Young Rebels (1989)

This is one I did on the podcast back in August, episode 105, with Jacob Gustafson of the Awful Awesome book series, and I've had it in my queue to review all that time. I guess there's no time like now to finally make it happen. In addition to us, this is a Superfecta Film, as Comeuppance, The Video Vacuum, and Bulletproof have all covered it before as well.

Young Rebels has neither youth nor rebellion, but rather is an Amir Shervan joint about a guy, played by Jon Greene (as Johnny Greene) who has a down-on-his luck brother that's into a mob boss for a lot of dough. To settle the debt, Greene agrees to fly a helicopter to pick up some guys in Mexico for the mob boss, but when that goes south, the mob boss, as mob bosses are wont to do, decides he wants his revenge, so he starts by killing Greene's brother. Turns out he messed with the wrong guy, so Greene gathers up some friends, including Tadashi Yamashita, to take the mob boss, and the mob boss's son, Robert Z'Dar, down. It's going to be a blood bath--or maybe just an extended shootout and extended strip scene bath, but a bath nonetheless.

This is pure Shervan. All of our late 80s action movie excess is run through Shervan's Iranian filter and reflected back at us. How long should a strip scene go before it crosses from sexy into uncomfortable? Shervan has no idea, American guys seem to spend hours in these places, so why not make it as long as possible? And does seeing a sweaty doughy man responding to the strippers make it more uncomfortable for the viewer? Why would it, don't American men go to these places with other guys all the time? What about the shootouts taking place in late 80s finished basements, known at the time as "dens,"--before we had to give everything cute names like "man caves"--how long should those be? I mean, Americans like action and they love their guns, the longer the better, right? And to that point, who cares how good the dialog is? Does it even need to make that much sense? It makes sense enough to me, that should be all that matters, right? While this doesn't have the all out classic level of ridiculousness that Samurai Cop does, for the kind of movie this is, it hits all the right spots.

We last saw now DTVC Hall of Famer Robert Z'Dar back in October when we did his induction post, which was also an Amir Shervan film, Killing American Style. Like that one, this was a bigger role for Z'Dar, which let him do more. The problem here was, part of that doing more was watching a woman do a strip tease with a long necklace of pearls that she drags through parts of her body that maybe she shouldn't have, and Z'Dar has to react to it like he's into it. There is no real face someone can make to show they're into it that doesn't look ridiculous, especially on camera, which means Z'Dar was already working uphill before he even agreed to do that scene, but he ends up making it more cringey for us the viewer. The question is, where do we go from here with Z'Dar? He does have some stuff on Tubi and YouTube, but the reality is, a lot of it is two or three notches below where we usually go with all the stuff that's available now. There are a couple though, like Red Line and Double Blast, which our friends at Comeuppance have already covered, that I think we need on here, so this definitely won't be the last we see of Mr. Z'Dar.

We're now at three Amir Shervan films on the site, and I slot this one between the other two, right after Samurai Cop and before Killing American Style. It's a fascinating filmography though, where he's an established director in Iran, then is forced to come to the US after the Iranian Revolution, and while the next generation of filmmakers there are, despite the restrictions put on their work by the government, a few years out from putting out some of the best stuff in the world at that time, Shervan is giving us what are objectively some of the most off the wall low-budget actioners ever. As we get into the later part of the 90s, in Iran we get Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry, Makhmalbaf's Gabbeh, Dariush Mehrjui's Leila--and Mehrjui was actually a contemporary of Shervan's before Shervan left Iran--and Majid Majidi's Oscar nominated Children of Heaven--and even before that, in 1992, one of my favorites, Nargess, directed by Rakhshan Bani-etemad, all while Shervan is giving us Samurai Cop and Young Rebels. It's really fascinating to consider these two tracks in parallel, that we have a set of directors who are the darlings of international cinema working in the country Shervan was forced to flee, while he's struggling to put together some schlock actioners that he thinks are what Americans at that time wanted. What we get isn't maybe something worthy of the Criterion Collection, but it's fun just the same, making it a short but sweet legacy in the DTV action world.

Our hero is played by Jon Greene, and when we look at his filmography on IMDb, it's a lot of "police officer," "police detective," or "police sergeant"--in fact, we've seen him before as "Officer Baylor" in Crack House. This was his one time to shine as the hero, the problem was, I think in Shervan trying to push the "young" element in the film, he ended up making him into the guy I used to see in the convenience store on a Friday when I was growing up who definitely looked like he was onto cooler and better things than me and my friends who were loading up on junk food before a night of video game playing. Was that guy really about do something cooler than that though? When I finally got to be his age, I learned that life generally wasn't that much cooler, that maybe finishing every level in Super Mario 3 without warping was better than getting wasted and having a hangover the next day, and now it's even worse, as guys that age post on social media what they're doing to try and make it look even better. At least that guy back then, or me 10 years later, didn't need to worry about making everything look better to keep up with the Joneses on Instagram, didn't need to worry about how our sneakers looked, if our T-shirts had designer logos on them, if the place we were at was more of a destination than what our friends were posting. No, that guy in his mullet, dirty high-tops, and faded jeans was living his best life before we coined horrible terms like that and needed to hashtag it on our social media posts about what we were doing. 

Finally, as I mentioned above, parts of this film take place in the finished basement, or den, of the house where they were filming. When I was in high school, a friend of ours had one of those finished basements complete with a bar and a bathroom, and he used to host big sleepovers with five or six of us on a weekend. We could sneak out the backdoor to smoke weed, or go to get late night food, often the friends with cars letting them roll in neutral to avoid waking up his parents before they started the engine. Nowadays, that den would be called a "man cave," the dad wouldn't let his son use it for sleepovers, and Ring cameras would patrol the backdoor so no one could sneak out. Were we "young rebels," or just kids in a small town in Maine who were looking for something to do? And to go back to the previous paragraph, we couldn't wait until we were old enough to have our own places where we could smoke our weed and come and go when we felt like it. The problem, as I'm sure you know, is your own place comes with bills, which means you need a job too. Now we don't even need to sneak out to get weed, I can take a bus to New Jersey and get gummies legally--and if I snuck out at 1am here in Philly, I don't know what kind of unsavory characters I'd run into, but I can order my Taco Bell through Doordash so I don't need to sneak out to get it. Here's to you 90s den and all that came with you, you were one of the good ones.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can stream this free on Tubi. That's your best bet. It's not quite Samurai Cop, but it will anchor your Saturday movie night well enough. As the guys at Comeuppance said, they don't make 'em like this anymore, and I agree with them that that's not a great thing.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2394099

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

One Shot (2021)

This is one I watched last year while I was house sitting for my sister and brother in-law, during my mini-Adkins fest, which was featured in DTVC Podcast episode 101, aptly titled "Adkins Fest," a solo episode I did last year where I covered this and three other Adkins films. In addition to us, our friends at Bulletproof have covered this as well.

One Shot has Adkins as a Navy SEAL who, with his team, is escorting Ashley Greene to a secret military base where a suspected terrorist is being kept. The thing is, he knows about an attack that could kill thousands, so Greene wants to bring him back to the US and get him to talk. The problem is, he's already being tortured by Ryan Phillippe, who runs the base, and that has his fellow terrorists scared that he may already be talking. So said terrorists load up a clown car with hundreds of men, and lay siege to the base. Now it's up to Adkins and his men, against all odds, to fight through all these guys, get the terrorist to the chopper, and get him to the US. Will they succeed? Also, this film is done in all one continuous scene, made to look like one continuous shot, like an extended action version of the Spice Girls video for "Wannabe."

This isn't horrible, but I think it's hamstrung by the one shot device. In a short I think it could work really well, but for 96 minutes, we need cuts to other things happening. We also need cuts to individuals. Ryan Phillippe says something bad, I need a cut to Adkins's face to see him roll his eyes or something. I think it was clever the way they tried to mitigate that though through the one shot device, I guess I just don't know why I need the mitigation, right? Was there a contest to see who could do the best one shot action film? This is like the guy who wrote a novel without using the letter E. Maybe director James Nunn just wanted to see if he could do it, and he did, so in that sense it's successful. One of the other issues people had was the clown car aspect of a military truck showing up with some terrorists, and somehow that truck turns into hundreds of men. That's the kind of thing that's forgivable if you have some crazy PM Spiro Razatos action-directed 90-minute action fest, but here, where a lot of the action is just shooting at each other and we're hamstrung by the one shot device, I can see why people called that out--plus the one shot device in and of itself is saying the film wants to be taken more seriously, and as such something like a clown car effect will be given more of a side eye. Overall, I think this is a solid, fun actioner, kind of squarely in the middle of what you'd want from an Adkins flick.

As of this writing I still haven't seen John Wick: Chapter 4--almost 3 hours in the theater with no intermission means I probably won't see it until it comes out on streaming--but I am excited to see what Adkins does in that film. Here he's just the solid presence we've grown to know and love, and that really carries this thing more than the one shot device. I kind of pulled a fast one last fall when I reviewed Close Range during my Hall of Fame posts, only to be using it to induct Isaac Florentine, but now that we're at 25 films and counting for Adkins, I think his induction this fall is almost a fait accompli--I mean, do we want to force The Asylum Automatic Induction Rule at 30 posts for him? It's bad enough that we'll be doing it for Danny Trejo. One interesting thing is his output has slowed a bit. That may be due in part to the pandemic, but it makes it easier for us to keep up. For example, this is only one of two films he had come out in 2021, the other being Castle Falls. In 2020 he had 4, and in 2019 he had 5. And if he's going to be doing more big screen stuff like John Wick, it'll be even easier to catch up. By my count, I see about 11 films of his we could review on the site, which would put him near the 40 Club if we did them all. Again, probably a sign that we need to get him into the Hall of Fame sooner rather than later.

Director James Nunn has worked with Adkins before, on Eliminators and Green Street 3, of which I've seen the former, and I liked that film better than this. Yes, that one had the classic Adkins story trope, child kidnapped and he has to fight to get her back, but the action, especially between him and Stu Bennett, was great. And maybe that hurt this film more than the one shot device, the lack of a great baddie, because the one we had was sufficiently villainous bad, but he wasn't Stu Bennett charismatic bad, if you know what I mean; and to be honest, Adkins, though his presence carried the film, his character wasn't anything spectacular either, more just a one-note special forces soldier who's only better than your Chad Michael Murray or Jesse Metcalfe in a Willis Emmett-Furla-Oasis flick by virtue of it being Adkins. But maybe this is where I'm being hard on this movie and Nunn, because this isn't an EFO Willis actioner, it is more inspired than that, and being inspired is something we've seen less of over the last 15 years or so of DTV action. For that I think we can applaud Nunn, he's trying to give us something unique, and in that respect I think it worked.

We're now at 4 Ryan Phillippe films here on the site, which I hadn't realized we had that many, but as I looked at them, I remembered reviewing each one, I just needed to click on his tag for a reminder of them. Unlike Jesse Metcalfe or Chad Michael Murray that I mentioned above, Phillippe has made the transition from teen heartthrob to action guy much better, and he works well in the role he has here, dick federal guy giving Greene a hard time, but who can also get shit done. In looking at his IMDb bio, I see that he has some other stuff we can review, but not a lot. It doesn't look like he's leaning into these kinds of roles as much, and is doing things that are slightly bigger and more nuanced. That probably means we won't see him much more on here, but also with those few that this won't be the last time we see him. It'll be interesting to see if they work as well as he did here.

Finally, the clown car effect in this film brings up an interesting question: what can a DTV action film get away with as far as verisimilitude? I think really it all depends on how great the action is, how great the hero is, and how many iconic moments we have. Also, how serious are they trying to play it. The obvious one is the one guy beating up a bar full of baddies. We assume one guy, no matter how skilled, wouldn't be able to do that, but if the action is choreographed in a way that's exciting, we'll go with it. Another big one is the baddie who has endless resources, including an endless supply of goons, which is what we see here with the clown car effect. Sometimes it's ninjas, which work great because you can recycle stunt people for them and no one will know. In the 90s we always loved the beefy guy in a black suit who was just waiting for our hero to knock him out, or even better, spray him with uzi fire so he can shimmy to his death. The thing is, if you're putting out a schlock low-budget actioner, all of these things are seen as charming more than things we'd ding the film on when we're discussing it. When you put out a film that's all one shot though, you're looking to give the film a level of credibility that say a PM actioner or a Corman-produced Philippines romp wouldn't have, and as such, the clown car effect we get here is less charming and more something we'd give an eye roll to. When you want the film to be taken seriously on that level, it's more important to get those other parts right.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Hulu, so if you have that subscription you're good to go. I think this is worth checking out, especially if you're an Adkins fan. It's not his best of his recent ones, but it does the trick.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14199590

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Operation Seawolf (2022)

This is one I rented back in December when I had a discount from my cable company. I figured that would be it and I'd review it here, but then it appeared on Tubi and Ty from Comeuppance and I decided to take advantage of that for the podcast, so he watched it on there and we discussed it on our episode titled "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese," because we covered this and Shadow Wolves with Hotch from Criminal Minds. Anyway, we now covering it for the site too so we have it here.

Operation Seawolf has Dolph as a WWI sub commander who now, in the closing days of WWII, is sent on a mission to attack America's homeland. He gets a new sub, which is under another command, and now that he's taking over, they're not so sure they want to follow him. At the same time, Frank Grillo is giving orders from a chair in an office in the US, and he's telling Hiram A. Murray's anti-sub ship to find and take this submarine out. Will our man Dolph prevail? And should we be rooting for him since he's a Nazi?

This was actually good. More a drama than an actioner, but also a lot more Dolph than you'd expect from the cover--again, perhaps the fact that he's a Nazi may have meant we couldn't have him front and center on the cover. And they do attempt to mitigate the Nazi thing by having Dolph be someone who's against Nazis but wants to do his duty for his country, plus by having Hiram Murray's all-black unit being the one hunting them down. I think they do a better job with the former, but unfortunately they don't develop Murray's character and his crew enough to make them enough of a factor. What makes this all the way through is Dolph's performance. It's fully invested, and involves a lot of screentime, the latter of which is something we haven't from him in a long time--maybe since 2016's Don't Kill It as far as his DTV work. The Dolph performance combined with the ability to screen it free on Tubi makes this a definite watch.

We're now at 67 films for Dolph, with one more left in the can, 4Got10. Unlike Seagal though, who we finished up recently, Dolph has other ones coming up that will keep us busy before we need to dive into ones like Small Apartments or Seal Team or even Sharknado 5. The thing is, most of his new stuff involves him taking on smaller roles, which makes sense at this stage in his career, but something like this where he plays a mature character whose story is anchoring the film is a nice change of pace. Yes, the screens I took show him looking haggard or falling asleep, which might make you think this is more silly than serious, but it works, and it works because of Dolph's performance. As we make our way to getting him into the 70 Club, we'll probably see more smaller good roles, so when we get something more robust like this, we need to hold onto them like grim death.

We're firing up the Grillo again for the second time on our site. This is no Boss Level, what we have here is primarily a sit down role, where from time to time he stands up and uses a pencil to mark things on a map. He's supposed to be a WWII Commander, but he has a 2020s haircut and nicely sculpted modern five o'clock shadow. That's okay though, I'd rather have Grillo doing this role than anyone else, and the haircut and five o'clock shadow aren't as bad as Mickey Rourke's cowboy hat in War Pigs. We do have some more Grillo in the can, so this won't be the last time we fire up the Grillo, but it'll be interesting to see how much of his stuff we get on the site with all the other names we need to get to. He's a lot of fun, even in a small role like this, so even if we only see him every six months or so, it's better than nothing at all.

Ty and I remarked that perhaps the most surprising thing about this after the size and quality of Dolph's role, was the fact that we had an interesting sub movie! Most of the time DTV sub movies turn into the dreaded sub slog--you know the type, "excitement" by repetition with multiple scenes of commanders looking off somewhere with grim expressions on their faces saying "fire," while young male supporting characters push some buttons and look into some periscopes, while footage of torpedoes cruising through the water head toward a target as we're supposed to be watching with bated breath for something to happen. Where this works is the story is more compelling, and Dolph's performance makes it even more so. Then when we get action, more of it is above ground than below, which also helped. When you've been doing this as long as we have, eventually you see everything, and a sub movie that's not a slog is now one we've finally seen.

Finally, as we've been doing, we'll give Dolph another paragraph due to the volume of films of his we've covered on the site. Unlike Seagal who has a couple films in development, but no idea when they're coming out, Dolph has two films slated for release this year, plus what looks like three more DTV flicks and three big screen flicks coming after that. I don't know that he'll continue that pace, but we know he'll hit 70 this year, and if he keeps pumping out a few films a year, he could hit 80 in 2026--if we're still writing the site then. The thing is, his influence and ability to move the needle hasn't slowed much, meaning when he has something new come out, we need to prioritize it over other stuff we might have in the can. So not only does he have more then ten films between him and the person with the second-most films, Gary Daniels, but there's no way for him or anyone else to catch up when I'm a position where I need to review Dolph's new films before anyone else's. It's a massive legacy, one that will probably never be surpassed.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of right now, you can stream this free on Tubi. Between the story and Dolph's performance, that's more than worth it. And if you haven't yet, check out the podcast episode where Ty and I discussed this, episode 120 in the archives, "A Dolph and Hotch UnSub with Grillo Cheese."

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13429928

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

End of a Gun (2016)

It's a yearly tradition at the DTVC, our Steven Seagal birthday post. This is also one I've been meaning to get to for a long time, but as long as I've been back from hiatus, this has only been available as a rental. Then a miracle happened, and RedBox's streaming service of all places had this free with ads. Wonders never cease in the world of DTV and Seagal films.

End of a Gun has Seagal as some kind of former DEA/CIA/whatever who one night in Paris/Bucharest finds Jade Ewan being hassled by her jerky boyfriend. He of course insinuates himself, gives the jerky boyfriend some slap chop routine, and next thing you know there's a shootout and the boyfriend is dead. Thing is, the boyfriend works for a drug kingpin and had an obscene amount of money in the trunk of his car, and said car has been impounded by the French police in Bucharest. As the drug dealers try to find a way to get the money, Ewan uses her ample feminine wiles to convince Seagal to get it first, which he's all too happy to do. But can he trust her? And what will happen when the drug dealers find out and come for him? It'll probably end in some kind of showdown in an abandoned factory, right?

This is every bit the 2010s Keoni Waxman-directed Seagal actioner you'd expect it to be, only with a twist. The twist is, spoiler alert, Seagal doesn't get the girl. And there's even a hint--only a hint, Seagal wouldn't allow us to have more of that--that the girl really isn't interested in him. How can you not be into Seagal though? Between the chia pet goatee, the fake Cajun accent, and the frequent doubles, what's not to like? But we're at a stage now where I've watched and we've reviewed all of these Seagal DTV efforts--I still haven't reviewed The Onion or Clementine, but you know what I mean, this kind of movie, we've now done them all--and when you find something unique about one, it's hard not to hold onto it like grim death. And that may also explain why this one is kind of harder to get than a lot of the others, Seagal took a look at it after the fact and was like "I don't like how it looks like Jade Ewan wasn't into me." These films seem to have a kind of charm in spite of themselves though, right? And out of the seven films he had released in 2016, this one might have more time with him standing than the other six combined, so there's that too. All that said, this is a fun time killer in that 2010s Seagal DTV kind of way, but you should only go out of your way to watch it if it's the last one for you, like this is for me.

We're now at 39 films for Seagal as we celebrate his 71st birthday. His output has slowed down considerably, but he does have two films in pre-production according to IMDb, so perhaps we'll have more in the near future--plus I can finally do The Onion film to get him into the 40 Club too if neither of those films happen. And if they don't, what is Seagal's legacy? Starred in some of the best late 80s/early 90s actioners, and then went on to have one of the goofiest DTV action careers--and this film is indicative of all of that. There's something fascinating about it all, isn't there? And I think it's for that reason that no one on the site other than Dolph and maybe Willis moves the needle the way Seagal does. Action fans have come for the awesome, classic early stuff, and have stuck around to watch the car wreck that is the newer stuff. And they aren't serious car wrecks either, they're like you hear the squeal of tires outside, then the crash, and then yelling, because some asshole wasn't paying attention and crashed into someone else at an intersection. No one's hurt, and ultimately it's just a matter of cooler heads prevailing and the parties involved trading insurance information, but in the meantime, I just need to look out my window and watch what's happening, which I guess is why I need to come back to these Seagal films time and again, I'm just drawn to the whole alchemy of goofy and former glory.

Why is my one shot of Jade Ewan obscured by this man's back? Because that man's supposed to be Seagal, but, as we know, he never does his reverse shots. The thing with Ewan, is she's stunning, complete with an English accent that would make any American straight male like Seagal putty in her hands, and there's really nothing wrong with that, but as we also know, Seagal can't have it seem like someone is getting over on him. The movie tries to split the baby on that, by having her double-cross him, but him act like he figured on that, but he wanted to help her anyway, or whatever, which of course no one is buying. Before Jade was in this, she was in the British pop group The Sugarbabes, who I remember having a hit here in the States with "Hole in the Head," but it looks like Ewan wasn't in that iteration of the group. She's currently on a Netflix show, Luis Miguel, where she plays Mariah Carey. I haven't seen any of that show, but here I thought she did well as an actor--maybe too well when acting opposite Seagal, or opposite his double, like she was in this scene--so I can imagine she's probably good in that show too.

This is the last of the 9 Keoni Waxman/Steven Seagal films we had to review, so it's almost like the end of something with that, isn't it? From 2009 when he and Seagal did The Keeper, until 2016's Cartels (I believe it was their last collaboration--it was one of these 2016 movies) Waxman almost worked exclusively with Seagal, the one exception being Hunt to Kill with Stone Cold Steven Austin and Gary Daniels. Maybe it's not Scorsese and De Niro, but this collaboration has been one of the most fascinating in DTV history. We always joked that Waxman is the Seagal whisperer, because he seemed to do the best at working around all of the things Seagal expects out of his movies. By the same token, it has to be tiring, and after Cartels in 2016 he hasn't worked with Seagal since. I've been using the word "fascinating" a lot in this review, but these 9 Waxman/Seagal films leave behind a fascinating legacy. The 2010s were about turning the DTV film world into assembly line productions, kicking out cookie-cutter movies with known names on the tin to get as many streams and rentals as possible; but these Waxman/Seagal films, though they were as much a part of starting and establishing that trend, they also give us something a bit more. Between the goofiness and the benign car wreck quality of what Seagal's career has become, there's a sense that Waxman is trying to not only work with Seagal, but also almost highlight the goofiness and benign car wreck quality in his own subtle way. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose, but, again, it's just fascinating.

Finally, with this probably being the last Seagal post on the site for some time, I figured I'd do one final paragraph on him. When I started the site in 2007, Seagal DTV was something I was just getting into, but even then, in a short period between 2003 and 2007, he put out 13 DTV films, all of varying levels of quality. You had absurd moments, like him playing a professor in Out for a Kill and decapitating a man by throwing a samurai sword at him from a second story window; but also there were some pretty solid moments, like The Foreigner and it's Le Samourai vibes. Over the 39 films of his we've reviewed, we've seen Seagal's accent become more Cajun'y, his goatee more chia pet-ish, and his ratio of sitting to standing tilt further to the side of the former. Through it all, Seagal's films always provided fun content for the site, whether the film was good or bad. He's the first of the big names that we're nearing completion on, and as we do the same with Dolph, Van Damme, Gary Daniels, et al, this will free up more posts for names like Fred Williamson who we've been trying to catch up on, or names like Frank Zagarino who we've just gotten started on. Also, while we may not be reviewing much more Seagal here on the site, expect more of him on the DTVC podcast, so if you're not subscribed, make sure you are so you catch all our upcoming episodes.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Right now RedBox streaming is the only way to get this free, and I think that's the way to go. It's really for Seagal completists only, but being a Seagal DTV completist is a lot of fun, so why not?

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268433

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

In the past I used to celebrate my birthday, April Fools' Day, with a post on the site. From 2009 through 2011 I posted movies called "April Fools' Day," and then I guess when I ran out, I stopped worrying about it. But with me posting every Saturday, and with April Fools' falling on a Saturday this year, I thought I'd do something fun to celebrate again. Having exhausted films about April Fools' Day, I decided to post something as a joke, and after this film came up during a recent podcast recording with the guys from Comeuppance, I thought this would be a perfect one to review.

My Dinner with Andre has Wallace Shawn as Wallace, a struggling playwright who goes to a French restaurant after an old friend in the theater world, Andre--played by Andre Gregory--invites him to dinner. Andre has dropped off the radar for a bit, and now he's telling Wallace about all of his experiences. As Wallace listens, he tries to take in everything Andre's telling him, but also respond to some of his revelations with his own weltanschauung. Is an electric blanket a comfort, or an indulgence that prevents one from experiencing life?

I don't really know the answer, but I really enjoyed this. For someone who complains about films not having enough action, or for being over 90 minutes, you wouldn't think I'd enjoy a film like this, but it all really worked for me. I loved Andre's anecdotes. I loved Wallace's responses. I loved the waiter looking askance at them and just wanting to serve them their food, or the rest of the staff closing down the restaurant in the background. I loved the shots of Andre talking and listening to Wallace while his reflection appears in the mirror behind them. The thing is, when I complain about a film having more talking and less action, or being over 90 minutes long, I'm complaining because the talking isn't interesting, or the film has no reason to be longer than 90 minutes. When it's filled with something that interests me, the talking can go on as long as it's sustainable. Roger Ebert in his review made a great point: "In another sense, they are simply carriers for a thrilling drama--a film with more action than 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' What 'My Dinner With Andre' exploits is the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told. Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more..." And I think that's the ultimate success of My Dinner with Andre, that a film with no action can have so much action.

From an April Fools' perspective, it is fun to throw in a My Dinner with Andre in among Andy Sidaris films, PM actioners, and schlock horror with Julie Strain and Brinke Stevens. The thing is though, from a DTV perspective, My Dinner with Andre only has $5,073 listed on IMDb as the box office gross, which, accurate or not, puts it well under my limit for what I consider DTV enough for the site. Granted, it probably has pulled in more money than that, but the independent spirit is still there. What's fascinating is the different ways the craft of film making is undertaken to give us such extremely different results through the same medium. Here we have Louis Malle meticulously crafting scenes so in the mirrors it looks like we're seeing a busy restaurant in the background. Compare that to Spiro Razatos in a 90s PM flick putting together some of the best action scenes, leading to him being one of the best in the business currently. Film can be so many things, and so while this is an April Fools' post because My Dinner with Andre is so different from the kinds of films we post here, in the end it's all still film and there to be enjoyed.

Recently I had a chance to go to a French restaurant when the president of our product at work took us out to one. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in one, but the idea of it, escargot, red wine, a dish like coq au vin, now combined with the idea in this film of sitting there in a large cardigan sweater talking about whatever, just seems so fantastic. I don't know if this movie would have been as endearing to me if I hadn't been to a French restaurant as recently. Like Wallace Shawn though, I don't have a lot of money, so it would be me taking the subway here in Philly--which isn't as bad as what we see in New York in the early 80s, but it's not fantastic either--and probably hoping someone like Andre Gregory or the president of my product would be treating me. Even going alone, sitting at a table, drinking my wine and eating my way through the courses, sounds nice enough. It's another great piece of why this works, the setting of the French restaurant stands out as an oasis amidst the harshness of New York at that time. To complete the picture we have the waiter, Jean Lenauer, who in his expressions and mannerisms, shows us that as much as this is an oasis for the patrons, it never fully is for him, yet he still takes pride in keeping up the appearance of the oasis for everyone else.

With such a prodigious acting career, I was curious if at any point Wallace Shawn had had a film here on the site, but it doesn't look like it. Same with Andre Gregory, but he was closer, having appeared in the Sly Stallone/Wesley Snipes action classic Demolition Man. Louis Malle was someone I was introduced to in high school, when we watched Au Revoir Les Enfants in French class. Later, when I had my Matt, Movie Guy Tumblr, I did a blurb on Elevator to the Gallows, which I watched one Saturday with Mon Oncle and Jules and Jim when I was snowed in. It's a funny thing, Tumblr, I go back to it from time to time, but it's like an old abandoned restaurant or something, posts strewn around like old furniture and cooking equipment, collecting dust, capsules of time. It's not like MySpace though, which no longer exists like it did, Tumblr is there for you to visit, some kind of former digital boom town whose population has shrunk exponentially, but everything remained intact for the rest of the world to experience.

Finally, seeing the Lloyd Kaufman and Troma tags is probably setting off your April Fools' radar, but those are actually legit tags. Louis Malle actually used Lloyd Kaufman and his fledgling Troma production studios to help him with the New York production of the film. Wonders never cease, right? Just three short years later he'd be producing Toxic Avenger. One of the things I realized about the Lloyd Kaufman tag: I tagged him for his appearance in Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, but never went back and tagged the Troma films he was involved in. With that done, he now has 10 tags on the site, though the Troma film with the most views on the site, Buttcrack, is the only one we've covered that he wasn't credited on. So he was credited on My Dinner with Andre, but not Buttcrack. Again, wonders never cease.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get My Dinner with Andre on HBOMax, or you can buy the Criterion DVD. It's a unique film, one that I really enjoyed, but you may not, and that's okay too. Either way, happy April Fools' Day everyone!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!