Two weeks ago, one of my favorite actors died in a way that
could have come straight from a horror sequel like
Christine 2 or
Final
Destination 12, a freak accident that could well have been an auto
malfunction or simple driver negligence. Either way, when I heard about it, my
first thought was,
At least it wasn’t
drugs, as it so often is. And then I grieved, and then felt guilty for it
because the depth of my feeling for this was greater than my sorrowful
ruminations on the Orlando tragedy only a week before. And I thought how
celebrity is a funny thing because when you admire somebody and his work, you
can come to feel like you know him, even though you don’t. And certainly for a
theatre and film guy like myself, you fantasize about working with your idols
someday. It doesn’t help when you have a bit of crush for them. So like a
friend who has to speak at the funeral, I find myself having to do something to
celebrate this actor that I admired, and to talk a little bit about his work. I
haven’t seen everything; he’s got 65 acting credits on IMDb, and he was only 27
years old. But I wanted to cover the stuff I have seen, the good, the bad, and
the ugly.
Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
This adaptation of Stephen King’s novella,
Low Men in Yellow Coats, adapted by
William Goldman and directed by Scott Hicks, is a charming and affecting
coming-of-age drama, less fantasy than King’s story, more cold war reflection,
with the bonus of the always-wonderful Anthony Hopkins as the centerpiece, or
one of the centerpieces anyway. The other would be Anton, in his first
performance I had ever seen. And I really wasn’t crazy about this casting. I
had a different kind of Bobby Garfield in my head, a little more mature, a
little less awkward. Seeing the young Anton Yelchin in this role, I could
understand why the other kids picks on the character! And when he imitates a comic bit from Hopkins
in the closing shot (in which he demonstrates to his mom what flatulence is), I
found it cringe-worthy. So while I liked the film as a whole, I would not
notice Anton again or become a fan until years later when I saw
Charlie Bartlett.
House of D (2004)
I bought this DVD shortly after Robin Williams died (I
grieved big time for him as well), and the fact that it had Anton in it was a
bonus. As it turns out, I really don’t like Williams very much in this film
(too much face mugging), but Anton’s work was a pretty big step forward from
Hearts in Atlantis. Written and directed
by David Duchovny, it’s another period coming-of-age story, this time set in
New York, where Anton’s character goes to a somewhat oppressive religious
school, is best friends with a mentally disabled janitor (Williams), seeks
relationship advice from a mysterious female black inmate, and has to cope with
the loss of his father and the encroaching madness of his mother. It’s a lot
for a young boy to handle, but Anton manages to deftly portray the broad
spectrum of his quirky childhood with a mix of humor and pathos.
Fierce People (2005)
Yet another period coming-of-age story where Anton has dysfunctional
parents. This time, while his dad is studying tribes in South America, his
addict mom moves into the estate of an extremely wealthy, older man, played by
Donald Sutherland, where Anton’s character runs afoul of the old man’s
privileged grandson (Chris Evans), while at the same time finding a girl to crush
on (Kristin Stewart) and another father figure (or perhaps, more accurately,
grandfather figure). The strange thing about this film is the tonal shift that
takes place in the third act, from quirky comedy to dramatic suspense. You
really do feel like you’re watching two different movies here.
Alpha Dog (2006)
Though I haven’t seen all of Anton’s films, I would be
willing to bet that this one is the most tragic. Inspired by a true story, he
plays a kid who is kidnapped by a gang of thugs to get revenge on his brother.
Zack does not really realize the gravity of his situation; he’s so unhappy at
home, and he’s actually eager to win the approval and acceptance of these
gang-bangers. But his trust and appreciation is very sadly misplaced. This
film, which features another favorite actor of mine, Emile Hirsch, as well as
Justin Timberlake, and the best (unrecognizable) performance I’ve ever seen
from Sharon Stone, is what I call a “kick in the gut” movie. This is what it
does to you. And if you’re like me, you’ll be thankful for it.
Charlie Bartlett (2007)
This film has been compared to a number of high school
comedies, from
Rushmore to
Farris Beuller’s Day Off, but the one it
reminds me of the most is
Pump Up the
Volume, a film for which I’ve always had a great deal of affection. Yelchin
plays a spoiled, wealthy trouble-maker who gets kicked out of every private prep
school, only to end up finding his niche in public school, which seemed to be
the last place he would belong. Seems pretty cliché so far, but then it
branches off into its own territory, and Charlie Bartlett becomes the kid you
actually wish you knew in school. So enamored was I with the charming, funny,
yet sweet title character that I had to look up the actor who played him, and I
was shocked that he was that kid I didn’t like so much in
Hearts in Atlantis. Here was a young actor who seemed completely
uninhibited, willing to do almost anything on camera and make a total fool of
himself, and look good doing it. There is a little bit of screwball content in
Charlie Bartlett, and it doesn’t quite
get the subject of psychotropic drugs right, but what I love is the sweet
earnestness of the character and how accepting he is of everyone (even a stern,
sad sack, alcoholic principle, played by Robert Downey Jr.), showing that it’s
possible for people to be good to one another, even in a vicious place like
high school.
New York, I Love You (2008)
A fun collection of 10 short films by different directors
with the common theme, which is expressed in the movie’s title: a love of the
big apple. In Anton’s segment, directed by Brett Ratner, he plays a high school
kid who was dumped on the day of his prom. But his boss at the pharmacy has a
surprise for him, which will make this prom night one to remember. I dare not
say anything more, except that it’s a charming and funny piece of an overall
delightful film.
Middle of Nowhere (2008)
More teen angst and dysfunctional parents here. Anton plays
another privileged kid who doesn’t appreciate what he’s got, so he rebels, and
is sent off to live with…an uncle? (That part was somewhat unclear.) He starts
working at a crappy urban water park, where he meets a girl he likes named
Grace, who is extremely unhappy with her mom (Susan Sarandon, who always plays
bad mothers) for blowing all the family money on a modeling career for her
younger sister, which the sister doesn’t even want. Anton’s character, Dorian,
agrees to let Grace help him sell pot to make money to pay for college—her ticket
out of her unhappy life. At some point, he also gets the gumption to find his
birth mother and ask why she gave him up. This is fairly melodramatic, Lifetime
movie-type material, but if you are a Yelchin fan, you’ll enjoy it for that
reason alone.
Star Trek films (2009-2016)
I’m combining all the
Trek
films in this section because when it comes to the character of Pavel Chekov,
it’s all pretty much the same. In the original
Star Trek series and films, Chekov always had the smallest of the 7
“lead” roles. And the same thing is true here. Did this make me sad? Did it
make me
mad? Well, yes, to be
honest, I hoped for more. But it was delightful seeing Anton in his
bundle-of-rabid-energy mode (ala
Charlie
Bartlett) and that beautiful native Russian accent. Some would say the
accent was over the top, but in paying homage to Walter Koenig’s performance in
the original, it was necessary. And I’m guessing it was a lot of fun for Anton,
who was born in Russia, to ham that up a little.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
I avoided this one for a long time. In fact, I only saw it
this week for the first (and probably last) time. Part of the problem was some
of the publicity surrounding it. There was Christian Bale’s meltdown in which
he screamed at the cinematographer on set. Then there was the bashing of
Terminator 3 among the cast, including
Bale and even (gasp) Anton. The earlier film wasn’t great by any means, but it
had one of my all-time favorite actors, Nick Stahl, who did a noble job with
less than stellar material. I just read that Bale blamed the failure of
Salvation on its director, McG. Why can’t
people just be nice and supportive of each other’s work? But it was difficult
all these years never watching it because Anton played my favorite character in
the series, the one occupied in the first film by the incomparable Michael
Biehn, who is another actor that I love. What would Anton do with this character?
I only just found out. The trouble with this installment of the franchise is
that all the human drama is drowned out by endless action sequences. And while
its predecessors had their share of such sequences, they managed to at least
make you care about the outcome of what you were watching.
Like Crazy (2011)
Possibly the most critically acclaimed film of Anton’s
career, this Sundance prize winner was the story of young love and forced
separation, due to the kind of dumb mistakes that people make when they’re
young. She (Anna, played by Felicity Jones) overstays her student Visa, and can’t
come back. Jacob (Anton) has a great career here and doesn’t want to move to Britain,
and they both wander in and out of each other’s lives, in and out of love,
trying to make it work, hooking up with other people only to break their hearts
to return to their first love. It’s a statement to the honesty of this film
that the most sympathetic and heartbreaking character is neither of the leads,
but the “other woman” played by Jennifer Lawrence. Her pain of being rejected in palpable, and
somehow more affecting than most similar scenes I’ve seen in movies. She is
truly amazing. One interesting note about this film that I only recently found
out is that much of the scene work was improvised. The filmmaker had a rough
outline of the events that were to take place, but the actors had a huge level
of freedom and responsibility to not only flesh out their characters but to
come up with their own dialogue and actions.
You and I (2011)
A couple of lesbian teenagers in Russia meet online and bond
over the music of a faux-lesbian band called T.a.t.U. and their dreams of fame,
fortune, and modeling. Anton plays a sleazy rich guy who promises to hook one
of them up with a famous fashion photographer, but when she refuses to sleep
with him, he becomes less than supportive. One girl ends up in jail, and the
other ends up drug addicted and on the street. But it all ends happily enough
when the manager of T.a.t.U. discovers the girls’ YouTube video and saves them
from prison, drugs, homelessness, and obscurity. The band T.a.t.U. really did
exist, but I hear they were not actually lesbians. This movie plays like one of
those tacky pop star promo films, with a bit of Lifetime movie cautionary tale
thrown in. Not much Anton here; his picture on the cover is deceptive. He does,
however, get to use his Russian Chekov accent again!
The Beaver (2011)
Jodie Foster directed this highly unusual film starring Mel
Gibson as an extremely depressed man named Walter who suffers a mental break
after failing to commit suicide. In that act, he happened to be holding a
beaver hand puppet (which he had found in a dumpster earlier that night) in his
right hand, and suddenly Walter’s fractured personality is channeled into The
Beaver, a tough-talking life coach with an Australian accent who’s determined to
help Walter get his life back together. His wife (Foster) and resentful son
Porter (Anton) can only talk to the Beaver; Walter’s not available for comment.
While Walter’s life actually does find stability, his family life falls apart
ever further than it had before the breakdown. Porter has a troubled romance
with classmate Norah, who hides tragic secrets from her past. Another great
performance from Jennifer Lawrence here. I love this movie. It is absurd in the
way that Walter uses the Beaver to cope with his broken psyche, and it’s also
hilarious, and it’s also very poignant in the way it deals with the effects of
mental illness, and the love that can hold a family together. Of all the movies
Anton has been in, I think this one most closely resembles the type of thing
that I would write myself.
Fright Night (2011)
This is his worst movie. Well, I know I haven’t seen them
all, but I’m pretty sure. There was no reason for this remake of the 1985 film
with Roddy McDowell as the old horror movie star and Chris Sarandon as the evil
vampire. Anton filled William Ragsdale’s shoes okay as Charley Brewster, but
Christopher Mintz-Plasse was no substitute for Stephen Geoffrey’s wild, wacky,
but ultimately tragic Evil Ed character. Even the likes of Colin Farrell and
David Tennant couldn’t save this cheap knock-off. You don’t care about any of
the characters. Where in the original, they seemed like real (if eccentric)
people, here they just serve the plot. The friendship between Charley and Ed is
downplayed, as is the homoerotic subtext surrounding Ed’s character. Everything
that made the original interesting and fun to watch was absent here.
Odd Thomas (2013)
A long-time fan of Dean Koontz, and a big fan of his
Odd Thomas book series, I can’t tell you
how excited I was that Anton was chosen to play the main character, a young fry
cook who could see the dead and whose mission it was to help resolve their
problems, which, in many cases, involved solving and preventing murders. For
some reason, Koontz—who is in his 70s—has a knack for writing a really strong
voice for young people, a voice filled with wit, intelligence, and a solid
sense of morality. All of these things Odd uses to fulfill his duty, his
purpose for being on the planet. Anton was perfect for this role, and the only
disappointment was that it was not commercially successful.Well, and also the fact that Anton would not live to star in sequels, although it's doubtful that there would have been any in spite of seven successful books, some better than others. This film is enhanced significantly by the casting of Willem Dafoe as Chief Wyatt Porter. And like the book, this movie will leave you in tears by the end. Koontz is often a powerful writer, and Stephen Sommers' faithful adaptation checks all the boxes to make this movie work on the same level. It is one of the only adaptations of Koontz's work that has ever met his approval.
Rudderless (2013)
Sam (Billy Crudup) loses his son to an act of school gun
violence. The son was a musician, and his dad hears his son’s compositions for
the first time, and decides to learn them and perform them live. He passes them
off as his own, and attracts a young man who wants to join his band: Quentin,
played by Anton. If Sam was somewhat of an absent father to his son, maybe he
has another chance in Quentin, who seems to be lonely, shy, and somewhat
awkward. A nice little indie film, perhaps a bit slow in pacing. One of several
films that portray Anton as a musician of one kind or another, and indeed he
did play guitar and piano, and wrote and performed in a band.
5 to 7 (2014)
Anton plays an aspiring writer who meets an attractive woman
one day on her smoke break. She offers him an ongoing fling, but it must be
between the hours of 5 to 7 each day. After that, you see, her husband comes
home. Well, it all becomes emotionally complicated, as you can easily predict,
and at least one person’s heart gets broken. I love to watch Anton in a
romantic role, but this harkens back too much to the territory of
Like Crazy.
Dying of the Light (2014)
Nick Cage plays a dying CIA agent, out for revenge against
some mofo who tortured him years ago. Anton plays a fellow agent, in one of his
only roles that I found a little hard to swallow. He’s a good guy, and loyal to
a fault. Cage’s character is obsessive and deteriorating, and his mission is
fraught with danger, but the young protégé will follow, even unto death. This
is actually a more thoughtful film than it sounds. Cage has more humanity in it
than you would think. Some of the violence is unnecessary and gratuitous, but
the film has heart that you don’t expect.
Broken Horses (2015)
In an isolated desert town close to the Mexican border, two
brothers share a special bond. One of them (Jacob, the adult version played by
Anton) is a smart musical prodigy, destined to get out of this shit town. The
other (Buddy, the adult version played by Chris Marquette, in a performance
that actually outshines Yelchin) is mentally disabled and winds up being
brainwashed by the head of the town mob (Vincent D’Onofrio), following the
death of the boys’ father, and recruited to do his dirty bidding. Of course,
Jacob is oblivious to all this while he’s gone. One day he comes back and
learns the truth, throwing a wrench into the empire that D’Onofrio has built.
Part family drama, part suspense, part action film, this stylish thriller is a
cut above almost everything that you can find for free On Demand because it
never got good distribution for some stupid reason. I repeat, Marquette steals
the show here.
The Driftless Area (2015)
The title refers to an area of land in the Middle of
Nowhere, a place where the glaciers stopped moving so many eons ago and left random
patches of mountain in their eventual wake. (Something like that…although I
took geology in school, I never understood it all that well.) A strange ghost
story of sorts, Anton plays a young man who is actually kind of adrift himself,
with nothing really going on in his life, until he falls in a well and is
rescued by a beautiful young woman…who happened to have died in a fire a while
back. Pierre falls for the woman rather quickly, and there are some nice
romantic and sexy moments. An old man played by Frank Langella informs her that
Pierre is the guy who is meant to bring retribution on the man who started the
fire, and these events are set in motion with nothing able to stop it. This all
sounds pretty heavy, but the characters themselves—especially the villains—are treated
with a rather light touch and a slightly warped sense of humor. They are
imbeciles, and you really don’t want them to meet a dark fate, because they
barely seem to have any understanding of how life works, much less right and
wrong. This movie is a little bit like
Fierce
People, in that it has wild shifts in mood, and, as an audience, it can be
hard to know how you’re supposed to respond to it.
Green Room (2015)
I saw this filmed-in-Oregon horror flick with my friend
James. It’s one of the only Yelchin films I’ve seen on the big screen (the
others are the Star Treks, Like Crazy, and maybe Hearts in Atlantis). I remember there
was a screening a few week prior at the Hollywood Theatre, and I didn’t know if
Anton would be there. I kind of wanted to go if he was, but I stayed home. I
don’t know if he was around. Apparently, it was shot around Astoria. Patrick
Stewart played the head of some scary neo-Nazis who are bent on killing Yelchin’s
punk band because they witnessed a murder. Most everyone in the movie dies. I
wish that this had not been the final release before Anton’s death. Apart from
his music ability, which was real, this role could have been played by a
thousand other actors. It wasn’t a great note to end on, but there is comfort
in the fact that his career and life really did not end on this. There are a
number of films that are in post-production, a handful of more chances to see
this unique talent and his ever eclectic project choices.
So I hope this blog entry got some readers, and that some of
you will check out some of these films. Most of them are worth seeing. Anton
Yelchin wasn’t just another hot young leading man type. In fact, one you could
argue that he wasn’t all that conventionally handsome. And he often excelled at
roles that were not the traditional hero or romantic lead. He loved telling an
interesting story and creating complex characters. He was an actor and an
artist, in the truest sense.
