Category Archives: favorites

Eddie and the Cruisers

Posted on February 9, 2006

Though it kind of sank without a trace on release in 1983, Eddie and the Cruisers has always been a favorite of mine. How could it not be? After all, the main character is a fusion of Bruce Springsteen and Jim Morrison, the music is John Cafferty’s closest Springsteen imitation ever and his band Beaver Brown does their best E Street too, and then there’s the whole Jersey cool aspect. A whole bunch of people picked up on the movie when it hit cable (Showtime originally, I think) and then video, but that just got us a crap sequel.

Basics: It’s 1983 and something strange is going on with people who used to be in a flash in the pan called Eddie and the Crusiers, there’s a surge of interest driven by rumors that never died of a mysterious second album made before Eddie died in a car crash. Flash back to 1963 or so, just before the Beatles tidal wave, and Eddie Wilson has broken his band the Cruisers big, after years of slogging in bars and colleges from the Jersey Shore to Ohio. We even get flashbacks on the flashback, to see the band as it came together.

There’s no doubt this is a trashy film, though probably better than the PF Kluge novel on which its based, but the story and the music are so cool I don’t care. Michael Pare is good enough as Eddie and Tom Berenger is just young enough to play the poet/piano player and his twenty years older high school English teacher counterpart but I imagine I was hardly alone in feeling the heat steaming off Helen Schneider as Eddie’s girl Joann. She was just so sweet to Berenger’s way out of his depth youngster and to this day I wonder why she didn’t ever show up again in Hollywood product. Joe Pantoliano had one of his first prominent roles, this was right around the same time as his pimp performance in Risky Business, as the band’s slick manager and you know he must have been good because all these years later I still think of him as sleazy.

Obviously recommended

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The Great Escape

Posted on January 22, 2006

This John Sturges classic is over 40 years old now and while the production values (e.g., lack of big explosions and long sad pull shots) show it, there are only a handful of war movies which come close to it for overall impact. The Great Escape is a big sprawling story and has lots of recognizable stars, many of them young and who used this as a launch pad.

By the early ’60s most Americans had transitioned to seeing Germany as our ally against the Soviet Union and so for the most part the enemy characters are not villainous or evil, more committed to their cause and victory. Stalag 17, produced a decade earlier, is a decent comparison for the change in portrayal of Nazis.

Plot basics: Late in WWII the Nazis decide to bring together in a single, heavily guarded and secured place the Allied prisoners who’ve been the most persistent in escaping from other camps. Not necessarily the best strategy though because these prisoners have been tasked with allowing themselves to be recaptured after escapes to draw resources inside the homeland and putting all of them together means they have all the specialists required to break out even from the purpose-built stockade. This time, though, the Allied soldiers intend to make their departure from hospitality permanent.

There are so many good performances in this movie. Standouts for me include: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Donald Pleasance. Hannes Messemer (the camp commandant), James Donald, and Harry Riebauer (no doubt the model for Sgt. Schulze on Hogan’s Heroes). Also getting important early exposure are James Coburn, Charles Bronson, David McCallum and Gordon Jackson. The interplay between Garner and Pleasance during their part of the escape is particularly touching and human and not expected in a war flick.

The screenplay, full of smart dialogue, was written by Hollywood veteran W.R. Burnett (Edward G. Robinson starrer Little Caeser, noir classic This Gun for Hire, and multi-Oscar nominee The Asphalt Jungle) and James Clavell from Paul Brickhill’s book. Clavell covered similar territory in his terrific novel King Rat, the movie version of which gave George Segal one of his first major parts, before gaining fame from his novels Shogun and Tai-Pan. Surpise for me looking at Clavell’s IMDB listing is that he also wrote the screenplay of English racial tension drama To Sir, With Love.

highly recommended

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Serenity

Posted on October 2, 2005

Fox (the TV network) has a habit of putting on very cool shows and cancelling them just as I get hooked; Firefly, John Doe, Greg the Bunny are three examples that come to mind. Just who the heck was John Doe going to turn out to be anyway?! I try and resist but it’s like any other addiction. So when I first read that Universal had picked up the rights to Firefly and was giving Joss Whedon pretty free reign to make a big screen version, well, you know what happened.

Fortunately for me, Serenity delivers. With one significant exception, which I prefer not to detail so as to not spoil things for you, the movie is packed with the smarts and humor of the television show and adds the visual impact only possible on the much larger canvas. Box Office Mojo and IMDB list the production budget at a mere $40 million and if that’s accurate then the crew stretched every penny of it. The imagery is stylish, taking cues from the series but not being limited by it, though there’s much less of the Old West flavor.

One of the challenges Whedon had was to make a movie that didn’t expect familiarity with the series but still rewarded it. One of the trickier aspects of this was conveying the basics of the ‘Verse, the fictional future’s backstory, and the problem with River Tamme (that forms the core of the movie) without getting bogged down in them and the device used was brilliant because the opening scene took care of both while opening the plot at the same time.

I was also glad to find out that Whedon didn’t feel trapped by the need to keep absolute continuity with the series, something that absolutely became a heavy stone for the Star Trek franchise. Two quick examples where Serenity breaks it: Shepherd Book (Ron Glass) is not a crewmember but rather a good friend and provider of refuge for the ship after deals are done and, well, the movie starts with River and Simon’s rescue of her with help (presumably) from the Serenity crew while in the series the two come aboard as passengers, already escaped from and wanted by the Alliance.

Nathan Fillion really does well playing the leader of our little band, definitely a post-modern future Robin Hood. His Captain Reynolds is good with a gun but not much more than a club boxer with his fists and he’s kept in character by not doing any wire-assisted martial arts. Adam Baldwin’s Jayne gets a smattering more smarts but remains most concerned with himself and his pocketbook. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who I’ve enjoyed in quite a few movies and one or two British import TV shows, rides his accent and an unwordly serene temperament (which I wonder if Whedon had him do intentionally) to provide an antagonist, a front for The Man since no time’s wasted on showing him getting instructions. Summer Glaus is called on as River for a much wider range than any other character, from the disconnected, nearly mad gibberish to world-class, wire-heavy ninja sword and battle ballet and does stuning work.

As mentioned, there’s one event right before the final confrontation that I truly question. When you see the movie you’ll recognize it and I hope you’ll agree that it does nothing for plot development–included to provide a final motivational push (I suppose), it just seem unnecessary and pointlessly deprives Whedon of tools for the sequels that are sure to come. Not a huge big bad, just the least good aspect of the movie.

definitely recommended

Correction: I received an email a few hours after posting this review from Stephanie (the only name she left) explaining that I misunderstood a few parts of Serenity. To set the record straight I’ll quote her mail in its entirety:

“A little off there. You must have missed the three comics that were recently released as official continuity for the series. Shepherd Book left the boat, so in the film it isn’t that he was never crew, but that he no longer was at that point. This isn’t a break or adjustment for the movie. Same with Inara, she’d also left. The Operative is also introduced in the comics. Simon’s River retrieval didn’t happen with help from the Serenity crew in the movie either. Nothing changed from the series. I’m not sure why you perceived that it was otherwise? Could you clarify that for me? That retrieval at the beginning was a flashback, that was not in time with the film. While we as the audience were able to watch parts of their escape for our own benefit, it’s clear that is but a flashback. In fact, a record of it, shown clearly when the Operative pauses the sequence. We were just watching what he was watching. -S”

Fair enough. As I pointed out to her, though, we watched every episode as SciFi recently rebroadcast the Firefly episodes and I can’t recall a single mention of the comic books. That the opening was a flashback was apparently understood by my wife and does make sense in retrospective. Doesn’t change my opinion about the movie, I don’t give all that many definitely recommendeds.

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City of God (Cidade de Deus)

Posted on August 14, 2005

Foreign films are rarely nominated for Oscars–outside of the Best Foreign Film category, of course–so if I say that Cidade de Deus was nominated for four last year and yet not in that category you’ll have some idea of the quality and controversy of the film. When I finished watching my soul felt dirty, that after 130 minutes of nearly unrelenting grim violence pushing the delete button on the Tivo remote felt good.

The problem, though, is that City of God tells a true story. The movie’s name comes from a housing project in Rio de Janeiro that the government threw up in the mid-’60s. People displaced from elsewhere or simply unable to afford a home were installed into shacks that had no hot water and, at least at first, only sometimes electricity. Few of the youngsters had any hope of finding an honest way out but the depths to which many sank are beyond the pale of civilization. Think of the stories of invaders raping and pillaging in olden days, then update it to the our times, add drugs, pistols and semi-automatics and, oh yeah, leave out the invaders part since these monsters were bred at home.

As the story begins three boys who don’t seem more than 14 or 15, the Tender Trio, are making a few cruzeiros ripping off gas delivery trucks. Two of them have younger brothers hanging around, plus another neighbor boy of the same age. The narrator, essentially, is named Busca-Pe (Rocket), one of the brothers. He’s got no taste for crime despite finding himself driven to try it later on but the other two youngsters certainly do.

One night the neighbor boy suggests the Trio move up in class by ripping off a whorehouse a couple of miles away. Though brought along, they leave Li’l Dice outside to watch for cops. As a way to alert the bandidos he’s given a pistol but the temptation, the siren call to act, is too great and he fires off a round. The olders boys hear it and rush out; not around they assume the police pinched him, or worse, and flee in one of the john’s cars.

Li’l Dice has, in fact, gone inside and, well, director Fernando Meirelles leaves the showing of that for later. More bad things happen and soon all the Tender Trio are out of the picture. But not our boy with the cold eyes. He’s active, and learning, realizing his rightful place is running the drug concession in the ghetto. On his 18th birthday Li’l Dice and Benny (the other younger brother) literally eliminate all the other top dealers except one, Carrot, who’s befriended Benny.

Rocket, meanwhile, is trying to find a way out that doesn’t involve being on either end of a gun barrel and latches on to photography. This puts him at the center of the inevitable battle between Li’l Ze and Carrot. I doubt more bullets were fired on D-Day than seemed to be splattering everywhere, from any boy big enough to lift a pistol, in the war between the dealers.

Having written all this, I still understand how Meirelles was nominated for Best Director and other nods came for Editing and Cinematography (the fourth, for adapted screenplay, I’m not as clear on mostly because I had to read the dialog as subtitles). This film is political art of the highest order. The descent into barbarity–boys barely out of diapers are in one scene making a list of who they should kill next because, well, they said something offensive–is portrayed as the natural result of grinding poverty, corruption and indifference. Yet it’s portrayed stunningly, with the color and vitality most Westerners associate with Brazil.

An amazing film yet more horrifying than anything made by Wes Craven of John Carpenter. When City of God finished Vivian asked me how it was. I told her I was glad to have seen it butjust as glad she hadn’t.

absolutely recommended

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Heat

Posted on March 5, 2005

Released in 1995, Heat established Michael Mann as masterful film director. Mann was, of course, already famous for creating TV series Miami Vice, but his previous movies were respectable at best; after this he delivered The Insider, Ali and Collateral. Of all of those, Heat is most similar to Collateral and not only because both revolve around a criminal racing against the clock and the cops to finish a job and get out of town. While at the end of the day different, both movies are:

  • Set up as a face-off between one main criminal against one main pursuer;
  • Set all over Los Angeles, the incredible variety of landscapes combined with saturation of light and color breaks out of typically cramped urban visualization;
  • Set to a pulsing, complex electronic soundtrack that throbs and beats; and,
  • Set in motion by an outsider, a ponytailed Jon Voight here and a voice on the end of a phone for Cruise.

Hard to say which is better, really. The newer one is a bit crisper and more tightly focused, 120 versus 188 minutes, which might explain the differences in box office and overall reception. Not really any need to choose, both are well worth watching. Perhaps because film is considered a director’s medium, Mann’s writing ability seems often overlooked–he also wrote all four of the movies I mentioed–but I think his scripts and skill with dialog are excellent as well.

Heat pits two of the great modern American actors against each other, Robert DeNiro as the leader of an experienced criminal crew and Al Pacino running the LAPD Major Crimes Unit. But Mann cast recognizable, talented actors in almost every role. DeNiro’s crew are Voight, Val Kilmer, Dennis Haysbert, Tom Sizemore, and Tom Noonan, his girlfriend is Amy Brenneman, Kilmer’s wife is Ashley Judd, and Hank Azaria has a bit as Judd’s lover. Pacino’s squad includes Ted Levine, Mykelti Williamson, Wes Studi with Diane Venora as Pacino’s wife and a very young Natalie Portman as his troubled stepdaughter. Also featured are William Fichtner as a sleazy financial type, Jeremy Pivens, Xander Berkeley, Farrah Forke, Brad Cort and Tone Loc.

Heat has three major highlights: two honest conversations between DeNiro and Pacino discussing their substantial similarities and a midday gun battle between the cops and the crooks in which an awesome quantity of bullets are unleashed. But there are many smaller quality bits too, some that stand out to me are: Judds’ signal to Kilmer, DeNiro’s reaction to a barely noticeable sound during a preliminary robbery, Pacino’s disposal of a TV set, Brenneman’s realization that DeNiro is a crook and not a salesman, Haysbert’s on the spot decision to join DeNiro, and Pacino’s tenderness when Portman’s troubled nature is laid bare.

absolutely recommended

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Much Ado About Nothing

Posted on August 9, 2004

Kenneth Branagh came blasting out of England in the ’80s, promising to be the next Olivier. One of the ways he chose to use his new-found clout is to bring versions of all of Shakespeare’s works to the screen. From 1993, Much Ado About Nothing is one of the comedies and probably one of my favorite movies ever.

Branagh, who wrote adaptation and directed, plays Benedick, a nobleman in the service of Don Pedro (Denzel Washington). Pedro and his men visit Seigneur Leonato, the Governor of Messina, and his family; in his party are his brother John (an evil Keanu Reeves) and Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard), a young, sweet, naive boy who is in love with Leonato’s daughter Hero (an enchanting Kate Beckinsale). Benedick is matched with Leonato’s niece, Beatrice, played by an amazing Emma Thompson.

The key plots are: Claudio and Hero’s love match, which John keeps trying to sabotage and Benedick and Beatrice’s pairing, a match that Don Pedro and Leonato conspire to arrange despite the sharp, antagonistic attitudes of the married in real life couple. The characters have complex relationships and with only eight major roles almost all are well developed, Hero and Don Pedro the main exceptions. Michael Keaton, in a minor turn, is a great Dogberry.

Beyond the sophisticated humor and terrific acting, Branagh as director has brought a beautiful, radiant vision of the Italian countryside on screen. Almost as if he had the lighting crew put a second Sun in the sky–which is something one of the digital FX houses might be able to do today but not a dozen years ago.

absolutely recommended

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To Live and Die in L.A.

Posted on July 18, 2004

I always remembered To Live and Die in L.A. fondly even if I only saw it once in the theaters during its run in 1985 and on cable shortly after. A very slick movie that had ahead of its time visual editing and a purpose-built rock soundtrack. Not to mention writer/director William Friedkin’s sure touch with the relationship between cops and crooks.
 
Tried to get the thing recorded by TiVo for the longest time but for some reason no luck; then Fry’s had the DVD on deep discount and voila! A lazy Summer afternoon is a great time to watch this icy cool flick.
 
The first starring roles for Willem Dafoe (the bad boy), William Peterson (the anti-hero) and John Pankow (badling before his time), the story turns on a murderous counterfieter faced off against two Secret Service agents. Peterson will go to any lengths to avenge his murdered partner (played by Michael Greene), even though his partner more or less brought his own death on by mysteriously refusing backup.
 
Not too many big blowups or action sequences but the ones we get are really strong. Most spectacular, perhaps, is an amazing, very long car chase where Peterson and Pankow don’t even know who’s chasing them or why. And a lovely romantic interest for each of the leads, with matching personalities.
 
The end is very surprising for Hollywood and I was not at all surprised to hear the director say, on his commentary track, that the studio ordered an alternate shot; watching what was proposed (an extra on the DVD) I’m more than happy he was able to stay with the original. Sadly, this was Freidkin’s last decent flick, though not his last by far. Remember Samuel Jackson’s rancid Rules of Engagement or Shaq in Blue Chips?

recommended

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Chariots of Fire

Posted on March 14, 2004

One of the films I remember most fondly from college days (appropriate, eh?), I was surprised that TS1 had never seen Chariots of Fire and when it popped on the TCM schedule there was no doubt we had to watch. This story of a few British runners in post-WWI years won four Oscars in 1982 including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Soundtrack–everyone knows that seminal new age theme on piano and synth by Vangelis.

Chariots of Fire is the true story of Eric Liddle (played by Ian Charleson) and Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) who ran for gold in the 1924 Olympics despite great personal obstacles. Liddle, a devoutly religious man, would not run his qualifying heat because it fell on a Sunday, while Abrahams, who was Jewish, faced anti-Semitism. The bulk of the film sets up the climactic races in Paris and, aside from a single race well before that, the two protagonists really never meet or interact. The movie tells of the mental and athletic preparations as parallel stories.

I find it very interesting that none of the primary group of younger actors (Charleson, Cross, Nigel Havers, Nicholas Farrell and Daniel Gerroll) really went on to have substantial Hollywood careers. Of course John Gielgud and Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins in the recent LotR movies, for instance) were different but they were older and firmly established by this point. Cross did make a few pictures and big TV miniseries but the rest of them basically went on to British TV, which is sad as the evidence here is that they were capable of more.

This film takes time and trouble to develop the lead characters by way of a series of set pieces, some focused on running while others explore the conflicts which give meaning to their achievements. Abrahams is set off against both his Cambridge chums as well as Holm as his (naughty boy!) professional coach while Liddle mainly has conflict with his equally religious sister.

Hugh Hudson, who did such a fine job directing the movie, also never did much more. I really wonder why that was. The studios are reputedly such strange, dangerous and incestuous places but one would think that Hudson would have earned more than such schlock as Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and Revolution (the Al Pacino Revolutionary War flick) but there you go.

recommended

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High Fidelity

Posted on February 1, 2004

Top five reasons why High Fidelity is one of my all time favorite movies:

  1. A romantic comedy with intelligence and wit, a plot that is in constant motion, well-contrasted characters who find organic growth. More laughs and smiles per square meter of film stock than you can shake a stick at.
  2. John Cusack is one of the great American actors whether he gets the credit for it or not. High Fidelity uses his ability for believability and physical humor and contrasts him so well with Jack Black (going over the top) and Todd Louiso (just the opposite, barely animated).
  3. Lots and lots of great music, much of which is woven directly into the plot and not just used as background. And the artists are all over the place: Springsteen, Aretha, Bow Wow Wow, Belle & Sebastian, Liz Phair, Ann Peebles, Illinois Jacquet, Stiff Little Fingers and more.
  4. You can watch it many times and see some new bit or some scene in a new light each time. Plus it’s difficult to get tired of seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones pull off her top.
  5. Bruce Springsteen makes a cameo, sitting back playing his Telecaster and giving Rob sage advice

More top fives about the movie from Ben Guaraldi.

absolutely recommended

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Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition

Posted on December 14, 2003

What a great way to spend a Saturday! The extra scenes were like gems except for Faramir’s flashback to the day his father sent Boromir off to Elrond’s council. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Extended Edition was a bargain at $9.50 compared to so many other films that come out these days. Peter Jackson just has the magic touch and might even convince me to see King Kong.

Can I wait for Thursday when we see Return of the King? Barely! I have a feeling it’ll put the battle scenes from Gladiator and Braveheart to shame.

Absolutely recommended

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