The one year anniversary of The Kilmer Project has snuck up on me. What a year it was. To think just a year ago, almost to the day, I was sitting down to Top Secret. Wow.
A lot has happened in that time. Not least of all, I moved from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, CA. While I'm not done with The Kilmer Project yet (and believe me, as I've been sitting through the different versions of Alexander for a massive upcoming post, there have been several points where I've come close to quitting). I have some big news for all you Kilmer-Project-aholics out there (and thanks to the tracker I turned on with Google, I know there are at least a couple of you out there). I've decided to transfer the blog to Tumblr. I'm a little sick of the blogspot layout (soooo 2004) and like Tumblr much more.
It's not that big of a change, the link is:
http://thekilmerproject.tumblr.com
Over the next few days I'll be migrating over all the old posts and then, hopefully with a nice stiff drink in hand, I'll sit down to describe my viewing of Alexander (theatrical, director, and "final" cuts!). As well as Mindhunters which is just super weird. Please stay with us.
February 11, 2010
February 3, 2010
Stateside (2004)
This movie apparently tells a close to true life love story of a young starlet who goes crazy and a silver spoon-bred elitist who ends up having to enlist in the Marines after a drunk driving stunt goes horribly wrong. Val Kilmer plays the tough as nails drill sergeant who, much like the drill sergeants on daytime talk shows, grinds the arrogant young protagonist into something resembling an upstanding young gentleman soldier.
Rachel Leigh Cook plays the schizophrenic pop star that the spoiled teenage marine falls for. She was of course the lead in the formative (at least for me) teen movie "She's All That." It's probably in large measure due to that movie that I still carry quite the candle for her. She's looking great in Stateside, but seems (apparently to some degree by choice) to not have had many big star turns since her breakout role some time ago... interesting.
According to IMDB: "Val Kilmer originally only had a cameo, but his part as a Marine Corps Drill Instructor was extended significantly by Reverge Anselmo after filming had began."
Forgetting for a moment how silly of a name Reverge seems to be (almost like a mix between reverb and revenge), his part STILL isn't very long at all. His last scene takes place when the spoiled kid turned marine is about to graduate boot camp. Staff Sergeant Skeer (Kilmer) gives a rambling speech in which he more or less says that he doesn't have any idea how this world truly works, but that by some stroke of fate he ended married to a Polish girl he met off of base somewhere and now he has to go shopping for a stroller. That's what they're fighting for. Amen.
Rachel Leigh Cook plays the schizophrenic pop star that the spoiled teenage marine falls for. She was of course the lead in the formative (at least for me) teen movie "She's All That." It's probably in large measure due to that movie that I still carry quite the candle for her. She's looking great in Stateside, but seems (apparently to some degree by choice) to not have had many big star turns since her breakout role some time ago... interesting.
According to IMDB: "Val Kilmer originally only had a cameo, but his part as a Marine Corps Drill Instructor was extended significantly by Reverge Anselmo after filming had began."
Forgetting for a moment how silly of a name Reverge seems to be (almost like a mix between reverb and revenge), his part STILL isn't very long at all. His last scene takes place when the spoiled kid turned marine is about to graduate boot camp. Staff Sergeant Skeer (Kilmer) gives a rambling speech in which he more or less says that he doesn't have any idea how this world truly works, but that by some stroke of fate he ended married to a Polish girl he met off of base somewhere and now he has to go shopping for a stroller. That's what they're fighting for. Amen.
January 25, 2010
Spartan (2004)
First, let's take a moment to commemorate 20 years of Kilmer in cinema. He's come a long way and he's still going... somewhere.
Spartan is a return to Kilmer-as-hero form. He plays something of a Secret Service contractor. That is to say that he trains the Secret Service on some really intense ways to track down fugitives and protect America's geopolitical interests. The movie opens with him training a new class of agents out in the boonies. But get this, Kilmer's character is so above the fray (and apparently with such an ironclad security clearance) that he only moonlights as the rawest special agent in the entire world. Most of the time he's a down to earth farmer. Our heroic man of the soil returns to his farm after completing a training course only to be immediately called back to Washington by the Secret Service on an incredibly important mission: the daughter of the unnamed President of the United States has been kidnapped because the (one?) agent in her detail ran off to meet some girl instead of protecting her like he was supposed to. Once Kilmer aggressively coerces this confession out of him, the disgraced agent appropriately commits suicide.
Now Kilmer is called into action to track down the President's daughter before it gets released to the news media which would obviously be a pretty big blow to all parties involved. So after some crafty detective work, Kilmer and his cagey partner find out that she's been drugged and abducted by international sex traffickers. At this point the plot of the movie converges almost identically with "Taken," the Liam Neesen movie where he karate chops his way through Europe to save his daughter from sex traffickers. Kilmer and his partner begin a daring chase after the girl, only to find themselves constantly one step behind. Then a plot twist that would derail a lesser movie emerges: the girl's body has been discovered drowned off the coast of the Atlantic.
So that's it right? Wrong. Turns out it wasn't the girl at all. Turns out the President never loved his daughter and would rather have her considered dead than face the scandal of her security detail being reorganized to cover his laison with another woman while he was in town (which subsequently led to her - somehow accidental - kidnapping by sex traffickers. Well this is way too much for Val Kilmer to stand. He decides to track her down and rescue her no matter what the consequences. He's just that kind of guy. Also, the head of the secret service has somehow raised the girl. I don't know how the head of a nonpolitical security organization would have had any role in some politician's family life for the previous 20 years, but she made quite the emotional plea.
Kilmer goes to Europe, because he's got one hell of a moral compass. In his pursuit of this girl, I should add, at least three intelligence operatives that he talks into working with him on this off the books mission end up dead. He'd be in such deep shit in the actual bureaucratic world that it's mind boggling. Still, he manages to save this girl (played by the lovely Kristen Bell in a rare miss of a performance), he gets riddled with bullets and survives, and he kills William H. Macy's darkly evil political operative character. Basically it's a prequel to "Taken." For my money, I'd rather have the karate chopping:
Spartan is a return to Kilmer-as-hero form. He plays something of a Secret Service contractor. That is to say that he trains the Secret Service on some really intense ways to track down fugitives and protect America's geopolitical interests. The movie opens with him training a new class of agents out in the boonies. But get this, Kilmer's character is so above the fray (and apparently with such an ironclad security clearance) that he only moonlights as the rawest special agent in the entire world. Most of the time he's a down to earth farmer. Our heroic man of the soil returns to his farm after completing a training course only to be immediately called back to Washington by the Secret Service on an incredibly important mission: the daughter of the unnamed President of the United States has been kidnapped because the (one?) agent in her detail ran off to meet some girl instead of protecting her like he was supposed to. Once Kilmer aggressively coerces this confession out of him, the disgraced agent appropriately commits suicide.
Now Kilmer is called into action to track down the President's daughter before it gets released to the news media which would obviously be a pretty big blow to all parties involved. So after some crafty detective work, Kilmer and his cagey partner find out that she's been drugged and abducted by international sex traffickers. At this point the plot of the movie converges almost identically with "Taken," the Liam Neesen movie where he karate chops his way through Europe to save his daughter from sex traffickers. Kilmer and his partner begin a daring chase after the girl, only to find themselves constantly one step behind. Then a plot twist that would derail a lesser movie emerges: the girl's body has been discovered drowned off the coast of the Atlantic.
So that's it right? Wrong. Turns out it wasn't the girl at all. Turns out the President never loved his daughter and would rather have her considered dead than face the scandal of her security detail being reorganized to cover his laison with another woman while he was in town (which subsequently led to her - somehow accidental - kidnapping by sex traffickers. Well this is way too much for Val Kilmer to stand. He decides to track her down and rescue her no matter what the consequences. He's just that kind of guy. Also, the head of the secret service has somehow raised the girl. I don't know how the head of a nonpolitical security organization would have had any role in some politician's family life for the previous 20 years, but she made quite the emotional plea.
Kilmer goes to Europe, because he's got one hell of a moral compass. In his pursuit of this girl, I should add, at least three intelligence operatives that he talks into working with him on this off the books mission end up dead. He'd be in such deep shit in the actual bureaucratic world that it's mind boggling. Still, he manages to save this girl (played by the lovely Kristen Bell in a rare miss of a performance), he gets riddled with bullets and survives, and he kills William H. Macy's darkly evil political operative character. Basically it's a prequel to "Taken." For my money, I'd rather have the karate chopping:
Blind Horizon (2003)
Whatever happened to Neve Campbell? She had Scream, Wild Things, Party of Five, and then she totally fell off the radar. She's still made some movies but what a fall from grace. To wit, she's the femme fatale of this late period Kilmer noir movie.
Kilmer is found shot in the head in the southwest American desert. He awakes in a hospital in a small town with a severe case of amnesia. As he regains his strength he starts to have flashes of a plot to kill the President of the United States. Given the extent of his amnesia, he's not exactly fully stocked on the details so he's having a hard time convincing anyone about what exactly is going to happen. He's pretty troubled about it. Just look at him:
The Secret Service is called in but they're far from convinced that he's believable considering that the President is not even planning on passing through the tiny Southwest town and Kilmer can't even remember that his name is Frank Kavanaugh. Neve Campbell shows up and claims to be his wife but there's something really off about their interactions. Kilmer starts flirting really aggressively with his nurse (Amy Smart) who looks just super foxy in this movie.
Kilmer starts going out drinking really hard. This sort of heightens the recurrence of his flashbacks.
Spoiler alert: There's a couple of shady co-conspirators in the town who pull off this massive diversion that ends up bringing the POTUS motorcade through the small town. Kilmer pulls off a massive turnaround on the co-conspirators. He gets the money he was going to be paid to be the triggerman, and kills off the would-be assassins. Hooray, but pretty forgettable.
Kilmer is found shot in the head in the southwest American desert. He awakes in a hospital in a small town with a severe case of amnesia. As he regains his strength he starts to have flashes of a plot to kill the President of the United States. Given the extent of his amnesia, he's not exactly fully stocked on the details so he's having a hard time convincing anyone about what exactly is going to happen. He's pretty troubled about it. Just look at him:
The Secret Service is called in but they're far from convinced that he's believable considering that the President is not even planning on passing through the tiny Southwest town and Kilmer can't even remember that his name is Frank Kavanaugh. Neve Campbell shows up and claims to be his wife but there's something really off about their interactions. Kilmer starts flirting really aggressively with his nurse (Amy Smart) who looks just super foxy in this movie.
Kilmer starts going out drinking really hard. This sort of heightens the recurrence of his flashbacks.
Spoiler alert: There's a couple of shady co-conspirators in the town who pull off this massive diversion that ends up bringing the POTUS motorcade through the small town. Kilmer pulls off a massive turnaround on the co-conspirators. He gets the money he was going to be paid to be the triggerman, and kills off the would-be assassins. Hooray, but pretty forgettable.
January 5, 2010
The Missing (2003)
This movie is set in the old timey US frontier. Cate Blanchett plays a single mother homesteader who has a sort of flirtatious working relationship with Aaron Eckhart. Out of nowhere her estranged father who had run off to live with some manner of Pueblo Native American tribe shows up and is all like, "Hey, long time no see, I'm mystically aware of the natural world now and would like to reconnect with you and my grandkids." Cate Blanchett's pissed. She tells him to bounce and like a sad ol' dispossessed Native American, down the trail he goes.
Then, out of nowhere, her girls get snatched up by an Apache gang that's going to sell them to the owner of a Mexican whorehouse across the border. They kill Aaron Eckhart and Cate Blanchett is forced to call on crafty ol' Tommy Lee Jones to hunt them down and get them back.
Val Kilmer shows up only briefly as a semi corrupt US Cavalry officer who is ineffectively chasing down the Apaches. Apparently he agreed to appear in it as part of his role on the New Mexico Film Board, which tries to get movies to film in New Mexico (seriously).
This movie features one Batman (VK) and two Twofaces (Eckhart and T.L.Jones) but no x-men. I kind of love Tommy Lee Jones.
Then, out of nowhere, her girls get snatched up by an Apache gang that's going to sell them to the owner of a Mexican whorehouse across the border. They kill Aaron Eckhart and Cate Blanchett is forced to call on crafty ol' Tommy Lee Jones to hunt them down and get them back.
Val Kilmer shows up only briefly as a semi corrupt US Cavalry officer who is ineffectively chasing down the Apaches. Apparently he agreed to appear in it as part of his role on the New Mexico Film Board, which tries to get movies to film in New Mexico (seriously).
This movie features one Batman (VK) and two Twofaces (Eckhart and T.L.Jones) but no x-men. I kind of love Tommy Lee Jones.
December 18, 2009
Wonderland (2003)
Pardon the delay faithful readers, but I have returned to my Kilmer viewings and will continue to update the remaining entries in the Kilmer filmography with all due haste. I have a couple on the backlog that I need to get up right away so without further ado let me begin by asking:
How excited are you about the prospect of Val Kilmer playing a porn star? You'd imagine he'd bring that same raw-Jim Morrison in the Doors-sexual energy to the role, right? Now, how about Val Kilmer playing a washed up porn star who's now really into drugs and may be at the center of a grizzly murder? Sounds great right? It is.
Wonderland tells the story of a grizzly quadruple murder that took place in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood type district in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area (my new home). Back in 1981 this murder went down and a lot of evidence suggested that former porn star John Holmes was involved.
Good god. Look at that man. It's almost enough to make me grow out a mustache... almost. When the well endowed subject of Wonderland was actually making his films, the legal status of pornography was kind of unclear and accordingly, Mr. Holmes did what any rational porn star and drug addict would do to avoid getting in trouble: he became a police informant for the LAPD.
The movie focuses on a couple of eventful weeks when John Holmes ripped off some drug dealers living on the eponymous Wonderland Drive in Laurel Canyon. Kilmer plays Holmes as a totally sleazy and desperate cokehead and liar who betrays absolutely everyone at some point in the course of events. The murders and the subsequent investigation is told in a kind of interesting noir-ish nonlinear manner. It's a pretty enjoyable crime drama and Val Kilmer plays a man in a deep professional downward spiral (meta!).
How excited are you about the prospect of Val Kilmer playing a porn star? You'd imagine he'd bring that same raw-Jim Morrison in the Doors-sexual energy to the role, right? Now, how about Val Kilmer playing a washed up porn star who's now really into drugs and may be at the center of a grizzly murder? Sounds great right? It is.
Wonderland tells the story of a grizzly quadruple murder that took place in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood type district in the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area (my new home). Back in 1981 this murder went down and a lot of evidence suggested that former porn star John Holmes was involved.
Good god. Look at that man. It's almost enough to make me grow out a mustache... almost. When the well endowed subject of Wonderland was actually making his films, the legal status of pornography was kind of unclear and accordingly, Mr. Holmes did what any rational porn star and drug addict would do to avoid getting in trouble: he became a police informant for the LAPD.
The movie focuses on a couple of eventful weeks when John Holmes ripped off some drug dealers living on the eponymous Wonderland Drive in Laurel Canyon. Kilmer plays Holmes as a totally sleazy and desperate cokehead and liar who betrays absolutely everyone at some point in the course of events. The murders and the subsequent investigation is told in a kind of interesting noir-ish nonlinear manner. It's a pretty enjoyable crime drama and Val Kilmer plays a man in a deep professional downward spiral (meta!).
November 9, 2009
Masked and Anonymous (2003)
Full disclosure: I'm a Bob Dylan fan. I don't just mean I appreciate his 1960s topical folk songs. I like his recent stuff a great deal. Everything from Time Out of Mind onward anyway. I like his life story and the bizarre turns his career has taken over the years. I've read his memoirs. His songwriting is usually phenomenal and his artistic vision is generally unique and forward-looking. Still, everybody makes mistakes.
"Masked and Anonymous" is set in a dystopian future where a corrupt concert promoter (John Goodman) has decided to put on a benefit concert of sorts to, somehow, heal the nation's psyche. Due to John Goodman's corruption, the only artist that they talk into playing is Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) a late Bob Dylanesque figure whose fortunes are in serious decline as he has to be sprung from jail to play the concert. The main problem with the movie is that the pacing is so slow that the story, told in this paragraph, drags out over the course of a full length movie. There are a couple of performances mixed in. It kind of makes the whole thing seem like a long, strange, conceptual Bob Dylan music video.
Val Kilmer appears only briefly in the film. He's listed as an "animal handler" in the credits, but he actually plays more of an exotic animal bbq concessions stand attendant who delivers a long rambling speech that more or less sums up everything wrong with this movie. Take a look.
"Masked and Anonymous" is set in a dystopian future where a corrupt concert promoter (John Goodman) has decided to put on a benefit concert of sorts to, somehow, heal the nation's psyche. Due to John Goodman's corruption, the only artist that they talk into playing is Jack Fate (Bob Dylan) a late Bob Dylanesque figure whose fortunes are in serious decline as he has to be sprung from jail to play the concert. The main problem with the movie is that the pacing is so slow that the story, told in this paragraph, drags out over the course of a full length movie. There are a couple of performances mixed in. It kind of makes the whole thing seem like a long, strange, conceptual Bob Dylan music video.
Val Kilmer appears only briefly in the film. He's listed as an "animal handler" in the credits, but he actually plays more of an exotic animal bbq concessions stand attendant who delivers a long rambling speech that more or less sums up everything wrong with this movie. Take a look.
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