The Other Joel Schumacher
(Note: This was actually intended for my own blog, but I was hoping to invite some discussion on this subject.)
Filmmaker Joel Schumacher will best be remembered as the man who drove the Batman series off a cliff with rubber nipples and enough gay innuendo to make the cast of Brokeback Mountain blush. I thought about him the other day when I reflected on how ironic it was that a gay activist was resurrecting the Superman franchise considering that a gay director had killed the Batman franchise.
Oddly enough, while I began the train of thought with the idea of ridiculing Schumacher, I found myself thinking that he's actually made a few pretty good movies.
Case in point: 2003's Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell, was easily one of the more imaginative thrillers I've seen in a while. It's pretty remarkable considering that the vast majority of its running time is a series of close ups and long shots of a man in a phone booth. Colin Farrell has to make the audience believe that he can be held hostage by a person on a phone who claims to have a rifle pointed at his head, and thanks to some finely textured acting, and the voice of Kiefer Sutherland tingling with cold menace, he succeeds magnificently. It was taut, riveting storytelling, and while credit must surely go to Larry Cohen for such an interesting concept, a truly incompetent director could have thrown it all away. Oddly enough, it's not the kind of movie you really want to see twice, but if it was a book it would be a real page-turner; one cannot help but wonder, for the entire 80 or so minutes, how the whole thing is going to end.
The movie that actually launched Colin Farrell's North American career is another fine example. Tigerland (2000) could have easily been just another Vietnam movie, considering there had already been a few dozen of them, but rather than try to ape the schmaltz of Stone (in Platoon) or the stark brutality of Stanley Kubrick (in Full Metal Jacket), Schumacher went for a story on a smaller, less dramatic scale. It takes place in a training camp in Texas (I think) and focuses on a group of young soldiers in training. The director spares us the gore of Vietnam, which has already been done to death (although the US government doesn't seem to have learned a damned thing). There is a lovely, rough and tumble feel to the storytelling which feels part documentary, part maverick, low budget filmmaker. It feels real, even though Farrell's fake American accent gets occasionally grating.
I haven't seen St. Elmo's Fire (1985), but I haven't heard anyone reviling it as one of the worst movies of its time. In fact, it is spoken of as one of the films that launched the careers of many of the young stars that were in it, also known as the Brat Pack.
My favorite example, however, is a much earlier film than either of the Farrell flicks, but somewhat later than St. Elmo's Fire.
Falling Down (1993) starring Michael Douglas, has to be the ultimate cathartic fantasy.I don't know of any movie before or since that has more succinctly embodied all of the frustrations of the average working joe. It's basically about a man who has been going through the motions of life for years upon years, taking all of the shit that life has to shovel, until he just snaps. There is some glorious, vicarious wish fulfillment in seeing the thoroughly de-glamorized Michael Douglas beat up street punks, give an asshole geriatric golfer a heart attack, and basically take a good, hard kick at the society that has been screwing him his whole life. This movie has even inspired similar stories in other media, specifically comic books, such as Gerry Alanguilan's internationally acclaimed graphic novel Wasted (1998 or so) and Mark Millar's Wanted (2003). Falling Down is a truly memorable movie for all the right reasons, and you can tell that the stellar cast of Douglas and Robert Duvall seem to be having a heck of a time. As strange as it may seem, JOEL SCHUMACHER MADE THIS MOVIE.
Is there a rule of thumb to be found here? Well, as far as I can tell, Schumacher is at his best doing low-budget films with down to earth characters. Give him carte blanche to tell fantastical, larger-than-life stories and we get disasters like his Batman films or The Phantom of the Opera (though I did like the songs).
I leave you with a question: what other generally reviled director has, on a few occasions, shown patches of brilliance that seem largely overlooked by the mainstream?
Filmmaker Joel Schumacher will best be remembered as the man who drove the Batman series off a cliff with rubber nipples and enough gay innuendo to make the cast of Brokeback Mountain blush. I thought about him the other day when I reflected on how ironic it was that a gay activist was resurrecting the Superman franchise considering that a gay director had killed the Batman franchise.
Oddly enough, while I began the train of thought with the idea of ridiculing Schumacher, I found myself thinking that he's actually made a few pretty good movies.
Case in point: 2003's Phone Booth, starring Colin Farrell, was easily one of the more imaginative thrillers I've seen in a while. It's pretty remarkable considering that the vast majority of its running time is a series of close ups and long shots of a man in a phone booth. Colin Farrell has to make the audience believe that he can be held hostage by a person on a phone who claims to have a rifle pointed at his head, and thanks to some finely textured acting, and the voice of Kiefer Sutherland tingling with cold menace, he succeeds magnificently. It was taut, riveting storytelling, and while credit must surely go to Larry Cohen for such an interesting concept, a truly incompetent director could have thrown it all away. Oddly enough, it's not the kind of movie you really want to see twice, but if it was a book it would be a real page-turner; one cannot help but wonder, for the entire 80 or so minutes, how the whole thing is going to end.
The movie that actually launched Colin Farrell's North American career is another fine example. Tigerland (2000) could have easily been just another Vietnam movie, considering there had already been a few dozen of them, but rather than try to ape the schmaltz of Stone (in Platoon) or the stark brutality of Stanley Kubrick (in Full Metal Jacket), Schumacher went for a story on a smaller, less dramatic scale. It takes place in a training camp in Texas (I think) and focuses on a group of young soldiers in training. The director spares us the gore of Vietnam, which has already been done to death (although the US government doesn't seem to have learned a damned thing). There is a lovely, rough and tumble feel to the storytelling which feels part documentary, part maverick, low budget filmmaker. It feels real, even though Farrell's fake American accent gets occasionally grating.
I haven't seen St. Elmo's Fire (1985), but I haven't heard anyone reviling it as one of the worst movies of its time. In fact, it is spoken of as one of the films that launched the careers of many of the young stars that were in it, also known as the Brat Pack.
My favorite example, however, is a much earlier film than either of the Farrell flicks, but somewhat later than St. Elmo's Fire.
Falling Down (1993) starring Michael Douglas, has to be the ultimate cathartic fantasy.I don't know of any movie before or since that has more succinctly embodied all of the frustrations of the average working joe. It's basically about a man who has been going through the motions of life for years upon years, taking all of the shit that life has to shovel, until he just snaps. There is some glorious, vicarious wish fulfillment in seeing the thoroughly de-glamorized Michael Douglas beat up street punks, give an asshole geriatric golfer a heart attack, and basically take a good, hard kick at the society that has been screwing him his whole life. This movie has even inspired similar stories in other media, specifically comic books, such as Gerry Alanguilan's internationally acclaimed graphic novel Wasted (1998 or so) and Mark Millar's Wanted (2003). Falling Down is a truly memorable movie for all the right reasons, and you can tell that the stellar cast of Douglas and Robert Duvall seem to be having a heck of a time. As strange as it may seem, JOEL SCHUMACHER MADE THIS MOVIE.
Is there a rule of thumb to be found here? Well, as far as I can tell, Schumacher is at his best doing low-budget films with down to earth characters. Give him carte blanche to tell fantastical, larger-than-life stories and we get disasters like his Batman films or The Phantom of the Opera (though I did like the songs).
I leave you with a question: what other generally reviled director has, on a few occasions, shown patches of brilliance that seem largely overlooked by the mainstream?
posted by Jim Arroyo at 5:02 PM
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