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Virginia Madsen in Jake Squared

Jake Squared

I’ve seen my fair share of surreal films over the years, but… Jake Squared has to be up there amongst the most surreal of them all. It’s bordering on chaos at points.

Jake Squared is an indie film from 2013, as well as being surreal and chaotic it’s got a quirky streak a mile wide. The movie’s about Jake Klein (Elias Koteas) who is a middle aged film maker, who in the full throws of a mid life crisis decides to make a film about his own life to figure out what went wrong.

Which would be fine, but pretty soon he’s directing younger versions of himself all the while dealing with people from his past who are all of a sudden back in his life again.Virginia Madsen in Jake SquaredIt’s a weird one for sure – There are times when there are liberal past, present and future versions of Jake all on screen at the same time. Other times it’s kind of hard to work out which version of Jake it is we’re watching, more than once I got confused. It’s not super clear, and I don’t even know if it’s supposed to be – OR – trying to be clever.

And, honestly because of this I’ve taken a pass on it. I did watch it, but it got into a confusing mess pretty early on, I lost interest and I’m not really sure I ever really knew what was going on. I would have watched it again, but frankly I didn’t enjoy it enough to care by the end of it. I perhaps should have called it a day earlier than I did and, then I might have felt like another go. But I didn’t. And now, I don’t want to.

That’s about as honest as it gets.

Virginia Madsen plays Beth, Jake’s ex-wife. And as far as I can tell, she’s had enough of Jake’s mess as much as I did. Which, honestly, just added another layer of surreal into it for me.
Virginia Madsen in Jake SquaredShe’s actually that good in it, that when I was thinking about it afterwards I wasn’t unsure if this was some kind of “message” from the film that Beth’s exasperation with Jake wasn’t some kind of metaphor for what we were having to deal with as viewers watching it.

I don’t really have a lot to say on this one – It’s worth a watch for Virginia Madsen’s performance, she does keep the film grounded, sort of. I actually dread to think where it’d go without her character.

Maybe I’ll give it another go one day, maybe it’s another that I’m not old enough, or young enough anymore, to understand. A film that you need to be in the right place and right time for.

It would of course reunite Elias Koreas with Virginia Madsen after nearly 20 years, they last worked together in the 1995 film, The Prophecy.

Availability:

Good, ish. I don’t think it’s in print anymore but I see copies of it pop up all the time on eBay for Reigon 1 and 4.

Trailer:

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virginia madsen in the prophecy

The Prophecy

The Prophecy is a film I’d not watched in a very long time before starting this Virginia Madsen rewatch thing and I was quite looking forward to watching it again.

It’s a thriller from 1995 which brings the Angels of Heaven down to Earth to battle for the souls of humanity. It stars Christopher Walken as Gabriel as he stalks the Earth looking for an evil soul on Earth to use in his battle against Lucifer.

Which, means the film can’t go wrong. Right? I mean, Christopher Walken as a millitarised Angel in a fight of literal biblical proportions. Right?

The film is set in Los Angeles, we primarily follow Thomas (Elias Koteas), a Detective who used to full to the brim of Catholic faith but it was lost when he kept getting visions of an Angelic war up in Heaven.

In the modern day, two Angels have fallen to Earth. Simon (Eric Stoltz) and Uziel (not Eric Stoltz). Simon makes short work of Uziel which leaves Thomas with a crime and a body to investigate, he just happens to have connections to it all from his Catholic days. Handy.
Virginia Madsen as Katherine in Gabriel arrives on Earth in search of an Evil soul he needs to tip the balance of Good and Evil in the heavenly wars. To help him in his quest he stops a young man, Jerry (Adam Goldberg), from committing suicide. Jerry sets about destroying all evidence of Angels that have been left behind by Simon and Uziel. Meanwhile Simon has made his way to the funeral of a recently deceased Korean warlord. He takes the warlords soul and stashes it in the body of a very much alive young girl.

This is the soul that Gabriel needs for his war, obviously.

The soul is too much for the little girl to handle, she immediately falls ill. Her teacher, Katherine (our own Angel, Virginia Madsen) finds her and takes her home to care for her.

Virginia Madsen as Katherine in And then it’s all Angels, Demons, Lucifer and all other things biblical. I won’t go into detail as there is half an interesting take on it all stashed away in there somewhere if you’ve never seen it.

Time hasn’t been as kind to this one as I’d hoped. I mean, it’s not bad as such but you can’t help but wonder what more could have done with the material today. Christopher Walken seems somehow, as though he wasn’t quite ready to be Christopher Walken just yet.

It’s not that it’s bad, at all. I used to enjoy The Prophecy, and it’s sequels. But it’s just not aged all that well. By my standards anyways. I found myself a little disenchanted with it. Rose colour glasses at play methinks.

Virginia plays her part well, as always. She’s probably not given as much to chew on as she could have been but it’s not the first film to waste her talent and it isn’t the last one either. It is however good to see her each and every time she’s on screen.
Virginia Madsen as Katherine in
The Prophecy would get two sequels featuring Christopher Walken, and then two more after that (which I’ve never seen) but Virginia wouldn’t return for any of those.

Probably for the best, although she had a good time on the movie and worked with people she really wanted to work with, the film itself didn’t sit that well with her according to her in an interview with The AV Club;

“That was not a real movie. That was, like, one of those completely ridiculous situations where they didn’t even have a whole script when we went in to shoot. But it was a good idea. The movie was a really, really good idea. And the director [Gregory Widen] was the writer of Backdraft, so we thought we were in good hands. Like, “Oh, he’ll be able to write it if it’s not done!” But it’s impossible to write as you go. That’s just something that never works, no matter how talented people may think they are.”

Might be for the best I’ve never seen the sequels then…

Availability:

Very good, available on DVD almost anywhere you can think of and had a 4K UHD release not that long ago along with the two Christopher Walken staring sequels.

Gallery:

Trailer:

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