Sam Neill is 78 years old today. He was born on 14 September 1947. He was born in Northern Ireland. But people say he’s from New Zealand since his family moved there when he was seven.
To me, New Zealand is a land of mystery. How do so many amazing filmmakers come from such a small country?! Of course, I think the same of Canada. The United States is so big it destroys the will of most artists. That’s my theory anyway.
Sam Neill is a great actor. And he’s been in a ton of films — most of which are worth watching. But I love him for two films — one psychotronic and one, well, I’m not sure.
I’ve come to think of psychotronic as being about how you watch a film, not what you watch. It’s about open-mindedness. It’s about not listening to critics. And most of all, it’s about enjoyment. We do not make excuses for enjoying Now You See Him, Now You Don’t!
But what are we to do about films we love that happen to also be simply outstanding? Specifically, what are we to do with Dean Spanley? It’s a period comedy. The cast is outstanding with veterans in even the small roles. And the production couldn’t be better.
On the other hand, it’s about a clergyman who thinks he was a dog in a past life. What’s more, it’s written by Alan Sharp, who I think of as a genre writer with films like Night Moves and The Osterman Weekend. Regardless, I highly recommend everyone watch it. And here’s the whole film:
The other Sam Neill film is absolutely psychotronic: In the Mouth of Madness. I really don’t understand why this film isn’t more widely loved. Critical opinion is sharply divided into (1) critics who love it; and (2) critics who don’t understand it. Not that there’s much to understand. But most critics lean heavily on the dull side of the spectrum.
It and Re-Animator are probably the best filmed versions of Lovecraft. I think it is because neither takes the source material all that seriously. Lovecraft’s world fits nicely in the context of the last few thousand years of mythology. But like that mythology, it isn’t terribly believable. Few today would see gods in such concrete form. So its better if filmmakers have their tongues in their cheeks.
Sam Neill is great in the film. And the whole thing is a delight.
Image cropped from Neill at Burghound Asia in Singapore in 2011 by David Seow under CC BY-SA 4.0.
I’ve never NOT liked him in anything. Even the dino one. It was a POS but Neill was terrific (that movie had a heckuva talented cast for basically an updated B movie).
Dean Spanley was a great suggestion. It’s the kind of movie I love discovering — a smart script and great acting in a movie I’d never heard of. I kinda see why it failed to originally catch an audience though (I think it has, over time.) That’s the kind of movie that’s really hard to market. Every animal lover would adore the story but most animal movies are awful. The tough parent-child relationship is something many people can relate to but most other movies along those lines are awful. The ads made this look like Field of Dreams meets Marley & Me.
I usually blame Hollywood morons when they can’t figure out how to market a good movie, but in this case I wouldn’t have known how to sell it, either!
As far as I can tell, Dean Spanley never really got released in the US. And it is the kind of film that would succeed as a sleeper. It’s the kind of film that needs word of mouth. I find it kind of offensive that it didn’t get more of a chance. Critics tend to complain that “they don’t make films for adults.” But when they get one, they most ignore it. Reviews were good. But most people focused on Peter O’Toole, who’s good but hardly the core of the film. And no “critic” that I know of championed the film.
The internet has really killed the notion of a critic championing a film, though. What critic has enough clout now to really stand by a film and have anybody care? People will just see the title and if they haven’t heard of it, they won’t click on it. Any paid critic who keeps doing posts nobody clicks on will soon stop being paid.
Also, by 2008, the multiplex wasn’t gonna be putting oddball little Brit movies in the tenth of their 10 theaters. They did when Full Monty came out. (Which, I know, is cheesy, but Wilkinson and Carlyle are great!) By 2008, if it wasn’t a comic-book movie or Harry Potter or Jason Statham or such, there wasn’t room for it.
I don’t know that I agree with that. For one thing, many of the theaters are tiny. It really isn’t asking that much for 1/16th of a theater’s space to try out a smaller film. And I do see smaller films featured at the multiplex. And the film could have streamed. In all the time it’s been out, I have never seen it streaming anywhere. It is rentable and that’s it. For whatever reason, the producers did not want this film to be seen. It’s DVD release (it hasn’t been released on Blu-ray) is perfunctory.
As for “critics,” there are still major critics and major publications. And Roger Ebert was still alive when Dean Spanley came out. And I’d argue that it would be helpful for a “critic” to campaign for something. As it is, the main thing I notice about modern “critics” is how much they don’t stand out. When you go to the critic grocery store, most of what you will find in plain yogurt. I think I disagree with Pauline Kael more than I agree with her but she made a name for herself by being different. Whereas the difference between Siskel and Ebert were really quite small. And I think things are even worse now.
Maybe it was a thing where the financiers stood to make more from dumping the movie than releasing it in the U.S. Who knows, that’s not uneard-of. The entire movie business is a total wasps’ nest of parasitic crooks.
On modern “serious” critics, couldn’t agree more. They’re all writing for the 32-year-old office worker who wants to know “what everyone else is talking about,” to have an opinion on the latest thing that “educated” people are discussing, to show that they’re not among the Great Unwashed. They all rave over exactly the same things for exactly the same reasons. It’s like yuppies who have Malcolm Gladwell books, it’s purely a “cultural signifier,” to borrow your phrase.
It’s great you mentioned Gladwell. That’s perfect! This is also what I’ve found using LLMs. They all have a great deal of film writing in their training. So ask them any question about film and you will get back the consensus opinion. It makes me feel slightly better about life because I actually do have different opinions. I’m not sure what the point of saying the same thing as everyone else really does. Well, I guess it feeds Rotten Tomatoes. And that’s what people use now. One of the reasons for creating PR was to provide reasons why you should like the films we talk about. I’ve gotten away from that. I need to work on it…
I can see why these people love AI so much. My main use for ChatGPT is to find out what conventional wisdom is. And we already had that! It’s called Wikipedia!