Cimino's western epic, loosely based on the Johnson County War of the 1890s between land barons and European immigrants, is the poster child for movie industry excess and hubris that killed the wild dream of the New Hollywood era in one fell swoop. Its troubled production and colossal financial failure, as well as the director's tyrannicidal on-set behaviour, have become the stuff of legends, but what is the actual film like? At the time it was considered one of the worst films ever made, but critics have been kinder to it in recent years, many even hailing the 2012 director's cut as a recovered masterpiece. I don't really share either opinion. This is neither a terrible movie nor a great one. Sure, it has some memorable sequences and looks amazing, but looks aren't everything. When you push past all the myth-making that arose around it, Heaven's Gate is just a dull and plodding affair, littered with forgettable characters played by actors who all look like they'd rather be as far away from Michael Cimino as possible.
Rating: ⭐⭐
A crew of skilled (but not exactly smart) thieves have to pull off multiple heists (and one prison break) when the diamond they were originally hired to steal keeps slipping through their fingers. You'd think a breezy heist movie starring Robert Redford at his peak, written by William Goldman (adapting the book by Donald E. Westlake), and from the director of Bullitt would be a guaranteed hit. And yet this was a big flop on release and remains overlooked even to this day, which is just baffling to me because this is a great film. Terrific cast, a cracking Goldman script, and exceptional direction, just can't imagine why this has never really found itself a wider audience. It does kinda stumbles with the last heist, which is a little too far-fetched even for this type of film, but that delightful final tracking shot more than makes up for it.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Master thief Eddie 'Hudson Hawk' Hawkins (Bruce Willis) is fresh out of prison and desperate for a cappuccino, but before he can enjoy it he's blackmailed into robbing an auction house, which turns out to be part of an unhinged scheme by eccentric rogue CIA agents named after candy bars and an OTT billionaire bent on world domination to find clues to Leonardo da Vinci's gold making machine. This is one of those infamous flops, where whole books have been written about everything that went incredibly wrong while making it. No Hollywood ego has produced a vanity project as fever brained as Willis did when he dreamt up Hudson Hawk with old bar buddy Robert Kraft (no, not that one). A bonkers live action Looney Tunes that revels in its own absurdity. This is a film I really should love, it's exactly the kind of unhinged craziness I look for in a blockbuster, but it's just so unbearably smug and unfunny, a cringy, crumbling monument to the leading man's entire charming asshole persona that doesn't even have the decency to at least be a fun bad movie.
Rating: ⭐
One of the reasons films flop is because producers get so spooked by poor test screenings they decide the only way to save a film is to spend even more money on extensive reshoots and re-edits, which often makes the threshold for success too high for the film to ever reach. That's what happened with The 13th Warrior. Based on the book by Michael Crichton, the film mixes the historical northern journey of Ahmad ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas, a problematic casting, but still better than the original choice of Michael Keaton) with a reworking of the legend of Beowulf. McTiernan's original cut was 127 minutes, but jittery producers let Crichton basically take over as director to oversee reshoots and he started by hacking the runtime down to 108 minutes. The finished film mostly holds together well — I really like the fire worm attack and the cave raid — but it's painfully obvious at times that huge chunks are missing (what happened to the scheming prince?). This is most noticeable in the first quarter, which rushes through Ahmed's exile and journey north so quickly he ends up mastering the northmen's language in one night. Few of the titular warriors get any personality or development. Most are just canon fodder and one seems to have been mostly cut from the film, always lingering around the edge of scenes, never doing or saying anything.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Spatio-temporal agents Valerian and Laureline (Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne) are dispatched to the massive multi-cultural space station Alpha, where a mysterious force is threatening the safety of the station. One of the problems with adapting a work like Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières' Valerian and Laureline is that the comics were so influential (Lucas lifted a lot for Star Wars) that what was once trailblazing about them before can now feel like a trope. Of course, it is easy to overcome that by making an exciting film with fun performances and some visual flair, but Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has none of those things. The plot is a scattered slog, all the main roles are badly miscast, and the visuals are flat and uninteresting. There's no point in wasting all that money on CGI to bring these worlds to life if you're just going to shoot the whole thing with less creativity than a 90s sitcom director.
Rating: ⭐
The tale of how outlaw Jesse James (Brad Pitt) was betrayed and murdered by his fellow gang member Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). Remains a crime that it took fourteen nominations before Roger Deakins finally won an Oscar. Out of all the unjust snubs he suffered over the years, this one annoys me the most. The train robbery alone should've netted him every award on the planet. It is just one of the most stunning sequences ever put on screen. Along with the Nick Cave and Warren Ellis score, Deakins' cinematography is the best thing about Dominik's meditative western. Hell, I'd go as far to say they are all that is good about Dominik's meditative western. I'm not surprised this struggled to make any money when it first came out. Westerns have very little appeal these days, especially lengthy ones with titles that are a mouthful. Also doesn't help if the film is slow and dull and gives you little reason to become invested in any of the people in it.
Rating: ⭐⭐
After a heated argument on their anniversary, Las Vegas couple Hank and Frannie (Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr) separate and seek out new love. No round up of expensive flops would be complete without at least one film by Francis Ford Coppola. Since his 70s heyday, his entire filmography has been littered with costly failures, none more damaging than this dreamy romantic musical. Intended to be a modest production after the expensive nightmare that was the making of Apocalypse Now, the budget swelled when Coppola decided to shoot the entire thing on elaborate sets at his new studio. Like other films I've mentioned, this one looks spectacular. Coppola was really flexing his filmmaking muscles here, taking full advantage of the things you can do when you have complete control over the environment you're filming in. The real Las Vegas has just never looked as sublime as Coppola's fake one. Unfortunately for him (and his bank balance), the film's ambition far exceeded its appeal. This was such a disaster at the box office that it bankrupted his studio, leaving him in so much debt he had to phone in another Godfather movie to get out of it. That might've all been worth it if One from the Heart had at least ended up being something truly special. Despite being a great technical showcase, this is a so-so as a musical and an almost complete failure as a love story with an ending that just left me screaming at the screen in frustration.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
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