So in the last 2 weeks we have been able to see three of the Best Picture winners from the mid-70s. A week and a half ago it was “Godfather Part 2”, two nights ago it was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, and last night was our chance to see “The Sting” the film that won the award between the other two. I’ve seen “The Sting” on the big screen several times, and it is always a pleasure. But seeing it with a full audience adds an extra dimension. Let me explain why.
When the auditorium is packed you can hear the reaction of other audience members around you. I could tell from the gasps and laughter of people sitting behind me and down a few rows, that they were seeing “The Sting” for the very first time. Those who are familiar with the movie are aware that there are several surprise twists in various spots in the film, but most especially in the last Act. It is a complete delight to listen to people who are surprised and amused at the twist that shows up next. Another one of the reasons that seeing a film with an audience on the big screen is so important to me.
The event had some special extras to go with it, in addition to our usual popcorn, a drink coupon was provided for us. We also had a selection of Halloween sized candy that we could pick up before we went into the theater. That stop also gave us a chance to wave at and say hi to Danielle who we had met the week before. Erin, the community outreach member that we met last year, greeted us as we were getting our popcorn. She also shared that our picture was used in the latest email to all of the film fans who signed up for Paramount notifications. That was cool.
Before the film started, a series of screen slides provided some trivia information about the making of the film. Included was a detail that Jack Nicholson had been offered the role of Hooker, ultimately played by Robert Redford. Yeah, I think this was a good outcome, having Jack in the part would have been a completely different kind of movie. The biggest draw for me has always been the outsized villain played by Robert Shaw. is Doyle Lonnegan is a joyless mobster who simply cares only for money and being the top dog. Any action that undermines his pride becomes a motivation for him to seek revenge. That’s why the poker game on the train is so important. It provides all the incentive that Lonnegan needs in order to accept a chance at getting back at Newman’s character. It allows the subterfuge to go undetected because of his desire for revenge. Shaw plays the part with barely a single smile in any of his scenes. Once in awhile a small smirk appears to indicate to Hooker or to Loneaggan’s lackeys that he has the upper hand. It’s a joy to see that smirk it wiped off of his face two or three times in the course of the movie.
Director George Roy Hill won the Academy Award for this particular film, and although he is a respected technician, you don’t hear many people speak of him with the same degree of awe as Scorsese, Coppola, or Spielberg. He did some amazing films in the ’70s and later on this summer we get a chance to revisit the movie that he made with Paul Newman and Robert Redford prior to this, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. I recently saw the film “A Little Romance”, which he made with Lawrence Olivier and a very young Diane Lane, and it’s absolutely terrific. Combine that with the fact that he made the greatest sports movie ever, “Slap Shot”, and turned my favorite book into a fairly reasonable film version, “The World According to Garp”, and I feel he deserves a little more cache with film fans.
It’s not even the middle of June yet, and I feel like I’ve had a summers worth of great movies already. I’m looking forward to several things in the next few weeks, and you can expect continued updates on the Paramount classic film series 50th anniversary.
The Paramount continues to try topping itself with great programming on Friday evenings. This week we get a double feature featuring the great actress Pam Grier. The two films that are presented are at the far ends of her career. “Jackie Brown” was a prestige project from Quentin Tarantino that earned Pam Grier a Golden Globe nomination and should have earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. This movie was paired with a film from 1974, at the peak of her career in exploitation films, it is actually a pretty decent forerunner for “Jackie Brown”, This one is called “Foxy Brown”.
Let’s start with “Jackie Brown”. This is a Tarantino film based not on an original idea of his, or a hybrid of exploitation films that he saw as a child, but rather on the novel Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. Tarantino adapted the book into a screenplay and made the central character a black woman so that Pam Grier could play the part. I haven’t read the original text, I only know the screenplay from having seen the movie several times, but I can’t imagine that the book is superior to the very clever screenplay that we get with this movie.
To Briefly summarize, Jackie Brown is an airline hostess for a low budget Mexican holiday flight operation, and she also makes extra cash by smuggling money for a gun Runner into and out of Cabo San Lucas. When things go wrong for Ordell, the gunrunner played by Samuel Jackson, Jackie looks like she is in the crosshairs of both the ATF and the violent Ordell. But you would never say that Jackie Brown was in over her head. This woman is whip smart, and fearless. And she devises a plan to get herself out of trouble with both of those sides.
The film is loaded with those Tarantino touches, such as mundane conversations turned into philosophical questions, expletive filled declarations of both love and hate, and a variety of characters that you don’t really like but find very interesting. So it is clearly under Tarantino’s thumb, and he makes the most of adapting somebody else’s work to his kind of film. In addition to Jackie, there is one other character that is smart and sympathetic and that we will find interesting and ready to root for. Max Cherry is a bail bondsman who is being used by Ordell to make his targets available after they have been arrested. Robert Forrester, plays Max as a sympathetic and wise older man, who does play by the rules but finds himself attracted to the charm of Jackie Brown. Forester has to sell the idea that he is falling in love with the least amount of dialogue possible, in often very brief scenes. That he does so successfully accounts for his nomination as best supporting actor that year, the only Academy Award nomination that the film received.
As usual, Samuel L Jackson is full of expletives and attitude, and his character Ordell is one of the most loathsome psychopaths that we have seen in a mainstream story. This is a movie that plays it straight, and although Ordell looks like a comic book villain at times, he really does seem to feel like a real person, just not one that’s very nice. Also along for the ride are Robert De Niro, as Ordell’s dimwitted partner in training, and Bridget Fonda as the beach bum girl that Ordell likes to have around as eye candy, primarily because she is white. The dialogue between Fonda and Jackson is frequently brittle and very funny. Fonda’s character is an attractive woman who is slightly over her youthful beauty and is now hardening into a harridan rather than a beach girl.
The cast is filled with very confident supporting actors including Michael Bowen, Chris Tucker, Tiny Lister, and most important of all Michael Keaton as the ATF guy that is interested in Jackie both professionally and romantically. Keaton and Bowen are the cops who are trying to manipulate Jackie into betraying Ordell, and Jackie has to outwit them as well as the dangerous gun dealer.
The film turns into a caper/con game movie in the last act, as Jackie and Max try to work out an exchange of money that implicates Ordell, frees Jackie from being under the thumb of the ATF, and also manages to separate the bad guy from his treasure. They do a dry run of the exchange so that the audience gets a sense of what’s going to be happening, but of course Tarantino twists it around when they get to the big exchange, and he gives us the process from three or four different perspectives, starting at different times, but ultimately overlapping. It’s a complicated sequence, but a good director has managed to make it completely understandable while still keeping us in suspense about what exactly is happening.
All of this only works because Pam Grier is a solid actress, who is finally getting a chance to play a smart character who doesn’t rely on belligerence to get her way but rather on cleverness. She is terrific in the scenes where she has to face down Ordell, or when she is flirting with Max. She does get to do the belligerent bit a couple of times in the film, but interestingly she is playing a part with that belligerence, sort of a meta reference to earlier characters that she’s played.
I was a guest on the Walt sent me podcast several years ago, where Todd Kristen and I talked about this film. The fact that Disney had bought Miramax, brought this movie into the house of Mouse, and the idea that Tarantino is responsible for a Disney movie just tickled us. I could not locate the episode, but believe me, we talked thoroughly about the film.
The second film in the program was from 1973, Foxy Brown. It’s not as intricately clever as Jackie Brown is, but it does give Pam Grier a chance to show the badass that we will be seeing 25 years later in the other movie. I’m going to do a separate post covering Foxy Brown on my site “Grindhouse Alley”. When that goes up I will link it here so you can see my thoughts on the second film in more detail.
I’m happy to say that even though it became a late night because of the double feature, most of the audience stayed for both movies. And everybody was very appreciative with Applause at the end of both films. I’ll say once more, the Paramount Summer Classic Film Series has hit the mark.
If you look elsewhere on the site you will find a list of my 10 favorite films. I cheated on one of the entries by listing both The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2 as a single unit. That’s because I always think of them as one big movie that just got separated by 2 years. The stories integrate so incredibly well, and the casting of the younger versions of characters that we come to know in the first Godfather is so spot on, that it feels like it was planned from the very beginning.
I’m so happy that the Paramount scheduled Godfather Part 2 on its 50th anniversary, because this is a movie that should be celebrated regularly. I don’t usually wait for a round number to rewatch the film, I think I saw it just a couple of years ago when I was doing my binge on “The Offer”, the streaming series based on the creation of the original Godfather. I like to catch up with this movie as often as possible although it is 3 hours and 20 minutes, which means that I’m not sitting down for a casual watch. Fortunately this is an opportunity to see the film on the big screen and once again it is as impressive as I remember.
Actor John Cazale famously made only five movies, all of which were nominated for Best Picture, and three of them won the award. It’s amazing to me that Cazale himself was never nominated. The only reason I can think that his performance in this film was overlooked is because there were three other supporting performances that were also pretty spectacular. It would have seemed odd at the Academy Awards if four out of the five slots had been taken up by actors in this film. Regardless Cazale’s performance as Fredo, is both heartbreaking and frustrating. If you’ve never seen the movie I certainly am not going to spoil it for you, but let’s just say that Michael never lets an offense to the family go unpunished.
The parallel structure of the two stories in this film starts with the rise of Vito Corleone as he and his family build a foundation in the early part of the 20th century in New York City , it is phenomenal. Robert De Niro, who did win this supporting actor award for his role in this film, actually looks like Marlon Brando might have looked in his leanest and hungriest years. He starts off as a naive waif, uncertain of where he fits in among the immigrants that he lives with and works around. When he encounters a young Clemenza, played with great personality by the late Bruno Kirby, Vito finds his way to his true destiny. Young Don Corleone was building his family up, but Michael Corleone in his desire to control his family completely, basically dismantles its core. In Godfather Part 3 we will get to see how it all plays out, but even without that pictures existence, we have a pretty clear idea of the wasteland that Corleone’s life had become.
It’s hard to imagine that Francis Ford Coppola was reluctant to do a sequel to the movie. He had so much success and a natural affinity for the material that it seemed inevitable that he would take on the task. The fact that he was able to use the studios desire for him to continue the story as a way of financing the film that he made between the two Godfathers, “The Conversation”, is just an extra bonus. When you watch the scenes of young Vito Corleone stalking Fanucci across the rooftops of the Italian neighborhood that this supposed member of the black hand was in control of, it’s like watching a tiger follow its prey. Inevitably there is violence, but Don Corleone does his best to keep the violence away from his family all of whom are all incredibly young at this point.
Michael’s story is of course a huge contrast, he starts off with all kinds of Power, but can’t keep the violence from intruding on the most personal parts of his life. The machine gun attack that takes place near the beginning of the film, highlights for his wife Kay, that the family is not really capable of going legitimate. Michael’s inability to confront problems with his son, or understand his wife’s pleas, makes him seem cold-hearted, when what he really is is a rock hard leader of a criminal organization. He lacks the warmth that his father had with his associates. There’s a great scene where he seems to be calling his adopted brother Tom Hagan on the carpet for fielding a job offer from another Institution. He comes across as bitter, and unsympathetic. Contrast this to the scene in the first Godfather when Vito actually comforts Tom when Sonny is killed. The difference between Father and Son is subtly displayed in these two scenes. Vito always played the humble part very well. Michael on the other hand is arrogant and self-assured, and never once allows anybody to see him sweat. Hell even in Cuba Michael has a hard time relaxing a little with his brother or the business associates that he is working with.
Coppola gives us fantastic set pieces, featuring hundreds of extras in elaborate costumes with distinctive music that clearly sets the time and place of the scenes that are playing out. The street festival where young Vito is stalking Fanucci, the confirmation party in Lake Tahoe, and the New Year’s Eve Revolution in Havana, are all spectacularly staged and probably a big part of why Coppola received the directors award that he was denied two years earlier. This was a big picture put together beautifully, with a huge degree of thought and care as to how the story was going to integrate the two lives.
I’ve told the story before of taking my girlfriend to see The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2 playing together back in the late 1970s. When the first film ended as we got up for an intermission to use the bathroom and maybe get something to drink, but the lights went down again and the second movie started immediately. We both sat down, skipped getting a drink, skipped going to the bathroom, and watch the second movie. We were hypnotized by the artistry of these two films. The fact that this woman sat with me for six and a half hours without a break only cemented my certainty that she was the woman I should spend my life with. So there’s that story again, hope you enjoyed it.
50 years ago was the start of a wonderful relationship for me. This was the year that I discovered Mel Brooks. Both “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” came out this year, and I saw them with my high school friends who all laughed as loud as I did. We knew we were in the presence of somebody who knew how to be funny, especially to high school boys. “Blazing Saddles” was the first of these two films to be released in 74, and it’s raucous, irreverent, and some times down right offensive. It was also a western, which I have a deep abiding Love for.
In spite of my admiration for “Blazing Saddles”, I’ve always felt that it was the second best Mel Brooks film of 1974. “Young Frankenstein” goes beyond silly parody, to be a genuine tribute to and echo of the classic Universal horror movies. Of course it is hysterical, there was little doubt that with the input of Brooks and co-screenwriter Gene Wilder, that this is going to be incredibly funny. It turns out that it is also incredibly sweet, with a soft spot for all of the characters in the film, even some of those loathsome villagers who think it’s time for a riot. There is something to laugh at and embrace in just about every scene.
To start off with, they made the film in black and white. In 1974 that was not very typical. Sure there were a few other films at the time that used black and white to suggest the past. Films like “The Last Picture Show”, “Paper Moon”, “Lenny” and a few more, They all use black and white to draw attention to themselves in a way that made them stand out in the crowded ’70s field. But in the field of comedy, you don’t get a lot of black and white films that are contemporary, until Woody Allen gets going a few years later. The truth is, this movie wouldn’t have worked in color, because our collective memory of the Universal films is black and white. Boris Karloff may have had green face makeup when the original Frankenstein was created, but we only saw the black and white and that’s what we remember. It would have been disturbing to have Peter Boyle on screen as the monster with a green face. Besides, all those great sets that were being used to make the movie wouldn’t look nearly as Gothic and creepy if they were in color. The villagers walking through the forest with fog rising from the ground in black and white just makes sense.
It would be pretty hard to go wrong with a cast that includes Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, and Kenneth Mars, but when you add a surprise guest performance by my favorite actor in a completely unexpected role, I’m just going to have to say this film approaches perfection. Let’s face it Gene Hackman, as an avuncular blind man stumbling his way through making a new friend, may be the funniest 5 minutes in the whole movie, and that saying something.
The John Morris score is also something pretty special. It recalls Frankenstein with its limited score, Dracula with its borrowed themes, and classical source music. The little horn section gets its own joke when Marty Feldman as Igor, plays his little horn to accompany Inga on the violin. It’s guaranteed to get a chuckle for you. Next to the sequence with Gene Hackman, the dance routine with Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” maybe one of the most bizarre, ridiculous, and ultimately perfect realizations of the absurdity of this story. Super duper.
As family-friendly as Young Frankenstein is, there are a couple of raunchy jokes built into the movie, especially at the end. Most of these will sail over the heads of kids, but teens and adults will smile at the sexual innuendo that is never explicitly stated. The film is certainly not as ribald as Blazing Saddles, but it’s not G-rated for a reason. We are reminded once again how sadly we miss Gene Wilder on screen, his performance is one for the ages. The moment of his frustration when he can’t get his two assistants to understand what he’s asking for as he’s being strangled by the monster, is both pantomime perfect, and then when he gets his voice back vocally hysterical. I have no patience for anybody who doesn’t think this film is funny. It’s so funny that I was amused by the slot machine that was based on it and was ubiquitous in Vegas two decades ago. Too bad you can’t find those slots now, I’m really in the mood for dropping some coin and hoping to get a bonus.
Hope Springs Eternal that seeing “Phantom of the Paradise” on the big screen will be an annual event. It has been for me for at least the last 2 years, now let’s keep our fingers crossed and pray that the streak can continue. This particular screening was opening weekend at the 50th Anniversary of the Paramount Theater Classic Summer Film Series. Since I got to Austin in the middle of the pandemic, I’ve discovered that the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin is my true second home. The theater is busy most nights with comedy shows and concerts from a variety of artists. In the summer however, especially during the week, the theater is filled with film fans who get a chance to enjoy some old classics in the way they are meant to be seen, on a big screen in a beautiful Movie Palace.
I started coming to the Paramount Theater in 2020 at the end of the summer when the lockdowns and the theater closures were finally dissipating. As it happened, the first two films that I saw at the Paramount were two of my favorite films of all time, Jaws and Lawrence of Arabia. Ever since then I have looked at the schedule for the summer series with anticipation. Last year my daughter and I sprang for the annual Club membership that allowed us to attend almost all of the film screenings in the summer series, as well as the Halloween “Panic at the Paramount” and the Christmas season offerings. This year we had no problem in deciding to renew, because this is how we live, and it’s how I roll.
Last year’s screening of “Phantom of the Paradise” was at an Alamo Drafthouse with an edited edition of the film done according to the specifications of director Brian DePalma. This version is unofficial, and the studio probably doesn’t really approve of it being shared. The version we saw this week was the one that played in theaters in 1974. It includes some of the bad floating matte work that was required to cover the “San Songs” logo, which was a copyright issue with the band Led Zeppelin. Steven Janice, the programmer at the Paramount, pointed out that the movie only made about $20,000 in its first week of release back in 1974. I’m pretty sure the $3.50 of that came from me, because I saw this film at the UA Theater in Pasadena in the fall that it came out.
It is hard for me to contain my enthusiasm for this movie. Brian DePalma was one of the most reliable directors in my formative years as a movie fan. This was the first of his films that I saw, and I loved it then as I do now. In addition to the outrageous premise the wild costumes and the over the top performances of some of the supporting cast, we have a fantastic score and a dozen songs from The Genius Paul Williams, who also happens to star as Swan, the villain of the movie.
I can never get “Goodbye Eddie” out of my head after hearing it in this movie. It’s the opening song played under the titles, and if you look at the promo that I’ve posted here for the classic summer film series, you’ll hear that it is the soundtrack for this ad. Winslow Leach may not approve of the “Juicy Fruits” but I was perfectly happy with their upbeat parody of a a 50s style lament about a rockstar who takes his life in order to increase his fame. Later on, the same band bastardizes Winslow’s Faust score to present a Beach Boys Style parody song “Upholstery”. This is another one of those Paul Williams tunes that gets hooked in your head and won’t go away. This movie is full of earworms.
I was a little brought down by the opening weekend of the summer classic film series because our annual pass was only good for one of the three screenings. We could have bought tickets separately for Casablanca or for Star Wars, but we did have other films that we were seeing that weekend so we limited ourselves to the Phantom experience. It appeared that a lot of other film fans felt the same way we did because they were out in mass on Sunday for this movie. The reception to the film was enthusiastic, and frankly I was sad that it was over because I wanted to do it all again immediately.
I’ve written about the film in a couple other places here on this blog so I will give you the links for those posts, so if you are interested in knowing more about the movie and the things that make it so special you can visit those musings. For now let me just say at the summer season is off to a rousing start and I have the Paramount Theater, Brian DePalma, and Paul Williams to think for my elevated mood this week. I’ll be seeing you regularly down on Congress Boulevard, if you see me say hi I’ll be the guy with a big smile on his face wallowing in classic movies.
Hitman is a Nifty little Neo Noir from director Richard Linklater and his star Glenn Powell. It is based on the case histories of an actual informant in Houston Texas. The movie is based on an article written in the Texas monthly, which chronicled the numerous incidents in which a college instructor impersonated supposed Killers for hire in order to arrest those trying to hire someone to murder another person.
Incredibly they were over 187 cases where this police informant managed to interact with potential customers sufficiently to incriminate them adequately to have them arrested. Most of the arrests resulted in convictions. The problem with this fantastic true story, is that it is basically a series of incidents where our protagonist portrays himself in multiple different ways so as to convince the contracting client that he really was a hired killer. Now, the movie contends that outside of cartel or Mafia connections, The hired hitman is a myth. So most of these people bought into a fantasy that they could solve their problems by finding someone who is willing to kill for money. As interesting as that might be, it’s not a narrative that would sustain a movie. What’s happened here is that Powell and Linklater have created a Noir to go along with these real incidents.
The film is primarily a comedy but it does go into some traditional Noir territory when it introduces a femme fatale who gets involved with our main character. This results in comedies traditional structure of one person trying to hide something from another person and going through desperate measures to do so. The conceit in this film is that the character that our informant creates in order to draw in this woman, becomes a persona that he inhabits a little too comfortably, and with comic consequences. The film is actually quite funny with several ironic components to it. The jealous police officer who has been replaced in these kinds of sting operations by this previously milk toast college professor, is turned into a dangerous rival with an agenda straight out of a 1940s film. Of course it also has a comedic element to it that is quite amusing.
I’m not sure if you can call it a Neo Noir if the result of the story turns out to have a happy ending. That doesn’t really fit with the traditional dark themes of that classic format. But because this is a comedy take on the form, it doesn’t really feel disingenuous to go in the direction that it does. The characters that we encounter are for the most part very likable, and it would seem unjust for them to end up in the negative for the experiences that they’ve gone through. Powell and his co-star Adria Arjona, have good chemistry together and they make us care about the outcome. When we meet her husband, the man that she originally wanted to hire someone to kill, we kind of understand that she is not the bad person that we might have assumed simply because she wanted to hire a hitman.
The early part of the film drives most of its comedy from Powell’s disguises, characters, and the potential clients who are is inept, venal, and delusional as you might expect. The second half of the film the comedy derives from Powell’s attempts to keep his true identity secret, and to hide the romance that has grown between him and the woman that he is steered away from committing a felony. The final third of the film does take a darker turn, but not so dark as to diminish the romantic comedy that has been growing up inside of this movie.
I found this movie to be completely delightful, cleverly acted and very intricately plotted so that it is engaging throughout. It may not be to everybody’s taste but it’s certainly fit mine, and as far as I’m concerned it is one of the critical hits of the year. This is a Netflix film that is getting a limited theatrical release, which is the reason that it got covered on this site. The screening that I went to was actually the premiere in theaters, and included a live broadcast to other theaters around the country, featuring the tars Glenn Powell, Adria Arjona, and director Richard Linklater. It was a lot of fun to be in the theater with the creators of this film and listen to their stories about how the movie was put together. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to see this in a theater, but if you don’t go ahead and take advantage of its availability on Netflix, it’s better than hiring a hitman.
It’s hard to believe that 45 years ago “Alien” opened and I saw it at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood California. I was preparing to graduate from USC, and begin a graduate program in rhetoric of all things. I’d had a period of difficulty in my last semester as an undergraduate, including losing a close friend in a horrible car accident, and my debate partner also being severely injured in the same accident. I was in a mood to recover from the end of the term and some of the tragedies that life throws at you. Interestingly enough I’ve always said that the summer of 1979 may have been my favorite. That’s because I didn’t have to work, I had no active School responsibilities, and my girlfriend graduated at the same time and had her own place and a job that was taking care of her. Despite the fact that the recent past had been tough, the immediate future looked bright. That summer I did two things consistently, swim in the pool at our apartment building everyday, and go see “Alien” multiple times.
I’ve said it before in other posts, my favorite between Alien and Aliens is whichever one I’ve seen most recently. That means for this week at least, Alien is my favorite. Seeing it at a 45th anniversary screening, during a week in which it reappeared on the box office charts 45 years later was a lot of fun. It’s easy to get caught up in nostalgia, because I always equate the movies that I see with the times in my life that I saw them. Of course they have their own qualities that make them memorable as well, and “Alien” is certainly memorable.
Thank goodness this was the original theatrical cut and not the enhanced Edition that has been released in several forms since the movie came out. Those versions add information and sequences that are unnecessary and frankly distracting. I found it much more mysterious and frightening that Dallas simply disappeared. Although there is some setup for a future film in those deleted scenes, I don’t think James Cameron thought they were necessary when it was time for him to direct the sequel. So we’ll stick with the best things about the original version. That’s how I’m going to spend a little bit of time on this post.
The music score for Alien was created by my favorite composer Jerry Goldsmith. The theme, which plays as the title is slowly being spelled out, letter segment by letter segment, is mysterious and creepy. It’s not, however the theme that makes Goldsmith’s music so effective here. He created some mood sequences that are very effective. The excursion onto the planet, where they encounter the alien egg, is filled with suspense and fear in the background score. Toward the end of the film there is a torrid, energetic, and frantic musical sequence that accompanies Ripley’s desperate attempt to destroy the ship and to cancel the destruction. When she’s not successful stopping the self-destruction process, there’s another musical sequence, as she prepares for a long rest, and is interrupted one more time by the unwelcome visitor. This score can be played over and over and you will get those images in your head, this is the way that film music should work.
Once again it’s probably unnecessary to point to the fabulous production design of this film. The H.R. Geiger inspired look of the alien vessel, and the used space pallette that had been adopted to some degree from Dark Star, is just terrific. We have a very clear sense of the differences in the work responsibilities of the crew. Parker and Brett are trapped working in a dark environment with grease and steam all around them, and they’re doing the tough work of keeping the ship and processing centers functioning. The resentment that they feel that their Shares are not equivalent to the rest of the crew is completely understandable. This adds a little bit of social reality to what otherwise would be a nondescript group of astronauts. The jobs of all of the space travelers, matter.
When we discover that the real monster is the corporation that all of them work for, it is a gut punch to these laborers, who have trusted their employer with their lives. The added surprise that one of them is secretly working on behalf of the company, and in fact is an artificial person, is another terrific element in this reality based setting. Yeah it’s science fiction, but it’s grounded in the economics and social systems that most of us encounter on a regular basis.
A 100 other voices have said it more effectively than I’ll ever be able to, but Ellen Ripley is one of the Great Movie heroes of American Cinema. I think her role in this film reflects some of the issues faced by women in the workplace in the 1970s. In the sequel, the issues have more to do with military adventurism, and distrust of corporate profit seeking. Both versions of the character are excellent, but the second does require the existence of the first.
There are still jump scares that work, even though I’ve seen the film dozens of times. The race against the clock at the end, may be an overused plot device but it works anyway. All of the actors don’t get as much screen time as they probably deserve, but they all make great use of what time they do get on the screen. Director Ridley Scott has come back to this franchise a couple of times with much less success. As a producer he will be overseeing a new episode that opens later this summer. We can only hope that it comes closer to “Aliens”, then it comes to any of the subsequent films.
The TCM Film Festival is now in our rearview mirrors for a couple of weeks. I traveled back from Southern California to Texas by car, and then immediately got on a plane back to Vegas the day after I got home. When I left Vegas I went back to Southern California and spent 3 days packing the shed in my backyard into a storage pod in preparation for tearing down the shed and replacing it. I then flew back to Texas, and spent three days trying to catch up with the Lambcast episodes that needed to be edited, and posted, and then have a YouTube video made for them. Oh and then I had another Lamcast to record. I also saw three other films in this time. I still need to post about them as well. All of this is by way of an explanation for why this post is not more timely.
After missing the festival last year, because of a pet emergency, I was happy to be back in Hollywood among people that love movies the way I do. The Thursday night opening film for the TCM Film Festival was Pulp Fiction. This 30-year-old film may not be considered a classic by many of the attendees, because it doesn’t come from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I think however that the passage of time helps put into perspective what the definition of “classic” is. This was a game breaking film and the collection of guests there to talk about it was very impressive. We had had dinner at Musso and Frank before the movie and almost missed getting to walk on the red carpet. We did get in at the tail end and got to wave at the fans in the stands as if we were celebrities as well. We did manage to find seats, but they were much further back than we usually sit for these events. Still, just being in the room is enough to make you satisfied that you spent the extra money to get the pass that allows you to attend the opening night film.
Pulp Fiction may have single-handedly created a market for independent films at a much broader level than had existed before. The nonlinear storytelling, the oddball conversational passages, and the stellar performances of everybody in the cast make the film worthy of the title classic. John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, and a half dozen others were present for the discussion of the movie. All of them told stories about the making of the film, many of which I had read before but enjoyed hearing first hand. It seemed especially fortuitous that the first time Travolta met with Quentin Tarantino was at Tarantino’s apartment, which Travolta was able to describe to him before he even entered, because it was the same apartment that Travolta lived in years before. The audience was appreciative of the stories and those who were in attendance seemed very happy to be seeing the movie on the big screen in the main house the first night of the festival.
Day Two at the festival for Amanda and I started off a bit awkwardly. We had meant to go to the Vitaphone presentation, but got shut out at the last minute. Damn L.A. traffic. Instead, we went over to the El Capitan and got in line for 101 Dalmatians which was introduced by Mario Cantone and he interviewed animator Floyd Norman. We’d seen Norman 2 years ago in the same venue, but that didn’t lessen the pleasure of getting to listen to him tell stories about the making of this film, and working with Walt Disney. Maybe the most pleasurable thing about the experience was the Wurlitzer organ
performance before the movie started, and then the lowering and raising of multiple curtains as if what we are seeing was something special that needed to be revealed and reveled in not just experienced
We only stayed for the first half of the movie because we were anxious to get into the presentation across the street for “Them!”, which was being hosted by Ben Burtt and Craig Barron. These two have been the most interesting, informative, and entertaining presenters at almost every Festival we have attended.
This presentation was no different. With a great deal of humor they introduced themselves, and proceeded to pull out a grab bag of visual Treasures to Thrill the audience with. It was an extra Delight to discover that the actress who plays the young girl at the beginning of the film, Sandy Descher, who has been traumatized by the ants killing her family, was there for this presentation and spoke about her experience. Even more exciting was the fact that she had brought home movies that her mother had made while she was on the set. We got to see clips of behind the scene moments, conversations with the directors and the co-stars, and just a short tour of the studio, all silent of course but all fascinating. There was an extensive discussion of how the giant ants were created and manipulated on screen, and as usual Burtt and Barron provided a ton of entertaining commentary about it all.
Scheduling at this Festival this year was tight, so we didn’t stay for the whole film of them, because we needed to get our queue tickets for the screening of the “Silence of the Lambs”. This presentation was also in the big house, and the main guest was star Jodie Foster, who, while we had been in seeing “Them!”, had got her hands and feet put into cement in a ceremony in front of the theater. Miss Foster was one of the most articulate and intelligent guests, and she answered the questions thoroughly and with great thought. As we watch the movie, several of the things that she had mentioned during her conversation or noticeable, and even more interesting as a result of her insights. Once again, this is a film from a more modern era, that some might not think of as a classic, but age and the fact that it won the five top Awards at the Academy Awards that year, I think qualify it again for the title.
Our final film of the second day of the festival was “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, also presented in the big house. One of the reasons that we make the extra effort to see a film like this at the festival, despite the fact that it’s not from the earlier age of Hollywood, is the fact that the festival is able to get guests of the caliber they did for a screening of this nature. The guest for this presentation was none other than the writer and director of the film, and one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history, Steven Spielberg. It was interesting to hear Spielberg talk about the film because it was so personal to him. Having seen his movie The Fable men’s, which is almost an autobiography, it was fascinating to see the way in which he morphed into the character played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film. It’s hard to be anything other than Starstruck, when Steven Spielberg is talking. I’m sure he said many memorable things that others will hold on to, once again I was just happy to be in the room. In the movie is fantastic, as was the John Williams score.
The Third day of the festival, we actually got to see all of the movies in their totality. Instead of having to leave halfway through a film in order to get to another screening, we largely stayed in the Hollywood Chinese Multiplex complex. I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t make it over to the nitrate screening of Annie Get Your Gun at the Egyptian Theater, but trade-offs always have to be made at a festival like this
I had looked forward to seeing the first movie of the day, Dirty Harry, since it was announced as part of the film programs. What I didn’t know was that the guests they were going to have, was Andy Robinson, who played the villain in the movie, in an iconic performance that is truly Unforgettable. It was not just his performance though that we appreciated in this screening, but it was his Vivid recall of moments during filming, and his history of being included in the film that made the discussion so fascinating. He genuinely seemed excited to be talking to all of us, and excited about the film itself. I have been a fan of Dirty Harry since it came out in 1971. It was the first R-rated film I ever saw, and it has been an annual staple ever since the Home Video Market began. The story of a cop who is more interested in Justice than following the rules, became a template for 100 films that followed. Eastwood’s iconic role led to force equals, one of which he directed himself. The film we’re almost certainly draw criticism from viewers who are not born before 1990. Harry’s attitude and the whole Law and Order vibe, will probably be at odds with the perception that many in younger Generations have of the police. Has someone who lived through the seventies, I know how frustrated many average citizens were with the amount of crime that existed and the frustrations that newly enforced civil rights laws sometimes created in fighting those crimes, it occasionally felt as if the law was not on the side of the citizens, and Harry became a stand-in for our frustrations. The movie contains some of the most familiar moments in movie history, especially the scene where Harry confronts a bank robber and quizzes him about the number of shots that he has fired during the confrontation. Seeing it in a theater and hearing the audience react to it once again was a complete pleasure for me. The presentation by Andy Robinson was maybe my favorite thing about the festival, his enthusiasm was contagious and I was happy that he made the effort to be there for the early morning screening.
No less delightful was the next film in our schedule, A Little Romance, starring Lawrence Olivier and Diane Lane. Olivier of course is passed on, but Diane Lane was only 13 when the movie came out in 1979 and she was there to talk about the movie and her experiences working with the legendary actor. A Little Romance is a sweet Love Story about a couple of adolescents who are struggling to find their place in the world and find each other in Paris but are determined to go to Venice to fulfill a fantasy that they share. The movie is full of sweet moments, including embarrassment at the kind of film they managed to sneak into, the geeky friends who established their own connection, but most especially the revelations about their older friend played by Lord Olivier. Lane was very generous in sharing thoughts about the film and about her career. She seemed to be particularly laudatory to director George Roy Hill, a man who despite having one an Academy Award and having directed three of the great films of the era, is frequently forgotten.
After this incredibly enjoyable interlude, we got in line to get back into the big theater to see my favorite Hitchcock film “North by Northwest”. To me this is the prototypical wrong man scenario that Hitchcock did so well in many of his films. Cary Grant is it the height of his charm, and some of the lines that he delivers will only work because he is the person who is delivering them. Eva Marie Saint was simply Delicious in the role of a bad girl turns spy, who really simply longs for true love. There are impressive scenes every few minutes in North by Northwest. The moment that Cary Grant ends up with the knife in his hands at the UN, or the ridiculous bidding war at the auction in Chicago, and of course maybe most iconic of all, is the attack by the crop duster on Grant in the middle of nowhere. There are many more events that are special in the climax of the film In fact there are so many scenes I love, I may be seeing this again at the end of the month in a Fathom presentation, just because I can. The guest for this presentation was writer/director Nancy Myers.
She had no direct connection to the film, and talked about it mostly from the point of view of a fan. There was however one highly significant element to her experience that made her one of the perfect people to have as a guest at this screening. She told the story of going with a friend of hers to meet Cary Grant at an interview that her friend was doing. Mr Grant, not quite understanding her relationship with her friend or what she was doing at the interview, included her in an invitation to fly to Palm Springs for the weekend. With no luggage or additional clothes, she put it this way, “who is going to turn down the chance to spend the weekend with Cary Grant?” The most memorable thing that she mentioned, was how Grant said that she was the first girl he knew who didn’t spend an hour putting on her makeup when she first started the day. Of course she didn’t have any, and it is at that point that the two of them laughed about the whole experience, and she had a memory of spending time with maybe the greatest star that Hollywood ever produced. And she shared the story with us.
We capped off the third day of the festival with a screening in the big house of the “Shawshank Redemption”. The guests were the two stars of the film Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. What a pleasure to see and hear these two gentlemen talk about a film that both of them think was pivotal to their careers. Each of them had slight variations of the story the other one was telling, but never in a manner that suggested the other person was wrong, just trying to fill in some gaps or reorganize a moment or two.
The final day of the festival began with an event that was both sweet and bitter. The sweet part was returning to the Egyptian Theater, which had been closed for the final two years that I had been in Southern California, and was not used in the last few TCM film festivals because it was undergoing renovation. Netflix has done a beautiful job restoring the theater improving the size of the screen, replacing the seats, and reconfiguring the theater so that it feels more intimate while still accommodating a large number in the audience. The lobby includes a much more functional concession stand now, and a much easier access and egress from the theater. Which leads to the bitter, we were seeing Lawrence of Arabia, has anybody who has read this site knows one of my favorite films, but like day two of the festival, the schedule is such that we had to leave early in order to make it to another screening. This meant that we only got to see 2 hours of Lawrence of Arabia instead of the full four,:-( .
The other screening that we were rushing off to was for the “Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings”, where the guests would be Billy Dee Williams, who had been honored earlier in a ceremony at a different presentation and venue of the festival. Those of you not familiar with the movie, need to arrange to see it because it is one of the Forgotten gems of the seventies. The story of negro league baseball players, trying to get a leg up on a monopolistic set of owners, who in spite of being black, are just as greedy and exploitive as the white owners of the Major Leagues. The cast included James Earl Jones, and Richard Pryor. I also saw in the cast actor Tony Burton, who had been a customer of my late wife’s boss when she worked for the insurance company in our neighborhood in Alhambra. The story is largely lighthearted although there are some dark moments in the telling, but the baseball shenanigans are a lot of fun. Billy Dee Williams talked a lot about his career and he had maybe the sunniest attitude about being in movies of anybody that I saw at the festival. His memories of being cast in films or missing out on rolls, are not clouded with negative attitudes about the racial inequities of the times, but rather the opportunities he had to work with people he admired and do things that he enjoyed. He is older now but he still has the charisma that he had back in the 1970s, there was a beautiful little tribute film they ran before the movie extolling his career and reminding us of his place in Hollywood history.
I still think that the era between 1967 and 1977 was the second golden age of Hollywood. Whether or not you would classify films made in that time as classics, it is undeniable that they are some of the most accomplished, thoughtful, and representative of the individuals who made them. This is the era that gave us two Godfathers, The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and a dozen other films that anybody who loves movies will recognize as film classics. Maybe Chief among them is a film with what many consider to be the greatest screenplay ever written, Chinatown.
Before I left for the festival I read a book entitled the big goodbye and the last years of Hollywood. It is primarily about the making of Chinatown. I knew I would be seeing the film and I wanted to have as much context as possible to be able to enjoy the experience again on the premier movie screen in the world. This film was at the big house on the boulevard and deserved to be a part of the festival. Writer and director Carl Franklin was the guest invited to talk about Chinatown, and as a knowledgeable fan he gave us some good insights and told some stories of what he knew about making a film like this. Well he was not directly involved in the making of the film as a future filmmaker drawn to Noir, Chinatown is a little bit like a film School for a director. I read the book and so I knew the story the Franklin told about the score of the film. Polansky and producer Robert Evans were both surprised at how the film played in previews, despite what they considered to be a well-produced story. One of the things that they decided was that the score that they had enlisted a composer for and given specific directions to, just did not seem to work. At the last minute my favorite composer Jerry Goldsmith was asked to redo the entire score, and make it sound as if it was from the time period but the movie is set. Anyone who listens to the score knows how Goldsmith hit it out of the park with one of the most interesting of his compositions. The fact that he was not awarded the Academy Award for this accomplishment is one of the great Mysteries of that sometimes questionable Institution. The score as it is is perfection when integrated with the movie. The fact that we see everything that takes place from the perspective of Jake Kitty’s makes the movie feel more energetic and mysterious then it might otherwise have seemed. And seeing the fabulous photography, and the Glorious costumes, and the long lost Los Angeles spots, makes me nostalgic for this film every time I see it. I’m not sure how it escaped being on my list 10 favorite films but I’m willing to say right now that if it’s not number 11, it’s actually higher on the list and something will have to be displaced.
Our final film of the festival was the Buster Keaton classic Sherlock Jr. A silent comedy, it is a little bit of a meta presentation of a film lovers dream. Keaton appears as a wannabe Detective, who’s Daydreams about the movies, put him into a fantasy role as the great Detective Sherlock Jr. The film was presented with a appropriate silent film score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. A group of five musicians, and a composer conductor, who played live during the film. The short comedy the goat, played before Sherlock Jr, and it was equally delightful. Silent films are often not an easy reach for moviegoers, but if you have chaplain, Lloyd, or Keaton, you are probably going to have a pretty good time and you shouldn’t worry about the fact that it’s a silent film. In the end it will work for you. This one certainly did for me.
This movie is as hypnotic as any DePalma film, with the added advantage that it is straightforward and to the point. Maybe it is just good guys versus the bad guys, but when the Good Guys are lead by Kevin Costner and Sean Connery, I don’t know how anyone can turn away. Throw in DeNiro as Al Capone and you have a heavyweight fight that would break pay per view records if it were a boxing match.
Even before the first scene, the movie is pulling you in with a haunting and propulsive theme played over artistically rendered Titles. Ennio Morricone was Oscar Nominated for the score of this film and it should have been his. The background themes are great at accentuating the heroes in their glory moments, and the action scenes are supplemented with exciting motifs that come up in various sections of the film. There are plenty of opportunities for the music to make an impact on you.
The botched opening raid is a nice way to set our expectations at a different place. Later, when the group of Untouchable Law Enforcement agents swoop down on smugglers at the Canadian border, we are amped up to see the results after the earlier futile effort. The key set piece is the train station shootout with the slow build and all the closeups. DePalma has studied the Serio Leone films meticulously and lets those beats play out at the same agonizing and tension filled pace as we got in the Spaghetti Westerns. Every complication adds to the suspense, every effort to get the accountant and keep him alive makes our anticipation of Andy Garcia as Stone worthwhile. Costner plays it so cool in this scene in comparison to some of the early moments of the film. You can see the character arc in his demeanor here.
Of course Sean Connery is the lynchpin for the film. His world weary folksiness and Chicago cantankerous nature were a perfect realization of the character. The combination of his story and that of Charles Martin Smith gives license to Eliot Ness to get a little dirty, in spite of his white knight image. Charlie Martin Smith and Billy Drago are the unsung heroes of the cast, one showing the exuberance of a puppy dog and the other reflecting the darkest elements of the Capone organization. Maybe Capone doesn’t go flying to his death, but we know that his empire has crumbled because of the turning of his own tactics against him.
Filmed in the 80s, DePalma and Company make Chicago look like fifty years earlier, and the soundstage sets match up so well with the exteriors, you can believe it was all shot in the time and place depicted. This movie is just a lot of fun. Fidelity to the real story is lacking, and the conclusion in the court is a bit baffling, but you won’t care because everything else is so rousing.
I have been a little negligent as of late, keeping up with my posts as quickly as possible after seeing the movie. This post comes four days after I saw this great family film, and I am sorry I can’t do more to promote the movie and save it from the discard pile that it appears to be headed for. Mark Wahlburg and a dog should be a sure thing for most family audiences, but I suspect that the sports based setting may not be as interesting to people on the big screen, since they see this weekly on their televisions.
Frankly, I am a sucker for a dog movie. It is probably a good idea for me to create an inventory of films I have covered on the site that feature a canine co-star. A couple of years ago, Channing Tatum made his directorial debut with a dog film, simply named “Dog“. I liked that one quite well and it would make a good companion film for this movie. Both feature dogs that have some health and psychological issues, but one is a straight drama while this movie is an adventure film as well. There are some beautiful scenes of a race around the jungles of the Dominican Republic, but I did end up worrying about current events in Haiti, which shares the island with the setting of this movie.
Wahlburg plays a long time race figure, who while widely respected, has never come in first in the grueling endurance challenges that these races present. After a humiliating loss, and a two year break, he attempts to return to competition, but his resources are low and sponsors are wary. As we watch him struggle to put together a team for the race, we also see a street dog, struggling to survive in the third world nation, frequently abused and usually starving. The back and forth between these two stories is a nice parallel which pays off in the second half of the movie. When the race starts, the two characters come together in a surprising way, and it would be nearly impossible to buy it, if it had not really happened.
The race presents dramatic challenges, and the dog is included in these as the progress deepens. There are a lot of tense scenes and some lighter moments with the dog. The two both make sacrifices for each other, and at the end, the race results become less important than the survival story of a man’s hope in a dog’s lifeforce. Having recently lost a beloved pet, there were moments in the last act of the film, that I was not prepared for and which evoked some strong emotional responses from me. Even without this personal history, I think the turn that the film takes will be an emotional wallop for most audiences. In the long run, the less you know about the real story, the stronger the conclusion of this film will play.
Mark Wahlburg has become a very reliable actor, and his presence in a film like this makes the story work. Unfortunately, it looks like the audience is missing out on this, probably bad marketing decisions about the release date, and the fact that streaming is going to eat all of these kinds of movies alive in the next few years. Look, this will work on your television, but like most films, it will work better in a theater, and you should go see it now before it gets pushed off of the screens by whatever is coming next week.
