'Wichita' to film in Worcester

From today's Telegram and Gazette:

WORCESTER — What do you mean no one uses Worcester Airport?

How about Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz? The Hollywood superstars are sure to create a flurry of excitement at the underused airport when they breeze into the terminal in a week or two to shoot scenes for an upcoming movie.

Construction workers are building sets in the cavernous-but-almost-empty terminal building for “Wichita,” a 20th Century Fox action comedy in which Cruise plays a secret agent who weaves in and out of the life of a single woman.

According to IMDB, the movie Shuttle was the last to film at the Worcester Airport.

Shutter Island bumped to 2010

Here's a piece of Massachusetts movie news that I missed while on vacation...the release of Shutter Island, the latest Martin Scorcese/Leo DiCaprio film to be set in Boston, is being pushed out of October and into Early 2010. From Variety:

Speculation by kudos prognosticators and Hollywood gossips went into overdrive during the weekend after Paramount announced its shift of Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” from Oct. 2 to Feb. 19.

Paramount insists that it was a simple business decision. In a statement, studio chairman-CEO Brad Grey said “Shutter” will be more profitable in February: “Our 2009 slate was greenlit in a very different economic climate and as a result we must remain flexible and willing to recalibrate and adapt to a changing environment.”

If so, it’s a sober reminder to the industry when such a high-profile pic (directed by Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio) is vulnerable to considerations of P&A in a tough economy.

On the other hand, conspiracy theorists wondered why Par made the decision only six weeks before the pic would have opened. Studio clearly tried to downplay the news as much as possible by announcing the date shuffle on Friday afternoon.

I fear that it is not as good as they hoped it would be.

Good Will Hunting

Lance: I'd read someplace (I can't for the life of me remember where I read it) that Good Will Hunting was one of those movies that didn't hold up well over time. The author suggested that it was a movie that was great for the '90s, but watching it 10 years later one was left to wonder what all the fuss was about. So I was expecting less form the movie than I should have. Perhaps that's a good thing; I actually liked the movie better this time than when I first watched it a decade ago.

Since this is about the most celebrated Boston movie of all time, I'm sure everyone knows the plot. But just to recap: Matt Damon is Will Hunting, a mathematical genius who is stuck in the rut that all poor boys from Southie are born into, and instead of being a student at MIT, he's a janitor. When a professor puts an unsolvable equation on the blackboard, it is Hunting that solves the problem. The professor bails Hunting out of jail and tries to make him into his own image. To do so (and to help keep Hunting out of jail), the professor brings him to a therapist (Robin Williams) who just happens to be a fellow Southtie boy who somehow found his way out of the rut. Can the therapist get through?

Scott: Am I the only one who sees the word "therapist" and thinks of Turd Ferguson? Anyway, I went into this a bit skeptical. I've seen the end of it before, so there's that; plus, it's a Robin Williams "beard" movie, which means he's being serious and could at any moment veer into Patch Adams territory, which is the film equivalent of setting the National Terror Alert at Orange. It's just... hide the kids, you know?

However, I was pleasantly surprised, mainly because Robin Williams is actually pretty darn good in this movie. And the romance element wasn't as bad as I was fearing it would be. Those sorts of things can go wrong in a big hurry (see: Wonderland) but while this wasn't the best young-people-falling-in-love movie I've seen (Before Sunrise kind of takes the cake on that aspect of things) it didn't make me want to slap everyone involved either, which is a bit of a moral victory. In other words, this movie could have been terrible on dozens of levels but managed to be pretty good all around, which is probably why relieved audiences and reviewers went so overboard on the praise. Everyone was just expecting it to be an indie film apocalypse.

Lance: Apparently most of official Boston was included in those thinking it would be a failure. It was interesting to see that Dunkin Donuts and the Red Sox are about the only two institutions that allowed their brands to be used. Instead of cars marked "Boston Police" the cops drove "Metro Police" cars, marked to otherwise look like Boston police. Affleck's character wears a Bruins jacket in a handful of scenes, with the Bruins and NHL logos taped over. (And isn't that just classic Bruins...a character in what would become a huge Boston movie wants to wear their logo and they don't give permission. Their marketing people have less foresight of a gaggle of cave bats).

Those little things help make this less of a Boston movie than it could have been. Sure, the movie is set at MIT and Harvard and the main characters are set in Southie, but would the movie really have been any different if it were set at Cal Poly, Stanford, and San Francisco?

Scott: Well, the Carlton Fisk segment would have been, I dunno, The Catch instead or something. But that actually might have made more sense. As we discussed when we were watching the film, the one seriously wrong note in the film is the idea that any Red Sox fan would have given up tickets to Game 6 of the 1975 World Series to talk to some stranger in a bar. No way on Earth that would ever happen. That's just not how Sox fans work. Hell, I met my soul mate once but I had to ditch her to get to an April game showcasing Matt Young pitching against the Detroit Tigers. You just have to have your priorities straight. Robin Williams's character may not have spent the rest of his life wondering what would have happened if he had talked to the girl, but he did spend the rest of his life wondering how awesome it would have been to be at Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Which is worse, hmm?

Lance: Not to mention that Williams's character also mentions that he slept out over night to get the tickets. Well, game 6 was rained out three times, so did Williams camp out in the soaking October rain for four days to get tix? Or had he been holding onto the ducats for three days, waiting for the game to be played? Either way, it would make the idea of giving them away at the last minute that much more absurd.

Anyway, Good Will Hunting is a very good movie. I'm just not sure it's a very good Boston movie.

'The Maiden Heist' may not be released

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported this morning that The Maiden Heist, filmed in Boston and Worcester and set in Boston, may not be released. Instead, it looks like the film, which stars Morgan Freeman, William H. Macy, and Christopher Walken, will go direct to video:

It looks as if you won't be seeing the Worcester Art Museum on the big screen anytime soon … unless you have one of those giant wall-spanning plasma TVs at home.

Most of us will have to settle for a small screen viewing of “The Maiden Heist,” a comedy with several scenes shot in Worcester Art Museum's Renaissance Court and galleries. Financial problems at the film's distribution company mean the film likely will go straight to DVD without benefit of a theatrical run....

Things began to go wrong after the movie, produced by Yari Film Group (“Crash” and “The Illusionist”), wrapped in 2008.

Yari had sold the film's DVD and cable rights to Sony Pictures and Yari was going to do the theatrical release and finance the publicity, which would benefit both partners, said Rob Paris, the movie's producer.

Then, Yari's fledgling distribution arm went bankrupt, meaning there was no money for the all-important — and very expensive — publicity blast every movie relies on.

At that point, filmmakers were hopeful another distributor could be found. Then the financial markets tanked and money could not be raised to buy the DVD rights back from Sony.

“We couldn't go out and sell this movie to another distributor without those home video rights because, frankly, that's where your safety net is for profitability,” Paris said.

Since it already had the DVD rights, couldn't Sony just squeeze “The Maiden Heist,” a relatively small film made for just under $20 million, into its theatrical release calendar?

“Sony just considered it a loss,” Paris said. “Their home video unit is completely separate from the theatrical unit at Sony. The theatrical unit has plenty of movies for this year and plenty of movies for next year. They don't need an extra movie.”

Monument Ave.

Lance: I've got to be honest, I'm a little wary of all these Irish mob movies. I mean, how many different takes can there be on the Irish mob? It's kind of like a mad lib. Guy grows up in [Eastie, Southie, Charlestown]. He or one of his family members is a [car thief, enforcer, gun runner]. Someone [rats on the boss, kills a family member, sells out to a rival gang]. This pisses off the boss, so he sends his thugs to [break the guy's legs, shoot him, drive him around town and intimidate him into silence]. Something goes wrong, and the [Boston Police, State Police, FBI] start snooping around. Etc. etc. etc.

Well, Monument Ave. has all of those, but it's more about life for the Townies in Charlestown than it is about the murder mystery. Denis Leary plays Bobby O'Grady, a low-level car thief in an Irish gang who is deeply conflicted when his boyhood friend and then his cousin Seamus get knocked off by the boss because they are accused of being snitches. The Charlestown way is to keep your mouth shut and look the other way (and there is truth to that, the neighborhood is well known for it's unsolved murders). But can Bobby O'Grady do that one more time? We get lots of close-ups of Denis Leary's mug as he tries to work that out.

Scott: This was an interesting movie. As you said, it's not really about mundane things like "plot" but more about what it's like for the characters to try and live in this environment. With that in mind, it was actually pretty good. If you're expecting a twisty thriller like The Departed, then you're going to be disappointed, but if you're just trying to locate a Denis Leary film that isn't disappointingly bad, then you're in luck. We did have some trepidation that the love interest would fall into the Carey Treatment trap of being totally superfluous, but since there's no real plot anyway, that's not a big deal. I'd also say that just by existing she turns up the tension between Leary and his rival, the local mob boss played by Colm Meaney (who, by the way, is great, but also in this film was the only person who had a suspect accent, which was a big surprise to me).

Lance: This movie wasn't at all disappointingly bad; it also wasn't at all popular. Looking at the box office numbers as reported on IMDB it lost so much money that I'm expecting a handwritten note from Leary thanking me for renting it. Just five million more rentals until he starts seeing residuals.

Oh, and congratulations on referencing The Carey Treatment again. I believe you do so in every review. Since we're referencing previous movies on the list, I'll take this opportunity to note that Monument Ave. also played a role in Mystery Street, as the wrongly accused suspect and his wife lived on Monument Ave.

One last note/question from me. There is a scene where the crew from Charlestown comes across a black man walking down the street and kidnaps him briefly in a successful attempt to intimidate him into leaving. In it, the O'Grady character showers the victim with all sort of racial epithets, including one that I don't think I'd ever heard until a Boston cop used it in reference to Henry Louis Gates. Is that just a Boston thing? Do you think this scene was even important? I'm not sure what it is supposed to say about Charlestown.

Scott: That was an interesting scene in that the character who was going nuts with the racial slurs and pointing a gun to the African-American guy's head was apparently doing it in an attempt to make the other guys in his posse realize how stupid their racism was. I think from a character point, it was mainly to expand upon the idea that O'Grady has outgrown Charlestown but doesn't seem to be able to find a way out of it. It comes right on the heels of the scene where he's trying to chat up the yuppie woman and instead gets completely undermined by all his townie connections butting in and ruining things for him. This scene is more of the same: he's sort of moved beyond this knee-jerk us vs. them mindset, but everyone around him is so stuck in it that they don't even realize what they're really saying or doing. In that sense I didn't have an issue with the scene even though on the surface it was pretty jarring.

The Brinks Job coming to TV this month

The Brink's Job, the only one of the 10 Memorable Boston Movies not available on DVD, is coming to the the HBO family of networks later this month and in September. Here is the schedule:

Sun 8/16 06:35 AM MORE MAX - EAST
Sun 8/16 09:35 AM MORE MAX - WEST

Tue 9/1 08:10 AM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Tue 9/1 11:10 AM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Sat 9/12 03:05 PM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Sat 9/12 06:05 PM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Sun 9/13 03:10 AM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Sun 9/13 06:10 AM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Wed 9/16 01:30 PM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Wed 9/16 04:30 PM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Sun 9/20 01:35 PM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Sun 9/20 04:35 PM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Mon 9/28 10:25 AM HBO COMEDY - EAST
Mon 9/28 01:25 PM HBO COMEDY - WEST

Tags: The Brink's Job HBO

Mystic River

Lance: Mystic River is one of the only movies on the Mass. Movie Project list that I had seen in the theater before starting this project. It also might just about be the only movie ever produced that I have seen and Scott has not. Scott came into the movie expecting that it would be "a downer." So what do you say, bro? Did Mystic River leave you morose?

Scott: Oh yeah, sure. I've pretty much spent my hours since drinking cheap wine and listening to the Dave Matthews Band while staring out at the specter of the merciless and unchanging ocean. Actually, it wasn't quite that bad in terms of morosity. It was a downer, but it was a well made downer, so that's good at least. I know Sean Penn has been accused in some circles of chewing the scenery like the world's biggest termite, but I didn't think he was too over the top. Maybe once or twice, but nothing terribly egregious. And it's nice to see Tim Robbins bringing his A game to something other than a charity hockey game.

Lance: I would be one of Sean Penn's accusers. I imagine it's hard to practice the way one would react if he found out his daughter had been murdered. But at least in the scene at the park he was over the moon, never mind over the top. (Perhaps it would be only fair to have director Clint Eastwood share the blame. You'll notice in the still from that scene that there are at least 11 uniformed officers holding Penn back. That's an awful lot of blue for one distraught Bostonian. Maybe Penn was told to be emotional enough to need 11 officers to restrain him).

Penn's occasional outbursts notwithstanding, I liked the film quite a bit. While the movie is ostensibly a murder mystery, it's more about three boys from East Boston who grow up to be three very different people, and who are never quite able to get past the kidnapping and molestation of one of them (the character played by Robbins).

The film begins in 1975 as the three boys are playing street hockey and causing a little mischief. A car pulls up and a man posing as police officer convinces Dave to get in the car so the cop can take him home. Once in the car, a second man who is posing as a priest (or who is a priest...here's another case where the knowledge of the Catholic Priest molestation scandals that were uncovered earlier this decade influenced the way I saw the film) flashes a ring and smiles a creepy smile and it's pretty obvious where this is going. The boy suffers through four days of sexual abuse before he's able to escape, his life to be changed forever. The three are thrown together again as Penn's daughter is murdered, Robbins becomes a suspect, and Kevin Bacon is the homicide detective assigned to the case. Even 25 years later, the incident shapes the way the characters relate (or don't relate) to each other.

Scott: I particularly liked the performance from Marcia Gay Harden as the wife of Tim Robbins. Even though I am usually a Laura Linney fan, though, I wasn't super thrilled with her character. She seemed just a little too Lady Macbeth there at the end and she also had the only accent that didn't quite work for me. I did think they did a particularly good job casting the kids for the young versions of each character though.

I don't know, I guess I don't have a heck of a lot to say about this one. It was good. Not great, but good. My quibbles with it were minor -- such as the fact that I thought they ended it at the wrong place (it should have ended with the phone call where Kevin Bacon's character finally talks to his wife). I also didn't think it was a fantastic mystery, though as you said that wasn't the point; it was borderline egregious that they had to resort to obscuring an obvious clue by having both police officers be just plain too stupid to do the most basic detective work on the case (seriously, wouldn't listening to the 911 call be just about the first thing you do on the case?). But overall it was fine I guess. Could have used a little bit of the Carey Treatment to liven it up if you know what I mean, but otherwise solid. Not as boring as Flags of Our Fathers, anyway.

Tags: Sean Penn Kevin Bacon Tim Robbins Clint Eastwood Mystic River 2003

Next Stop Wonderland

Lance: When I was in high school, we had an assembly speaker one day who gave a speech on I can't remember what (OK, there were a lot of assemblies like that). But what I do remember about this particular speech is that it really wasn't a speech at all. It was a 20-minute prelude to nothing. The speaker kept predicating his statements with "what I want to talk about today..." and "before I get into my topic..." and otherwise suggesting that there was something to look forward to, and then the talk was done. That's essentially what Next Stop Wonderland is: 90 minutes of suggesting that the movie is going somewhere, an end scene, and five minutes of credits.

Scott: Yeah, pretty much. In other words, it's like most of our blog entries. Drumroll! You know, I could kind of see what they were going after here. The male and female leads each go through a series of experience and romances and we the viewer keep expecting them to get together, but instead they end up getting together with other people, and doing other things, and just missing each other several times -- almost connecting without actually connecting. The woman basically speaks the premise of the film when she tells a story about how her parents never would have met if not for a random bit of chance, and then gets rebuffed by someone who says that is obviously the hand of fate. We see these people almost meet but not quite meet and then, right at the end, they finally accidentally meet and you're supposed to ask, is this random luck, or is it fate that they finally did get together after these near misses? Of course, what we actually end up asking is, who gives a crap? Also, why not use Philip Seymour Hoffman more? After all, that dude has an Oscar.

Lance: That's a pretty good synopsis from someone who derided the movie before it began as a "Rom Com." (And if you ever use the term Rom Com again you will be beaten.) Of course, it turned out that the film was more com than rom, not that it was that funny. But there were a couple of funny parts. I liked the montage of potential suitors calling to respond to the personal ad the heroine's mother placed on her behalf. That was about it for me. A huge part of the plot surrounds some small time mobster trying to kill a balloon fish at the New England Aquarium. That was supposed to be funny; I thought it was a waste. The male lead (Alan Gelfant) was pretty bland, too, for what that's worth.

And they did use Philip Seymour Hoffman plenty, it's just that the scene that had the potential to be the funniest in the movie--one where Hope Davis's character finally watches a break-up video that Hoffman gave her when he moved out--is cut short because her answering machine goes on the fritz and she ends up fighting with it while Hoffman's video plays in the background.

And I really thought the movie did a poor job of being a "Boston movie." It's like they were trying way way too hard, to the point that the Boston in the movie was more cliche than real. Every time anyone goes out to a bar, they get a Sam Adams. Every character, every bar. We get it, Sam Adams is a Boston beer. But it's use is not compulsory. And a gay male nurse (now there is a shocking break from stereotype...funny how every male nurse in movies is gay, but all the male nurses I know are not) meets his partner on a duck boat tour. Psst, Mr. Director...no one who actually lives in Boston rides the duck boats. Had the movie been made after 2003, I'm sure all of the bar patrons would have put down their Sam Adams, locked arms, and sang "Sweet Caroline" when the Sox game on the TV went to commercial because that's what we supposedly do.

Scott: I do have to say that I have been on a duck boat tour. I don't actually live in Boston, so maybe I don't count, something that is at least true according to local media. I agree with you in terms of how they tried to make it overtly Boston for the national people who otherwise, we can assume, would just give the film blank stares (oh wait, we were doing that anyway. But for a totally different reason). I did like that they used some different Boston locations than the other films we've seen, even if those locations were mainly used for stupid purposes (see: aquarium). I also sort of disagree with you about the male lead, because he seemed like a guy that would actually be a plumber on the North Shore, which I think means the acting was pretty good rather than that he was just a douchey townie. I thought he was much more Boston than the female lead.

But you're right about that gay nurse subplot. That whole thing was done in a very 1990's way that I'm sure seemed subtle at the time but now, post marriage law, seems really After School Special. And the fact that this film not only the female lead be a nurse but also have the male lead get caught up in an Irish mob plot was way too much in terms of Boston cliches. Jeez, Hollywood, we get it -- Boston has a lot of hospitals and Irish mobsters. You don't have to have every single film revolve around that stuff. It's pretty bad when those are the only occupations, even for people in a Rom Com.

Lance: Mickey, Seamus, and Knuckles will be by to break your legs shortly.

Tags: Hope Davis Alan Gelfant Brad Anderson Next Stop Wonderland 1998

The Verdict

Lance: When we put together the catalog of movies for the Mass. Movie Project and The Verdict made the list, I could have sworn I had seen it at some point on my youth. It seems like The Verdict was one of about twelve shows that played on HBO constantly in 1984 when we first got it in our house (the Scott Baio vehicle Zapped! and the comedy show Not Necessarily the News were two of the others) and I must have seen it. But I hadn't.

In The Verdict, Paul Newman is Frank Galvin, a hard-luck alcoholic lawyer who is at the end of his career, or will be if he doesn't get it together enough to try the last case he could get. He's been hired to represent the family of a woman who has been incapacitated by a medical procedure gone bad at a prominent Catholic hospital. The question is will Newman take the Archdiocese's offer to settle out of court, or will he go to trial and risk losing. He goes to trial and finds himself fighting against the best lawyer in Boston, the power and prestige of the Church, and a judge who is sympathetic to both. He also finds himself falling for a mysterious divorcee who comes to town and happens to take an interest in the aging lush.

Scott: That divorcee is played by Charlotte Rampling, who has one of the best names in the history of cinema. It's just so evocative for no apparent reason. "Do you like Rampling?" "I don't know, I've never rampled." Well, one person who has rampled is Newman's character. I quite liked his interaction with Rampling, particularly the scene where she tells him to man up and instead he runs into the bathroom and has a panic attack. It's not necessarily what you would expect from the premise.

That's actually true of much of the film. When you hear it's a legal drama starring Paul Newman, it brings to mind images of big, powerful lawyers and high theatrics on the stand in classic Perry Mason style. That doesn't really happen so much. Instead, it's much more low key, which in turn makes it more interesting and believable.

I was struck, though, by the surface similarities between this and the first film we watched, The Carey Treatment. Both are medical dramas, where the main character is investigating the death of a young woman who died due to complications with pregnancy (well, sort of). Both deal with how the powers that be exert influence to maintain the status quo. But, of course, only one has a deranged James Coburn kidnapping school girls and getting malicious rubdowns in non-existent Irish bathhouses. So in that sense, The Verdict could have been better.

Lance: Well, there is a scene after the first day of testimony where Jack Warden massages Paul Newman's shoulders as they commiserate over a disastrous day in court...I also liked the scene where Newman had a panic attack in Rampling's hotel room. He had another near-panic attack earlier in the movie. I thought little nuances like that really gave the character an added dimension.

I also appreciated another subtlety that may have been lost on someone not from Boston. Galvin goes to South Station to pick up his star witness, a medical expert from New York he was forced to essentially pick out of a phone book and has never met. It turns out that the doctor is black. Galvin tries very hard to mask his horror that he will be putting a black man on the stand. Remember, this is Boston in the early 1980s. It's been less than a decade since the city dealt with busing and the wounds from that hadn't fully healed. Galvin's reaction to the doctor reveals an understanding that some in his jury box will see the doctor through that prism.

Finally, the difference between the way a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Boston was portrayed in 1982 and the way the lawsuits against the church in the early 2000s went was fascinating.

Scott: Yeah, as we discussed during the film, the media treatment of the case would be almost completely opposite now as it was then. In the film, they have the Globe, Herald and channel 2 all do glowing puff pieces about how great the church was; if the case was going on now, those media outlets would be out for blood.

I have to say, though, that there was one small thing that bothered me about the story. At the end of the film, it ends as though Newman and his clients have just won a huge settlement. Yet, I find it almost impossible to believe that they would be able to collect on it. Newman and Warden earlier discover clear grounds to have this declared a mistrial, but decide not to pursue it. I'm sure that the defendants would be quick to call for a mistrial themselves, if not because of the actions of Rampling's character then because of the way the judge allowed evidence and then retroactively disallowed it. Based on the verbal instructions given it seems hard to understand how the jury could come to the decision they did and if I were the defendants I would immediately protest that he had prejudiced the jury with this evidence. And even if that didn't work, they can always appeal.

More likely, I think, would be am ultimate conclusion of the two sides eventually agreeing to an out of court settlement for a figure between the original offer and the award. After losing the case once the Archdiocese wouldn't want any more bad press form it, but by contesting the case they could at least save some money. Not that I necessarily think the movie should have shown any of this; it would have to be 12 hours long and really boring. But I just didn't think the ending was actually an ending so much as just the place where the film stopped.

Oh, and on another note, I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the scene where Newman just hauls off and punches Rampling right in the face. That was a bit of a surprise.

Lance: I don't know. I think there would be a huge risk in the defense asking for a mistrial based on the activities of the Rampling character. Sure, they might get a mistrial, but they also might all go to jail and be disbarred. In any event, the point is that Galvin redeems himself on the biggest stage of his life. What happens after that really isn't that important. I was bothered that there was a Boston Herald American in Galvin's apartment and two days later a man in the jury box was reading the same paper (with the same "Cops Stalk Terror Gang" headline). OK, I wasn't bothered, but I noticed it. And I liked the Boston shots--nice to see the city in the dead of winter--even though director Sidney Lumet used the State House steps to stand in for the courthouse.

This is where I could finish with the line "and the verdict is..." but that would be too corny. Let's just say the movie is well worth your consideration.

Tags: Paul Newman Charlotte Rampling Sidney Lumet The Verdict 1982

Be sure to set the DVR

If you are looking to get caught up on the first couple of movies, you're in luck. Turner Classic Movies has scheduled both The Carey Treatment and Mystery Street to air in the next few weeks. So mark your calendars and set the DVR for the following dates:

Tuesday, August 4, 1:30 pm -- The Carey Treatment
Wednesday, September 9, 7:45 am -- Mystery Street

Tags: Mystery Street The Carey Treatment Turner Classic Movies

Blockbuster Schedule Change

Thanks to Blockbuster's inability to provide The Friends of Eddie Coyle in time for this weekend, we are pushing that film out until it becomes available and moving the others up. So we will be reviewing The Verdict this week instead.

Mystery Street

Lance: 1950. A detective with the Barnstable County District Attorney's office, played by Ricardo Montalban, heads to Boston to try to solve a murder. Talk about a stretch...a Latino cop working in Massachusetts in the '50s? Might as well be working on the moon, for as real as that setup is. Yet, it actually works. The question in Mystery Street isn't 'who killed the leading lady?' it's 'how will the cops and the scientists be able to prove it?' Think CSI if Gil Grissom were Latino and was working 60 years ago (OK, don't think that. Montalban is a much more interesting leading man). Add a little bit of Harvard and a few really cool locations (including a Rte. 3 sign that might be the most awesome thing I've seen in a movie--and yes, I'm a geek about that sort of thing), and you've got a movie that was a pleasure to watch.

Scott: At first I was wondering why they decided to use Montalban as the lead, but that was soon answered when it was revealed that the victim was smothered to death with real Corinthian leather. Okay, that didn't happen, nor did Montalban at any point wear a fake rubber bare chest with hugely defined pecs. Despite these massive shortcomings, however, the film was, as Lance said, very entertaining. In light of the fact that Montalban became almost a parody by the time he finished Fantasy Island and is sort of a punchline now, I thought he was actually quite good. I was a little unsure about certain decisions made by the screenwriters (I thought the build-up was unnecessarily long and kind of weird) but for the most part it was well written, which could be assumed by the fact it was nominated for a screenplay Oscar. The CSI stuff in particular was probably quite fresh at the time this was written, even if it seems a bit creepy now (superimposing skulls over women's faces to measure how well the eyesockets lined up is just a bit too Ronnie James Dio for my taste). I particularly liked the fact that even though Montalban's character was shown to be a conscientious, thorough detective, he was also totally wrong about who the killer was to the point of nearly booking the wrong guy's wife too, as an accomplice. It was a nice departure from the usual lead detective as infallible Sherlock Holmes super sleuth.

Lance: Right. To a large extent, the "hero" of the film is the researcher at Harvard who uses all of the newfangled forensics to solve the murder, not Montalban's character. Montalban is a good guy in the sense that he's just open-minded enough to listen to the doctor instead of his gut (although he does have the wrong guy charged and indicted while the investigation is going on).

The writers did a credible job dealing with the topic of the Massachusetts Latino cop. At one point, Montalban mentions that he had been originally hired to work in the Portuguese unit of the District Attorney's office (not sure why that group would need a special unit all to themselves, but there is a large Portuguese community in Southeastern Massachusetts, so at least they got the ethnicity correct). In another scene Montalban is questioning a man as part of the investigation and the interviewee mentions that he is part of a prominent family that has been in Massachusetts for hundreds of years. Montalban replies that his own family has been here for less than a hundred years.

And I liked the CSI stuff; I didn't find it creepy at all. In 1950 they superimposed photos of the skull and possible victims, in 2009 they use a computer to generate the images. I don't think the slideshow was any more creepy than what they do now.

I did have a couple of nits to pick. I thought the subplot of the meddling landlord got in the way. There were real timing issues as well...the opening scene happens "six months ago" according to an on-screen graphic. We later find that the scene took place in late May--which would set the rest of the movie from November on forward--yet the movie is clearly set during the summer time based on the foliage, dress of the characters, etc. Not a bit of snow, ice, or cold to be found. But that's not more than a minor distraction.

Scott: Lance has here spared you, the reader, from the details of the lengthy debate that arose about what "Six Months Ago" was supposed to mean -- whether these events were six months before the other events in the film (the dialogue clearly indicates the opening sequence is actually three months before the opening sequence, not six) or whether the opening sequence is supposed to be six months before the "current day", i.e. when the audience is watching it (which also doesn't make sense based on when the film was released). Either way, the "Six Months Ago" tag at the beginning is a superfluous source of confusion. That, of course, is pretty much the textbook definition of nitpicking, because I doubt there are more than a half dozen people in the world who noticed this when they watched the movie. And fewer that got in an argument about it. I'm also going to stick with my contention that the CSI stuff is creepy. As it happens, I think CSI itself is little more than exploitative, sensationalist murder porn, so in that sense I much preferred the restraint of Mystery Street, even if the title "Mystery Street" didn't actually have a single thing to do with this movie. Overall it was a well done, solid and entertaining film.

Tags: Ricardo Montalban Elsa Lanchester John Sturges Mystery Street 1950

A couple of additions to the list

A friend of mine (whose name I will omit to protect his manhood) is a father and a high school teacher. As such, he is very much in tune with teeny flicks and family movies. Based on his vast knowledge of the genres, he suggested that I need to add two films to our list: Freedom Park and We Got the Beat.

I originally had Freedom Park on the list and then took it off when I couldn't find confirmation that it had a theatrical run. I suppose I should have checked the film's website, which reports that it was screened in eight theaters in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. With that confirmation, I've added it to the list.

Regarding We Got the Beat, while I was aware that the movie was being filmed at locations through Central Mass. I hadn't confirmed that the film was set in Massachusetts. In fact, based on the plot summary on IMDB, I figured that there was no way it was set here. It reads: "It's 1983 and Brad Roberts is the best high school quarterback in the country...."

It turns out that it is set in Worcester (talk about the need to suspend belief...the idea that the best high school QB in America would come from Worcester is more far-fetched than the idea that he would quit football to start "the first ever boy band," which is the main plot line). Therefore, I have also added this film as a future release. It is scheduled for late 2009.

Tags: We Got The Beat Freedom Park

The Carey Treatment

Lance: Well, I guess that was one way to start. The Carey Treatment is most definitely 100 minutes of movie.

Off the top of my head, here are a couple of things I really liked...The opening credits were fantastic. James Coburn driving his wood-paneled station wagon up 128, through the Allston tolls, along Memorial Drive with the Polaroid building in the background and the compulsory crew team on the Charles River (although he either must have got lost or turned around somehow since he was heading toward the Pru tunnel when he went through the Allston tolls, not the Allston-Cambridge offramp). And I appreciated seeing the only Chinese guy to appear in TV during the 70s (James Hong) and the only Irish cop to see the front of a camera during the same period (Pat Hingle) playing a Chinese guy and an Irish cop. There must have been something else...

Scott: This movie actually had some things going for it. All of those things, of course, were needlessly squandered, but they were there in theory. First off, it stars James Coburn, who is totally awesome. He's also one of those actors who is more awesome in the public imagination than in reality; a quick glance at his IMDB profile will show that he was in a vast amount of crappy movies and very few good ones. The Carey Treatment is not one of those good ones. This despite the fact that it also had an interesting premise, something even more surprising when you realize Michael Crichton was involved.

The story is that a girl dies from a botched abortion, and Carey tries to exonerate the abortionist and find the real killer. Considering this movie came out in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, and it should have been a third rail, hot button film. Instead it was a flat, lame, extended episode of Quincy, only with James Coburn doing a bunch of fairly inexplicable 70's swinger things. I'm pretty sure I saw Chrissy Snow in the background of the party scene.

The movie also suffers from little details like the plot not starting until 15 minutes into the film, a subplot about Carey hooking up with a dietician that had nothing to do with anything else in the film, and a really flimsy core mystery that revolves around random coincidence. On the plus side, Coburn's character is one of those late 60's-early 70's anti-hero types, meaning he's a charismatic asshole for no reason who does stuff like abduct a 15 year old girl and subject her to psychological torture via a high speed station wagon ride in order to intimidate her into giving him info for his goofy investigation. But then, who hasn't, right?

Special props have to be given to the inclusion of a place called Sullivan's Steam Bath, which is apparently where everyone from Southie goes to get an Irish massage. The tense showdown between Coburn and his chief suspect takes place here in an epic sequence where the muscled lad oils Coburn down and gives him a vigorous body massage while ominous music plays, and I was pretty sure they were about to get it on when Coburn instead punches the guy in the bread basket for no reason and stalks out.

Overall, this movie was one Bruce Jenner short of a bad CHiPs episode (if such a thing ever existed). It should be noted, though, that only one character in the film used a fake Boston accent, instantly making The Carey Treatment significantly better than, say, Quiz Show.

Lance: Totally agree about the accents. I hate fake Boston accents. Either you have one or you don't (and I don't) and trying to put one on is always a disaster. It's only a matter of degree.

This movie would have been better off as a two part TV miniseries, since it was half love story and half murder mystery. The two plots were barely connected, if at all. Perhaps Peter Carey in Love and Peter Carey: Pathologist for Hire on consecutive weeks in a non-sweeps period. For instance, there is a scene at the party hosted by Carey at his Beacon Hill residence (complete with deli trays, cold chili and potato salad; how gauche). The scene centers around a conversation Carey has with a lab tech who gives him the cold shoulder. Following the rejection, Carey returns to have what amounts to a heart-to-heart with his dietician lady friend who laments the fact that Carey was talking with what she considered to be a worthless slut. All of this takes about 10 minutes and has nothing to do with the murder mystery (although the lab tech resurfaces later in the movie so perhaps it is meant as some sort of foreshadowing...and perhaps I'm giving the movie too much credit).

Oh, the other thing the scene has to do with the murder plot is that some unknown fellow heads upstairs to the sleeping quarters. We're supposed to think this is just a swinger looking for a good time, but it turns out the guy is hiding in the closet waiting for Carey to come up after the party ends (this is the guy with the fake Boston accent). Following a scuffle, the intruder gets punched in the nose by Carey, tumbles over the railing to the floor 10 feet below, and somehow ends up with only a broken nose (from Carey's punch) and the opportunity to have a heart-to-heart about the girl's murder with the guy he just jumped.

(Not to get all caught up in the accent, but the guy with the fake accent is the son of a wealthy doctor and his wife, both of whom have English accents, and the nephew of a "confirmed bachelor" who speaks with a similar accent. How does a guy growing up in that family end up with what is supposed to sound like the classic Boston accent?)

Finally, the film contains what might be the oddest and potentially most disturbing dream sequence I've ever seen. The 15-year-old victim is in the mortuary being autopsied by John Hillerman (speaking with an American accent which begs the question...is he an American who played a Brit in Magnum PI, or a Brit playing an American here? Hmmmm...[note: He's American]) As Hillerman carves her up, we get a closeup of her face that bleeds in to a slow motion sequence of the teen frolicking in the surf in a bikini. Huh? It's fairly easy to infer that the Hillerman character is a pedo-necrophiliac lost for a moment in a fantasy, but I think this is supposed to be a way to tug at our heart strings by showing us the vitality lost in this senseless abortion gone wrong. Either way, it's mondo-creepy.

Scott: It should be mentioned that the car chase I alluded to earlier -- where Carey shanghais Jan Brady and races around the North Shore in his station wagon like a deranged soccer mom -- had some sequences filmed out of state. We slowed the film down to determine just where on the North Shore it was taking place and instead discovered what appeared to be a route marker for California state highway 68. I have a hunch, however, that the sequences with Coburn and his reluctant Lolita were filmed in MA and only the stuntwork (including an honest-to-god "jump over an open drawbridge") was done in CA. Just a guess.

And one final note from my end: the dead girl had a giant poster of Ringo Starr in her bedroom. The one where he's got a bird perched on his finger. Maybe it's the fact that he's not wearing a shirt, or maybe it's the dead, soulless eyes staring emptily from his melon, but I swear this picture was taken half a second before Ringo unhinged his jaw and swallowed the bird whole. And if that had been the death Coburn was investigating, maybe this film would have been worth watching.

Tags: James Coburn Jennifer O'Neill Blake Edwards The Carey Treatment 1972

The List of Massachusetts Movies

Here is the list, embedded as a Google spreadsheet. Please pass along any comments, suggestions, corrections, etc.



Tags: Mass Movie Project

Welcome to the Mass Movie Project

Have you ever thought "You know, what I'd really like to do is watch every movie ever filmed and set in Massachusetts."? Of course you have.

Well, now there is a way to do it. Join the Mass Movie Project.

So far, we've identified about 120 movies that fit our criteria and our plan is to watch all of them. What is the criteria you ask?

1. Movie must be filmed primarily in Massachusetts. (So a movie set in MA but filmed in Canada or L.A. would not qualify)
2. Movie must be set primarily in Massachusetts. (So a movie filmed here as a stand in for another location would not qualify)
3. Movie must have had some sort of a theatrical release. (A made-for-TV or direct-to-video film would not qualify)
4. Documentaries have been left out.

That's about it. We'll identify two or three movies each month to watch. and the Mass Movie Project Facebook group is the place to review, commend, pan, mock, or otherwise discuss the movies.

We are starting with the 10 films the Boston Globe has deemed "10 Memorable Boston Films." Following that list, we will go through those Massachusetts films that have either won or been nominated for Academy Awards and/or Golden Globes. Those will be in order from most awards to fewest. Once we've exhausted those movies, we'll trudge through the remaining 90+ films. Finally, if a hard to find movie--for instance a film that is not available on DVD--somehow surfaces, we'll slide that into the rotation out of order. In fact, the first film to be announced fits that description.

To get you started, here are the Mass Movie Project's first five films:

1. The Carey Treatment (1972). Not available on DVD--Only available on Turner Classic Movies June 19 at 10am or Aug. 4 at 1:30pm.
2. Mystery Street (1950).
3. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973).
4. The Verdict (1982).
5. Good Will Hunting (1997).

For more information or to join, go to the Mass Movie Project on Facebook. If you don't want to join the Facebook group but want to follow along, regular updates and reviews will be posted to this blog.

Tags: Mass Movie Project