Reviews
Psycho (1998)
Waste of celluloid
Someone, anyone, should have stopped before they had moved a muscle towards the production of this movie, and asked themselves, "How can I improve upon a masterpiece?" Answer: you can't. So why bother? Psycho (1998) is pointless and badly botched in many ways. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
1) The virtually shot-by-shot remake keeps all of the anachronisms inherent in the original screenplay. Not that the screenplay was anachronistic in 1960, but it is now, 40 yrs. later. Would a single girl driving by herself sleep all night on the side of the road? More than likely, if someone sneaks into a bathroom trying to kill someone in the shower today, she pulls out a gun and shoots him dead. Goodbye, Norman. Psycho preyed on the fears of '50's America; '90's America is very different. It would not have been impossible to have pulled a remake of Psycho off, but it would have to be updated.
2) Gus van Sant is not the director to do this job. Was Craven, Sam Raimi maybe, but not Gus van Sant. He specializes in quirky, character studies, and Psycho needs outsized , almost melodramatic emotional punch. Besides, Psycho has already been successfully updated and remade - 1978's Halloween, by John Carpenter.
3) The casting is all wrong. Vince Vaughn just comes across as creepy, something Anthony Perkins never did. Perkins performance was definitive and dogged him his whole career. It's impossible to improve upon. Anne Heche is also wrong, she's pixieish, lacking the carnality and voluptuousness Janet Leigh brought to the role. She wouldn't get anybody's juices flowing, even a lonely loser like Norman Bates.
4) There's a scene where Norman is watching Marion through the hole in the wall. Wrong. Norman represses his sexual urges; if he had release, he wouldn't have to call on mother to blow off steam. There's an additional scene where Marion's sister is going through Norman's room. Again, wrong. Norman is not a pervert or creepy, he's got much bigger problems than that.
5) One of the rationales given for this remake is that today's audiences want to see it in color. Hitchcock could have made the movie in color too, but thought black and white suited the dark material better. As usual, Hitchcock was right.
Avoid this stinker, and rent the original. Hitchcock's genius puts almost every director working today to shame, and it shows in every frame.
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
No babe in the woods
"What the pig says, goes," intones Babe's new friend, a pitt bull who enforces this new decree with all the subtlety of a goodfella. In order for a movie to get away with that sort of line, it has to be firmly in the realm of magic realism, and Babe: Pig in the City, is just that. This movie is another in a long list of very good animated and semi-animated films (i.e. Small Soldiers) that has come out in the last few years. It solidifies my theory that animated movies and T.V. shows are better than most live-action ones. Babe: Pig in the City isn't animated, and maybe not even semi-animated, although there are enough special effects in this movie that one could make a case that it is, but I discuss it in this context because most people think animated movies, and kids' movies, are actually for kids. Nothing could be farther from the truth; many so-called kids movies are family movies in the sense that adults will enjoy them too.
I mention this because there has been talk that Babe:Pig in the City is too dark for kids. There are scenes that might be too intense for very young kids, but the movie isn't intended for the very young. Neither was the first Babe movie. These movies are for grownups, darn it, talking animals or not!
That said, see this movie. It's not quite as good as the original, but the vision and imagination behind it is as good. The story revolves around Mrs. Hoggett and Babe having to go to the city to make money and save the farm. The city, however, is no place for these country bumpkins, and Babe must rely on his generous and giving heart for survival. The movie introduces a new raft of animal characters - cats practicing arias, dogs with paralyzed back legs who get around with a cart, and my favorite, world-weary circus chimpanzees and a too cool for life oranguatan. If these guys don't soften your heart, nothing will. The special effects are superb, you are transported to a city of cities, every city of the world melded into one. And a simple story of a pig with a higher sense of morality than most humans. Shame on us.
Small Soldiers (1998)
a small thin red line
Small Soldiers, with its numerous inside jokes and references to other movies, shamelessly invites comparisons with other movies. It has been compared to Toy Story, for obvious reasons, and Gremlins, an affinity aided by the fact that Joe Dante is the director of both Small Soldiers and Gremlins. I'm going to compare it to a movie most wouldn't think of comparing it to - Starship Troopers.
I make that comparison because both Small Soldiers and Starship Troopers have a violent, ironic understructure its intended audience is going to miss. Let me clarify. Starship Troopers was a sci-fi action movie, with lots of blood and gore. It also had a vaguely Nazian, militaristic backdrop which was supposed to be satirical and ironic (look at all the pretty people marching off to their gung-ho death!) But the intended audience, teenagers, are not going to get that joke. Most teenagers couldn't you tell the years WWII were waged, never mind get the totalitarian overtones. Small Soldiers does the same thing - it offers a satire on militarism and violence, but the targeted audience of little kids is not going to get it. All they're going to see are dismembered dolls, life-threatening attacks on adults, and a lot of scary "gunfire" and fireballs. This movie isn't appropriate for little kids at all.
That's not to say it isn't any good, just deceptive. Older kids, and adults with a touch of kid left in them, will enjoy it. The plot revolves around toys that come to life, and adjust and learn from life, because of an advanced computer chip rejected by the military (James Cameron, where are you?) The movie does a nice reversal by making the G.I.Joe - type good guys the bad guys, and the Gargonites, the ugly enemy, the good guys. They have to quit being losers and fight for themselves, and who can't relate to that? The plot is archetypal but solid, its fun, and the special effects are really good, by the inimitable Stan Winston. But its intensity and its targeted audience are way out of whack. But this movie will help accomplish one thing - the death of the idea that animated, and partially animated, movies are just for kids.
The Siege (1998)
thoughtful, provocative... but still fails
The Siege is a movie that can fool you. It is well acted, with the likes of Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Tony Shalhoub (who's a looong ways from Wings here) strutting their bad self, well directed by Edward Zwick (who's best film to date is Courage Under Fire), and at least tries to intertwine an action/thriller plot with a literate script. At first blush, she's smart and sexy.
But there are problems underneath the heavy makeup. The movie is a fantasy that explores the question of what might happen if Arab terrorists went wild in a major American city, in this case New York (obviously getting its inspiration from the Trade Center bombing). The movie wants it both ways - it wants the tension and action of fighting terrorist action on the street, but doesn't want to be anti-Arab. The movie makes constant references as to how most immigrants from Arab countries just want to be regular Americans, and has a huge crowd of people taking to the streets in support of Arabs being detained in internment camps by the Army. The Army, and its overzealous general, William Deveareax (Bruce Willis) is introduced in the last third of the movie as a sort of straw man. Suddenly they are the villains, trampling ordinary citizens' civil rights, as opposed to the terrorists, who are just killing people 600 at a time.
This is where the movie wants its cake and eat it too (to mix metaphors with the one I alluded to earlier). If it's Arab terrorists committing these heinous acts, then there's bound to be anti-Arab sentiment. That's the name of the game. I don't know what's worse - the inconsistency of The Siege, or the cartoon bad guys of True Lies. At least in True Lies it was impossible to take the Arab bad guys seriously; they were meant to be funny. The Siege could have been about the struggle between civil liberties and protection from terrorism in a democracy. But it's not. It's a thriller, it's about catching the bad guys. So the movie shuffles out all the usual technical gadgets, spy wizardry, news footage, etc, which is supposed to impress the viewer but confuses him instead. This is a very busy film, there's not enough time to let a development sink in before we are onto the next one. For a better movie on government abuse of power and technology, check out Enemy of the State.
(Just as a footnote, a very interesting idea is introduced along the lines of the CIA (and hence Americans) paying the price for its dirty work overseas. For don't kid yourself, the American government has a lot of blood on its hands. Now that would make for an interesting movie).
Blade (1998)
A palatable offering of Snipes and dice
Blade is everything Spawn wanted to be and wasn't. While Spawn was a loud, obnoxious, incoherent mess that should have stayed in Hell with its erstwhile hero, Blade is a relatively subdued (it's nice to actually hear the soundtrack), stylish, well-directed movie that actually tries to build empathy and pathos into the characters. While both are adaptations from comic-books, only one is a page-turner.
Blade, or Eric as his mom calls him, but which superhero would command respect with the name Eric, is half-man, half-vampire, made so by his mother, who survived a vampire attack long enough to give birth to him. This gives Blade a certain edge in his understandable grudge against vampires, "all of our strengths and none of our weaknesses" as his main vampire nemesis attests. The aforementioned nemesis is Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) who wants to unleash a vampire apocalypse on the world, decrying the Mafia-type approach that has served vampires so well up to this point - "humans are our food, not our allies," he explains. Blade is aided by his mentor/weapons specialist Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) and a female hematologist he rescued, Karen. Her expertise lends her to both create anti-vampire blood, and a possible cure for Blade that would make him fully human again. Although one gets the sense that Blade's fate isn't entirely tragic. He relishes kicking vampire butt.
The movie Blade succeeds for two reasons. It's technically polished, with good acting, excellent directing and production design, and awesome special effects - the way the vampires turn to skeletons and blow away like dried parchment when they die is way cool. There are three accomplished action sequences, the opening party scene which Blade inconveniently crashes, a brush with death on a subway, and the final conflict, with some special effects I can say, as a movie seasoned veteran, I've never seen before. The second reason is that Blade understands the inherent pull of the vampire myth. Vampirism represents a life given to sin, essentially. They are sensual creatures, dependent on flesh and blood for survival, shirking the light, and yet eternal, like evil fleshly lusts the Bible warns about. Vampires are not tragic, like Interview with a Vampire would have you believe, but fun, cool, and sexy. That's their power. Is not sin sexy? why would it be tempting otherwise? Vampires are cool because they live in sin without paying its consequences - death. But for that reason, they are the enemy and must die. For sin is, in the final analysis, bad. This essential good/evil conflict must be there for this type of story to work. Spawn had neither this nor the technical excellence Blade has, which is why it sucks so bad. Blade reminded me of another good vampire movie, Bram Stoker's Dracula, by Francis Ford Coppola. They would make good companion pieces on video.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Slash and burn
Halloween H20 doesn't even come close to replicating the magic of the original. Its only value lies in the promise that, due to its ending, there will finally be an end to this dreadful series (excluding the brilliant original, of course). There is a bitter irony in the recent renaissance of horror movies; the phenomenon began because of the success of the two Scream movies, but those same Scream movies, with their post-modern, self-referential comment on horror movies, have made straightforward horror movies obsolete. Yet all we're getting is straightforward slasher-type horror movies. Given Kevin Williamson's virtual monopoly on the recent glut of horror movies, I'm led to think the only reason he's making so many is to give work to a new stable of young hot stars, who will owe their careers to him, thereby giving him control of a great proportion of Hollywood 10-15 years down the road. Hey, there's a good idea for a horror movie! Remember, you heard it here first.
Halloween H20's plot revolves around the return of Michael Myers, after 20 years! to haunt his sister Laurie Strode, now underground after faking her death and changing her name to Keri Tate. Michael Myers is sure in good shape considering he must be approaching late middle age, he must be an aerobics instructor between periodic forays into knife-wielding madness. The return of Jamie Lee Curtis as a struggling alcoholic, tightly wound, overprotective mother is actually a good idea. She does a good job in her role.
The problem lies on the side of evil. When you look at the first Halloween movie, you will see that Michael Myers is not just a slasher - he represents metaphysical evil. He works like real evil works, ie, he lurks in the background, waiting for his opportunity to pounce on human vulnerabilities and times of weakness. Real tension is built by his omnipotent presence, by real evil, not fake jumps and false starts, like H20 uses all the time. Plus, the movie uses Michael Myers like a regular slasher, but who can't be killed. But he can't be both; he must either be a human being who can be killed, or figurative in a sense, like in the first movie. Hence H20 is contradictory to its own premise, and further hence, loses all real tension. The movie also doesn't spend enough time building to its climatic finale, we're there before things even get started, it seems, so there's no sense of tragedy either. I can only wonder what Wes Craven could do with this material. He's the only one who knows what to do with the horror genre. I would recommend seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street again, and watch for the sense of tragedy. It's there.
Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)
Blitzed by Donner again!
Lethal Weapon 4 is a definite improvement on the third installment in this formidable franchise, but doesn't capture the magic of the first two films. The reason for this admittedly superficial accomplishment is because ALL action movies live and die by their villains, and LW4 offers a thrilling villain by the name of Jet Li, a martial arts expert out of Hong Kong. His presence immediately corkscrews the fear and loathing needed to really hate the bad guys, seeing as how, you know, its so hard to tell them apart from the good guys.
The plot involves Asian ganglords who illegally import slave labor, are forging Chinese banknotes to buy back members of an Asian triad, yada yada yada, the plot is barely coherent and mostly unnecessary in a movie like this anyways. It's always been style over substance in this series, and by this point director Richard Donner (who's done all four pictures), could do this in his sleep. The secret to this series' longevity is the amazing repoire between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, who have created one of the most dynamic cop pairings ever. Their incessant banter has the feel of genuine friendship and spontaneity - you can't tell me its all from the script. These characters are so woven into their being they don't even need to slip into them, they ARE them, and that ease of embellishment creates an audience empathy no script could ever do.
Also aiding the effort is the return of Joe Pesci as Leo, Rene Russo as Gibson's love interest, plus a new member, Chris Rock, as another detective whose name Riggs and Murtaugh can never remember, and who is bound to have a complicated relationship with Murtaugh. There is enough human interest in this movie to flesh out these characters, along with the usual spectacular chase sequences and fights. The movie is funny, silly, and ridiculous, but if you don't mind being entertained on a strictly superficial level, you'll enjoy Letal Weapon 4.
The Faculty (1998)
Skip this school lesson!
The Faculty is a retread of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers; or to be more specific, it's a combination of The Breakfast Club and The Thing (1982). To its only credit, at least it explicitly acknowledges this. Hollywood's stupidity never ceases to amaze me; the whole reason horror movies died out in the first place was because of exploitative, unimaginative, money-grabbing movies like this one.
Here is its fundamental problem. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers' central idea is the sanctity of the individual over repression and conformity (written and made in the '50's, read American democracy over Soviet totalitarianism). Freedom beats central planning and control. Good idea. Except by 1998, this idea is hardly fresh. It needs to be tweaked. So The Faculty should have gone one of two ways - either satire, or ultra-serious, into tragedy. Instead, it plays like a straightforward action movie, with all the requisite cliches. Not only is this boring, its directed in a pedestrian way by Robert Rodriguez, who has done nothing of worth since El Mariachi. Kevin Williamson should also be ashamed, maybe Dawson's Creek is taking up too much of his time. Avoid this stinker.
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Dreamworks does not equal spiritual works
The Prince of Egypt is brilliantly animated, but it will be very difficult for Dreamworks to sell a cartoon for adults in an already overcrowded animated movie market. It is a rare animated movie that appeals both to kids and adults, but The Prince of Egypt, by sticking relatively faithfully to the biblical story on which it is based, doesn't even try. It's a movie for adults. No singing camels, no cute furry creatures, no Robin Williams. And Pharaoh thought the plagues were rough.
I like and recommend this movie; four scenes in particular stick out in my mind. The opening 8-minute song sequence, a brilliant hieroglyphic montage detailing the Egyptian genocide of Israelite children, the 10 plague sequence, and of course the parting of the Red Sea are all superb. But the movie suffers from the conundrum all biblically based movies do. The Bible is first and foremost a spiritual document; moralizing is its whole point. Film is essentially a visual/ sensual medium. Nary the twain shall meet, Ingmar Bergman movies excepted. So to make The Prince of Egypt entertaining, its makers have emphasized the Moses/Pharoah conflict, turning it into a brotherly and familial battle. No matter its attention to details, this is essentially to miss the point.
The movie also drags in the middle because it spends a lot of time with Moses in Midian, where he spent 40 yrs. after killing the Egyptian. The movie spends more time there than the Bible does, so it's unnecessary. Personally, I think the movie should have emphasized the repression and then freedom of the Israelite nation as a whole more, the central conflict revolving around culture and not family. One critic rightly said that this movie, in posterity, is likely to be admired more than loved.
A Bug's Life (1998)
Don't squish this bug!
It is truly a sad state of affairs in the entertainment industry when the best TV shows and movies are if not animated then at least have the characteristics of cartoons (see The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Buffy, Antz, Mulan...). A Bug's Life is another excellent addition to this unique canon. It is made by Pixar, the company that made the even better Toy Story a couple of years ago. This film rides that finicky edge between appealing to kids and adults alike, a task notoriously difficult to accomplish. A Bug's Life showcases brilliant computer animation with a time-tested Seven Samurai story - young man must leave home to redeem himself, brings back friends, becomes a hero and changes the community for the better. Classic. Adults, don't be afraid to go see this movie. And stick around for the end of the credits; it's worth it.
The Negotiator (1998)
Palatable thriller
High priced stars + high concept = mediocre box office seems to be the Hollywood formula for (un)success these days. Thank goodness for video and foreign box office. These last two, coincidentally, is the market Hollywood's big budget movies are made for. This must be the case, because the studio's trip over themselves in their efforts to give A-list movie stars astronomical salaries knowing full well these said stars do not guarantee big box office. The movie star system does not work; given the extremely inconsistent quality of movies that come out these days, everyone knows a movie with their favorite actor in it is no guarantee that it will be any good. The studio system is meant to support the star system, not challenge it.
I say this because the only reason to see The Negotiator is Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey star in it. At least that is what the studio releasing the film would have you believe, and people seem to be buying this notion, proclaiming the brilliance of the acting in the movie. Personally, I think they chew the scenery something fierce; it's just that they are polished and charismatic enough to overact, wink at the audience about how they're overacting, and get away with it.
But even these good actors' best efforts can't conceal the glaring holes in the plot. It involves Samuel L. Jackson as Danny Roman, a top notch hostage negotiator set up for murder, who then takes hostages! to prove his innocence, enlisting the aid of another top notch negotiator,Chris Sabian (Spacey) to help him. Although the set-up is so lame no-one in their right mind would believe it. Although no negotiator could be as bad as Farley (he's only there to make Jackson look good). Although no-one would assume Roman actually killed the cop he took hostage. And how did Sabian sneak Roman out of the barricaded area? And so on and so on... Still, the movie tries to be fun and exciting without insulting our intelligence too much, which is saying something these days. And if you like enough close-ups to count the hairs in Samuel L. Jackson's nose, this is the movie for you.
Budbringeren (1997)
Bring me a Bud and I'll be happy
Junk Mail is a Norweigan movie, and it is as black a comedy as I've seen. But the makers of the movie have stumbled onto a comedic truth that never fails: take an aberrant character trait, and take it to the absolute limit. The lead character is a mailman of monstrously incompetent proportions, a creepy, irredemiably snoopy individual who can't even get mugged right; he would gladly have handed over his mailbag, but he couldn't get it off his shoulder. In the process of sneaking around a deaf girl's apartment whom he fancies, he saves her life after she tries to commit suicide. For this guy, this uncharacteristically unselfish act sets off a disastrous chain of events. This weird movie will NOT work for you if you don't think it's funny. And this movie will only be funny for you to the degree that you're cynical and capricious in your affections. People of good heart, stay away.
Pleasantville (1998)
Technically proficient but simplistic
Pleasantville has been favorably compared to The Truman Show, which premiered earlier this year. However, I feel Pleasantville doesn't hold a candle to The Truman Show. While Truman offered genuine pathos, a sympathetic, even heroic lead, and insight into the intrusive nature of television, Pleasantville is overlong, repetitive, simplistic, and hollow.
The plot of Pleasantville has two modern-day teen-agers being magically transported to a fictional T.V. show set in the '50's, called Pleasantville (by no less a character than Don Knotts, the movie's only inspired idea). The boy, played by Toby Maguire, likes it there - it's a nice respite from his family problems, which includes his sister, played by Reese Witherspoon. She is transported with her brother, but feels she has entered Nerdville, and so sets out to change her surroundings to something she is more familiar with, something with a more 90's sensibility, like, say with...sex?
This is actually an interesting premise, especially since the 50's world is in black and white, and only gradually introduced to color. Unfortunately, the movie takes a black and white attitude in its morality too, hammering the same point home over and over again. I think the movie is basically saying the 50's was a time of stifling conformity, dull and unimaginative culture, and in the end, threatening and oppressive patriarchy. The 90's, on the other hand, offers ultruistic freedom, better values, and color! to life.
Please! One could make a better argument that the 90's offers moral decay and fear, as evidenced by broken families, teenage pregnancy, violence, and general cynicism towards all authority. The film takes the logically dubious step of taking 50's sitcom sensibility and making it the reality of that time. Just ask how 90's sitcoms accurately reflect 90's reality. One could defend the movie by saying that it is not making a literal 50's - 90's comparison, but is making the more general point that freedom is better than confromity. This is a truism and doesn't need over two hours to justify, and besides, the movie is taking that comparison seriously. The audience shouldn't.
Halloween (1978)
Genuinely deserves the name of classic
It is Halloween, 1998, and I have just seen the movie Halloween again for the sixth time. As the character of Linda in the movie would say, "I totally love this movie!" The repeated viewings have allowed me to see where the movie's power really lies. I have narrowed it down to two things: one, the movie taps into many of our subconscious fears; two, it is technically brilliantly executed. On the first point: 1) The boogeyman. A relentless killer who cannot be stopped. He is like The Thing (the movie that plays on the TV in the background), an alien creature who cannot be reasoned with, who you cannot hide from. He is the kitchen knife-wielding Terminator, and he could represent any fear that has a hold on you. 2) The threatened Suburbia. Adults work all their lives to create a safe haven to raise kids - only to disappear when the real danger lurks. This also taps into the missing parent fear. 3) Sin. As one character in Scream accurately points out, sin must be punished. It is the morality buried deep within all horror movies. 4) The Dark. Darkness represents evil. The Devil always comes out at night, and the scariest thing about haunted houses (the Myers house) is the unknown - the unknown of darkness, the unknown of how such evil could have occurred there. The unknown is a powerful force for obedience. On the second point: 1) Camerawork. John Carpenter uses a roving, restless camera to good effect, the movie has a realistic street feel to it. This applies to characters as well. 2) Foreground composition. You never know where the killer is at any given moment. He's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Until it's too late.
On a movie buff note, watch for all the parallels to Hitchcock's Psycho, a movie which has spawned more imitators than virtually any other.
Zero Effect (1998)
Offbeat, intelligent character study
When we first meet Daryl Zero (Bill Pullman), the brilliant Nero Wolfe-esque private detective at the heart of Zero Effect, he is jumping on the top of his bed singing a horrible rendition of yet another of his horrible homespun country songs. "it's good, really good," his faithful assistant and footman Steve Arlo(Ben Stiller) says. Despite Daryl Zero's genius, he can't see through this lie. Arlo is bringing before his reclusive, paranoid employer another difficult case, this one involving a millionaire businessman, a lost set of keys, blackmail, and a treasure trove of family secrets.
For some reason, Zero decides to solve the case personally, and more importantly, outside his well-guarded home. In the process of discovering clues and evidence, he meets a girl. A very special girl, in fact, who is as good at intuiting him as vice versa. To give away too much would spoil the movie; suffice to say she is central to both plot and character development.
The film is written and directed by Jake Kasdan, and it's an auspicious debut. It's very well-written, with a complicated but never overwhelming mystery as its narrative drive. The characters are three dimensional and unpredictable. By the end of the movie, you really care about these characters. Watch also for a very good comic performance by Ben Stiller. It won't get all the attention, but it's sly and understated.
Snake Eyes (1998)
Initially promising but ultimately disappointing thriller
Snake Eyes opens with a brilliant 12-minute tracking shot, ostensively one long unedited scene. In this sequence we learn everything we need to know about our hero, played by Nicolas Cage. He is a highly energetic and corrupt Atlantic City cop - "it's a sewer, but it's my sewer." It's fight night, and there are a number of dignitaries in the crowd. Included in this select group is the Minister of Defense, guarded by a good friend of Nic's, played by Gary Sinese.
It isn't long before the Minister of Defense is dead, and Nic's cover-up machine kicks in. But who is really guilty here? Who's the blonde, and who's the redhead? Will our hero ultimately stay in character, or will his conscience win over?
Brian De Palma should do well by this material. He's a veteran of thrillers with a number of good ones under his belt (see Blow Out, Body Double, Carrie). But this movie loses steam about halfway through. A cliched and perfectly predictable plot sets in, the Nicolas Cage character loses his energy, and the finale in the rain makes no sense. To add insult to injury, the movie tacks on a half-hearted happy ending. Rent the aformentioned movies instead.
Shichinin no samurai (1954)
Emotionally resonant masterpiece
They just don't come any better than The Seven Samurai. If I was forced to name my favorite movie of all time, this would be it. The story is set in medieval Japan, where warlords ruled the country and villages are left at their mercy. One village decides to do something about this; they will hire samurai warriors to protect their goods and their lives, for harvesting season is just around the corner. They don't have much to offer the samurai - just food and a roof, actually. They manage to attain seven samurai for this foolhardy plan (five, really, two aren't official samurai warriors). The rest of the film details the misadventures of this motley group of people as they must quickly coalesce into a team to defeat the nasty warlords. The film is amazingly able to bring together many different genres to make a coherent whole. It is an adventure/action movie, funny, romantic, and genuinely insightful of human nature all at the same time. It is filled with brilliant images; director Kurasawa was a master of cinema, one of only a handful of directors born to make movies (see his Ran, Kagemusha, and The Hidden Fortress, for example). It is also a deeply moving portrait of human love and sacrifice; these samurai do what they do for the sake of ideals and a reality beyond their selfish desires. A must-see of international cinema.
Chinatown (1974)
A film-noir masterpiece
Chinatown is the only film-noir movie I've seen that uses sunlight ironically. If film-noir by definition deals with dark subject matter, what's all the brilliant sunlight for? Robert Towne's script is a perfect assemblage of complexity and coherence; the plot twists are never misleading and add to the story, not detract from it. Director Polanski was also lucky enough to catch Jack Nicholson in his prime; he is perfectly cast as slimy and yet vulnerable Jack Gittes. Faye Dunaway is also superb. She was in her prime too, with Bonnie and Clyde behind and Network yet to come. There is genius in not showing Chinatown (the place) until the end of the movie; it represents the idea that all dirty secrets reveal their tragic consequences only after a miserable and dogged search for truth. A must-see for true film buffs.
Andrey Rublyov (1966)
A Demanding but rewarding movie
Andrei Rublev is a profoundly difficult but ultimately rewarding movie; good things come to those who wait. The film follows the travails of a monk by the name of Andrei Rublev in 16th century Russia. Andrei and his fellow religious practitioners face every kind of trial and tribulation known to man - sexual temptation, war, sorcery, starvation, and corruption. The film ends, after 3 hours of black and white, in an explosion of color. They are icons, pictures of saints, long outlasting the destructions of sin and despair. The film's last shots are of horses in a field, seen through rain-drenched lens. I don't know what that last shot means, but it's beautiful. The film is suffused with beautiful shot after beautiful shot. Director Tarkovsky was born to make movies (see My Name is Ivan and Stalker). The film also makes no concessions to the viewer; I found that the best way to keep track of what was going on was the follow intently the character of Andre Rublev. Ask what is he doing in that scene, and what is he going through. Overall, a moving, spiritual experience.
Ronin (1998)
Better-than-average suspense thriller
How I miss a good car chase scene! There are only a few candidates for masterful car chase scenes (see Bullitt, The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A). You can add Ronin to the list. There is an extremely well-executed car chase scene set in the narrow streets of Paris. Apparently director Frankenheimer genuinely had his actors roaring through said streets; it shows, you can't fake those facial reactions.
Beyond that, the script is exciting and coherent (if barely), and the actors are up to the task, although Robert De Niro reminded me way too much of his character in the movie Heat (an even better suspense-thriller, by the way). All one asks from an action movie is that it doesn't break the "pact of plausibility." The plot doesn't have to be realistic, it just has to be plausible. Beyond the fact that these characters are able to shoot up the French countryside and still hang out in coffee shops afterwards, this movie accomplishes that.