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June 15, 2015

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JAWS List Number One for the Fourtieth Anniversary

Of all the films I have written about in the five years of doing this blog, none has received more attention and space than Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws”. The film celebrates it’s 40th Anniversary this year. It came out just a week after I graduated from High School, and in the middle of a very weird decade, changed the way the movie business works.

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I plan on celebrating the film several times this month. Today went to a screening at the Crest Theater in Westwood.

Crest Theater Interior

Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies are having screenings on June 21 and 24 at 500 theaters around the country. We plan on going to the two on the 21st and the final one on Wednesday the 24th. That’s right, in an orgy of self indulgence, our plan is to see the greatest adventure film of the last half century on the big screen, four times in 10 days. I can’t think of a better way to get the summer started.

As a change of pace for my writing on this film, I decided to try a sure fire strategy to make it easy for people to chow down on and digest some more “Jaws” material. So here is the first list for our 40th Anniversary Celebration.

Ten Times the Shark isn’t working but still appears on screen in some form.

The notoriously uncooperative mechanical shark used in the production, forced the film makers to find other ways of putting the lead character into the story without actually showing him. Here are my favorite moments showcasing the shark with no shark footage.

Fishing off the Dock of the Bay, Watching your Roast Swim Away.

Two guys decide to go for the $3000 bounty offered by Mrs. Kintner by baiting a giant hook with a raw beef roast and then tossing it into the ocean, anchored to the small dock they are standing on. They do this at night, on the far side of the island to avoid detection by the Police Chief. What follows is suspenseful and hilarious.

The turn of the pier at the end of the clip says everything about the invisible shark.

Click, click, click

Once out to sea, Chief Brody and Matt Hooper are introduced to “sharking” Quint style. They are not really fishing, but the rod and reel are essential to Quint’s process and it gives us plenty to fear without any image of the shark at all.

That’s Ben Gardner’s Boat

Hooper gets a drunk Chief Brody to go out on the water, at night and they discover the remains of a fishing boat that appears to have encountered our titular hero.

 Hooper goes into the water to investigate and everyone in the audience tightens their sphincter because this cannot go well. Spielberg was so meticulous on this piece of business that he went back to the scene after it was done and re-shot some footage in the pool of editor Verna Fields. The result was a scene that levitated whole audiences of hundreds, out of their seats simultaneously.   We won’t give anything away here, but Hooper’s face manages to say it all.

Foreshadowing, what foreshadowing?

Watching the start of the third act in the film, we get a transition shot that ironically shows the doomed Orca and the future that she is sailing into. It is a beautiful shot and it tells us to fear the shark, again without the shark being present.

Those proportions are correct.

How big is the shark? Well, let me draw you a picture.

Roll Out the Barrel.

How can we give a sense of showing the shark stalking the heroes if we can’t always use the shark, easy, we’ll use a shark surrogate. Those barrels that Quint uses to bring the shark to the surface, well watch them transform into creepy shadows following the Orca.

After we see the barrels attached to the shark, the Orca follows them, and for a moment, the hunters are joyous in their pursuit.

Suddenly, after being assured by Quint that he can’t stay down with three barrels on him, the barrels disappear as they pass under the boat. Oh oh.

And how do you know you are in deep trouble? The barrels start following you. This is not going as planned.

Research Man, get a book and do some reading.

Just the thought of the shark startles the chief and his wife.

Who Let That Shark into the Town Meeting?

All the Islanders are getting nervous about the beaches being closed. Quint shows up to make them an offer, but to get their attention he scratches a chalkboard with his fingernails and reveals a little doodle to scare them all.

The Most Iconic Theme of All Time.

Well before we ever see a shark, we know he is around because of the much parodied but perfect theme for the shark. Yeah, you know it.

Lets Go Swimming.

This scene catches you by the throat and the film never let’s go after that. No sign of the shark, but your nightmares will never be the same.

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June 12, 2015

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Jurassic World

The world is a different place than it was twenty two years ago when the original “Jurassic Park” stormed onto screens, made CGI the standard by which special effects would be measured from then on, and crowned the king of Hollywood with his greatest commercial success the same year he achieved his greatest artistic success with “Schindler’s List”. Spielberg’s dinosaur movie was the start of freeing our imaginations with digital images and the story was fresh. Here we are all those years later, and everyone knows that the dinosaurs are going to be spectacular, and the setting is going to be lush and the action intense. Even if it is the first time you see any of the Jurassic Park films, “Jurassic World” can never repeat the magic of that 1993 event picture.

Having said that, and giving anybody with bloated expectations a way to let a little air out of the bubble, “Jurassic World” is a terrific summer film that should fill the pockets of everyone involved because it does exactly what the times call for. It entertains us with spectacle, danger and action. There is one important element missing from this film that was much more abundant in it’s three precursors, humor. Other than that, you will have a great time at the movies as long as you are not really expecting a science lesson.

The park has been open for a while now. It is still unclear to me after the events of “The Lost World: Jurassic Park”, how “i-gen”, the company founded by John Hammond can still exist. They must have had their assets sold off to pay for the lawsuits that would have followed the company after the T-Rex eats half of San Diego. They could not even afford security to keep people off of site B in the third Jurassic Park film. That is all just nit picking however, the point of this movie is to give us something to marvel at and be frightened of. The real monsters continue to be the scientists who play with genetic power and don’t consider the consequences. These films must have inspired a lot of the Monsanto hate out there, because the researchers come across as indifferent to the work they are doing and it’s consequence, they simply see it as something to exploit.  B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu is older but not wiser, making all new mistakes with the current endeavor. Vincent D’Onofrio has the Paul Reiser role as a corporate hack who has visions of defense contracts dancing through his head. It’s Bryce Dallas-Howard who ultimately has to redeem herself as a cold fish of an executive, looking at marketing before she considers the ethical and responsible things to do. She does get to the point where we do root for her, but in the beginning, she is as guilty as anyone for what happens.

If you were worried that the velociraptors of the early films had turned into trained house pets, be assured that is not the case. Chris Pratt, channeling Harrison Ford, is working with the deadly pack hunters, but the story is much more realistic than the trailer would lead you to believe. He needed to have more of “Star Lords” one liners and facial ticks, to make the movie sing more. The fault is not in the performance but the script. Jeff Goldblum owned the first two movies with his sardonic sense of humor and his well timed jabs at the corporation and scientific processes. Pratt only gets one or two moments to show off his comic chops, and then once the story takes off, there are no moments of levity at all.

There are several thrill moments in the film, but nothing to match that T-Rex attack from “Jurassic Park”. The sequence with the gyroglobes is meant to stand in for the attack on the jeep in the first film, and it does have a few great elements to it, but it is not as sustained as that first brilliant sequence that Spielberg used all of his skills to put together. Director Colin Trevorrow copies the master but can’t quite match the terror achieved in that sequence. His strongest effort is in the final fight sequence which does manage to use the characters , both real and digital, to their best effect. Composer Michael Giacchino has done a good job in building a soundtrack for the movie but his work will always be overshadowed here by the theme from the first film, composed by John Williams. That motif is repeated in several sections and at the end of the picture it is as if Williams himself did the score for this. It may be an unfair thing for me to say, but it was the way I felt about it.

The movie succeeds in creating a monster to chase the characters that really is scary. The park looks fantastic and reasonably crowed, at least until the climax. I would want to do several of the rides and attractions we saw in the build up. Kayaking with dinosaurs, riding a Triceratops, or traveling by monorail through a forest are all attractions that would made me want to go through the turnstile. Some times the themes get a little big for the movie. Asset management and investment are certainly important, but a guy who manages to make it to being the eighth richest man on the planet can surely see that losing a $26 million project is small potatoes next to the disaster staring him in the face. Of course if people did not make some stupid choices, there would be no movie for us to thrill to, so ignore some of the improbable s, and sit back for what will surely be the thrill ride of the summer.

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June 11, 2015

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Gremlins/Gremlins 2: The New Batch

If any of you read my blog project last year, you will know that although I think “Amadeus” was the best film of 1984 (or any other year in the 1980s), it was not my favorite film of the year. That honor fell to a subversive little film that grabbed us by the heart and then kicked us in the balls. You can read the exhaustive discussion of “Gremlins” on that site, and if you missed it I hope you will go over and enjoy the nostalgia.

Last night as part of a week long tribute to director Joe Dante, a screening of “Gremlins” was held along with the sequel “Gremlins 2: The New Batch”. Dante is one of those guys who came from the Roger Corman school of film making. Make em cheap, fast and be inventive. There are other double features playing this week that if I had the time to see, I would make the return trip to Hollywood. “The ‘Burbs/Matinee” and “Innerspace/Explorers” are this weekend and his new film “Burying the Ex” a zombie horror comedy is screening tonight. I would not have forgiven myself though if I had skipped the opportunity to see “Gremlins” on the big screen.

At the Turner Classic Film Festival back in March, I sat right in front of John Milius for a showing of “The Wind and the Lion”. Last night, the director of the film I love sat one row in front of me on the other side of the aisle. He did not stay for the whole film but he did do a brief introduction of the two movies, describing the “New Batch” as being more personal since he and his collaborators created it while he worked from Chris Columbus’s script for the original.

This was actually the second time I say behind Mr. Dante at a movie screening. In 1988 my wife and I saw the Bruce Willis/James Garner salute to Tom Mix, “Sunset” at the Cinerama Dome. Mr. Dante came in right as the movie started and sit directly in front of us. I don’t know that anyone else might have recognized him but at the time, I was a pretty big geek about “Gremlins” and to me it was a cool celebrity sighting.

“The New Batch” is an even more maniacal comedy of destruction and mayhem than the original. The technology was up dated and they had a bigger budget, and as Mr. Dante said last night, Warner Brothers was so happy to be getting a sequel that they pretty much let him do whatever he wanted.  What he did was a parody of his own film. The jokes make reference to moments in the original that often stand out as issues for some fans. As the security guys are dismissing Billy’s warning about the creatures, they ask those questions that critical fans might have asked about the original, like what if a piece of food caught between their teeth in a meal before mid-night comes loose after mid-night? Does that trigger the metamorphosis?  Kate starts a story at an odd moment during the film about her tragic memories of a Lincoln’s Birthday trauma from her childhood. The movie is filled with those sort of self referential jokes.

John Glover is marvelous as a cross between Donald Trump and Ted Turner, getting the bluster right and in the background being mocked by P.A. announcements and gift shop bric-à-brac . Leonard Maltin basically repeats his criticism of the original as being too violent for it’s own good, before being taken down in a moment of gentler violence. Sadly this day we lost Christopher Lee, who appeared in this film as a mad scientist with no conscience but a high level of lawsuit awareness.

The real stars of the movie however are the gremlins themselves, many of which have undergone a genetic transformation as a result of the lab experiments of Lee’s mad Dr. Catheter. There are vegetable gremlins and arachnid gremlins and flying gremlins. There is also one that might be deemed by Chris Brown a “Science Experiment” much like he described Mr./Ms. Jenner recently. Tony Randall does the voice of an intellectualized gremlin and makes mayhem seem as if it is a cultural behavior that we should value from this new class of creatures.

While it may be Mr. Dante’s choice, it does lack the heart of the first film, and the violent surprises that took our breath away and helped create the PG-13 rating. Gizmo is side lined for much of the sequel and the expressive face that made him the focus of marketing and audience adoration in the first film, gets used much more sparingly in the second.  It is still a wonderful film, my preference is as always for the original.

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June 8, 2015

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SPY

After the horrid reviews of “Tammy” from last summer and seeing the horrible poster for this film featuring the star dressed down and colored gold, I thought this would be one to skip. The word of mouth though has been really strong, the Rotten Tomatoes score was impressively at 95%, so I decided to take a chance and I can say I was rewarded. This is an amusing spy parody that gets a lot of credit for playing off the Bond film tropes but then adds the Melissa McCarthy vulgarity in appropriate doses.  When you throw in a couple of extra performers that I have an affinity for, well you end up with a solid piece of summer entertainment.

The titles and title song are perfect reflections of a Bond opening with Maurice Binder like silhouettes and a soft rock piece of cheese that isn’t Adele but make you think of her. Jude Law plays as typecast as a spy who is good, and of course good looking, but is extra special because of the control operator he has back at CIA headquarters. He’s not incompetent, but he appears to be a little less perfect than 007 would be in the same circumstances. Ultimately, the comedy turns on getting McCarty out in the field, as an unlikely spy with equally unlikely cover.

There is an amusing sequence with the CIA equivalent of “Q”. A spy quartermaster that is dismissive of the agent and also expert at his job. Michael McDonald plays a stone-faced bureaucrat in this sequence and to make it work, he has no joy in his eyes. One of the reasons the film works is because they don’t play it as a parody but rather as a straight spy film with comic overtones. “Q” might smirk, or make a sarcastic comment, but this quartermaster has no sense of humor. Neither does deputy director of CIA operations Elaine Crocker, played by the always great Allison Janney. She is the straight man to a number of jokes in the set up of the film, I don’t know if I knew she was in the movie before today, but ultimately the movie is carried by other performers.

There are three performances that ultimately make the movie work, and then just as a little frosting, there is a fourth actor I want to mention. McCarthy is the big gun here. She knows her way around this kind of material and so far people don’t appear to be tired of the familiarity. Her disappointment at the covers she is given is a nice contrast to the hard edged character she ultimately pretends to be (and it turns out, actually is). As the star of the film, most of the focus is on her and if you don’t care for her, then this film will not be for you. I was impressed with the cold bitch persona that Rose Byrne manages for her villain character. The dry, dull tone that she uses to pass out orders, insults and backhanded compliments was amusing and matched the tone the movie was trying for.  Jason Statham was hysterical as a spy who can’t keep from tooting his own horn in the most outrageous and self delusional fantasies you can imagine. His comic chops are great as he plays against the type of character that he played in “Furious 7”. If there is a sequel to this film, look for he and McCarthy to be paired in the mismatched partner story that a sequel would beg for. Also, stick around through the credits for a couple of stingers and an out-take that will make you laugh one more time. Bobby Cannavale is a comedian turned actor who gets to play a handsome in a slick bad boy kind of way, villain. After seeing him in “Win-Win” and “Blue Jasmine” in the last few years, I am increasingly impressed with his work.

The worst poster of the year winner.

This film is not likely to be seen as a classic. The jokes are good the first time through but I doubt they will have a high degree of repeatability. There are several visual gags that help the film earn it’s rating, as well as the potty mouth of the star. The people behind this get the joke and they know how to tell it. I thought “The Heat” from two years ago was alright but it was a big stretch to believe the two characters as tough cops. This movie suffers from the same problem but covers it up the same way, by making enough jokes that connect to outweigh the improbability of any of the story.

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May 31, 2015

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San Andreas

I understand the commerce behind a film like this. Big action, a big star, and over the top visual sequences make money. Look, I put down my twelve bucks so I guess I should not complain too much, except what does it say about me and the rest of humanity when we watch disaster porn? Are we confronting our fears and our own mortality or are we revealing in the destruction and enjoying watching millions of people die? I just can’t answer. I feel a little dirty but it is also such a stupid movie that I feel silly for feeling guilty, talk about mixed emotions.

Southern California is the only home I have ever known, and I know that we are all going to be very unhappy when the “Big One” does show up. I rode out the 1971 quake in Sylmar, the 87 Whittier Narrows Quake that killed my hometown theater, and the 94 Northridge quake which made the area sit up and beg. Every once in a while we get a good sized movement of the earth that reminds us that stuff is happening below our feet. This movie wants to bitch slap you into alertness and then make you care about five people while the whole west coast is going to hell in a handbasket. If anyone is better prepared as a result of seeing this, that would be a good thing. The problem is that this movie suggests that we are all pretty much screwed unless we have a helicopter, a plane and a boat at our disposal. Also, pack Dwayne Johnson in your EQ kit because mere mortals are not going to survive without this kind of hero.

The former “Rock” has been a movie star for fifteen years now. He is in one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, and he gets better as an actor each time out while keeping the charisma that made him a star wrestler before he moved over to the silver screen. He loads this unbelievably derivative story on his broad shoulders and powers though it as if it were Shakespeare. He does not play it camp and he does a credible job playing the hero that everyone will need in a disaster. If Liam Neeson and others are the Old Guy fantasy of competence, Johnson is right there with them, assuming the old guys look like Arnold Schwarzenegger reborn.

Take three parts “Earthquake”, one part “The Towering Inferno”, one part “The Poseidon Adventure”, throw in a dash of “2012” and “The Day After” and you have this movie. Match it with state of the art visual effects to depress the hell out of anyone who remembers 9/11 and you will see what I mean. This movie is cheesy as hell but also sadly familiar. I spent hours watching tsunami videos after the Japanese disaster a few years ago, and I felt like a gawker at the scene of a car accident, but still not able to look away. The dramatic action scenes in this movie still manage to involve you because the main characters are likable and we have followed them through the whole story, but look around and there are a hundred other stories that end in tragedy every time our leads make it thorough ( which they would never do it this was real.)

Paul Giamatti is credible as a Cal Tech scientist, and he adds a little gravitas to the proceedings but the whole scenario is so over the top that in the long run it does not matter. If you can swallow your self loathing and just load up on popcorn, you will be moderately entertained. If you are at all conflicted about the idea, then maybe you should wait for the next comic book movie, where it is easier to laugh off the ludicrous amount of destruction as just being a movie.

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May 27, 2015

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5 Year Anniversary

Five years ago, in a fit of pique because there was a three week break between the end of the regular semester and the start of the summer session, I decided to vent by creating a project for myself. I was going to have some time on my hands during the day and I decided to start a movie blog project. The original goal was to do a post every day for the summer, first by watching a film and then by providing opinion, history, and context to the experience. While some bloggers seem to thrive on a daily ritual, I don’t always find it easy. My schedule changes, my moods range more directions than a herd of cats, and frankly, because I never learned to touch type, my composition was sometimes a chore designed more to reduce typos than to offer deep insights.

The original project ran from May 31 though Labor Day, September 6, 2010. There were 97 movies in the project that I posted on in that time frame, films from the summers of my youth, the 1970s. Most of them were pleasant revisits, a few drove me to distraction, but all of them forced me to think about the movies I see in more than just a passing fashion. When the project was complete, I discovered I wanted to keep writing and sharing my impressions, so by the end of 2010, the blog evolved into a more contemporary film blog, with occasional diversions back into the past. I decided that if I saw a film in a theater, I would post some kind of comment about the experience.

Since the start of 2011, I have reviewed or pontificated on all the new releases that I have seen, and there are a lot of them. I pay for all my theatrical experiences so sometimes I am selective, I don’t see every documentary, indie, or foreign  film making the rounds. Now let me completely contradict my claim about being selective, I see a lot of crap. If Jason Statham or Liam Neeson are are on the poster, there is a good chance I will see it. If it is a horror film with a theme, a director, or word of mouth good enough to get me into a theater, I’m happy to confess my weakness. I have seen all the Transformers movies, fortunately only two were in the time I was writing for the blog.

I like revivals of classic films, and special screenings of recent projects now being sold on Blu-ray and marketed with a one night only opportunity. If I can find “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Jaws” on a big screen within a fifty mile radius, I will usually be there. The American Cinematique at the Egyptian Theater and the “Cinerama Dome” at the Archlight in Hollywood are spots that I haunt, hoping for a chance to see something I have loved from the past in a real movie palace.

I have been fortunate to find new friends on line that share their enthusiasms about films and will listen to me when I am right, and disagree with me when they are wrong. ( OK, maybe the reverse also). There are James Bond Fans out there who are probably tired of me mouthing off on why their selection of the greatest 007 is wrong, or who can’t wait to find some other obscure piece of Bond material to fetishize along with me. I’ve met a few of these folks in person, but most of them are a continent away, and they might freak out if I show up unannounced at their beach house or at Comic Com N.Y..

People have invited me to participate in a multiple blogathons, a round table or two, and even a podcast. I hope to continue in doing all of those things. I will probably create a podcast myself, and if you haven’t yet visited the VLOG page, you should make a little time. I have a lot of fun when I post the video material and your impression of the voice behind this blog might change by seeing me in human form. The posts I did for Fogs Movie Reviews are still listed on one of the pages here, and “30 Years On” is not finished. There are a dozen more films for the project that I just got behind on, and then the page will morph into the site for all my retro material. If you are a WordPress reader, I have a doppelganger site at “Kirkham A Movie A Day” , for some people, following and commenting is easier if they are using a site that matches their own.

Anyway, I just thought I should commemorate the date and thank anyone who has come by any of the places I have played in over the last five years. Fogs, Eric, Keith and Michael, I especially want to thank you for the consistency of your on-line friendship. There are a dozen others that comment regularly or allow me to comment on their sites with enthusiasm and all of you are appreciated. Thanks, and expect another epic “Jaws” post in the near future, it is after all the 40th anniversary of that artistic achievement.

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May 24, 2015

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Poltergeist

On the way to the Theater this morning, we made every light between our house and the movie theater. It’s almost three miles on a very busy commercial mainline, and there are at least a dozen intersections with traffic lights. We made every one of them. I thought maybe we should go to Vegas, but then it occurred to me that maybe it was a good omen for the film we were about to see. Nope. Not gonna happen. This remake of Poltergeist is as mundane and unnecessary as you thought it would be. Having the names of Sam Rami and Sam Rockwell associated with the film was enough to take a flyer on it, but it all just lays there.

The story is somewhat the same as the original, but instead of an upwardly mobile yuppie couple buying into the American dream, we have a downsized family making due with leftovers. There is no contentious but friendly next door neighbor in this movie. In fact the only other people not directly related to the story sort of look down on folks living in this neighborhood. The dearth of nearby residents is supposed to be explained by the fact that there are so many foreclosures in the neighborhood. That is the only way this film might compare favorably to the original, it at least has an explanation as to how these events could take place without anyone else in the area being aware.

Other interesting points about the movie, well Rosemarie DeWitt who plays the Mother in this film is married to Ron Livingston who played the Father in “The Conjuring“.  He definitely got the better end of that deal. It’s not an improvement but it is an interesting twist, the spiritualist they bring in to help the family, instead of being a diminutive female Rambo with a Kewpie doll voice, we get a grizzled reality TV Ghosthunter who has an Irish brogue and a gruff disposition. My daughter had a good insight on this film. It would have played better if this was a case the TV guy was doing for an episode of his series as opposed to his agreeing to work this case in spite of the fact that the family did not want to be on TV. It would have played off the two genres against each other and left room for more surprises than we finally get with this fairly standard haunted house story.

Like the remake of “Carrie” from two years ago, “Poltergeist” does nothing to hurt the legacy of the other film. If audiences are unwilling to go back three decades to see the original, there might as well be a version that they can get themselves to. It’s just sad to think that people believe the visual effects from then are inferior to the CGI of today. I’d disagree and the incident at the sink in both films would be a good way to make the comparison. The 1982 film was a lot more frightening with the practical make-up effects.

Sam Rockwell is playing a character who is less interesting and less heroic than the oddball salesman of Craig T. Nelson. There is one brief sequence, which has nothing to do with the story, that allows him to use his Rockwellisms and charisma. It is short and unfortunately, there was no dancing involved. The two young actors playing the youngest children in the family were very good. It was maybe a bit more interesting to give the son more to do but it is at the expense of the rest of the characters. The build up in the first film was intriguing with some moments of levity. This version crashes headlong into the action, and there is never a sense of wonder. It is all about fear. In the original, the clown doll sits like a ticking bomb in the scenes set in the son’s bedroom. In this version, it is a ringing alarm from the very first moment it appears. The controversy over Spielberg’s taking over direction from Tobe Hooper continues to today. It is safe to say he had nothing to do with directing this film.

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May 24, 2015

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Tomorrowland

This movie is a mess. It has a dozen different strands of ideas that it wants to follow, it’s tone is all over the place, and the rules of the story seem inconsistent. The idea of making a Disney attraction into a film is not of course new, but as a whole “land” is involved this time, I think maybe the stitching required to get it all to hold together is just more obvious this time out. George Clooney is a movie star that can’t really open a film on his own without a strong premise, and he is invisible from this movie for most of the first hour.

Director Brad Bird has made some of my favorite films over the last fifteen years. He is capable of telling a coherent story but this one is just not quite there. You can see the ideas right there in front of you, tantalizing us with the notion that there is something deep and worthwhile in this experience. It just does not come together. It reminded me several times of the movie “Toys” with Robin Williams. There are things to look at, there are good performers giving it their all, but the premise is too fuzzy in the end to be anything more than mildly likable when it is all over. I ended up wanting to see the movie that they tell this story around, rather than the book ends that make up this structure. I think even the story of Casey, the young protagonist played by Britt Roberston, would have worked a bit better. At the end, the conventional issues all undermine the creativity of the imagination that the promise of “Tomorrowland” is supposed to hold.

The opening section that tells the back story of Clooney’s Frank Walker was excellent. The setting at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 is picture perfect. The Fair contained all sorts of advanced gizmos and concepts and a few of them are illustrated here. We never see the “Carrousel  of Progress” but the song makes an appearance and promises us a great big beautiful tomorrow. Raffey Cassidy is an interesting young actress who may very well have been cast because of her resemblance to Angela Cartwright of “the Sound of Music” but more importantly Penny from “Lost in Space”. Baby boomers will see her freckles and the dress she wears in those early scenes and think immediately of the time period being evoked. Casting here went a long way in setting the scene, I think even more than all the special effects. The kid who plays young Frank is also very well cast to give a sense of those hopeful, early sixties dreamers of the New Frontier. His answer as to why he made the jetpack he has brought to the Inventions Hall at the Fair is a great encapsulation of America’s can do spirit. The contrast with the heroine’s project, to keep the launch pad at Cape Canaveral from closing down, is a little heavy handed but it is clear. We stopped being dreamers.

So I’m settling down for an uplifting movie about how we lost our way and might get it back again, when evil robots try to kill the pretty little science terrorist, and then they disintegrate three police officers out of nowhere and do it with a creepy mechanical smile. Wow, this is a PG rated family film? It features the same kinds of blue guts splattered we saw in “The World”s End” only from humans rather than robots. Watch out for the sudden car accident that also runs over a little girl. Nothing says family entertainment like that. Suddenly our whimsical fantasy film has become an action picture complete with a pint sized Terminator to lead us to the resolution. By the time Clooney comes back to the screen, the film feels completely different. The pursuit of the two science dreamers across different dimensions includes dismemberment of the  robot pursuers in several grim but amusing booby traps. Then it is followed up by a Coke joke. The story meanders around trying to show us background material, but this is one of the few times I can think of where an exposition laden conversation between the two leads might have helped the movie move forward rather than slowing it down.

When story returns to Tomorrowland, it is never clear why things there have gotten as bleak as the other dimension we occupy. The macguffin that is referred to is incompletely explained and the visionary technologies that exist seem to be put to no better use than tracking kids down to kill them. Yep, that’s the joy of Tomorrowland. At the very end of the story, the characters try to redeem all we have experienced with a renewed promise, but they have not explained how the same problem cannot occur again or why a new set of dreamers will make any difference. Hugh Laurie’s Governor Nix asks at one point how we managed to have the dual problems of obesity and starvation simultaneously? It’s a pretty reasonable dilemma, I’ve got another one for you, How are we supposed to expect the future to be a place for our dreams, when it is trying to kill us at the same time?

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May 17, 2015

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Mad Max: Fury Road

Post Apocalyptic stories have been a go to film genre for me since the glory days of the 1970s. I guess since “Planet of the Apes” ultimately counts in this category, technically I have been hooked since 1968. I really loved stories about a group of survivors, struggling against the environment and other treacherous obstacles in a world that has changed dramatically. “Damnation Alley” , a not very good film, featured a cool vehicle with a rotating set of triangular wheel axles. “A Boy and His Dog”, mined sex and loneliness and survivors in ragged clothes and armed to the teeth for it’s entertainment value. None of those movies prepared me for the experience of first seeing “The Road Warrior” in the summer of 1982. In the rest of the world it was “Mad Max 2”, but here in the States, it was a stand alone film that introduced a new film maker to a much bigger audience. Action movies have not been the same since.

Just as in 1985, when my most anticipated Summer Film was a sequel to the “The Road Warrior”, 2015 brings on a sense of deja’ vu. “Fury Road” has taken a long route to get here, but it has arrived with the kind of force that you would expect. This is a take no prisoners action flick that grabs you with a strong stunt sequence in the first two minutes, followed by a foot chase and combat fighting within five minutes, and in about ten minutes the rest of the chase begins. This is a chase film that goes on for two hours and has maybe three segments when the chase pauses, not for long, just enough to get some exposition in and then back on the road. There are some new gruesome twists on the survivor story. Factory farming will be seen in a whole new light next time you open a bottle of milk. The future is a depressing place if you are not in control of the power, and Max our titular hero is close to powerless at the start of this story.

The vultures that preyed on the weak in “The Road Warrior” and created a twisted economic system in “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”, have evolved into a extended family cult of malignant children of the deformed patriarch of Immortan Joe. For reasons that become obvious early on, a set of women flee his power and Max becomes part of the exodus by accident. The father figure god is unwilling to give up his possessions and so begins an elaborate pursuit by super charged dune buggies, modified big rigs, and and hundreds of Warrior Boys, convinced that their death will result into admission to Valhalla at the feet of their demi-god father. The two previous films in this series, thirty and thirty-three years old, spent most of their time building up to the climactic chase. This movie is all chase and it sustains the chase through a series of set pieces, plot twists and brilliant design that will keep you hanging on from the moment it begins. Plot is thin but the action is thick and the visualization is visionary. Renegade clans in the outer desert are encased in vehicles that resemble porcupines. The washed out white skin of the Warrior boys make them appear to be an army of spooks, descending on the pursued from all angles.  The grimacing regulator that Immortan Joe wears becomes a death mask that follows the heroes from their nightmares to the waking world. There are spectacular crashes and innovative weapons and a disturbing cult of death that brings them all together. Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron, seems appropriately named. She is without humor, and determined to save her group of women. Her strategy is to run and keep running and anything that tries to slow her down needs to be mowed down. The war carriage she drives is a moving fortress that is vulnerable to attack only by having overwhelming forces swarm the wagon. Even then, it turns out that she has a secret weapon she herself did not know about, Max.

I have nothing negative to say about Tom Hardy. I think he was well cast and fits the character like a glove. The two criticisms I have of the film do center around Max however, so Hardy may end up a little worse for wear based on my assessment. As great as I think Hardy might be, he does not have the visual charisma that Mel Gibson radiated off the screen in 1982. If you have not seen those earlier Mad Max films with Gibson, I suggest you wait to do so until after you see this and then the comparison that inevitably ensues will not be nagging you through out the film. The character Max is supposed to be cryptic, but as written here, he feels impenetrable and we can’t quite commit to him as we might want to. Maybe having to play a second leading role with his face covered by a mask for larger parts of the film is the thing that holds back my full endorsement. Nicholas Hoult on the other hand is surprisingly compelling as a Warrior Boy in  the right spot at the right time. His character had more dimension in the nearly characterless plot than anyone else. Hardy is stoic, Theron is fierce but young Mr. Hoult gets to play despair, joy, confusion and be disgustingly winsome at times. 


 The action and explosions and fights are choreographed wit a frenetic pace that stays involving for long periods at a time. Director George Miller invented this kind of Apocalyptic mayhem with the original Mad Max, now he has a budget and enough time to see this vision play out in the grandest scale possible. I am now willing to cancel his debit to me for the irritation that “Happy Feet” brought to me. There is enough credit on his ledger from this film to balance out any more dancing penguins that happen along.