Hi! My name is Aaron & I LOVE MOVIES!!! I wanted to find a way to share my love of movies with the world & decided to do it by creating my own blog. I’ll be discussing movies of all genres, but my favorites are Horror & Science Fiction. Keep coming back for my thoughts on classic cinema, old & new...
In the late 1970′s there was an explosion of science fiction at the box office. Films such as Star Wars, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Superman , and Alien were introducing audiences to more sophisticated effects and more technology-oriented storytelling. Some filmmakers, however, yearned for the days of pure fantasy and escapism in cinema. A tribute to the glory days of the fantastic came in 1981 in the form of Clash of the Titans.
Our story begins with King Acrisius (Donald Houston) of Argos sealing his daughter Danae (Vida Taylor) and her infant son Perseus (the product of an affair with king of the gods Zeus [Sir Laurence Olivier]) in a box, essentially a coffin, and casting them to the sea. This act is witnessed by Zeus, who orders the god of the sea Poseidon (Jack Gwillim) to release the sea monster known as the Kraken to destroy Argos, and to see to it that Danae and her son are brought safely to a peaceful shore (Zeus sees to Acrisius’s death personally). As Perseus (Harry Hamlin) grows to manhood, Zeus is forced to punish Calibos (Neil McCarthy), son of the goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith), for his repeated cruelties against Zeus’s favorite creatures by making him a deformed creature of the marsh. This ends Calibos’s hopes of marrying the princess Andromeda (Judi Bowker), daughter of Queen Cassiopeia (Sian Phillips) of Joppa. Thetis promptly puts a curse on Joppa, forbidding Andromeda to marry until a suitor is able to solve a riddle asked of each of them. As for Perseus, Thetis is jealous of his favored treatment and deposits him in an amphitheater in Joppa. After meeting a playwright named Ammon (Burgess Meredith), Perseus is given gifts by his father to help him survive his stay in the cursed city: a helmet which renders its wearer invisible, a sword that can cut through virtually anything without damage, and a shield which he is told “will [one day] guard your life.” Perseus battles Calibos in the swamp and frees Joppa from its curse, but shortly after Thetis demands that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken or the city of Joppa be destroyed. Perseus then has to go on a quest to find a way to destroy the Kraken before it destroys Argos or kills the woman he loves, a quest that will bring him face to face (so to speak) with the hideous and deadly Medusa.
Ray Harryhausen, the producer of Clash of the Titans, was a pioneer in cinematic special effects. having worked on such classics as Mighty Joe Young, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. Although Harryhausen’s stop-motion techniques were seen by some in Hollywood as out-dated, he felt they were perfect for a mythological pseudo-swashbuckler like Clash. Harryhausen was always of the opinion that this was the primary kind of story films were invented to tell, anyway: larger-than-life epics with a perfect mixture of human drama and grand spectacle. With this, his final film before retiring, Harryhausen showed he still had the gift for telling a riveting story, even without computers.
The film was populated with some of the best actors in the business of the day. Sir Laurence Olivier was practically born to play Zeus, one of probably only two or three actors at the time qualified to play ruler of the universe. Maggie Smith is great as always as Thetis, the mother always making excuses for her bad seed of a son. Harry Hamlin is perfect as Perseus, striking a terrific balance between wide-eyed inexperience and boundless heroism. Burgess Meredith is cool as ever as the world-weary Ammon, the playwright who’s seen it all. Judi Bowker is beautiful but somewhat underused as Andromeda, the woman for whom men are willing to risk their lives. Ursula Andress is another beauty tragically underused as Aphrodite, quite convincing as the goddess of love (I still can’t get over her in that bikini outfit from Dr. No). Finally, Neil McCarthy evokes both dread and sympathy as Calibos, a villain whom we hate yet cannot help but pity.
The film did quite well, grossing just over $41 million on a $15 million budget. It definitely had a lasting impact, too: in 2010, Warner Bros released a 3-D remake of Clash of the Titans, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and complete with state-of-the-art CGI animation. The remake was a fun ride, but like most Bruckheimer productions, a little short on characted development and a little heavy on eye candy. For the full package, with just the right mix of action and drama, I’ll stick with the original…
In 1979, director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon released a film that gave birthto one of the most memorable and enduring franchises in modern cinema. Along with films like Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it paved the way for modern cinematic science fiction. Of course, I’m talking about a little movie called Alien…
Alien is about a group of contract employees on the Nostromo, a cargo ship travelling between planets (essentially truckers in outer space) who pick up a distress signal from an uncharted planet and are required to investigate. On the planet, they find an alien ship filled with what appear to be very large eggs, one of which “hatches” in the face of Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt). An alien creature attaches itself to Kane’s face, and he is taken back to the Nostromo‘s sick bay, over the protestations of Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Science Officer Ash (Sir Ian Holm) discovers that the creature cannot be forcibly removed because its blood acts as an industrial-strengthcorrosive, threatening to eat through the hull. After a couple of days, however, the creature appears to die and just fall off of Kane’s face. That night, however, at dinner, a horrible creature violently erupts out of Kane’s chest, killing him instantly. The crew now find themselves trapped aboard a ship in the middle of space with an organism devouring them one by one.
While attending film school at USC, Dan O’Bannon had made a science fiction comedy called Dark Star with fellow student (and future directing legend) John Carpenter. Dark Star featured an alien that was nothing more than a painted beach-ball; it worked fine for the film (it was a comedy, after all), but it left O’Bannon wanting to do a “real” alien, or, as he put it, “Dark Star as a horror movie instead of a comedy.” Off & on throughout the 1970′s, O’Bannon worked on script ideas for his science fiction/horror idea as well as trying to convince a studio of its marketability. Two factors converged that ultimately helped O’Bannon sell his idea: first, the success of Jaws and The Omen convinced studio executives that fright films done with a sense of style could translate to big bucks at the box office; second, the release of Star Wars showed that, with modern cinematic technology, science fiction had come a long way from the cardboard sets of the 50′s & 60′s. The tremendous cultural impact of these films set the stage for O’Bannon’s vision to bear fruit.
Once O’Bannon had attracted the interest of 20th Century Fox (the studio responsible for the aforementioned Star Warsand looking to dominate this newly-emerging genre), Fox set about finding the right director. Walter Hill was offered the job but declined due to previous commitments along withbeing uncomfortable with the level of special effects required to do the film justice. Robert Aldrich, Peter Yates, and Jack Clayton were all approached but ultimately rejected by O’Bannon because he didn’t feel any of them would take the material seriously. O’Bannon then suggested Ridley Scott because he admired Scott’s work on a small film called The Duellists. Scott, eager to prove himself, enthusiastically accepted the job (studio executives were so impressed with his initial storyboards they doubled the film’s budget upon seeing them). Scott’s original conception of the film’s look drew influences from such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, but he was quick to remind everyone involved that he saw Alien first and foremost as a horror film, calling it “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction.”
Alien is an absolutely terrifying film. Although it’s a tad slow getting started, once you see that nest of alien eggs, the dread begins; and once the alien bursts from Kane’s chest, all bets are off (the scene wasn’t even rehearsed; the other actors didn’t even know exactly what the thing would look like or how much blood would erupt from John Hurt’s fake chest, making their reactions all the more visceral). It’s been called a haunted house movie in outer space, which I think is the best way to describe it. Classic haunted house movies have always come up with some reason why the characters are trapped inside (terrible storm, locked in), but in Alien, there’s no breaking out no matter how bad things get.
The cast does an amazing job of making the audience feel we’re right there with them. Tom Skerritt is terrific as Dallas, the captain, a guy who just wants to get his rig from point A to point B. John Hurt is good as always as Kane, the creature’s first victim. Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto are hysterical as Bret and Parker, the ship’s engineers, constantly giving us the sci-fi equivalent of “that ain’t my job” (“I think we need to discuss the bonus situation”). Sir Ian Holm is excellent as Ash, the science officer who isn’t what he appears to be. Veronica Cartwright is very good as Lambert, the navigator and character with whom the audience is meant to most closely identify, giving voice to our fears in the face of this unique threat. Finally, nothing I can say would do justice to the performance of Sigourney Weaver as the now-iconic Ripley; it’s easy to see why this film made her a star.
It would, of course, be a travesty to write a review of Alien without mentioning the mind-blowing work of HR Giger, the Swiss surrealist artist who designed the alien. The first time Scott saw some of Giger’s work, he knew Giger was the designer he wanted for the creature. Although 20th Century Fox executives feared that Giger’s designs might be toofrightening, Scott and O’Bannon eventually convinced them and Giger’s alien ended up being one of the most recognizable monsters in film history.
Some have accused O’Bannon of “ripping off” previous works of science fiction and/or horror, most notably 1958′s It! The Terror From Beyond Space. O’Bannon has always insisted that he was influenced by every science fiction movie he saw in his youth, not just one single film. As O’Bannon once put it, “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!”
Alien is the perfect blend of good science fiction and pure horror. It is routinely selected as one of the greatest science fiction and/or horror films of all time. It won numerous awards in 1979 and 1980 and is now in the National Film Registry. Its appeal is extremely broad-based (suspense fans love it for the dark atmosphere, women like it because the female characters aren’t just hapless victims, science fiction fans love the space shots, gore fans love the chest-bursting sequence). For an excellent, genuinely creepy film, you can’t do much better than Alien…
John Carpenter is one of the masters of modern horror. Since his 1978 masterpiece Halloween, Carpenter has turned out several of the most suspenseful films of the last 30 years. In 1995, he proved he was still a cinematic genius with his mind-bending masterpiece In the Mouth of Madness.
In the Mouth of Madness tells the story of John Trent (Sam Neill), a freelance insurance investigator hired by an insurance agent (Bernie Casey) on behalf of publisher Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston) to find Harglow’s best-selling author, Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow), “this century’s most widely-read author,” whose works have been known to have a deleterious effect on his “less stable readers” and who disappeared shortly after beginning his latest novel. Trent becomes convinced that Cane is in Hobb’s End, a sleepy little town in New Hampshire that is the setting for Cane’s stories. Trent goes on a road trip to find Hobb’s End accompanied by Cane’s editor Linda Styles (Julie Carmen). Eventually finding the town, Trent and Styles begin to encounter people and situations from Cane’s books. Trent is convinced that it’s all a publicity stunt engineered by Harglow, Styles, and Cane to drum up free press for Cane’s newest novel; Styles, on the other hand, tries to convince Trent that she believes Cane is somehow manipulating reality, and she knows that his latest book is somehow about the end of the world as we know it…
In the interest of complete disclosure, I should tell you that In the Mouth of Madness is one of my favorite films. Carpenter was already one of my favorite filmmakers and this one did nothing but add to his reputation in my mind (I was so obsessed with the movie, I saw it 3 times in one weekend). John Carpenter, working from Michael De Luca’s script, has crafted a perfect “puzzle box” of a movie. The moment Cane’s agent attacks Trent and Robinson in mid-town Manhattan with an axe, we aren’t sure what’s going on; when Trent starts having bizarre nightmares after reading some of Cane’s books, we start to feel off-kilter ourselves, not knowing what’s really part of the story & what’s just a dream, until we discover it’s all both…
Carpenter has assembled an excellent cast to tell his tale. Sam Neill, a favorite of mine since the early 80′s (when he made a name for himself as the one good thing in otherwise mediocre productions such as Omen III: the Final Conflict & the TV miniseries Amerika), is just awesome as John Trent. The role itself is extraordinary, equal parts Everyman, detective, bounty hunter, and action hero, and Neill brings an utter believability to every moment onscreen. Julie Carmen is great as Styles, leading lady and potential romantic interest (although the film never fully goes in that direction), conveying a sense of sultry, smoky sexiness while still leaving you wondering if she knows more than she’s letting on. Jurgen Prochnow, who doesn’t show up until halfway through the film, is still ever-present as Sutter Cane, the horror author who seems to be bending reality to his will, with frightening consequences. Excellent cameo performances are turned in by acting greats Charlton Heston, Bernie Casey, David Warner, and John Glover.
Mention should be made to the film’s overt references to the universe of HP Lovecraft, a renowned author of horror fiction (cited as a primary influence by such modern literary giants as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Bentley Little & Alan Moore). Lovecraft’s central theme throughout the majority of his work was of a group of alien beings or demons who had once ruled our universe but were eventually cast aside in favor of reason and order, constantly struggling to escape their extra-dimensional prison and resume power over our domain; on the rare occasions that human beings were exposed to them & their realm, the knowledge of them would render said human beings insane, similar to the effect Cane’s work has on some of his readers in the film. Some of the titles of Cane’s books are direct references to Lovecraft’s works (The Hobb’s End Horror being a direct reference to Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror, for example). In one climactic scene, Trent is forced to flee from the Old Ones, demons on their way back to take over our reality, depicted just as they were often described by Lovecraft.
In the Mouth of Madness, unfortunately, didn’t do very well at the box office, making less than $9 million in its original theatrical run. Fortunately, it has been recognized by many through home video for the great film that it is and has carved out a bit of a niche for itself as a modern cult classic. For the more discerning fan of horror, someone not interested in 90 minutes of teenagers being chased by a thug in a mask or the latest bit of torture porn, I would highly recommend checking out In the Mouth of Madness…
In 1980, Robert Zemeckis and his friend Bob Gale began shopping around an idea for a film involving a time travelling teenager. Studio after studio rejected the idea as too light (this being the days of such risque teen fare as Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Porky’s). After Zemeckis directed the 1984 blockbuster romantic comedy Romancing the Stone, however, Universal Pictures decided to take a gamble on what became the sci-fi comedy classic Back to the Future.
The film stars Michael J Fox as Marty McFly, a 17-year-old growing up in Hill Valley, CA in 1985. He has a band, the Pinheads, a girlfriend named Jennifer (Claudia Wells), an annoying brother and sister (Marc McClure, Wendie Jo Sperber), and parents Lorraine (Lea Thompson) and George (Crispin Glover) commonly considered the town losers (spineless George even does his boss Biff’s [Thomas F Wilson] work, something Biff’s been forcing him to do since high school). Marty is good friends with Dr “Doc” Emmett Brown, a local crackpot inventor, a friendship which unfortunately cause Marty to frequently run afoul of school principal Mr Strickland (James Tolkan). One night, Marty meets Doc Brown in the parking lot of the local mall to see the doc’s latest experiment, which turns out to be a DeLorean converted into a time machine. Due to a machine gun attack by Libyan terrorists (long story), Marty inadvertently travels back in time to 1955 and accidentally interferes with his parents’ first meeting. After contacting the Doc Brown of that time period, the two of them realize Marty’s got to find a way to get his parents together or he’ll never exist, not to even mention the rather dangerous steps necessary to get Marty home; the only problem with playing matchmaker is that 17-year-old Lorraine has a major crush on Marty.
The cast of Back to the Future was perfect; each actor seemed born to play their role. Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover are excellent as Lorraine and George McFly; Thompson plays Lorraine as quiet girl-next-door type with a smoldering horny teenager lurking just beneath the surface, making it obvious why wimpy nerd George never stood a chance once she set her sights on him. Thomas F Wilson is great as Biff, the stupid yet still intimidating high school bully (his performance is probably the best part of the otherwise so-so Back to the Future II). James Tolkan is good as always as Mr Strickland, the only real authority figure in the whole movie (“You’re a SLACKER!!”).
Special mention must be made, however, to the two characters/actors central to the story, comedy legend Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown and Michael J Fox as Marty McFly. I’ve been a fan of Lloyd’s since his Reverend Jim days on Taxi, and of course Fox has been a favorite of mine since we first met the smug Alex P Keaton of Family Ties. Each of them literally becomes his part. Lloyd has some of the best lines in the movie (“When this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit;” “No wonder your president has to be an actor, he has to look good on television;” “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads…”), while Fox definitely gets to show his acting chops with the biggest emotional journey through the film. We get to see him in love with his girlfriend Jennifer, in awe at the revelation of the doc’s invention, in terror when he realizes he’s in 1955, and in shattering grief near the end when he thinks he’s failed to save his best friend, and yet all of it with the requisite humor of a comedy. Together, they’re an incredible comedy duo; Lloyd and Fox have a screen chemistry reminiscent of the “Road” pictures starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
Probably the most amazing thing about Fox’s performance is that we almost never got to see it. Fox was Zemeckis’s first choice for the role, but due to scheduling commitments vis a vis Family Ties, Fox had been forced to decline despite very much wanting the part. The filmmakers instead hired Eric Stoltz to play Marty. After about a month of filming, it became obvious to everyone, including Stoltz, that, while being a terrific actor, he was wrong for the part. Zemeckis discussed the problem with executive producer Steven Spielberg and they decided, despite the fact that it would add $3 million to the budget, to try to recast the role & re-shoot what had already been filmed. They approached Michael J Fox again, and, not wanting to turn down the opportunity a second time, Fox made arrangements with the set of his TV show so that he could work on both. It led to a grueling shooting schedule for Fox, but the career dividends were enormous. Fox was already a well-known TV personality; Back to the Future made him a movie star.
Back to the Future went on to become the #1 box office moneymaker of 1985, and one of the most popular films of the 1980′s, securing a place in the National Film Registry in 2007. While not the most solid science fiction concept ever filmed, it’s certainly one of the most entertaining. If you’ve never seen it (which I doubt), Back to the Future is a fun ride…
In 1978 John Carpenter changed the face of cinematic horror with his signature work Halloween. He followed that up with another great work of low-budget terror, The Fog. After that, he showed an adeptness at the action/science fiction genre with Escape from New York. In no time at all, Carpenter was being courted by the major studios to make a big-budget film with his unique sense of style. In 1982 he did just that with a remake of one of his favorite films, The Thing.
The Thing stars Kurt Russell as RJ MacReady, an Army chopper pilot assigned to a US government research post in Antarctica. At the beginning of the film, a dog runs into camp being chased by two Norwegians in a helicopter. Both of the Norwegians are shortly killed (one by accident, one by the US base’s CO because the Norwegian shoots an American soldier), and the Americans figure it’s probably a case of cabin fever. To be sure, MacReady takes the camp’s physician, Copper (Richard Dysart) to the Norwegians’ camp to see if they need help. MacReady and Copper find the camp and all the Norwegians destroyed by fire; they also find that the Norwegians had discovered an alien life-form and ship buried in the ice. They bring the alien remains back to base along with videotapes of the Norwegians’ work. Shortly afterward, the Americans discover that their newly-acquired dog, as MacReady puts it, “ain’t what he appears to be.” Soon, the men are in a struggle for their lives against an alien creature that consumes and then perfectly imitates other life-forms, and they realize that, if the Thing reaches civilization, it will mean the end of all indigenous life on Earth.
Carpenter has said on more than one occasion that his favorite filmmaker is Howard Hawks, the producer (and rumored “real” director) of the original The Thing from Another World; he even managed to work a reference to it into Halloween (it was one of the films being shown on television as Michael Myers was spreading terror from house to house). When Universal approached Carpenter about making Halloween II, he agreed to write the screenplay on the condition that he be allowed to shoot a remake of The Thing from Another World. The studio enthusiastically agreed and, as soon as the script for Halloween II was finished, Carpenter set to work on finding the right screenwriter to pen The Thing, eventually going with Bill Lancaster, son of the great Burt Lancaster.
Carpenter’s primary vision of the film (and the only directive he gave to Lancaster during the writing process) was a return to the original source material. The original film was a screen adaptation of a John W Campbell short story published in 1938 entitled “Who Goes There?” but took major liberties with the storyline: in the original film, the Thing (played by future TV star James Arness) is more of a Frankenstein’s Monster-type creature the soldiers are trying to hunt down and contain. Carpenter saw much more interesting possibilities in the original story of a shape-shifting creature threatening to take over the expedition.
The performances in The Thing are among the best in science fiction cinema. Russell is great as the world-weary chopper pilot MacReady, thrust into a leadership role he clearly doesn’t want but seems born to do. Wilford Brimley (famed Cream of Wheat and diabetes testing supply spokesman) is brilliant as Blair, the biologist driven to the brink of insanity with the realization of the ramifications of the Thing reaching civilization. Keith David is his usual intimidating self as Childs, the intelligent yet hotheaded soldier ready to pounce on anyone once the light of suspicion is cast upon them. Donald Moffat is excellent as Garry, the camp head honcho who apparently went to the Henry Blake School of Command. Richard Masur is noteworthy as Clark, the first member of the team to fall under suspicion and who plays the role with an understated ambiguity, leaving the audience as much in the dark as the characters. Unfortunately there are too many great actors in this film to mention them all, but trust me, there’s not a single bad performance in the bunch.
The groundbreaking special effects for The Thing were crafted by Rob Bottin (with minor assistance from Stan Winston), who had worked with Carpenter previously on The Fog as well as the original Piranha and The Howling. Bottin’s work was criticized at the time as excessive, but later re-evaluation has led to it being praised as some of the greatest effects work of the pre-CGI era.
If I had to describe The Thing with just one word, it would have to be paranoia. What makes it such a masterpiece of suspense is the pervasive feeling of paranoia felt throughout the film, a feeling inherent in the premise itself: a creature capable of reshaping itself into a perfect imitation of any life-form it consumes, even capable of imitating multiple life-forms simultaneously. How could one not be driven mad with paranoia if caught in this situation?
As for favorite scenes, I would have to mention the first appearance of the Thing in the kennel (“I don’t know what the hell’s in there, but it’s weird & pissed off whatever it is.”). I could also bring up the scene where Blair destroys the radio room (“You don’t understand; that thing wanted to be UUUUUSSSSS!!!”) Another great one is the blood test (“I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!!!”).
I’ve already mentioned some great lines (this movie seems to have more great lines per capita than almost any other genre film), but at least two more bear mentioning:
- MacReady: Childs, we’re goin’ out to give Blair the test; if he tries to make it back here & we’re not with him, burn him.
- Garry: The generator’s gone. MacReady: Any way we can fix it? Garry: It’s gone, MacReady.
The Thing was blasted by critics upon its release in 1982, most of whom complained that the film was excessively gory and self-indulgent. Audiences weren’t interested in a downbeat alien creature feature when they could, within the same cineplex, see a far more uplifting version of first contact, Steven Spielberg’s ET: the Extra-Terrestrial. The film ended up being a box-office bomb and set Carpenter’s career back significantly, forcing him to take more commercial assignments such as the Stephen King adaptation Christine, the science fiction romance Starman, and the made-for-cable Body Bags, not truly getting his career back on track until 1987′s Prince of Darkness. Once the film was released on home video, however, it found its audience and the re-assessments began. Now, both the film and Carpenter are given the respect they deserve, with The Thing routinely appearing on various lists of the greatest horror and/or science fiction films ever made.
If you haven’t seen The Thing, you definitely should. It’s a science fiction classic, and one of the creepiest movies you’ll ever see…
Today marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In recognition of this historic date, I thought I would whip up a review of Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-gasm JFK, the most famous (and rabid) example of cinematic paranoia in Hollywood history.
JFK tells the story of Jim Garrison’s (Kevin Costner) investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. Along the way, Garrison encounters veiled threats from and surveillance by government agents, witnesses either reluctant to come forward out of fear or already dead under mysterious circumstances, problems with his wife and children, and dissent among his staff. Garrison discovers that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy orchestrated by high-level operatives in the military-industrial-intelligence complex (say that 3 times fast) and covered up by various high-ranking government officials who, for various reasons, don’t want the truth exposed.
I should probably say, right off the bat, that I don’t agree in any way with Stone’s hypothesis that Kennedy was killed by some far-reaching conspiracy. That being said, JFK is a great movie, a groundbreaking cinematic achievement of story, cinematography, acting, and editing. The story is an electrifying one, possibly the greatest political thriller ever made; it is incredibly complex yet as old as film itself: the lone honest man standing up to the evil corporate/political apparatus determined to bend the masses to its will and crush anyone who stands in its way, a political David vs. Goliath. The blending of multiple film stocks and the blending of real footage with staged blurs the line between reality and fantasy, lending to the believability of the story. The performances in the film are just incredible: Kevin Costner is the perfect choice for the film’s interpretation of Jim Garrison, an Everyman fighting the forces of darkness; Gary Oldman is outstanding as Lee Harvey Oswald, who manages a perfect ambiguity so that you don’t really know what side he ultimately falls on; Sissy Spacek is terrific as Liz Garrison, the put-upon wife who just wants to raise her children and have a normal life; other outstanding performances were turned in by Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Donald Sutherland, Brian Doyle-Murray, and too many others to mention.
The film is famous (infamous?) for its controversial approach to the material. One of the primary problems some critics (many of whom were commenting on the film before it was even released) had was its seemless shifting from actual footage (the Zapruder film is shown multiple times throughout the film) to staged scenes that veer squarely into the realm of speculation on Stone’s part (military officers and intelligence agents are shown in documentary-style footage plotting the president’s death, witnesses of various importance to Garrison’s case are shown being murdered when the true circumstances of their deaths are either in dispute or outright contrary to the film’s version). Stone’s defense is that he is not a historian but a storyteller; while I’m inclined to agree, Stone seems to want it both ways, simultaneously claiming that his version of events is the most accurate to date. Stone’s personal politics definitely shine through in his selection of villains. Stone makes no secret of his distrust of the military or the American business community; small wonder he sees them as capable of murdering a President of the United States as well as anyone who threatens to expose their crime.
As for favorite things about the movie, I believe my favorite scene is the one in Washington between Costner and Sutherland when Sutherland (as the anonymous Mr. X) gives Garrison the details of the subtle moves made by his superiors at the Pentagon that allowed Kennedy to be such an easy target in Dallas and the hints he spotted that weekend that the story of Oswald-as-lone-assassin was a myth. A close second is the sequence in the courtroom where Garrison speculates on the actual nature of events the weekend of the assassination. My favorite aspect of the film is Stone’s method of depicting the same events in multiple ways, depending on various points of view (reminiscent of the Japanese classic Rashomon). Stone demonstrates not only a fluency in the language of classic cinema, but an adeptness at creating a cinematic vocabulary all his own.
As to the complaint of many that Stone misrepresents the facts of the case, he admittedly is guilty as charged. Just to name a few things in the interest of fairness:
- Oswald actually had 8.3 seconds to fire the 3 shots, not the 5.6 seconds repeatedly asserted by not only Stone but most conspiracy theorists, and for a former Marine Corps sharpshooter, most experts agree it was a simple shot
- The so-called “pristine bullet” or “magic bullet” was in fact flattened on its journey through Kennedy and Connally; furthermore, fragments from the bullet were recovered from Connally’s wrist and computer models have confirmed that the two men were in the perfect postion for the bullet to pass through them just as the Warren Commission theorized
- Jack Ruby was in fact known by many of his friends and employees to be mentally ill and violently unstable, hardly the type to pick for such a dangerous assignment as “whacking” a presidential assassin
- By most accounts, the real Garrison was hardly the lily-white crusader presented by Stone and Costner; he was known for frequent abuses of power as well as turning a blind eye to obvious Mafia activity in New Orleans (there have even been allegations that he made improper advances toward young boys at his health club)
All of that being said, however, I prefer to judge the film on its own merits. Stone, as he said, is not a historian but a filmmaker, and a great one at that. JFK is not a factual account of the events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy, but it is an awesome movie…
From the days of silent film to the early 1970′s, westerns were one of the leading genres of motion pictures and, later, television. It was the go-to genre of every studio when they needed a sure money-maker; they were enjoyed by both children and adults. By the end of the 1960′s, however, audiences had grown far more cynical; the tumultuous times America had just gone through made audiences of all ages more jaded, and westerns now seemed dated. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood were the only two Hollywood stars still producing successful westerns during the 1970′s, but the genre as it was known was indeed on its last legs. In 1976, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the film that served as the perfect requiem of that era, The Outlaw Josey Wales.
The Outlaw Josey Wales is the story of a farmer (Clint Eastwood) whose family happens to live in Confederate territory, although he has no interest in the war. One day, a regiment of Union soldiers known as “red-legs” because of the red stockings they wear, ride onto Wales’s farm, brutally beat him, rape his wife, then set fire to his home with his wife and children inside. Wales is left to bury his family alone; as he does so, a group of Confederate soldiers ride up, offering Wales a chance at revenge if he wants to join them. Shortly after, the war comes to an end; the rest of the group chooses to surrender so they can go home (and gets a nasty surprise when they try to do so), but Wales goes renegade to hunt down Captain Terrill (Bill McKinney), the leader of the “red-legs.” Along the way he collects a rag-tag group of fellow misfits from society, including an Indian chief (Chief Dan George), an Indian female (Geraldine Keams) on the run from the trading post she was sold to, and an ornery settler (Paula Trueman) and her granddaughter (Sondra Locke), who think they are on their way to a western paradise that isn’t really there. Along the way, Wales has to contend with Fletcher (John Vernon), his former friend and comrade who has been hired to hunt him down and kill him.
By the end of the 1960′s, Eastwood had established himself as the #1 box office draw in the world (a position he would hold until the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early 1980′s). He had shown himself capable of pulling off just about any kind of movie, be it action (Where Eagles Dare, Dirty Harry), comedy (Paint Your Wagon, Kelly’s Heroes), drama (The Beguiled), or even suspense (Play Misty for Me), but he was still most identified with westerns, the genre that had made him a star. He had read a novel by Forrest Carter called The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales and fell in love with the story. Through his production company, Malpaso, Eastwood obtained the film rights and hired Sonia Chernus to write the screenplay,supervised by planned director Philip Kaufman (Kaufman himself was a big fan of the novel and wanted to ensure that the script stuck as closely to the novel as possible). Once the film went into production, however, tensions developed between Kaufman and Eastwood: Kaufman’s meticulous attention to detail would sometimes slow down production and thus push up the budget; there was also some personal jealousy between the two regarding their shared attraction for leading lady Sondra Locke, with whom Eastwood was already beginning a relationship. Ultimately, Kaufman was fired from the project and Eastwood stepped in to finish directing the picture.
The Outlaw Josey Wales is a great movie, undoubtedly one of Eastwood’s best. Many critics have dismissed him as just a cinematic tough guy, an action star and nothing more, but the first few minutes of this film alone proves that assessment wrong. Watching him collapse from grief at the hastily-made grave of his family is heart-wrenching; the viewer can actually feel his anguish. McKinney is excellent (as always) as Terrill, by far one of the best character actors of the 1970′s and 1980′s. Chief Dan George gave one of the best performances of his career in The Outlaw Josey Wales (the other being Little Big Man) as well as some of the best lines of the film. Although he appears only intermittently throughout the film, John Vernon gives a great performance as Fletcher; you can tell he’s willing to kill Wales if he has too, yet he’s still conflicted about hunting down his former comrade in arms.
Eastwood himself has mentioned that the film addressed two social issues important to him at the time. The first was race relations. Josey’s interactions with the Amerind characters (and the prejudice shown toward them by others in the film) was meant as a subtle commentary on race relations in modern America. The other was the Vietnam War, still a fresh wound on the American psyche at the time of the film’s release. Eastwood saw a parallel between the folly of the American Civil War with our military involvement in Vietnam, possibly the two most painful military experiences in our history. Both conflicts turned brother against brother, the Civil War literally, the Vietnam War in the arena of public opinion.
The Outlaw Josey Wales was greeted with widespread critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release. Time magazine and several other critics named it one of the top ten films of the year, and, although other excellent examples of the genre have been produced since then, it is now considered the last great American western, a fitting tribute to a dying genre that had contributed so much to the motion picture and television industries. In 1996 it was entered into the National Film Registry. It’s an unquestioned classic of American cinema. Even if you’re not a big fan of westerns (which, personally, I’m not), The Outlaw Josey Wales is worth a look…
Director Stanley Kubrick first put himself on the cinematic map with 1964′s Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and 1968′s science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick was already considered one of the leaders of “the new Hollywood” (the era where the creative power shifted from the studio moguls to the directors) when he released another cinematic icon, A Clockwork Orange…
A Clockwork Orange tells the story of Alex, a fun-loving teenager whose ”principal interests are rape, ultra-violence, and Beethoven.” Alex and his gang of ”droogs” (Pete, Georgie, and Dim) love to spend their nights robbing, raping, and attacking everyone and everything in sight (a practice Alex likes to call “the old ultra-violence”), occasionally taking a time-out to partake of drugs and a fight or two with rival gangs. Although they enjoy running with Alex, the gang eventually wants him to relinquish his role as leader, a proposition Alex answers with near-deadly force. One night the gang breaks into a woman’s home to rob & rape her but the woman fights back surprisingly fiercely, and Alex ends up killing her. The droogs smash a milk bottle across Alex’s face, temporarily blinding him while they escape. Thus, Alex is convicted of the woman’s murder alone; however, he is offered the opportunity to undergo an experimental form of aversion therapy to try to convert him into a model citizen. The movie then deals with the repercussions of that decision as Alex attempts to adjust to life in civilized society.
Although its near-future setting makes the film technically a work of science fiction, Kubrick’s approach to the material was as a social satire, similar to Gene Roddenberry’s intention with the more socially-conscious episodes of Star Trek. The film touches on a wide range of themes relevant to the time, including youth gangs, psychology, the penal system, conservatism vs. liberalism, and the general nature of morality. Its disturbing view of the future is as much a view of its own time.
The idea of youths having too much power, too much freedom, and using that power & freedom to run amok goes back at least to the World War II era; teenagers enjoyed more and more latitude at home while their fathers were away fighting the war & their mothers were stepping out of the house for the first time, working in the factories that produced the weapons of war. Once the war was over, most parents were unable to reign in their children who were enjoying this new-found freedom; the rise of street gangs in the 1950′s seemed to confirm parents’ suspicions about the next generation. Alex and his droogs are the logical extrapolation of post-war America’s fears regarding teenagers.
Many in power in the 1960′s and early 1970′s were proposing the very idea proposed to Alex: mental reconditioning (known in the movie as “the Ludovico technique”) of violent criminals to reshape them into model citizens. The very notion of brainwashing people to make them behave is positively chilling to us today, but the idea itself wasn’t so immediately dismissed back then. Since Richard Condon’s The Machurian Candidate was published in 1954, there had been speculation about mental reconditioning; A Clockwork Orange simply dramatized one possible application. Alex’s reconditioning sequence may have been sensationalized and especially horrific, but the very idea is enough to send a shiver down one’s spine.
Kubrick pulls no punches when it comes to political commentary in the film, depicting both liberals and conservatives as equally evil if left to their own devices. The conservative government sees the new “Ludovico technique” as the most promising way of curbing violent crime, despite its morally repugnant nature. The liberals, embodied by Alex’s victim Frank Alexander, are no better: Mr. Alexander wants to kill Alex in revenge because he is one of the gang’s victims, yet he wants to use Alex’s death to bring an end to the government’s use of the Ludovico technique, willing to commit murder for both personal and political reasons.
It’s frightening how prophetic the film has been, at least in its depiction of modern urban violence. Aside from the bowler hats, Alex and his droogs can easily be pictured walking down any city street, cruising for their next victim, the next bit of “the old ultra-violence.” As shocking as their crimes are, however, Kubrick instills in them a sense of devil-may-care fun and excitement; we almost wish we were doing these things, which makes the film all the more shocking.
As to its place in the realm of science fiction, I would say it fits squarely between 1984 and Brave New World. Orwell envisioned a totalitarian regime which controls all thought and action, whereas Huxley proposed a world where everything, even people, are manufactured with assembly-line precision, leaving people free to pursue any and all hedonistic pursuits. A Clockwork Orange is the godchild of these two concepts: Alex is personal freedom run amok with no concept of moral responsibility, with the government of his world wanting to control people’s thoughts.
A Clockwork Orange is a brutal cinematic experience, but one that any true fan of film should see. Stanley Kubrick went on to create many more classics of the silver screen, but this is one of the ones he will be best remembered for. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should…
David Fincher is one of the most well-respected directors in Hollywood today. With films like Se7en, Fight Club, and Panic Room, Fincher established himself as a master of the gritty, suspenseful, post-modern noir thriller. In 2007, he brought his distinctive style to a film he had shepherded to the screen as a very personal project, Zodiac…
Zodiac tells the terrifyingly true story of the hunt for the Zodiac, a serial killer active in San Francisco in the late 1960′s and possibly early 1970′s, through the eyes of the three men most involved in the search: Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhal), a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the murders; Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr), a crime reporter at the paper & eventual friend of Graysmith’s; and Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), an SFPD homicide detective. The film explores how, over the course of 20-plus years, the case dominates the men’s lives, focusing not on the murders themselves, but the hunt for the killer (all the murders occur within the first 15-20 minutes of a two-and-a-half hour film).
David Fincher was actually a child living in the San Francisco Bay area at the time of the Zodiac murders, and has said he still remembers hearing and seeing news reports about the killer, as well as having to ride on school buses with police escort after the Zodiac threatened to “wipe out a school bus some morning…” When he found out that a screenplay based on Robert Graysmith’s 1986 book about the case was floating around Hollywood, he knew he was the right man to direct.
The film is a classic cinematic study of how obsession can control, and in some cases destroy, a person’s life. At the beginning of the film, Robert is simply a political cartoonist and single dad. Once the Chronicle receives its first letter from the killer containing a cryptogram allegedly revealing his identity, he enthusiastically begins following the case, seeing it as nothing more than a puzzle, an intellectual exercise. His colleague and friend Paul, being a crime reporter, sees the Zodiac as “the Big Story,” a possible Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Once the Zodiac claims his 5th victim, cabbie Paul Stine, Inspector Toschi is assigned to the case and begins what he would later call the most frustrating manhunt of his career. All three men join the hunt for different reasons, yet all three are eventually pulled in by the seductive allure of the unyielding riddle of the murders. All three eventually become victims of the Zodiac in one way or another: Paul Avery starts living harder and harder after the Zodiac mails him a death threat, becoming a drunk with emphysema; Dave Toschi’s name becomes so connected to the case that, when the Zodiac breaks a four-year silence and writes a new letter to the Chronicle mentioning Toschi by name, Toschi himself is accused of writing the letter and loses his job in Homicide; Robert Graysmith becomes so obsessed with finding the killer that he loses his job, his family, and almost his sanity.
Zodiac is a terrific film for several reasons, starting with the performances, too many of which to mention. Besides the three leads mentioned above, Anthony Edwards is terrific as Bill Armstrong, Toschi’s partner until he decides he can no longer stomach working in Homicide. Bryan Cox is hysterical as Melvin Belli, a prominent (and unbearably smug) San Francisco attorney repeatedly contacted by the killer. Dermot Mulroney projects an air of quiet authority as Toschi & Armstrong’s captain. Chloe Sevigney is excellent yet understated as Graysmith’s blind date & eventual wife, angry at the thought of losing her husband to a faceless phantom. Finally, special mention must be given to John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime suspect in the case; even though he only appears in three scenes, his presence is overpowering, leaving a mark on the entire film.
One of my favorite things about Zodiac is its perfect recreation of San Francisco 1969. Fincher said he was tired of seeing all depictions of Frisco in the late 60′s being wall-to-wall hippies, when they were only prominent in a small part of the downtown area. Fincher wanted a more authentic look, and he succeeded. Also, the music used in the film was just so perfect; songs like “Easy to be Hard,” “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” and “The Sound of the City” conjure the perfect feel of the late 1960′s, a world of endless possibilities…and unspeakable dangers.
Zodiac didn’t do very well at the box office, probably because the trailers seemed to be marketing it as a horror film rather than the psychological thriller Finch had filmed. Critics saw through the confusion, however, most of whom picked it as one of the ten best films of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, I urge you to watch Zodiac…
By the early 1970′s, Mel Brooks had made a name for himself as one of the leading comedy writers in television. In the ’50′s, he had been the head writer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, the precursor of Saturday Night Live; in the ’60′s, he was best known for creating the Don Adams vehicle Get Smart. In 1969, Brooks made the leap to feature films with The Producers, a farce about two Broadway producers putting on a musical about Hitler. The film was a modest success, but with his next feature, the hysterical Western satire Blazing Saddles, Brooks found his cinematic niche: creating affectionate parodies of established film genres. The stage was now set for Brooks to make what would become his personal favorite of all his films, and one of the best comedies of all time, Young Frankenstein.
In the film, Dr Frederick Frankenstein (which he insists is pronounced Fronk-en-steen) (Gene Wilder) is informed that he is now the owner of Castle Frankenstein per the will of his great-grandfather, Baron Beaufort von Frankenstein. Frederick has mixed emotions about travelling to Transylvania to claim his inheritance: he is not only engaged to be married but has spent his whole life trying to distance himself from the insane experiments of his infamous grandfather, Victor. Frederick says goodbye to his fiance Elizabeth (Madeline Kahn) and sets off for the castle. Once in his family’s village, he meets Igor (pronounced Eye-gore) (Marty Feldman), grandson of Victor’s hunchbacked assistant (“Of course, the rates have gone up.”), the beautiful lab assistant Inga (Teri Garr), and housekeeper Frau Blucher (Cloris Leachman). Little by little, the old family obsession gets him & Frederick ends up creating a monster (Peter Boyle); hilarity then ensues.
The idea for Young Frankenstein was actually conceived by Gene Wilder. One night, after having just completed a film with Woody Allen, Wilder was lying in bed when he picked up a pad and spontaneously wrote two words: “Young Frankenstein.” He then proceeded to write 5 or 6 pages about what might happen to him if he were the grandson of the infamous Victor Frankenstein. The next day, Wilder called his friend and fellow filmmaker Mel Brooks and pitched the idea, which Brooks at first hated. After hours of discussion, he told Wilder “we’ll see;” the next day, Wilder was informed they had a deal with Columbia Pictures.
Brooks began butting heads with Columbia almost from the start. Columbia wanted the budget of the film to be almost half what Brooks needed to make the film as he envisioned; not only that, the studio balked when Brooks insisted that the film be shot in black and white to recreate the feel of the classic Frankenstein films, of which he wanted Young Frankenstein to be an affectionate homage. By this time, black and white was considered outdated (film and television having only transitioned to color over the past 10 years or so) and Columbia executives worried about the film’s commercial potential if it were not released in color. At an impasse, Brooks got his agent to cancel the deal with Columbia and took the film to 20th Century Fox, who agreed with Brooks’s budget as well as releasing the film sans color.
The filming was long and arduous. Some long days stemmed from the cast not being able to keep themselves from cracking up on set, often due to many examples of ad-libbing (Frau Blucher’s offering of “varm” milk and Ovaltine, Igor’s moving/disappearing hump); some, however, resulted from Brooks’s insistence on getting every scene just right. The best example of this was the creation scene, which was shot as a 22-minute sequence (Wilder called the scene as originally shot “22 minutes of something terrible”), but which, over the course of a month in the cutting room, Brooks turned into a “12-minute masterpiece,” as Brooks himself put it.
Despite the difficulties, everyone on the set (even the occasional visitor) agreed it was one of the most fun shoots they had ever been on. Wilder has fondly recalled his time with Teri Garr and Peter Boyle on several occasions; Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn, two of Brooks’s more frequently used players throughout the 1970′s, have said Young Frankenstein was their favorite shoot. Several studio executives who stopped by to visit the set at one time or another had to be asked to leave when they were laughing so hard they could be heard off-camera.
One of the best things about Young Frankenstein is that it is a parody of the classic Universal Frankenstein films without subjecting them to ridicule. Brooks and Wilder carefully chose elements from the original films on which to build humorous scenes (the medical school lecture, the train ride, the stealing of the brain, the creation, the little girl, the police inspector with the wooden arm, the blind hermit) while also bringing to the table their own ideas (Frederick & Igor’s pronunciations of their names, the Monster’s enormous Schwanstuker, the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” dance number [which Wilder had to fight long and hard to convince Brooks to do]).
Special mention has to be made of Kenneth Strickfaden, the unsung genius of the Universal era. Strickfaden was the electrical engineer who designed the lab equipment used in every classic Universal Frankenstein film. Brooks was so enamored of the look of the machines, he tracked down Strickfaden, by then retired and living in an apartment over a garage housing his equipment, and rented the classic lab devices to give Young Frankenstein a truly authentic feel. By the look of the film alone, you would almost swear you’re watching one of the old Universals.
Young Frankenstein is Mel Brooks’s favorite film of his, and it is by far the most critically acclaimed, having been nominated for 2 Academy Awards, 2 Golden Globes, and a WGA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The American Film Institute placed it at #13 on its list of the 100 greatest film comedies. Brooks has even turned it into a hit Broadway musical. If you’re a fan of classic horror films, or classic comedy, or both, you really need to check out Young Frankenstein…
