1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 54: Blood & wine
R.I.P. Mikhail Gorbachev.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
R.I.P. Bob Rafelson, director of:
Five Easy Pieces, with Jack Nicholson and Karen Black …
Black Widow, the homoerotic thriller with Theresa Russell and Debra Winger …
Mountains of the Moon, the homoerotic Victorian-explorers-of-Africa biopic with Patrick Bergen and Iain Glen …
that is to say, three movies of which I’m very fond (perhaps inordinately so, in the case of Black Widow) …
also, the music video for my favorite Lionel Richie song, “All Night Long (All Night)” …
and Blood & Wine, which I hadn’t viewed until this week.
This is hardly Rafelson’s best movie, but it’s watchable. Like other Rafelson movies, this is an actor’s movie.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
There’s an awful-looking movie from 2007 that I’ve never gotten around to viewing, in which terminally ill Morgan Freeman and terminally ill Jack Nicholson go on a road trip and do cheesy, life-affirming things. Blood & Wine is like that; only, it’s Nicholson and Michael Caine. And it isn’t a road trip with a lot of stops, it’s a single jewel heist and its aftermath. And it isn’t life-affirming, it’s grim. These guys are cadaverous ne’er-do-wells who still hanker after the big score – who, after all these years, haven’t given up their pathetic dreams of glamor. Their time is running out.
Caine, in one of his scummiest roles, is dying. He coughs through all of his dialog. It would be terrible to listen to, if he weren’t so good at it.
Nicholson, too, is out of options. He has alienated his wife (Judy Davis), whose money has been propping up his wine shop – the venture that has enabled him to rub shoulders with, and scope out, the inhabitants of Miami’s gated communities. His romantic efforts are lavished upon a young nanny (Jennifer Lopez), who came over from Cuba in a little boat. She is as nice as anyone can be who’s hell-bent on obtaining other people’s property.
So, Caine and Nicholson are desperate. And bad. And they don’t like each other. They’re not so different from the criminal partners in Fargo, except they’re a lot older.
They hole up together in a seedy motel room. Caine, in between coughs, manages a soliloquy. “This is not an oceanfront suite in Marbella,” he wheezes. “There are no flowers or champagne from the management. I don’t, I don’t see a Swiss chocolate on my pillow. My masseuse is not at the door. And I am f---ing dying, Alex!”
“Take it easy, Vic,” says Nicholson.
Caine and Nicholson occupy half of the movie. Lopez’s screen time, and her affections, are divided between Nicholson and his earnest stepson (Stephen Dorff), whose mother is Davis. Davis and Dorff are the good guys; Lopez has to make up her mind whether to be bad or good. Yeah, OK, fine. I didn’t pay much attention to Lopez or to Dorff. I was too interested in the wicked old men.
And I enjoyed watching Davis, who, as in other movies, pulls faces that are downright acerbic. She may be mistreated, but she’s no pushover. She walks with a cane; perhaps it’s Nicholson who crippled her. Well, you know the rule that if a gun makes a casual appearance in an early scene, it’ll get used, later on, upon one of the characters. Apply this same rule to the cane. Again, as in Fargo, the movie has long passages of wry set-up … and then, bursts of violence. There is a car chase scene that is worthy of Fargo. Most of the movie isn’t in that league, but some of it is.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. After I watched Blood & Wine, I watched Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens, with younger Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and Julia Anne Robinson, a cutie who died not long afterward, in a fire. I liked that movie, too. Two brothers and two women bum around wintry Atlantic City and fantasize about building a resort on a Hawaiian islet. Atlantic City’s grand old hotels are wonderful to look at. They were torn down not long thereafter.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
R.I.P. Bob Rafelson, director of:
Five Easy Pieces, with Jack Nicholson and Karen Black …
Black Widow, the homoerotic thriller with Theresa Russell and Debra Winger …
Mountains of the Moon, the homoerotic Victorian-explorers-of-Africa biopic with Patrick Bergen and Iain Glen …
that is to say, three movies of which I’m very fond (perhaps inordinately so, in the case of Black Widow) …
also, the music video for my favorite Lionel Richie song, “All Night Long (All Night)” …
and Blood & Wine, which I hadn’t viewed until this week.
This is hardly Rafelson’s best movie, but it’s watchable. Like other Rafelson movies, this is an actor’s movie.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
There’s an awful-looking movie from 2007 that I’ve never gotten around to viewing, in which terminally ill Morgan Freeman and terminally ill Jack Nicholson go on a road trip and do cheesy, life-affirming things. Blood & Wine is like that; only, it’s Nicholson and Michael Caine. And it isn’t a road trip with a lot of stops, it’s a single jewel heist and its aftermath. And it isn’t life-affirming, it’s grim. These guys are cadaverous ne’er-do-wells who still hanker after the big score – who, after all these years, haven’t given up their pathetic dreams of glamor. Their time is running out.
Caine, in one of his scummiest roles, is dying. He coughs through all of his dialog. It would be terrible to listen to, if he weren’t so good at it.
Nicholson, too, is out of options. He has alienated his wife (Judy Davis), whose money has been propping up his wine shop – the venture that has enabled him to rub shoulders with, and scope out, the inhabitants of Miami’s gated communities. His romantic efforts are lavished upon a young nanny (Jennifer Lopez), who came over from Cuba in a little boat. She is as nice as anyone can be who’s hell-bent on obtaining other people’s property.
So, Caine and Nicholson are desperate. And bad. And they don’t like each other. They’re not so different from the criminal partners in Fargo, except they’re a lot older.
They hole up together in a seedy motel room. Caine, in between coughs, manages a soliloquy. “This is not an oceanfront suite in Marbella,” he wheezes. “There are no flowers or champagne from the management. I don’t, I don’t see a Swiss chocolate on my pillow. My masseuse is not at the door. And I am f---ing dying, Alex!”
“Take it easy, Vic,” says Nicholson.
Caine and Nicholson occupy half of the movie. Lopez’s screen time, and her affections, are divided between Nicholson and his earnest stepson (Stephen Dorff), whose mother is Davis. Davis and Dorff are the good guys; Lopez has to make up her mind whether to be bad or good. Yeah, OK, fine. I didn’t pay much attention to Lopez or to Dorff. I was too interested in the wicked old men.
And I enjoyed watching Davis, who, as in other movies, pulls faces that are downright acerbic. She may be mistreated, but she’s no pushover. She walks with a cane; perhaps it’s Nicholson who crippled her. Well, you know the rule that if a gun makes a casual appearance in an early scene, it’ll get used, later on, upon one of the characters. Apply this same rule to the cane. Again, as in Fargo, the movie has long passages of wry set-up … and then, bursts of violence. There is a car chase scene that is worthy of Fargo. Most of the movie isn’t in that league, but some of it is.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
P.S. After I watched Blood & Wine, I watched Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens, with younger Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, and Julia Anne Robinson, a cutie who died not long afterward, in a fire. I liked that movie, too. Two brothers and two women bum around wintry Atlantic City and fantasize about building a resort on a Hawaiian islet. Atlantic City’s grand old hotels are wonderful to look at. They were torn down not long thereafter.