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2000 Eyes, by Richard T. Jameson, Film Reviews

2000 Eyes: South of Heaven, West of Hell

Written by Richard T. Jameson November 4, 2020November 4, 2020 Leave a Comment

[Written for Amazon.com]

If you’ve never heard of South of Heaven, West of Hell, there’s an excellent reason. If you have heard of it, it’s probably because you stumbled upon the information that it marks the directorial debut of singer-actor Dwight Yoakam, who managed to sweet-talk a spectacularly quirky cast into abetting the enterprise: current girlfriend Bridget Fonda and her papa Peter; indie-world luminaries Vince Vaughn and Billy Bob Thornton (for whom Yoakam made a memorably loathsome villain in Sling Blade); character-acting stalwarts Bo Hopkins, Matt Clark, Luke Askew, and Scott Wilson; and such icons of the florid fringe as Bud Cort, Paul Reubens, and Michael Jeter. All should file for workman’s comp and alienation of audience affection because they got themselves mired in one of the dumbest, most inept, most tediously self-indulgent messes in the history of showbiz hubris.

Review: Return to Paradise

Written by Richard T. Jameson December 12, 2018

[Originally written for Amazon in 1998]

Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years.

In Malaysia, three young Americans with little else in common are united in a shared enthusiasm for beer, women, and righteous hashish. Eventually, “Sheriff” (Vince Vaughn) and Tony (David Conrad) head back to New York. Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix), a spacey but good-hearted sort, stays on with the notion of helping save the orangutans. Two years later, a brassy lawyer (Anne Heche) shows up in Manhattan with the news that her client, Lewis, has spent the interim in Penang prison. Arrested for a prankish misdemeanor they all shared in, he’s taking the rap for something worse:the dope stash they left him holding was a fatal few grams over the limit. Unless his fellow Americans return voluntarily to (literally) share the weight, in eight days Lewis will be hanged as a drug trafficker.

Review: Psycho (1998)

Written by Richard T. Jameson October 23, 2018

[Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, December 4, 1998]

Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years.

Is there anybody on this planet who doesn’t know Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror-suspense classic Psycho? Or hasn’t been exposed to its sundry bastard offspring (name any slasher movie), hommage-y imitations (the collected works of Brian De Palma), and sequels (none of them Hitch’s); or the hundreds of jokes it has inspired; or the earnest insistence of any number of aunts, neighbors, or co-workers that, no sirree, they haven’t felt comfortable taking a shower ever since. So there won’t be lots of folks who’ll wander innocently into a theater where Gus Van Sant’s virtually line-for-line, shot-for-shot remake is playing, experience the story of Marion Crane, Norman Bates, and the dark doings at the Bates Motel as something brand-new, and say, “Heavens to Betsy, that took me by surprise!”

‘Delivery Man’: Vince Vaughn Has a Fertility Problem

Written by Robert Horton November 21, 2013

Could someone please come and save Vince Vaughn’s career from itself? There was a time when he could glide into a movie and rip it up, either as a comic blabbermouth or an edgily unpredictable straight actor. He still talks a lot in movies, but like Nicolas Cage, he’s let go of the scary originality and been absorbed into a tame industry that burps out the likes of Fred Claus and The Dilemma. Case in point: Delivery Man, a comedy of the heartwarming variety, in which Vaughn labors hard to etch a few signature moments around a farfetched sitcom plot.

Said plot comes from writer/director Ken Scott, remaking his 2011 French-Canadian film Starbuck (seen here in April). Vaughn plays an irresponsible schlub, David Wozniak, who drives the truck for his family’s butcher shop.

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