“Jack” (1996)
Coppola is the type of revered filmmaker who will inspire someone, somewhere to launch a vigorous campaign to rehabilitate even his worst missteps, yet try as we might we can muster no defense for “Jack,” doubtless because that might entail watching the damn thing again and life (which is ironically the moral of this very fable) is short. The deafening silence where we might expect a chorus of “deserves a second look” or “more to it than its reputation suggests” is no doubt the result of several factors, but it may be mostly that even amongst the rogues gallery of the director’s less shiny moments, “Jack” takes the wooden spoon —it’s not even an interesting failure the way other Coppola wrong turns almost invariably are. The unbearably mawkish ‘Benjamin Button’-lite story of a boy born with a rare disorder that makes him age physically at four times the rate of a normal child, this is a film that occupies one sole register of would-be plangent schmaltz, and a role that plays to the very worst impulses of the late, great Robin Williams’ manchild persona. Indeed, the literalizing of the manchild concept was presumably what attracted Coppola, giving him the opportunity (along with writers James DeMonaco and Gary Nadeau) to investigate issues of aging and mortality that are obviously recurring concerns for the filmmaker, especially from this period of his career onward. But it’s depressing just how little he does with them, preferring to fall back into a bafflingly anonymous, thuddingly unsubtle family-friendly mode that sits at uncomfortable odds with the story’s darker implications. The ooginess of the sexuality issue is skated over awkwardly, not least by the film skipping forward in time by seven years in just one of its examples of narrative dishonesty, and Coppola seems to actively shy away from anything provocative or insightful (though watching it right now does yield an added frisson of discomfort with Bill Cosby’s presence as Jack’s wise, avuncular, similarly kid-at-heart tutor). If this steaming pile of ersatz sentiment has any redeeming feature for the director, it’s that “Jack” is crafted as though he were in the Witness Protection Program under exceptionally credible cover as a journeyman director —it’s so anonymous that it’s hard to remember Coppola was ever behind it, when you remember the film at all. [D]
“The Rainmaker” (1997)
Re-watching “The Rainmaker” these days, especially for those of us who might not have seen it for a decade or more, may be one of those experiences whereby present predilections collide with bloated memories to make for a disappointing but still nostalgic ride. Based on a novel by courtroom drama maestro John Grisham, who was on an absolute tear in the mid 90s with seven adaptations of his works coming out between ’93 and ’98, this is way more mellow than memory serves, to the point of sluggishness. Artistically speaking, Coppola was apparently already all but spent at this stage in the game, and the evidence is right here; everything about this picture just looks plain, ordinary and again anonymous. Without a trace of the audacious character that we’d last seen breathing at least some splendid visual life into “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (unless you count the film’s titles), this feels more like an assignment than an inspired project. The sense of Coppola treading water trying to maintain his own interest, let alone ours, is inescapable. Matt Damon plays a young zealous lawyer who is determined to bring down a corrupt insurance company while juggling a million other things like studying for the bar exam for half the film, dealing with Danny Devito’s obnoxious ambulance-chasing partner, or falling for Claire Danes’ abused wife. There’s a bit too much melodrama going on, and not enough intense courtroom moments comparable to the likes of other Grisham adaptations like “A Time To Kill.” But then, Grisham himself thinks it’s the best film adaptation out of all the others, so maybe the issue is that Coppola stuck too closely to the source material here, which lacks the kind of meat and potential for cinema fireworks worthy of Coppola’s talents. But hey, it’s never a dull sight to see Jon Voight playing a baddie and Mickey Rourke playing a boss, and it’s nowhere near as bad as what immediately preceded it, though you could drive yourself insane just trying to locate any vestige of golden-era Coppola across its resolutely uninspired 135 minutes. [C+]
“Youth Without Youth” (2007)
There’s no way an event like Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in 10 years could possibly come and go with a shrug of indifference, wthout creating any waves at all, but is it just us, or did most critics seem a tad hyperbolic in their all-out hatred for this strange but at times fascinating sci-fi tale? Garnering some of the snarkiest reviews of his career, maybe because of the urge to tear into a fallen idol who dared to turn in something this unabashedly self-indulgent and opaque, “Youth Without Youth” was Coppola’s attempt to get back to an earlier ideal of making smaller, more personal films, and yet it is weighted down at every point with the heavy, portentous and occasionally downright confusing impulses of an old man, fearing death and leaving an incomplete legacy. It certainly doesn’t work entirely, and it is without doubt almost shamefully self-absorbed, yet it is also occasionally fascinating and in its sorrowful, yearning moments has more real feeling than Coppola had managed for decades. And there’s often an exuberance to the filmmaking and a daring willingness to be as esoteric and weird as the story demands, which in the context of his filmography is certainly a refreshing if divisive move on from the bland look and feel of his last two features. At heart, the film is concerned with the Coppola staples of time, legacy and mortality (which you can see in everything from ‘Peggy Sue’ to “The Godfather Part III” to “Dracula,” to “Jack” and beyond, even up to “Twixt”), but so much is thrown at the wall in ‘Youth’ —a nazi spy subplot, romances, dealing with newly discovered super powers, World War II, and more—that not all of it can possibly stick or even fit together. At times unwieldy though it may be, the central ‘Benjamin Button’-esque story of an old man (Tim Roth) struck by lightning who miraculously regenerates into his younger self is an ambitious and always interesting metaphysical what-if, and though Coppola struggles mashing together disparate genres, it’s fairly obvious to see why he’d be interested in this story, and why he might invest it with so much heart. It’s the tale of a man who’s essentially granted the impossible wish for more time in which to complete his life’s work and address the mistakes and regrets of his past. [B-]
“Tetro” (2009)
Two years after his much-disparaged comeback with “Youth Without Youth,” Coppola continued his new era with this mostly self-financed (ah, wine money!) and highly personal story about two estranged brothers and the familial rivalries borne out of different generations. “Tetro” is so far the most well-received of the filmmaker’s late-period works. The high-contrast, black-and-white digital cinematography by Mihai Mălaimare, Jr. (who went on to shoot “The Master” in 70mm) is absolutely gorgeous, and there’s a good reason one of the first promotional clips released for the film was of the stunning opening three minutes, in which we are introduced to the glorious crisp look of the film and its urban Argentinian setting. Not enough can be said though for the brilliant casting of Vincent Gallo in the titular role, the older brother to Alden Ehrenreich’s Bennie (also quite good). Gallo is an acquired taste, but can anyone argue he has on-camera presence to burn? His slithery, motor-mouthed aggression, wiry frame, and atypical good looks are perfectly in sync with Coppola’s intentions here and coupled with the slick and luscious visual treatment, which switches abruptly to color for some flashbacks and the odd surreal Powell and Pressburger-style ballet sequence, helps make “Tetro” Coppola’s best, most complete work in his twilight period. And perhaps we were also by this stage learning a little what to expect from the ageing filmmaker, or at least what not to: with “Tetro,” Coppola makes the persuasive case that he is not creatively exhausted, but if he has another masterpiece in him, it will not look anything like “The Godfather” and we should all stop holding even him to the impossible standard of his younger self. At times, it’s too on the nose and it’s obviously personal, which can be invigorating but also alienating and self-indulgent. Regardless, there aren’t many legendary, 70-year-old filmmakers with multiple Oscars making movies like “Tetro,” and that alone should be commended. [B]
“Twixt” (2011)
If it felt like Coppola was climbing his way slowly back into our good graces over the late 00s, he must have missed a foothold because he slipped a far bit back with this turgid, silly, occasionally unwatchable horror movie, which was positioned as Coppola’s late-career comeback but instead playing more as a for-diehards-only curio. Val Kilmer plays Hall Baltimore, a “bargain basement Stephen King” whose imagination is ignited when he stops off at a spooky small town and gets told stories about a series of ritualistic child murders that happened long ago (the bodies are buried, supposedly, underneath the hotel where Kilmer is staying). The main mystery, concerning a serial killer that the local sheriff (played by a scenery-chewing Bruce Dern) dubs “The Vampire Executioner,” is seriously stale —there’s literally a scene where Kilmer, Dern, Dern’s deputy, and a little kid ask a Ouija board for help. And the whole thing is shot so blandly that you can’t tell whether or not Coppola registers how funny the tableau is (the film’s lack of style is odd considering cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr. also shot the sumptuous “Tetro”). Things get slightly livelier when Kilmer slips into a dream world, where he converses with Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) and a shimmery Elle Fanning, who may or may not be one of the town’s murdered children. But even those sequences don’t register as “dreamy” as much as they are “sparsely furnished” (at one point these sequences were supposed to be exhibited in 3D, but that, along with a “live score” by co-composer Dan Deacon, never got much further than a handful of screenings). There are a number of things that make “Twixt” a worthy watch, at least for intrigued Coppola completists —the genuinely batshit performances by Dern and Kilmer (at one point he does impressions of Marlon Brando, Peter O’Toole, and “a black gay basketball player from the ’60s”), some nifty stylistic flourishes, the fact that Kilmer’s on-screen harridan wife is played by his real-life ex-wife Joanne Whalley and the film’s occasional blast of eeriness, particularly when Coppola perversely re-creates the tragic death of his son Gian-Carlo Coppola. But none of this borrowed interest, salacious or otherwise can enliven what is mostly a dull, muddily plotted misfire that even for those entirely disenchanted with late-period Coppola, feels just so far beneath him. [C-]
