Off Script: Dementia 13

Film: Dementia 13
Format: DVD from LaSalle Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

Roger Corman might be known for low-budget schlock, but you have to hand it to the man: he was if nothing else a great judge of directorial talent. Among his protégés is the great Francis Ford Coppola, a man who in many ways defined American film in the 1970s. Corman gave Coppola his start, and a large part of that start came in the film Dementia 13. Coppola punched out a short script over three days and filmed using the same sets and actors as another of Corman’s films provided he could do things on the cheap and work around Corman’s shooting schedule.

The result of those constraints gives us a film that shows a good deal of ambition but also shows all of the strings and gaps of needing to work on the quick with actors involved in another film. Personally, I find it interesting to see the work of a director best known for feats of cinematic brilliance like The Godfather Trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation making a film that hints on the supernatural and involving an axe murderer and a woman swimming in her lingerie. There’s something wonderfully lurid about it.

Retread

Film: Peggy Sue Got Married
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

What do you get when you take almost everything fun from Back to the Future and replace it with Nicolas Cage sporting a pompadour? What do you get when you take the concept of time travelling back to the 1950s/1960s and replace the directorial style of Robert Zemeckis with that of Francis Ford Coppola? You get Peggy Sue Got Married, a film that feels like a retread 20 minutes in and not in any good way. The concept behind the film is sound enough but aside from a couple of points, the concept is pretty much all it has.

Peggy Sue Bodell (Kathleen Turner) is stuck in a life she doesn’t like on the night of her 25th high school reunion. She married her high school sweetheart Charlie Bodell (Nicolas Cage) who went on to own a discount electronics store complete with crazy late-night television ads. He also turned out to be a frequent adulterer, which is the main reason he and Peggy Sue are getting a divorce. Peggy Sue attends the reunion without him, running into old friends Carol (Catherine Hicks) and Maddie (Joan Allen) as well as others from her past including high school nerd turned inventor Richard (Barry Miller) and local dentist Walter Getz (Jim Carrey). For some reason, the reunion elects a king and queen—Richard and Peggy Sue in this case—and shortly after the crown is put on her head, Peggy Sue collapses on stage.

Three's Not Always a Charm

Film: The Godfather Part III
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I can’t say it was with a great deal of relish that I decided on The Godfather Part III today. I’ve seen this one before. I’ve mentioned in the past that while I think the first two Godfather films deserve their reputation, I almost never feel like watching them. With the third installment, I’ve never really felt much desire to revisit it at all. But it is on the Oscars list, and like it or not, I had to get to it eventually. Going in, I remember thinking of this as the least of the three Godfather films, but also as being better than its reputation.

It is, of course, the continuing story of the Corleone family, and more specifically the continuing saga of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), who took over the family business at the end of the first movie. The main thrust of the film, at least at the beginning, is Michael’s attempt to recover his reputation from years as the head of a large and powerful Mafia family. As much as he can, Michael has gone straight, but he still has deep ties to the family, having turned over his criminal interests to a man named Joey Zasa (Joe Mantenga).

Joseph Conrad

Film: Apocalypse Now; Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players (Apocalypse); DVD from NetFlix on laptop (Hearts).

It’s not easy to write about Apocalypse Now because so much has already been written about it. I’ll come clean at the start here and say that I think it’s the best Vietnam War film ever made and one of the best war films in general. When I was younger, I’d have picked Full Metal Jacket. FMJ is underrated—the opening half is so good that people forget just how solid the second half is. But Apocalypse Now is the full package. It conveys not only the battlefield of the war, but the mental landscape as well. It’s as much a physical depiction of the war as it is an emotional reaction to it.

Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has returned to Saigon after rotating back to the U.S. following his first tour. He spends a week in a hotel room slowly going crazy until he is given an assignment. His mission is to commandeer a boat and take it up river into Cambodia and take out a man named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has gone off the rails from the more standard operating procedure of the U.S. military. Accompanying him on this mission are the crew of his boat: Chief (Albert Hall), who wants to keep his men safe and make it back; “Chef” Hicks (Frederic Forrest), a New Orleans saucier who really just wants to make food; “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne), a young kid who possibly lied about his age to join the military; and Lance Johnson (Sam Bottoms), a world-class surfer-turned-sailor.

To the Mattresses

Films: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.


If you are older than 15, you’ve probably seen both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. My wife has not seen either of these films and doesn’t really have a lot of interest in them. That makes her one of about five adults in the world who have never seen these movies.

With that in mind, I’m going to guess that the chances are very good that, male or female, you’ve seen these movies, so I’m not going to delve into plot here much beyond the very basics. There are plenty of places both on the Internet and elsewhere you can discover summaries of these films. And really, since the combined length of the films is over six hours, even a cursory summary here will have me typing for the next hour.

Suffice it to say that The Godfather is the story of the Corleone crime family. Specifically, we have Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), who took the name when he arrived in America in the early part of the century. His last name is actually the name of the town he grew up in, and it was given to him by one of the immigration officials. Vito has four children: Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale), Connie ( Talia Shire), and Michael (Al Pacino). Sonny is to be the next boss, and is hot-blooded and uncontrollable. Fredo is weak and not very bright. Connie is wild and spoiled. Michael is the family pride. He is to be kept out of the business so that he can be respectable.

A war starts between the Corleone family and the other crime families in New York based on the drug trade—Vito wants no part of it because it’s dirty. This leads to an assassination attempt on him, one that he survives. The war continues, significantly in that Michael enters into the conflict as an active participant despite the fact that he has always been a civilian—untouchable because he is a war hero and not a part of the criminal enterprises.

Of course, things don’t work out the way Vito Corleone planned, as Michael becomes more and more embroiled in family business, eventually ending up in charge of the family.


The sequel picks up several years after the original film stops. We also get a number of flash backs to the early oughts and the early pre-crime life of Corleone (played here by Robert De Niro). Corleone is poor, and loses his job to a crime boss in New York. When he turns to crime and is forced to give up some of his take to the boss, Vito plots to kill him and does so, leading to his eventual respect in the neighborhood and his life of crime as the head of a major syndicate, all of which is covered in the first film.

This film also concerns the continued criminal career of Michael and his role in charge of the family. Michael has learned to become ruthless, and acts in the way to best further the aims of himself and his people, despite promises to turn the family’s businesses legitimate he makes to his wife, Kay (Diane Keaton). This story is much more about Michael’s consolidation of power as the head of the family and his own maneuverings made under the tutelage of his father.

Both films are really about Michael. The first concerns his entry into the family business as the one sibling most untouched by the life of crime originally. It’s important that his entry into the criminal world is voluntary—he makes it himself rather than by force from someone else, and this dominates every decision he makes from that point forward. While the second film does include the back story of Vito Corleone, it is also Michael’s film. His efforts to make the family business legitimate come to nothing, and he can do nothing to leave the life of crime he has entered, and soon no longer has a desire to do so.

These are sprawling films filled with death and pain. They also feature tremendous casts. In addition to the people above, Robert Duvall plays Tom Hagen, the family lawyer and all but adopted son. Other roles are played by Bruno Kirby, Lee Strasberg, Troy Donohue, Abe Vigoda, Harry Dean Stanton, Danny Aiello, Sterling Hayden, and more.

It may be that The Godfather films glamorize the Mafia and the criminal life despite their bleakness. Glamorized or not, these films are tremendous portraits of the people in them. All of their stories are tragic and unhappy, and while I find it difficult to really like them, there is still a great deal of empathy for them. There is cruelty throughout, and pain, and very little that happens here is good in any sense of the word.

But it is brilliant. Both of these films won Oscars for Best Picture; the second was the first sequel to do so. The third, considered by most people to be the poor stepchild of the bunch, was nominated. It is the worst of the lot, but is still good—but suffers in comparison with the first two films. It’s hard to be the third film following two of the greatest films ever made.

Which is better? Hard to say. They are both exemplary films, evidence of Coppola’s skill at that point in his career. If you’ve never seen them, spend a day with them and allow yourself to become engrossed in them. They are worth it.

Why to watch The Godfather: Movies don’t get much better.
Why not to watch: There is no reason to not watch this film.

Why to watch The Godfather Part II: It has everything.
Why not to watch: Few films glamorize the idea of the mob more than this film.

Doomed Love

Film: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, La Captive (The Captive)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (both films).

With the wild, and to my mind unexplainable, success of Twilight, one might well ask when vampires became wimpy romantic pussies. It’s a fair question, really. Vampires were the stuff of nightmare and legend until what seems like 90% of the young female population decided that necrophilia was sexy. Certainly there has always been a romantic element to the vampire, a sense of doom and fatalism that seems to please the true romantic. The original pussified vampire usually gets placed firmly on the shoulders of Anne Rice and Interview with the Vampire. That may well be correct, but there’s certainly some indication in my mind that things started a little earlier, with Coppola’s version of the Dracula story.

Dracula, more commonly referred to as Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in many ways a classic retelling of the original Stoker tale with some significant additions. The film starts, for instance, with a telling of how the film version of Vlad the Impaler became a creature of the night. Historically, of course, Vlad Tepes was a monster who enjoyed, well, impaling people on pikes. Here, he starts as a great defender of the church, but when a false report of his death causes his love to kill herself and thus doom her soul for all eternity, he swears vengeance on God. He stabs the cross in the church, causing a flood of blood, which he then drinks, presumably turning him into a vampire.

From here, it switches to the more traditional narrative of the original story. A firm in London has been contacted by an obscure Count in Transylvania with a desire to purchase ten properties. The original agent sent to close the deal, Renfield (the awesome Tom Waits), went loopy and now resides in an insane asylum in London, where he obsesses over blood and eats insects. The company sends a new agent named Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to close the deal. Because of the trip, Harker has to put his wedding plans on hold. His bride-to-be, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder before she went all kleptomaniacal) understands the importance of the trip, but is sad at having to wait for that sweet, sweet, Keanu lovin’. Harker arrives in the Carpathians to encounter Count Dracula (Gary Oldman).

At this point, you probably already know the story. Harker is trapped in Dracula’s castle while the Count leaves, forcing him to return to London while the game is already afoot. Mina, it turns out, is the image of the doomed and dead love from hundreds of years earlier. Dracula pursues Mina, and does so initially through her friend Lucy (Sadie Frost). Harker is assisted by several men who believe his story—predominantly Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), Dr. Jack Seward (Richard Grant), Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), and the American adventurer Quincey P. Morris (Bill Campbell).

All of these people are more fully entwined than it might at first appear. Holmwood, Seward, and Morris, for instance, are all greatly interested in Lucy, who ultimately decides on Lord Holmwood, which reduces Seward’s effectiveness as he slips into morphine addiction. Seward runs the insane asylum where Renfield is imprisoned. And, of course, Dracula becomes a figure of interest because of his foreign strangeness and unnatural charm and charisma.

Because the story is so familiar, at least in part, to many, going further into the tale here doesn’t really warrant much space. However, if the only Dracula you know is the cinematic version(s), there are a number of aspects of this film that may take you by surprise. The reason Coppola called the film what he did is that he sticks pretty closely to Stoker’s original story, even mimicking the use of diary and journal entries for much of his narration. Since the book is written entirely as journal entries, letters, and newspaper accounts, this was a nice nod to the style in which the story was originally told. There are differences. Mina is far more willing as a victim here than she is in Stoker’s work, for instance, and there’s far less of a chase around London to find all of Dracula’s hiding places. The final chase back to Transylvania is much faster here as well. And the Hollywood ending doesn’t track to the book, either.

Because the story is at least vaguely familiar to almost everyone, the things worth paying attention to here are not the story elements, but what Coppola and crew brought to the story. There are some interesting visual effects throughout. Coppola does a lot with shadows and light, as befits the story being told. Frequently, for instance, Dracula’s shadow moves when he does not. The shadow, in fact, frequently depicts Dracula’s mood or desire. Subtle at first, this becomes an increasingly disturbing aspect of the film, and it works brilliantly throughout. Gravity works backwards in some places in Dracula’s castle on some objects—water drops float up and mice crawl on the underside of beams. Small differences like this set up the more disturbing elements of the film. The small changes make the big changes more acceptable.

This is also a more sexually charged Dracula film than most. While many have a hint of the erotic about them, Bram Stoker’s Dracula goes full-bore in this regard. There’s substantial nudity (Dracula’s brides and Lucy in particular), and substantial eroticism. Interestingly, the eroticism is frequently of a disturbing, necrophilic, sado-masochistic nature.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a visual feast, beautiful and terrible to see, and more than most vampire movies, trades on its lush visuals to keep the audience in the seat. I like much of this film, but could have happily lived without Keanu Reeves in the role of a British clerk. Coppola couldn’t find a young, talented Brit for the role? We had to have Ted Logan? Regardless, I appreciate this film because it does what many horror films don’t even attempt to do. Rather than going for the straight gross-out, Bram Stoker’s Dracula attempts real, creeping fear, the look-over-your-shoulder-because-something’s-gonna-getcha-style of fear that is so rare when it happens and so worthwhile when it does.

La Captive (The Captive) does not involve vampires in any way, but does contain some of the same basic themes as Dracula. In it, we find unhealthy obsession, love, and a sense of fatalism that, as I said earlier, seems to attract the romantic in many ways. Here, instead of love from beyond the grave, we have simple obsession of one man for a woman.

The film uses part of Marcel Proust’s massive Remembrance of Things Past for its plot. We spend our time primarily with Simon (Stanislas Merhar), a rich, dissolute young man, and Ariane (Sylvie Testud), his fiancée. Simon suspects Sylvie of some vague type of infidelity, at least at first. As the film progresses, what we discover is that Simon is actually obsessed with this woman, and wants to essentially know everything there is to know about her. His lack of anything better to do with his time causes him to focus strictly on her.

As the story continues, it several things become evident. First, Simon’s behavior is due less to suspicions of Ariane than it is his own paranoia and particular oddness. And he is odd. In terms of sex, he demands that Ariane be completely passive, even pretending to be asleep, for him to have anything like a positive experience. Simon’s suspicions of Ariane’s actual identity as a lesbian with her friend Andree (Olivia Bonamy) is confirmed in his mind when her answers to his incessant questions remain vague. In truth, it’s likely that she’s just trying to keep her own privacy. As he descends further and further into paranoia and suspicion, the relationship becomes increasingly strained and reaches a final breaking point.

All of this sounds great, doesn’t it? Based strictly on the plot, the film comes across like a modern version of Play Misty for Me. Sadly, the execution falls far short of the promise created by the story.

Bluntly, I blame Chantal Akerman. My first glimpse into the film world of Akerman was the eternal and astonishingly dull Jeanne Dielman, that was three hours of boredom, a couple minutes of sex and death, and then eight more minutes of boredom. I’m always willing to give a director a second chance on things, but I’m really starting to think that unless she appears a third time on this list, I’m not going to give her a third chance.

While Akerman definitely has an artistic component to her work, she also seems to actively dislike her audience. Nothing happens. It’s almost like she is daring people to sit through her films, daring them to like them. The film is aggressively dull, and is an improvement on the huge time sink that is Jeanne Dielman only because it’s considerably shorter.

I don’t mind languorous parts of films, or long takes in which little happens. One of my favorite movie scenes ever is the bus stop scene from North by Northwest in which little happens, but tension builds continuously. There are a number of long takes in The Spirit of the Beehive that I found beautiful and moving despite the lack of action. The reason for this is that both films have established themselves enough that the action in those scenes is internal, and we know our characters well enough that we can follow the internal action.

The same cannot be said for these characters. They are little more than mannequins from my perspective, and these long, slow, dull shots contain no internal action because we have not been made privy to the internal desires and actions of the characters. It’s frustrating to watch people sit and stare at each other when we have no clue what’s going on inside their heads. To use these shots, a filmmaker needs to give the audience enough that the internal action can be followed. We don’t get that here.

I am, perhaps, being too harsh. Initially at least there is a sense of suspense and tension, but it’s held for far too long for the amount of information we are given. I don’t care about any of the people in this film, and so I don’t care if they are in peril or are upset or aren’t getting what they want.

Chantal Akerman is zero for two as far as I can see. On a final note, Akerman has a weird sex hang-up. In both of the movies I've seen of hers, women get no pleasure from sex, either because the men are too selfish or are paying for the sex in the first place. If Akerman was a guy, the general reaction would be that he needed to get laid. I'd say the same thing here, but then Akerman's horde of feminist fans would come and gut me like a game fish.

Why to watch Bram Stoker’s Dracula: An attempt at real horror that sometimes works, and (finally), a more faithful adaptation of the book that inspires all vampire stories.
Why not to watch: Duuuude…whoa…vampires…and a sappy ending.

Why to watch La Captive: A modernized version of a classic tale.
Why not to watch: Not a damn thing happens until the end. Again.

Sounds Like Conspiracy

Films: Das Leben der Andern (The Lives of Others), The Conversation
Format: DVD from DeKalb public library (Lives), DVD from personal collection(Conversation), both on laptop.


Unless completely avoidable, I don’t really want to add politics into this blog, but there are times when it will undoubtedly be necessary to bring them up. The first of today’s films makes the discussion of politics inevitable, since it concerns itself with socialism and communism. I suppose that by the end of this entry you’ll be aware of what my stance is, which probably can’t be helped. When I write, I’m something of an open book.

Das Leben der Andern (The Lives of Others) is a drama set in East Germany about half a dozen years or so before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country. East Germany at the time was full under the sway of socialism, and more specifically communism. The reality of this means that many people—anyone suspicious and most artists and similar creative types—are under surveillance at all times by the Stasi, the East German secret police/KGB equivalent.

We spend the bulk of the film with two main characters. The first, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), works for the Stasi doing surveillance of people suspected of thinking, acting, or otherwise working against the East German government. He is soon made aware of the only author not currently being watched, a playwright named Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). Dreyman is not being watched despite his influence (he’s even read in the West), because it is evident in his writing that he truly believes in the socialist state.

Despite this, Wiesler is put under watch by Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme). Wiesler spends days essentially living his life through what he observes in Dreyman’s apartment through bugs and phone taps. He discovers several important things. First, Dreyman truly does believe in the socialist state. He is not hiding subversive thoughts or tendencies, and his plays really do support the ideas he holds true to. Second, Wiesler discovers that the relationship between Dreyman and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck) is intimate and passionate. Third, and most disturbing, he discovers that Minister Hempf desires Christa-Maria for himself, and wants Wiesler to frame Dreyman so she will be freed up and forced into a relationship with him. When Dreyman does start doing something that the Stasi isn’t happy with, Wiesler must make an even more difficult decision regarding his actions.

What we have, then, is a crisis of conscience for Hauptmann Wiesler. Does he do what he is asked by his superior, going against his ideals of communism, or does he disobey his orders, putting himself in jeopardy by remaining true to what he believes is right? This question could easily be asked in any other setting, and is frequently asked in film. What makes this film compelling and worth watching is the setting itself because it is so unfamiliar to us. Just as much at question here beyond Wiesler’s actions is in fact the morality of the surveillance itself. Many will claim that the current political administration is doing exactly this—moving us more and more toward socialism and this sort of oppression. It’s worth reminding those people that it was the previous administration that allowed for warrantless wiretaps—essentially the kind of surveillance occurring in the East Germany of this film.

The question is not really the legality of the surveillance or the oppression it implies. Rather, the real question here is the abuse of power and where this constant surveillance leads. Anyone—the East German Stasi or the American politicians who defended the practice of wiretapping as required for the protection of the American people—can justify whatever they wish. What they cannot justify is that such information can and always will be used not for the good of the state, but for the private gain of those in possessing it.

Ulrich Muhe owns this film. His expression rarely, if ever, changes throughout the film, and yet he conveys a great deal of emotion with his face throughout the film. Years of living and working under the state machinery have left him appearing passive, a facial expression George Orwell describes in 1984 as a sort of benign optimism as a facial neutral. And yet, through that expressionlessness, Muhe shows a great deal of longing, pain, and desire. He wants to be needed and loved, his position prevents that sort of emotional attachment, and so the desire burns in him just barely visible under the surface. It’s easy to show longing. It’s difficult to show that much passion while pretending to be emotionless.

I did guess how the film would end, but only moments before the actual event. While I did predict accurately, this in no way reduced the power or the poignancy of that ending. At the risk of sounding trite, the ending is uplifting and beautiful.


Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation works with the same themes and ideas, or, since this film is a good three decades older, it blazed a trail into the lives of surveillance people that was furthered by Das Leben der Andern. Unlike the later film, this one takes place in the U.S., and doesn’t involve any government agents.

We start with what looks like Union Square. We see people milling around, music playing, and folks having a good time in general. As the camera pans around, we seem to be focusing on a couple walking aimlessly. We catch some of their conversation, but other pieces are broken up by what seems to be electronic interference. It soon becomes evident someone is taping them. Their conversation is being recorded from multiple positions around the park. The couple is Ann (Cindy Williams) and Marc (Frederic Forrest).

We are also soon introduced to Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), who is in charge of getting this recording for his mysterious employer. Harry is a sound expert, and makes most of his living doing surreptitious surveillance as a freelancer. He doesn’t concern himself too much with what he’s recording as long as he gets the entire conversation he’s being paid for. Perhaps because of the nature of his expertise, Harry is exceedingly private, not letting anyone in too close to him. This manifests itself in something that goes further than bordering on paranoia. When he finds a birthday gift in his apartment after the taping session, he calls the gift giver not to say thank you, but to find out how she bypassed his locks and alarm system.

The next day, we see Harry at work in his lab. He takes each of the different recordings of the conversation from the park and plays them back, making a master recording, carefully mixing out any other noise and background static, switching from one mike to another depending on the quality of each recording. As he does this, we get a flashback to the park and the locations of the different mikes, getting more of the conversation this time. This is a recurring theme throughout the film. As we get deeper and deeper into the plot, this conversation is played again and again, each time with a different meaning. It’s made apparent that the woman in the conversation is the wife of the man who hired Harry, and the other man is evidently her lover. This more than anything convinces Harry that something bad is going to happen to the two of them.

When Caul refuses to turn over the tapes to the assistant of the man who employed him (the assistant is played by a very young Harrison Ford; the director is played by an uncredited Robert Duvall), things start to get stranger. Harry is convinced that the two people he recorded are in danger. This causes real problems for him, because it is revealed that he was once involved in a similar situation on the East Coast, a situation that resulted in the deaths of two people. It was this that caused Harry to become the paranoid recluse he is, refusing to tell anything to anyone, hiding himself even from his girlfriend, Amy (Teri Garr).

It’s a fascinating world that is portrayed here, a private and disturbing little hell that Harry Caul lives in. Aside from his saxophone playing, the only thing he is really good at is surveillance, but the jobs are starting to tear him apart with guilt. As he gets deeper and deeper into the recording in question, his paranoia increases, and is pushed still further by the presence of another recording expert (Allen Garfield) who appears to be moving his operations from Detroit to San Francisco, which is Caul’s territory. This competitor makes a move at hiring Harry’s assistant Stan (John Cazale), further pushing Harry into paranoia. The end, the last 20 minutes or so, are absolutely shattering to Harry's psyche.

It is perhaps not too strange that in both films, the men in charge of getting information about other people are themselves obsessed with keeping their own private lives as private as possible. Perhaps it is the nature of the business, perhaps it is something about knowing exactly how vulnerable other people are at moments they believe are private but really aren’t. Whatever it is, these men live in a world where the only things more precious than the secrets of other people are their own secrets.

A few noteworthy things here—this film feels completely out of character for Cindy Williams, who is most famous for being the second half of Laverne and Shirley. She made a name for herself through most of her career in light comedy and other comedic fare, but here she is deadly serious. Interesting to think of what tracks her career could have taken if she’d found more roles like this one. Second, it’s a very different side of Gene Hackman. I typically think of him in both charismatic and bombastic roles: the coach in Hoosiers, the sheriff in Unforgiven, and of course Popeye Doyle in both French Connection films. Here he is socially inept, quiet, almost mildly autistic. If you think he didn’t have range as an actor, this movie will show you different.

Why to watch Das Leben der Andern: A familiar dilemma given a fascinating setting and characters.
Why not to watch: You’ll want to check your light switches and outlets for bugs.

Why to watch The Conversation: A fascinating descent into paranoia.
Why not to watch: It’s entirely possible that paranoia is communicable through film.