Movie Review: The Vanished (2020)

Genre: Mystery Thriller  

Director: Peter Facinelli  
Starring: Thomas Jane, Anne Heche, Jason Patric  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: Married couple Paul and Wendy (Thomas Jane and Anne Heche) along with 10-year-old daughter Taylor arrive in their RV to an isolated lakeside camping site. As Paul gets to know their campsite neighbour Miranda (Aleksei Archer), Taylor disappears. Sheriff Baker (Jason Patric) arrives to investigate, and his men start a search of the surrounding woods. Paul and Wendy grow increasingly frantic when they learn an escaped convict is in the area. They also find Miranda and her husband Eric suspicious, while the camp ground manager and his assistant are plain creepy.

What Works Well: Writer and director Peter Facinelli creates a strong sense of place, the remote lakeside RV park (filmed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama) offering both beauty and mystery. The twisty plot leads Paul and Wendy on a wild ride, and they are soon much more than just concerned parents. Thomas Jane, Anne Heche, and Jason Patric provide sufficient quality in the lead roles to maintain interest.

What Does Not Work As Well: It takes a bewildering amount of police ineptitude to advance the plot. With a vulnerable child gone missing, Sheriff Baker and his officers do not properly search the premises (sordid secrets hide behind most doors), nor do they investigate the backgrounds of key characters, nor do they ever make meaningful progress on multiple related crime scenes (including two deaths and one missing person). Unsurprisingly, the compounding logic holes consume the predictable climax.

Key Quote:

Sheriff Baker, reassuring Paul and Wendy: I promise, I'll always be as transparent and as honest as I can be. You've got a partner here.

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Movie Review: 13 Minutes (2021)

Genre: Disaster Drama

Director: Lindsay Gossling

Starring: Anne Heche, Amy Smart, Thora Birch, Sofia Vassilieva, Paz Vega
Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: A county in rural Oklahoma is bracing for a storm carrying the threat of destructive tornadoes. A farming couple (Anne Heche and Trace Adkins), a young mother and her unexpectedly pregnant teen daughter (Thora Birch and Sofia Vassilieva), a hotel housekeeper (Paz Vega) and her illegal immigrant lover, a gay couple, and an emergency management services coordinator (Amy Smart) and her young deaf daughter, all have their lives disrupted when the storm hits.

What Works Well: Arriving approximately two thirds of the way through the running time, the critical few minutes when everyone scrambles for shelter and the storm rumbles over the community are excellent. Despite the modest budget, the mammoth tornado is brought to the screen with menacing special effects, and the immediate stunning aftermath featuring a community reduced to rubble carries the requisite impact.

What Does Not Work As Well: Writer and director Lindsay Gossling overpacks her plot with a diversity of cultural hot topics, including abortion, illegal immigration, and parent/gay offspring conflicts, all dealt with at the most superficial level. It takes a long time for the storm to interrupt all the stereotypical antics, and the aftermath is a bland non-resolution, the final third mostly consisting of survivors clambering over debris piles. Some of the acting and writing borders on painfully amateurish.

Conclusion: The real damage is done before the tornado ever makes land.

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Movie Review: Wag The Dog (1997)

A satire about the power of spin doctoring in politics, Wag The Dog is never less than over the top, but also always funny.

The United States presidential election is eleven days away. The President is running for re-election, but is suddenly facing damaging accusations of sexual misconduct. Renowned spin doctor Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is called in to manage the crisis. Working with presidential aid Winifred Ames (Anne Heche), he starts to conceive of a war scenario with Albania to distract the press.

Conrad and Winifred recruit Hollywood movie producer Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman) to help the cause. He assembles a group of creative artists to create the justification for war, complete with a made-up story of a suitcase nuclear bomb hidden in Canada, fake Albanian village vignettes, manufactured patriotic songs and imaginary victims. When CIA agents disrupt the bogus war narrative, Conrad and Stanley pivot towards a prisoner-of-war sob story featuring Sergeant William Schumann (Woody Harrelson) as a soldier in need of rescue.

In 1998 President Bill Clinton became embroiled in the sex scandal featuring White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and by 1999 the United States was bombing Yugoslavia. By 2016 the concept of fake news and alternative facts had become part of the political lexicon. But before all the jaw-dropping reality came the prescient fiction. Director Barry Levinson brought Wag The Dog to the screen with almost perfect timing, screenwriters Hilary Henkin and David Mamet adapting the 1993 book American Hero by Larry Beinhart just in time to grab an I-told-you-so front seat to history.

In turns funny, ludicrous and cutting, the film never pretends to be anything other than a broad satire. The spin doctoring to create and then capitalize upon a non-existent war is beyond any realms of reality, but Levinson runs with it as a plot device to poke fun at the extremes of both Washington DC and Hollywood. Nothing is sacred, least of all the truth, as Conrad, Stanley and their assembled entourage of talented artists allow their imaginations to run wild. They then possess and can deploy unlimited resources to turn their fantasies into a polished visual and aural reality to dominate the attention of a nation.

And even when CIA agents shine a light upon the grand ruse of a non-existent war with Albania, the subterfuge does not stop. Now the story of Sergeant William Schumann, complete with the nickname Old Shoe, is concocted. Just when it seems the film is stretching its own incredulity too thin, Woody Harrelson arrives with a hilariously edgy performance deserving its own narrative. The Schumann character proves too hot to handle even for the combined manipulative skills of Conrad and Stanley, and still they will not give up on their lofty plan to achieve mass distraction.

The lead performances are happy to yield to the enormous wackiness. Veterans Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman easily bounce each off other with relaxed portrayals of men good at what they do, comfortable in their own skin, and aware they are still stronger as a team. In an underwritten role, Anne Heche suffers in comparison. Willie Nelson appears as a grizzled songwriter recruited to provide the soundtrack to a crisis, although Levinson is guilty of giving all the incidental mock artefacts too much screen time, as well as a surplus of self-congratulatory moments.

Wag The Dog is happy to propose that everything perceived as fact may be an artistic creation in service of nefarious objectives. The rich and powerful not only influence history, but also bankroll the peddling of absurd alternative realities to serve selfish agendas. It's an entertaining premise, and at least in spirit, painfully close to the truth.

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Movie Review: Cedar Rapids (2011)

An independent small-scale comedy, Cedar Rapids creates a clever premise with potentially interesting characters, but then quickly runs out of ideas.

Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is a naive but well-meaning insurance agent who has never left his small Wisconsin hometown of Brown Valley. He enjoys sexual encounters with his former school teacher Macy (Sigourney Weaver), although he is much more serious about the relationship than she is. Tim's boss Bill (Stephen Root) is adamant the agency maintain the coveted "Two Diamond" rating awarded by the regional insurance association.

When star agent Roger unexpectedly expires, Bill dispatches Tim to the industry conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a mission to impress association president Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). On his first ever trip to anywhere, Tim meets a trio of seasoned insurance agents: the kind Ronald (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), boorish Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), and frisky Joan (Anne Heche). They expose him to conference-style fun, but Tim soon discovers some hard truths.

The world of nondescript conferences in nowheresville towns where salespeople congregate provides potentially rich soil for humour. Screenwriter Phil Johnston, director Miguel Arteta, and co-producer Alexander Payne conjure up a good foundation for laughs, with most of the film taking place at the mundane cookie-cutter hotel.

But once the place and people are introduced, Cedar Rapids quickly stalls. Tim's naive disposition is too easy a target, and he quickly succumbs to alcohol and pot, leading to all the usual and predictable misadventures. Uncomfortable nude encounters, skinny dipping, drunken sexual liaisons, and wild parties with prostitutes ensue, the film ticking off a checklist straight from the horny teenager comedies of the 1980s.

Ed Helms as Tim is essentially a blank canvass allowing events to be drawn on him. It is left to the veteran conference attendees to enliven the film, and thanks to a strong cast enough energy is injected to provide bursts of entertainment. John C. Reilly gives Ziegler a few good layers to peel away, while Anne Heche is the married-too-early mom who uses the conference as the one annual opportunity to live a different life. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is less well defined, while Alia Shawkat as the local whore with a heart of gold has nowhere to take her character.

Most of the laughs come from Reilly going all out with the churlish mannerisms of Ziegler as loud, rude and with a ready insult for any situation. He is a common but unwelcome conference presence, lingering like the sickly chlorine smell of the hotel's indoor swimming pool.

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Movie Review: Volcano (1997)

A disaster action film, Volcano features an overabundance of special effects but no soul - and no volcano.

Los Angeles is hit by a seemingly routine earthquake. Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) is the head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, trying to enjoy his vacation with daughter Kelly (Gaby Hoffman). His second-in- command is Emmit Reese (Don Cheadle). At MacArthur Park, seven city workers are killed after the quake, seemingly burned to death in an underground release of extreme heat. Mike calls on geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) to try and understand what may be going on.

Amy notices a steep rise in the water temperature of the park's lake, and deduces that the quakes may have caused a release of hot gases and lava. Mike tries to shut down the Metro transit line in the area, but to no avail. Soon lava bombs burst out of the ground along Wilshire Boulevard, followed by an eruption of a sea of creeping magma that incinerates everything it touches. Mike and Amy have to figure out a way to stop the carnage and save Kelly, who ends up helping Dr. Jaye Calder (Jacqueline Kim) at an overwhelmed hospital.

Directed by Mick Jackson, Volcano enjoys a decent opening 30 minutes of ominous scene setting but then falls apart. As soon as the earthquake hits and the lava starts to ooze out, all the drama and tension ironically seep out of the film. The flying fireballs are at first exciting, but there are only so many computer-created scenes of a flowing hot magma river causing fake fires that can be thrown at the screen before the whole premise starts to look ridiculous.

The film's real problems then arrive with the hopeless attempts to give Mike and Amy something to actually do. Other than repeatedly getting themselves into tight corners surrounded by the burning stuff, the heroes here are reduced to childish solutions. Let's topple a bus in the path of the lava! Let's knock down a building in the path of the lava! It's as ridiculous as that, and Volcano never engages in anything resembling smart problem solving.

Jackson equally avoids any investments in his characters, who all appear to be borrowed as a package from other and better disaster movies, including the egotistical developer who shows his true colours under stress.

Tommy Lee Jones tries but fails to appear serious in the face of all special effects, but often he's not quite sure where to look or how to act because all the carnage was added later by the computer guys. Anne Heche does not seem to try to convince as a geologist. Don Cheadle spends the film in a room full of phones and computer monitors, but it's never clear if his character actually contributes anything to resolve the unfolding crisis.

Volcano is an eruption of mundane silliness, not so much a disaster as an intellectually challenged bore.

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The Movies Of Anne Heche

All movies starring Anne Heche and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Juror (1996)

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Volcano (1997)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Wag The Dog (1997)

John Q (2002)

The Other Guys (2010, uncredited cameo)

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Rampart (2011)

Arthur Newman (2012)

The Best Of Enemies (2019)

The Vanished (2020)

13 Minutes (2021)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Donnie Brasco (1997)

Based on the true story of legendary mob infiltrator Joseph Pistone, Donnie Brasco is a gritty journey into the belly of the Mafia. Al Pacino and Johnny Depp are captivating as the entrails of an organization at war with itself are revealed in bloody detail.

Posing as a shady jewel trader in the grimy New York City of the 1970s, FBI agent Pistone, operating under the alias Donnie Brasco (Depp), attracts the attention of Ben "Lefty" Ruggiero (Pacino). A low level but respected hit-man in the crew commanded by Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano (Michael Madsen), Lefty has always been passed over for promotions within the mob's hierarchy. With his own son a drug addicted failure, Lefty takes Donnie under his wing, introducing him to the family as a trusted associate.

Donnie gains the confidence of the various mob operatives in Sonny Black's crew, including Nicky Santora (Bruno Kirby). But as Pistone burrows deeper into the Mafia, his personal life begins to feel the strain, with his wife Maggie (Anne Heche) effectively leading the life of a widow, never knowing where her husband is.  Meanwhile, Sonny Black gives Donnie increasing responsibilities, including running a club in Miami, and Lefty realizes with growing resentment that his protege has surpassed him in influence. When an internal mob war erupts, Donnie finds himself at the hot end of the hostilities, and his FBI handlers have to find a way to pull him out before he kills or gets killed.

The script by Paul Attanasio, adapting Pistone's book, takes some artistic liberties, but in general Donnie Brasco recaptures the grim reality of the FBI's most successful mob infiltration. The six years that Pistone spent undercover resulted in over 100 convictions, and the film provides an immersive lesson on life within a criminal enterprise. While some drag creeps into the second half of the story, with a vaguely unsatisfying  highlight reel composition taking hold, the raw power of the events and the central performances help pull the movie through.

The New York City of the 1970s is always fertile ground for rampant criminality wedded to resignation, and director Mike Newell ensures that the clothes, cars, locales and dialogue do nothing to alleviate the overbearing sense of crime as routine business. "Fogettaboutit" is the most common phrase exchanged within Lefty's circles, and as Donnie explains in one humorous scene, it can mean anything, depending on the exact pronunciation.

Al Pacino and Johnny Depp both deliver hypnotic performances. Pacino's Lefty is a man looking in the rear view mirror at what might have been, holding on to a bit of pride but fully aware that his chance at glory, if he ever had one, has long since passed. With an economy of movement but a defiant face ready to switch from aggressive to aggrieved in an instant, Pacino effortlessly succeeds in making a multiple killer sympathetic.

Depp matches Pacino, as Donnie walks a tightrope between outwardly respecting Lefty while he comprehensively betrays him. Depp exudes a cool confidence mixed with just enough of a propensity for violence for Donnie to gain the confidence of Lefty and then Sonny Black, as he worms his way into the mob's business and ever deeper into an alternate reality. Depp's achievement is a masterful portrayal of a man whose mind is always racing ahead of the events surrounding him, since he is only ever one mistake away from death.

Donnie Brasco is a worthy addition to the long list of mob crime dramas, with the added shine of real people and events serving as the basis for a gripping narrative. Fogettaboutit? Not likely.

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