the late 90s.  Having these two be the killers was the laziest copout imaginable.  Mickey is a tired choice because he’s just Stu 2.0 in every way possible!  I imagine on the page the role was exactly as bland as Stu was & since Olyphant plays the role very down to Earth, Mickey just doesn’t make an impression.  I promise 95% of people who see Scream 2 have Mickey as their first guess & the fact they went there is cheap.  As for Mrs. Loomis… well, I mean seriously?  The Mom angle?  What’s worse is there’s no mystery at all.  Why?  Because Mrs. Loomis (masquerading as Debbie Salt) never ONCE crosses paths with Sidney.  She’s truly a tertiary character that plays absolutely no part in the film except as comic relief until the “Oh wait… it was HER?” reveal.  

It doesn’t help that Metcalf is so frail & tiny it’s impossible to imagine her overcoming ANYONE, let alone be a master killer.   It robs the final action of all it’s horror since I found nothing scary about a 98 pound pantsuited aggressor.  On the upside, it does continue the Scream franchises tradition of strong women- the true evil mastermind in Scream 2 is a woman but the two heroes are women as well.   In fact, Deputy Dewey officially becomes the most ineffective male “hero” in cinematic history after being apparently stabbed to death AGAIN.   He ends both films being wheeled into an ambulance calling out “Gale”.    It’s not Alien class in it’s feminine agenda but it’s better than what most horror offers.  All in all, even with the atrocious killers,  I had a blast!   Scream 2 isn’t a great film like the original is, but it’s still a fantastic example of how good visual style & strong character dynamics can really make a film exceptional!

It doesn't hurt Courtney Cox looked really good in the film!

CLOSING COMMENTS:

MVP Onscreen: Courtney Cox.  The character of Gale Weathers really takes over in this entry.  It isn’t an astounding performance or particularly unique but there’s some great character work done here.   It’s a fun performance that helps keep the story floating along.  While, the first film was entirely Sidney Prescott’s tale, this time around the narrative is more evenly split.  It’s fun to watch the murders & all but a lot of the fun really comes out of watching Gale become less of a bitch.   Fun performance.

MVP Offscreen: Wes Craven.  Once again, the direction is smooth, confident & hits all the right notes.  While Kevin Williamson’s script hits a few faults along the way (the red herrings are terrible- there is no reason why Cotton Weary should be walking around a college film dept. at 2 A.M. EXCEPT to be a case of mistaken identity) the direction never missteps.    Great work on his behalf.  Classic 90’s horror direction.

Tomorrow brings a look at Scream 3.  This should be interesting since I remember REALLY hating the film & haven’t been able to finish it once since the movie was released in 2000.

Retrospective: SCREAM

Most people don’t know this but I’m a sucker for meta-fiction.  Few things pump me up more than a piece of fiction actually commenting on the art & storytelling devices inherent in crafting a narrative.  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I have a real soft spot for the SCREAM Franchise- without a doubt the “most meta” film series of all time.   It’s a series that built itself on addressing the cliche traits of the horror genre & then one upped that by actually INDULGING in said cliches at the same time!   Scream is truly an amazing franchise that has achieved so much in a genre saturated with a lack of ideas.

The series is also close to my film loving heart because the whole endeavor began right around the time I started to grasp just what cinema was.  It really makes me feel old but the original Scream was released when I was only 11!   I didn’t even know what a good movie was at 11!  Hell, the biggest movie of the year for me at that age was none other than Independence Day! Welcome to Earf, indeed!  I even paid…I mean, relatives paid…. to see that film 6 TIMES in the theater!  6!  Regardless, when I was 11 I started to realize that there were movies outside of those found in the Disney library.  Cinema did not start with Disney’s The Rescuers Down Under & end with Pocahontas.  I started getting interested in the concept of film genre & I remember sneaking downstairs at night to catch a late night showing of Alien3 (complete with Spanish subtitles).  So when TV ads would feature ads of girls being chased by a guy who wanted to kill them AND TALK ABOUT MOVIES my interest was peaked.  Alas, I never saw the original Scream in theaters & never got to partake in the wonderful back & forth the film offers a packed audience, but the movie sure got a lot of love on VHS.  Thank you for all the grand memories, Blockbuster!

Now DIE

It’s been a long time since I last visited the Scream Universe, but with the series returning to the silver screen this Friday I decided it was time to revisit it! So, I jumped into my time machine & went back to the mid 90s, an era when a movie geek had to really do their homework if they wanted to know, in chronological order, every film in Brian DePalma’s career & not just look it up on IMDB.  … Nah, fuck that, I popped the Bluray in, turned off the lights, put on my headphones & cracked open a beer.

The flick started & the first thing I noticed was just how different Scream looks from anything out there today.  The BD has the trailer for the newest film on it as a special feature & it’s quite a shock to look at Scream 4‘s heavy digital color correction (how high is the contrast on that film going to be?) vs. the pure filmic look of the 1996 original.  The second thing that really grabbed me was just how damn scary the flick is!  You heard that right- scary!  The Drew Barrymore opener in Scream is an absolutely chilling & pitch-perfect horror short!  The direction is suave, the musical cues spot on, the Voice has never been more threatening, & even Drew Barrymore (a performer I normally can’t stand) was flawless!  I can only imagine how shocking it was to watch this film on it’s initial release, when Scream must have been the first slasher post-Halloween that didn’t have an unstoppable killing machine chasing victims but just a normal sonofabitch in a mask.  It’s the down to earth reality of it all- just a guy on the other end of the phone- that makes it all so terrifying!  The opener even brings forth emotions not common in the slasher genre: pathos!  If you can watch the closing of the opener- particularly when the parents come home- & not get chocked up a little than I don’t know what to do for you.   Speaking of which, if you haven’t watched Scream lately- or ever- go watch it now, the first 12 minutes of the film are perfect horror!

This & E.T. makes all her other cinematic atrocities acceptable.

Regrettably, the remaining 90 minutes of Scream never recapture the levels of cinematic perfection found in that opening but they still tell one hell of a great story!  Kevin Williamson’s almost flawless script introduces the series mainstays in quick fashion:  Sidney Prescott (dude, Neve Campell is hot!), Gale Weathers (dude, Courtney Cox is hot!), & Dewey Riley (dude, David Arquette is…fit) amongst others & I was actually surprised to find myself laughing at the sharply written dialogue time & time again.  Kevin Williamson’s script truthfully is on point for the entire 103 minute duration of the narrative!   The character dynamics are fresh & enjoyable- I would not have no qualms watching these same characters in a movie without murders- & the scares come at just the right points in the narrative.  SPOILERS FOLLOW: It’s such a strong script that for the first- possibly only- time in the franchise I find myself having no qualms with the reveal of the killers.  Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) & Stu Marken (Matthew Lillard) are the ideal villains of the franchise because they work as both a personification of the film’s key theme & as great characters all their own!   Billy has the emotional reason to kill- though his actions are perfectly misguided  & overly self-centered- & Lillard’s usual manic performance makes it an easy buy that Stu is just nuts.  It’s the only time to date I’ve bought the killers”motivation” in the franchise to date & I don’t feel it will ever be beat regardless of how many Scream films they make.

Never trust men dressed like Hugh Hefner or Johnny Depp

The original Scream isn’t the scariest movie of the 90s (personally, I feel that title belongs to Takashi Miike’s Audition) & it isn’t oppressive in its scares like modern horror but it’s an excellent example of the genre!  It’s a perfect party movie! An easy view for everyone!  Scream is also the only slasher film that comes to mind which doesn’t wallow in misogyny.  For being such a prominent film in a genre built on brutalizing hot teenage girls (played by women in their mid-to-late-20s) Scream doesn’t mistreat it’s female cast.  Sure, Gale Weathers is a bitch but she keeps all her clothes on.  Casey Becker is viciously murdered in the opening scene but Drew Barrymore is not drying herself off after taking a steamy shower.  Best of all, Sidney Presscott- the virgin hero- is allowed to actually get laid & live.  Short of the way Rose McGowan dresses in the film (like a dirty old man’s wet dream…. she looks good!) there’s no questionable debasement of the female characters in the film which is awesome!  It’s just good storytelling without much of the usual gender agenda (interesting name for a band) & I really recommend you all give it a view again in the immediate future!

AAAAAAHHHH!

CLOSING COMMENTS:

MVP Onscreen: Matthew Lillard. Normally, Lillard’s manic no-line-can-just-be-spoken-it-must-be-shrieked style of acting gets on my nerves but as Stu Marken he is simply perfect casting.  In fact, Lillard helps elevate the role which on the page must’ve been a no-nothing part since he doesn’t do anything till the final act.  Lillard infuses the none existent role of Stu with a life all it’s own before he even reveals his true intentions.  Lillard’s the only Ghostface in the franchise to date who actually seemed to get off on the act of killing & in my eyes that made him the most captivating killer yet.  He knocks the crazy aspects of his role out of the part!  Cheers!

MVP Offscreen:  Kevin Williamson. Look, I’m pretty confident this is the best film of Wes Craven’s career AND his direction is superb… but the strength of this film is all reliant on Williamson’s script & it’s gangbusters.   Some of the tertiary characters are given some terrible lines of dialogue & sometimes the movie references  get too cutesy for it’s own good (like name dropping horror director Wes Carpenter) but the screenplay overall is incredibly solid!   This is all the more impressive considering films in the horror genre are more often than not are structured like porn films- lots of bad setup & a few action scenes building to a gooey climax.   Williamson’s script elevates above all that muck to make Scream something not often found in the slasher genre- a genuine STORY!

* To any who read, I’m still getting a hang on this blogging.  It’s quite fun to do but I feel my writing has a tendency to wander.  Hopefully, if I continue writing in here I’ll get a grasp on achieving a tighter focus & would make for a more delightful read.   Thanks!

I Wish The Taxi Driver WAS Limitless

I miss Robert DeNiro.   A lot.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting my local theater to catch a fresh, newly scanned (4K) 35mm print of TAXI DRIVER.  It’s a cliche line to be sure but “It was like seeing it again for the first time”. Colors I’d never noticed before just popped out of the screen, Bernard Herrmann’s final score was so clear it just seeped right into my brain, Martin Scorsese’s exquisite pinpoint direction is still breathtaking & unmastered when it comes to expressing crushing loneliness, last of all the aesthetic textures of everything from an NYC far past were just awe-stounding.   This was not the NYC I find myself walking through from time to time (this missing New York is both a curse & a blessing), this was a whole different universe from the one I know.  But above all else, what really exploded off the screen was the hypnotic Travis Bickle, performed by Robert DeNiro.   On the big screen Travis had life I hadn’t seen before in Taxi Driver (& I’ve watched the film on multiple MULTIPLE occasions).  There was added nuance in DeNiro’s eyes, more menace was present in every breath & false smile given.  Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve seen seen a performance that strong on the silver screen in years! Just off the top of my head the only recent performances that come to my mind that could even exist in the same level of class are Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood & Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man 2006 (don’t laugh! It truly is a perfect performance….for all the Wrong/Right reasons!)

Yet, the crazy thing is performances of this type were commonplace for Robert DeNiro back then!  Four years later after Taxi Driver he arguably surpassed this performance by playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, still one the most nakedly bare emotional performances ever committed to film even without the incredible weight changes he underwent.  Back then, DeNiro also showed us how to NOT be friends with Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, made us forget to laugh in The King of Comedy, haunted us in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America (my favorite film of all time!), finally let people laugh in Brazil, carried out The Mission, made us realize how dangerous baseball can be in The Untouchables, gave a tear-jerking performance in Awakenings, turned our mind into mush in Goodfellas, made us realize sometimes you just “gott-to-git” in Cape Fear 1991, was the perfect bad dad in This Boy’s Life & ran a casino in coincidentally enough, Casino.   Hell, before Taxi Driver he won an Oscar playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II even though he barely uttered a word in English!  Robert DeNiro had the balls to take risks & push the art of giving a performance on film into an almost unchallenged calibre of excellence.

For over 20 years this was the most captivating performer in Western Cinema

….and then something happened.  Max Cady became that crazy dad in Hide & Seek.  Al Capone became that racist Senator in Machete.  Neil McCauley (Heat) became a cop named Turk (Righteous Kill).   Sure, every role can’t be a classic & I don’t think anyone expects that, but somehow the tough roles just stopped coming in total.  I’m still an avid fan of DeNiro to this day- point must be that he DOES star in two of my three favorite films of all time- & have closely followed his career even after he stopped trying!  Problem is it’s just getting to be too painful now.   It’s become like holding onto those good memories from high school- they were great experiences back then & helped shape who I am today but they just have no correlation to anything anymore.   Now why bring this up now in the futuristic year of 2011?  I mean, DeNiro HAS been off for a while now, arguably his last GREAT performance was as the moronic stoner Louis Gara in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997).  I  mean, with that one little performance DeNiro encapsulated everything an audience circa the late 1990’s NEVER expected to see Robert DeNiro do, I.E. be a stupid, lazy, absolutely out of touch & incompetent boob (which makes his one act of pure DeNiro violence in the third act that much more shocking) & then he delivered an excellent performance on top of that!

It’s been almost 14 years since he played Louis Gara & I’ve seen almost all of the roles he’s done since then.  More often than not I saw these roles for the first time in the movie theater!  I was there when he first Analyze(‘d) This, I sat in a dark theater when he first insulted Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker & even when he played a goddamned Mafia Shark.  I even paid to watch him unexpectantly have sex with Carla Gugino in Righteous Kill (probably the worst film of his career).  The performances weren’t great, most were barely passable, but I would always walk out of the darkened theater & say to myself “The next time he’s bound to be better!  He’s Robert De’Fuckin’Niro”.  But, the next time never came.  There’d be sparks here & there, like Stone where the DeNiro of old shows up once or twice but it was never enough.  Soon the work would go back to playing up that tough guy persona in a boner-based comedy or bad cop thriller.  It took a (essentially) back to back viewing of Taxi Driver & his newest film, Limitless, to make me realize enough’s enough.  The time has come for me to call it quits on hoping for the next great performance from DeNiro.

It’s not like I ever expected Limitless to be a great film, mind you.  The trailers were well-put together, selling the movie as Wall Street 2 without Shia LaBeouf (an improvement in any language), but it is a March release which isn’t the strongest release month for great movies.  Honestly, the most I expected out of the film was a flashy 2 hour visit to my local cinema. And that it was!  Don’t take my criticisms the wrong way, Limitless is actually a fun, if admittedly very brainless, little thriller that’s hilariously pro-drugs.  The film is light, frothy, full of cool little visual gimmicks (great lighting but they overused digital color correction IMO) & once or twice even teases a De Palma’esque set piece.  There are far worse ways to enjoy a night out at the theaters BUT it drove home how little DeNiro actually tries these days.   I can honestly say he was the dullest aspect of the entire film & I think it would have been a stronger overall feature if someone else had played the role of Carl Van Loon (a Bond villain name if ever there was one).  It’s not as if DeNiro was terrible, he wasn’t, it’s just the same schtick he’s pulled in every single film since… forever it seems.  For one second, the performance teases the audience that DeNiro is going to deliver something unique & then it just settles right back into the upset grandpa he’s been milking for years.  The performance just floats past you, leaving nothing to grab onto, which is a damn shame since the penultimate scene is an important back & forth discussion between him & Bradley Cooper, thus rendering the exclamation point of Limitless ineffective.   It was partially bad writing (repeat, the film is fun but the script is pretty bad) but the scene mostly fell flat because I was watching one performer (Cooper) give his all & the other just coast on his good name.  Limitless ended, the lights came up, I walked out the theater & once again said “The next time he’s bound to be better!  He’s Robert De’Fuckin’Niro”!

DeNiro is.... oh wait, that's Elias Koteas ... GREAT ACTOR!

Thing is, the next time he WAS better!  That’s because the next time was Taxi Driver on the big screen!  When the lights came up after 112 minutes of upsetting brilliance, I realized after over 10 years of paying to see DeNiro on the big screen I hadn’t once watched him deliver a great performance.  Ever.  It took a 35 year-old-film to make me realize that & it’s a damn shame too.   I’m pretty confident I won’t see a better film in the theaters this year than Taxi Driver, just like I’m confident that I won’t see a better performance than Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle.  It’s a real shame I can’t say that twice about DeNiro’s illustrious career.  The man is a cinematic legend, that’s a given, but the legend is gone & has been since he was in his early 50s (he’s currently 67).  Most likely his other activities- TriBeCa productions, the film festival, the various restaurants, etc- have stolen most of his energy on screen & I just gotta come to terms with that.  The man’s having a great life & doing great work but it’s just not present on screen.   I certainly don’t think New Year’s Eve or any of the movies on IMDB he’s currently attached are going to offer much in the way of above average entertainment.   Only film that does offer promise is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a video game adaptation he’s RUMORED to be on… & it’s only promising because David O. Russell (The Fighter) is directing.   Truthfully, from now on the only thing that could get me immediately pumped to see a Robert DeNiro film is if his 9th collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, ever goes into production.  But, I don’t see that film happening anytime soon.

HUGO CABRET is going to be the best Harry Potter film that never was!

I’m not done with DeNiro.  I am going to continue to watch his films.  My Taxi Driver Bluray shows up from Amazon tomorrow & it’s gonna get lots of attention on my player & will eventually sit on Bluray shelf right next to Once Upon A Time In America, Raging Bull & Goodfellas. Only, don’t expect to see me sitting in a theater anytime soon to see Meet the Parents IV: The Little Fockers Keep Focking.

If it's playing near you- SEE IT!