Morgan P Salvo

Right off the bat, you can tell Looper is going to be different. Its edgy approach reinvents and, for the most part, rejects standard Hollywood formula. Director Rian Johnson is the guy who brought us new lingo and changed the face of noir with Brick, followed up with the con-man tale The Brothers Bloom which was only mildly entertaining. Third time’s a charm as Looper delivers on all possible levels while its gaffes are few and forgivable. It’s an exciting science fiction action yarn with a dose of tongue-in-cheek drama, an engaging script and a down right wacky idea overall.

There have been movies about indulgence, such as Barfly, Lost Weekend and Le Grande Bouffe, but to me the ultimate sign of indulgence is either spending a ton of money on a film or creating a dud that nobody wants to watch. If you Google “the most expensive movies ever made” and “worst movies ever,” there’s a lot of overlap between these two categories. Here’s our short list of
Hollywood at its most excessive.

Cosmopolis might be Cronenberg’s most personal film and that is pretty scary. The guy who brought us Rabid, Scanners, The Fly, Videodrome and History of Violence (to name a few) has gone back to the high tech stuff that fueled his version of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and his film Crash—not the Oscar winning one that sucked.
Based on Don Delillo’s novel of the same name, Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis uses the source material surreptitiously to weave a web of futility. There’s an “inside is safe and outside is turmoil” feel to this flick. This film is a vehicle for a socio-political discussion about corporate greed and the media. Cronenberg tries to tackle what is really wrong with this country and how truly paranoid we’ve become as a society.

With attention to detail and a filmography time table to rival Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be deriving pleasure from emulating other director’s styles while being fiercely independent and creating a unique world of his own with a stable of consummate actors.
Hard Eight (1996)
A hard luck gambling saga showcasing the repertory of actors Anderson would come to draw upon in later films. John C. Reilly is mentored in casino logic by an ailing Philip Baker Hall. Gwyneth Paltrow and Phillip Seymour Hoffman round out this flick. Even Samuel L. Jackson shows up before he was in everything.

Killer Joe’s opening credits gives us the heads up that we are seeing the second collaboration between writer Tracy Letts and Director William Friedkin—the first joint effort produced Bug. Sporting an NC-17 rating due to some full frontal rampant nudity and graphic sex, Killer Joe has an even weirder vibe that hangs over the entire flick.
Here the writing/directing duo tries to recapture the critical acclaim of Bug with this screwed up potboiler, but Killer Joe only half translates to film. The whole viewing time I was wishing I were watching the play on which it is based and not this mostly defective film. What’s weird is that, even for all its flaws, the film left a haunting memory. Replaying scenes in my head and the strange, warped, uncomfortable feeling I got from watching this flick has somehow morphed into the same feeling of recalling a dream, like, ‘did that really happen?’

I truly thought William Friedkin had a much more illustrious career.  Yet when I look back, I find he has his share of some real truly great films and some horrific duds.
The French Connection
Gene Hackman deserved his Academy Award for his role as Manhattan homicide detective Popeye Doyle who furiously tracks down a heroin ring. Boasts one of the best car chases of the time, rivaling Steve McQueen’s Bullitt.
The Exorcist
The movie that has scared audiences around the world for decades still does today. The film stays true to William Peter Blatty’s bestseller and gives us our first glimpses into demonic possession, not to mention a little girl cursing, growing lesions on her face, spinning her head around and puking green bile into a priest’s face.

Good Lord, another exorcism movie and with the tagline, “based on true events.” Holy crap, the only thing worse is a haunted house movie with the same dubious claim. Yet The Possession achieves the near impossible; it makes us care for the two central characters Clyde (Jeffery Dean Morgan) and Emily “Em”  (Natasha Calis). This hasn’t happened since the original Exorcist where we sat on the edge of our seat out of concern for Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair and Jason Miller.
Filmmakers working in this horror subgenre cannot escape the inherently generic formula. All they can do is embellish on a tired old tale. Most of the time it’s done with smoke and mirrors, overdone special effects and /or piling on the bone snapping, contorting and gallons of gory blood oozing. Here, Danish Director Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch, Just Another Love Story) brings some nice ambient tricks to the table while setting a somber mood amidst the stereotypical shenanigans.

Exorcism movies have a high rate of sucking. There are a slew of terrible, and I mean god-awful, grade z, drive-in bad Exorcism flicks. Too many to mention, but let me take a stab at a few highlights.
The Exorcist
William Peter Blatty’s best seller comes to life in the big granddaddy of them all. When it came out, I thought it sucked and was laughably bad. Now I appreciate it after the flock of copycat regurgitations. Groundbreaking in its day, the film keeps the tension up with director William Friedkin’s excellent camera work and special effects that have withstood the test of time. It’s still overly quoted; but I don’t know anyone who hasn’t said, “Your mother sucks c*#k$ in hell.”

The ongoing collaboration between musician/writer Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat spans 14 years. While Hillcoat has made a lot of short films and music videos (including The Bad Seeds’ “Babe I’m on Fire”) his features mostly rely on Cave’s soundtracks and screenwriting. Hillcoat likes humans caked in dirt and bloody sacrificial filmmaking while Cave eschews his angst driven messy rock to fall back on more somber moments allowing haunting melodies, droning violins and piano riffs to enhance our viewing pleasure.
Ghosts… of the Civil Dead (1988)
Produced 14 years ago, this violently poetic Australian flick is about a maximum security lockdown in the middle of nowhere. Both the prisoners and the guards are slowly and deliberately brutalized, manipulated and provoked into violence. Slowly carving out the theme of isolation, Cave also starred in and co-wrote the screenplay with onetime Bad Seed member Hugo Race. All the performances are gut-wrenching, and the soundtrack is a menacing landscape of eerie clanks and minimalistic music accompanied by grunts, hammers, wind noise and bells. Ghosts… is available on DVD in Europe, but has not yet been released in the United States.

Michael Shannon’s catalog of ethically and psychologically complicated characters, continues to amaze. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his scene stealing role in Revolutionary Road and has shown up in countless, but definitive, supporting roles and small cameos in off-the-map indies as well as blockbusters like Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II. Here is a list of my all time favorite roles and mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to see a great actor carving out a niche.
Bug (2006)
Director William Friedkin saw Shannon on the British stage in the same role and cast him in the film version opposite Ashley Judd. Hollywood wanted a bigger name, but Friedkin knew he had the perfect fit with Shannon who seamlessly moved from stage to the sound stage in this tricky little flick that is all about psychological terror and paranoia. Shannon captivates as a mentally ill veteran who believes he’s been infested with parasites. Sadly Bug was promoted as a horror flick and lost scads of potential audience members.