SOLDIER BLUE (US - 1970) Directed by Ralph Nelson. Written by John Gay. Cast: Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, Donald Pleasence, John Anderson, Jorge Rivero, Dana Elcar, James Hampton, Mort Mills, Bob Carraway, Martin West, Jorge Russek, Aurora Clavell. (R, 115 mins) A revisionist western inspired by the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory that also tries to be a then-topical Vietnam allegory, Ralph Nelson's SOLDIER BLUE was a controversial misfire in the summer of 1970 (though its theme song by Indigenous Canadian singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie became a big hit in the UK) and despite some positive critical reassessment and an inevitable cult following over the ensuing 50 years, it hasn't really improved with age. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), SOLDIER BLUE generated some buzz at the time of its release for its sickeningly violent climax, with a cavalry attack on a Cheyenne tribe so gory and over-the-top it that out-splatters THE WILD BUNCH and goes several steps beyond, with heads blown apart, limbs hacked off, children being decapitated, trampled, and/or impaled, a Cheyenne woman gang-raped and getting her left breast sliced off, and a laundry list of other unmentionables in a seemingly endless barrage of atrocities that remains shocking today and seems more in line with an Italian jungle exploitation grinder. That the perpetrators are American soldiers attacking "savages" is a salient point that directly invokes both Sand Creek and the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. The finale of SOLDIER BLUE needed to be as difficult to watch as it is, certainly one of the most disturbing depictions of historical carnage ever seen in a mainstream American film, but it's such a tedious buildup in a generally standard western that the abrupt shift in tone seems like a tacked-on afterthought. Imagine if you can a pre-WILD BUNCH Hollywood western that feels like it was started by Henry Hathaway and finished by Ruggero Deodato.
A cavalry escorting military fiancee Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen) across the Colorado Territory to her husband-to-be is attacked by the Cheyenne warriors of the feared Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivero). The only survivors are Cresta and Private Honus Gant (Peter Strauss), who must make their way across the harsh terrain to the safety of her fiance Lt. Johnny McNair's (Bob Carraway) unit at Fort Battalion. Along the way, they brave the elements, deal with a shortage of food and water, have a run-in with Kiowa tribesmen, and encounter a duplicitous trader named Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), who's been getting rich by selling military weapons to various tribes. Complicating matters is that the headstrong, independent Cresta sympathizes with the "savages" and spent two years married to Spotted Wolf. Of course, she and Gant will develop feelings for one another, but there's a lot of bickering and arguing along the way, with the brash, vulgar, uninhibited Cresta and the fussy, whiny, uptight Gant turning into the stars of a mismatched "...if they don't kill each other first!" buddy movie as he expresses continued dismay at her behavior while she derisively refers to him as "Soldier Blue" for his naive, puritanical ways.
The opening attack on Gant's cavalry unit is well-choreographed and features some attention-getting Peckinpah-esque bloodletting, with a memorable shot of a bullet ripping through the cheek of Gant's clownish best friend Private Menzies (James Hampton). But the opening and closing sequences are tonally at odds with everything in the sluggish middle. Bergen and Strauss (in just his second film after his 1969 debut as Michael Douglas' younger brother in HAIL, HERO) both deliver seriously grating performances, with Bergen's especially feeling much too 1970 counterculture to work in an 1864 period setting (when John Anderson's psychopathic colonel sees Cresta and harumphs "When I see young people today behaving like that, I just can't help but wonder what this goddamn country's coming to," the point is a little too on-the-nose). Strauss' Gant is one of the least-appealing western genre heroes you'll ever see, and it's little wonder that SOLDIER BLUE began and effectively ended his career as a big-screen leading man. He next did Sergio Grieco's obscure 1971 Italian desert adventure MAN OF LEGEND before embarking on a successful TV career, vying with Richard Chamberlain for the "King of the Miniseries" title with must-see blockbusters like 1976's RICH MAN, POOR MAN and its 1978 sequel, and 1981's MASADA, along with an Emmy-winning turn in the 1979 TV-movie THE JERICHO MILE, the directing debut of Michael Mann. Strauss only made occasional appearances in feature films for the next two decades (1976's THE LAST TYCOON, 1983's SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE) before aging into the character actor phase of his career in the late '90s and into the '00s. Now 73, Strauss remains busy, and was most recently spotted in multiplexes in a supporting role in 2018's OPERATION FINALE and he guest-starred on a February 2020 episode of GREY'S ANATOMY.
Perhaps SOLDIER BLUE needed a more risk-taking director than Nelson, a high-end journeyman who directed Sidney Poitier and Cliff Robertson to Best Actor Oscars in 1963's LILIES OF THE FIELD and 1968's CHARLY, respectively. Nelson was a top television director in the 1950s and generally took whatever big-screen assignment came his way, whether it was the 1964 Cary Grant comedy FATHER GOOSE, the 1966 Poitier/James Garner western DUEL AT DIABLO, or the 1976 Rock Hudson sci-fi/horror outing EMBRYO. SOLDIER BLUE has some valid points to make and the comparison between Sand Creek and My Lai is a legitimate one, but it needed someone with vision to properly pull it off. Nelson was a go-to "get it in the can" director, but at a time when American cinema was at a crossroads with the New Hollywood era being ushered in by the auteurist likes of BONNIE AND CLYDE and EASY RIDER, SOLDIER BLUE struggles to find its identity. It seems to have one foot in the formulaic, old-fashioned John Wayne westerns of the past and one in the post-WILD BUNCH "Bloody Sam"-style of the present and future. As a result, it never reconciles those discrepancies and ends up working at cross purposes. It's a western with a score by Roy Budd that invokes the grandiose majesty of a composer like Dimitri Tiomkin (HIGH NOON, GIANT), but it doesn't gel with off-the-charts levels of graphic violence and gory atrocities so extreme that it's legitimately surprising that the film somehow managed to avoid an X rating. Nowhere is that inability to settle on a tone more apparent than in Pleasence's unthreatening, almost comic-relief secondary bad guy, complete with his silly name and a set of ludicrous fake teeth to make him even more buffoonish. No politically-charged Vietnam-era allegory that features gang rape, breast mutilation, realistic scalpings, copious amounts of horse-tripping, and children being decapitated, impaled, and trampled as buckets of blood splash across the screen in one stomach-turning shot after another should include a total goofball character named "Isaac Q. Cumber."
RULES DON'T APPLY (US - 2016) Written and directed by Warren Beatty. Cast: Warren Beatty, Lily Collins, Alden Ehrenreich, Annette Bening, Matthew Broderick, Alec Baldwin, Haley Bennett, Candice Bergen, Dabney Coleman, Steve Coogan, Ed Harris, Megan Hilty, Oliver Platt, Martin Sheen, Paul Sorvino, Taissa Farmiga, Amy Madigan, Paul Schneider, Hart Bochner, Louise Linton, Graham Beckel, Chace Crawford, Ashley Hamilton, Marshall Bell, Patrick Fischler, Michael Badalucco, Joe Cortese. (PG-13, 126 mins) As an actor, writer, director, and producer, Warren Beatty has been nominated for 14 Oscars in total, winning one for Best Director with 1981's REDS. He's a living legend, and as a producer and star, one who was instrumental in ushering in the "New Hollywood" era with 1967's landmark BONNIE AND CLYDE. Beatty was never prolific even in his heyday: starting with his big-screen debut in 1961's SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, he's acted in just 22 films in 55 years, the bulk of those being in the 1960s and 1970s. Offscreen since the expensive 2001 bomb TOWN & COUNTRY, Beatty returns with RULES DON'T APPLY, a pet project about Howard Hughes that he's had in various stages of development since 1973. Beatty also wrote and directed, and the whole thing was kept under wraps as shooting began in early 2014. Granted a Kubrickian level of freedom and secrecy that very few are afforded these days, Beatty made exactly the film he wanted to make, and if the end result is what he's had playing in his head for over 40 years, then you have to wonder what he was thinking and why he even bothered.
Set from 1959 to 1964, RULES DON'T APPLY takes its time getting to Beatty's Howard Hughes (79-year-old Beatty is about 25 years too old to play Hughes in this time period), instead focusing on Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins, daughter of Phil), a virginal, small-town beauty queen and bright-eyed songwriter from Virginia, who's been given a studio contract by Hughes and is flown out to Hollywood with her overprotective, devout Baptist mother Lucy (Annette Bening). They're picked up at the airport by Hughes employee Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich), a Methodist engaged to 7th grade sweetheart Sarah (Taissa Farmiga) back in Fresno and with big dreams about getting Hughes to back his real estate ventures. Hughes has over 25 starlets under contract, and despite stipulations that the drivers aren't to get involved with them, Lucy and Frank can't deny their attraction to one another, even though she feels he's essentially married since he's already had sex with Sarah.
So far, so good. The opening half hour of RULES DON'T APPLY isn't great, but it has a sort-of "second-tier Woody Allen" thing going on and plays a lot like Allen's similar CAFE SOCIETY from earlier this year. But once Hughes enters the picture, the focus shifts to Beatty going through the litany of every Hughes tic, compulsion, oddity, and stereotype in existence. Sometimes it's played for laughs, other times it turns strangely dark, such as an uncomfortable and frankly creepy scene where a drunk Marla gives her virginity to a befuddled, babbling Hughes. Very little in this story is based on fact, other than there was a Howard Hughes and he was a total weirdo billionaire, so it's a jarring tonal shift to have what was essentially a light, romantic comedy suddenly turn bleak, with Marla feeling used and ending up pregnant and considering an abortion. Frank can't decide if he wants to be with Sarah or Marla, and for the sake of the script, instead gets a quick promotion from anonymous driver to Hughes' right-hand man almost overnight. Beatty then spends an inordinate amount of time on Hughes' dealings with his TWA airline, various defense contracts with the US government, and trying to convince the government that his plane can fly, with his behavior growing increasingly erratic with each passing scene. Many big names joined the project, obviously for the chance to work with Beatty, but with the exception of Matthew Broderick as another top Hughes flunky, none of them are put to good use: Candice Bergen has a thankless role as Hughes' secretary; Martin Sheen has three or four brief appearances before we even get a hint of who he's supposed to be (he's either Hughes' lawyer or he runs the day-to-day operations of the Hughes empire), then his character is fired and replaced by another character played by Alec Baldwin, doing a quick "Hey, I'm here to hang with Warren" drop-by; Ed Harris and Amy Madigan have one scene as Sarah's parents; Steve Coogan plays a scared pilot riding shotgun after Hughes drops what he's doing and goes to London to fly a plane; Dabney Coleman shows up briefly as Hughes' doctor; and in a barely-there bit part, Paul Sorvino is seen chatting in the background of a couple shots, eventually getting one line of dialogue when his character is seen on a TV screen. Who is he? Why is he here? Who knows?
It's never a good sign when four editors share credit, and RULES DON'T APPLY looks like a hastily-assembled mess that wasn't so much finished as it was given up on. Characters appear and disappear with no explanation, and early scenes are presented in such a brisk and choppy fashion that you never ascertain who certain people are and what purpose they serve to the story. Beatty bum-rushes through the exposition to get to the parts he cares most about--hamming it up as Howard Hughes--and leaves a large cast mostly stranded. It just gets worse as it goes on, Hughes impulsively heading to London, Managua, and Acapulco, with Frank in tow, for reasons never really explained. Beatty assembled some cast and crew for some reshoots in early 2015 and then spent well over a year putting the movie together. He had nearly five decades to figure out what he wanted with this thing and the end result is a leaden, lifeless, self-indulgent fiasco. Collins and Ehrenreich do what they can with the material (and you have to respect future Han Solo Ehrenreich, who arrived a few years ago as an obvious Leonardo DiCaprio clone who's now getting the roles Leo has aged out of, but he's a young actor who knows his history and has jumped at the chance to work with movie legends like Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola, and Woody Allen), but they're completely defeated by the whims and indecisiveness of a director who's just maybe been away from the game for too long. Beatty hasn't directed a film since 1998's still-scathing BULWORTH (though he reportedly pulled rank on Peter Chelsom and backseat-directed most of TOWN & COUNTRY himself), and that was a movie that had things to say that remain relevant today. Whether as a director, producer, writer, or star, Beatty has historically had his finger on the pulse of current events and deftly capturing the zeitgeist, whether it's the political commentary and the hip-hop awakening of BULWORTH, the changing cinema trends exemplified by BONNIE AND CLYDE, the post-Nixon/Watergate paranoia of THE PARALLAX VIEW, or the sexually liberated '70s in SHAMPOO. RULES DON'T APPLY (you could make a drinking game out of how many times that phrase is shoehorned in via dialogue or song) is a tone-deaf vanity project that puts Beatty in with other influential auteurs--Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, George Romero, Dario Argento, to name a few--whose final or most recent works are indicative of aging legends who just don't get out much anymore. How else do you explain an extended gag about a cum stain on Frank's pants? Did Beatty just now get around to seeing a Farrelly Brothers comedy? And why is that joke in this movie? Given his sporadic work habits and his age, this is likely the last thing we're going to see from Warren Beatty. And that's a damn shame.
Arriving on DVD & Blu-ray just four days after its VOD and scant theatrical release, A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS is a bland and lifeless dysfunctional family Christmas comedy that has nothing to offer aside from Robin Williams in one of his last roles. With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to play armchair psychologist knowing what we now know about Williams' battle with depression and his health issues that factored into his suicide in August. But even here, in a film shot in early 2013 and in his unusually subdued interview in the DVD's bonus features, it's sadly evident that he looks tired and already checked out. Still, even without that dark cloud looming overhead, it would be difficult to enjoy this laugh-deprived trifle that squanders an overqualified cast of proven funny people. Forget comparisons to CHRISTMAS VACATION or BAD SANTA: this isn't even up to the level of the made-for-TV CHRISTMAS VACATION 2: COUSIN EDDIE'S ISLAND ADVENTURE. In a performance that won't be erasing fond memories of Chevy Chase's Clark Griswold anytime soon, Joel McHale is Boyd Mitchler, a successful Chicago hedge fund manager and all-around nice-guy family man with a tendency to overcompensate on Christmas, with an obsessive determination to keep the belief in Santa Claus alive for his coddled son Douglas, nicknamed "Bug" (LOOPER's Pierce Gagnon). As if the ridiculous character names weren't already pissing you off, the reason for Boyd's fanaticism about getting Christmas perfect is his abrasive, alcoholic father Mitch (Williams), whose misanthropic issues may very well be rooted in the fact that he's named Mitch Mitchler. Mitch's drunkenness had a habit of consistently ruining Christmas for young Boyd, and when Boyd is forced to drag the family--there's also wife Luann (BAD SANTA's Lauren Graham) and daughter Vera (Bebe Wood)--four hours away to his parents' house for the holiday, we know he'll be opening wounds that still haven't healed. Then we meet the rest of the Mitchler clan: enabling matriarch Donna (Candice Bergen), daughter Shauna (Wendi McClendon-Covey) and sex-offender son-in-law Dave (Tim Heidecker), and son Nelson (Clark Duke), whose cheating wife ran off with the father of the baby she left for him to raise, and who suffers from PTSD after being discharged from the military following a head injury when he fell off a Humvee during basic training. When Boyd realizes he left Bug's gifts back home in Chicago, he attempts to drive back to get them, but his car breaks down, forcing Mitch to pick him up as the pair predictably air their lifelong grievances on the ride to and back from Chicago, getting a little magical help from a homeless drunk in a Santa costume (Oliver Platt).
There's no edge to A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS. It's a strictly connect-the-dots story that never finds a spark. Everything about it is perfunctory and forgettable. It wants to be this dark, "did that really go there?" comedy, but it just doesn't have the balls to do anything, instead choosing to pull its punches and be safe, nice, and thoroughly neutered. It makes overtures toward pushing the envelope with Dave's sex offender status and the situation with Nelson's dark-skinned son, but it's too afraid to ruffle feathers. Even the wacky elements--Boyd's pants somehow catching on fire ten seconds after he arrives at his parents' house, Bug hallucinating after his competitive eating champ cousin dares him to down a 40-year-old jar of pickles, Mitch serving Boyd squirrel with buckshot when he finds out Boyd doesn't eat chicken, Luann finding some portraits in the attic that reveal Boyd's childhood Bea Arthur obsession--land with a strangely awkward thud (in the right hands, that Bea Arthur subplot could've killed). At the height of the TV series COMMUNITY's popularity, FRIGGIN' began life as a Joel McHale vehicle at Universal with ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT directors Joe and Anthony Russo and a script by WRECK-IT-RALPH writer Phil Johnston. But it never got made and the Russos eventually moved on to CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. McHale kept the project alive through independent means, bringing regular COMMUNITY director Tristram Shapeero (also a vet of PARKS AND RECREATION and NEW GIRL) onboard. Things probably got drastically changed along the way, as an obviously displeased Johnston had his name removed from the credits, with the script now blamed on the non-existent "Michael Brown," and the film ended up being acquired by the lowly Phase 4 Films, home of many an Uwe Boll joint. A MERRY FRIGGIN' CHRISTMAS is so slight and has so little to say and offer that the closing credits start at 73 minutes, rolling as slowly as possible to stretch it to a reasonable running time. There's also a post-credits stinger involving two unfunny Cowboy Santa bit players as well as a nice enough tribute to Williams. He doesn't go overboard as in the recent THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, possibly his worst film, but he seems completely disengaged from the project and isn't funny, spending FRIGGIN' grunting like Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO, chomping on a cigar, derisively calling Boyd "Sally" or "Gladys," and barking things like "Are you on the friggin' rag?" at him. Williams had three other films completed at the time of his death--the grim indie drama BOULEVARD, which got raves at this year's Tribeca Film Festival but is still without a distributor; his last onscreen performance in NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB, due out in theaters in December; and he voices a dog in the comedy ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING, set to be released in spring 2015--and hopefully any of those will provide him with a more fitting sendoff than this friggin' depressing holiday dud. (Unrated, 82 mins)
WILLOW CREEK (US - 2014)
1991's SHAKES THE CLOWN was annihilated by critics before becoming a legitimate cult classic, but it another decade of TV directing gigs before veteran comedian Bobcat Goldthwait would make another film. With the Comedy Central mockumentary WINDY CITY HEAT (2003), and the extremely dark and quite often uncomfortable comedies SLEEPING DOGS LIE (2006), WORLD'S GREATEST DAD (2009), and GOD BLESS AMERICA (2012), Goldthwait has unexpectedly become one of America's boldest and most interesting indie filmmakers and one of the undisputed kings of cringe. He's carved a niche for himself in that field, which makes his delving into found-footage horror a bit perplexing. WILLOW CREEK follows a couple, Jim (Bryce Johnson) and Kelly (Alexie Gilmore) on an excursion into Trinity National Forest where Bigfoot enthusiast Jim intends to follow the path taken in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, the men who claim to have filmed a female Bigfoot on Bluff Creek. Kelly isn't a Bigfoot believer but goes along because it's a hiking trip with her boyfriend. Goldthwait subscribes to the Ti West slow-burn methodology for over half of the running time, but once he finally gets Jim and Kelly in a tent and lets the tension build over a 20-minute uninterrupted take as noises, wailing, growling, and footsteps get closer and closer, WILLOW CREEK really hits its stride. The sequence inside the tent could almost be its own short film and is a textbook example of slow-burn done right. Goldthwait follows the template of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, almost to a fault: someone or something wrecks the camp site and hangs Jim's sock from a tree branch while he takes a swim, and after the tent sequence, the same noises seem to surround them and they end up running in circles (interestingly, BLAIR WITCH co-director Eduardo Sanchez just released his own found-footage Bigfoot opus EXISTS). Those who like concrete explanations probably won't care much for the deliberately ambiguous ending, one that has disturbing implications and expects you to have been paying attention. WILLOW CREEK does a good job of feeling improvised but being very carefully constructed and making early throwaway lines and jokey humor turn out to be quite significant bits of foreshadowing. It's rare these days for a found-footage film to be the kind of movie that prompts discussion and debate, but therein lies the conundrum of WILLOW CREEK: it takes its rightful place among the best that the subgenre has to offer, but it arrives so far beyond fashionably late that it can't really be greeted with anything but a shrug by horror scenesters who, if found footage's waning recent box office numbers are any indication, are getting to be just about over this type of thing (they're cheap to produce and easy to turn a profit, so even with diminishing returns, these movies aren't going anywhere for a while). It's not fair to WILLOW CREEK to judge it by the all the garbage found-footage bottom-feeders that came before it, but one can't help but wonder why Goldthwait decided to make this now. (Unrated, 80 mins)
