Whenever I get a chance to see one of my 1984 films on the big screen, I am going to take it. Last week the Alamo Drafthouse had a Movie Party Screening of “Ghostbusters”. The Movie Party screenings include a theme hosted introduction with a contest for a prize, and props are distributed as you enter the theater. In the past, some of the props are clever, but not useful for the interactions of the Party Atmosphere. This event however did include some props that made the screening feel like a party. We were given two foot long glowstick streamers that allowed us to join in on the ghost hunts when the proton packs came out.
Everyone in the half full theater would wave their proton streams whenever the Ghostbusters did. It was quite a sight. I did not record during the screening, that would still be a no no by Alamo standards, but you can imagine the effect by looking at the video above.
No one used the slime in a jar during the movie, but I did see several people eat their marshmallow at the end of the film when the Stay Puft Man makes his appearance.
I am always happy to revisit a film that I love in a theater. Getting to do so with other fans is one of the things that makes movie going special for me. Oh, by the way, I wone the ring toss Slimer game and got two passes for an Alamo Screening. Not to shabby for a 41 year old movie and an even older fan.
A rare Wednesday double feature at the Paramount this week with a screening of “Legally Blonde” and “Clueless”. Both films have elements of female empowerment in them, and both of them have completely silly components, which keep them firmly in the comedy category and diminish any social commentary. Not that that’s a bad thing.What both films have going for them are charming leads, and comic scenarios that get resolved with happy endings. In other words they are audience fantasies that deliver what people want from their entertainment.
LEGALLY BLONDE
Legally Blonde was the Breakthrough movie for Reese Witherspoon, and it’s success catapulted her to the ranks of Highly sought after actresses in the first decade of the century. Playing a high school senior who is pursuing her boyfriend to Harvard Law School, Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, a fashion merchandising 4. 0 student who manages to excel on the LSAT after cramming very hard. The fact that she’s a cute blonde in a bikini in her video essay doesn’t with the admissions committee either. So when the film makes a point about the importance of female accomplishments over appearance, that is going to be undermined by this plot point. Okay that’s the last serious thing I’m going to say about Legally Blonde.
What I will say is that it is delightfully droll, Witherspoon is a blast playing a perky Fish Out of Water in an elitist cultural niche which judges you by your family in source of wealth more than your character or even income. Harvard I’m sure appreciates being portrayed as an exclusive Miley sought after admission, but the movie shows us some of the most stereotypical intellectual snobs that you can imagine, as being the sort of students that Elle will have to compete with.
The courtroom antics are fine, but you will actually get a better sense of legal procedure by watching My Cousin Vinny. Legally Blonde resorts to an old Perry Mason trick to finish off this Underdog Story. But no one will care because Elle Wood is a good person who wins out in the end, and all of the other good guys win as well. Cue the Applause from the overwhelmingly female audience that attended Wednesday’s performance.
CLUELESS
Cher, the heroine in this reimagined version of Emma, is played by Alicia Silverstone. This was another one of those films that established young actors as the Bedrock of ’90s and early 2000 films. In fact we’re still getting Paul Rudd, who looks pretty much like he did back in 1995, starring in movies. Silverstone is the quintessential spoiled dumb blonde of classic film. Although she sees herself as the authority in the story, the rest of us recognize quite early on that she is the one who is out of Step.
I can’t tell you how authentic the relationships between teen girls in Beverly Hills are represented by this film. It is however easy to imagine Petty jealousies and misunderstandings creating broken friendships or lost romantic opportunities. The themes in Clueless are actually a little bit more serious than the legal drama of Legally Blonde. Everybody engages in some kind of manipulation, sometimes we have the best of intentions when doing so, but in the long run we should really reassess the choices we make. Like Jane Austen’s Emma, Cher is manipulating others in what she sees is an altruistic attempt to help them out. The problem is she puts her own vision ahead of what is best when it comes to her friends.
Once again it all works out, and there are serious laughs to be had throughout the film. I’ve always liked Dan Hedaya who plays Cher’s dad, and even in the small role that he has here he puts his grumpy but sympathetic persona to good use. Wallace Shawn shows up as the stern but naive debate coach, and I see too much of myself in this role, fortunately I can laugh at myself.
About a third of the audience left after Legally Blonde, but those who remained embraced Clueless almost as enthusiastically and we all shared a laugh as we left later in the night than we usually do during the week.
Sunday was a double dose of Paul Verhoeven satire and action. The first movie was the perfection that is “Robocop”. I don’t know if I can count the number of times I have seen this film. I do know that I have seen it at least a half dozen times on the big screen, including a 2023 screening right here at the Paramount Theater. Quentin Tarantino apparently agrees with me that the script is perfect. What is also perfect are the performances from the main actors in the film. Dr. Peter Weller fully commits to the persona of the cyborg, but only after charming us as the eager to please Dad and new partner.
Kirkwood Smith, sneers his way thru the movie as the repulsive Clarence Boddicker, the crime boss of old Detroit. Although they don’t all get as much time to display their horrendous sides to us, the four toadies that make up his crew are equally loathsome, with special emphasis on Paul McCrane as Emil, the one bad guy who gets a deservingly nasty end to his story.
I have always loved stop motion animation when it is integrated into real life surroundings. Ray Harryhausen was a cinema hero to me. Phil Tippet and his crew do a great job with ED-209, with little touches everywhere that add to the humor and tension of the film.
Robert Rodriguez Presented both films and his opening remarks are in the message above.
Starship Troopers came out a decade after “Robocop” but it contained a lot of the same bitter satire that the earlier movie did. The hostility to fascism is clear, but of course it is largely missed because we get engaged in Johnny Rico’s story and we can admire his mentors in spite of their authoritarian tendencies. Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown are terrific as the older generation, trying to mold the youth of this world into soldiers and subsequently citizens. It also doesn’t help the anti-fascist theme to have Rico’s parents be a couple of mealy mouthed characters that today might be revered to as woke.
The Special Effects in the film were pretty impressive for 1997. The vast numbers of bugs that the Mobile Infantry has to face is intimidating. Anyone who has dealt with an ant infestation will recognize how much we are outnumbered. In this world however, the bugs are not small and you can’t just stomp on them.
Our host is friends with the star of the film and got him on the phone when it was time to go to the second movie.
You already know a few of my favorite things, so I will spare you my singing about them and instead praise Julie Andrews for singing about a few of her favorite things. The Sound of Music is one of those films that inspires both love and derision from film aficionados. Cynics object to the sugary take on the Von Trapp family story. They would say the children are too upbeat, the songs are treacle, and the pretty people facing Nazis is a misuse of History. I’m cynical about a lot of things, but “The Sound of Music” isn’t one of them. This is just a joyful experience with Sweet Moments, terrific staging, and some of the best songs of the 20th century.
The movie is a love story, but it is not just a story about a love between a man and a woman. Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews portray the adults who fall in love in perilous times and difficult circumstances. There are however still seven children who also need to fall in love, at first with a governess and finally a new mother. The way in which Maria wins over all of the children, by exhibiting more patience than is imaginable, and singing about their very needs, makes for a great story. Don’t forget it’s also a story about people who love their country, and see it being torn apart by the events of the day. I can understand if you don’t like “The Sound of Music” because you don’t care for musicals, or if Julie Andrews just isn’t your cup of tea, but if you don’t like this movie because of the themes or the story( which for the most part is true), then you are missing the point. And I feel sorry for you because you’re going to lead a less fulfilling life.
The exuberance of some of the dancing sequences, which really aren’t about dancing at all but just about children playing at being adults, is part of the fun. The world is full of people who don’t like it when kids appear in movies, they should probably stay away from this as if it were the plague. I on the other hand am perfectly content to try to remember the names of each of the children, like Maria does when she says her prayers. By the way, I didn’t forget Kurt.
The synchronization between the helicopter shot and the introduction of Maria on the hillside is a miracle a filmmaking at the time. Today it would be accomplished with drones and computer adjusted shots. Yet it wouldn’t be any better. A lot of sequences go on for a while, without the heavy editing of a director who is trying to hard to show off. Robert Wise knows exactly what he is doing when telling this story. It may have moments of suspense in the Final Act, but it is not a thriller that requires Quick Cuts and close-ups of sweaty faces. This is a character piece with music, something that Wise has already shown he can handle.
Once again I cannot recommend highly enough seeing a film like this on the big screen with a receptive audience. This was one of the family films for the Paramount classic summer film series, and there were plenty of families there to experience this film on its 60th anniversary. The world is a better place for it.
It only happens occasionally but this is one of those times, a film will enter my regular blog posts, but also be included in the Strathmore film project. Strother has a minor part in his great 1968 Western directed by Sam Peckinpaugh, a man that Strother had worked with before and would work with again. Any film fan is familiar with the Wild Bunch and it’s significance as part of the new Hollywood.
An elegantin Western sit near the end of the frontier days, the Wild Bunch is about the passing of old ways, and the violence that ensues. The film stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson, and Warren Oats as a band of Outlaws whose competence is in question, and who is being pursued by a posse of prairie scum led by their former compatriot played by Robert Ryan. As surprising as it might seem there are themes of loyalty in the film, and when considering the nature of these men, loyalty is not one of the characteristics you would expect. In fact there is a clear example of such hypocrisy at the very beginning of the film. In escaping from the town and the trap that had been set for them, they abandoned their youngest member, to be set upon by the citizens after the others have escaped.
There is virtually no one in the film that could be described as an honorable person. Everyone is guilty of some form of murder or theft. However, there are moments when the bandits act with dignity, and a sense of a moral code, that seems so foreign to the way they act to the rest of the time. In addition to the issue of loyalty, the biggest theme seems to be autonomy. No one in the film, from the bandits to the Posse to the Mexican soldiers, wants to be told what to do or how to act. The desire to have command over your own decisions seems to be a strong motivator, especially for Holden and Borgnine.
Robert Ryan as an aging Bandit himself, now trapped into leading a posse against his former partners, is the poster child for the theme of autonomy. His inability to act in the manner that he wants, and the fact that he is forced to work with characters for whom he has disdain, is another driving force in the film. Two of the scum that ride with the Posse are TC and Coffer, played by Buddies lq Jones and Strother Martin. If there is anything close to comic relief in the film by these two losers, who bicker with each other like an old married couple over issues like whose bullet killed a victim in the streets, or which one of them gets to keep the boots of the latest dead man they have found. While Pike Bishop and Dutch Engstrom are hardly models of social nicety, they certainly Tower over the likes of Deke Thornton’s mob of Misfits.
Sam Peckinpaugh became famous for the stylized violence in his films, often featuring slow motion deaths. This is the film that probably initiated that reputation. The movie is bookended by two over the top shootouts, which feature Mass deaths in slow motion bullet holes and falls. If there is a third theme running through the film, it may be that violence is inevitable and inevitably futile. There is a coda to the film which also includes violence, but after the massacre of the Mexican troops and the Wild Bunch itself, Peck and Paul wisely allows the massacre of the Posse to occur off screen. So anyone who says that Peck and paw shows no restraint must have missed this last scene.
There’s a lot more to the movie than the two big shootouts, but I’ll leave that for another time. I have no doubt that I will return to the Wild Bunch for a separate entry on the Strother Martin film project. For now it’s just a pleasure to have seen the film once again on the big screen, and bathe in the Macho themes and images that dominate this movie.
One of the greatest films of the 1970s is also one that is largely forgotten. The reasons for this are complex but include the fact that this film came out in the wake of Star Wars, replaced that film on the Chinese Theater screen for only a week, and then was replaced itself by Star Wars. This was the film that no one knew what to do with, it’s an action adventure film with protagonists who are all loathsome in some way. Their heroic actions are always mitigated by the fact that they are criminals, terrorists, fraudsters, and murderers. When your rooting interest is someone that you would avoid if you cross paths with them on the street, it’s not hard to imagine that a film is going to struggle to find an audience.
“Sorcerer”, may be William Friedkin’s best film, and he made “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection”. This sweat-laden, rain soaked, mud encrusted thriller, will not leave you with a warm feeling, but it will leave you with deep admiration for the director’s skill at building tension and following characters through their true natures.
This was my first time seeing the film on the big screen. I only caught up with it on cable years later, and then finally when the remastered Blu-ray came out about a decade ago, I Revisited it andI appreciated the story. Seeing it in a theater however, is truly a great experience. There are sequences in this film that are so fraught with tension that I felt like sweating myself. Those of you not familiar, the main part of the story focuses on four displaced men, struggling in a poverty stricken Village in the nameless South American country, who take on the job of transporting volatile explosives 200 miles across the jungle.
The first half hour of the movie however, has nothing to do with the main adventure, it simply details what these four men were like before they came together in this anonymous part of the world. Each of their stories has a degree of vibrancy to it that makes their subsequent activities feel more important. Roy Scheider plays the displaced American, a gangster who is wanted by other gangsters for a crime back in the States. There is also a Palestinian terrorist, a French financier, guilty of a massive fraud, and a professional assassin as part of this team of drivers taking on this hellish task because they are desperate.
Perhaps the most amazing part of this film is that it was shot without CGI, or in a studio. The road that this group has to travel is filled with dangerous sinkholes, impossible to pass barriers, and a raging river with a rickety bridge that will give you nightmares. All of it is on screen and all of it is real to some degree. Of course some of the biggest threats come not from nature but from other men. There is revolution in the air, and there are criminal elements who take advantage of the Revolutionary impulses of others, to steal and kill.
Although we got backstories for all four of the drivers, Scheider remains our main protagonist, and our link to the civilization that seems largely out of reach In this jungle locale. As is typical in 1970s films, the ending of the story is downbeat, but not at all in a manner in which you expect. The inevitability of our guilt catching up with us is one of the main themes of the story. I’m not sure if that’s a part of the original film this movie is based on. I have seen that movie, but it has been a long time and I didn’t have the context of this film to compare it to at the time.
So if you want to feel your sphincter tighten, and have your sympathies be conflicted, then you should make it a point to see this film. And of course if you get a chance to see it on the big screen you need to put your money down and go.
It seems like there were dozens of “Jaws” rip-offs in the late seventies. Killer Orcas, Grizzlies, and in this film, genetically modified piranha that can strip a man to the bone in minutes. This was an exploitation picture that launched the career of director Joe Dante. It has only a little of the sideways humor that characterizes his best films, but it does try to keep the audience engaged with frequent piranha victims every few minutes.
The formula is a clear set of beats stolen from “Jaws”. We start with a titillating experience that results in death, followed up by a slow discovery of what is happening, and then a series of denials of reality by officials. One of the main differences is that the obnoxious character who is trying to dismiss the whole thing, gets a comeuppance, unlike the mayor in the shark movie.
Bradford Dillman was a seventies staple as a suspicious official or businessman, and he was in a ton of TV shows of the era. Here he plays a drunk hermit like loser, who hets turned into an action hero for no particular reason. Heather Menzies, who played one of the Von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music” and Strother Martin’s daughter in Sssssss, is a bounty hunter who gets caught up in the action, and veteran horror icon Kevin McCarthy starts a long association with director Dante, playing a crazed scientist. Don’t ask why there is a small lizard man walking around the laboratory in the early part of the film. It never becomes important and it is simply a loose thread.
“Piranha” is an efficient, low budget fright film. The film makers do the best they can with their resources and imaginations. Although many consider it a cult classic, it simply feels standard for the times. But of course those were my times so I loved it.
Most of the entries coming up will be brief, I am still trying to catch up on posts for all the theatrical screenings in the last couple of weeks. I cannot however, skimp on my opinions about this particular film. “Zodiac” has been one of our family favorites since we saw it in it’s original theatrical release. Over the years, it has become a default movie for us. Whenever we have trouble deciding what we should watch , someone inevitably suggests “Zodiac” as an alternative and nine times out of ten, we are watching it again. This screening at the Paramount Theater was the first time I have seen it in a theater since 2007, and it is the first time since I started blogging, that it gets included on this project.
I was eleven years old when the Zodiac killings started drawing press attention across the state of California. So I was old enough to be aware of the story, but still young enough that it did not obsess me the way that it did the characters portrayed in the story. Robert Graysmith , as portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, is a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper, one that received messages from the killer. His tangential connection lead to an intense desire to know who the killer was, and he wrote the book this movie is based on. Director David Fincher, portrays the writer as an innocent bystander, watching the horror play out around him. Gyllenhaal looks like a baby-faced kid among the police and newspaper professionals that surround the case. His sincerity is achingly displayed on his face as he asks questions of his colleague Paul Avery, who is covering the Zodiac for the paper. Avery is played by a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. Avery is also presented as an obsessive, but his pursuit is more professional and it consumes him in a different way than Graysmith.
The third leg of the tripod that the story of the investigation rests on is Dave Toschi, a police inspector in charge of the S.F. part of the investigation. Mark Ruffalo plays Toschi as an overwhelmed professional, frustrated by jurisdictional impediments and inconsistent evidence. The two newspaper guys supplement and interfere with his task, but ultimately, it is Toschi who gets to chillingly interrogate a suspect that seems to fit the information that they have. All three of these men get moments of horror as they confront individuals or places that may be a key to solving the crimes. Downey Jr. is playing a character who descends into alcohol and drug use as his paranoia and professional life collide. There is an honesty about those destructive forces that may be a reflection of his real life struggles in the years that preceded this film. Ruffalo seems to be calmly frustrated reacting to both the killer and his amateur pair of Zodiac hunters.
Everyone in the movie is top notch in their performances, but I will single out two of the supporting players to show how well the movie is put together. Toschi has a partner, Bill Armstrong, played by Antony Edwards. Armstrong is a dedicated professional but he remains more impartial than Toschi. He is analytical but not obsessive. Edwards exudes competence with an aura of detachment. He wants to solve the case as much as his partner, but he doesn’t let the frustrations of the case overwhelm him. Edwards is the cool straight man to Ruffalo’s, only slightly warmer counterpart. They make a great team.
The second outstanding secondary performance is by John Carrol Lynch, who plays the eventual main suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen. We only see Allen in the context of the investigations. There are no scenes where he is depicted as the killer engaged in the crimes. We learn about his character in interviews with his former friends and family. When Toschi, Armstrong and two other law enforcement personnel question him at work in the break room of the facility he works at, all sorts of alarms are going off in our heads as the cops listen with gapped mouths to the explanations and information that Allen shares. Lynch is calmly aloof as he spills suspicious conduct and details to the investigators. His face never reveals a fear that he is trapped, or that he is on alert in the face of the questions he is getting. His quiet comment “I am not the Zodiac. And if I was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.” is as chilling as some of the murders that we see depicted in the film.
The verisimilitude of the film is found in a thousand places in the movie. The location shots are all consistent with the era. There is a sequence with Melvin Belli, a famous attorney who was a celebrity because of the lawsuits and clients he was involved with His depiction reflects the commercial television practices of the time. Toschi is shown attending a special screening of “Dirty Harry” which is a film that has a character inspired by the real life criminal he is pursuing. One of the most haunting and realistic uses of music of the time occurs in the attack on the couple in a car at the start of the film. Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy” man plays out over the scene, and you can almost smell the aura of the 1960 descending on the moment.
I would not classify this as a horror film, just as I would not say “The Silence of the Lambs” is a horror film. There are certainly frightening moments but the key is realistic suspense. These are thrillers with horror elements. The creepiest scene takes place in a basement, and there is no blood, weapon or violence shown, but the hair on the back of your neck will certainly stand up at the moment. Charles Fleisher, who is best known as the voice of “Roger Rabbit”, provides an additional supporting character to make this movie the masterpiece that it is.
“Zodiac” was not a huge success when it was first released, but there has been a lot of reassessment in the last two decades and I think you will find that this movie will hold your attention, frighten you and haunt you for a long time. I am happy to have had a chance to see it again in it’s natural habitat and I encourage everyone to spend some time with this excellent film.
I saw this film with my wife when it first came out and we enjoyed it but frankly, I did not think it was a great film. It is a popcorn picture that looks a little cheaper than it should. They must have spent most of the budget on Sean Connery for his brief time in the story. I enjoyed Christopher Lambert in “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan” two years before. He was okay in this film, but it was clear that he was going to get by on physical charisma in his career and not acting chops. Clancy Brown on the other hand, understood the assignment and went full on nuts. He mugs and hams it up, just the way his character should.
Sean Connery, shows up for the second act and plays the part of a mentor to Lambert’s Conner MacLeod. Much ridicule has been made over the years of his being cast as an Arab, from Spain, with a Scottish Accent. However, it may not be inconceivable that in the 1200 years he was alive, he picked up some traits from all the places that he’s lived. Also, if that is the credibility stretcher for you, you have not been paying attention.
The best element of the movie is the notion that immortality takes it’s greatest toll on those that we love and must leave as they die. MacLeod suffers from his loss obviously, but the strain on his Scottish wife was pretty well drawn in the film. Another character from the 20th Century illustrates it as well. I don’t want to give the movie too much credit, it is still a cheesy piece of pop fantasy, but it is completely watchable and I enjoyed the revisit.
Local Director and friend of the Paramount, Robert Rodriguez, hosted and scheduled this program. He does a nice job talking about the films and the film makers that he had connections with. He shared his story about this movie in the conversation you can listen to below.
The Untouchables (1987)
The second film in our double feature is the terrific Brian DePalma movie, “The Untouchables”. It is impossible to imagine a better Sean Connery part (with the exception of the film I will be writing about next). Connery plays a put upon beat cop, who has resisted temptation and played straight with the law instead of getting into bed with mobsters. He becomes a mentor to the enthusiastic but as yet untested Elliot Ness, a Treasury agent, in pursuit of Al Capone.
The relationship between Ness and Jimmy Malone (Connery) is funny, fatherly and frustrating at times. Jimmy needs to trust Ness and Ness takes some getting used to because of some tentative characteristics. The team gets substantially enhanced by Andy Garcia as a rookie cop, with deadly shooting skills, who gets drafted into their unit. Garcia is fine in the action scenes but doesn’t have as much to say in the rest of the plot. Charles Martin Smith however, as Treasury Accountant and agent Oscar Wallace, is a delight in bringing a spark to the team because of his distinctive background. He is the square peg that they find a way to fit in.
The bad guys are pretty vivid with Robert DeNiro hamming it up as Capone. Billy Drago is a chilling Frank Nitti and his comeuppance is one of the great satisfactions of the film. DeNiro’s scene with a baseball bat in his hand is his big moment on screen. The scene is directed with the usual style of Brian DePalma, it is elegant, and suddenly violent in an ugly way. The two big set pieces of the film are the border raid and the train station shootout. Both of these are strongly enhanced by my favorite Ennio Morricone score.
I have seen this movie dozens of times, and probably a half dozen times on the big screen. My first viewing was at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood when the movie opened in 1987, it remains another hallmark moment in my Dome history. I am glad I can now pair it with a screening at the beautiful Paramount Theater in Austin.
Frankly, there may not be a more charming film in existence than “Babe”. The story of an orphan pig who tries to find his place in the hierarchy of the farm is just too sweet not to love. It charmed the hell out of us back in 1995 when my kids were seven and nine. I took the youngest with me to this screening, she is now thirty-seven and she still loves it. (She will deny it, but I suspect it played a big part in her aversion to pork).
This film won the Academy Awards for effects the year it came out, over the shots of a space launch and rescue mission in “Apollo 13”. That win should be an indicator as to how animation and CGI were soon to dominate the film landscape. This was also the same year as “Toy Story” so you can feel the earthquake and aftershocks with those two movies.
James Cromwell received a big boost to his career after this, and we were very sad that we missed him at the TCM Film Festival, talking about this movie, back in April. We did get to see it on the big screen through the “Paramount Summer Classic Film Series” and although it was promoted as a kids matinee, there were plenty of adults there to share in the pleasure of our talking pig hero “Babe”. The relationship between Farmer Hoggett and his pig is a complicated one with a couple of grim moments, but Cromwell makes a joyous human who learns to trust his instincts and his porker buddy.
The Greek Chorus of Mice that introduce the various chapters of the story, are still amusing 30 years later, and when the lead sheepdog, swallows his pride to get help for “Babe” from the sheep, we get a few life lessons as well. I do think having a duck do the rooster’s duties would be a lot of fun here at the house.
This movie was such a change up from the shark serial killer movie of the previous evening. Maybe all double features should work this was as a one-two punch, start with something hard hitting and then finish with something heartwarming. Two good days at the movies.
Kirkham A Movie A Day 