Chariots of Fire: Hugh Hudson

Hugh Hudson's Chariots of Fire was recently re-released in Great Britain in honor of the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games. After all, the film, which follows two athletes at the 1924 Olympics, is considered by many to be a timeless classic of English cinema. Much like Gotta Fly Now from Rocky (1976), its main theme has become synonymous for victory and triumph over adversity. Both central characters overcome great odds and obstacles to compete in the Olympics. Eric Liddell is a devout Scottish Christian who plans on doing missionary work in China. However, Liddell wants to postpone his trip in order to pursue competitive running. He feels in the depths of his soul that running is his way of glorifying God. However things get complicated when he discovers that he is scheduled to compete at the Olypmics on the Sabbath. What is Liddell to do? Break God's laws to glorify Him? The other main character, Harold Abrahams, is a Jew who faces persecution at the University of Cambridge. Running is a way for him to gain respect from those who hate him. But after an early defeat, can Abrahams pull himself back together and win? Hudson does a magnificent job balancing both stories together into a cohesive narrative. It is refreshing to see such a modern film tackle the subject of faith so boldly and earnestly. However, the film seems to end rather quickly, thereby stunting its catharsis. But that's only my opinion. Chariots of Fire is still a classic. It is truly a treasure of a film.

8/10

The Black Sleep: Reginald Le Borg

Many horror films from the 1950s haven't aged well. Reginald Le Borg's The Black Sleep is not one of them. Despite its age, The Black Sleep scared me on a primitive, basic level. It exploits two very basic yet powerful fears. The first is that of biological deformity and sickness. The second is of medical professionals, i.e. people we trust with our very lives, betraying and abusing our bodies. The Black Sleep follows Sir Joel Cadman, a prominent surgeon whose wife falls ill with a fatal brain tumor. He has a gypsy kidnap people so he can use them in "experiments" that he hopes will unlock the secret to saving her life. He does so with the use of an Indian anesthetic, Nind Andhera, which puts the patient into a death-like sleep. Once he has cut and explored their brains, he locks them up in a dungeon in a perverse gallery of medical horrors. I was stunned by the graphic surgery scenes in The Black Sleep. Some of them, particularly one shot where a still-living cerebellum is split open, would warrant an R-rating by today's standards. And yet, despite its graphic violence, the film doesn't rely on it. The film revels in atmosphere and character drama. The cast is full of horror veterans who deliver magnificent performances, including Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson. I personally cannot believe that I have never heard of this film before. It deserves to be enshrined as a horror classic.

9/10

Gorgo: Eugène Lourié

So here's a film that examines something I would never have dreamed of: a giant, Godzilla-esque monster destroying London. I guess that giant monsters have been so thoroughly engrained in my subconscious as a Japanese phenomenon that the thought of them popping up anywhere else in the world seemed ludicrous. But Eugène Lourié proved the folly of that assumption when he directed Gorgo. Not only is Gorgo a decent entry in the pantheon of giant monsters, it features some surprisingly excellent special effects. The plot, however, is mind-numbingly cliche even by giant monster movie standards: a giant monster is found, captured, taken to a zoo, and displayed for the public's amusement. And, surprise surprise, it is discovered that the captured monster is only a baby! And right on cue the mother shows up, annihilates London, rescues her baby, and both escape into the sea. But what of the scenes where the mother wreaks havoc, you might ask. I can honestly say that the destruction sequence, the keynote of any giant monster film, is one of the finest that I have ever witnessed. Although, to be fair, there are a number of shots where it is very obvious that falling debris was superimposed over pre-existing footage instead of using fake debris during production. But that is merely a nitpick. I would still recommend Gorgo for any fan of giant monster movies.

6/10

The Artist: Michel Hazanavicius

Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist is a loving, intelligent homage to Hollywood silent cinema. Every frame drips with pure affection for the cinema as an art form and for its ability to change lives. It follows the careers of two Hollywood stars during the rise of the "talkies." The first is George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a dashing leading man in the same vein as Rudolph Valentino (obviously the character's namesake) and Clark Gable. Valentin is the king of Hollywood whose films dominate the box office. But one day his studio announces that they will no longer make silent films. This enrages Valentin who refuses to make the leap to sound cinema. At this same moment, a young woman named Peppy Miller quickly becomes Hollywood's next big thing. How tragic it must be for Valentin to watch his life collapse as Miller's takes off, especially considering the fact that Valentin was responsible for her big break in Hollywood. From there, the film takes its cues from silent melodramas. Valentin goes broke, tries to commit suicide, and Miller saves him, revealing that she has always been his biggest fan. There's more to the plot than that, but that should give the general gist of the film. But where this film shines is in its references to classic films (using Vertigo's music), actors (the aforementioned Valentino reference), directors (one of the director's names is a homage to Otto Preminger), and studios ("Kinograph"). But The Artist does more than just pay tribute to silent films. It also manages to utilize techniques from silent films and integrate them into modern day film language. Is it a perfect copy of a classic silent film? No. But I don't think it was ever supposed to be. And you know what? That's quite alright with me.

8/10

The Deadly Bees: Freddie Francis

When it comes to assorted creatures and creepy-crawlies that would make excellent horror movie villains, you can't get much better than bees. They're loud, they move in large swarms, and even at their regular size are responsible for many deaths every year. So why can't anyone seem to make a good horror movie about them? The best bee-related horror film that I can think of is Candyman (1992). And even in that film the bees aren't even the main villain! If I had to guess why it is seemingly impossible to make a good bee horror movie, it would be that the sight of people getting attacked by bees is always, without exception, hilarious (And, yes, I say this as someone who has been attacked by bees.). But the sight of people dying via bee attack is not the only reason why Freddie Francis' The Deadly Bees doesn't work. The film, which follows an exhausted pop singer who moves to a cottage in the country to recuperate, is completely devoid of suspense. The cottage is owned by a beekeeper named Ralph Hargrove who, unbeknownst to anyone else, has managed to isolate the human fear pheromone. He then goes about murdering people by secretly exposing them to the pheromone which, for some reason, causes the bees to savagely attack and kill them. Even though the screenplay was written by Robert Bloch, the man who also wrote the novel that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was based on, the film is dead on arrival. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that maybe Ralph the beekeeper has something to do with the killer bees. Oh well...maybe one day bees will get the horror movie that they deserve.

5/10

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Benh Zeitlin

Something magical happened to me today. About 3/4 of the way through Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, a thunderstorm started outside the theater. However, at that same moment, a storm was brewing onscreen. The two storms escalated in tandem with the sound of the outside rain matching the downpour inside. And then, suddenly, the power went out. It was only at that moment that I realized that there was a storm outside. Life had become art and art had become life. But such is the power of Beasts of the Southern Wild. Zeitlin's film follows a six year old girl named Hushpuppy who lives with her father, Wink, in "the Bathtub," a Southern bayou that is slowly being swallowed up by water. One day a mighty storm comes and sinks the Bathtub. Hushpuppy and her father join together with the rest of the survivors to rebuild their homes. Beasts of the Southern Wild exists somewhere between the warm humanism of Jean Renoir and magical realism. Giant beasts haunt the bayou and threaten to gobble Hushpuppy and her family up. Are they real? Are they imaginary? Does it really matter? At the heart of Beasts of the Southern Wild is the relationship between Hushpuppy and Wink. Zeitlin avoids the usual cliches of father-daughter relationships that plague most films. The result is one of the most believable and touching portrayals of familial ties this side of the Atlantic and Pacific. The entire film was shot on 16mm film stock. As a result, the film takes on a grainy, mystical aura that re-enforces the suggestion of magic. And yet despite the special effects and unexplainable creatures, Beasts of the Southern Wild stings with a realism unparalleled by Hollywood films. When I left the theater I felt that I had witnessed something special, something truly precious. Can you imagine how surprised I was to discover that outside the theater the thunderstorm had flooded the parking lot, turning it into my own personal Bathtub? As Hushpuppy says, we're all just a small part of a very big universe. How thankful I am for such serendipitous coincidences. They are worth their weight in gold. Or, at the very least, their weight in crayfish.

10/10

Rio Lobo: Howard Hawks

Few directors have had such a massive and long-lasting impact on the Western genre as Howard Hawks. He directed some of the genre's most enduring masterpieces like Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). So maybe it was appropriate that his last film would also be a Western. Working one last time with the legendary John Wayne, Hawks directed Rio Lobo, a film that was despised upon release. Many of my film buffs friends share in that sentiment. I suppose it is due to the fact that it is always compared with Rio Bravo. After all, Rio Lobo is considered to be the third part of a trilogy of Westerns that follow sheriffs defending their towns against outlaws. Rio Bravo happened to be the first film in that trilogy. So Rio Lobo will forever be in that film's shadow. But I can't understand why people don't like this film based on its own merits. It may not be a masterpiece, but Rio Lobo is still a fantastic Western. The film follows Col. Cord McNally (Wayne) as he hunts down a pair of Union traitors. During the Civil War, the two had illegally traded military secrets with the Confederacy. One of these instances involved the schedule of a train delivering gold for Union salaries. When the Confederacy robbed the train (in a spectacular sequence), they accidentally killed one of McNally's best friends. With the war over, McNally sets out to find the traitors who inadvertently killed his friend. He discovers that the two traitors have taken over a town and are extorting its citizens for their land deeds. Joining McNally in his quest for vengeance, he teams up with many of the same Confederate soldiers who robbed the train in the first place. This leads to one of the film's most memorable and fascinating moments where McNally explains that he holds no ill will to the Confederate troops. After all, he reasons, robbing the train was an act of war. But those two Union traitors committed treason. And that is a very different matter. In the end, Rio Lobo is a fine Western. I don't care what anybody else says.

7/10

Nazis at the Center of the Earth: Joseph Lawson

I knew that eventually I would have to dive into the world of The Asylum. One of the most notorious modern film studios, The Asylum exists to create low-budget, direct-to-video schlock fests. They gained special notoriety for their contributions to the "remakesploitaiton" genre where they would make films with similar plots and titles to major Hollywood blockbusters. So, finally, I decided to give one of their movies a try. And, really, how could you expect me not watch a film with a title as absurd as Nazis at the Center of the Earth? All you really need to know about this film is that a bunch of scientists in the Antarctic discover a passageway to the center of the earth that contains a secret Nazi base. Oh, and the Nazi base is led by Dr. Josef Mengele. And Mengele is trying to create mecha-Hitler. And he succeeds. And he does so by using stem cells from the unborn fetus of one of the scientists who happens to be pregnant. Yeah. This is kind of a weird movie. The entire film is in incredibly poor taste. But then again, so are most of the exploitation films that I love from the 60s and 70s. The film sports several deliriously over-the-top performances, including Jake Busey as Adrian Reistad, a strange scientist who "shockingly" is revealed to be an agent of Mengele. Christopher Karl Johnson manages to portray Josef Mengele as appropriately menacing and terrifying. But many of the other performances are just plain terrible. The special effects are absolutely laughable. Wait until you see mecha-Hitler. I've seen PlayStation One cut-scenes with more convincing CGI. I read somewhere that Nazis at the Center of the Earth is considered to be "the Citizen Kane of Asylum films." If that is true, then I shudder to think of what their Plan Nine from Outer Space is like.

4/10

Das Boot: Wolfgang Petersen

There are certain films which so masterfully explore their subject matter that they become a kind of default by which all others are judged. If I mentioned the boxing genre, people would immediately think of Rocky (1976) or Raging Bull (1980). Historical epics? Ben-Hur (1959) or Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Submarine thrillers? Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot. The film has become synonymous with the genre. It has even become one of those extremely rare foreign language films that American audiences will not only tolerate, but celebrate. That's especially impressive considering that it's well over three hours long and about a Nazi U-Boat. The film follows the crew of German submarine U-96 during a lengthy patrol in late 1941. There are certainly many scenes where the crew holds their breath as they are hunted by destroyers and depth charges. And these scenes easily rank as some of the most intense and suspenseful ever captured on film. Peterson did a magnificent job capturing the atmosphere of intense claustrophobia that must accompany any submarine crew. But many of the best scenes in Das Boot aren't about actual fighting. Instead, they are about the crew trying to adapt and survive to living in a cramped metal tube for months on end. Jürgen Prochnow gives the performance of his career as Der Alte, the U-boat's cynical and battle-weary Kapitänleutnant. His talents truly shine during a scene where he reluctantly orders his crew to not rescue survivors of a destroyed British tanker. He claims that he was following orders to not take prisoners. But we suspect Prochnow has other reasons...Das Boot is a stunning film. Brutally honest and mercilessly intense, Das Boot is simply one of the greatest German films ever made.

9/10

Gandhi: Richard Attenborough

Long before I ever saw Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, I remember my dad telling me that it was a great film. But he was quick to add that it wasn't a film that he had any interest in watching more than once. That statement always puzzled me. After all, isn't a great film one you can watch over and over again? Well, since then, much time has passed. I have finally had a chance to watch this biopic of  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the man who helped lead India to freedom from British colonial rule. It is a stunningly lavish production with magnificent performances that somehow manages to do justice to that great man's life. And yet, I find myself agreeing with my father. As great as Gandhi was, I don't really have any interest in seeing it again. I'm not sure I can put the reasons into words. There are certainly scenes that I would love to re-watch. Attenborough's depiction of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was harrowing and terrifying. A scene late in the film where a bed-ridden Gandhi comforts and advises a grieving father who avenged his lost child by killing another brought tears to my eyes. Ben Kingsley does more than simply act as Gandhi: he disappears into the role. And yet, I feel no desire or obligation to watch it again. Still, I would highly recommend watching it at least once. A story this powerful about a man this great deserves to be seen.

8/10

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers: Fred F. Sears

I adore 50s sci-fi. For all its preposterous hilarity, there was a spirit of awe and adventure that I find infectious. And yet, I don't find that in Fred F. Sears' Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. Even for a film about an alien invasion, it feels tired and dry. Not even the great Ray Harryhausen was able to salvage this film. In fact, I found his work in this particular film to be somewhat uninspired. It's one thing to bring to life a giant monster or an army of skeletons. It's quite another to animate a group of flying saucers that simply rotate. The scenes where they wreak destruction upon Washington D.C. are well done. After all, Harryhausen managed to cut loose and animate several buildings being destroyed. But other than that I just didn't see a need for Harryhausen's work. But the worst part is the ridiculous plot. It starts off generic enough: an army of alien spacecraft announce plans to take over the earth.  Only scientist Russell Marvin can stop them! But then the aliens announce that they will wait 56 days for earth's leaders to meet and negotiate surrender. Of course, the aliens don't suspect that the humans will spend this time figuring out a way to stop them. These are easily some of the most incompetent aliens that I have ever seen outside an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Not to mention that in the final scenes the aliens forget that they are vulnerable to bullets even though one of their number was shot and killed earlier in the film. If you are a die-hard Ray Harryhausen fan, then watch Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. If not, just re-watch The War of the Worlds (1953).

5/10

Warrior of the Lost World: David Worth

I guess it was inevitable that after the insane success of the Mad Max series that there would be an Italian knock-off. And, considering the quality of other Italian blockbuster rip-offs, the Mad Max series can rest easy knowing that they have one of the better entries in this strange remakesploitation sub-genre. Of course, when your competition consists of films like Turkish Star Wars...that doesn't mean much. Warrior of the Lost World is an unholy combination of Mad Max, 1984, and Night Rider. It follows a biker known only as The Rider who roams the world on a motorcycle with an artificial intelligence named Einstein. He becomes embroiled in a plot to over-throw the generic Orwellian overlords. That's all I can really remember of the plot. It doesn't help that The Rider is almost completely intelligible. He mumbles his lines like a half-hearted Karl Childers impersonation. The cinematography is blurry and over-exposed. The sets involve Eastern-bloc style office buildings and motels. The vehicles look like they are made out of cardboard and linoleum. My favorite vehicle is nothing but a 16-wheeler with giant spikes attached to its front bumper. When the credits finally rolled at the end, I had no idea what had just happened. And, quite frankly, I don't really care.

3/10

They Died With Their Boots On: Raoul Walsh

I usually have a problem with Westerns that play fast and loose with historical accuracies. I don't mean the regular Hollywood romanticism and white-washing. I mean films that claim that Buffalo Bill saved Jesse James at the Alamo with Chief Crazy Horse. Well...maybe not that extreme...but that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I was ready and willing to despise Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On, a "historical re-telling" of the life of George Armstrong Custer. After all, the film portrays him as a man of honor who respects the Native Americans and only participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn because corrupt businessmen and politicians forced him. But despite all of this, I enjoyed They Died with Their Boots On. I found myself captivated by Walsh's cinematic language. Getting his start in the Silent Era, Walsh worked with many of cinema's greatest talents. He even worked as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. So Walsh's cinematic language heavily referenced the techniques of early Hollywood. As a result, the film was incredibly engaging. Yet it also managed to side-step the suffocating melodrama that plagued early Hollywood fare. Errol Flynn is so charismatic and charming as Custer that we forget about the actions of his real-life counter-part and cheer for him. For a film that seemed designed to infuriate me, They Died with Their Boots On was a terrific Western. Someday, I might even watch it again.

7/10

Dark of the Sun: Jack Cardiff

 
There's a very thin line between graphic realism and blatant exploitation. Can movies be made on touchy subjects like genocide without devolving into stag reals of gore and violence? Films like Schindler's List (1993) prove that such things can be examined with respect and dignity. But Schindler's List wasn't an action film. Jack Cardiff's Dark of the Sun is a "men on a mission" action film about a group of mercenaries who have to rescue a group of Europeans (and a large deposit of diamonds) from a town in the middle of war-torn Congo. The film is notorious for scenes that depict the horrors of the 1960-1966 Congo Crisis. The most famous scene involves a group of rebel Simbas attacking the town that the mercenaries were supposed to rescue. There is unspeakable carnage, rape, and destruction. Many might argue that it was trying to raise attention to the conditions in Congo. But the film is much more concerned with the internal conflicts of the actual mercenaries. The atrocities are merely sideshow attractions meant to titillate and excite. So, I would argue that Dark of the Sun does, in fact, exploit the Congo Crisis. But here's the kicker: despite all of this, it's a very good film. If examined as an exploitation action/adventure film, it's easily one of the best ones out there. The character drama is excellent and the scenes depicting atrocities are shocking, authentic, and well filmed. Cardiff does a magnificent job portraying the sheer size and scale of the fighting. Some of my favorite parts involve extreme long shots depicting an army of simbas swarming through a forest or over a mountain. So, while Dark of the Sun may not be respectful, it is certainly entertaining.

7/10

The Stranger: Lee H. Katzin

I'm really getting tired of watching poorly conceived and poorly executed sci-fi television shows re-purposed as "feature films." Between Riding with Death (1981) and Mighty Jack (1987), I don't know how much more of these films I can take. And yet, lo and behold, I have had to watch another of these made-for-TV monstrosities. This time around the film is The Stranger by Lee H. Katzin. It was originally designed as a pilot for a television show that was never picked up. Fortunately, this means that the entire film contains one coherent storyline instead of a hodge-podge of clips and scenes from a season's worth of episodes. Unfortunately, the single storyline is nothing more than a sci-fi rip-off of The Fugitive. The film follows Neil Stryker, an American astronaut who crash lands on a "twin planet," or an earth-like planet on the opposite side of the sun. This planet has followed the same evolutionary path as Strkyer's earth, even producing humans. Unfortunately, this twin earth is ruled by a dystopian government called "The Perfect Order." So Stryker needs to find a way to get back to earth without getting caught by "The Perfect Order." It's a bland, boring film with ugly cinematography. I'm glad that The Stranger never got picked up as a series. It would have been a terrible television show.

5/10

The Quiet Earth: Geoff Murphy

Of every film genre in existence, science fiction has the most power to stun, shock, and make me feel very, very small.  By the end of Geoff Murphy's The Quiet Earth, I remember feeling like I had truly visited another universe, another dimension. The film follows three survivors of a catastrophic event which seemingly erases all of humanity from the face of the earth in the blink of an eye. We first meet Zac Hobson, a scientist working for Delenco, an international consortium trying to create a global energy grid. The first third of the film watches as he reacts to being "the last man." As could be expected, he soon goes mad. This leads to a magnificent scene where he "addresses" a crowd of cardboard cut-outs and announces that his work with Delenco might be responsible for the global catastrophe. He soon finds the other two survivors, Joanne and Api. As they try to adjust to this new world, they begin to realize that there might be a reason why they didn't vanish along with the rest of mankind. The Quiet Earth is one of the most mysterious and enigmatic sci-fi films since Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). That isn't a comparison that I make lightly. The Quiet Earth dives into questions of religion, philosophy, and science without becoming preachy or overbearing. And just like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it has more questions than answers. The Quiet Earth is a film that dares to dream and wonder. I think we all need more of that in our lives.

9/10

Decision at Sundown: Budd Boetticher

Budd Boetticher's work with Randolph Scott became famous and revered within critical circles and among directors due to its distillation of Western tropes and archetypes into their purest forms. But even Boetticher's work could become tired and repetitive. Decision at Sundown is one such example. It pales in comparison to Boetticher and Scott's other collaborations. The film feels like it is merely going through the motions of what a Boetticher/Scott Western should be. You have Scott as Bart Allison, a tough, weathered man with a dark past. He comes to the town of Sundown with the intention of killing Tate Kimbrough. Allison believes that Kimbrough is responsible for his wife's death three years earlier. After disrupting Kimbrough's marriage ceremony to a local woman, he engages in a massive shoot-out. This scene pales in comparison to another shoot-out in a superior Boetticher/Scott collaboration, Buchanan Rides Alone (1958). Whereas in Buchanan Rides Alone the shoot-out consumed the entire town, in Decision at Sundown Allison is content to hole up in a single building and pick people off. There is a twist near the end that reveals that Allison's wife may not have been as virtuous as he thought. This casts Allison in a peculiar light when compared to Boetticher/Scott's other protagonists. Could he be deluding himself? If he is, why does he want Kimbrough dead so badly? These are interesting questions, but unfortunately they fall to carry the film.

6/10

The Ten Commandments: Cecil B. DeMille

Every now and then I write a review that makes me feel like I'm committing cinematic blasphemy. This is one such occasion. I think that Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments is a mediocre film that has not aged well. It has its moments, of course. The scene of Moses parting the Red Sea is rightfully one of the most iconic moments of the epic film genre. The casting is absolutely flawless. Charlton Heston dominates every frame as Moses. Yul Brynner brings the pathos and inner torment of Pharaoh Rameses II to life. Edward G. Robinson is pitch-perfect as Dathan. So why do I feel like The Ten Commandments is a mediocre film? I would argue that DeMille's heart wasn't really in the project. The Ten Commandments feels like DeMille was just going through the motions of a genre he helped define. There are numerous lengthy dialogue scenes that could have used re-writing and re-editing. Such scenes could have worked in a silent film where expressive acting and pantomime were the norm. But the dialogue scenes lack the visual flair of silent cinema. The highly kinetic film making techniques that energized his earlier sound pictures like The Plainsman (1936) and Union Pacific (1939) seem all but forgotten. But still, it is impossible to ignore the sheer scope of DeMille's production. But what value there is to be found in The Ten Commandments seems more attributable to the talent surrounding DeMille then DeMille himself.

7/10