Next week on the LAMBcast we're going to have a Tom Cruise draft. This makes perfect sense because essentially Tom Cruise is the last of the movie stars. There's not anybody close to Tom Cruise when it comes to opening a movie. He hasn't been able to make everything he's in a success, but his batting average is pretty damn High, and with the final Mission Impossible film on the schedule, Tom puts in his all as he usually does to give us some thrills.
Let me start out by saying that although I like this film quite well it does have a couple of significant problems. First of all it is almost 3 hours long and that seems excessive for what is mostly an action film. A second problem might be the thing that makes this feel long, the first hour of the film is filled with exposition narrative that is clunky and struggles to connect the events of the previous films into a single storyline. I'm all for fan service especially when it comes to the final film in a series, but only a couple of the things that they attempt, work very well.
The most logical extension that they have found for these films is suggesting that the MacGuffin from the third “Mission Impossible", is in fact The Entity, the AI Boogeyman that arrived in episode 7 “Dead Reckoning”. In the earlier film it was referred to as the Rabbit's Foot, and we never got to know what it was all about. The idea that it is some sort of blueprint for creating the AI that everybody is worried about here in the last film is a minor stretch, but one that works pretty well.
The connection between this film and its predecessor however is not as smooth. Many of the things that happened in the previous film are vaguely referred to, but none of it seems to be strongly connected to the events of this film. The exception being the location of the submarine that contains the original algorithm of The Entity. The way this problem was approached in the last film is completely different from the way it is approached in this film. That doesn't mean that it couldn't work, it just didn't.
The stakes in the film are, as always, a little elevated. It seems that Ethan Hunt has to save the world repeatedly like some comic book superhero instead of dealing with a more manageable problem that could offer us some thrills with a believable set of consequences. To be honest it's unlikely that any film of this ilk is going to have the audacity to let the world end. If that conclusion is off the table then given what has come before, “Mission Impossible Final Reckoning” feels like it is just a structure that exists, not to build suspense but to hang the set pieces on. At least those set pieces are really good.
I have no doubt that a number of other reviews will mention the two big sequences in the movie. I'm not clever enough or alert enough today to try to find something deeper so I will just repeat what should be obvious to anybody who's heard of this movie, the submarine sequence with it’s underwater photography is ambitious, and, come on the bi- plane sequence terrific. Along the way we get to see Ethan Hunt run, get punched, do a lot of punching of his own and give us a couple of fakeouts. The plan is outlined in its broadest sense. We usually get a description of what's supposed to happen, and then it happens .Of course there are always one or two complications along the way, but the complications that take place in this movie have less to do with the details of each individual problem and everything to do with just trying to move the pieces around on the board so we stay interested.
The IMF needs to be a little bit more engaged with Ethan to make us care about what's going on. In this story they seem mostly reactive and taking their time just to be sure that Ethan will be able to do what he wants to do. The only one of the team that really gets the opportunity to feel like a part of the story is Luther, the character played by Ving Rhames. Even then, the resolution of his storyline feels a little manufactured.
I will mention that one of the things that was different about this movie is where we saw it. We had traveled to New York for the holiday weekend to catch several Broadway Productions. We got there early enough on Friday that we could fit in a movie, so we got a chance to use our AMC “A list” membership and see a film right in Manhattan. The theaters are built vertically rather than horizontally, which makes getting in and out of them feel a lot more like a puzzle. You have to go up a level or down a level to find an exit or the bathroom. So it was an experience as much as it was a Mission Impossible movie.
Cruise is great and I'm glad that he continues to do his own stunts and care about the way the movie looks. His partner Christopher McQuarrie, directed and co-wrote the screenplay, and he was a lot more effective managing the filmmaking then he was getting the story ideas right. The movie looks great but doesn't always make a great deal of sense.
In the 30-year history of the franchise there have been some highs and lows. The first and third films are my favorite but both “Rogue Nation” and “Ghost Protocol” are excellent. I wish I could say the final films, which are direct sequels to each other, topped it off with the best, but they actually fit in the lower half of the eight films. At least they're better than MI- 2.
Have we set our final farewell to Ethan Hunt? It's hard to say. Tom Cruise is 62 years old, although he looks like he's much younger than that, and it appears that he is quite capable of continuing the action beats necessary for a movie like this to work. I just get the impression that the story lines have gotten a little tired and that there's a struggle to find something worthy to make as the subject of the film, and I'm not sure that's what is really important. It seems to me that the characters and the incidents are the things that make these movies work.
I've said it before, including a mention on the LAMBcastt, there must be something about us that is just wrong for enjoying these movies. The main reason that somebody goes to see a “Final Destination" film is to watch people die in elaborate convoluted accidents. The fascination with this sort of thing is easy to understand, since everybody does some rubbernecking when they pass that accident on the highway, or watches videos online where people get hurt doing stupid things. I suppose we can excuse this behavior in regard to the movie because we know it's an elaborate fiction, and that there is some malevolent force behind it. Still, when you hear people cheering for some gruesome moment in one of these Rube Goldberg execution methods, it does make you question Humanity.
A month ago on the podcast, we covered the entire “Final Destination” franchise. The people on that show all enjoyed it so much that they volunteered to come back and talk about the new installment, which arrives here 14 years after the last Edition. “Bloodline”s has a couple of twists on the formula which helps make it feel fresh and worth investigating. The biggest innovation is that the original disaster is in fact completely avoided, which leaves a whole lot of deaths unaccounted for in the Grim Reaper’s Ledger book. The storytelling gets a little convoluted and the explanation of how death is just catching up with everybody at this point is awkward. Almost 30 years after he was denied all those earlier deaths he is finally getting around to the main family involved. Those of you who have seen the previous Final Destination films know that there is an order in which the deaths are supposed to occur, and we get a trick here that shows how that has been pushed back for several decades. As you know however, the bill is going to come due.
One of the things that makes “Bloodlines" work is that we get some characters that we do in fact care about. The hero of the original disaster turns out to be the linchpin for this story, and once that plug is pulled we return to the inevitable line of disasters. Interestingly enough though, there are a couple more turns which create some humor in the story and a lot more suspense. Many of these come at the expense of audience expectations from previous entries in the series. Sudden bus deaths are narrowly avoided, and a complex series of events that is reminiscent of two elaborate scenes in the earlier films, turns out to be a red herring.
If you take the time to listen to the podcast that I'm going to post here, you'll hear everybody ranking their favorite deaths. Once again, our entertainment values are pretty morbid, but they are also satisfied with a well plotted story, some pretty effective character work, and a lot of fan service that turns out to work pretty well.
As horror films, these movies undermine the suspense and thrills a little bit, because we know eventually everyone is in fact going to die. The only questions we have concern how they're going to die and whether or not it will be entertaining enough to wait around for. This film is just about 2 hours and that's 30 minutes longer than most of the other entries. I never found my attention lagging, but I did wonder sometimes if in an attempting to create some dread, the filmmakers stepped on their own jokes. For example a character that's been holding off death for decades is holed up in a cabin that is surrounded by a yard full of things that would be happy to kill her. It feels like the exact opposite of what the character would probably choose. If you want an example of this you can go back to Final Destination 2 and see how Clear Rivers tried to do the same thing.
Minor quibbles aside, this film was a blast and it was exactly what I was looking for. What it says about me that I enjoyed it so much is not clear, but I suspect that most of you who love horror films will find plenty to justify spending your money and your time on “Final Destination Bloodlines”.
Well I'm happy this film is doing so well with the box office, and encouraged by the willingness of people to invest in a story that is not based on some other IP, I don't want to be blind to the flaws of the movie simply because it succeeds so well and in most aspects. Let me start with the positive things and then move on to a couple of the main criticisms that I have of Ryan Cooglers's "Sinners".
The film takes great effort to set a time and place where there is automatically discomfort in the normal settings that the principles find themselves in. A pair of twin black brothers have returned home to their southern roots after having ripped off the mobs in Chicago, well into the Great Depression. The hometown they have returned to, seems calm on the surface, and supposedly the Klan is no longer in operation, but that doesn't mean that it's roots are not still near to the surface. The brothers are attempting to create a social club that caters to the local black population, in particular to their taste in music dancing and other frivolities. Most of the social tension that you get at this point is set up for atmosphere, but later on director/writer Coogler, tries to use it as a plot point to finish off the film and that doesn't quite work.
Anybody who chooses to see this will know that it's a horror film, but it does take a while for the horror elements to develop. There is some early mumbo jumbo about hoodoos brought from the African Homeland, and maybe some of the Caribbean influence as well. All of that is really in aid of developing a secondary character who will provide some exposition later in the film. The ability to recognize vampires doesn't really require all of that, but the film goes through the motions anyway.
The characters in the film do the most to create an atmosphere of dread without any particular source. Michael B, Jordan plays the brothers as a pair of menacing hoodlums who recognize their own depravity, but proceed to live life as if they are the ones who are in the right. Their younger cousin, a musician with dreams of blues mastery, gets mixed up in their plan to create a juke joint that will bring in big dollars and hopefully provide him some fame. The brothers are not interested in him becoming a regular part of the entertainment. They seem to sense that this is a one-off opportunity, it's going to have some negative consequences, and they appear to be trying to avoid trapping him into their own lifestyle. That's about as close as being noble that the two hoodlum Brothers get.
It takes an hour or so for the supernatural element to enter the story, and when it does it's pretty creepy. The rapidly multiplying population of monsters sets the stage for a siege segment that is the main action sequence of the film. Viewers steeped in Vampire lore will understand some of the rules that are being followed, but there are also some things that don't make a lot of sense.
This is where some of the flaws of the film come in. The rules of the world that they have created seem a little ambiguous. Why becoming a vampire turns you into a virtuoso musician, singer, or dancer is not clear. Characters who are turned seem to maintain the personas of their earlier selves, but never for long and it's not clear what's driving them. Also for a group of characters who are so intelligent as to give a philosophical justification for their actions, they don't seem to have planned for the arrival of dawn. Which for vampires is a pretty short-sighted fault.
The best things about the film are the musical sequences which integrate Blues roots into the plot line. In fact it might even be acceptable to call this film a musical based on the number of scenes where the primary emphasis is on a performance. The scenes of the cousin playing guitar in the car, or performing in the Juke Joint, are excellent. The scenes of the vampires trying to use music is a way of enticing themselves into the Juke Joint are also quite good. Apparently being dead can turn you into quite the Irish dancer, I'll have to keep that in mind for future reference.
Well the film is superior in a number of ways, it does suffer from some of the typical faults of horror movies. The main characters have to make stupid mistakes, someone has to violate the rules, and there will be choices that will make you scratch your head. As usual I try not to give away any spoilers in these posts, but a little of what I'm about to share with you might hint in that direction so proceed in reading with a little caution.
Ryan Coogler cannot find an exit for the movie. He creates a scenario which allows for a satisfying murder of dozens of violent racists, but it has nothing to do with the main plot of the film and it feels tacked on. Even when it's finished, he is still not done. There's a final twist in the film which is designed to give us one more musical interlude, and a take which seems to suggest that giving in to being a vampire isn't necessarily all that bad. The movie should have ended 20 minutes before it did. And regardless of how good the song is or how satisfying an extended sequence of cathartic violence might be, it's got nothing to do with the main story and it feels like padding. Coogler needed his editor to twist his arm a little bit and say "let's stop here".
So the production quality on the film is great, the actors do a terrific job, and the horror story works pretty well even with some of the flaws. It all gets diluted by Coogler's attempt to turn the film into a social commentary. Something that was not needed in order for the film to be worthwhile.
A whole series of disparate events come to a violent conclusion and dozens of bad guys are killed. That's about as much of a plot summary as you need for a movie like this. Action films can work well with a minimal backstory, and sometimes they work well when the plot gets convoluted. This is one of the latter. A sequel to "The Accountant" from almost a decade ago, it finds Ben Affleck as an autistic but functioning human being with extraordinary financial skills. In the first film he was a savant and an extraordinary killer. He's not really an assassin anymore, but his old skills have not left him and he calls on them along with his estranged brother by John Bernthal, to wreak havoc on a trafficking organization.
If you want the audience to really hate the bad guys, you give them the worst kind of criminal activity to be involved in. In this case it is human trafficking, primarily of illegal immigrant women into prostitution. I don't think it's a spoiler to discover that one of the ways the organizations controls the women, is by imprisoning their children. We don't see it on the screen, but there is little doubt that an economic stream involving the children will eventually be in their future as well. It is by a strange series of coincidences, that the head of the FBI Financial crimes unit gets involved in a case that connects the trafficking group with an assassin.
Of course to fight against assassins, it helps to have a couple of Assassins on your side. That's where Affleck and Bernthal come into play. The FBI chief gets a little squeamish working with killers who don't have the same restrictions of legal Authority on them. Still they end up approaching the case from different directions, and ultimately connecting a dangerous assassin, to the crime ring. There is a bit of a twist in this plot development, I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of sense, but they do try to explain it.
Affleck's character lives in an Airstream trailer, and connects with his financial Empire through a mysterious computer center, filled with children who, like himself, have some Savant abilities. It's been almost 30 years now that filmmakers have been trying to make computer hacking interesting on screen. Programmers, typing in code onto a computer screen, has to be inter-cut with a lot of other activity to make it watchable. The "Accountant 2", does these hacking scenes as well as anybody else has.
Although you would not want to know either Affleck or Bernthal's characters in real life, they make a fascinating pair in the movies. Occasionally questions come up concerning morality, but they're never really answered. There is usually some joke that gets them out of a moral quandary. This was a very effective action piece, with a story that was mysterious enough to keep you intrigued for the 90 minutes that the movie runs. Then we get a shootout, multiple deaths of bad guys, and a couple of closing lines suggesting that we'll be back with this crew again.
We were scheduled to see this film on Thursday night at the usual preview screenings that now are really just the opening day of the film. However, as members of the Paramount Theater family we were invited to a free screening the night before that, so we felt a little special and we made the Trek down to the State Theater for the film. It was a packed audience and everybody was very enthusiastic, now let me tell you whether or not they should be,
The MCU has been in the doldrums for a few films now. It seems for every "Guardians of the Galaxy" success or "Deadpool" crossover, there is an "Eternals" or "Quantumania", ready to drag the franchise down. The powers that be, have been struggling to get the gravy train back on track, and with this film it looks like they hit the switch for the right set of rails. "Thunderbolts*", soon to be retitled, is a very satisfying team up of secondary characters, some heroic, some villainous, who come together as a group in order to face down the next existential crisis facing the planet. Yet before they deal with that crisis, they have to deal with a different existential crisis, their own sense of self-worth and levels of depression.
Florence Pugh's character, Yelena, is a skilled Black Ops agent, with pretty much the same skill set as her sister, the deceased Black Widow. What satisfying thing can you do with those skills? Unfortunately it seems they've been put to use by the current director of the CIA for some not very pleasant tasks. Yelena is giving in to a malaise that she may not be able to draw herself out of. The fact that she is not the only one who is suffering from an apparent rut in an unsatisfying field is the premise for the film. I enjoy light-hearted super hero movies but I know they can't all be fun times beating the bad guys. To make the stories real, there is usually some human drama involved. This movie creates a parallel structure of the opening half, with its mentally ill protagonists, and in the second half, turns that depression into the literal big bad of the film.
I've said it before, I am not deeply invested in comic books. It's been about 55 years since I spent any time looking at those colorful pages in a magazine format. There have been thousands of stories, and hundreds of heroes and villains have come and gone in that time period. I understand that there will be characters that I'm not familiar with and that's okay. As long as they are explained adequately in the film I'm looking at at the moment, I can enjoy the movie and appreciate the way the character seems to work. There are two characters in this in this film, which comic book fans seem to be quite wound up about, Taskmaster and the Sentry. Both of them appear in this film but with vastly different story arcs. I can't begin to debate the merits of how the characters are used in comparison to the way they originated in the comic books, I have no knowledge in this area. I can say that I felt one of these characters was ill-used in this story and the other is being set up for more important plot lines in the future.
Florence Pugh continues to impress with her talents on the screen. She portrays a convincing badass with a serious demeanor who is conflicted over the direction of her life. In contrast, David Harbor, who plays her father the Red Guardian, is equally living a less than satisfied life, but his attitude toward it is completely different. His avuncular and upbeat personality provides the movie with some humor and light moments as the main characters face their existential nightmares. The film also features John Walker, who for a short period of time was the new Captain America. He is portrayed by Wyatt Russell, and his take on the character is funny while also being a little problematic. Of course the drama of the film stems from the fact that all of the characters are problematic.
The story combines the usual tropes of the MCU hero team-ups. Each misfit gets a brief introduction, they engage in a competition/fight among themselves, and then they learn who the real enemy is and have to decide if they are able to take on that individual. Does that sound like Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers? There's a reason for that, it's because these films with a group of Heroes follow very familiar storytelling points.
The combat scenes in this film are pretty solid. There's a fight in an underground vault that is decisively designed to eliminate the heroes. It's choreographed very carefully and the flying knives, speeding bullets, and Flying Kicks all last about the right amount of time. I never felt like anything in this movie was padding, although there are several sequences which seem to suggest the exact opposite.
A pivotal new character, Bob, starts off as a naive confused patient, but ends up a somewhat deranged and honest hero and villain. It's another part of the mental health theme of this movie. It may be pressing good taste a little bit to have a deranged meth addict in a chicken costume attacking people for laughs, but in the long run it is a sad commentary on the lives that some people lead, returning us to that theme of disappointment, despair, and depression.
I can't say that this was the best MCU film, or even a top tier episode. I can say I enjoyed it enough to go back for the Thursday night screening that we had originally planned on and repeat the experience for a second evening in a row. I was entertained by the film and satisfied that the keepers of the franchise are starting to right the boat. As usual there are mid credit and end credit sequences as part of the exit titles. One of them is just a final joke and the other is a tie-in to the future of the franchise. Both of them are worth sitting through the credits for. Oh, and we get an official redubbing of the film title.
It feels a little like sundowner syndrome when we arrive at the fourth day of the film festival. Everyone has had a wonderful time for 3 days but we all know that it's about to be over with, even though there are wonderful things still scheduled for the afternoon. Our fourth day at the film festival was really pretty simple, we had two films that we were going to see both of them were pretty long, and then we had the closing night film.
2001 A Space Odyssey
Amanda and I made the decision to split up for the first film of the day, she had never seen "Oklahoma" before and was anxious to catch it on the big screen. And as I've said in other posts, although I love my daughter she has disappointed me in her lack of appreciation for "2001 A Space Odyssey", that's the film I decided that I would go to see. I was especially interested in seeing 2001 again on the big screen, because the guest of the day was going to be the star of the film Keir Dullea. The festival programmers seem to be doing their best to get to important guests while they are still around. Mr Dullea, is maybe the 5th or 6th guest that I saw this weekend who is in their late 80s. All of us are due to leave this Mortal coil at some point, and I'm glad that so many of these guests chose to spend some time with us while they still could.
2001 on the big screen, at the Egyptian, is something I've done several times before. And once again seeing the movie in a theater with a rapt audience is thrilling. We were given the whole effect, including Overture, intermission, and exit music. They have also made sure to make these presentations authentic in another way, they closed the curtains and then open them again when it's time for the feature. To me, the sense of excitement as the curtains part and the credits begin to roll, is one of the things that makes me most love the movies. They should be an event, not just content.
The conversation with Keir Dullea, was quite interesting, including stories about how he was cast and about his working with Stanley Kubrick on the set. His wife accompanied him onto the stage to help keep him focused on particular questions. He was by no means senile, but he would wander off track occasionally or miss the meaning of the question and she assisted him quite ably without necessarily suggesting that there was anything wrong. Especially appreciated the prompt that she had at the end when she reminded him that he wanted to talk about a piece of dialogue that got cut from the film, but for which he had spent a great deal of time trying to memorize, and still has it in his head.
I did an audio recording several parts of the conversation, and I'm going to try to include them here.
"2001", along with "Jaws" is on my list of 10 favorite films of all time. So this is a pretty good weekend for me.
Apocalypse Now
When I met up with my daughter after her screening, we were queuing up to get numbers for this 1979 Francis Ford Coppola classic. She had been quite enamored of "Oklahoma", and I hate that I missed sitting through it with her, because I quite like the film. I really enjoyed her embrace of the songs and the story and the joy that she seemed to be having. I was a little worried that this next film would destroy some of the cheerfulness that surrounded the mornings experience for her. After all Apocalypse Now is not a happy film.
I'm not sure how she managed to get to her age without being exposed to this film more. She told me she's only seen a few clips and doesn't really know much about the movie. So that made our decision to see "Apocalypse Now", here at the film festival, really an appropriate one. The guest for this presentation was director Antoine Fuqua who has directed a ton of action films that I have loved over the last 20 years. He had nothing to do with the production of "Apocalypse Now", it just happens that it's his favorite film and inspired him to become a director and make movies that feature kind of grit and action that Coppola provided. His commentary on the film was mostly that of an enamored fan, which is not really a bad thing. It was certainly encouraging to hear his enthusiasm for the movie, as we tried to gird ourselves for the experience.
I mentioned that in the 2001 screening, the festival was trying to create an authentic experience included the ritual with the curtains. For this screening, the authenticity was enhanced by the distribution of a booklet, that contain the credits for the film. Back in 1979, the premier screening of this movie it Cannes, was done without any credits appearing on the screen, but rather in a Nifty little pocketbook with pictures. That item was reproduced and provided to all of us who attended this Sunday afternoon screening of a decidedly depressing War film.
There are variations of "Apocalypse Now" that have become quite popular in the last few years, but this presentation was the original theatrical cut. That's the only version of the film that I know. I've seen the film occasionally over the years, and I have bounced back and forth between disliking it and embracing it. Whenever I think of the distaste I might have had for the movie, it probably reflects the negativity that is such a huge part of the story.
This time I was happy to embrace the film, and I was glad that Amanda was suitably impressed with it as well. Now if only I could get her to respond to 2001 the same way maybe I wouldn't feel like such a failure as a father.
Heat
The closing night film for the festival was Heat, in the TCL IMAX theater. We had originally planned on watching the silent version of Beau Jeste in the Egyptian Theater. When actor Al Pacino was added to the discussion of "Heat", we changed our minds and decided we could not miss out on the opportunity to hear one of the great actors of the 20th century talk about this movie.
The original guest was Michael Mann the director of the film, and Pacino joining him made the discussion feel a lot more complete. In fact even though there were questions, the situation felt more like a conversation with two old friends on the couch rather than an interview. Each of them remembered some things slightly differently, and they occasionally made the effort to correct a misstatement or a difference in memory.
Now I do have a confession to make, we chose not to stay for the screening of the film after the conversation. We had watched Heat last year and Amanda was not up for repeating it. It is a long film, and if we had stayed we wouldn't have gotten home until midnight at least. So we stayed for the conversation between Pacino and director Michael Mann, and then we made our way out of the theater is quietly as possible so that we can return to the Southern California house and my daughter and her husband are living in. We got to have dinner with them instead of sending down in the diner with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Our third day of the TCM Film Festival started off with a science fiction classic from the 1950s featuring Special Effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. I don't think I've ever seen this film before "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers". The morning's presentation was introduced by Joe Dante a director that I've admired for almost 50 years. Just as a side note that behind him at the screening of the Bruce Willis film "Sunset" in the Cinerama Dome.
Earth versus the flying saucers is a straightforward fifties sci-fi film, which means that it features military types who are hysterical about contact with new species, and weapons that we have not encountered before which will require a sudden development of Technology that we haven't used before. Many times the aliens in these movies are standings for communism, the idea that a totalitarian race wants to dominate us and control our resources and lives sounds like it's a pretty straightforward interpretation of the Soviet Union, only with cool space suits.
I'm sure I've seen actor Hugh Marlow in something else but at the moment I can't remember what it would be. Many of the actors portraying generals looked quite familiar, I suspect they probably worked regularly in the 1950s playing military types. The highlight of these films is usually the special effects and in this particular case it's the flying saucers and the Damage they cause Washington DC. Ray Harryhausen he's always been one of my favorite producers, who's specialty is stop motion animation, that he did mostly on his own. The effects look really cool on the screen, although in this particular film they were a little repetitive until we got to the attack on DC.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Our second film of the day was one that I was looking forward to from the moment I first saw the schedule. In the decade Plus that I have attended the TCM Film Festival, I've made sure to see the presentations from Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. These two gentlemen have extensive background in sound and special effects, receiving multiple Academy Awards, and having a clear knowledge of the history of their own disciplines. The very first film I saw at one of these festivals was my favorite, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn. Barron and Burtt were the presenters for that screening and they had such interesting detail and background history on the movie that I resolved never to miss an opportunity when they were speaking again.
The film they were working on this day, was "Colossus: The Forbin Project", from 1970. While not the most well-known science fiction film of its ilk, Colossus is a forerunner of some of the most prescient films of the last 50 years. James Cameron was clearly influenced by exposure to this movie because the whole concept of Skynet is stolen from this film. The premise of the film is simple, we have created an artificial intelligence to run our defense systems, and the worst things that can happen do.
I was a little surprised that this was the film that these two gentlemen were working on for the festival, because I didn't remember that there were extensive effect shots. Of course I forget sometimes that matte paintings and sound design are a big part of how a movie like this manage to impress. The opening shots of Dr Forbin, walking through the Colossus computer as it is being booted up, require some difficult matte paintings that were done by the great Albert Whitlock. The descriptions that the speakers provided impressively explained why we should take note of this subtle work.
I also found it quite interesting, that the sound of colossus's voice in the television interface that originated at the World's Fair in 1939, was classified during World War II. The sound technology was used for the direct communication line between Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Winston Churchill. It was a nice simulation of what their call would have sounded like using the encryption sound technology that was later used for this movie. Once again one of my favorite things at the TCM Film Festival was a presentation by Craig Barron and Ben Bert. As an added bonus the star of the film Eric Braeden made an appearance. He did a brief introduction before the movie, and then participated in a little Q&A
Brigadoon
The third film for the day had us returning to the Egyptian Theater for the first time since last year. Although I love the Chinese IMAX I have to say that the Egyptian is my favorite venue for the festival. When I lived in Southern California I was a member of the American Cinematique, who operated the Egyptian. It is since traded hands and is now a Netflix venue, and while that may not be something I think is great, they have done a fantastic job updating the theater while still maintaining it's historical ambience. Such ambience seemed particularly important for this film, a 1950s Musical that I have never seen before Brigadoon.
I'm a fan of musicals and of Gene Kelly, so it's a little surprising that I hadn't seen this for myself at some point in the past. I don't know that it has the best reputation in the world of musicals, after all I'm not sure there's a song in it that was a hit. The film however it does have a number of charms, and it's a good reminder of how the studio system of the golden age of Hollywood could produce a film on sound stages that made you feel like you were in Scotland. In case you are not aware Brigadoon is a village that is either cursed or blessed depending upon your point of view. It's residents appear to be living nearly forever, because the village is only active for a few days every hundred years. Of course when Gene Kelly and Van Johnson stumble upon the village, complications ensue, but so do some wonderful dance sequences. I was not aware that Van Johnson danced in any films, but he did a pretty credible job with one number in this movie.
The real dancers in the film however were represented at the screening today by two of their own, Barrie Chase and George Chakiris. Both of these actors/dancers are well into their 80s, and they occasionally scratch their heads trying to remember some details about the particular film. They certainly gave us some insight into the way that dancers in those days found jobs or auditioned. I got the definite impression that Barry Chase lost a few opportunities because she would not submit to Arthur Freed . The casting couch was alive and well in those days.
While most of the film looked pretty good there were some sequences that probably needed to be remastered. I was happy to catch up on this classic and enjoy the look of the film even if the story is a little slight, and inconsistent on its own world building. After all it's really a musical not a science fiction fantasy film interested in creating its own universe.
JAWS
When we left the theater after Brigadoon we immediately got a new cue card and got in line to get back into the Egyptian for the most important film of our at TCM. This year is the 50th anniversary of the greatest film of the second half of the 20th century. Jaws is influential, groundbreaking, and once again in my opinion the best film that Steven Spielberg has ever made.
I am not sure that there is another movie that I have seen in a theater as often as I have Jaws. It made me very nostalgic to be seeing it here at TCM in the Egyptian Theater, since at least a half dozen of my earlier screenings also took place at this iconic venue. Anybody reading this can find more than a dozen posts about the movie Jaws on this blog site. I'm not going to recap the story or the significance of the movie on this day. Instead, main thing I want to talk about is the guest Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody in the film.
She was married to Sid Steinberg, who at the time was the chief at Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg's mentor. This is the part that she will be remembered for, all of her other roles were primarily supporting TV characters. Frankly she's terrific in the movie, although she disappears from the film entirely in the third Act. Advanced age of 88 she had No Reservations about being honest concerning her co-workers. She was dismissive of Richard Dreyfuss, without giving any details of why she didn't care for him. She also expressed the opinion that Roy Scheider was it somewhat mean co-star, and she didn't have any warm memories of working with him. She did however confess to having a crush on Robert Shaw, which I find completely Charming and ironic given their parts in the film.
The print of the film that was screened for us came from the British Film Institute, and had been preserved since a 1981 presentation on the BBC. The color dyes in this print are probably as close to the original version of the film from 1975, as we are likely to ever see. The film looked magnificent. It was surprising when Ben Mankowitz ask for a show of hands of people who had never seen the movie, that there were dozens of hands in the air. Listening to the audience during the film I had no trouble believing that those people were being honest, because you could hear the intake of breath, the shots of surprise, and the Applause of delight for all those little things that make Jaws the quintessential Blockbuster in one of my favorite films.
Blade Runner
We repeated the process at the end of this film walking out of the theater getting in line immediately to get a new cue card to go back in and see our final film for the evening. Although it was not a financial success in 1982 when it was first released, Blade Runner has been a critical success and a cult favorite for more than 40 years.
One of the first Criterion Collection laserdiscs that I purchased was Blade Runner, back in the 1990s. That version does not include the director's cut in the Final Cut, but there is discussion of some of the things that would later be included in revised editions of the film. The version we saw appears to have been the Final Cut, so there is no narration in the ending is slightly different, although to be honest we only stayed through the first hour of the film. As I've already mentioned we were staying at the house in Glendora so we had a 45 minute ride home, if we stayed for the whole film we would not have been in bed until 1: 30, and we needed to get up at 5: 30 to make Sunday.
The special guests for this film was the female co-star Sean Young, who was only 19 when the film was made and who was making her debut as a film actress with this movie. Miss Young has always been known as an outspoken and opinionated actress and nothing has changed even if she is aged the way I have. She spoke about working with Harrison Ford, the rigors of the makeup chair, and generally working in Hollywood. Her talk was not limited to Blade Runner though, as she made brief comments about several films and actors that she had worked with. She seemed fond of the late Gene Hackman when she worked with in no way out, but never seem to get very close to Kevin Costner who was her leading man. She did say that Blade Runner was the favorite film that she made, but the bigger reaction from the audience was to her second favorite film which was Ace Ventura.
Watching Blade Runner at home on Blu-ray, streaming, or even my beloved LaserDisc, cannot do it justice. Seeing it on the big screen and listening to the score and the sound design of the film in the theater like the Egyptian is one of those things that everybody should experience. We only stayed through the scene where James Hong meets his demise, but I can tell you everything up to that point looked and sounded spectacular on the big screen.
At one time it had been my hope to make a couple of the midnight movies, and "Wild at Heart" would have been another film at the Egyptian had we not been so tired. So we ended our day with the fun talk from Sean Young and the brilliant vision of Ridley Scott.
