Author: Jim McLennan

Dir: Gigi Gaston
Star: Alyson Hannigan, Nastassja Kinski, Jennifer Esposito, Todd Field
a.k.a. Rip It Off

There’s a quote from Hannigan about this movie; I can’t find the original source, but it’s worth bearing in mind with regard to this misconceived slab of misandry, disguised as a heist movie:

“It was a nightmare to shoot: the producer and director were constantly fighting… It was completely unorganised. Alexis [Denisof] was also in it and he and I would go into each other’s trailers and go, ‘We’ve made a huge mistake, this is the worst thing ever!’ It just went terribly, terribly wrong.”

The sad thing is, when it’s not engaging in unsubtle man-bashing, it isn’t bad. The final third, where the casino robbery finally happens, only to collapse into a series of unfortunate events, is tense and well-staged enough to be interesting. Just a shame you have to sit through the first hour to get there. The original planners of the crime are two Russian criminals. Sergei and Yuri (Brian McCardie and Denisof), using inside help from a casino employee named Troy (Steve Harris), who knows he’s shortly going to be unemployed. The two Russians have girlfriends, Lexi (Hannigan) and Misha (Kinski), who might be more than good friends themselves, and are increasingly unhappy with their lot, particularly the appalling Sergei, who is an unpleasant and brutal piece of work.

When they give Yuri an ultimatum – it’s Sergei or them – he basically goes “bros before hoes”, and casts them out. The disgruntled women bump into Misha’s old friend, Helena (Esposito), and decide to extract revenge through Helena’s ex-husband, police officer Jack Toretti (Field). However, rather than arresting the criminals, Jack and his partner team up with them, and the women are cut out entirely. Even more aggrieved, the trio decide to turn their ex’s against each other, snare Jack with a honey-trap of sex and drugs [allowing the director to give a small role to her long-time partner, Sophie B. Hawkins] and carry out the plan with Troy, all by themselves. For what else could possibly go wrong? Uh, how about,  virtually everything?

Structurally, it’s a mess. The opening scene makes it seem that Jack is going to be the focus of the movie, since it opens with him being chased naked through the streets by the cops. Then the movie shifts into a flashback, and he vanishes almost entirely for the rest of the first half. Thereafter, the film thrashes around, between Lexi, Misha and Helena, unable to settle on providing any one of them with particular depth. It’s never even explained, in any convincing way, why even the least picky of women would want to be in the same room as Sergei, let alone have a relationship with him. [And McCardie, from Glasgow, makes a thoroughly unconvincing Russian – at least Denisof has some appropriate ancestry on his father’s side, though I’m not sure his accent is any better for it]

While the alternate title is a clear attempt to confuse viewers with the rather more successful female robbery film, Set It Off, the film’s closest cousin is perhaps Bound, with which it shares the considerably more niche “lesbian heist” genre. Though it comes nowhere near achieving anything like the same sense of steamy noir as the Wachowski Brothers Sisters Siblings managed, instead wandering off in poorly-considered directions like Lexi’s briefly important heroin addiction. This suddenly arrives out of nowhere, leads to a couple of portentous and/or pretentious scenes, then vanishes back into the obscurity from whence it came, never to be mentioned again.

Kinski likely comes out of the mess which is the first hour best, seeming the most well-rounded member of the trio – though that is hardly a glowing endorsement comparing to the seething mass of dysfunctional humanity which populates the movie. Whether through writing or performance Misha’s character seems to consist of more than the word “bisexual” written on a cocktail napkin, and appears to be at least somewhat smart. Though again, you are left wondering how the hell she ended up with losers like Yuri and Sergei. There’s an untold prequel there, though based on Hannigan’s comment earlier, she would have to be even more heavily drugged than Lexi, to get her back onto a movie set with the creators.

As previously noted, things become both more coherent and more interesting once the action kicks off and the robbery plan is put into play. Nastassja seems generally to have shown a curious aversion to firing guns in her filmography, even remaining relatively pacifist in cheerful action fodder like Crackerjack (though she wields a mean cooking pan there). There’s no such aversion here, as the image on top demonstrates, when the intended slick, quick in and out raid degenerates into a strongroom gun battle. And even after they prevail, there’s no honor among thieves, and the gang has one or two nasty surprises as they try to take their ill-gotten gains and make it… [Gasp!] …beyond the city limits.

The ins and outs of the casino business, and how the security measures could be bypassed, would have made for a much more interesting film than the soap-opera nonsense which bogs this down. I’ve no problem with having female leads in such an effort, and even if you want to make an ambiguously gay relationship movie, by all means: go ahead. Just don’t disguise it in the trappings of Ocean’s 11, and staff it with supporting actors from Buffy the Vampire Slayer plus a low-rent version of Melissa Etheridge. Because such a bait and switch is unlikely to impress any viewer, even if they’re actually looking for an ambiguously gay relationship movie starring supporting actors from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. That’s probably about as uber-niche a market as it is possible to get, and disappointment for everyone else is likely close to unavoidable.

Dir: Allan Moyle
Star: Nastassja Kinski, William Baldwin, Hart Bochner, Jordy Benattar

It’s odd how synchronicity kicks in. 15 years after this was released, its tale of a sleazy, multi-millionaire businessman, who uses his power to sexually harass a beautiful woman, has suddenly acquired relevance as this ugly Presidential campaign unfolds. Weirder still, the businessman here is played by William Baldwin – whose brother, Alec, was seen later the same night I watched this, portraying Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Moving rapidly away from politics, the target for Julian Grant (Baldwin) is Grace Needham (Kinski), whose marriage is currently on shaky grounds. Her husband, Matt (Bochner) lost his job, went into a downward spiral and now sits around the house, drinking. Even when friends give them a vacation to Miami Beach, he refuses to go, so Grace takes the trip by herself. Which is where she meets Julian, who is also at the resort by himself. After a little dining and sailing, they have a briefly passionate encounter on the beach, which Grace immediately regrets. Returning to her home, she’s convinced the best solution is to follow the title’s advice, especially since things seem to be improving again, with Matt finding a great job. However, she’s dismayed when she realizes that his new boss, and the man responsible for her husband’s position, is Julian. For he’s not prepared to regard what happened as a one-night stand, and will stop at nothing to pursue Grace.

Well, he does appear to draw the line at boiling the family pet. For this is best described as a gender- and class-reversed version of Fatal Attraction, with the man being the psycho, and also doing so from a position of power, and the woman bitterly regretting a moment of weakness. This is perhaps the result of a female script-writer, though I have a feeling stuff like the utterly gratuitous shower shortly after Kinski’s arrival at the resort may not have been her idea. It’s approximately 12 minutes in, if you want to save yourself some time. Though I have to say, I’m all but certain both it and the sex scene with Baldwin are body-doubles. Which would be perfectly fine, if they’d chosen someone of similar stature, but as the screen captures below show, it appears the stand-in was rather more busty than Nastassja, to the degree where even I noticed, and I’m usually pretty oblivious to these things. Really: what’s the point, especially for such a meaningless scene.

To be fair, the rest of the film isn’t as shallowly banal as you might expect – especially given I filled the first 400 words of this with political ramblings and a discussion of gratuitous nudity. If you put it alongside Fatal Attraction, it stands up reasonably well, with Kinski being a more sympathetic character than Michael Douglas portrays, and Baldwin less bat-shit crazy than Glenn Close. There are still some mis-steps here, however; it just doesn’t ring true for a supposedly loving mother to abandon her daughter and go swanning off to Florida on vacation, necessary though it certainly is to the plot. But most of the plot elements that flow from this are, at least, somewhat credible, which is enough to make it above average for the erotic thriller genre. Admittedly, the final face-off likely doesn’t deserve even the “somewhat” version, with a car chase which leads to a cliff-top battle, that then implodes into not much of a resolution at all.

One nice angle I did appreciate, is that Grace is a former model, who now works for a fashion magazine, and there are nods to this visible in the background, that provide a throwback to Nastassja’s earlier time as a cover-girl. There are some magazine covers with pics of a younger Kinski, as well as what looks like a Warhol-esque print, which I hadn’t seen before. Finally, the Richard Avedon snake print is on someone’s mantelpiece, making for a dryly amusing bit of meta-Kinski, such as when Grace is talking about having been pushed out of the industry by younger models. Given the body double mentioned above, this is also somewhat sad, and potentially ironic, though its use could very well have been at her own insistence. I also note a cropped and rotated fragment of Avedon’s classic photograph becoming part of the DVD sleeve. Counterpoint: I really did not like her haircut here, which looks like a bad wig on more than one occasion, and doesn’t do her any justice at all.

This could be described as the finale in Kinski’s “poor romantic decisions” trilogy. This began in Blind Terror, then continued in Cold Heart, both of which also focus on Nastassja falling for the wrong man, and were made the same year as Say Nothing. While perhaps a stretch, it’s tempting to read into the common theme, something about her personal life, since around this time, she was “at war” with her first husband, Egyptian film producer Ibrahim Moussa. Still, like the other two, Nothing is probably somewhat better than I expected, even if my opinion says as much about the low expectations I had going in, as anything. The movie, like its predecessors in the trilogy, makes solid use of Kinski’s vulnerable quality, which has been a staple of her career going back, at least as far as Tess. The script could certainly have been improved, particularly in the final act, yet overall remains watchable, if not exactly memorable.

Dir: Éva Gárdos
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Goldwyn, Kelly Endrész Banlaki

“Nastassja is amazing. I met her several years ago when Bonnie Timmermann first gave her my script. When I showed her a picture of my arrival, she understood the drama of the story. She has a lot in common with the character, as a European woman and someone who has gone through many changes in her own life. And, of course, her natural warmth and beauty make the character very complex and rich.”
— Director Éva Gárdos

In which a bratty teenager runs off back to her Eastern Bloc roots, and discovers that life is not always greener on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I may be somewhat misinterpreting the point here, and it’s certainly not all that happens in this. It’s more likely the “bratty teenager” aspect is the one with most personal resonance. Though at least our daughter never had to be locked in her room or took to shooting holes in the bedroom door, like the character here. I’m grateful for that.

I’m also getting ahead of the film here. It begins in 1950’s Hungary, a dark time when the jackboot of Soviet totalitarianism was cracking down hard on any form of dissent. Husband and wife Peter (Goldwyn) and Margit Sandor (Kinski) decide to escape across the border to the West. Their elder daughter, Maria, is just old enough to be part of the escape, but it’s too risky for newly-born Suzanne, who will take a different route. However, that falls through, and Suzanne spends her first five years being brought up by a foster family in the country. Her real parents have reached California, where Margit wages a letter-writing campaign to everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Dag Hammarskjöld, seeking their help to get Suzanne to America.

It eventually has the desired effect and Suzanne (at this point, played by Banlaki) is swept away from her fosters and on a plane to America, where she has to cope with suddenly having a big sister, burgers, Coca Cola, and not simply being able to wander around at will, like she did in Hungary. Fast forward a decade, and she (now, Johansson) has become an archetypical surly teenager, not enhanced by a belief her mother abandoned her. This evinces itself in smoking, hanging out with boys and shrieking “I hate you!” at her bemused mother, who has no idea how to cope. Her reaction involves calling a locksmith, which is what causes Suzanne to blast her way to freedom.

Eventually, her more level-headed father agrees to let Suzanne return to Hungary, and visit her foster family. While delighted to see her, they are now living in a Budapest apartment, and Suzanne gets to experience first-hand the failures of Communism. However, she also discovers the specific reason why her mother was unable to live in the country any longer, and gains a new-found appreciation for what her parents went through in order to give her a better life. So, it all ends in hugs between mother and daughter, because America is the bestest country in the world ever, am I right?

Sorry, guess my cynicism slipped through again. The film doesn’t truly deserve that – or, perhaps, it does – as it genuinely seems to believe the rose-tinted view on display. Witness how the Sandors are, one second, crossing the border from Hungary with suitcases, filmed in ominous black-and-white, and the next, they’re magically living in full Technicolor, occupying a wonderful home in California, with a car and all mod cons, even though she’s a waitress and he’s a door-to-door salesman of vacuum cleaners. Damn, if I realized emigrating to America was so easy, I’d have done it fifteen years sooner.

Fortunately, there are a few things which save it from collapsing entirely into a large tub of saccharine. Gárdos, largely inspired by her own experiences, it appears, treats everyone involved with respect and empathy. You understand both where the mother is coming from, and why the daughter feels betrayed – their actions make sense on an individual level, it’s the clash between them which leads to the dramatic tension. The performances are also uniformly excellent. First off, I don’t speak Hungarian, but both Kinski and Goldwyn seemed entirely convincing when doing so – those familiar with the language, appear equally impressed.

The emotional heart of the movie, however, is likely Banlaki, who is entirely adorable as the moppet growing up in total ignorance that her family is not her family. Watching the angst on her little face as she was torn away from them, then flown half-way around the world to a completely alien culture, and a language she couldn’t speak, was heart-rending. It is a necessary trauma for the purposes of the film, since it help you understand the teenage Suzanne’s subsequent rebellion into whiny self-pity. Johansson certainly nails that aspect, though the director claims she toned the character down: “Many times people involved in the film asked me, ‘Were you really as bad as Suzanne’ and I have to admit that; no, I was even worse!” [I also note the presence of another young future star, Emmy Rossum (Christine in the Phantom of the Opera film), playing her teenage comrade in arms, Sheila.]

Gárdos was better known as an editor, and this was her feature debut. As such, it’s not a bad effort, despite my cynical. Perhaps a little earnest and somewhat heavy on the portrayal of Communism as Reagan’s “Evil Empire,” though given the director’s background, losing no love for the Soviets is probably understandable. This reminded me somewhat of Kinski’s earlier The Ring, which was also about a family seeking to make a new life for them, by emigrating from post-war Europe. That was rather more melodramatic perhaps, and I likely appreciated this better (despite what some of my more snarky comments above may imply!). There’s a solid aura of quality here, enhanced in particular by an evocative score from Cliff Eidelman, and it’s a welcome step up for Nastassja.

Dir: Peter Chelsom
Star: Warren Beatty, Garry Shandling Jr., Diane Keaton, Nastassja Kinski

Or, “Lifestyles of the rich and noxious,” as I increasingly felt like it should have been titled. Because there’s not a character here with whom I felt the slightest connection. My political views don’t exactly tend toward the anarchist generally; yet, by the end of this, I was fully prepared to man the barricades and eat the rich. #ClassWarNow. It starts in a striking fashion, with architect Peter Stoddard (Beatty) lying in bed, watching a naked Alex (Kinski), as she plays the cello – complete with fetching sound-hole tattoos on the small of her back. Hang on, wasn’t she also a sexy cello player in Exposed? Anyway, you certainly have my attention. Now what?

Turns out this was his first infidelity, after decades of relatively happy marriage to interior designer Ellie (Keaton). But he’s not the only one having a midlife crisis, as the marriage of his best friend, Griffin (Shandling), is also on the rocks after his wife Mona (Goldie Hawn) spots him having an extra-marital tryst at a motel. What neither Mona nor Peter know, is Griffin is actually gay. In short order, this leads to Peter having a fling with Mona, then a trip to Sun Valley for him and Griffin, in an effort to get away from it all. But this only leads to further affairs, with heiress Eugenie Claybourne (Andie McDowell), and also a hardware store clark, Auburn (Jenna Elfman). These issues then end up following Peter back to his home in New York, and colliding at an awards gala.

If you’re thinking this sounds tedious, you are right on the mark and I am doing my job with the apathetic synopsis above. For this is one of those cases where the production was rather more interesting that the film itself. Even before it came out, the film was described as being accompanied by “a pervasive sense of doom like none that has attached itself to a major Hollywood release in a long time.” The results were perhaps even worse, as you’d expect given a release postponed more than a dozen times, with the film eventually seeping out almost three years after production began.

There’s general agreement on the main cause: the film went into production without a finished script. However, this was merely the tip of a nightmarish iceberg of problems. Gerard Depardieu was originally supposed to play Griffin, until he hurt his back and had to be replaced. Reports have the director and star clashing over artistic direction – it was Beatty’s first purely acting gig in a quarter century and he seemed reluctant to stick to that job. Film canisters were stolen and ransomed. Jenna Elfman’s hair fell out. Shooting was unable to finish in the allotted time, and the actors left to work on other projects. Disastrous test screenings led to rewrites and reshoots.

Just not enough rewrites and reshoot, it appears. The film stumbles, right out of the gate. When the first thing you see is a man cheating on his wife, any moral audience member generally loses sympathy for him, and the movie offers little or no reason thereafter to change that opinion. It appears the original script had both he and Ellie being unfaithful, which would at least have made the film’s conclusion somewhat credible. But it appears that symmetry was lost in the rewrites, as did any reason why women, literally half Beatty’s age [at the point of release, he was 64 and Elfman 29] throw themselves at him.

Random plot points stick out all over the place. Alex is pregnant! Oh, never mind: Peter’s not the father. Please carry on. Charlton Heston shows up, playing a gun nut, with a foul-mouthed, wheelchair-bound wife. Oh, hold my aching sides, for I fear they may split. The film seems to think that throwing recognizable faces on screen is the equivalent of the wit and sophistication shown by Golden Era screwball comedies, hoping to skate by on the success of previous pairings e.g. Beatty and Hawn in Shampoo. Or perhaps its aiming for some kind of Woody Allen, Big Apple vibe – the presence of Keaton certainly suggests this.

The end result, however, is a comedy without significant laughs, and a drama without any drama at all. Kinski does at least come out of it relatively unscathed. We’ve discussed her unsuitability for humor previously, and wisely, she’s left out of the film’s increasingly desperate and flailing attempts in this department, though only her cello-playing sticks in the mind [. I’ve never seen Shandling in anything of note, and there’s nothing here that would make me want to change that situation. But it’s Beatty who embarrasses himself worst here, an aging Lothario playing a reluctant aging Lothario for the non-existent amusement of the viewer. While there’s no denying Beatty’s talents elsewhere, he’s horribly unsuited to this ill-conceived and poorly executed exercise.

Kinski has had her share of commercial failures over her career: One From the Heart and Revolution being the most notable. But this is perhaps the biggest flop of them all. Town & Country cost an estimated $90 million, not including distribution or marketing. Its worldwide box-office take: slightly below $10.4 million. It still crops up in articles about the biggest box-office bombs of all time, while Warren Beatty has literally not been part of another feature in the 15 years since. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the film, that its star immediately gave up making movies. Especially when this was the same man who had doggedly chosen to persevere in Hollywood after Ishtar – which, incidentally, cost about $40 million less than Town & Country, while taking more at the box-office. In this case, the popular audience appears to have got it right.

Dir: Dennis Dimster
Star: Josh Holloway, Nastassja Kinski, Jeff Fahey, Hudson Leick

One of the benefits of having a psycho in your movie, is that they can do anything necessary for the plot and it’s okay. They’re psycho, y’see: so if they don’t behave rationally, or in the way a normal person would, it makes perfect sense! There’s certainly a prime example of the species here, in Sean (Holloway). He’s locked up in the loony bin after having come perilously close to killing his last girlfriend. But working with his shrink, Dr. Phil (Fahey) – seriously, the psychiatrist’s name is Phil Cross – who has been financed by Sean’s rich father, he’s deemed sane enough to be released into society.

Here, I’ll also mention there are two types of movie psychopaths. Type A are the creepy ones, about whom you can immediately tell something is wrong immediately: the Norman Bateses. Then there is Type B, the suave and charismatic manipulators: the Patrick Batemans.  It’s the latter category into which Sean falls. And, hey whaddya know. he immediately ends up working for Dr. Cross’s wife, Linda (Kinski), who runs a movie production company. For what are the odds that he would casually run into her partner, Julia (Leick) at a coffee-stand and charm her into offering him a job? Actually, if you’ve seen many of this kind of thriller, you’ll know the answer is, “about 100%”.

You’ll also be unsurprised to learn Linda’s marriage is on shaky ground, she suspects her husband of having an affair, and thinks Phil is only staying with her for financial reasons. Something something trust fund. It’s not long – pausing only for a gratuitous shower-scene, but more on this aspect in a bit – before she and Sean are conducting a torrid affair. However, for Linda at least, this comes with a large side-order of guilt, particularly after she realizes Phil wasn’t having an affair at all, and all his skulking around was cover as he secretly bought their dream cabin. So she decides to end the relationship, which does not sit well with Sean, causing the “psycho” aspect of his nature to kick in.

You may be detecting some cynicism in the above, and not without cause. However, it isn’t entirely without merit, since there’s at least one twist which I honestly didn’t see coming. I probably should have, as it’s necessary to the plot, yet the scripts keeps that revelation on the back burner until almost the very end. The finale does require the other aspect of cinematic insanity mentioned earlier. Some of Sean’s late choices appear to be ones apparently mandated by the script-writer, rather than flowing naturally from the situation and/or his character. But it’s alright, ‘cos he’s a psycho. And you know what they say: “He who sets the psychopath, gets the psychopath.” Ok, just me then.

The cast aren’t bad, even if none of the roles require much more than stock genre tropes. In addition to Kinski, a particular bonus for me was Hudson Leick, whom I recall being very fond of, back in the days when she played the uber-villainess Callisto in Xena: Warrior Princess. Nothing quite as gloriously OTT here; though let’s face it, hard to top lines like, “Such a pretty day for a blood bath,” appropriate though it might have been. Holloway, in an early feature role, well before becoming known for Lost, does the charming madman thing effectively enough. Fahey’s role isn’t as significant as his billing might appear, and we never do address the elephant in the room. You’re married to Nastassja Kinski; what could possibly have gone wrong?

This seems cut from much the same cloth as Blind Terror, also from the same year, in which Kinski also hooked up with the wrong guy. And with the exception of some gratuitous nudity, this could equally well have played on television. Speaking of which, the obligatory quota of flesh is met, both through the shower-scene mentioned above and several sequences of Linda and Sean bonking. Except, it appears not to be Kinski at all, but more likely a body double, going in particular by the obvious way her face is never shown in those shots. It’s rather disconcerting, and since these scenes aren’t necessary – they appear perfunctory to the point of contractual obligation – you’re almost left wishing they hadn’t bothered. Note: the image on the sleeve of NK with her hands tied above her head does not appear in the film. Though bondage fans may be impressed by the fairly detailed knotwork when Sean ties up Julia. Maybe he has a touch of OCD as well.

Kinski’s performance is decent enough, putting over an aura of paranoid vulnerability that’s reasonably effective. It’s odd that the film is supposedly told from Sean’s perspective, as the final shot makes clear, yet it is not consistently so. Aspects are also revealed, of which he’d have to be completely unaware, such as Julia’s shifting doubts as to her husband’s fidelity. It seems she’s the character with which the audience is supposed to empathize, yet Dimster wants the illicit thrill of associating with the cold, dead heart of Sean as well. I would definitely say he falls short of managing to pull that feat off, and he would have been better trying to have his cake or eat it.

But the basic plot did a fairly good job of sustaining my interest for 90 minutes, and if you’re looking for a low-budget flick along the lines of Fatal Attraction, you could certainly do much worse. It’s not exactly ambitious; there are hardly more than half a dozen speaking roles in the entire film. Yet knowing your limitations is one of the important aspects of straight-to-video work, and wisely, the makers here remain inside what’s available with their resources. The money apparently was spent mostly on a solid cast, and they probably help to elevate the (frankly, tired and over-familiar) material, beyond what it deserves.

Dir: Joseph Brutsman
Star: Michael Des Barres, Rosanna Arquette, Nastassja Kinski, Eva Jenícková

Beyond one of the most click-baity titles in cinematic history, lurks something slightly more than the soft-porn bonkathon which it would appear to be, and is instead trying to offer a psychological portrait of the titular character. This is the not-exactly subtly named Sammy Horn (Des Barres), a restaurant owner bearing some resemblance to a certain celebrity chef whose name might rhyme with Bordon Hamsay, sharing similar hair and a quick temper. Project Kinski legal advisers counsel me to stress that is all they have in common.

Horn has a lovely wife, Grace (Arquette), and a charming young child, but this does not stop in the slightest from trying to bed every woman to cross his path. That list includes workers in his restaurant, women he meets in bars, his doctor’s receptionist, hookers he hires, strip-club bartenders, even Grace’s sister is fair game for Sammy’s lust. This all causes no end of problems: he gets arrested after a particularly vocal sex session in the bathroom of a restaurant, and has a scary moment when his doctor tells him Grace is HIV-positive. The lies and deceit he’s forced into with his wife don’t help, and in the end he realizes he has a problem and seeks help.

That comes in the form of therapist Dr. Jane Bordeaux (Kinski), to whom he details his recent exploits, as she listens and frowns – I guess she’s trying to establish a motive and figure out how Horn can control his urges. While I didn’t notice at the time, it strikes me as not exactly much of a stretch to find a parallel between Sammy and Nastassja’s father, Klaus, whose fleshly appetites were the stuff of legend (at least, in his self-penned memories – who can say how close these came to the reality?). Perhaps playing a therapist was a coping mechanism of some kind for the daughter? Hey, it’s not much more dubious than the psychology this has to offer, and would at least explain Kinski’s presence. Now, if only we could find a similar excuse for Arquette…

It is, certainly, a title likely to mislead, especially since the two lead actresses remain more or less completely attached to their clothes. There’s no shortage of sex, to be sure, but it’s not by anyone of whom you’ll ever have heard.  It’s also a bit of a time-capsule, offering a glimpse of an era when aggressive sexual behavior was rather more acceptable. From a 2016 viewpoint, Horn comes over as predatory, at the very least – arguably even, to borrow a quote from Cersei Lannister, “a bit of a rapist”, since gaining consent hardly seems to be on his to-do list before grabbing on to his next target. You could also make the case he abuses his power, such as with a sous chef at his restaurant. But Horn is not actually an unsympathetic character, and Des Barres’s portrayal gives a bit more depth to him than you’d expected.

There is an odd subplot, which seems to be trying to enhance the positive side. Horn is taking his family to the movies, and gets in an altercation with the ticket-taker, that ends with the latter being fired. The now-unemployed man starts stalking Horn, with bad intentions, but a confrontation in an alley behind the restaurant ends in Horn offering his assailant a job – albeit with a warning to keep his temper in check. I was expecting something more to follow, yet nothing ever comes of this thereafter. It’s oddly affecting, perhaps a result of it being one of the few scenes where Horn is actually communicating with another human being, rather than trying to get into their pants.

Even the sequences between him and Dr. Bordeaux don’t possess much in the way of apparent honesty: as therapists go, she doesn’t seem particularly interested in locating the cause of his addiction, or offering any kind of significant treatment. Well, unless “staring disapprovingly” is what passes for mental health care these days. It’s certainly an easy enough role for Kinski, who only appears in a single location (her office) and likely dashed off her entire performance in less than a week. To be honest, it’s more of a backdrop to allow for the film’s main purpose, which appears to be wish fulfillment for middle-aged men: Horn is not exactly a hunk, yet still appears to be capable of getting any woman (save Dr. Bordeaux) onto his genitals, in the time it takes the rest of us to boil an egg.

What’s a little odd though, is the relatively restrained nature of the sex scenes, which, if enthusiastic (to the point where I felt compelled to lower the volume!), contain a much higher amount of clothing then I was expecting. It’s still certainly not a family film, but if you are expecting the soft-core bonkathon mentioned earlier, you’re going to end up disappointed, even if every woman in it, is more or less uniformly attractive. As such, it seems almost to possess a split personality: partly wanting to be a serious drama about addiction, yet clothed in the trappings of a late-night cable television movie. Probably inevitably, it manages to fall short on both fronts.

That all said, I didn’t hate this as much as many reviews I’ve read. It would be easy for a film on the topic to take a hypocritical approach, both condemning the protagonist’s behavior, while salaciously exploiting it, yet that doesn’t seem to happen here. For all the storyline flaws, Des Barres’s portrayal of Horn is a surprisingly effective one. He’s a bundle of contradictory feelings, behavior and traits – if not consistent, by any stretch, it may well be a more accurate portrayal of most people’s frailties and failings than many Hollywood creations.

Dir: Terence Gross
Star:  Bobby Edner, Randy Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Harry Groener

This was one in a series of five films which were made for cable television – specifically, Cinemax – around Halloween 2001. The series, called “Creature Features”, was produced by FX guru Stan Winston, and took as its inspiration monster movies made by American International Pictures in the late 1950’s. The others were The She-Creature (1956), Earth vs. the Spider, How to Make a Monster, and Teenage Caveman (all 1958), though rather than straightforward remakes, the new versions all added a more modern spin to the concepts involved, or as here, going in a completely different direction. In this case, the title also picked up a bonus definite article, its predecessor having been called simply, Day the World Ended, and was directed by B-movie master, Roger Corman. This 1955 film told of life after a nuclear apocalypse, with a household cut off from the rest of the world, having to handle other survivors, as well as a monster in the nearby woods. The remake has no such Armageddon, though does at least retain the “monster in the woods.”

Kinski plays school therapist Dr. Jennifer Stillman, who arrives in her new district, which is the small town of Sierra Vista. Almost immediately on arrival, she meets troubled young boy Ben McCann (Edner), who has just been in a fight with another kid. He was an orphan, adopted by the town’s physician, Dr. Michael McCann (Quaid). after his mother vanished, in circumstances best initially described as “murky”. The boy is now obsessed with SF comic books and B-movies [including Day the World Ended], and appears to have telekinetic powers. Ben is also convinced that his father came from outer-space, and will eventually return to rescue him. Just an over-imaginative little boy, right? So Jennifer thinks to begin with, crossing swords with his father over the need for therapy. However, sleepy little Sierra Vista is shaken out of its slumber, by a series of violent – by which, I mean, face-ripping – deaths, which leave the local sheriff (Groener) baffled. Dr. McCann, not so much, because he realizes that the victims have something in common – involvement in the disappearance of Ben’s mother.

Initially, this seems closer to another 50’s slice of SF, Invasion of the Body Snatchers [made the year after the original World], with Stillman encountering reluctance and resentment from the locals, who appear to resent her big-city ways. At one point, she says “How Tippi Hedren of me,” after being blamed for the strange things which follow her arrival, an apparent reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It drifts thereafter,  and for a bit the audience is left wondering whether the alien angle is entirely in Ben’s head, a result of his mind being corrupted by age-inappropriate entertainment. Then, the audience remembers that this series is called “Creature Features” and was produced by the guy who made the Predator – so you know the odds are slim of this being a subtle, underplayed piece of psychology, when there can be some rampaging latex-suited guy in the woods instead. And so it proves, with the second half turning into just about that, more or less. Although at the end, it heads off into “Monsters from the id” territory, and concludes without offering any true resolution at all.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing either: this is, after all, a made for cable remake of a movie whose budget, Wikipedia tells me, was $96,234.49. There’s something to be said for this kind of remake – applied to something with room for improvement, or whose core concepts spark an idea worthy of further exploration. Not sure this necessarily falls into either category. While the special effects are not bad, they have hardly taken advantage of the greater freedom offered by the cable destination, with regard to content: outside of a couple of F-bombs, this could just as easily have been something made for the SyFy channel. It’s not helped by an extended flashback sequence, revealing what actually happened to Ben’s mother, that appears to have been shot entirely with the strobe effect on the camera accidentally enabled. I’ve not clue what Gross was trying to achieve here; what I can say, though, is that whatever it was, doesn’t work.

Kinski’s portrayal is okay: I was reminded somewhat of her role in A Storm in Summer, both in its portrayal of someone who cares about a child, despite being unrelated to him, and the lack of any romantic angles for her character. However, Dr Stillman is a thoroughly unconvincing “child therapist,” not least because we don’t ever see her doing any therapy – she’s supposedly responsible for an entire school district, but as depicted here, her focus is absolutely on a single kid in a single educational establishment. It might have worked better if she had already been in place, with Dr. McCann and Ben moving to town, perhaps trying to escape the strange trail of carnage which seems to follow them, wherever they go.

It’s likely significant that you find yourself thinking of ways this could have been better, even as you are watching it. To be honest, the title also no longer makes any sense, with the apocalypse theme of the original entirely missing, and promises far more “doom” than the movie ever delivers. Quaid isn’t bad – his role reminded me somewhat of his similar one as a father harboring a dark secret, in Parents – and I was also diverted by trying to remember, from where I was familiar with Groener [the answer being his role as Mayor Wilkins from Buffy the Vampire Slayer]. Edner, meanwhile, went on to a musical career and was also a dancer in Alien Ant Farm’s Smooth Criminal video. Now you know. I guess, overall, this falls mostly into the category of harmless. I can see where it was trying to go, yet there’s hardly anything that will stick in your mind, and a relatively well-known cast (compared to some of the other Creature Features, in particular) appear to be content with not much more than showing up.

Dir: Giles Walker
Star: Nastassja Kinski, Stewart Bick, Victoria Snow, Jack Langedijk

Susan (Kinski) appears to have everything necessary for a great live: a successful career as an environmental designer in Chicago, and a loving husband, Alan. However, a trip to the store in a thunderstorm, for an anniversary bottle of wine, ends in tragedy for the couple as he is hit and killed by a car. Distraught, Susan throws herself wholeheartedly into her work for several years. Seeking to bring Susan out of this shell, her associate in the design company, Peggy (Snow), introduces Susan to Kevin Markson (Bick), a financial adviser who is also clever, handsome and funny – a perfect match, in fact. The pair begin a whirlwind relationship, leading to a rapid marriage after they fly down to Las Vegas for the weekend. And that’s where the problems begin.

For it isn’t long before strange things start happening: a woman, wearing a hat and dark glasses, seems to be following Susan and watching her apartment. Cryptic but threatening messages are left at her office, and things continue to escalate, with crude graffiti being scrawled, calling her a “whore” and their apartment being broken into. After the police are brought in, Kevin eventually confesses that he thinks he knows who is responsible: he had a brief dalliance with a woman he met in a bar, Leslie Seeward, and when they split up, she vowed that she would kill any other woman whom he married. She appears to be making good on the threat, and only the fortunate presence of a cemetery worker saves Susan from worse than bruising after an attack by her mother’s grave.

But Leslie also seems to be completely elusive, and even the private detective Susan hires is, at least initially, unable to make progress, as the address Kevin had for Leslie appears to be a complete dead end, with nobody knowing her there. Is Kevin telling the truth? If not, who is behind it all? Potential candidates include Peggy, as well as Justine, Susan’s younger sister; the two have a strained relationship, because by the terms of their parents’ will, Susan controls the trust fund income Justine gets. That’s a direct result of Justine’s husband being a low-life slimeball with some bad, money-burning habits, so perhaps he’s involved too? You won’t find out the truth until right at the end and… Well, I can’t honestly say I was particularly convinced by the resolution. I guess, in some ways, it “makes sense”, as long as you have a fairly loose definition of what constitutes sense.

Fragments of this reminded me of The Intruder, though that obviously has a significantly different backstory. But both are Canadian productions (Montreal standing in for “Chicago” here), and with Kinski playing a woman who may (or may not) be being stalked by an old flame of her current man. Though for some reason, I thought this actually had Kinski playing a woman who couldn’t see, so it was a bit of a surprise the whole “Blind” part of the title proves almost entirely irrelevant. I think I was perhaps confusing it with another film of the same name (at least, in the United Kingdom), starring Mia Farrow as the sightless victim of a psychotic killer. But given the tagline used on the DVD sleeve here is “Open your eyes to the terror,” I feel any resulting optic-based confusion is at least not all my fault. That matters particularly here, because this is the first Nastassja movie reviewed for the site, on which I had to spend actual money: between my existing film collection and what should be left in vague terms as “the usual sources,” I’d managed to watch everything else to this point. However, both came up short, though I was able to use an Amazon gift-card, and picked this up for less than five bucks, including shipping.

On balance, that’s likely a bit much, considering there is not much here that will merit repeat viewing: the main hook is wondering who is behind the increasingly more-violent attacks on Susan, and if you know that going in, the appeal would be sharply diminished. The performances are nothing special to write home about: Bick is particularly bland, to the extent that I can’t even remember what he looks like, and I only watched the film two days ago. Possibly the best is Gordon Pinsent as Martin Howell, the PI engaged by Susan; while he doesn’t have much screen-time, he manages to do a lot more with it, in terms of creating a character, than you’d expect. Kinski is okay. She has a vulnerable quality that is appropriate and effective for the part, yet Susan remains a cypher. I kept expecting the whole “loss of her husband” thing to be revisited, and turn into something much more significant in storyline terms, than it ever ends up being – such as the attacker being the vengeful spirit of her dead first husband. No such luck. Turns out to be nothing more than an easy ploy for cheap sympathy.

The limitations of the TV movie genre also restrict this, in terms of the passion and intensity which can be displayed here. This stands out particularly during the cemetery “attack” – quotes used advisedly, since it has to be one of the weakest excuses I’ve seen, in terms of the threat it poses to the heroine. This is an ongoing issue: you rarely get the sense that Susan is genuinely in peril, except perhaps during the final sequence, and even there your attention is diverted by the revelation of the attacker’s identity, with the resulting strain that puts on your disbelief. I suppose, as TVM’s go, these issues are more or less par for the course, but I didn’t actually know that was the provenance here, any more than I knew Kinski’s character could see. You can make a case that any resulting disappointment is my responsibility, for having nurtured unrealistic expectations, and I probably wouldn’t argue. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Star: Wes Bentley, Peter Mullan, Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski

So, as I was watching this, I was working on a review that focused on how much this felt like an adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel – if Hardy had been born in Tombstone, rather than Dorset. But literally the first thing I found when post-Googling it said: “The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce is loosely based on the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy”

Well, bugger. There goes my outline.

Ah, screw it. The basic principal still seem to hold good, even though Casterbridge is one of Hardy’s works I haven’t actually read [much though I love Tess of the D’Urbevilles, even if I confess my interest was originally perhaps less than entirely literate]. It’s social tragedy, for want of a better phrase, which feels like a pessimistic version of Charles Dickens. Reading Dickens, you tend to get the feeling that things will turn out for the best; Hardy, however, provides no such hope. Things will go from bad to worse, despite – or perhaps, because of – the characters’ best efforts otherwise. Boyce and director Winterbottom nail that here, right from the moment we first see Kinski, coughing up a storm and looking so pale, she might already be a forlorn spirit. Yeah, this is not going to end well, for anyone concerned.

And so it proves. The setting is the Californian gold-rush town of Kingdom Come, founded and ruled over by Daniel Dillon (Mullan). Into his fiefdom comes railway surveyor Donald Dalglish (Bentley), who is planning a line for the railroad, which may or may not go through the town, giving him significant leverage. Also newly arrived are Elena Burn (Kinski) and her teenage daughter Hope (Sarah Polley), with the mother seeking to meet Dillon. It turns out she was once married to him, but along with the newly-born Hope, was traded to a disgruntled miner in exchange for his claim – which ended up turning into Kingdom Come, after Dillon struck it rich. He is prepared to do right by his wife, who is now terminally ill, and only concerned about Hope’s future, not her own, and agrees to marry Elena once again. This decision sets him against his current lover, Lucia (Jovovich), who does not take kindly to being thrown to one side.

There’s certainly a loose grip of nationality present here, even past the shift of the entire story from Wessex to Old West. Bentley, born in Arkansas, plays a Scot, while an actual Scot, Mullan, portrays an Irishman. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Jovovich is inexplicably a Portuguese character, which makes Kinski’s geographical shift from Germany to Poland seem relatively trivial. Most are fine, though being so used to seeing Milla kicking zombie ass, it takes a bit of adjustment to seeing her in a petticoat, playing the owner/madam of the town’s saloon/brothel. For Kinski, of course, this is not her first time at the “tragic heroine in a Hardy novel” rodeo – I note that Winterbottom also did Jude a few years earlier – and she looks suitably wan as she slowly fades away to – and I trust I’m not spoiling this for anyone – her eventual demise. It doesn’t appear to be an enormous stretch for her talents, and I can imagine the director passing her acting notes such as “Look iller”.

With the past driving a nail through Dillon’s soul, it’s time for the present to kick in, when Dalglish announces the railroad will bypass Kingdom Come, effectively killing the town. Worse, it’ll be going through the valley below, where Lucia has now set up her shop/saloon/brothel, effectively killing off Dillon’s town. What’s a disgruntled former land-baron to do? In a sharp diversion from Casterbridge, the answer here is go out in a blaze of glory, partly as a burnt offering to atone for past misdeeds, partly as a gigantic, fiery middle-finger to everyone who has bailed on him – even though he’s not actually a bad man, by any means [especially if you contrast him with somebody like Al Swearengen from Deadwood]. Fate, it seems, just does not want to reward him with happiness. In this aspect, there’s something of a film from the other Kinski, Fitzcarraldo, and the scene where Dillon has his entire house dragged through the town’s streets, as an ostentatious wedding present to Elena, may be a particular nod to it.

It’s a grand but empty theatrical gesture, and the same could probably be said of the film as a whole. It looks lovely, in part due to the majestic grandeur of the locations (supposedly the Sierra Nevada range in California, actually the Colorado Rockies), in part the work of cinematographer Alwin Küchler. Yet, things happen too often in a vacuum, with no apparent justification than because they are a striking image. For instance, at one point, the carriage carrying Dalglish’s supply of nitroglycerin takes one too many jolts and explodes. It serves no purpose to the plot, is never referred to again, and seems to exists purely so Winterbottom can have a shot of a horse, galloping away in (digital) flames. Undeniably impressive, it’s only afterward that you realize it was an empty spectacle, one serving no purpose at all in terms of the story or character development.

The result is a film that can be little more than appreciated and applauded on a technical level, since it largely fails to engage a connection between the audience and its players. It’s never quite clear with whom we are expected to empathize. Dalglish is closest to a conventional hero, and much is initially made of his burgeoning relationship with Hope. Yet he is largely shuffled to one side in the second half, in favor of Dillon – admittedly, a more interesting creature – who is initially set up as if he’s going to be the villain of the piece. Turns out, there really isn’t one: the conflict here is more internal, and it may partly be this, which keeps the film feeling as emotionally chilly as the high-altitude wilderness in which it is set.

Nastassja Kinski, director Michael Winterbottom, Sarah Polley and Milla Jovovich (Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage)

Dir: Sharon von Wietersheim
Star: Timothy Dalton, Nastassja Kinski, Kevin Zegers, Cameron Finley

I hated this exercise in anti-intellectualism with a vengeance, based as it is on the apparent principle that being an asshole is much more preferable to being smart. For, make no mistake, the former is exactly what Matt Farragher (Dalton) is, despite painfully obvious efforts to paint him as the “fun Dad”. I think the signature moment was, when waiting with his kids in their car to board a ferry, he suddenly decides he can’t be bothered to queue any more, and whizzes down along the outside. No, sir, that does not make you a wild and wacky guy. It makes you an asshole.

They are on the way to Balboa Island for a couple of weeks’ vacation. He doesn’t see much of his kids, being separated from their mother, who is an archaeologist off in Peru or something – he’s a chef, working seven days a week in his restaurant. [Again: you’re an asshole. You have kids, their upbringing should take precedence ahead of your career goals, rather than making your mother take care of them, as Matt does] However, their time-share turns out to have been double-booked, with the Weiland family. The mother there, Julia (Kinski) is a genetic scientist with a very structured approach to child-rearing, and who is also engaged to one of her work colleagues. She was also one of the people cut off by Matt’s shenanigans in the ferry queue, so they don’t like each other much.

You can probably guess where the rest of this ABC Family TV movie, originally screened in June 2000, is going. And you’d be right, if you guess the initial antagonism between Julia and Matt is going to end up turning into tolerance, and eventual love, Julia spurning the more serious-minded intentions of her current fiance, literally at the altar, for the “informality” of life with Matt. Including, presumably, his severely dickish tendencies. Really, I lost the will to live by this point, watching Matt’s goonish, occasionally borderline stalkery tendencies, which have not aged well over the 15 years since this came out. Whether it’s trying to talk Julia into letting him sleep with her, on the childish pretext of him being scared of a thunderstorm, or acting particularly creepy after a case of mistaken identity (below), it’s painful to watch. That whirring sound you hear, is James Bond, spinning in his grave.

It’s a bit of an unusual, intellectual role for Nastassja, playing a scientist – albeit one of the more attractive kind. She doesn’t disgrace herself or seem out of her depth, unlike certain actors and actresses I could mention (I’m thinking Denise Richards, nuclear physicist, in The World Is Not Enough; or, for equal opportunity purposes, Charlie Sheen, radio astronomer, in The Arrival). While certainly not the first time she has played a mother – I suppose, technically, To The Devil a Daughter was her first such role! – her family here is a good deal more functional than, say, Little Boy Blue or The Magic of Marciano. Sure, she’s a little neurotic and what would in modern terms be called a “helicopter parent”, always hovering over her offspring. But that’s perhaps preferable to Matt’s approach, which borders on neglect: “hey, if I lose these kids, I can always have some more.” It might have been interesting to contrast those two approaches, and how their kids turn out – if my own parenting is any indication, they’ll be fine, almost regardless of what you do!

But, no. This is a drippily predictable slab of PG-rated romance, interspersed with occasional moments of non-threatening dramatic tension, such as when two of the kids steal a sailboat – Matt obviously sucking at teaching the whole “personal responsibility” thing as well – and have to be rescued by the Coast Guard. The only person I really feel much sympathy for in all this, is Julia’s fiance who, while certainly engrossed in his job, doesn’t deserve to be dumped at the altar, in favor of the aging Lothario who is Mr. Farragher. This isn’t really any reflection on Dalton or Kinski or even the director: blame for this cringeworthy mess sits squarely on the shoulders of writer Eric Tuchman, who script fails to pass muster, even by the low standards of ABC Family television movies.

I thunk what irritated me most was the shallow reduction of the characters to stereotypes. Nobody here seemed like a real individual: no-one actually behaves like they do here. Obviously, this is the movies, so some slack needs to be cut, since films would be short and dull if people behaved sensibly [“The house is screaming GET OUT at us? Maybe we should, y’know, leave?”] But nor do they exhibit the same one-note tendencies which flood this film. Even the most serious person has moments of levity, and that works the other way too, not that you’d know it from this televisual treat. When the players and their actions both seem as contrived as here, occurring entirely for the purposes of a plot so obvious, you can see exactly where it’s going inside less than 10 minutes, there’s little or no incentive to watch. If it wasn’t for Kinski’s luminescent presence, I’d have changed channels before the first commercial break.