The Screengrab : chris eigeman

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We'd Most Like To See (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

WHIT STILLMAN (& CHRIS EIGEMAN)

Like caviar or triple-malt scotch, the films of Whit Stillman are rarified, WASPy treats best savored while the rest of the world noshes on Big Macs and beer. Around the time Richard Linklater was eavesdropping on his beloved Austin eccentrics in Slacker and Kevin Smith was chronicling the lives of hyper-articulate, dirty-minded New Jersey wage slaves in Clerks, Stillman’s indie debut, Metropolitan, focused on yet another chatty, self-contained subculture: the privileged debutantes and awkward urban haute bourgeoisie of the Upper East Side twentysomething social circuit. Dry, sardonic Chris Eigeman and nervous, schleppy Taylor Nichols were Metropolitan’s standouts, and Stillman wisely paired the sweet-and-sour comic duo as brothers in his follow-up, Barcelona, a witty, extremely low-concept picaresque about boorish Americans abroad in 1980s Spain. Eigeman also starred in The Last Days of Disco, the final installment of the director’s overeducated white people trilogy (and also his last film to date). For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, given its thematic and tonal similarity to its predecessors, Disco (which also features Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale and Robert Sean Leonard) was considered a disappointment by most fans and critics (if not by Stillman himself, who enjoyed the tale of bed and club-hopping yuppies enough to retell the story again a few years later as a fake roman-a-clef in the voice of one of the film’s characters). Sadly, Stillman’s vision was too wordy, insular and quirky even for art house audiences, making it impossible in recent years for him to finance subsequent projects, the worst result of which (to my way of thinking) is the resultant lack of good roles for the hilarious (and criminally underused) Eigeman. Yet the Internet Movie Database says that Stillman is currently adapting Christopher Buckley’s novel Little Green Men, and though no cast is listed yet, with luck maybe it’s a good sign that Eigeman (recently Spirit Award-nominated for his directorial debut, Turn the River) will someday appear in front of the camera again and not just behind it.

BROOKE ADAMS

In the late '70s and early '80s, Adams' dark-haired beauty, sense of fun, and tantalizing hint of neurosis (in such films as Days of Heaven, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Tell Me a Riddle, The Dead Zone, and Almost You) made her the thinking horndog's indie movie star of choice, but then she drifted out of sight. She only turned up in movies a couple of times during the '90s, most notably in Alison Anders's 1992 Gas Food Lodging. That same year, she married Tony Shalhoub, with whom she had a daughter the next year. In 2002, she had her only big movie role of recent years in Made-Up, a charming but barely seen comedy that Shalhoub co-starred in and directed, from a script by her sister, Lynne Adams. About the only other way to have gazed on her in recent years would be to monitor Shalhoub's TV series; she's made guest appearances on both Wings and Monk. So long as they're happy, I'm happy. I miss her, though.

MARE WINNINGHAM

In 1985, Winningham co-starred in the prototypical Brat Pack movie St. Elmo's Fire, when she was 26. Dramatically, she was at a disadvantage for being cast as the least emotional, mildest mannered of the seven lead characters, though she also had an edge in that she was the only one of the movie's stars, besides Ally Sheedy, who could act a lick. (At the time, anyway: Rob Lowe had his moments fifteen years later on The West Wing.) Winningham has the kind of virtues that can easily be cast as negatives, but she's such a capable, talented actress that her honesty and decency can seem radiant and illuminating rather than starchy and prim; to fully appreciate her, check out the 1995 Georgia, where her superb performance as a hard-working, mess-cleaning musician can be viewed aside Jennifer Jason Leigh's gruesomely self-immolating, exhibitionistic display as her self-immolating sister. The worst thing that could ever be said of Winningham is that her honorable acting style has sometimes failed to make the dull, underwritten roles she's been stuck with seem livelier than they are, but anyone who saw her as the unconventional love of Anthony Edwards' life in Miracle Mile (1989) or the blubbering girlfriend who's quick to dump the jobless Timothy Hutton in Made in Heaven (1987) knows that her gifts include a wild streak. As she enters her middle years -- she turns fifty next year -- it sure would be something to get to see the nice girl be given the chance to cut the hell loose.

PAMELA REED

It's easy to imagine aspiring directors in Hollywood being sent forth into the valley armed with one basic, flawless piece of no-brainer advice: if you have a scene that you want the audience to stay awake for, stick Pamela Reed onscreen. Since 1980, her first year in movies, inviting David Carradine and Sonny Landham to have a knife fight for her honor (Carradine: "What does the winner get?" Reed: "Nothin' you ain't both already had.") in The Long Riders and presenting Paul La Mat with a marriage proposal that should have come with a free toaster in Melvin and Howard, she's been practically storming off the screen and slapping the cell phones out of people's hands. Why has this woman never been offered the chance to carry a movie? Is it thought that a woman with her energy and internal strength would alienate audiences if they had to put up with her for more than a few scenes at a time? Sure, that makes sense: it's not as if Bette Davis had a career. But I don't mean to suggest that we shouldn't be grateful for what we get of her, especially given that she's spent most of the past decade hanging around TV sets. This did give her the chance to revive one of her greatest roles, the fully caffeinated political campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh of Robert Alman's Tanner '88 and its 2004 sequel Tanner on Tanner. On the other hand, that Jericho thing didn't do anybody any good. She belongs on the big screen, where she can take on dragons big enough to make it seem like a fair fight (as does her co-star from Tanner and The Right Stuff, Veronica Cartwright, and Amy Madigan, another actress who doesn't need to chug kerosene before she arrives on the set to breathe fire).

PIPER PERABO

Can it really be called a comeback if a star never quite hit it big in the first place? Consider the sad case of Piper Perabo. In 2000, she was being called Hollywood's It Girl, with two high-profile projects on the horizon. Unfortunately for her, those projects were The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Coyote Ugly. The former was a notorious stinker in which Perabo's performance got lost amid the second-rate animation and hammy turns from Robert DeNiro and Rene Russo. The latter was a modest success, but one that had less to do with its nominal lead than audiences flocking to see scantily-clad dancing female bartenders. Having gained no momentum whatsoever from her alleged star-making vehicles, Perabo's career quickly hit the skids, with the actress appearing in a string of lame-brained thrillers and forgettable comedies, with the occasional supporting role in the Steve Martin-headed Cheaper By the Dozen franchise. Eight years after being declared the Next Big Thing, Perabo was last seen playing second banana to a cast of talking Chihuahuas. Frankly, that's a shame, because despite the disappointing trajectory of her career, Perabo remains a vibrant, fetching actress with an infectious smile and a surprisingly soulful side. Just look at her brief appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige -- as Hugh Jackman's ill-fated lover, Perabo brings more genuine spark and feeling to her role than her more tabloid-friendly costar Scarlett Johansson could hope to muster. Even better is 2001's Lost and Delirious, a mostly forgotten Canadian film about teenage sexuality in an ivy-covered boarding school. Perabo steals the show as Paulie, a rebellious young woman nursing a hopeless love for her reluctant classmate. It's a performance that's so white-hot with intensity and charged with eroticism that she eventually becomes more than the film can really take. So why exactly was she last seen in a movie that called for her to bark into a telephone? Your guess is as good as ours.

Click Here For Part One, Three & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

Screengrab's Back To School Round-Up: The Top 15 College Movies (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

REAL GENIUS (1985)

If there’s one thing America hates, it’s smart people. Brainy elitists like Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and that pencil-neck geek we used to beat up in gym class make us nervous, inspiring vague feelings of inadequacy that can usually be doused by voting for down-to-earth “real” people like George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, who don’t know how to pronounce “nuclear” (and really couldn’t give a shit). But Martha Coolidge’s ensemble comedy about fledgling scientists at a fictionalized CalTech depicts a world where mental, not physical, strength is prized and knowledge (in the form of Val Kilmer’s fast-talking, wisecracking Chris Knight and Michelle Meyrink’s official Screengrab Sexy Nerd Jordan) is hot. The story’s teen prodigy protagonist Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarrett...largely MIA in recent years but reappearing soon in Frost/Nixon) and aging burnout Laslo (Jon Gries) embody the double-edged sword of intellectual aptitude, where intimate knowledge of chemical laser technology is no guarantee of success, happiness or intimacy with actual humans, while the surprisingly charming Kilmer offers a hopeful balance of “real” and “genius,” with the wherewithal to understand that light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation can also be used to blow off steam by pointing the way to the occasional pool party blow-out.

SCHOOL DAZE (1988)

Oh, college...where politics, drinking and date rape are never more than a quad away. This Spike Lee joint takes us to the Mission College campus, a historically black alma mater back in the "divest from South Africa, support ANC" days. It stars Giancarlo Esposito as a fascistoid fraternity leader, Laurence Fishburne as Dap, a righteous, wet-behind-the ears campus radical and Spike Lee as his vertically challenged cousin Half-Pint. Half-Pint is not so much into the politics, being more given to Greek life. The movie follows Dap's quest to get the college to divest and Half-Pint's quest to pledge with the Gamma-Phi-Gammas and get laid. Like any self-respecting college movie, School Daze, takes us through pledge week, a homecoming parade and a dance scene in which half-naked coeds get down to a band. All that plus musical numbers and parachute pants.

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995)

I don't know about you folks, but my college experience was not a nonstop bacchanal of toga parties and panty raids (although that description accurately applies to the typical day at Screengrab headquarters), so the average college movie doesn't really speak to me. My memories of those days mostly involve bantering about matters great and small over a pitcher of beer with good friends, neurotic fretting about dysfunctional relationships and, towards the end, a sort of heart-freezing paralysis at the prospect of "life" awaiting me. That's probably why I've always loved Noah Baumbach's debut Kicking and Screaming, one of the few "Gen X" movies (along with Linklater's Slacker) that didn't make me want to set fire to the movie theater. (Let us not even speak of Reality Bites.) Baumbach's film covers the final day of college and the aimless months that follow for a group of friends finding it hard to move on from their routine of trivia contests, verbal jousting and picking up undergrads at the local pub. The ensemble includes Chris Eigeman, Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton and the scene-stealing Carlos Jacott, all of whom clearly relish Baumbach's literate, martini-dry dialogue, as well as Eric Stolz in one of his best roles, a sort of intellectual doppelganger of Wooderson from Dazed and Confused ("Why would I ever leave? I am a student and that's what I chose.") Have fun with those slobs at Delta House – I'll be over here thinking up eight movies where monkeys play key roles.

NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986)

Innumerable horror movies have taken place on college campuses or featured college students as the protagonists, but more often than not, this is just so the producers can film the movie on the cheap and have an excuse to put nubile twenty-somethings in front of the camera. The highly enjoyable 1986 cult classic Night of the Creeps, on the other hand, not only makes full use of its campus setting (having the alien menace begin its rampage in a menacing corner of the biology lab), but with its campy tone, hilariously quotable dialogue, nerdy outcast protagonists, delightfully lo-fi approach, and innumerable film student in-jokes, it actually plays like a movie that was made by college students. Writer/director Fred Dekker wasn’t exactly that when he made Night of the Creeps, but he wasn’t far from it; he was only 26, and, having been rejected by both UCLA and USC’s film schools, he had something to prove. His later efforts didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but his debut remains one of the most enjoyable horror flicks of the 1980s – a movie that plays more like an admiring postmodern salute to the old B-movie fare of yesteryear than the grim misogynist slasher flicks that dominated the decade. (For those who are, ahem, of a certain age, the movie’s fashions and music will also bring back memories of college that may not be altogether pleasant.) The whole movie is sustained with its terrific sense of humor, much of which is dryly delivered by inimitable character actor Tom Atkins.

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

Sam Raimi’s second installment of the Spider-Man franchise isn’t just one of the best super-hero movies ever made; it’s a good solid college movie as well, that speaks to any busy student with or without radioactive arachnid powers. Think about it: Marvel Comics has always prided itself on mixing real-world angst with its crimefighting action; that’s the factor that made the Spider-Man comic such a success in the first place. And that kind of storytelling is very much on display here: Peter Parker, fresh out of high school and entering his first semester at Empire State (an institution of higher learning that, as a child, I was determined I would one day attend until I found out it wasn’t real), and the turmoil that so thoroughly futzes with his state of mind both in and out of costume all throughout Spider-Man 2 are familiar ones to anyone who’s ever been in college. He’s on a full ride, but his family’s not doing so well; he’s got to work a low-paying, demeaning job to help out, and that cuts into his study time. His girlfriend has eschewed college to pursue a successful career, and he’s not only barely got time to see her, but he’s even a little jealous. He’s drifting away from his only high school friend. His precocious genius isn’t as impressive to his college professors as it was to his high school teachers. And his educational mentor undergoes a horrible accident and rampages all over New York with the robotic limbs fused to his torso. Okay, maybe that last one’s a stretch, but still – you get the idea.

Click Here for Part One & Part Two

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Sarah Sundberg, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Independent Film Festival of Boston Review: Turn the River

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Gambling movies, like submarine movies, generally don’t have too many variables. At some point in just about every sub movie, the submarine gets torpedoed and/or sinks to “crush depth,” and the captain and crew either get killed or, more often, survive. Likewise, in cards and billiards movies (not to mention sports films in general, of which gambling flicks are a boozier subset), the plot typically comes down to: in the big, climactic competition, does your rooting interest win or lose? And in most stories, the outcome, while faux suspenseful, is usually pretty easy to predict.

So it’s one of the strengths of indie staple Chris Eigeman’s writing and directing debut Turn the River, about Famke Janssen’s desperate, homeless, pool-hustling card sharp, that not only is the outcome of her particular “big game,” when it comes, anything but a foregone conclusion, but also that her ultimate success or failure in the contest is only one element in a suspenseful skein of fateful plot developments.

Eigeman, best known for mordant, fast-talking characters in films like Kicking & Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, the short-lived West Coast Seinfeld knock-off It’s Like, You Know and the Whit Stillman trilogy (Metropolitan, Barcelona & The Last Days of Disco), does a good job capturing both the quiet hostility of upper class dysfunction and the bare-knuckle grit of back-room cash games in this tightly-controlled, low-budget indie about a mother (Janssen) struggling to raise the money necessary to kidnap her son (Jaymie Dornan) over the border to Canada, away from his abusive yuppie father (Matt Ross, the scary polygamist Alby on Big Love).

Janssen goes “all in” (get it?) with her portrayal of the mother, Kailey, an older, sadder variant of the shady poker pro she portrayed in Rounders. Despite stringy hair and a drab wardrobe, the actress’ supermodel looks clash a bit with River's seedy milieu, but the character’s she-wolf intensity is nevertheless compelling.

According to Eigman, his star went to billiards boot camp before shooting began, and managed to nail one crucial, difficult bank shot in the movie on her very first try (scoring a nice payday for some lucky P.A. in the on-set betting pool who correctly predicted she’d manage the feat in one take). Janssen’s unfaked ease with a cue stick lends credence to the storyline, as does her palpable chemistry with Dornan, utterly believable as a smart, resourceful kid with none of the usual cloying Hollywood precociousness.

The rest of the supporting cast is equally fine: Ross is a hissable but multi-faceted villain, Lois Smith is a hoot as a bitch-on-wheels matriarch, John Juback is a formidable pool-hall adversary and Terry Kinney steals his scenes as a sweet, street-smart black marketeer. And for those disheartened by Rip Torn’s recent frail, half-speed performances on 30 Rock, his turn here as Janssen’s grizzly mentor, Quinn, is a gruff, vigorous return to form.

Forgotten Films: Mr. Jealousy (1997)

Peter Smith — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Noah Baumbauch, the writer-director of the new Margot at the Wedding, first made a splash in 1995 with his Gen-X comedy Kicking and Screaming. Ten years later, that film and Baumbach's name had slipped so far into neglect that a major studio thought nothing of recycling its title for one of Will Ferrell's more negligible vehicles. That same year, Baumbach enjoyed a comeback with The Squid and the Whale, and since then Kicking and Screaming has enjoyed the honor of being issued on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection. Meanwhile, his sophomore effort, the 1997 Mr. Jealousy (available for home viewing in a no-frills DVD) remains largely unknown. Which is a shame; it's a near-perfect modern screwball comedy that uses Baumbach's favorite subject — the way that intelligent, literate people screw up their relationships — as the basis for some smart satire.

The movie stars '90s indie stalwart Eric Stoltz as Lester Grimm, who's locked in a pattern of gumming up his love life with displays of obsessive jealousy. Stoltz thinks that his current girlfriend, Ramona (Annabella Sciorra), might be the one, which makes it all the more intolerable when he lays eyes on her ex, a cool-stepping novelist named Dashiell (Chris Eigeman), and can't stop wondering about Ramona's past. Lester ends up joining Dash's encounter therapy group, the better to find out whether the guy is obsessing over Ramona and to learn choice details about their past together. Of course, in order to disguise his identity, he has to refrain from talking about his own problems in therapy, so he borrows the problems of his best friend, played by Carlos Jacott. Then, when the process inevitably leaves him feeling more confused than ever, he winds up getting Jacott to join the group so that Jacott can pretend to have Stoltz's problems. Jacott just about steals the movie, especially when, taking on the assignment of pretending to be someone else with the deranged commitment of an idealistic Method actor, he turns up in the group earnestly discussing Stoltz's self-perpetuating neuroses in an outrageously bogus British accent. Mr. Jealousy is much lighter than Bamubach's more recent film, but it could be his funniest work. — Phil Nugent