Boogie Nights (1997)-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

I could have sworn I'd written about this film before, but as I looked for any version of a review on the site I came up empty. It must simply be that I've talked about it with other people on a regular basis and so I thought I had actually written something about the movie. There are a couple reasons why this feels somewhat personal, but it has nothing to do with my drug use or participation in the adult film industry. Many of the reasons that I identify with this film have to do with the time and setting of the movie, which in some ways do parallel my own life.

The house that Eddie, our main character, lives in with his parents, before he becomes Dirk Diggler, is in Torrance California and it looks exactly like the home of my college debate partner who lived in Torrance. The interior layout and the exterior Frontage might very well have been filmed in his neighborhood. In 1981, which would be in the middle of the time that this film is set, I had a summer job making deliveries of photographic supplies to a variety of businesses, and one of my routes consisted of the San Fernando Valley. Famously, this was the home of the pornography industry at the time, much like it's depicted in the film. Some of the locations that I made deliveries to were in fact producing magazines that were largely pornographic. So I have a tangential connection to what was going on. The one element of the film however that most closely connects me to the story, is maybe the most compelling scene in the film, the drug deal that goes wrong. One of my closest friends in college took a wrong turn and ended up working as a low-level drug dealer, in the valley. By the time he was doing this I only saw him occasionally for lunch or to talk to on the phone just to check in. I was not immersed in his lifestyle, except that there was one experience when we met for lunch and I drove him to a location where he was making drop off of his supplies. It was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I ever had with him. A year later he was murdered by his partners in the drug business. So although the experience is not exactly the same I can certainly share the perspective of how crazy and dangerous the times were.

My personal connections with the story aside, this is an incredibly watchable movie that is propulsive and uses needle drops and inserts to create a sense of verisimilitude. There are some truly great performances in the film, Mark Wahlberg gives us a desperate, insecure character in the last act, for whom you can feel surprising sympathy. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a minor character in the film, but he develops a sense of pity from us that feels quite realistic. Burt Reynolds notoriously disowned the film, but his performance in it, as the father figure / pornographic film director, is one of his career best. Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Robert Ridgely, John C Reilly, and a dozen other players all create characters with big faults that we still find ourselves empathizing with, to our surprise.

I was flying solo at this performance at the Paramount, and I got there a little bit later than I usually do. I had to sit near the back on the orchestra level because the theater was packed for this Thursday night screening. The audience was incredibly receptive, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who is not making his debut with this film but for whom this was my first exposure, impressed me and everybody else with how this movie was put together.

Sorcerer (1977)-Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

One of the greatest films of the 1970s is also one that is largely forgotten. The reasons for this are complex but include the fact that this film came out in the wake of Star Wars, replaced that film on the Chinese Theater screen for only a week, and then was replaced itself by Star Wars. This was the film that no one knew what to do with, it's an action adventure film with protagonists who are all loathsome in some way. Their heroic actions are always mitigated by the fact that they are criminals, terrorists, fraudsters, and murderers. When your rooting interest is someone that you would avoid if you cross paths with them on the street, it's not hard to imagine that a film is going to struggle to find an audience.

“Sorcerer”, may be William Friedkin's best film, and he made “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection”. This sweat-laden, rain soaked, mud  encrusted thriller,  will not leave you with a warm feeling, but it will leave you with deep admiration for the director's skill at building tension and following characters through their true natures.

This was my first time seeing the film on the big screen. I only caught up with it on cable years later, and then finally when the remastered Blu-ray came out about a decade ago, I Revisited it andI appreciated the story. Seeing it in a theater however, is truly a great experience. There are sequences in this film that are so fraught with tension that I felt like sweating myself. Those of you not familiar, the main part of the story focuses on four displaced men, struggling in a poverty stricken Village in the nameless South American country, who take on the job of transporting volatile explosives 200 miles across the jungle.

The first half hour of the movie however, has nothing to do with the main adventure, it simply details what these four men were like before they came together in this anonymous part of the world. Each of their stories has a degree of vibrancy to it that makes their subsequent activities feel more important. Roy Scheider plays the displaced American, a gangster who is wanted by other gangsters for a crime back in the States. There is also a Palestinian terrorist, a French financier, guilty of a massive fraud, and a professional assassin as part of this team of drivers taking on this hellish task because they are desperate.

Perhaps the most amazing part of this film is that it was shot without CGI, or in a studio. The road that this group has to travel is filled with dangerous sinkholes, impossible to pass barriers, and a raging river with a rickety bridge that will give you nightmares. All of it is on screen and all of it is real to some degree. Of course some of the biggest threats come not from nature but from other men. There is revolution in the air, and there are criminal elements who take advantage of the Revolutionary impulses of others, to steal and kill.

Although we got backstories for all four of the drivers, Scheider remains our main protagonist, and our link to the civilization that seems largely out of reach In this jungle locale. As is typical in 1970s films, the ending of the story is downbeat, but not at all in a manner in which you expect. The inevitability of our guilt catching up with us is one of the main themes of the story. I'm not sure if that's a part of the original film  this movie is based on. I have seen that movie, but it has been a long time and I didn't have the context of this film to compare it to at the time.

So if you want to feel your sphincter tighten, and have your sympathies be conflicted, then you should make it a point to see this film. And of course if you get a chance to see it on the big screen you need to put your money down and go.

The Magnificent Seven (1960) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

After having spent 2 hours in the presence of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, one may wonder how any stars in another film could compete for our attention. The second film in our Sunday double feature answers the question in the most obvious way, multiplying the number of stars. Magnificent Seven gives us a half dozen great actors in a meaty part in a western. That's the way you follow up with star power.

Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen may not match Kelly and Grant straight up, but that's okay because they're also supported by James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, and Eli Wallach. There are also a few secondary level Stars that make the movie worthwhile as well, and Elmer Bernstein score is a star in its own right.

You probably already know that this is a remake of Seven Samurai but set in the West. It works really well as a band of mercenaries help a local Village fight off marauding Bandidos for 2 hours. There are several clever moments in the film, but there is one glaring plot problem. Eli Wallach's character grants the seven their weapons back after having caught them by surprise through the betrayal of one of the villagers. This was a mistake on a massive scale by the supposed brains of the marauding bandits. The only justification for it, is to allow Our Heroes to come back and claim victory. It's a head scratching plot point.

Regardless of that fault, leads in this film provide plenty of fireworks for the movie. This film actually made Steve McQueen a star, but James Coburn was not too far behind him. Most people who think that Charles Bronson was merely a tough guy face on the screen, should pay attention to his character Ark in this film. He gives a pretty good speech to the kids who have attached themselves to his character.

The assembly of the band of Heroes that takes place in the first part of the film is more interesting than the conflicts in the village. In the long run most of the characters get a chance to reflect their reason for being included in the band. A lot of people might think that the Italian westerns of Sergio Leone were the start of the anti-western, but the depressing circumstances of Our Heroes here, very well could have been a precursor to those themes. It just doesn't seem that being a gunfighter paid very well, or provided a comfortable lifestyle. Everybody in this film, from the villagers to the bandits to The Mercenaries seems depressingly miserable.

Regardless of their misery however, we get some pretty good gun fights, some clever twists, and maybe not A Fistful of Dollars but A Fistful of Stars. This film is never going to be as perfect as Seven Samurai, but it is pretty damn good.

To Catch a Thief (1955) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

Another Hitchcock film for the Paramount classic summer film series 2025. I've seen To Catch a Thief before, but it has literally been decades since I last saw it and I remembered very little of it. I did remember a substantial amount of the Cary Grant Grace Kelly by play. And I did remember who the actual Thief was, but I'd forgotten the machinations that Grant's character had to go through to discover the truth.

The movie doesn't have the suspense of most of Hitchcock's films, but it does have a lot of romance and the spectacular location they probably made for a fantastic summer vacation for everybody involved. Just as a quick reminder Grant's character was a jewel thief before World War II, but became a resistance fighter for the French during the war, and was seemingly reformed. A new series of thefts from the resorts on the French Riviera point to him becoming active again as a criminal. He has to discover who is using his MO and try to vindicate himself.

It's easy to see how people in the 1950s, might not care very much about the plot of the film when they have these two exquisitely beautiful people to look at. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly may be the most magnetic couple on screen in that particular decade. The buy play between them is humorous, and if you've seen any of the Steven Soderberg oceans films, you'll have a good sense of where the humor in those films come from.

This was the first film of the double feature that we saw on a Sunday afternoon, and it was a delightful way to spend the late afternoon.

Zodiac (2007) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

Most of the entries coming up will be brief, I am still trying to catch up on posts for all the theatrical screenings in the last couple of weeks. I cannot however, skimp on my opinions about this particular film. "Zodiac" has been one of our family favorites since we saw it in it's original theatrical release. Over the years, it has become a default movie for us. Whenever we have trouble deciding what we should watch , someone inevitably suggests "Zodiac" as an alternative and nine times out of ten, we are watching it again. This screening at the Paramount Theater was the first time I have seen it in a theater since 2007, and it is the first time since I started blogging, that it gets included on this project.

I was eleven years old when the Zodiac killings started drawing press attention across the state of California. So I was old enough to be aware of the story, but still young enough that it did not obsess me the way that it did the characters portrayed in the story. Robert Graysmith , as portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, is a cartoonist for a San Francisco newspaper, one that received messages from the killer. His tangential connection lead to an intense desire to know who the killer was, and he wrote the book this movie is based on. Director David Fincher, portrays the writer as an innocent bystander, watching the horror play out around him. Gyllenhaal looks like a baby-faced kid among the police and newspaper professionals that surround the case. His sincerity is achingly displayed on his face as he asks questions of his colleague Paul Avery, who is covering the Zodiac for the paper. Avery is played by a pre-Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. Avery is also presented as an obsessive, but his pursuit is more professional and it consumes him in a different way than Graysmith.

The third leg of the tripod that the story of the investigation rests on is Dave Toschi, a police inspector in charge of the S.F. part of the investigation. Mark Ruffalo plays Toschi as an overwhelmed professional, frustrated by jurisdictional impediments and inconsistent evidence. The two newspaper guys supplement and interfere with his task, but ultimately, it is Toschi who gets to chillingly interrogate a suspect that seems to fit the information that they have. All three of these men get moments of horror as they confront individuals or places that may be a key to solving the crimes. Downey Jr. is playing a character who descends into alcohol and drug use as his paranoia and professional life collide. There is an honesty about those destructive forces that may be a reflection of his real life struggles in the years that preceded this film. Ruffalo seems to be calmly frustrated reacting to both the killer and his amateur pair of Zodiac hunters. 

Everyone in the movie is top notch in their performances, but I will single out two of the supporting players to show how well the movie is put together. Toschi has a partner, Bill Armstrong, played by Antony Edwards. Armstrong is a dedicated professional but he remains more impartial than Toschi. He is analytical but not obsessive.  Edwards exudes competence with an aura of detachment. He wants to solve the case as much as his partner, but he doesn't let the frustrations of the case overwhelm him. Edwards is the cool straight man to Ruffalo's, only slightly warmer counterpart. They make a great team. 

The second outstanding secondary performance is by John Carrol Lynch, who plays the eventual main suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen. We only see Allen in the context of the investigations. There are no scenes where he is depicted as the killer engaged in the crimes. We learn about his character in interviews with his former friends and family. When Toschi, Armstrong and two other law enforcement  personnel question him at work in the break room of the facility he works at, all sorts of alarms are going off in our heads as the cops listen with gapped mouths to the explanations and information that Allen shares. Lynch is calmly aloof as he spills suspicious conduct and details to the investigators. His face never reveals a fear that he is trapped, or that he is on alert in the face of the questions he is getting. His quiet comment "I am not the Zodiac. And if I was, I certainly wouldn't tell you." is as chilling as some of the murders that we see depicted in the film.

The verisimilitude of the film is found in a thousand places in the movie. The location shots are all consistent with the era. There is a sequence with Melvin Belli, a famous attorney who was a celebrity because of the lawsuits and clients he was involved with His depiction reflects the commercial television practices of the time. Toschi is shown attending a special screening of "Dirty Harry" which is a film that has a character inspired by the real life criminal he is pursuing. One of the most haunting and realistic uses of music of the time occurs in the attack on the couple in a car at the start of the film. Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy" man plays out over the scene, and you can almost smell the aura of the 1960 descending on the moment.

I would not classify this as a horror film, just as I would not say "The Silence of the Lambs" is a horror film. There are certainly frightening moments but the key is realistic suspense. These are thrillers with horror elements. The creepiest scene takes place in a basement, and there is no blood, weapon or violence shown, but the hair on the back of your neck will certainly stand up at the moment. Charles Fleisher, who is best known as the voice of "Roger Rabbit", provides an additional supporting character to make this movie the masterpiece that it is.  

"Zodiac" was not a huge success when it was first released, but there has been a lot of reassessment in the last two decades and I think you will find that this movie will hold your attention, frighten you and haunt you for a long time. I  am happy to have had a chance to see it again in it's natural habitat and I encourage everyone to spend some time with this excellent film. 

 

Working Girl (1988) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

Ladyhawke/The Hitcher Paramount Summer Classic Film Series: Robert Rodriguez Presents

Richard Kirkham · Ladyhawke 1

Richard Kirkham · Ladyhawke 2

Tremors (1990) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

The Big Lebowski (1998) Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

 

Father's Day Sean Connery Double Feature/Robert Rodriguez Paramount Summer Classic Film Series

Highlander (1986) 

 I saw this film with my wife when it first came out and we enjoyed it but frankly, I did not think it was a great film. It is a popcorn picture that looks a little cheaper than it should. They must have spent most of the budget on Sean Connery for his brief time in the story. I enjoyed Christopher Lambert in "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan" two years before. He was okay in this film, but it was clear that he was going to get by on physical charisma in his career and not acting chops. Clancy Brown on the other hand, understood the assignment and went full on nuts. He mugs and hams it up, just the way his character should.

Sean Connery, shows up for the second act and plays the part of a mentor to Lambert's Conner MacLeod. Much ridicule has been made over the years of his being cast as an Arab, from Spain, with a Scottish Accent. However, it may not be inconceivable that in the 1200 years he was alive, he picked up some traits from all the places that he's lived. Also, if that is the credibility stretcher for you, you have not been paying attention. 

The best element of the movie is the notion that immortality takes it's greatest toll on those that we love and must leave as they die. MacLeod suffers from his loss obviously, but the strain on his Scottish wife was pretty well drawn in the film. Another character from the 20th Century illustrates it as well. I don't want to give the movie too much credit, it is still a cheesy piece of pop fantasy, but it is completely watchable and I enjoyed the revisit.

Local Director and friend of the Paramount, Robert Rodriguez, hosted and scheduled this program. He does a nice job talking about the films and the film makers that he had connections with. He shared his story about this movie in the conversation you can listen to below.

Richard Kirkham · Robert Rodriguez Sean Connery

The Untouchables (1987)

The second film in our double feature is the terrific Brian DePalma movie, "The Untouchables". It is impossible to imagine a better Sean Connery part (with the exception of the film I will be writing about next). Connery plays a put upon beat cop, who has resisted temptation and played straight with the law instead of getting into bed with mobsters. He becomes a mentor to the enthusiastic but as yet untested Elliot Ness, a Treasury agent, in pursuit of Al Capone.

The relationship between Ness and Jimmy Malone (Connery) is funny, fatherly and frustrating at times. Jimmy needs to trust Ness and Ness takes some getting used to because of some tentative characteristics. The team gets substantially enhanced by Andy Garcia as a rookie cop, with deadly shooting skills, who gets drafted into their unit. Garcia is fine in the action scenes but doesn't have as much to say in the rest of the plot. Charles Martin Smith however, as Treasury Accountant and agent Oscar Wallace, is a delight in bringing a spark to the team because of his distinctive background. He is the square peg that they find a way to fit in.

The bad guys are pretty vivid with Robert DeNiro hamming it up as Capone. Billy Drago is a chilling Frank Nitti and his comeuppance is one of the great satisfactions of the film. DeNiro's scene with a baseball bat in his hand is his big moment on screen. The scene is directed with the usual style of Brian DePalma, it is elegant, and suddenly violent in an ugly way. The two big set pieces of the film are the border raid and the train station shootout. Both of these are strongly enhanced by my favorite Ennio Morricone score. 

I have seen this movie dozens of times, and probably a half dozen times on the big screen. My first viewing was at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood when the movie opened in 1987, it remains another hallmark moment in my Dome history. I am glad I can now pair it with a screening at the beautiful Paramount Theater in Austin.     

Babe (1995) Paramount Classic Film Series

 

Frankly, there may not be a more charming film in existence than "Babe". The story of an orphan pig who tries to find his place in the hierarchy of the farm is just too sweet not to love. It charmed the hell out of us back in 1995 when my kids were seven and nine. I took the youngest with me to this screening, she is now thirty-seven and she still loves it. (She will deny it, but I suspect it played a big part in her aversion to pork). 

This film won the Academy Awards for effects the year it came out, over the shots of a space launch and rescue mission in "Apollo 13". That win should be an indicator as to how animation and CGI were soon to dominate the film landscape. This was also the same year as "Toy Story" so you can feel the earthquake and aftershocks with those two movies.

James Cromwell received a big boost to his career after this, and we were very sad that we missed him at the TCM Film Festival, talking about this movie, back in April. We did get to see it on the big screen through the "Paramount Summer Classic Film Series" and although it was promoted as a kids matinee, there were plenty of adults there to share in the pleasure of our talking pig hero "Babe". The relationship between Farmer Hoggett and his pig is a complicated one with a couple of grim moments, but Cromwell makes a joyous human who learns to trust his instincts and his porker buddy. 

The Greek Chorus of Mice that introduce the various chapters of the story, are still amusing 30 years later, and when the lead sheepdog, swallows his pride to get help for "Babe" from the sheep, we get a few life lessons as well. I do think having a duck do the rooster's duties would be a lot of fun here at the house.

This movie was such a change up from the shark serial killer movie of the previous evening. Maybe all double features should work this was as a one-two punch, start with something hard hitting and then finish with something heartwarming. Two good days at the movies.