Movie Review: Quiz Show (1994)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Robert Redford  

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Rob Morrow, John Turturro, David Paymer, Paul Scofield, Hank Azaria  

Running Time: 133 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1958, Twenty One is the highest rated quiz show on the NBC television network, and goofy Herb Stempel (John Turturro) is the current multi-week champion. The show's producer Dan Enright (David Paymer) builds ratings by rigging the outcome: popular contestants are provided with answers in advance. When ratings plateau, Herb is unceremoniously replaced by handsome academic Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who is initially reluctant to cheat but then enjoys celebrity status as his winning streak captures the nation's imagination. The jilted Herb goes public with corruption accusations, prompting an investigation by Congressional lawyer Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow).

What Works Well: Based on actual events, the story of greed-driven competition fixing is enhanced by complex character dynamics. Aided by an engaged cast, polished production values, and touches of humour, director Robert Redford probes dogged investigator Goodwin's evolving attitudes towards the charms of Charles Van Doren. Hints of celebrity worship combine with sympathy, leading Goodwin to target the industry rather than the individual, an unsatisfactory prospect for both the public and the politicians. Meanwhile the enraged Herb is sidelined but not silenced, and makes enough of a ruckus to allege discrimination based on class, education, and religion, although as a cheater himself he remains unlikely to benefit from any outcome.

What Does Not Work As Well: As the drama meanders over the two hours mark, the storytelling starts to surpass the story. Although undoubtedly headline grabbing, television game show cheating is more spectacle than substance.

Conclusion: Good questions, well-prepared answers.



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Movie Review: To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

A police investigation action thriller, To Live And Die In L.A. takes a conventional story and twists it into a compelling dark journey into the soul's abyss.

Secret Agents Richard Chance (William Petersen) and Jimmy Hart (Michael Greene) foil a terrorist attack in Washington D.C. The duo are reassigned to Los Angeles where Hart is gunned down days away from retirement while investigating the elaborate money counterfeiting operation run by Rick Masters (Willem Dafoe). Chance tells his new partner John Vukovich (John Pankow) he will stop at nothing to bring down Masters.

Chance controls the life of parolee informer Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel) with sex and money, and she leads him to crooked lawyer Max Waxman (Christopher Allport), a buyer of fake currency. His death yields a notebook with more details about the counterfeiting business. The agents arrest Masters' courier Carl Cody (John Turturro) and connect with his disillusioned lawyer Bob Grimes (Dean Stockwell). When Chance and Vukovich impersonate potential clients but are stymied by a lack of money to catch Masters in the act, Chance turns to methods well outside the rule book to pursue the investigation.

Director William Friedkin chose the novel by former secret agent Gerald Petievich for his return to form. Working with a limited budget and with a cast of relative unknowns, he crafts a nihilistic police thriller intent on breaking conventions and subverting expectations. To Live And Die In L.A. amplifies The French Connection themes of rampant corruption and the lost battle against crime. But this time Secret Agent Chance is more honest about his willingness to operate all the way outside the lines, resulting in a brilliantly disconcerting narrative running on unstable energy fragments.

Chance is an unforgettable and unsettling character. A cocky risk-taking thrill seeker, he believes in his own indestructibility, his version of justice, and fierce loyalty to the memory of his murdered partner Hart. He callously takes advantage of informant Ruth, using her for sex and information while threatening her with a return to prison. And when it's time to close in on his prime target Masters, Chance circumvents the bureaucracy by launching a rogue mission to secure the funds he needs, placing in jeopardy everyone he should care about but providing him with the ultimate thrill ride.

And Friedkin translates Chance's thrill into a seminal car chase scene, at least equalling the heart-stopping action of The French Connection and here featuring a sojourn through the iconic LA river then an astounding and incredibly staged high speed crash-filled manic race traveling the wrong way against freeway traffic.

In addition to bursts of violence and some effective gore, Friedkin infuses the movie with an undercurrent of unconstrained sexuality, both the predator Chance and the prey Masters stripped bare in several scenes and coldly engaging in emotionless sex as confirmation of their mirrored explicit personalities and rotting cores.

Other highlights include an elaborate and seemingly authentic recreation of the counterfeiting process, a vivid visual style inspired by television's Miami Vice, and a singular music soundtrack featuring English new wave band Wang Chung.

Petersen was plucked from the Chicago theatre circuit and his obscurity works in his favour. With no screen persona to adhere to, Petersen has a blank canvass to create Chance upon, and he succeeds in combining edgy cool with barely concealed combustible emotional tension. In one of his earliest prominent roles Willem Dafoe provides an aura of violent arrogance as Masters.

A gripping disruption of the familiar, To Live And Die In L.A. creates its own exhilarating set of rules and consequences.

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Movie Review: Gloria Bell (2018)

A romantic drama, Gloria Bell explores second chances at love and all the attached luggage weighing down new opportunities.

In Los Angeles, middle-aged Gloria (Julianne Moore) has been divorced for 12 years. She works as an insurance agent and tries to stay involved in the lives of her grown children, son Peter (Michael Cera) and daughter Anne (Caren Pistorius). But most of all Gloria likes to dance at a retro discotheque, where she eventually meets Arnold (John Turturro), who has been divorced for a year.

They start a relationship which quickly turns serious, although Arnold appears to be tethered to his two grown but emotionally immature daughters. An evening that brings Gloria together with her two children and ex-husband Dustin (Brad Garrett) ends badly for Arnold, and threatens Gloria's budding attempt at a new romance.

Chilean director Sebastián Lelio remakes his own 2013 drama Gloria, this time in English and with Julianne Moore in radiant perfection mode. Devoid of a traditional narrative structure and not free of meandering stretches, the film ambles along, tracing Gloria's ups and downs. Moore at least ensures that even the seemingly mundane scenes of club dancing and car radio singalongs carry the warmth of a genuine and expansive human spirit.

The emotional luggage accumulated by middle age is given a physical representation in the large bag Arnold places in Gloria's trunk. It carries his paintball paraphernalia, but symbolically weighs down their relationship with all his insecurities, mistakes and lingering dependencies. His phone is the rope, a metaphorical strangulation device interrupting the oxygen needed for the romance with Gloria to survive.

She is not without her issues, worrying about daughter Anne falling in love with a wandering Swedish surfer and son Peter already abandoned by his wife and left caring for a newborn infant on his own. Not to mention a colourless job, a hairless cat and a suicidal upstairs neighbour adding plenty of angst to what should be quiet time.

But at least Gloria is open about her life and has a semblance of balance between her personal needs and her family responsibilities. Arnold is falling through the cracks, and Gloria will use every device she knows, from companionship to sex to estrangement, in an attempted emotional rescue.

Gloria Bell features touches of humour to lighten the mood, the persistent hairless cat seeking to adopt Gloria a regular source of brief but welcome distraction. Gloria has to decide whether to allow a damaged man and an ugly cat into her life, as the unexpected challenges of middle age range from profound to bizarre.

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Movie Review: Do The Right Thing (1989)

A social drama with biting humour, Do The Right Thing takes a hard look at street-level race relations, and finds no heroes but plenty of boiling anger.

On a scorching hot day in a mostly black Brooklyn neighbourhood, Italian-American Sal (Danny Aiello) runs a popular pizza joint with his two sons Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson). Mookie (Spike Lee) is their laidback delivery guy, taking long breaks and mostly ignoring his hispanic girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez) and toddler son. Mookie's younger sister Jade (Joie Lee) appears to be the smarter of the two.

The neighbourhood is full of characters, including jovial drunk Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), overseer Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), and brooding boom box music fan Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn). DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) spins tunes at the local radio station. A Korean couple run the local grocery store, while three elderly black men spend their day chatting on the sidewalk. Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) is mentally challenged and roams the streets selling pictures of Martin Luther King with Malcolm X.

Mookie's excitable friend Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) takes offence at Sal's "wall of fame" pictures, because no blacks are featured. He tries to organize a boycott of the pizzeria, with unintended consequences.

Director, producer and writer Spike Lee's third feature film is a seminal achievement. Eschewing a conventional plot, Do The Right Thing roams the baking streets within a few small blocks of Sal's pizza joint, and finds a collection of people dependent on each other, superficially getting along and yet seething with barely contained rage fanned by hurling insults. Lee creates the conditions for a bonfire rich with fuel and ready to burn, just waiting for a spark.

Few of the characters, and none of the ethnicities, escape with a clear conscience. Most are operating within shades of grey, with individuals like Pino at the darkest end expressing outward racist thoughts, while Sal and Mookie are more tolerant and inclined to get along. Lee makes it a point to emphasize black on black discord, a community quick to turn on itself and put down people like Da Mayor. Between the various visible ethnicities the fences are also thick, the Korean store owners subjected to black abuse for having the temerity to start and run a business, and the battle lines between blacks and Hispanics drawn over music volume.

Towards the middle are the clutch of people seemingly resigned to their fate, depressing as it seems, and willing to spout either cushioned or more brazen contempt against each other. The middle ground can be nudged to either extreme, and the film explores the territory between Martin Luther King's pacifist dignity and Malcolm X's more hardline attitudes, represented by the exceptionally limited space between the Love and Hate rings on Radio Raheem's fists. Violence is the potential weapon, easy to reach for but unquestionably placing the ultimate goal further out of reach.

Do The Right Thing bursts with the colours of heat. Yellows and reds dominate as Lee creates a fiery palette, capturing scorching temperatures and equally hot tension. The neighbourhood hums to the tunes of Love Daddy, and he along with Mother Sister constitute the only two people willing to give love a chance, although their relative passivity risks being trampled.

In a film with hardly a narrative thrust, Do The Right Thing creates a remarkably gripping imperative to find a resolution. Undoubtedly the simmering tensions need an outlet, and Lee provides a sadly predictable climactic release valve. In the eternal story of communities struggling against forces of history, poverty, and limited opportunities, the wrong thing is easy to discern, but it's much more difficult to know what the right thing is. The one certainty is that at the end of each day, the sense of injustice will have increased on all sides.

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Movie Review: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

A satirical comedy inspired by Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou? features some enjoyable episodes but is a mostly fragmented exercise of scattered ideas looking for a purpose.

The setting is Mississippi during the 1930s with the Great Depression still lingering. Three convicts escape from a chain gang and set out across the countryside. The wordy and cerebral Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) claims to have buried stolen treasure before being incarcerated. His fellow escapees are the tightly wound Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and the rather dim Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson).

As they barely stay one step ahead of the chasing posse, the trio encounter various obstacles and characters, including Pete's cousin "Wash" Hogwallop (Frank Collison), crazed bank robber Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco), three distracting singing sirens, guitarist Tommy Johnson (Chris Thomas King) who claims to have sold his soul to the devil, incumbent Governor Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel (Charles Durning), and dangerous Bible salesman Daniel "Big Dan" Teague (John Goodman). The Ku Klux Klan also make an appearance before Ulysses catches up with his wife Penny (Holly Hunter), who is just about ready to abandon him.

Written and directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, O Brother, Where Art Thou? transposes the ancient Greek poem to the American rural south, suffering under the strain of an economic depression and the sweltering heat. It's all played for laughs, the actors over-emoting at will and most of the dialogue exchanges featuring Ulysses Everett McGill's over-elaborate prose and the stupefied reactions of his chainmates.

The film's pacing cannot be faulted, as each episode lasts about 10 minutes before the next, generally unrelated adventure kicks off. Whether hit or miss, nothing lingers for too long. The better sub-plots feature the trio of prisoners recording an impromptu hit song at an early-era radio station, and an enchanted encounter with the seductive sirens in the forest. Less successful is the run-in with Bible salesman Big Dan, while the chapters featuring Governor O'Daniel seem to rotate in a singular circle.

Wide open landscapes, appealing cinematography and an interesting colour palette that often evokes the photographs of the era maintain interest, while the period-specific folk music often moves to the foreground to provide a soulful kick.

Towards the end the film threatens to completely unravel, a case of too many marginal ideas thrown at the screen and sliding to the bottom due to a lack of cohesion. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is inspired by great literature, but achieves only modest success.

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Movie Review: Miller's Crossing (1990)

A gangster drama with neo-noir elements and a mean streak of humour, Miller's Crossing is a character rich story about the sordid but engrossing business of crime.

Mobster Leo O'Bannon (Albert Finney) rules an unnamed city during the Prohibition. He refuses the request of fellow gang boss Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito) to kill bookie Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro). Caspar believes that Bernie is an unethical cheat when it comes to fixed boxing bouts, but Leo is in love with Bernie's sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden) and wants to maintain the peace. Leo's second in command Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is unsuccessful arguing that liquidating Bernie is a cheap price to pay in order to avoid a conflict with Caspar.

What Leo does not know is that Tom, who is saddled with gambling debts, is also carrying on a steamy affair with Verna. Leo does suspect Verna enough to have her followed, but things start to get complicated when the tail shows up dead in an alley. Meanwhile Caspar is fed up with taking orders from Leo and a full-fledged violent turf war erupts between the two. Tom and Leo have a public falling out, and with Caspar appearing to gain the upper hand in the fight to control the underworld, Tom joins Caspar's inner circle.

Directed by Joel Coen and written by his brother Ethan, Miller's Crossing builds slowly but surely to some magnificent peaks of tension and drama in the criminal world. Deploying a measured pace, grim aesthetics and a narrative that smoothly swerves with divided loyalties and suspect alliances, the film works both as a salute to the genre and a memorably unique story.

Inspired by the novels of Dashiell Hammett, the canon of gangster films and sharing some man-in-the-middle story principles with the likes of A Fistful Of Dollars, the Coens create a matter-of-fact world where the mobsters own the law and the politicians, and the prize at the heart of the struggle for power is nothing less than economic control of an entire city. The film does not question the reasons behind this reality; with a combination of jarring violence and sharp wit, Miller's Crossing proceeds to reveal the cunning, conspiracies and collusion required for survival and success in the world of mob rule.

Leo and Caspar will settle their conflict with bullets rather than votes; Tom just has to find a way to navigate and manipulate the dirty war without losing his head, no easy task when he is sleeping with the boss's girl. A black fedora becomes a symbol for loss and death, while a cold blooded crime in the titular forest clearing provides a neat twist and a reminder for Tom that there is a price for everything, but sometimes others pay to play. Verna is a classic woman desired by many but truly attainable by probably none, and her magnetism tugs at the raging egos to make every dangerous situation worse.

Miller's Crossing is punctuated by manic action scenes, ranging in scale from raids and battles involving hordes of cops and gangsters exchanging hot lead from blazing Tommy guns, to quiet one-on-one showdowns prolonged to reveal the fragility of life. Tom's one big advantage is that he is smarter than everybody around him, and particularly wise enough to stand close to power but not cling onto it. In a world gone crazy with killings, Tom slices through the drama using brains instead of brawn. Reluctant to use a gun, he also counts on the incompetence of the goons supposedly running the show to wriggle out of tight spots.

Gabriel Byrne carries the role with requisite intensity, an intelligent man working overtime to design outcomes in a shifting landscape. Albert Finney, Jon Polito and John Turturro humanize a trio of enduring gangsters circling each other looking for the duplicitous kill. Marcia Gay Harden pouts her way through the role of Verna, fully understanding her influence but not feeling any better for it. A woman in a man's world gone mad has every reason to want to land on the winning side of a merciless conflict.

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Movie Review: Barton Fink (1991)

A dramatic comedy about writer's block, Barton Fink successfully gets into the head of a fledgling writer but stretches the concept to incredulous extremes.

In New York City of 1941, writer Barton Fink (John Turturro) achieves success with a new Broadway play and is celebrated as a rising star of the literary world. Despite espousing idealistic views of writing for the masses, Fink accepts a high-paying assignment to write screenplays in Hollywood and relocates to Los Angeles. His new employer is Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner), boss of Capitol Pictures, who pretends to adore writers before assigning Fink to write a script for a lowbrow wrestling drama starring Wallace Beery.

Fink takes up residence in a derelict room at the cavernous but sparsely populated Hotel Earle, and struggles mightily with writer's block. The distractions include noise from adjoining rooms, peeling wallpaper, a singular picture of a girl on the beach, and talkative insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), who occupies the room next door. Extremely lonely and desperate to converse with another writer, Fink connects with W. P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a legendary author now reduced to a state of perpetual drunkenness. Mayhew's secretary Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis) proves to be a better companion. With a deadline for delivering the script looming, there is a new major shock ahead for the hopelessly blocked Fink.

Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, Barton Fink is an odd exercise, apparently a diversionary exercise the Coens used as break from the intensity of Miller's Crossing. Filled with salutes to written and cinematic landmarks, the film contains plenty to admire both aesthetically and intellectually, and hits at dead centre the intended target topic of writer's block. But only so much can be built around a white empty page that stares back. Desperate for variety the film veers towards a madcap tone, and a final third that is more amusing than effective.

The best moments are by far set at the Hotel Earle, an eerily empty place forgotten by time and carrying echoes of that most famous writer's block hangout, The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. But Barton's journey is not one of madness, rather just a banana skin where his idealistic spoutings slip on an inability to listen to the common man and a quick soul sell. The peeling wall paper, the pesky mosquito, the noisy neighbours, the incessant heat, and that darned too perfect picture on the wall do nothing except conspire to prevent Barton from writing.

John Turturro does what is necessary in the grey title role, the screen portrayal of an introverted writer struggling to find words by definition a rather thankless task.

Less interesting are the surrounding characters. W.P. Mayhew is not so much the inspiration Barton hoped to find but rather the ultimate victim of writer's block, a man with a destiny to meet his fate at the bottom of the bottle every single day. John Goodman is excellent as Charlie Meadows, a salesman who starts out as an irritant, evolves into a friend and companion, and then transforms into something else entirely as the script slips out of control.

Judy Davis as Audrey Taylor does not get a chance to register as much of anything, her obvious role as writer's muse truncated to serve a needless detour towards mystical mystery territory. Steve Buscemi as the hotel clerk and Tony Shalhoub as a movie producer get small supporting roles.

Undoubtedly thought provoking, Barton Fink offers plenty of talking points but is an ultimately less than cohesive experience.

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The Movies Of John Turturro

All movies starring John Turturro and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:


Raging Bull (1980, uncredited)

To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

Hannah And Her Sisters (1986)

The Color Of Money (1986)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Miller's Crossing (1990)

King Of New York (1990)

Barton Fink (1991)

Quiz Show (1994)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Rounders (1998)

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Anger Management (2003)

The Good Shepherd (2006)

The Taking Of Pelham 123 (2009)

Gloria Bell (2018)

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Movie Review: King Of New York (1990)

A stylishly gloomy crime drama, King Of New York layers on the artsy violence but leaves behind any reason to care about its principal characters.

Crime lord Frank White (Christopher Walken) is released from prison and immediately heads back to New York to regain control of his empire. His gang members, led by Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne), pave the way for Frank's return by killing rival gang leaders El Zapa and King Tito, the former in a phone booth outside a high class brothel, the latter in a hotel room.

Frank then applies pressure on Mafia boss Arty Clay and Triad leader Larry Wong, demanding a cut of their business. Clay refuses to cooperate, and Wong attempts to negotiate. Both pay a heavy price for failing to comply with Frank's wishes.With Frank's lawyer Jennifer (Janet Julian) keeping him and his men beyond the reach of the courts, police detectives Bishop (Victor Argo), Gilley (David Caruso) and Flanigan (Wesley Snipes) grow increasingly frustrated. Gilley advocates going outside the law to deal with Frank, adding fuel to the wave of violence sweeping across the city.

An independent production directed by Abel Ferrara with an emphasis on wild action set-pieces, King Of New York packs plenty of intense shoot-outs, chases, and general scenes of carnage and violence into a relatively short 106 minutes of running time. This is a film that transforms New York into a war zone where hundreds of bullet rounds are sprayed around on a nightly basis, as gangsters kill each other with savagery driven by hatred and the imperative need to control the drug trade.

Ferrara delivers all the brutality with an eye on moody and stylish packaging, the action often happening at night, the gangsters largely emotionless as they kill to the beat of rap music and under the toxic influence of drugs, with random gyrating women always within reach.

It's all wildly entertaining but also not even remotely realistic, and as an exercise in sleek crime depiction King Of New York is hampered by an almost complete absence of character introduction or development. Frank White remains an almost robotic blank slate, save for one quite unconvincing late speech about his criminality being less criminal than his rivals. A half-baked sub-plot about Frank channeling funds to an inner-city hospital project holds promise but is underdeveloped.

The secondary characters fare worse, and next to nothing is known about all the other crime bosses and the three police detectives. But Laurence (billed as Larry) Fishburne does get to let loose in a pretty insane depiction of the trigger-happy Jimmy Jump, a man so far gone on the culture of drugs and violence that he is actually enjoying the madness that comes with hurtling towards oblivion.

King Of New York dances to the beat of anarchic artistry, but beyond all the bloodshed the king has few other clothes on.

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Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

In this remake of the 1974 film that epitomized the emerging hot, overbearing, urban and pessimistic style of the 1970's, a group of hijackers led by "Ryder" ( John Travolta) takes over a New York subway car in the middle of an underground tunnel, and demands a ransom of $10 Million to be delivered in one hour. Otherwise, one passenger will be shot every minute.

Ryder establishes contact with Garber (Denzel Washington) a subway authority dispatcher with a troubled past of his own. As the clock ticks towards the deadline, the relationship between Ryder and Garber forms the core of the film, as all around them there is panic. The New York Mayor (James Gandolfini) and his entourage wade in; a professional negotiator (John Turturro) has to work around Ryder's insistence of only talking to Garber; the SWAT teams have to deal with an unhinged hijacker who is not afraid to pull the trigger; and the police have to escort $10 million in cash across town, using a high-speed convoy through busy New York traffic.

This latter plot element is an extremely contrived addition to the movie, apparently for the sole purpose of satisfying director Tony Scott's desire for a high speed chase scene, complete with multiple crashes and cars flying off overpasses. As the mayor says halfway through, echoing the question in every viewer's mind, "couldn't they have used a helicopter?"

In keeping with modern times, this version of The Taking of Pelham 123 has a generally positive message about New York, and gently celebrates the city's services, workers, and emergency responders. It's an interesting but not unwelcome departure from the original, celebrating how far the city's image has been improved.

The two old pros Travolta and Washington both deliver polished performances, working from a script by Brian Helgeland. Travolta has the more maniacal role with not inappropriate frequent and sharp mood swings. Washington is remarkably cool throughout, in the process straining a bit at the credibility envelope of the skills under pressure that can be expected from a city employee.

The 2009 edition of The Taking of Pelham 123 is unlikely to be fondly remembered 35 years from now, like the original is. At the same time, it is a star-driven slick and entertaining hijack caper that can be enjoyed on its own merits.






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