Dead Man

For many years, if you asked me who my favorite actor was, I would immediately answer "Johnny Depp."  To date, I have seen 37 of his 42 films, and I have enjoyed most of them.  With the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, though, I have felt that Depp's roles have been significantly tamer than the glorious weirdness that marked his career from 1990-1998.  Just as I was starting to question whether or not Depp was still my favorite, I noticed that Dead Man was LAMB's Movie of the Month.  That was a good enough reason for me to revisit this film for the first time in fifteen years.

Dead Man is the story of Bill Blake (Johnny Depp), an accountant from Cleveland who has gone West to get over heartbreak and seize a business opportunity.  It turns out that the West he winds up in is significantly further West than he probably had anticipated; his train started with men in suits and well-dressed women, but as the miles wore on, the train car became populated with gruff drunkards with wild hair, animal skins, and lots and lots of guns. 

Blake's stop is at the very end of the line, in a town called Machine.  After taking in the sights (a horse pissing in the street, Gibby Haynes receiving oral sex in an alley, etc.), he heads to work.  Unfortunately, it took Blake too long to make the trip; since he received the letter guaranteeing his employment in Machine, another man has been hired for the post.  Blake tries to protest, but it does little good against his rough would-be employer, John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum).

You're not going to beat two barrels of Mitchum

Without enough money to return home, Blake is at a loss.  He manages to postpone making any real decisions when he befriends (in the Biblical sense) Thel (Mili Avital).  In their post-coital bliss, Thel's ex-boyfriend, Charlie Dickinson (Gabriel Byrne) walks in; he shoots at Blake, the bullet goes through Thel and lodges in Blake's chest, and Blake shoots Charlie in the neck.  Gravely wounded, Blake manages to grab his belongings, steals a horse, and wakes up lost in the woods with a fat Indian poking his wound with a knife. 

Not the ideal wake-up call

It's not as bad as you might think.  Well, maybe it is.  The Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer) was trying to dig out the bullet (which was a pleasant surprise for Bill), but it is too close to his heart (which is bad news for Bill).  Blake is essentially living on borrowed time.  Meanwhile, John Dickinson hires a trio of murderous thugs to bring Blake back, alive or (preferably) dead and has wanted posters put up all around, offering a large cash reward.  What is an accountant to do in the wild, with every armed man in the West looking to kill him for money?  What do you do when you are a [clever use of the movie title]?

You cry lighting?

Dead Man was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, and is the only film I have seen of his to date.  I was a little surprised by that, so if you have any Jarmusch recommendations, please leave me a comment.  If there is only one thing you can say about Dead Man, it is that it is definitely stylized.  The entire film is in black-and-white.  The passage of time is shown only through scenes fading to black, sometimes after only a few moments.  It has a very atypical score for a Western; Neil Young provides a sparse soundtrack, consisting almost entirely of harsh and abrupt electric guitar riffs.  This is not the Wild West from classic Hollywood Westerns, where you go West to find freedom and start anew.  Jarmusch's West is surreal and nightmarish.  I loved the direction in this film, and I thought the actors were all handled quite well.  As for the writing...well, I'll come back to that later.

The acting in Dead Man is good, although most of the surprisingly deep supporting cast is limited to shallow bit parts.  Johnny Depp is good as the perpetually out-of-his-depth Blake; what I liked best about his portrayal was just how much calmer and worldly Blake got as he approached death.  Gary Farmer was also very enjoyable as Blake's companion, Nobody.  The last film I watched that had a prominent Native American role in it was Windtalkers, so it was nice to see an ethnic character that wasn't a stereotype.  Lance Henriksen was good as a truly nasty killer, but he was overshadowed by Michael Wincott's gravel-voiced (and often surprisingly funny) chatterbox; Eugene Byrd was fine as the third hired killer, but he definitely had the least developed character in the bunch. 

If nothing else, Westerns typically deliver mean-looking bad guys

Robert Mitchum was pretty awesome as an elderly bad-ass in his few moments onscreen.  I also enjoyed Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris, and Iggy Pop as a bizarre trio of fur-traders.

Depp's paper rose is discussed in detail here.  Thankfully, Pop's dress and bonnet are not

The rest of the noteworthy cast (including Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, and Alfred Molina) are certainly adequate, but their appearances generate more of a "is that who I think it is?" reaction than a "what a great performance!"

Dead Man is a dark, trippy, surreal and surprisingly funny Western.  It is sometimes referred to as an Acid Western, following the example of non-traditional Westerns from the 60s and 70s and turning the sense of dread from films like Ride in the Whirlwind into an extended nightmare.  The dialogue is crisp and clever, and the fact that the various Native Americans languages were not subtitled or translated only emphasized Blake's outsider status.  The first time I saw this movie, I was oblivious to William Blake, but now that I'm somewhat familiar with his work, I found Nobody's references and plan far more amusing and less random.  As much as I enjoyed most of Jarmusch's writing in Dead Man, I have one major complaint.  The story just seems to go on and on.  Don't get me wrong --- I enjoyed the film and the two hour running time wasn't excessive.  The story just didn't have much structure.  Blake heads West, gets shot and then another hour and a half go by.  As an exercise in style and fun writing, Dead Man is great, but it is lacking a story that makes you care.  Still, good performances, enjoyable writing and interesting direction makes this better than most movies, even if it is imperfect.

The Ward

In 2001, John Carpenter directed Ghosts of Mars, and it was pretty terrible.  It was so bad that, even with Ice Cube, Jason Statham, and Pam Grier in the cast, the movie never even approached being an entertainingly bad action movie.  In recent years, Carpenter has let others remake his films (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, etc.), but hasn't written or directed anything for the big screen in a long time.  The Ward is his first movie in ten years.  Was it worth the wait?  The answer to that question is an emphatic "no."

Ghost of Mars The Ward

Kristen (Amber Heard) was found alone in a nightgown, with no memory, in front of a farmhouse that she burned down by local police.  What do you do with a half-dressed pyromaniac, suffering from amnesia?  Throw her in the looney bin, of course! 

Not crazy enough to smudge her makeup, though

Kristen is placed in The Ward, which is apparently a specialized psychiatric wing that focuses solely on (mostly) attractive women in their twenties.  Note to self: if I ever open a psychiatric care facility, take only model-quality patients.  There are only a few (four!) other girls in The Ward, which seems both impractical and unlikely; granted, the film does take place in 1966, but even The Snake Pit had more patients than this.  Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) is the local mean girl, Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca) is the nice girl, Zoey (Laura-Leigh) acts like a frightened child, and Emily (Mamie Gummer) acts like a crazy person.

Why so serious?

Naturally, Kristen wants to escape this overcrowded hell hole, because amnesia and pyromania are not symptoms of mental illness.  She tries and fails, repeatedly.  In the process, she encounters what appears to be a ghost in The Ward.

Surprisingly, ghosts rarely have tangled hair.  Why is that?

No one seems surprised to hear her allegations, but no one will talk to her about it.  But then, the girls start disappearing one by one, victims of the ghost.  Why is this ghost killing insane women?  Why does she have it out for Kristen, who couldn't have possibly done anything wrong to the ghost?  The answer is underwhelming.

My biggest problem with The Ward was the odd nature of the ghost.  I suppose you can explain everything away with the twist ending, but...ugh...I don't want to.  The Ward is set up as a haunting story.  Something bad has happened, and a ghost is terrorizing these girls.  Simple enough.  The ghost seems to have the ability to show up anywhere, at any time.  And yet, ghost attacks are staggered over several days.  And the ghost obviously has a physical presence, since it snatches Kristen's blanket (what a bitch!), leaves behind a charm bracelet, and chokes, stabs, slices, and electrocutes different girls. 

Strapped in by a ghost who understands electrical equipment

What the hell kind of ghost is this?  If it wasn't for the creepy face and the teleporting, I would assume that the ghost was a real person.  And how do you defeat this killer ghost?  SPOILER ALERT: With a freakin' axe to the chest.  Of course that works; I've always felt that Ghostbusters was exaggerating the problem.  Yes, there is a twist that (kind of) explains these things (sort of), but the simple fact that no one in the movie notices how strange any of this is bugs the crap out of me.  All it would take is a couple of lines commenting about how ghosts don't steal blankets or ghosts don't usually have murders covered up by hospitals , but the audience isn't even given that much.

The acting in The Ward is not fantastic, but it is adequate for this story.  Amber Heard is decent as the main girl (the one with common sense), Danielle Panabaker is mediocre as a snotty stereotype, and Laura-Leigh overacted as the timid gal with a childish mentality.  Lyndsy Fonseca's character was a little less basic, and I thought she was fine as the friendly polite girl.  Oddly enough, Heard, Panabaker, and Fonseca played crazy characters that didn't look or act crazy at all.

Bitchy?  Maybe.  Crazy?  No.

Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, was given the only role that required someone to act crazy.  I'm not sure how much I liked her.  Yes, she acted crazy, and yes, she was annoying.  It's not the worst crazy performance I have seen, but it sticks out here because the "crazy" women tend to act very normally.  Jared Harris isn't very impressive as the doctor masterminding the plot, but I will give him credit for seeming appropriately sympathetic and secretive.  None of the acting is particularly noteworthy, but none of it is awful.  After all, this is a John Carpenter film, and his stories are usually the focus.

I was very disappointed with John Carpenter's writing and direction.   I have nothing against plot twists, but The Ward's twist effectively negates any investment the audience might have made in the characters.  This twist was eerily (and unfortunately) close to the twist in Identity, and that twist suuuuuuucks.  If the script was tighter, the twist may have been revelatory, but it wound up simply feeling manipulative.  As for Carpenter's direction, his pacing was off from the start.  The only scares come in the form of "the audience sees something behind a character" startles, and they weren't even effective most of the time.  Thanks to the ridiculous story (which he wrote), the actors were given an excuse to portray their characters as shallow cliches, which makes this film even less fun to watch.  The Ward is just an all-around miss from a master craftsman that should have known better.

Ten years after his (arguably) worst film, John Carpenter returned with a vengeance.  Unfortunately, not in a good way.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot, given the cast, but I had hoped for a decent thriller or some classic Carpenter horror.  Instead, I was bored and had my intelligence insulted.

Other things that bothered me in The Ward:

• Apparently, the same nurse and patient-wrangler-guy work 24-7, and do not have any relief shifts.
• If the ghost can teleport, why does it take her so long to kill people?  Yes, the twist kind of explains it, but it bothers me that no one else asked.
• Why is Kristen the only one clever enough to escape from her room at night?  It took her, like, ten minutes to craft an escape.  None of the others have come up with anything after presumably months in the hospital?
• Why is the ghost's face disfigured?  That doesn't match the way she died whatsoever.