Stalker (1979)
The eponymous stalker guides The Writer and The Professor to The Room, a magical place in the middle of a heavily restricted area known as The Zone, where your innermost desire becomes reality.
The Writer is afraid he’s lost his inspiration and wants to use The Room as a muse. Initially reluctant to share his motivation, The Professor wants to destroy The Room because he believes it will eventually be used by power-hungry forces for nefarious purposes.
Loosely based on the Russian novel, Roadside Picnic, this slow, metaphysical thriller by Andrei Tarkovsky is a post apocalyptic version of My Dinner with Andre (1983).
It’s much more interesting than I’m giving it credit, but the payoff is underwhelming, and the coda with Stalker’s wife and physically deformed daughter feels like weirdness for weirdness sake. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, but it’s not a waste of time to watch it once.
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003)
Nick Broomfield’s first documentary about Aileen Wuornos, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, premiered just after her 1993 conviction and exposed how the media and those associated with Aileen (including the police officers who arrested her) tried to profit from her infamy.
This follow up film was released just after her execution. Broomfield was called to testify during her quest to have her sentence overturned and used this opportunity to document the last months of her life. While the first film was focused on the people around Aileen, this film is focused on her.
What unfolds is a portrait of a demented sociopath who was victimized her entire life. The product of a loveless marriage, she was mistreated and abused by everyone in her life from her parents, to siblings, to classmates at school, to anonymous johns who paid her for sex, to her lesbian lover.
Her explosive rants about her mistreatment are unnerving. She’s a feral animal lashing out when pushed into a corner. Many will find this depiction of evil in the hands of a scrawny woman in her mid forties disturbing, but the most difficult part of the film is the dawning realization, regardless of my position on the morality of the death penalty, I know the world is a better, safer place without her in it.
Tombstone (1993)
Sometime outlaw, sometime lawman Wyatt Earp lived a fascinating life. Kurt Russell is exceptional as Wyatt Earp, and Val Kilmer turns in one of his best performance as Doc Holliday, but the film is too muddled and uneven and fails to do justice to this seminal figure in the wild west.
It’s a parade of famous names associated with the American West including the Earps, the Clantons, the Mastersons, and Mattie Blaylock, but we don’t see enough of them to make an impression. While most people don’t know who Big Nose Kate or Billy Breakenridge were, this film assumes its audience consists of experts in minor western anecdotes. Instead of exposition or explanation, we’re left with a lot of name dropping.
It’s almost like they couldn’t decide what type of movie they wanted, so they decided to do a little bit of everything with as many characters as possible, like a chef who just keeps adding more ingredients until all that’s left is a soupy mess. When the allotted two hour run time is over, quickly wraps up without any concern for narrative resolution. A smaller film about the Earp / Clanton feud with the same actors would have been a great movie.
Bill Paxton is woefully miscast in the key role of Morgan Earp. We know Curly Bill Brocius (Powers Boothe) would run roughshod over Morgan because Boothe is believable as a tough, intimidating son of a bitch while Paxton looks like he wouldn’t survive a week in the American frontier. This mismatch ruins the rhythm of the movie.
Yet, there are a few moments of brilliance: Doc Holliday’s death scene, every time Powers Boothe is on camera, and this:
Watching this film is frustrating because I can see the beginnings a great movie, but it’s buried in this bad one and all that’s left is its tombstone.