By Steve Crum

The taut opening moments of Reptile, featuring Benecio del Toro as a dedicated detective pulled into a horrendous murder mystery, is a hook I could not let go. 

Before delving into the film’s highlights and criticisms, do not be misled regarding the “reptilian” title. It took at least 10 minutes before I realized Reptile was not a monster movie. I now figure it references del Toro’s Tom Nichols—a driven (even in his sleep) police dick of the old school. A bit slovenly here and there, he is nonetheless relentless to go above and beyond. In the process, he might lose friends and family. “A groveling or despised person” is the dictionary call. 

And so goes Detective Nichols in Reptile. 

The movie’s premise is as simple as the final act is predictable. Directed by Grant Singer (his first feature film), the story follows typical problem-cause-solution progression. A young lady real estate agent is brutally killed—in one of the houses she is showing. Numerous suspects are investigated by the local police, led by Detective Nichols. Among them are the victim’s boyfriend (well played by Justin Timberlake) and the ex-husband, Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman).

When it appears the case is solved, Nichols defies his fellow policemen, and relentlessly keeps delving into alternative solutions. His rebellious actions affect his private life, particularly his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone). 

Singer, del Toro, and Benjamin Brewer crafted the screenplay, which has problems in the 136-minute film’s second half. Maybe this is due in part to to muddled editing (Kevin Hickman)? Nonetheless, the story morphs into a kind of paranoid and bizarre narrative involving corruption. Actually, such a plot has been around in police dramas for decades—notably 1973’s Serpico. 

While the music score by Yair Elazar Glotman and Black Label Media continually suggests there are some creepy things about to happen, it is much ado about hardly anything, a red herring at best. (Actually, the music often feels like a horror movie.) 

What begins as a taut crime story ends as anything but. In fact, the finale leaves a couple of questions unanswered. 

But what a stellar cast!

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: C-

By Steve Crum

You can’t blame Heart of Stone for delivering one explosive stunt sequence after another. Or can you? From the get-go, we are caught up in a caper involving deception and danger. And that’s even before the opening credits. 

Director Tom Harper, known for his British TV and film work, guides heroine Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) through 122 minutes of undercover spy vs spy adventures to maintain peace in our treacherous world.  

The problem lies in originality, the lack thereof. We have seen similar undercover/spy/gang infiltration set pieces in a myriad number of movies and TV shows. That makes Heart’s opening so predictable. It brings to mind the Mission: Impossible franchise, the James Bond franchise, and numerous TV takes—including Chicago PD and  Law & Order Special Victims Unit. 

Heart of Stone’s Rachel Stone (aka “Nine of Hearts”—her spy moniker) is a hybrid of  Ethan Hunt and James Bond. She is as adept on both the ground (a motorcycle race) and airborne (a dirigible). The stunt work is awesome. This is particularly true of the mountaintop confrontation that involves Heart, a ski lift, parachute, and on and on. I could not help but think of the memorable Swiss mountain lab of Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. (George Lazenby lives!) 

Shall we say that Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder’s screenplay has been greatly inspired from several sources. At least they moved the location from Switzerland to the Italian Alps. 

Like the Mission: Impossible plots, Heart of Stone has a confusing premise. At the outset, Stone works with fellow M16 field agents Parker (Jamie Dornan), Yang (Jing Lusi) and Bailey (Paul Ready). They are tracking arms dealer Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti). But Stone is actually running quarterback for Charter, a secret organization dedicated to peacekeeping. 

Keep in mind that “Nine of Hearts” is trying to keep a nefarious digital service from world domination by hacking into worldwide operations. Treachery and disloyalty abound throughout the plot as the body count increases. 

But does “Nine of Hearts” survive? 

Cue the James Bond theme. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B-

This review of Independence Day was published in The Kansas City Kansan newspaper on July 5, 1996.

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By Steve Crum

It is always a good sign when a movie grabs your attention so much that it seemingly ends after it has just begun. Independence Day, at two hours and 15 minutes, has that effect. It is an awesome film.

Independence Day, in fact, is the most spectacular and intriguing sci-fi action film since the Star Wars Trilogy. (The first-rate Aliens and Terminator 2 classify as sci-fi horror films.) That means the action and characterizations are stunning enough that even plausibility lapses and a talky second act hardly matter. Big bucks were spent on ID’s effects, and it shows. The result is state-of-the-art glorious. 

The story kicks off immediately as a saucer, six miles in diameter, heads toward Washington, D.C. Similar vehicles are descending upon other world capitols and major cities. Bill Pullman is cast the American President who has to deal with imminent (within six hours) invasion. Imminent evacuation is more like it. These gargantuan
ships do not even bother communicating their intentions, although Jeff Goldblum’s computer whiz David Levinson does intercept a message of their plans. 

Uncle Sam’s best war planes have no effect on the alien vessels. So a good part of the movie’s opening involves desperation and running away since virtually every monument in D.C. (including The White House) and New York City (Empire State Building, et al) are spectacularly blasted apart. 

Enter Will Smith as jock fighter pilot Captain Steven Hiller, who survives a dogfight with one of the hundreds of alien fighter saucers emerging from the hovercraft. Hiller soon leads a major attack squadron against the space guys. After punching out one of the tentacled creatures, he quips, “Now that’s what I call a close encounter.” Could he be the Fresh Prince of Altair1?

Clinton and Dole could never top this: ID’s President Whitmore dons a pilot uniform to join the fighter attack!

There are some clever inserts (a TV showing The Day the Earth Stood Still is interrupted as the invasion begins) and casting (Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner plays a fright-wigged
scientist). 

Good support via comedy relief is provided by Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid and Harvey Fierstein. 

Stargate director Roland Emmerich and his effects crew deserve major credit, making Independence Day one terrific blast. 

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: A-

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My interview with June Foray occurred on an early June Saturday of 1996 at The Cartoon Company, a specialized shop selling animation cels, in Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri. Then my notes were lost and the story never written…until now. Enjoy!

By Steve Crum

I never met “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” Mel Blanc, but I did meet “The Woman of a Thousand Voices.” It happened 27 years ago, around the first of June, 1996.

That was when Natasha Fatale was in Kansas City. So were Jokey Smurf,  Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Tweety Bird, and Granny (Tweety’s protector from Sylvester the Cat). And I have to mention one of my fav voices, that of the vicious “Talking Tina” in the classic Twilight Zone episode,”Living Doll.”

Hokey Smoke! They were June Foray!

I caught up with her as she was greeting fans at—appropriately—The Cartoon Company, a store specializing in sales of motion picture cartoon cels. In the creation of cartoons before digital art, cels were hand-drawn on clear celluloid sheets placed over painted backgrounds. These are better known as animation cels. Since 1990, studios have used digitalized images instead of cels.

As I walked into the shop, about a half dozen fans were waiting in line to meet the voice legend. At room center, Foray sat behind a table and atop a tall chair, which hid her diminutive 4’ 11” height. She did not look nearly as old as her 79 years, and her strong, trained voice was still vibrant.

“My voice is in my genes,” Foray explained, “and it has been that way since I was six years old.” So began my few minutes virtually alone with June Foray. (No one else was waiting to see her, so I had ample private time with her.)

“My untrained talent led to an extremely lucrative career in cartoon voices”—for Warner Brothers, Jay Ward, Walt Disney, Hanna-Barbera, and various other radio, TV and movie voice-overs and commercials. After hundreds of vocal appearances in cartoons, Foray began the 1960s with her efforts for the preservation and promotion of animation. During that period, she was awarded for her past work in films.

After two decades, her lobbying for the creation of an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature category finally paid off. This was a definite plus in her career.

On the flip side, she carries ill feelings about the trend of casting celebrity voices instead of professional voice actors in animated features. This is exemplified by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in the Toy Story movies. Not only do they get paid much more, but they receive screen credit big time.

“It usurps those who are trying to make a living solely as such,” Foray says. Yet she has been greatly unaffected by the trend, having had steady work from the beginning.

My introduction to that Foray voice came when she WAS given voice credit—but on radio during the summer of 1957. That is when she was part of the stock company of credited voice actors (along with Daws Butler, the voice of Huckleberry Hound) starring on the CBS radio comedy program, The Stan Freberg Show. She had already made a name with satirist Freberg on several best selling 45 rpm records during the early 1950s—St. George and the Dragonet, Sh-Boom, and Little Blue Riding Hood among them. She, Butler and Freberg had even performed St. George live on The Ed Sullivan Show. June Foray’s wonderful sense of humor was so apparent.

I am sure that most Freberg fans cite his 1961 Capitol LP, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Vol.1, as his classic best recording. This monumental musical-comedy satire includes June Foray doing a variety of voices that cover the founding of our nation. Thirty-five years later, Vol. 2 was finally released…and Foray was again a prominent voice therein.

It had just been released when I spoke of it to her. She heartily roared when I brought it up.

“I was out driving and had not listened to it yet,” she says, “so I  put the CD in my player…and laughed. I laughed so hard I had to pull over and park the car to continue laughing.”

Warner Brothers animation legend Chuck Jones worked with Foray numerous times in some of the most hilarious cartoons ever created.

“June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc,” he said. “Mel Blanc was the male June Foray.”

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June Foray worked primarily in television productions throughout the rest of her life. She remains the oldest entertainer to receive an Emmy Award for her voice work in 2012’s The Garfield Show (as Mrs. Cauldron). She received a Governors Award Emmy the following year. She died at 99 on July 26, 2017.

This review of Superman Returns originally appeared in the July 6, 2006 Liberty Tribune newspaper.

By Steve Crum

In Superman Returns, our caped hero does not turn the world backward to relive time, but much of director Bryan Singer’s film seems lifted from 1978’s Superman: The Movie, including John Williams’ super score. 

Nevertheless, this new take is a mixed treats bag well worth gobbling down. Homage to the classic 1950s TV series adds more surprises inside. OK, enough sweet metaphors for the eye candy flick of the summer. 

Singer (The Usual Suspects and the first two X-Men movies ) and writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris have retooled The Man of Steel into a much more introspective guy given to quietly musing about the earth’s needs for him.

In one scene he floats in outer space, listening for sounds of turmoil around the world. We learn via TV newscasts that Superman has squashed evils in various countries during the past day. He is not limited to Metropolis crimes, as previous films have implied. 

Coming close to sacrilege, Superman refers to himself as a savior the world needs. In addition, a sequence of Superman bursting through heavenly looking clouds, speeding to the rescue as a hallelujah chorus resounds, reinforces the movie’s religious edge. It is pretty eyebrow raising.

The plot is basically familiar with twists. Superman aka Clark Kent (Brandon Routh, a Christopher Reeve lookalike) crash lands via spaceship on his adopted parents’ farm after being out of planet—as opposed to out of town—for five years. Widowed Earth mom Martha (Eva Marie Saint) helps Clark recover from his fruitless, exhaustive search for traces of his Kryptonian family and similar beings like himself.

While away, crime has escalated. That includes recent evil doings by the world’s top criminal, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey). Lex has just been paroled after spending the past five years in prison. In his brief time out of jail, he has ransacked Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and plans to obliterate the United States.

Not only that, Daily Planet reporter and Supie’s babe, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) is engaged to Richard White (James Marsden aka X-Men’s Cyclops—but that’s another story entirely). AND Lois has a 5 year-old son with super powers. (Spoiler!) Hmm. Richard is editor Perry White’s (Frank Langella) nephew and assistant editor. 

See what happens when you turn the back of your cape on things for a few years?

Memorable set pieces include Superman placing a jumbo jet smack in the middle of an ongoing Major League Baseball game, and battling both Lex Luthor and Kryptonite at his crystal fortress. There is also an extended romantic sequence (see Superman: The Movie) wherein he flies Lois in tender embrace over the evening Metropolis skyline.

Superman Returns takes itself seriously, which works OK. Superman is often sullen, and Lex is colder and more brutal than Gene Hackman’s 1978 characterization. Lex’s moll, Kitty (Parker Posey), is hard edged too, as are his henchmen. Perhaps this reflects the time in which we live, where sadistic real villains abound.

Substantial cameos are by Noel Neill and Jack Larson (TV’s Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, respectively). It’s heartening to see Larson hugging the new Jimmy Olsen, played by Sam Huntington. 

Incidentally I increase the rating to an “A” by factoring in the fabulous IMAX version playing at the Olathe, Kansas AMC. Twenty minutes of jaw dropping 3D footage is included. 

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GRADE based upon A-F Rating; B+

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