Communion (Phillipe Mora, 1989)
Walken plays: Whitley Strieber -
Friday 20 May 2016
Monday 16 May 2016
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990)
Walken plays: Robert - Congenial host, amateur photographer, patriarchal creepbag
Synopsis: The Comfort of Strangers gives you the sense of what it would be like to observe Travis Bickle from Schrader's Taxi Driver from the outside, only from the perspective of others just as unhappy and almost as weird, albeit more passable as normal. Penned by the truly impressive one-two punch of Atonement's Ian McEwan (novel) and Harold Pinter (screenplay), it's a haunting, eerie tale of lurid sexuality and obsession, the fallout of familial trauma, and the noxiously addictive nature thereof to bystanders who may not be as innocent as they seem. A young English couple, Mary and Colin (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), travel to Venice to patch up their listless relationship and contemplate marriage, but tension lies thicker than romance. But when they bump into Robert (Walken), a debonair but distinctly odd local, who takes them to his nearby bar for wine and conversation, things take a turn. After a drunken night of getting lost and sleeping in the street, their paths again cross with Robert, who insists on bringing them to his lavish Venetian mansion for rest and dinner. There, they meet Robert's Canadian wife Caroline (Helen Mirren), who immediately admits to watching them as they sleep, nude. The dinner is as unsettling as you'd expect, as Robert and Caroline grow subtly more predatorial...yet, once they leave, Mary and Colin are suddenly sexually ravenous for one another. Nor, in spite of the danger signals, can they seem to resist visiting Robert and Caroline one last time. The outcome is just as grotesquely disastrous as you'd expect...
Walken plays: Robert - Congenial host, amateur photographer, patriarchal creepbag
Synopsis: The Comfort of Strangers gives you the sense of what it would be like to observe Travis Bickle from Schrader's Taxi Driver from the outside, only from the perspective of others just as unhappy and almost as weird, albeit more passable as normal. Penned by the truly impressive one-two punch of Atonement's Ian McEwan (novel) and Harold Pinter (screenplay), it's a haunting, eerie tale of lurid sexuality and obsession, the fallout of familial trauma, and the noxiously addictive nature thereof to bystanders who may not be as innocent as they seem. A young English couple, Mary and Colin (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), travel to Venice to patch up their listless relationship and contemplate marriage, but tension lies thicker than romance. But when they bump into Robert (Walken), a debonair but distinctly odd local, who takes them to his nearby bar for wine and conversation, things take a turn. After a drunken night of getting lost and sleeping in the street, their paths again cross with Robert, who insists on bringing them to his lavish Venetian mansion for rest and dinner. There, they meet Robert's Canadian wife Caroline (Helen Mirren), who immediately admits to watching them as they sleep, nude. The dinner is as unsettling as you'd expect, as Robert and Caroline grow subtly more predatorial...yet, once they leave, Mary and Colin are suddenly sexually ravenous for one another. Nor, in spite of the danger signals, can they seem to resist visiting Robert and Caroline one last time. The outcome is just as grotesquely disastrous as you'd expect...
Click (2006)
Walken plays: Morty - The Angel of Death works at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (because Adam Sandler)
Synopsis:
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999)
Synopsis:
Walken plays: The Hessian Horseman - fanged, snarling, but Headless no more! 
Synopsis:
Thursday 12 May 2016
Eddie the Eagle (2016)
Eddie the Eagle (Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Synopsis: Michael 'Eddie' Edwards (Taron Egerton) really really wants to compete in the Olympics. Everyone else - family, professionals, bystanders - really really doesn't want him to, and for good reason. And yet, in a story so daft it had to be true, our bespectacled hero stumbles and crashes his way through a succession of possible sports, before settling on ski jumping - one of the most dangerous - and, frankly, stupid - winter Olympic sports. Naturally, guided only by his plucky, borderline psychotic perseverance, and his reluctant, bedraggled, drunken coach (Hugh Jackman), Eddie fumbles his way into the 1988 Calgary Olympics, as his silly post-jump antics win the heart of his nation, and he accomplishes the most triumphant Olympic goal imaginable: managing to not kill himself. Director Fletcher pours on the cheese like there's no tomorrow, but it's a pleasantly chipper little tale in spite of its howlingly by-the-numbers execution. There are nods aplenty to Cool Runnings (which, amazingly, took place during the same Olympics that year, in what must have been the most batshit year for underdogs in Olympic history), and it's an appropriate tonal reference point, given some life through its gaggle of pump-up 80s tunes. And yes, there is a training montage set to Hall 'n Oates. You know you want it.
Walken's Warren Sharp is a glorified cameo, mostly restricted to images in old photographs and an autobiography book cover, as well as a spectacularly awkward excerpt of narration. Still, his presence is felt throughout - as Jackman's former coach, he casts an imposing spectre of discipline, finger waggling, and crushed dreams throughout. You wouldn't be surprised to see him cast (for the third time!) as the angel of death here, if the movie took any such illustrious artistic chances. By the time Sharp actually pops up in the flesh, in a fleeting, ominous TV interview, and in a gooey climactic emotional reconciliation locker room visit, it's pretty clear that the part coasts by on Walken's star identity, and that he doesn't have to do much other than show up. Still, he accentuates Eddie's post-jump emotional high well, capably conveying the struggle of a man fighting through years of emotion to finally make up with his prodigal son, and his heartfelt hug with Jackman is so cathartic it makes it all worth the while. He even works in the tiniest flourish of illustrious Walken weirdness by presumptuously offering to sign Eddie's copy of his autobiography. Cheeky bastard.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Only the most banal inspirational/foreboding dialogue here, but I do enjoy the fact that when he arrives in the locker room to congratulate Eddie for surviving his record highest jump, he only seems to want to talk about his own book.
DOES HE DANCE: Nope. Hell, he barely moves beyond a two-dimensional image.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 2/10 cowbells. Walken could have done this easy cameo in his sleep, but his unique ability to be simultaneously charming and hugely creepy does lend Sharp the appropriate gravitas. If anything, Hugh Jackman gets to shoulder a lot of the charismatic oddness we'd normally seek out Walken for here, including some spectacularly unconvincing drunk caterwauling, and simulating an orgasm in a close-up facing the camera, which he ends by nearly operatically bellowing "BO DEREK." In short, Walken's as pleasant as the movie itself, but watching Eddie the Eagle for him alone (as I did...) isn't that rewarding for any but the most tenaciously devoted Walken followers.
Walken plays: Warren Sharp - Savvy ski-jumper, crusty coach
Synopsis: Michael 'Eddie' Edwards (Taron Egerton) really really wants to compete in the Olympics. Everyone else - family, professionals, bystanders - really really doesn't want him to, and for good reason. And yet, in a story so daft it had to be true, our bespectacled hero stumbles and crashes his way through a succession of possible sports, before settling on ski jumping - one of the most dangerous - and, frankly, stupid - winter Olympic sports. Naturally, guided only by his plucky, borderline psychotic perseverance, and his reluctant, bedraggled, drunken coach (Hugh Jackman), Eddie fumbles his way into the 1988 Calgary Olympics, as his silly post-jump antics win the heart of his nation, and he accomplishes the most triumphant Olympic goal imaginable: managing to not kill himself. Director Fletcher pours on the cheese like there's no tomorrow, but it's a pleasantly chipper little tale in spite of its howlingly by-the-numbers execution. There are nods aplenty to Cool Runnings (which, amazingly, took place during the same Olympics that year, in what must have been the most batshit year for underdogs in Olympic history), and it's an appropriate tonal reference point, given some life through its gaggle of pump-up 80s tunes. And yes, there is a training montage set to Hall 'n Oates. You know you want it.
Walken's Warren Sharp is a glorified cameo, mostly restricted to images in old photographs and an autobiography book cover, as well as a spectacularly awkward excerpt of narration. Still, his presence is felt throughout - as Jackman's former coach, he casts an imposing spectre of discipline, finger waggling, and crushed dreams throughout. You wouldn't be surprised to see him cast (for the third time!) as the angel of death here, if the movie took any such illustrious artistic chances. By the time Sharp actually pops up in the flesh, in a fleeting, ominous TV interview, and in a gooey climactic emotional reconciliation locker room visit, it's pretty clear that the part coasts by on Walken's star identity, and that he doesn't have to do much other than show up. Still, he accentuates Eddie's post-jump emotional high well, capably conveying the struggle of a man fighting through years of emotion to finally make up with his prodigal son, and his heartfelt hug with Jackman is so cathartic it makes it all worth the while. He even works in the tiniest flourish of illustrious Walken weirdness by presumptuously offering to sign Eddie's copy of his autobiography. Cheeky bastard.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Only the most banal inspirational/foreboding dialogue here, but I do enjoy the fact that when he arrives in the locker room to congratulate Eddie for surviving his record highest jump, he only seems to want to talk about his own book.
DOES HE DANCE: Nope. Hell, he barely moves beyond a two-dimensional image.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 2/10 cowbells. Walken could have done this easy cameo in his sleep, but his unique ability to be simultaneously charming and hugely creepy does lend Sharp the appropriate gravitas. If anything, Hugh Jackman gets to shoulder a lot of the charismatic oddness we'd normally seek out Walken for here, including some spectacularly unconvincing drunk caterwauling, and simulating an orgasm in a close-up facing the camera, which he ends by nearly operatically bellowing "BO DEREK." In short, Walken's as pleasant as the movie itself, but watching Eddie the Eagle for him alone (as I did...) isn't that rewarding for any but the most tenaciously devoted Walken followers.
Monday 9 May 2016
At Close Range (1986)
At Close Range (James Foley, 1986)
Walken plays: Brad Whitewood Sr. - Tractor thief, Filicidal rapist, all-around awful person
Synopsis: The unholy love-child of The Godfather era's homespun crime drama and other 80s 'broken family, coming of age' ballads like Rumble Fish and Stand By Me, At Close Range is certainly one of the grimmer moments in Walken's career. Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) is already a low level hood, stewing around farmland Pennsylvania and nearly at the bursting point, before being abruptly reintroduced to his estranged criminal father, Brad Sr. (Walken). Brad Jr. is initially intoxicated by his father's lifestyle of used car hustling and larger-scale machinery theft. But, inevitably, second thoughts start to bubble up after his brother (Chris Penn) and girlfriend (Mary Stuart Masterson) are endangered after he's made accessory to a murder - not to mention that the FBI encroaching on the Whitewoods' action leads to Brad Sr. taking some pretty drastic steps in witness elimination. Fun fact: director James Foley went on to helm the stupendous Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), and...um... the two sequels to 50 Shades of Grey. Womp womp.
Playing a part turned down by Robert De Niro for being "too dark" (yikes...), Walken's Brad Whitewood is truly bad news from the moment his moustache first inauspiciously struts onscreen. That said, Walken is ingenious enough to play the long game here, luring us, for over half the movie, into thinking that maybe, maybe, he isn't all that bad. Sure, he's a seedy hustler and perennial drinker, and there's that omnipresent murderous glint in his eye, particularly when cornered by a former gang member. His sparking interplay with 26 year-old Sean Penn, who's giving 110% as a scene partner, makes their scenes crackle with palpable tension. But gosh darn it, maybe, maybe, he does just want to bond with his sons through a bunch of criminal hijinx. Would that really be too much to ask for...?
Yes. It absolutely would. The second Whitewood's shadowy, Deep Throat-style informant (David Strathairn, in a shadowy cameo) lets him know that the FBI are on his tail, Walken's former ballsy charisma snaps away like a bear trap. Suddenly, we're watching him tearing around a corn field in his car, bellowing like a maniac. Then, when his jokey charisma returns, it's with an unmistakable edge of visceral threat. And then, before you can say 'How much Whitewood could a Whitewoodchuck chuck,' BOOM: he's in a hotel room vindictively raping his son's girlfriend. Next scene: BOOM - he's shot his younger son in cold blood, for fear of him informing to the FBI. Are we still laughing now?
I often refer to Walken as a performer rather than an actor (a term he uses himself, amidst a confession that he still sees himself as a dancer rather than an actor who's been faking it all these years). His unique style is unpredictable and eminently watchable, but always with a veneer of playful mediation - he may play creepy or intimidating, but there's always a Vaudevillian wink that, 'don't worry, it's all part of the act,' and there's a comfort to that. It's only in his most live wire performances - The Deer Hunter, and, yes, At Close Range - that he loses that, and fully commits to the immersive darkness of his legendary psychopaths. The year after Max Zorin guffawed while cheerfully gunning down his henchmen, here we have Walken disappearing into the skin of a real, gruesomely convincing villain. And he is terrifyingly convincing.
Wacky Walken dialogue: He gets a cracking monologue about coyotes, but it's a bit too loaded with the subtext of HE'S ABOUT TO MURDER HIS SON for the word 'wacky' to apply. A couple of his earlier lines blend zany with sinister a bit more seamlessly:
Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. The definitive performance to turn to when justifying that, yes, Walken is sometime as terrifying as the aura he projects, At Close Range showcases his best emotional glissando from affable and charming to unbelievably sadistic. There's some of his usual weirdness, but no artifice here, so it bleeds into only make Whitewood seem all the more strung-out and scarily unpredictable. Still, terrific as he is, watching Walken cash in on the psychopathic aura he's cultivated throughout his career, sexual violence and all: well, let's just say that I don't wike it.
Walken plays: Brad Whitewood Sr. - Tractor thief, Filicidal rapist, all-around awful person
Synopsis: The unholy love-child of The Godfather era's homespun crime drama and other 80s 'broken family, coming of age' ballads like Rumble Fish and Stand By Me, At Close Range is certainly one of the grimmer moments in Walken's career. Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) is already a low level hood, stewing around farmland Pennsylvania and nearly at the bursting point, before being abruptly reintroduced to his estranged criminal father, Brad Sr. (Walken). Brad Jr. is initially intoxicated by his father's lifestyle of used car hustling and larger-scale machinery theft. But, inevitably, second thoughts start to bubble up after his brother (Chris Penn) and girlfriend (Mary Stuart Masterson) are endangered after he's made accessory to a murder - not to mention that the FBI encroaching on the Whitewoods' action leads to Brad Sr. taking some pretty drastic steps in witness elimination. Fun fact: director James Foley went on to helm the stupendous Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), and...um... the two sequels to 50 Shades of Grey. Womp womp.
Playing a part turned down by Robert De Niro for being "too dark" (yikes...), Walken's Brad Whitewood is truly bad news from the moment his moustache first inauspiciously struts onscreen. That said, Walken is ingenious enough to play the long game here, luring us, for over half the movie, into thinking that maybe, maybe, he isn't all that bad. Sure, he's a seedy hustler and perennial drinker, and there's that omnipresent murderous glint in his eye, particularly when cornered by a former gang member. His sparking interplay with 26 year-old Sean Penn, who's giving 110% as a scene partner, makes their scenes crackle with palpable tension. But gosh darn it, maybe, maybe, he does just want to bond with his sons through a bunch of criminal hijinx. Would that really be too much to ask for...?
 |
| Look at all of their happy father/son times! |
 |
| This kind of happiness could never end...right? |
Yes. It absolutely would. The second Whitewood's shadowy, Deep Throat-style informant (David Strathairn, in a shadowy cameo) lets him know that the FBI are on his tail, Walken's former ballsy charisma snaps away like a bear trap. Suddenly, we're watching him tearing around a corn field in his car, bellowing like a maniac. Then, when his jokey charisma returns, it's with an unmistakable edge of visceral threat. And then, before you can say 'How much Whitewood could a Whitewoodchuck chuck,' BOOM: he's in a hotel room vindictively raping his son's girlfriend. Next scene: BOOM - he's shot his younger son in cold blood, for fear of him informing to the FBI. Are we still laughing now?
I often refer to Walken as a performer rather than an actor (a term he uses himself, amidst a confession that he still sees himself as a dancer rather than an actor who's been faking it all these years). His unique style is unpredictable and eminently watchable, but always with a veneer of playful mediation - he may play creepy or intimidating, but there's always a Vaudevillian wink that, 'don't worry, it's all part of the act,' and there's a comfort to that. It's only in his most live wire performances - The Deer Hunter, and, yes, At Close Range - that he loses that, and fully commits to the immersive darkness of his legendary psychopaths. The year after Max Zorin guffawed while cheerfully gunning down his henchmen, here we have Walken disappearing into the skin of a real, gruesomely convincing villain. And he is terrifyingly convincing.
 |
| Little did Penn know that 'Brad Whitewood' was merely the most recent alias used by Magneto |
- "I gotta see something in you. I gotta see you got something here... between the legs... Then I'll give you a real present." [he's actually discussing giving his sons a gun here, but Walken's lingering gaze lets the innuendo fly as much as your wildest dreams. Colonel Angus, eat your... heart... out]
- [after his son calls, announcing he's just been shot in the face] "Get a woman. Get a life." Ouch.
Putting the combined weirdness of Walken and Crispin Glover into a single shot somehow didn't cause the film to erupt into a deluge of winged snails before erupting into flames
Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. The definitive performance to turn to when justifying that, yes, Walken is sometime as terrifying as the aura he projects, At Close Range showcases his best emotional glissando from affable and charming to unbelievably sadistic. There's some of his usual weirdness, but no artifice here, so it bleeds into only make Whitewood seem all the more strung-out and scarily unpredictable. Still, terrific as he is, watching Walken cash in on the psychopathic aura he's cultivated throughout his career, sexual violence and all: well, let's just say that I don't wike it.
Gigli (2003)
Gigli (Martin Brest, 2003)
Walken plays: Detective Stanley Jacobellis -
Synopsis: Ah, Gigli - the film so legendarily, paradigm-shiftingly bad I wasn't sure if, approaching it, I should be filled with dread or reverence. If there's a 'Top 5 worst films' list that doesn't include it, the compiler is likely too afraid to take it in - or has, but the experience of getting through it has corroded their brain so much they've lost all memory of it.
Walken plays: Detective Stanley Jacobellis -
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