Lights, Camera,...

Film: The Fabelmans
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

A number of years ago, a random passer-by on this blog was upset that I wasn’t completely blown away by the film The Color of Pomegranates. In that rant, in addition to spelling the name of the director wrong, that commenter also told me I should spend my time with easier, less challenging films, like the works of Steven Spielberg. I always thought that was a weird insult—say what you will about Spielberg, the man makes a good movie. Seriously, go with Michael Bay or Tony Scott if you’re shooting for lowbrow. Anyway, I was reminded of this when I sat down with The Fabelmans.

For lack of a better way to put it, this is Steven Spielberg making his own fictionalized biopic of his early life and birth as a filmmaker. If you like, it’s akin in some ways to 8 ½, or perhaps more closely Woody Allen’s Radio Days. We’re going to see the young Spielberg stand-in Sam Fabelman (Mateo Zoryan initially, then Gabriel LaBelle for the bulk of the film) introduced to the idea of movies by his parents, Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) in the form of The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy seems upset by the train crash sequence, but also fascinated by it to the point that he asks for a train set for Hannukah that year.

Shark Attack

Films: West Side Story (2021)
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on rockin’ flatscreen.

When dealing with any list of films, I’ve always made a concerted effort to knock out the longest films on the list as early as I could. So, when Spielberg’s version of West Side Story showed up on Disney Plus, I knew I’d be watching it sooner rather than later; it was the second longest film on the current Oscar list I have. It’s also the fact that I knew this would be a tough watch for me. Ten years ago, I would have told you that that was because I didn’t like musicals. These days, there are plenty that I like. No, the issue is that I don’t love West Side Story as a piece of work because I genuinely dislike the source material.

There’s no getting around that fact. I really dislike Romeo and Juliet as a play and even as a concept. There are those who look at Romeo and Juliet as the height of romance. I look at it as a story where two kids (Romeo is canonically 16; Juliet is all of 13) decide that they can’t live without each other and over the course of a couple of days, a bunch of people die for their rash stupidity. West Side Story is that with a couple of really good songs.

Mars...? Attacks...?

Film: War of the Worlds (2005)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on The New Portable.

I suppose that when I think about it, it’s not terribly surprising that Spielberg did a remake of War of the Worlds. Now, in retrospect, it’s kind of a warm up for Super 8. While the plots are significantly different, there are some similarities between the two movies at least on the surface in that both are alien invasion movies. And, true to Spielberg’s fixation with absent or bad fathers, we’re going to get at least a part of that story in the form of the Tom Cruise character.

Ray Ferrier (Cruise) works a union job and is seen leaving his job site to return home. It’s evidently his weekend with his kids, teenage rebellious son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and younger daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning). Ray, we learn is something less than a model parent, and Robbie especially seems to resent the time that he’s forced to spend with his father. After a little bit of an introduction to give us the family dynamic, we dive head-first into the alien invasion that is the bulk of the story. I’ll say this for Spielberg’s version: we don’t spend nearly the sort of time the source material does setting things up. Instead, it’s pandemonium, lightning attacks, and chaos from about half an hour in to almost the end.

Insert Quarter

Films: Ready Player One
Format: Blu-Ray from Cortland Community Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m going to make some people mad now, or at least disappoint them. Ready Player One is pop culture pornography designed to wow anyone who sees it into loving it for its veneer and flash and ignore the fact that underneath, it’s the same kind of male fantasy fulfillment that this sort of film tends to be.

I say this as someone who could not be more of the movie’s target audience. Ready Player One is obsessed with the 1980s; I graduated from high school in 1985. It is in many ways the same sort of standard power fantasy that this sort of science fiction that I grew up on uses over and over. I recognized almost everything in the movie, from a ton of the avatars to the face of the demon on the back of Aech’s truck. I’m so much the target for this movie that when I knew the first piece of information about the third challenge in the film, I knew exactly what the answer was. But we’ll get to that soon.

Free Press

Film: The Post
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I feel like I’ve been slacking lately, and that’s not a hard conclusion to come to when you look at my posting history for this month. It’s not that I’m coming to the end of things; it’s more that I’ve been unbelievably busy for the last several weeks especially. I have a daughter who is a week away from moving. There have been some extended family issues I won’t go into here. And I’ve been screamingly busy at work. I know everyone says that, but where I teach, we’re given a specific number of classes we’re supposed to have every quarter. Right now, I have the equivalent of that plus two. This being the case, it’s taken me a week to finally sit down with The Post, the first movie I’ve watched nearly seven days.

I have to say that this isn’t the movie I expected, or at least not the story I expected. I knew this was about the Washington Post, and I thought it was about the Watergate break-in. I wondered about that, considering that we’ve already got All the President’s Men and certainly don’t need another version of the same story. Thankfully, The Post is about the time just before that, the moment that made the Post a national paper just before Woodward and Bernstein cemented it into place.

Off Script: The Twilight Zone: The Movie

Film: The Twilight Zone: The Movie
Format: DVD from Byron Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

If you’re older than about 30, you watched The Twilight Zone on television at some point. This was the television version of M. Night Shyamalan’s career, except that the twists almost always worked on the television show. Weird, creepy little stories that sometimes packed a moral lesson and sometimes just wanted to give people the shivering willies made for good television. Seriously, when I was younger, it was probably the only show I knew of where people my age would voluntarily watch a black-and-white television show because the stories were frequently that good. So, it’s only natural that eventually The Twilight Zone: The Movie was conceived of and released.

What I remember most about it from 1983 (it’s release date falls squarely between my sophomore and junior years in high school) is the controversy that surrounded it. Specifically, that controversy was the rather horrifying deaths of actors Vic Morrow, Renee Chen, and My-ca Dinh Le (the latter two being 6- and 7-years-old respectively), who were killed when a helicopter crashed on them while filming the first segment. This accident led to multiple court cases and almost led to the cancellation of the entire project. What I remember most was people being more than a little outraged that the film itself seemed to take no notice of this tragedy, not following the typical pattern of dedicating the film to someone close to the production who had died.

Ten Days of Terror!: Duel

Film: Duel
Format: DVD from Seneca Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

One of the things that I find interesting about movies is how many acclaimed, award-winning directors started out doing thrillers and horror movies. Counted in that number is Steven Spielbeg. Jaws wasn’t his first horror-themed movie; the made-for-television Duel was. Duel is based on a Richard Matheson story and a Matheson script as well, so he started from a good place. Duel may not show the polish of Spielberg’s later efforts, but it’s a hell of a good place to start from. This is a tight thriller that uses solid camera work to ratchet the tension for the full 90 minute running time.

David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is a traveling salesmen heading out to make a sales call. On the way, he gets caught behind a dirty big rig going well under the speed limit. David passes it, and a few moments later, the rig passes him and slows down again. David goes around again and when the truck starts to approach him again, he speeds off down the highway.

Mission: Impossible--Jerusalem Branch

Films: Munich
Format: DVD from Sycamore Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I knew going in to Munich that it was about what happened with the Israeli Olympic team in the 1972 Olympics. I’m not quite old enough to remember this when it happened, but I new about it soon enough. I assumed that this was about that event, the Palestinian terrorists, the taking of the Israeli team as hostages, and the eventual, terrible conclusion. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Aside from a few imagined sequences that operate as flashbacks, the entire kidnapping of the Israeli team occupies only the first few minutes of the film. No, this is about the terrible retribution that came afterward.

The death of the Olympic athletes and coaches left Israel in a terrible situation. While Germany had nothing to do with what happened, it had to resonate that the terrorism took place on German soil. What the Golda Meir’s government wanted was swift retribution, a message that the targeting of Israelis and Jews in general would not be tolerated. To head that retribution, Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent, is recruited. His contact Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) tells him that he will be heading a team of four other operatives tasked with the job of hunting down the men responsible for planning and carrying out the deaths of the Israeli Olympic team.

Covert Ops

Film: Bridge of Spies
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

The problem with rarely going to the theater and simultaneously keeping a blog about Oscar films is that every year when the Oscar nominations are announced, I find myself suddenly with a series of films to watch that are often not immediately available to me. So, as the films are released, it’s a slow game of catch up. Bridge of Spies is one I was interested in, so when it became available, I rolled it to the top of the queue and crossed my fingers that I’d get it quickly. And so I did.

I like spy movies. I’m not entirely sure what I find interesting about them or why I like them as much as I do. Many spy films, of course, are action movies, so there’s that attraction. Bridge of Spies is not an action movie. There are a few scenes in which shots are fired and there’s a pretty cool plane crash sequence, but this is a movie about courtrooms and negotiations and backroom deals, with many of those deals having massive implications on a geopolitical scale.

Our Greatest Living Actor

Film: Lincoln
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop.

It would be forgivable to think of the term “Oscar bait” when contemplating Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. If you think about it, this is in many ways the perfect Oscar film. You have a celebrated, multiple-nomination-winning director; a film covering one of America’s greatest and most beloved political leaders at a watershed moment in his political career; an all-star cast with more nominations than can be counted on fingers and toes; and topped off with a starring actor who is arguably (and it’s not a difficult argument to make) the greatest actor of his generation. Lincoln is the kind of film that Oscar fills its pants over. No surprise that it walked off with 12 nominations.

That said, there is a very real question when it comes to this film: does it live up to its potential. While Spielberg is certainly capable of a great film, he’s also capable of shitting the bed, getting too sentimental and maudlin, and turning a potentially great film into a pretty good one. Unless Lincoln was terrible, it was going to get nominations. The question was whether or not it deserved any of them.

Men are Bad

Film: The Color Purple
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on Sue’s Mother’s Day present.

When I wrote up the end of June, I mentioned that there were several films that I was dreading and that I should do my best to get through a few of them sooner rather than later. Behold, The Color Purple, a film that I knew was going to be a rough ride for me, not only because of its length. Spielberg, for all his acclaim, is a director who goes too far into some territory for me. When he’s on, there are few people better. When he gets a particular idea, though, he worries it to death, hammering home his message with as much force as he can. He’s not a subtle director (see War Horse for a more recent example). And with The Color Purple being an “important” film, I knew there was great danger of Spielberg spending 150 minutes on a pulpit.

Here’s the nutshell version. If you are the possessor of a penis, The Color Purple thinks you are a bad person. It doesn’t matter how much you think you’re a good person or even if anyone else thinks you’re a good person. No, in the world of this film, men are all melodrama villains who live only to oppress women. Got that? If you’re male, you’re evil. Deal with it. In fact, the film says, if you are not sexually or physically abusive, you are a weakling.

Seeing a Man About a Horse

Film: War Horse
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

About a year ago, an anonymous commenter told me on this blog that if I couldn’t understand art films and didn’t want to dedicate myself to truly learning about (in the case of The Color of Pomegranates) the Armenian surrealist tradition that I would be better off sticking to Spielberg. That’s an odd quantum level above typical trolling; normally, I’d be told to drool over the latest Michael Bay film. I like Spielberg sometimes. At the very least he has the potential to make a great film whenever he sets out to make one. Sure, sometimes you get 1941, but sometimes you get Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’ll always give him a chance.

That said, I knew going in to War Horse that I was setting myself up for Spielberg’s favorite movie pastime—black belt-level emotional manipulation. Spielberg has never seen an emotional moment he couldn’t milk nor has he come across an honest moment of real emotion he couldn’t play for that last tug of the heartstrings or slowly falling tear. The problem with being as emotionally manipulative as Spielberg can be is that I’m aware of it, and because of that, I’m on my guard against it. Any time there’s a Dickensian-style coincidence or a particular swelling of music, my heart hardens. I know what’s coming because I know he flat-out can’t resist going there.

What Does Fried Dino Taste Like?

Film: Jurassic Park
Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’d love to say that in 1993 when Jurassic Park came out I was a kid. Sadly, that’s not true. In 1993, I celebrated my second wedding anniversary. I wasn’t a kid. That didn’t make too much of a difference, though—I still really wanted to see giant, realistic dinosaurs on a giant screen. And so I went. You better believe I went and saw Jurassic Park during its initial run in theaters. I won’t kid you, here. Seeing giant friggin’ dinosaurs doing what they have always done in movies but looking like I imagined they’d really look was awfully damn cool.

I’m going to work on the assumption that you’ve seen this movie but may not have seen it lately. So here’s the quick and dirty. A rich guy named John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has a cool idea. He sends out teams to find ancient, prehistoric mosquitoes trapped in fossilized amber. From them, the blood of their last meal is extracted, and since we are talking about prehistoric insects, we’re talking about dinosaurs. The DNA is then extracted from the blood, and using frog DNA to cover any gaps, real, living dinosaurs are created, with the goal being a huge zoo/amusement park called, well, Jurassic Park.

So, Hammond brings in some experts from a dig he is financing, specifically paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotonist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) as well as chaos-loving mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). He also brings his grandchildren Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex (Ariana Richards). And, of course, all hell breaks loose. What fun would it be if it didn’t?

The hell breaking loose comes from the actions of park systems designer and programmer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), who has some unidentified money problems. He is being offered a significant amount of money to bring out some dinosaur embryos to a rival company. When he attempts this, he shuts down most of the safety systems in the park. This means that the dinosaurs—particularly the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the velociraptors are free to move about and threaten the people. And, while running from the dinos, the scientists discover that despite all of the precautions, the dinosaurs have started mating.

The film, as is typical for Spielberg, sports a fantastic cast of players. In addition to those mentioned above, we get Samuel L. Jackson pre-BAMF as one of the main security experts in the park and Bob Peck as Muldoon, the big game hunter who works in the park to keep the dinosaurs in line. I had forgotten (or more likely never knew) that B.D. Wong shows up here for a cup of coffee as a scientist, too.

Despite the cast, Jurassic Park is essentially a big-budget B-movie. Man makes dinosaurs, dinosaurs escape, man runs from dinosaurs. The sell here isn’t the inspiring or terrific plot, but the dinosaurs themselves, looking more realistic than anyone had ever seen before on the big screen. Now, almost 20 years later (and yes, that’s hard for me to believe), they still look great. This is a film to watch on a large screen, HD if you can get it, and really experience the dinosaurs the way they were intended. The acting is good overall, but this is a film that sells itself from start to finish on the special effects and the overall look.

Jurassic Park does suffer from one of Spielberg’s frequent tropes. Our two paleoscientists, particularly Dr. Grant, has a hypothesis about dinosaurs. It’s his belief (one that actually is gaining credence these days) that dinosaurs didn’t so much evolve into reptiles, but into birds. Because Dr. Grant is a good guy in this film and is trying to save the two kids lost in the park, his hypothesis proves correct. This became a much larger problem in the sequel to this film, but it still exists here. People who we want to root for are always right in anything they think and try. They don’t make mistakes or have incorrect hypotheses.

But it doesn’t really matter. Jurassic Park is fun and scary. This is the movie that introduced those of us who aren’t paleontologists to the terror that are velociraptors. It’s also the film that made dinosaurs cool for the masses again. And they are cool.

Jurassic Park, as I’ve said, is all about the special effects. It helps that it really seems like the science would work, too. I have no idea if it is possible to create dinosaurs in the way described here, but for the layman like me, it sounds official and like it would work. I respect the hell out of it for that—it works on science and not magic, even if the science isn’t totally realistic.

So is it good? Yeah, it is. It’s fun and scary and exciting, and it’s not really meant to be anything more than that. Watch it on the biggest screen you have available, and if it’s been awhile since you’ve seen it, remember how much damn fun this movie really is.

Why to watch Jurassic Park: Giant realistic dinosaurs.
Why not to watch: It follows the Spielberg morality rule, although the sequel is far worse.

The Uncanny Valley

Film: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I remember when A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released. What I remember most about it is that there was some controversy over it. Some people loved it and others hated it. Having seen the film now, I understand both sides of that equation. There’s a lot to love here, but there are parts of this movie that are a lot like the end of Old Yeller. You might well know it’s coming, but that doesn’t really make it any easier.

A.I. (and I’m going to shorten the name to that for now) started out as a Kubrick project, but the story goes that he didn’t want to film it until the lead role could be played by an actual android. The technology still isn’t there unless you count CG. Regardless, at some point he passed the story over to Steven Spielberg, suggesting that it was more in his wheelhouse.

It is. This story has Spielberg written all over it. Many of Spielberg’s favorite themes are here, and many of his favorite tropes come into play throughout. But, as often happens, I’m jumping ahead of myself.

The story takes place in the future, in a world where the polar ice caps have melted, destroying a number of major cities. The human population has dwindled as well. Similarly, technology has made incredible strides, particularly in the realm of robotics. Robots, called “mecha” are now prevalent, and many of them appear to duplicate humanity almost perfectly, except for an inability to truly express or feel emotions. That, naturally, is the gap that many, particularly by Professor Hobby (William Hurt) wish to close.

This desire results in the creation of David (Haley Joel Osment), a completely sentient robot made in the image of a young boy. He is a pleasant, if deep-into-the-uncanny-valley child and is given to Monica and Henry Swinton (Frances O’Connor and Sam Robards). Their son Martin (Jake Thomas) is suffering from an incurable illness and is in stasis until a cure can be discovered. David is the replacement, although Monica is at first horribly disturbed and then skeptical. However, after a little time, she imprints herself on him, meaning that he will love her completely and selflessly to the point that if she ever gives him up, he will have to be destroyed.

And of course, there are immediate complications. A cure is discovered for Martin and he comes home. Through a series of misunderstandings and malicious acts from Martin, David is seen to be dangerous. But rather than have him destroyed, Monica looses him in a forest, warns him of what he may find in the world, and leaves. David now has to fend for himself, although he is greatly assisted by a sex robot named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law), who has been framed for a murder he didn’t commit.

David’s one overriding wish throughout the film is the old Pinocchio story—he wants to be a real boy. And so he quests after the Blue Fairy from the Pinocchio tale to give him that wish, since he was created young enough to believe that such fairy tales might truly be real.

Spielberg has never been able to do much without aiming directly at every heartstring his audience has, and A.I. is no different in this respect. This poor little robot kid goes through absolute hell in this movie because he loves unconditionally and feels that he is not loved in return. While an android, he is for all intents and purposes a young child who wants only the love of his mother, and is rather unfairly and unceremoniously separated from her. And so our hearts bleed for the kid from start to finish.

The best science fiction, or at least the most cerebral science fiction, explores that idea of what truly makes us human. Often, this is done by presenting us with things that are not human that behave in human ways—things that express a basic humanity without human appearance or being internally human. Science fiction is one of the only ways to approach this question believably, allowing us to question what we hold dear by shining a different light through the lens. It is nearly impossible to suggest that David is not human in the most important ways in this film, despite constant proof that he is, in fact, not human in a very real sense. And so another important question asked here is what our responsibility is to those things that we create. If the genie is let out of the bottle, what is our responsibility to the genie?

It’s hard to call this Spielberg’s darkest film when he also made films like Schindler’s List, Munich, Amistad, and Saving Private Ryan, but there’s a real darkness here, in no small part because what is happening is happening to a child, at least of sorts.

It’s worth noting that Haley Joel Osment is simultaneously endearing and disturbing in this film. He spends a great deal of his time in that uncanny valley where he looks human enough to be human, but with touches of strangeness that make him somewhat repellent. This film came at a time in his career when he was still the child actor flavor of the month—roles subsequently filled in some order by Dakota Fanning, Abigail Breslin, and Freddie Highmore. Osment’s career has leaned more and more toward voiceovers lately, and that might not be a bad choice for a kid who was so completely overexposed for a few years.

Why to watch A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Spielberg’s best tropes taking a dark turn.
Why not to watch: It’s pretty bleak if you spend any time thinking about it.

1,100 Worlds

Film: Schindler’s List
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on big ol’ television.

Steven Spielberg is a manipulative filmmaker. I don’t deny that he’s also a great filmmaker; I dearly love several of his movies and respect a bunch more. But a part of his success as a filmmaker comes from the fact that he is a master manipulator of the emotions of his audience. Often, this is done behind the scenes and it’s quite effective. The best such toying with feelings is done without the audience knowing its happening. At other times, the strings as it were are visible.

Few Spielberg films are as emotionally controlling as his epic Schindler’s List, a film based on the real story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler. The story itself is a grand one, full of real drama, real pathos, but there are moments that feel as if Spielberg has tweaked them one way or the other to get just the right emotional response from the audience. I don’t want to say that the film feels forced, but it does at times feel moderately artificial, or Hollywood-ized for the benefit of the viewer.

Schindler (Liam Neeson) is an ethnic German industrialist who has shown up in Poland shortly after the German takeover of the country. His intent is to make a huge profit, in no small part because Jews have been banned from owning businesses in the Reich. Thus, he can show up in Poland, nab a formerly-Jewish-owned and still successful business and run it. He manages to acquire a factory that creates enameled metalware and nabs a contract with the German government to make mess kits for the Wehrmacht. In so doing, he employs a huge number of Polish Jews, and essentially has the company run by a man named Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), who essentially uses this as an opportunity to provide jobs for many people in the new Jewish ghetto who need them.

Things change in Krakow with the arrival of Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), since he is to oversee the creation of the Plaszow concentration camp. Goeth is a man who thrives on cruelty and fear, killing any Jew who seems uncooperative, doesn’t work hard or fast enough to suit him, and at times, seemingly simply because he enjoys killing things. Once the camp is complete, he moves all of the ghettoized Jews into it, killing many of them in the process. Many of those killed are factory workers for Schindler. As a stop-gap measure to protect his profits and more and more to protect his people, Schindler bribes Goeth for the creation of a sub-camp. He houses his workers here, where they receive better treatment and are otherwise generally immune from the tortures and random killings of Goeth and his men.

Eventually, the war goes against Germany, and Goeth is ordered to exhume all of the bodies of the thousands of murdered Jews, to completely dismantle his camp, and to ship all of the surviving people to Auschwitz. Again, Schindler intervenes on behalf of his workers, paying a massive bribe to Goeth to redirect those he wishes to Moravia where he will again set up shop, this time creating munitions. This, then, is the list of the film’s title. Schindler spends the fortune he made in Poland to rescue as many people as he can, eventually creating a list of some 1100 people to be directed away from Auschwitz and to him, where he can continue to attempt to keep them safe.

I would be lying if I said the film wasn’t deeply emotional and deeply moving. It is. It would be impossible for a film like this not to be powerful. Spielberg is smart enough to film the bulk of this in black-and-white, which adds a particular starkness to the proceedings. He brings in small flashes of color—the flame of a candle, a girl’s coat—as emphasis here and there. It’s subtle but effective in drawing the eye to a particular place on the screen, and thus to a particular action or the result of an action. A red coat worn by a young girl grabs our attention when we first see it, and does again when we see it in the mass grave during the exhumation of the bodies of the fallen.

This is precisely what I’m talking about when I say that Spielberg is manipulative. There is nothing on screen so moving or so emotional that he will not do everything he can to wring one more tear or one more piece of anger from his audience. Normally, of course, that is precisely the job of a filmmaker attempting to make any film. If we as the audience don’t have an emotional connection to the characters (at best) or the action (at least), there is no reason to watch.

And yet for this film, I wonder if this sort of manipulation is necessary. The truth of the story of Schindler and the people he saved didn’t need any embellishing. It’s already a genuinely compelling story just sticking with the history. Goeth was a truly awful human being who not only ordered the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings, but was evidently personally responsible for as many as 500. Schindler did make a fortune from essentially slave labor and then spend it saving those people from a terrible fate. Nothing here requires that we have anything extra to move us.

Regardless of the fact that I did notice the attempts at manipulation, Schindler’s List is essential for no other reason than it is essential. It is an impossible film to dislike because of what it represents. The most powerful moment comes at the end, when we see a procession of survivors of Schindler’s factory passing and marking his grave with stones. This is not calculating because it is real, and all the more potent because of it. The scene where Schindler leaves his factory to run (Germany has surrendered, and as an official profiteer of slave labor, munitions maker, and member of the Nazi Party, he is a war criminal despite his actions) is also a scene of emotional depth, but feels influenced by a desire for more drama. In fact, it is the difference between these two scenes that indicate precisely why playing the drama card wasn’t needed here. The real story is more than enough; I think it might be impossible to watch that line of people mark the grave with stones as a traditional way of saying thanks without a tear or at least a lump in the throat.

There is a Talmudic quote offered in the film to the effect that a person who saves a life saves the entire world. It's a refreshing piece of philosophy, and one worth maintaining.

Why to watch Schindler’s List: A truly magnificent story of hope and humanity.
Why not to watch: The history didn’t need the embellishment.

The Best Month Ever: June, 1982 Part 2

Films: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player (E.T.) and on big ol’ television (Blade Runner).

[These reviews have been included as a part of Pussy Goes Grrr's Juxtaposition Blogathon!]

The biggest film event of 1982 was not Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan no matter what the Trekkies have to say about it. The movie of the year was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Like any great kid movie, this one enamored both adults and kids and became a huge sensation, solidifying Steven Spielberg’s reputation as a director who could capture magic on film and could do no wrong, an amazing feat from a guy just a few years removed from 1941.

There’s not much reason to go into the plot here—if you haven’t seen E.T. it’s because you’ve seen fewer than a dozen movies in your life, are less than 20 years old, or live under a rock (which makes me question how you have Internet access). There are other options, but it’s still no excuse for not having seen this film, which even now, 30 years later, is remarkable for how well it captures a particular mystery and sense of youthful adventure. Suffice to say that a squat little alien gets left behind by his compatriots, is discovered by a boy who helps protect him, and the two attempt to get the critter back to its people while the big bad government attempts to kidnap the alien for research purposes.

Starring in the film is Henry Thomas as Elliott, the boy who finds the alien in the woods behind his house. He’s a good child actor, although at times he’s difficult to notice simply because he spends so much of his time next to the creation that is the focus of the movie: the alien. Also featured as his siblings are Robert MacNaughton as Elliott’s older brother/tormentor Michael and, of course, Drew Barrymore as little sister Gertie. This film was the break-out role for Barrymore, who has gone on to a tremendous Hollywood career. MacNaughton, on the other hand, has vanished from acting and at last account works in a post office. In many ways, though, he is the most natural of the kids on the screen. I had a brother much like Michael. He tormented me the way Michael torments Elliott. At the same time, once Michael discovers what is going on, he’s Elliott’s protector and confidant. This is a great screen relationship, and speaks to smart and believable characters.

E.T. is filled with early Spielberg tropes—a missing father, evil government, and magical childhood adventures, things it holds in common with Spielberg-written films like The Goonies. There’s also a sense of high adventure--Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind all bear this stamp.

What’s fascinating to me, and it’s a connection I didn’t see until today, is that for Spielberg, at least at this point in his career, dangers came from planet Earth while salvation came from the stars. Early Spielberg films have terrestrial, or at least formerly terrestrial dangers. The bad things in Duel, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even Jurassic Park and Poltergeist have Earth origins. In outer space-related, science fiction films, the aliens are misunderstood at worst and actively beneficent at best.

And get this—I’ve also only realized on this watching (it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this film) that E.T. the character is essentially space Jesus. Much of the symbolism is there. This is an odd realization, and an odd position for the Jewish Spielberg to add into American film mythology, but there it is. It would not surprise me if a cut scene involved E.T. walking on water and then turning around and transmuting that water into kid-friendly root beer. Quick spoiler:

*** E.T. PHONE HOME ***

Think about it—E.T. has magical abilities. He can levitate objects and move them, and has a special connection with Elliott in the sense that what one feels, the other feels as well. He can also heal the injured and afflicted. E.T. is persecuted and hunted by those who don’t understand what he is. Eventually, E.T. dies, but comes back to life and ascends into the heavens, but not before he tells Elliott that he will continue to live on in his heart…just like Jesus does. Both are misunderstood by all but those who believe (although the argument could be made that Jesus is misunderstood in particular by the most devout). Still, there are enough points of similarity that the two occupy the same general sphere of altruistic, beneficent, otherworldly beings with miraculous powers. The one can be seen as a version of the other.

*** PLEASE CHECK THE NUMBER AND DIAL AGAIN ***

It’s without a doubt true that E.T. has entered the American mythology and lexicon. There are several iconic moments—“E.T. phone home” and the bicycle across the face of the moon being the most obvious ones, not to mention the huge upsurge in sales of Reese’s Pieces in the years to follow this film’s release. But the real reason the film has had such staying power, and will continue to charm children and adults is that it is a recognizable and great story. This is a true boy’s-own adventure, immediately accessible to kids of virtually any age, and still entertaining for the parents.

I like E.T. just fine. My tastes tend to run to the more violent, weird, thoughtful, and/or disturbing, but it’s a difficult film not to like. Of the great and noteworthy films released in this greatest month of American movies ever, this one is my least favorite—but it’s my least favorite in a hell of a good group. It’s sweet and endearing—perhaps too much so—but as a movie conceived and written for kids, it hits almost every mark. As a jaded high schooler, I wasn’t a big fan of this film. As an adult with kids, I appreciate it for what it is, and what it is is special.

And this brings us to the final movie on The List from this marvelous month: Blade Runner. For a long time, I think I liked this movie because I was supposed to like it. Everyone told me how great it was, and how much I should appreciate it, so I went along with that idea without really understanding what the movie was or what it was about.

And then I finally got around to reading Phillip K. Dick’s book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Suddenly, Blade Runner made sense to me, because I suddenly had context for it. Certain aspects of the film are not really explained in the film and exist almost as artifacts from the book. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Blade Runner exists in a world where nearly-human androids have been created for use in off-world colonies. Because of some problems that existed in the past, these androids, called “replicants,” are not permitted on Earth, despite the fact that many of them attempt to come to Earth. Because of this, special agents of the police, blade runners, exist to “retire” the replicants, “retire” being an obvious euphemism for “terminate with extreme prejudice using a high caliber pistol. Our blade runner in question, Deckard (Harrison Ford), has just been given a contract on a series of replicants that are of a new model, and have not only been spotted on Earth, but have killed at least one agent.

That’s enough of the plot, really. What exists around this plot, though, are artifacts of Dick’s world that don’t really make it into the film. For instance, there’s really no reason given why so many of the questions on the test to determine if someone is a replicant deal with the death or torture of animals. There’s no indication of exactly why people are still living on Earth despite the massive advertising blitz to send people to the colony worlds. These aspects of the story are explained fully in the book. They add to the experience, though, but are not necessary for the Blade Runner experience.

We get an interesting cast taking us through the story. In addition to Harrison Ford, the film features Edward James Olmos as Gaff, who acts both as Deckard’s foil and as his partner. Deckard’s nominal boss in this situation is Bryant, played by the always-excellent M. Emmet Walsh (an actor so good Roger Ebert once said that any movie that featured him can’t be all bad). As the replicants, we get the terrifying Brion James as Leon, Joanna Cassidy as Zhora, Sean Young as Rachael, Daryl Hannah as Pris, and the great Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. Batty is a terrifying presence in the film, in no small part thanks to Hauer’s talents. Also worth noting is the underrated and entertaining William Sanderson as J.F. Sebastian, an afflicted toy maker and geneticist.

The cast is great, and so is the story, but it’s the mise-en-scene that is the true star of this film. Blade Runner looks real to such a degree that it becomes real. Costuming, makeup, set design—it all works perfectly to create a real, believable world of the future. Ridley Scott was smart enough to make this future multi-cultural, giving it a pan-linguistic patois and a decidedly Asian flavor that functions perfectly as a backdrop for the action on screen.

I don’t normally like Sean Young, but she’s good here. It’s also worth noting that in general, Daryl Hannah is great when she plays non-humans. The minute a script asks her to be something that isn’t 100% human, she excels. Go figure.

There are multiple versions of this film out there. One version contains the much-maligned voice over explaining the film. There’s a definitive edition, a director’s cut (the first real director’s cut ever made), and it can be difficult to tell which one to watch. I’ll say it here—watch the director’s cut. When you have someone as good as Ridley Scott making the film, go with his vision. That being said, there are a couple of spoilers to handle:

*** LOOK! A REPLICANT! ***

The big question in the director’s cut is whether or not Deckard is himself a replicant. There’s evidence on both sides of the issue. For years, I believed he was for two reasons. First, he dreams of a unicorn, and Gaff places an origami unicorn in his apartment, almost as if he knows the implanted memories in Deckard’s head. Second, replicants have a particular eye gleam in certain angles of light, a gleam that appears in Deckard’s eyes at one point. I’m not so sure these days. I can tell you that in the book, this is never even considered as a question. There’s no indication that Deckard is a replicant. There’s also no love story between him and Rachael—Deckard is married in the book.

Second, why does Roy Batty save Deckard at the end? Because he does. Maybe it’s to prove that he has free will. Maybe he wanted his last conscious act to be something positive. Maybe he wanted someone to know that he was more than a killer. Again, this doesn’t happen in the book and is entirely a creation of this script.

*** TIME TO DIE ***

Like all good science fiction, Blade Runner explores the essential question of what it means to be human, and in this case, what humanity means in a world that is increasingly becoming dehumanized. That’s a central theme of author Ray Bradbury, which is one reason I can think of that there’s a building named after him in the film. Blade Runner may not answer this question fully, but should it? It offers the question as food for thought, and that should be good enough.

And so we close on this greatest month of American films in history, at least before the December deck stacking for the Oscars. I miss that prior age in the sense that there’s no mystery of when a truly great film will be released now. Summer blockbusters are just that—expensive and bombastic, and the great films don’t show up until Christmas. There’s little chance of a magical June ever happening again, and that makes me sad.

Why to watch E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The greatest kid adventure ever made.
Why not to watch: Too cute by a half.

Why to watch Blade Runner: The birth of cyberpunk, plus kick-ass humanoid robots.
Why not to watch: A vague, possibly unsatisfying ending.

Happy Birthday to Me

Films: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tampopo, North by Northwest
Format: DVDs from personal collection on laptop (Raiders, Tampopo), and on middlin'-sized living room television (Northwest).


It would be natural to assume that, what with today being Halloween, that I spent the day watching things like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and (of course) Halloween. That would be a natural assumption, but an incorrect one. As it happens, today is my birthday. Instead of watching scary films, I watched my three favorite films on the list. These are Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tampopo, and North by Northwest, which is my favorite movie of all time.

I was 13 when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark (I refuse to call it by its reissued name) in the theater. This is still one of the greatest theater experiences I have ever had, and likely ever will have. Sometimes, everything simply falls together precisely and an extended moment becomes an event remembered forever. That was Raiders for me on that first viewing.

Raiders was made at a time when Spielberg could do no wrong, and a big part of the reason was that he was making films for his inner child. This was modern pulp cinema, the sort of thing that was serialized weekly in the 1930s and ‘40s. It’s filled with evil, adventure, buried treasure, bad guys, and a two-fisted hero who steps a little over the line when the situation warrants. Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones (Harrison Ford) is essentially Doc Savage with a fedora and a whip, and that’s what he’s supposed to be. That he’s also a respected professor of archaeology matters not at all (Doc Savage was a scholar, too). We true believers know that professor is just his day job. Dr. Jones is a professional adventurer, an “obtainer of rare antiquities.”

So there I was, 13 years old, popcorn and soda clutched in my teenaged fists. I’d heard a little about the film at this point, and I’m excited. After all, it’s not that many years since I had my geekdom defined and solidified by Star Wars. I knew enough about the tradition of pulps to expect some of what was coming—I’d read a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs at this point, so I knew there’d be crazy action and battling against great evil.

And then the film, the glorious film. In the first 15 minutes, our hero whips the gun out of a guy’s hand, breaks through diabolical traps with his doomed companion Satipo (Alfred Molina), recovers an ancient artifact, survives a double-cross, narrowly escapes certain death, is chased by a huge round boulder, gets the artifact stolen by his French adversary Belloq (Paul Freeman), is chased through the South American jungle by a tribe of natives, and escapes. This is what a geek boner looks like.

And then, it gets better.

The film centers around the Ark of the Covenant, the box that Moses put the pieces of the Ten Commandments in after he came down from Mount Horeb. American authorities have gotten wind that Hitler has designs on the Ark, since an army that marches behind it is invincible. Indy is the guy to get it, though, because his old mentor is named specifically in the cable as having a piece necessary for the Ark’s recovery.

What follows is the chase. Indy locates where his mentor was last seen and discovers instead his mentor’s daughter Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). She’s also an old flame, and the source of the falling out between Indy and his mentor, and this complicates matters. After a run-in with the Nazis, led by creepy Nazi sadist Toht (Ronald Lacey), she accompanies Jones to Egypt and the site of the dig. Here they meet Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), Jones’s friend. They discover the true resting place of the Ark, have massive fights in the Cairo market, and generally tear the place up before they are captured again, put into terrible situations, and more. Jones and Marion are trapped in a pit with snakes, and then there’s a fist fight around a burning airplane.

Eventually, the Nazis drive off with the Ark, and Jones pursues, leading to one of the greatest chase sequences ever filmed. Jones battles a group of Nazis, gets thrown off the front of the truck, crawls underneath, and ultimately drives off with the Ark in his possession. He and Marion sail off on a pirate freighter hired by Sallah, the Ark safely in the hold.

At this point, my 13-year-old self literally stood up and prepared to leave. I was completely unprepared for there to be another 20 minutes of movie that was easily as awesome as the first hour and a half. The first 90 minutes are so good that I felt like I’d gotten my money’s worth.

That’s the magic of this film—all of the action here fits into a package just under two hours long. That epic chase scene that I would have guessed lasts about 15 minutes is actually about seven or eight. Every part of that sequence is so good and so memorable, that my mind naturally expands it out to the length it would be in another film.

This is why I love it. It’s a giant rollercoaster and the hills never get smaller. Raiders is indelibly a part of American mythology and world culture. The soundtrack, the iconic look, the giant rolling stone, the guy in the market with the huge sword, even the warehouse at the end are all a part of the collective world consciousness and forever will be. Raiders is what an action movie ought to be, and every time I see it, I’m a 13-year-old kid having the best time he ever did in a movie theater.


On the other end of the film landscape is Juzo Itami’s Tampopo. As American as Raiders is, Tampopo is entirely Japanese. No one from another culture could make Tampopo, nor could the film be accurately remade without it changing drastically. It is a perfect marriage of time and culture, a unique artifact that would be much less made a year or two earlier or later, or from another cultural standpoint.

All cultures, of course, have a relationship with food, and this relationship varies from place to place and people to people. This relationship is what the film explores, both in the main story and in the short vignettes that pop up throughout the running time. Food plays a role in every scene in the movie. In this film, food is life, love, family, death, friendship, sex, and desire. Food is celebration and work. It is all consuming and all consumed.

Perhaps to demonstrate how food affects all things, Itami creates a cinematic onion for us. We first hear from a gangster (Koji Yakusho) who acknowledges that he is watching a movie just as we are watching him in a movie. Our scene then shifts to two men eating noodles. The old teacher instructs the young pupil on the proper technique for eating and enjoying a bowl of ramen. Then we discover that this is actually a book being read by a pair of truck drivers. They are made hungry by the story, so the stop at a little restaurant for a bite. The driver, Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and his assistant Gun (Ken Watanabe) just want a quiet bowl of noodles, but they get more than they bargain for. The owner of the place is Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), who is being harassed by Pisken (Rikiya Yasuoka). Pisken eventually starts a fight with Goro, who sleeps off the aftermath in the restaurant.

The next morning over breakfast, Goro and Gun inform Tampopo that her noodles are bad. The genius here is that they speak of the noodles as if they are pieces of art—they have a basic integrity, but lack guts. Tampopo begs the pair to help her. All she wants is to be a great noodle cook. Goro finally agrees, and this is the main plot of the film.

As the film goes on, we add more characters to Tampopo’s quest. Goro enlists an old doctor (Yoshi Kato), now a derelict. He leads a troupe of gourmet hobos, and is himself an expert in all things in the kitchen. The rescue of an old wealthy man in a restaurant adds Shohei (Kinzoh Sakura), who is both chauffer and noodle professional. Pisken, who is a building contractor, jumps in as well, after another fight with Goro.

Each man add his own part to the whole. While Goro helps Tampopo build herself into a great chef, the old doctor works on the soup. Shohei helps her figure out the best recipe for her noodles. Pisken handles the redesign of the shop into something that fits her smaller frame. Gun takes on her physical transformation from mousy widow into true noodle chef.

Through all of this, scenes that relate to Japan’s unique food culture appear and play out like little comic intermissions. Our gangster friend figures frequently, but many have no particular connection to the main story, except that food is always a central theme. Witness the group of executives ordering from a fancy restaurant, only to be upstaged by the most junior member. Witness the spaghetti eating lesson in which Japanese girls learn how to properly eat Italian noodles. They are copied incorrectly by the American businessman, and then copy him incorrectly in turn. Witness the dying mother rising one last time to cook food for her children before expiring.

In addition to celebrating food in all of its endless varieties, Tampopo has great fun with other film styles as well, gently and lovingly spoofing them. Tampopo’s reverie is clipped from virtually every classic Western, for instance, complete with the little kid running in and telling the homesteaders (Tampopo and Goro in this case) that the bad guys have arrived. The vignette with the money swindle is straight out of film noir, with little pancakes taking the role of femme fatale. The rice omelet cooking scene is silent comedy, and could have been done by Chaplin. These are loving and sweet spoofs, though, done with a wink and paying homage as much as they tease.

Tampopo is a love letter to food, but it’s also much more. It is a uniquely Japanese expression of what food means to all of us, from the rich to the poor. People die for a dinner, risk their lives for a special treat. They make a fetish of the textures and smells of food, and use it for both gastronomic and sexual pleasure. They risk offending their superiors, job loss, international incident, and loss of freedom for just one bite of a delicacy. Food is our first thought once we are born and our last thought before we die. Food is life. It is love, survival, meaning, and society. It is through food that we interact with others and the world. Food is everything.

I have watched this film over and over, and it never becomes old. It also never fails to make me ravenously hungry, particularly the rice omelet and the little pancake scene.

It’s also worth noting that even if this weren’t a completely engaging and lovable film, it would still be worth watching. Visually, it’s one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. The camera work is stunning throughout. Even with a static camera, Itami always gets the audience to look exactly where he wants through the blocking of the actors and color. Watch the scene in the train station, where your eye moves precisely where Itami tells it to go with Tampopo’s movement combined with the color of her dress and the banner. Note the scene at the start in Tampopo’s restaurant where Pisken and Goro are perfectly framed by Pisken’s thugs. These shots are things of beauty, just like the food.


For our third and final film in today’s triple feature, we get my favorite movie ever, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. I dearly love this movie. It is, I think the perfect film. It contains virtually every element I want in a film, and all as good as I could want them.

Our main player is Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), an advertising executive with a couple of failed marriages. He’s out for a drink with a few colleagues when he realizes he’s made a mistake. He’s got plans to meet his mother, but needs to contact her, so he pages a worker in the hotel bar to place his call. Unfortunately for him, that worker is looking for a man named Kaplan at the behest of a couple of shady characters. When Thornhill stands up, they assume he’s Kaplan, and they kidnap him.

They take him to the home of a man named Lester Townsend, who threatens Thornhill. Evidently, Townsend and his group of thugs believe that Thornhill is a spy sent to stop them in some nefarious dealings. Thornhill, of course, has no clue as to what is going on, and can’t help them. Townsend decides that since he won’t help, Thornhill needs to be disposed of, and he leaves the job to his associate, Leonard (Martin Landau). Leonard pumps our ad exec full of booze and sends him down the road to a fatal crash, but Thornhill takes the wheel instead and drives into a police car. A good amount of the humor in the film comes in this scene, where the blasted-out-of-his-mind Thornhill calls his mother and sings about being hammered on bourbon to the police.

Protesting his innocence, Thornhill discovers that things at the Townsend house are not what he thought. Everyone there seems to recognize him, and Lester Townsend is addressing the United Nations that morning. However, when Thornhill goes to find out what happened, he discovers a few important things. First, Lester Townsend at the UN is not the man he met the night before. Second, the real Lester Townsend is killed by a thrown knife, and now Thornhill is on the run, since it appears that he was the killer.

We also discover a few important clues that Thornhill doesn’t know. Kaplan isn’t real. He’s a fake secret agent following on the trail of a man named Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), who masqueraded as Townsend. Additionally, the government has an agent in place very near Vandamm, and nothing can be done for poor Mr. Thornhill.

What does happen, though, is that while escaping from New York on the train, Thornhill meets the lovely Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). She’s traveling alone…or is she? She’s the agent placed near Vandamm, and while she knows Thornhill is innocent, she also can’t blow her own cover. There’s a connection between Eve and Roger, which gives us a romantic element to our mistaken identity thriller. There’s a chemistry between them, and a lot of good innuendo.

And on and on it goes. We learn that Vandamm is a smuggler, and what he’s smuggling is microfilm to enemy governments. All Thornhill wants is to survive, and to run away with Eve if he can, but Eve is in mortal danger.

North by Northwest is filled with wonderful set pieces and scenes that will be around as things to study for as long as films are being made. Hitchcock could pull off long scenes where nothing happens, but tension increases constantly. The bus sequence is absolutely this. Told he will meet Kaplan at a country bus stop, Thornhill waits. Cars drive past and don’t stop. People show up and ignore him. A car pulls up and a man gets out, but he’s not Kaplan, either. Eventually, the bus comes and Kaplan still doesn’t arrive. All of this takes a long time, and while nothing really happens, by the end of the scene, the tension is palpable. The payoff is an attack from men armed with a machine gun attacking from a crop duster.

There are scenes like this throughout the film, and each one is a set piece of how to make a movie. The conclusion, which takes place on the faces of Mount Rushmore, is one of the great final scenes in history.

In my mind, North by Northwest is the perfect film. It’s exciting, interesting, and a little bit sexy. It’s also got a great plot, and was directed by one of the greatest stylists ever to touch a movie camera. Hitchcock made a lot of great films, and while I know that Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo get a lot more praise, this one stands as the top of the heap in my world. It has all of the elements I want in a movie. Even the soundtrack is great.

I’m not doing it justice, but I’m also not really trying. This is not a film to have spoiled on an Internet blog. You should go rent this and watch it, and you should do this in the next few days. Put it on your NetFlix queue, and when it shows up, make some popcorn and enjoy it.

If you can’t watch a Hitchcock movie without looking for the director’s cameo, he’s the guy who misses getting on the bus right at the end of the opening credits.

Why to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark: It’s one of the most culturally important American films of the last 50 years, and it’s awesome.
Why not to watch: You no longer are in touch with your inner child.

Why to watch Tampopo: It’s made of perfection.
Why not to watch: If you’re hungry when it starts, you’ll end up ravenous.

Why to watch North by Northwest: Because it’s the greatest movie ever made.
Why not to watch: Because you want to spoil my birthday.

How Much is One Man Worth?

Film: Saving Private Ryan
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.


There was a time in cinematic history when war movies followed a particular formula. The bad guys were very, very bad and the good guys were very, very good. In fact, in American war movies of the ‘40s and ‘50s, the Americans were generally heroic, never faltering in their unwavering ability to fulfill their duty against overwhelming and terrible odds. The good guys came out on top, and when they died, they died like men, fulfilling an objective, saving their fellow troops, or perhaps even turning the tide in a battle. In movies about World War II, there’d always be a guy from Brooklyn who wondered how the Dodgers were doing, and the minute a guy showed someone a picture of his girlfriend back home, he’d be killed.

Modern war movies have become far more realistic in that sense. In modern war films, people often die without it advancing the plot in a particular way. People die because they’re in a war, and that’s what happens in a war. People break down, cry, fall apart, and want their mothers. It may not be the sort of Boy’s Own adventure that war had always been depicted as, but it certainly seems much more believable.

This shift started in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I think, when films started to be made about the Vietnam War. Films like The Deerhunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon took the romance out of war films and made them into something terrible to behold. While these films started he trend, perhaps no film displays it more effectively than Saving Private Ryan, a film that in many ways remade the war film.

What people who have seen this film remember most about it is the long, terrible scene of the D-Day invasion. It is a scene impossible to describe in any detail save that it is all horrific. Men dying, limbs blown off, intestines on the ground next to them, carnage, blood. The most striking image is probably the man, his arm blown off at the elbow, picking up his missing hand and walking away with it, but the one that stays with me is of Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) picking up his helmet off the beach and pouring blood out of it before putting it back on. A number of combat veterans had flashbacks caused by this opening scene according to reports, and I believe it. It’s that intense and terrible. I’ve seen this film before, and it was this part that I was dreading.

From here we learn that in the D-Day invasion and previously, three young men named Ryan were killed. All three are brothers, and the fourth, Private James F. Ryan (Matt Damon) is at least potentially alive somewhere in France. It is imperative in the minds of the men running the American side of the war that Private Ryan be returned home, his family already having given so much to the cause.

To do this, Capt. Miller is rounded up and sent in search of Private Ryan, who dropped with the 101st Airborne, who were scattered over hill and yon in the French countryside. Going with Miller are his sergeant, Horvath (Tom Sizemore), Medic Irwin Wade (Giovanni Ribisi), and privates Mellish (Adam Goldberg), Jackson (Barry Pepper), Reiben (Edward Burns), and Caparzo (Vin Diesel). Additionally, since both of the translators in his squad were KIA in the invasion, accompanying the group is Cpl. Upham (Jeremy Davies), who has never been in combat, but speaks both French and German.

And this is your movie. After the short introduction of an old gentleman at the Arlington National Cemetery, we flashback to D-Day, and then it’s a manhunt in the French countryside. Of course, since much of this countryside is controlled by the Germans at this point, this is not a happy romp in the park. We learn a bit about the men as they search, and they encounter several pockets of German resistance along the way. At one point, Caparzo is killed attempting to rescue a child, and Wade is killed when the group attacks an enemy machine gun nest.

This is one of the key scenes. Reiben attempts to turn around and leave, since it wasn’t necessary for the squad to take out the machine gun nest, and it cost them their medic. Up to this point, one of the continuing threads is that no one knows much about Capt. Miller. To defuse the situation, he tells everyone where he’s from and what he did in civilian life. It’s also a key scene because it involves the capture of a German combatant, who pleads for his life. The entire squad wants to kill him because of the loss of Wade, adding to the tension in the scene.

Eventually (with a good hour left in the film, actually), the squad finds Ryan as part of a small group of under-manned and under-equipped soldiers holding one of two critical bridges. The Germans are mounting a counteroffensive to take the bridge and halt the Allied advance. Knowing this, Ryan refuses to leave, preferring instead to stay with his comrades who have fought alongside him up to this point. This sets up the counterpoint to the D-Day invasion, as the Germans roll in with several dozen infantry and a set of tanks.

It’s interesting to me to see the number of well-known actors who show up here for just a couple of minutes of screen time. For instance, Dennis Farina is in the film for a couple of minutes as the Lieutenant Colonel who gives Miller his mission. Paul Giamatti is in a couple of scenes as a sergeant in an advanced position (right around where Caparzo gets picked off). The Captain leading that group, Captain Hamill, is played by Ted Danson. Finally, and most amusing to me, is that when the squad finds the wrong Private Ryan (James Frederick Ryan from Minnesota instead of James Francis Ryan from Iowa), it’s Nathan Fillion from Firefly. Additionally, a glider pilot encountered by the squad is played by Leland Orser, who’s a “that guy” from a lot of films (most memorable to me as the guy wrapped in a blanket from the lust murder in Se7en). I like Leland Orser, and I’m a little smug that I can identify him.

Ultimately, the brutality of war is truly depicted here. There are plenty of senseless deaths, and every life is constantly on the line. We see men in combat as they truly are, and while there are heroics here, most of what we see in the combat sequences is men simply trying to stay alive by killing the other guys first. Upham, it turns out, acts like many of us probably would in combat and like none of us would want to—he breaks down completely—something we wouldn’t have seen in a film like this from three or four decades previous. Some of the deaths we witness close-up. Wade’s death is particularly terrible. He realizes where he’s been shot, asks for more morphine, and then asks for his mother before expiring. It’s wrenching, as are a few of the other deaths that happen on screen. These are probably best handled as spoilers.

***SAVING YOUR MOVIE EXPERIENCE***

We do see some deaths up close and personal, like Wade’s, and near the end, like Capt. Miller’s. He actually gets a death scene, grabbing Ryan and telling him to earn what has been done for him with the rest of his life. Other deaths are only implied. Jackson, in a bell tower acting as a sniper, is blown up by one of the German tanks. We see only the explosion, not him dying.

Of all of the deaths, the most terrible is Mellish’s. Fighting hand to hand with a German soldier, the German slowly inches a knife into Mellish’s chest.

The film ends with the return to Arlington, and we probably don’t really need to morph from Matt Damon’s face into the older version of Ryan at the end. We know at this point it’s Ryan. The only other survivors from the squad are the cowardly Upham and Reiben, who tried to leave earlier.

***RETURN TO COMBAT***

Despite the carnage and brutality here, there is certainly a nod to those earlier, propaganda-filled war pictures of yesteryear. When Ryan determines that he will not return until the bridge is reinforced, it’s Sgt. Horvath who essentially sums up the film, saying, “Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful, shitty mess.” Even in this terrible place, there’s still a sense of honor and nobility. And that’s something special.

Why to watch Saving Private Ryan: The most influential war movie of the last 20 years.
Why not to watch: Carnage, pure and simple. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

Keep Watching the Skies!

Film: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on itty bitty bedroom television

Everyone has specific movies that are important to them for one reason or another. Movies that we watch at a particular time in our lives or at a specific age become films that define not only who we are, but how we react to other films, stories, and media. Everyone has these films or television shows, or books. One of those films for me is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Is it one of the greatest films ever made? Perhaps. It’s not specifically one of my favorite movies of all time, but it certainly had a lasting impact on me and on the films that I tend to like. For my money, it has all of the aspects of films that I truly love. There’s enough scary to keep me interested and there’s a classic science fiction element that keeps me riveted in my seat. I saw this film originally when it was released in the theater just a couple of weeks after I turned 10, and about half a year after I saw Star Wars. And I was hooked, and still am on science fiction.

Traditional science fiction films depict aliens that visit Earth as terrible conquerors, or at least something that needs to be battled against. Close Encounters does the exact opposite of this, positing instead that the aliens are unknowable and mysterious, but not specifically hostile or dangerous. This mystery, though, does ramp up the scare factor.

It starts strangely, with the discovery of the airplanes from Flight 19, a famous training flight that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945. Among those discovering the planes are David Laughlin (Bob Balaban) and Claude Lacombe (influential director Francois Truffaut). Later in the film, this pair and others also discover a missing ship in the middle of the Gobi Desert.

On a more domestic front, parts of Indiana and Ohio are plagued by alien sightings. In particular, the home of Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) suffers through a fly-by that turns on all of the electronic equipment. Jillian’s young son Barry (Cary Guffey) runs out of the house because of the lights, but he’s not scared. He’s attracted to them. At the same time, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who works for the electric company, has an encounter with alien spacecraft of his own. These folks meet when Roy chases the mysterious lights and almost runs down Barry with his truck.

After this encounter, Roy and Jillian are plagued by visions of a large mountain-like structure, as well as a series of five musical tones. Roy begins to see the shape everywhere, and his obsession with the things in the sky above him cause him to lose his job as well as his relationship with his wife (Terri Garr) and kids. Another encounter with the aliens causes Barry to walk out of his house and vanish.

When a news story breaks about a terrible nerve gas leak in Wyoming, Roy, Jillian, and evidently dozens of others see what they’ve had visions of: Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. The government converges on the site, the scientists converge on the site, and so do dozens of ordinary people, compelled by the vision of the site in their heads. And for better or worse, something else is converging on Devil’s Tower as well.

Close Encounters has a subtle magic to it. It’s actually a fairly slow movie in many ways. Only a few scenes really have anything happening, and the end of the film goes on for a very long time with some very long shots.

While there’s a lot to love here, it’s the vision here that I love most. There’s something very special about a film that manages to take a fairly standard fiction trope (aliens visiting our planet) and does something original and unique with it. It’s happy science fiction; it’s optimistic rather than defeatist or pessimistic. The evil here comes from our own government, which is a common theme with Spielberg.

It’s worth noting that at this point in his career, despite the fact that he had only a couple of films under his belt, he was able to convince no less a luminary than Francois Truffaut to not only appear in his film, but appear in a major, significant role. I like Truffaut’s films, and I like him here. He seems like such a sweet guy. Whether that’s the role or the man, I find him to be a positive presence in this film, and it would be much less without him.

Close Encounters is all about the mystery and all about the wonder. The last scene lasts forever, and the film is good enough that you’ll never notice that the scene doesn’t change and the set doesn’t change for a good half hour or so. That’s masterful filmmaking. The suspense continues to build until it can no longer be contained, and everything is finally revealed in some of the most memorable and important sequences in science fiction film history.

Damn, I like this movie.

Why to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Science fiction as good as it can be without all of the dystopia.
Why not to watch: Well, there’s that whole lack of dystopia thing.

baaaa-DUM! baaaa-DUM!

Film: Jaws
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.


The other day, I talked about Yasujiro Ozu’s last film as the capstone to his career. But, just as every director makes a final film, so too does every director have an early career. Many of the greatest directors in history have an early period littered with low budgets, bad acting, cheap sets, and the best they can do with virtually no money. And then there’s Spielberg. With a few television episodes, a made-for-TV movie (Duel), and another film to his credit, he made Jaws. Freakin’ Jaws! And just to show people he was ready to smack the film industry around and call it his bitch for the rest of his damn life, he made one of the scariest movies anyone has ever seen and still got the thing through the censors with a PG rating. That’s right, folks; a movie that induces piss-your-bed nightmares and makes me glad I live in a landlocked state is cleared for viewing if mommy and daddy say so.

To make things more impressive, the pay off special effect of the film—the giant man-eating shark—didn’t work. The thing was consistently broken or malfunctioning, meaning he couldn’t use it as much as he wanted. So what did he do? He made it work anyway, because Steven Spielberg has balls the size of goddam Volkswagen Beetles.

You’ve probably seen this movie, but I realize that there are people in the world who haven’t. So here’s the story. A former New York cop named Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) has agreed to become the new police chief of Amity Island, a resort town on the New England coast. Brody doesn’t like the water, doesn’t like living on an island, but running herd on a bunch of drunk tourists and townies has to be easier than chasing down drug dealers, right?

Sadly, this year a massive great white shark has decided that the waters off Amity is a restaurant and has just opened for business. A late night swimmer is killed by the creature, although no one sees it happen. While Brody wants to close the beaches, the town’s mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) doesn’t want to do anything that might endanger the town’s survival or the flow of needed summer dollars. Then, a young boy is killed just off the beach in the middle of the day, right in front of most of the town.

It’s here that we are introduced to the other two important characters in this film. Sam Quint (Robert Shaw) is a local fisherman, who tells the town council that he’ll catch the shark for a fee of $10,000. Additionally, the local oceanographic institute sends a researcher named Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to investigate the attacks, and his preliminary investigation of the remains of the first victim indicates that, to quote him, it wasn’t a boat propeller, a coral reef, or Jack the Ripper, but a shark.

You know how it’s going to end up, though, right? Quint, Brody, and Hooper end up on Quint’s boat out on the water hunting the giant critter and trying desperately not to get eaten in the process. That’s what movies are made of, folks: adventure on the high seas and not getting eaten.

Everything about this movie works from the opening underwater sequence and the first attack on the first victim through to the last moments as the credits start to roll. Brody has a genuine relationship with his wife, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), who is as supportive of her husband as she can be while worrying desperately that the fool errand he goes on is misguided bravery. She may feel like a throwaway character, since she doesn’t get a massive amount of screen time, but for me, she’s one of the things that grounds the film in reality. It would be easy to make her a cardboard cutout, but she isn’t.

These are real people. After a shark is caught off the beach and Brody is confronted by the mother of little boy who was killed, Hooper goes to visit the Brodys. Martin is slowly getting himself drunk and opens a bottle of red wine and slowly pours himself a huge tumbler, then pours regular wine glasses for Hooper and his wife. It’s a real reaction, and it makes Brody real in that moment.

There are too many great moments in this film to mention them all. Hooper’s investigation of Ben Gardner’s boat, the two fishermen throwing a roast off the dock, Quint’s speech about the USS Indianapolis, it all works. Additionally, as with any truly scary movie, it’s not just a bunch of scares laced together. There are moments of comedy throughout, and even a few moments of sweetness. The cutest is when Brody is slowly drinking himself into oblivion and his young son is imitating his movements.

Spielberg is smart with his camera, too. A number of the shots before and during the shark attacks have the camera at the water level, sometimes moving the microphone under and over the water to catch snippets of sound. One of the greatest shots of all time occurs as the Kitner boy is attacked—Spielberg simultaneously pulls back and zooms on the horrified face of Chief Brody in what feels like a moment of vertigo.

This is a rare instance for a film as well; it’s better than the book. I read Benchley’s novel a number of years ago. While the book is certainly exciting, it also contains (in my opinion), quite a bit of unnecessary crap like Ellen Brody having an affair with Hooper. It seemed like pure, worthless titillation to me. The movie cuts through a lot of this crap and goes right for the meat of the story, concentrating on the shark and on the three men who hunt it down. Incidentally, Benchley makes an appearance in the film—he’s the reporter on the beach on the 4th of July.

It also doesn't hurt that it has one of the greatest soundtracks ever conceived by mortal man.

As Hooper says, the shark in this film is a miracle of evolution. All it does is swim, eat, and make little sharks. All Spielberg does here is film and make people scared of the water.

Why to watch Jaws: Even 35 years after it was made, it hasn’t aged a day.
Why not to watch: You’ll have to learn to take your vacations in the mountains.