FEVER (1991):

Marcia Gay Harden, who is three years short of 50 as I write this, has come to be a respected and awarded actress (two Oscar nominations, one win) by playing a certain familiar type of character. If you are a guy you know this character very well. She's the sincere, intelligent, lonely woman that you meet at a party and can't get rid of because she's had a second glass of Chablis and can't distinguish between genuine interest and simple civility. She occupies you with the usual boilerplate comments about global warming, corporate irresponsibility, and her fear of growing old, and she just keeps nattering on and on, although you mutter only an occasional laconic response. She's attractive enough, probably used to be a looker, but you are a guy after all, so while you feign interest in her, you are actually thinking about breaking free and hitting on the short-bus chick who looks like Anna Kournikova. Sound familiar? The world is full of those women. I know at least four women who would be played by Marcia Gay Harden, in the unlikely event they would do anything or know anybody interesting enough to attract a screenwriter's interest.

Well, believe it or not, there was actually a time when you would have been thinking of breaking free from some other sincere woman to hit on Marcia Gay Harden. She caught the eye of the film world in 1990 with her sultry performance in a Coen Brother film, Miller's Crossing, and proceeded to get cast in some sexy leading parts for a couple of years. She was even cast as Ava Gardner in a TV movie about Sinatra!

This period virtually drove her once-promising film career into total obscurity. The problem wasn't that she lacked the looks or talent to handle the roles, but that she never got to strut her stuff in a decent movie. If you look at the ranked IMDb list of her top ten films, you'll see that none of them were made in the five or six years after Miller's Crossing.

1. (8.00) - Mystic River (2003)
2. (7.90) - Miller's Crossing (1990)
3. (7.09) - Pollock (2000)
4. (6.88) - The Daytrippers (1996)
5. (6.60) - Meet Joe Black (1998)
6. (6.59) - The Spitfire Grill (1996)
7. (6.57) - Casa de los babys (2003)
8. (6.39) - P.S. (2004)
9. (6.37) - Gaudi Afternoon (2001)
10. (6.30) - Space Cowboys (2000)

She spent a substantial portion of that period establishing credibility as a stage actress. She was nominated for a Tony for her performance in "Angels in America," playing the character that Mary-Louise Parker portrayed in the cable series. When Harden did make movies, however, they seemed to be mediocre ones. She would not really get her movie career going again until she re-emerged as a character actress.

Fever is one of the mediocre films she made in that sexy period.

It's a thriller and the premise is gimmicky. Armand Assante plays a paroled convict who wants to go straight. He returns to his ex-girlfriend (Harden) only to find that she is living with a sweet mild-mannered lawyer (Sam Neill). "Not very thrilling or gimmicky," you say? Does it sound like it belongs on the Oxygen Network? Be patient. I'm getting to the gimmicky conflict. A bunch of baddies from the con's past want him to use his talents to commit some crimes for them, so they kidnap the girlfriend as leverage. The con thus has to commit the crimes in order to save her life, a task made far more complicated by the fact that the wimpy lawyer insists on tagging along.

Fever isn't a bad watch for a non-theatrical actioner/thriller. There are some guilty pleasures. Late in the film, for example, there is a scene in which a psycho kidnapper cuts off Marcia Harden's bra, and that is damned hot. The film also has some interesting character development. The Armand Assante part is quite interesting. He's a tough and ruthless criminal, but also a complicated multi-dimensional man who really loves his ex. As the film progresses, we see more and more of the criminal's strengths revealed, while we see the lawyer descend deeper and deeper into the world of violent criminals, all the while surprising himself with how easy it is to revert to savage behavior, and how pleasurable it can be.

Given some strengths and a pretty good cast, I don't think you'll find Fever unbearable if you happen to run into it on cable or something. On the other hand, I would not recommend that you make an effort to seek it out, for three reasons:

• The pace of the thriller is slowed down excessively by various gratuitous sub-plots going on within the prison which the con has just left. The film's character development is deep enough that it takes a long time to deliver its punch even without these unnecessary digressions, so the prison scenes slow the film down to a pace which, in my opinion, is just too slow for an action film. Since the character development is actually one of the film's strengths, there was no room to cut any of that, so the only way to speed the film up would have been to minimize the prison scenes.

• In the large portion of the story which takes place after the girlfriend is kidnapped and before she is is rescued, the film becomes essentially a "mismatched buddy" partnership without the humor. I don't how universal my attitude is, but for me the only real pleasure of a mismatched buddy film IS the humor. Red Heat? Trite story, but fun to watch because Jim Belushi constantly makes fun of Arnold. 48 Hours? Not much of a story at all, but Murphy and Nolte carry it with banter and bickering. And so forth. The formula just doesn't work for me without the funny put-downs.

• Since Fever is ostensibly a formulaic thriller and not a hand-wringing drama, there's never any doubt that the mismatched buddies will save the woman's life. Therefore, the only suspense is derived from her ultimate choice between the two men ... and the viewer will actually forget about that choice for more than an hour during the "mismatched buddy" portion of the film.

The DVD is not worth acquiring. In addition to the fact that the film is so-so, the transfer is rather grainy and the disc has no features of any kind.

VIDS: (zipped .wmvs) Marcia Gay Harden in all cases.

• The two (rather tame) sex scenes between Sam Neill and Marcia Harden
• This however, is NOT tame and is worth a look. A psycho cuts off Marcia's bra.

 Collages:

Marcia Gay Harden

various background strippers

CRUSH (1992):

Crush is one of those Pinteresque films in which a sinister stranger insinuates him/herself into the lives of some relatively isolated people.

It's an odd film almost from the first moments. A literary critic from New Zealand and her American friend (Marcia Gay Harden) drive through a picturesque part of the North Island, on their way to interview a Kiwi author who is a Booker Prize winner. The two women discuss the fact that the interview may go poorly because this author is notoriously hard on critics, and she has written some harsh words about him. The American spots an odd roadside attraction which causes her to takes her eyes from the road long enough to cause a terrible accident. The New Zealander's body is mangled and appears to have died in the crash, but the American is only dazed, so she does what I think any of us would have done in this case. Instead of calling for emergency assistance, she makes her way to the author's house and pretends to be the critic - without even changing her American accent! This author is apparently not the brightest guy in the world, because he buys the impersonation hook, line and sinker.

The American is soon seducing the author, which doesn't go down well with his daughter, who kinda thought the American was hitting on her first! Meanwhile, it turns out that the real critic was not killed in the crash, but her body and mind were both badly damaged. When the daughter figures out precisely what is going on, she goes to the hospital, befriends the injured critic, and begins programming her for a recovery that includes revenge against the controlling American.

And so forth.

The daughter was really only planning to turn her father against the American, but it turns out that the injured critic is capable of far more insidious types of revenge than anyone could have imagined after seeing her damaged body. I think. Or maybe it was all a dream.

The film has a great look to it. It was shot near the town of Rotorua, a tourist mecca because of its unusual natural wonders like dramatic waterfalls, geysers, hot mud pools, thermal springs, ancient villages buried by volcanoes, Maori cultural artifacts, and tropical rainforests. It's an especially useful setting for an eerie movie because it appears that sunshine has never touched the place at any time. I once explained my Upstate New York birthplace to an ex-girlfriend of mine by saying that our local dialect doesn't even have a word for "sun." Rotorua is that kind of place - misty, foggy, and perennially overcast. It is made even more sinister by a surfeit of touristy hotels, motels, and shops which vie for the tourist dollars.

The words aren't as strong as the pictures. The script is laden with heavy-handed literary tropes. For example, the American's impersonation of the New Zealander is foreshadowed clumsily by a scene in which they eat chicken together before the accident and the critic asks her future impersonator, "Do you want my skin?" (She does. Literally and figuratively.) At least that device worked on the real level as well as the symbolic. Too many elements of the film exist on a figurative plane without attempting to make sense in the story's primary reality. One minute the two women are in the crash. The American gets up and walks. Then almost instantly the American is at the author's house, again taking the critic's "skin." WTF? Apparently the scenarist thought no more explanations were necessary. As for the ending ... well, I think I know what happened. Or not. Hard to say. Quirky editing.

In addition to the confusing script, the film is burdened by the fact that Marcia Gay Harden isn't especially convincing as the manipulative and malevolent seductress. This is another effort from her ill-fated "sexy seductress phase" in the early 90s. In this film she looks less like a femme fatale than a middle-class suburban housewife who watches Oprah every day and wants to shed a few pounds. You can tell that the script must have been written by a woman, because no man would conceive of this character as mysteriously seductive. She's obnoxious, a sloppy drunk, a messy eater, and she talks too much. She doesn't even shut up during sex.

Bottom line: Crush has some merit, especially in the visuals, but it's just trapped somewhere between the world of psychological horror films and the world of hand-wringing arthouse melodramas, and it never really settles into either groove.

VIDS: (zipped .wmvs)

• The two very brief flashes from Marcia Harden
• A lengthier flash from Donogh Rees while she's playing a hospital patient.

Collages:

Marcia Gay Harden

Donogh Rees

THIRD PARTY VIDEOS:

• Two vids from Headspace, a horror movie about a guy who suddenly has a massive expansion of brain power, ultimately with horrific consequences.
  • Pollyanna McIntosh (zipped .avi)
  • Tatiana Vidus (zipped .avi)

  Sample collages below:

  Pollyanna McIntosh

  Tatiana Vidius

OTHER CRAP:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Ashley Hanna -  Camp Blood, The Musical.

Pell James - The King.