Years ago I said it but I don't remember exactly who I said it to. Steven Spielberg learned all he knows about building an action scene by watching Hitchcock's “Strangers on a Train”. The movie is a slow burn with a lot of exposition but the climax is filled with the dramatic carousel chase that ends up being both humorous and truly frightening simultaneously. Hitchcock mixes close-ups with master shots and movement, along with editing to make the scene really sing. It's exactly the kind of thing that Spielberg has done in Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and the Lost World.
This 1951 Thriller begins Hitchcock's most epic period of filmmaking. The black and white cinematography was nominated for an Academy Award and it's almost impossible for me to believe but the truly psychotic Bruno played by Robert Walker was not nominated. Those of you not familiar with the story, it involves a chance meeting between a privileged, spoiled sociopath, and a tennis star that he admires. Bruno has an interesting theory, that the perfect way to commit a murder would be by trading murders with somebody else. That way you could establish an alibi and there would be no way to trace back who the killer of your victim who would have no motive..
Farley Granger plays Guy Haynes. who has a deep resentment to the wife that he thinks he's about to divorce, but who turns out to be manipulating him simply to keep him paying for her lifestyle in spite of her infidelities. He does lash out at her in one scene but it's not murderous, it's simply frustration. Bruno however insists on carrying out his part of the plan, and once he has committed an atrocity, expects Guy to reciprocate. Guy, who is afraid of being implicated in the murder of his wife, tries to avoid Bruno and stay out of his way. But like a gracious Terminator, Walker keeps coming back into the scene. At times convivial, at other times psychotically out of control.
In a continuation of Hitchcock's habit of focusing on the wrong man, Guy looks like he could be implicated in the crime by some evidence that Bruno has kept. It's a little complicated, but the woman that Guy wants to marry, helps him plan an opportunity to catch Bruno in the act of planting evidence, thus freeing himself from the threat of a false prosecution. The tension in the third act all starts with a tennis match that needs to finish as quickly as possible. Every serve and every long volley, builds up the tension as we wonder whether or not Guy will be able to intercept Bruno in time.
Along the way in the film there are some fantastic shots, typical of Hitchcock's cleverness in framing the story. One of the most Eerie visual moments involves watching a murderer approach his victim in the lens of a pair of eyeglasses. Later in the film, there is another moment where Bruno, when demonstrating to some Society ladies, the ease with which a person could take a life, while having a rather Twisted discussion about murder at a cocktail party, loses control and begins to relive his moment and actually starts to strangle one of the elderly women.
Of course the plot is a little exaggerated, and there are some things that the police probably wouldn't be doing in the way we see it being done on screen. Nevertheless the story holds up and we want Guy to exonerate himself and Bruno to be punished. Since this film was made in the 1950s by an established director with a major Studio you can probably guess that it all turns out all right.
I first watched this film back in the 1980s on one of my cable channels and became fascinated with it. I've seen it several times since but always on television . It was great getting a chance to go down to the State Theater and see it on the big screen. I was a little surprised at how jovial some of the audience members were about the threats presented by the antagonist, as if they were not serious and were only comically created. I, on the other hand , watch the way an audience might have back in 1951. Horrified by the suggestion and terrified by the circumstances. But most of all ultimately thrilled by the Mastery of Alfred Hitchcock.
Thursday April 30th was the opening night of the TCM Film Festival, and as become our custom, we had the Essential pass which allowed us to go to the opening night Premiere and walk the red carpet. The feature was Barefoot in the Park from 1967 starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. It was chosen as a tribute to Robert Redford who passed last year and Jane Fonda herself showed up as the guest to talk about her experience making the movie. While I am not a huge fan of Jane Fonda, I did think that her presentation was sweet and heartfelt about her co-star.
She mentioned how she had had a crush on him and would try to convince him that they should have an affair. I'm not sure she was really joking. She also told the story of how all the secretaries at the studio looked out the door and down the hallway when Redford was walking down the pathways of the studio.
The movie is a light fluffy romantic comedy from playwright Neil Simon, and it had its share of crazy characters and oddball situations, and there were plenty of laughs. I know I saw the movie back in the 1970s at some point probably on television, but I had very little memory of it except that their apartment was sort of dismal and small. Redford had a very nice touch with the comedy elements and he even does kind of a silly dance as part of the story. I think there's a restored 4K Blu-ray coming, and I will probably pick that up just to make sure I have it in my collection.
We were originally going to stay for a second movie but we got hungry and decided to make a late evening visit to Canter's Delicatessen for a sandwich and some cheesecake to take home to Allison.
Day Two
The El Capitan theater usually hosts an animated film from the Disney Vault on the first full day of the TCM Film Festival, this year it was ”Alice in Wonderland" which was pretty surreal anytime you see it. Mario Cantone was the host and he was delightfully silly and fun and talking about the film. His expert guest was Andreas Deja , a legendary animator from Disney Studios who has worked on dozens of Disney films since the 1980s. They talked about the things that inspired the movie and the fact that it had been one of the things Walt Disney had wanted to do from the very start. Of course there was also a discussion of how the movie finally started making money when we got to the Psychedelic era of the 60s and hippies under the influence made the film a hit.
We got locked out of “Letty Linton”, because Alice in Wonderland got out just 15 minutes before this long lost Joan Crawford film was to screen at the Egyptian. We did get in line and get a queue card but there was no way we were going to get into the film. The Theater was completely packed. So we went and had lunch in the car in the parking garage at Hollywood and Highland, and then went up for the second film of the day, which was “Dangerous Liaisons”.
The star of the film, Glenn Close, had just gotten her feet and handprints done in the courtyard at the Chinese Theater, and she stayed over to talk about this movie. She did have some interesting information about the process, including the fact that all of her scenes were shot well after everybody else had completed their work. She had given birth just 7 weeks before and was still on maternity leave before she came to Europe to film her part of the movie. She talked about how she was unsure that John Malkovich was going to cut it as a romantic lead , but she ultimately decided that he was definitely going to work in the film.
It's easy to forget that both Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves are also in the movie, they play secondary characters and they were both quite good despite the usual criticism that Keanu gets for playing a character in a period piece. There was a little bit of a discussion about the ending of the film, and Glenn Close revealed that they did shoot a guillotine execution, but that that was ultimately abandoned for the disturbing silent treatment ending that finishes off the film now.
The movie is a tour de force for both Close and John Malkovich, and it was certainly deserving of the awards that it received and the ones it was considered for.
Next on the agenda is just one of the most delightful moments of the festival. The presentation of the 1996 film “That Thing You Do”. This has always been a personal favorite, and it tells a great story behind one of those one hit wonders that made up pop music in the '60s and '70s, in this case though one that was entirely invented for the movie. The two guests were Johnathon Schaech and Kevin Pollock, who both explained how they had been cast and some of the contributions that they made to the way the story was told. The writer-director of the film is Tom Hanks, who also plays the part of record company executive Mr. White.
Schaech explained that when he went in for his audition he improvised the snapping fingers, hand on the ear and delivery to an invisible microphone when his character says “I quit”. It was his idea to present it as if it was a song that he's walking away from. He also literally walked away when he finished his line and Tom Hanks had to chase him down in the hallway to get him back. He said that that is the point at which he knew he was going to get the part. Pollock on the other hand had worked with Tom Hanks on his Apollo Mission miniseries, so they had a previous relationship. Again, the actor was given quite a bit of leeway into how his character was going to be played. People sometimes mistake him for a DJ but he's actually a local businessman who does his own commercials on the radio and that's why the audience is familiar with him. Pollock said that Hank's told him to do whatever he wanted with the character, and Kevin played it very broadly with some cartoonish dancing and movements and oddball vocal delivery. He thought for sure Hanks was going to call him on it and ask him to tone it down, but he said Tom was just fine with it and it ended up in the film. This presentation and the conversation that followed the movie were highlights of the festival for us.
We then went out and got in line again to go back into the Chinese Theater for the presentation of Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Boyer had also been in “Barefoot in the Park" the night before so we were seeing him in two different movies that were made 30 years apart. It was sort of an interesting comparison. Incidentally actress Mildred Natwick had been in both “Barefoot in the Park” and “Dangerous Liasions” so we saw two stars in their own double feature at the festival, an unplanned but very pleasant coincidence.
Amanda had not seen Gaslight before and she enjoyed it quite well, the fact that the term gaslighting has become so prolific in the last couple of years is easy to understand once you see the movie. We know that we are being deliberately lied to and are expected to accept the lie in spite of the evidence of our own eyes and ears. That's exactly what is happening as Boyer's character is attempting to drive his wife mad as he seeks jewels that belonged to her aunt. The movie was also the debut of Angela Lansbury and she is quite a character as a fairly slutty servant who is providing comic relief and some plot details in the film.
As much as we would have liked to stay for the midnight screening of “Vanishing Point”, it wasn't going to work. We were not staying in a hotel downtown and so we had a 45 minute commute back to the house in Glendora, and that meant that we would not have gotten home until after 3 am.. Not something that we could do and then on Saturday morning get up for the other films that we planned on seeing.
Day Three
We had to make a tough choice on Saturday morning, and the way it played out for the afternoon meant that our best option was to see “The Day the Earth Stood Still" in the Chinese Theater Multiplex. I think whenever they have an older science fiction film they basically get Joe Dante out of storage and bring him to the festival. Let's face it, this is a guy who knows what Saturday sci-fi and the 50s and 60s was all about.
He told a couple of quick stories about the making of the film, got us hyped up for the movie, and then got out of the way. This may be the 4th or 5th time I've seen him introduce a movie at the festival, and he always seems to work it just right, so the focus is on the movie.
Immediately after The Day the Earth Stood Still we got back in line at the multiplex to see Captain Blood, one of my favorite Errol Flynn films. The guest was Allen Rode who has written extensively about the era of films that this was made in and in particular about director Michael Curtis, whose long association with Errol Flynn was contentious for a variety of reasons including things that happened in the making of this film.
Mr Rode talked about the final time that Flynn and Curtis met near the end of Flynn's life when he was broke and desperate for work, and although they had had their differences they seem to have a Reconciliation at that final meeting, and after Flynn left Curtis told his host that if it wasn't for Errol Flynn he would not have had a career.
Because of the timing of events at the festival, we had to step out of Captain Blood for a few minutes to get queue cards for the next film that we wanted to see. We were able to do that and then go back in to finish off the movie, but the sequence that we missed while we were gone was the great duel between Flynn and Basil Rathbone on the beach. Fortunately I've seen the movie a dozen times, still it would have been nice to be able to see that moment again on the big screen.
The movie that we were trying to ensure that we got queue cards for was next and that was 1979's”The Muppet Movie”. The guest was composer Paul Williams, who did the music for the film and wrote the great classic song “Rainbow Connection”. Williams was in fine form telling great stories, and because he was going to be doing a conversation later in the festival, there was a small tribute film to him that screened before the Muppet Movie. Frankly if I had to pick a moment from the festival that was my favorite this would probably be it. I love “The Muppet Movie" and I've admired Paul Williams for 50 plus years. This made me anticipate the conversation that would be coming up later even more.
Afterwards we all sang along with the “Dream Factory"at the end of The Muppet Movie and then we made our way over to the Egyptian Theater for a screening of a Fellini film. We were also going to meet up with one of the Lambs who is also going to be seeing “Nights of Cabiria”. Aaron Neuwirth saw me first, and yes I turned around to the call “hey old man”. Ouch, but it is accurate. Aaron went in first. He had already gotten a queue card and he held a couple of seats for us at the back of the theater because all three of us were going to leave as soon as the movie was done to get queue cards for the next film.
“Nights of Cabiria”, won the Academy Award for Best foreign language film back in the 1950s, and I suppose from the perspective of the time it would be deserving. Frankly, it was not my cup of tea. The lead actress was quite good but her character is frustratingly irritating and dense to the point that she makes the same mistakes over and over again. And it may very well be that The stereotype of Italians shouting everything comes from this movie where the actors all seem to be about 20 decibels louder than they need to be. I have to admit that the three of us dozed off occasionally, and we left a little bit early to be sure we got in line for the movie that we were all anticipating.
Our final film on Saturday was “Robocop”, which I have seen on the big screen almost as many times as I've seen “Jaws” on the big screen. The bonus here though, was the guests, Paul McCrane who plays Emil, the melting man in the movie, Kurtwood Smith who is Clarence Boddicker, the villain who gets the most amount of time and the juiciest lines in the movie, and RoboCop himself Dr Peter Weller.
They had a lively time sharing stories about the making of the film and commenting on the work of director Paul Verhofen in turning this film into something that was not cartoon movie junk but rather a satire of the social mores of the time. I think all of the conversations that took place during the festival are available on the TCM YouTube channel, but I will try to link this one here because it was so memorable. Amanda and I had actually seen Peter Weller talk about Robocop in the Egyptian Theater several years before when the American Cinematheque was doing a tribute to Miguel Ferrer who passed away just days earlier. We said goodbye to Aaron after this film and once again headed home for a short night's sleep before coming back for the last day of the festival.
Day 4
Going to a movie at 9: 00 in the morning on a Sunday is my idea of Heaven but I'm sure a lot of people felt it was a little early. One of the most fun conversations about a film at the festival however took place here as nine of the 12 kids who made up the “Bad News Bears" showed up to talk about the movie. You would think having that large a crowd of storytellers would be overwhelming but they paced themselves very well and everybody got a turn to say something about the movie and their experience in it.
All of them had very nice things to say about Walter Matthau but also the director Michael Ritchie. Some of them had been actors and some of them had been kids who played baseball and just wanted an opportunity to do so on screen. As anybody who has seen the movie knows, there is dialogue in this film that comes from not only the adults but the kids, that would certainly not be politically correct. There is language that would not pass muster with the woke police of today. With that warning the audience watching the movie laughed at all of the appropriate places and held their breath once or twice because of the language use but everyone seemed to recognize that this was a comedy not a commentary and they responded appropriately.
I actually saw the Bad News Bears in the Chinese Theater in 1976 so it was kind of fun on the 50th anniversary to be back for another screening. I was asked about it by the cameras that were roving the courtyard before the film so I hope that that footage shows up somewhere so that people can appreciate the moment.
Our next stop at the TCM Film Festival was at Club TCM in the Roosevelt Hotel, to listen to the conversation with Paul Williams. Ben Mankiewicz introduced Williams and we also got to see the film tribute again which was nice. Paul went into more detail about the start of his career and he talked about how being an actor in a film where he picked up a guitar and started teaching himself how to play and making up a song on the spot led him to a career as a songwriter.
He could not be laudatory enough about Karen Carpenter, referring to her as an angel whose voice gave life to his lyrics and set his career path. I was hoping there would be a little bit more talk about the “Phantom of the Paradise" and I think Mankiewicz was planning on that, but Paul Williams is a raconteur and he had things that he wanted to say, so they just let him go. If there was one screening that I missed at this year's Film Festival that I would really like to have made it would have been “Ishtar” a movie that I have championed in the face of derisive criticism since the day it opened. Williams talked about how he was trying to create songs for that film that work musically but were cringe-worthy, and frankly he succeeded. He was pretty proud however of some of the lyrical rhyming that he did and who can blame him.
After the conversation we rushed over to the Egyptian Theater for another one of those things that we look forward to every year, the Craig Barron Ben Burtt presentation of "The Towering Inferno”. These two Academy award-winning film technicians deconstruct the visual effects and the sound effects of the movie that they talk about each year. We briefly met our friend Michael in line, who had shown up hoping to be able to crash the presentation and was in the standby line. We told him we would try to hold a seat for him when we got inside, but he texted us that he never really got close to being able to have a ticket to the screening. Maybe next year Michael, sorry.
Burtt and Baron both have a lot of fun putting these presentations together and they showed up in their firefighters turnouts and helmets to explain how the movie was made. They had some great behind the scenes pictures and clips to show, and the story of working with fire is always fascinating.
“The Towering Inferno” is 2 hours and 45 minutes, which sounds like a long time but it actually moves very effectively. Some people may think of it as a Cheesy disaster film, but let me tell you it works really well and plays like gangbusters on the screen. Maybe the character development is a little thin, but the plot plays out with a lot of suspense and there are some great set pieces. Paul Newman and Steve McQueen both get to play action hero in a couple of scenes and those look terrific on the big screen. Everyone was surprised at how well the film holds up, and this was the right way to see it on the big screen with great sound.
It also turns out that Director John Landis was a stuntman on the film who took a dive out a window on fire, and he was in the audience for the screening. How cool was this bit of trivia?
For our last film at the festival we decided to skip the closing night screening in the Chinese IMAX theater and instead opted for screening of the Gene Kelly Musical “On the Town”. The hosts for the show were Mario Cantone and Kate Flannery and I think both of them had a few shots before the screening because they were feeling good.
They didn't have any special insight into the film but they enjoyed talking about the three main characters and they engaged in a variation of the “F***”, Marry, or Kill? game, and let's just say the poor Jules Munchen came up on the short end of the stick with everyone.
“On the Town” is an ebullient celebration of New York City and the Golden Age of Hollywood dancing. Anne Miller and Vera Ellen are terrific dancers and Betty Garrett is no slouch either. There are great sequences and memorable moments in the film and it feels really nice to close out a classic film festival with a movie that came from the Dream Factory at its height.
So that was our Festival experience and I can't wait till next year.
I basically quoted the above teaser trailer to a couple of guys sitting behind me at the recent screening of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". I overheard them asking each other, "What are the first and second encounters?" That I could remember the answer from way back in this 1977 trailer is a credit to my long term memory, now if only I could remember the three things I was going to pick up at the market, I'd be in much better shape.
This was a last minute commitment we made. Some other social engagement fell out, and we are Paramount Movie Pass holders, so this was available to us without an extra charge. It was a 70mm screening of a newly struck print of the film, and the Austin audience was among the first to see this print.
I wrote about the film after a screening eight years ago, and I will stand by my comments from that time here.. Every time I see this film, I am more impressed by what it accomplishes. The screening at the Paramount allowed me to be immersed in the sounds of the film very effectively. The opening musical note, sustained and then the jump to a loud retort was perfectly timed to the visual jump opening that the movie comes in with. The roar of the winds in Mexico as the survey team is arriving to discover the lost squadron of WWII planes is a terrific use of sound. The same can be said of the sequence in India, where the throngs of thousands are replicating the humming musical notes that came from the sky. The payoff of the thousands of hands simultaneously pointing towards the heavens was perfect and another indicator of the brilliance of writer/director Steven Spielberg. That this is the film that followed his masterpiece "Jaws", cements his place in the hierarchy of film giants.
Of course If we are going to spend time talking about the sound of the film, we can't ignore the score from the legendary John Williams. The five note motif is so deeply intertwined with the story of the film, that as I said before, Williams could easily have earned a screenwriting credit for the movie. The editing of the lights and the music in the final scene is one of those times where music can completely replace dialogue and you still understand what is going on.
I discovered that I did not have a CE3K shirt to wear down to the presentation. So I substituted a shirt that has a secret connection to the film. Those of you who know, will appreciate the joke, and those of you who are confused need to watch both movies. So many cultural references depend on understanding the timing of the events, and this is one of those. The 007 movie came out two years after "Close Encounters".
I have to admit that I get frustrated sometimes with young people who have no sense of film history. Amanda told me that when she mentioned that she was going to the screening, her co-workers had never heard of the movie. Yes it is forty-eight years old, but they all know "Star Wars" and have at least heard of "the Godfather". I'm just amazed that this classic from director Steven Spielberg is not imprinted on our collective memory as deeply as I think it should be. I'm probably just a grumpy old guy, but when they discover this film for themselves, I will be seen as a prophet.
Ok, I admit, I might have an addiction. It is not a problem however, since it never interferes with my life and it only enhances it. If I can see this movie on the big screen in a theater, I will do so, and conveniently, in celebration of it's 50th anniversary, it was widely re-released and I took advantage of the opportunity in all three of the subscription services I am enrolled in.
First up was an Cinemark showing on the first day of the re-release. It was a great presentation in a straight forward theater.
On Sunday, we went to a 3-D Screening at the AMC Theater, it was mid-day on a Sunday, and we were there with maybe five other people.
Finally, I went by myself at the Alamo Drafthouse, also for a mid-day screening, and Mondays are a lonely time at a movie theater in the middle of the day. Still I loved it. You can find plenty of Jaws Content on the site. Come on in the water.
A lot of people when asked what it is the best shark movie after Jaws, might choose Deep Blue Sea. I saw DBS a week or two ago and was once again impressed with how much fun the movie is. Genetically altered sharks, hunting humans, in the middle of a natural disaster, is obviously a lot of fun. The story is filled with mayhem related to the cumulative destruction of the Marine Research Center where the sharks are housed. As entertaining as this film is however, I must say that it pales in comparison in regard to tension, anxiety, and reality, to the shallows.
This is practically a one-woman show, as Blake Lively plays a surfer, confronting a shark in a shallow bay, somewhere on the Mexican Coast. The setup for the film is very strong, there's a reason that nobody will miss her for a night, and there's a reason that the shark lingers in the area, which doesn't require it to have any particular emotional Arc that it is following. Unlike Jaws the Revenge, it's not really personal it's instinct.
Our protagonist is Nancy, a medical student who is uncertain that she wants to continue and become a doctor. She's retracing the steps of her deceased mother, to locate an isolated beach in a bay that was her mother's favorite place. She caught a ride with a local, while her traveling companion has been rendered incapable of going with her by inebriation and infatuation with man that she met near their hotel. So Nancy is on her own except for a couple of other surfers with whom she shares the secret of the perfect waves in this idyllic location.
The shark who becomes her nemesis, is there feasting on a whale that it has killed and which is floating into the bay. Perhaps even more harrowing than the shark, which is a consistent threat, is the shallow reef and rock formations, which have rendered Nancy injured, bleeding, and trapped on. After an initial attack, Nancy looks for refuge as she tries to figure out how to reach the shore while the shark doggedly pursues her and lingers in the area attracted by both the whale and her blood in the water.
The film builds a lot of tension, as others enter into this scenario, unaware of the danger that faces them as they interact with Nancy from her perch on a rock outcropping. Actually, Nancy has had three locations from which she tries to stay away from the shark. The first is on the floating dead whale, but as that is like seeking sanctuary on a a dinner plate, that location is not secure for long. The high and low tides exposed part of the reef and shallow rock bottom, at least enough to give Nancy a safe spot to contemplate her woes. Her injuries are significant, including a bite wound that threatens to leach the life away from her. It is convenient that as a budding physician, Nancy understands how to apply a tourniquet and create a pressure bandage out of part of her wetsuit. The Third location that she seeks protection on is it nearby buoy, which becomes her final refuge in the extended confrontation with the shark.
They are desperate attempts to acquire materials that will help her in her fight, some of which work and some of which fail. Her hopes are raised by the arrival of others on the beach, but those hopes are often dashed by the motives of the beachcombers, or by the actions of the shark. As horrifying as a shark bite would be, the moments that caused me physical pain watching the film came from seeing her tumble on the rocks or crawl across the poisonous coral. There's also a painful interlude with jellyfish, all of which will give you plenty of reason to cringe in your seat.
Most shark movies have some goofy element to them , or a human conflict in the background. "The Shallows" takes an experience that is very serious, and treats it in a way that makes you share the pain and frustration of our protagonist. The only thing that might make this movie feel a little artificial, is the climax and the resolution with the shark. It is dramatically solid, although a little improbable. In the end though none of it matters because we've spent two hours living an incident completely through our senses, and hope never to have to share.
It seems like there were dozens of "Jaws" rip-offs in the late seventies. Killer Orcas, Grizzlies, and in this film, genetically modified piranha that can strip a man to the bone in minutes. This was an exploitation picture that launched the career of director Joe Dante. It has only a little of the sideways humor that characterizes his best films, but it does try to keep the audience engaged with frequent piranha victims every few minutes.
The formula is a clear set of beats stolen from "Jaws". We start with a titillating experience that results in death, followed up by a slow discovery of what is happening, and then a series of denials of reality by officials. One of the main differences is that the obnoxious character who is trying to dismiss the whole thing, gets a comeuppance, unlike the mayor in the shark movie.
Bradford Dillman was a seventies staple as a suspicious official or businessman, and he was in a ton of TV shows of the era. Here he plays a drunk hermit like loser, who hets turned into an action hero for no particular reason. Heather Menzies, who played one of the Von Trapp children in "The Sound of Music" and Strother Martin's daughter in Sssssss, is a bounty hunter who gets caught up in the action, and veteran horror icon Kevin McCarthy starts a long association with director Dante, playing a crazed scientist. Don't ask why there is a small lizard man walking around the laboratory in the early part of the film. It never becomes important and it is simply a loose thread.
"Piranha" is an efficient, low budget fright film. The film makers do the best they can with their resources and imaginations. Although many consider it a cult classic, it simply feels standard for the times. But of course those were my times so I loved it.
It was fifty years ago, this month, that "Jaws" the greatest film of the last eighty years, first dropped into our collective culture. Ever since that day, film makers have been striving to recapture the essence of the film. Some have stuck to the basic horror narrative, using the sharks as a monster to hook us into watching. A few films (especially TV movies) have tried to parody shark films into action comedies with varying degrees of success. Only occasionally, has a shark film created a aura that was reminiscent of the classic, "The Shallows" being the most recent example I can think of. This new film, "Dangerous Animals" tries a different approach and succeeds in getting the tension right, and the horror appropriate. It is not anything close to the quality of film that "Jaws" is, but it has some things going for it that make it my favorite film of the year so far.
If you watch the trailer, you will understand the premise very quickly. We have a serial killer whose method of murder is feeding his live victims to ravenous sharks while the victim is still alive. This is potentially a gruesome horror film that could be classified as exploitation, except for the fact that director, Sean Byrne, has learned his Spielberg lessons well. Instead of extended scenes of sharks dismembering the poor subjects of the killers plans, we see just enough to be terrified, but not enough to be revolted. There is blood in the violence, but it is not the over the top fountains of a horror film like "The Monkey". If ever a horror movie could claim to be in gory good taste, this one is probably it.
The big advantage that this movie has over other exploitation films is that it has two dynamic characters that are really interesting. The main character is Hassie Harrison, as Zephyr, an itinerant American, surfing the coast of Australia. She is emotionally damaged, we can see that, but she is not unreachable as her one night stand with a friendly local explores. She is also not a mere damsel in distress. She is smart, resilient, and relentless in trying to fight back against the antagonist. Zephyr is not simply going to resign herself to a fate that she becomes an eyewitness to, she is going to struggle in any way possible to keep living. She may not be the easiest character to love, but she is clearly one that we are happy to root for, time and time again.
One of the faults of some thrillers is the good luck that the victims sometimes run into, which allow them to escape and give us unearned hope. This movie turns that trope on it's head. It is the killer who ends up with all the good luck on his side as he repeatedly thwarts Zephyr in her escape plans. Jai Courtney is Tucker, the deranged serial killer who can mask his evil with an avuncular round of "Baby Shark" one moment, and then a knife in the throat the next. I have seen in in half a dozen other movies over the last few years and he always seemed to me to be a guy who was just missing it. An actor who would have occasional moments but never enough to be memorable. He was bland as you could get. This film however, gives him a part that is screaming for some charisma, and he delivers. Courtney has the glint in his eye of a maniac, and the physical form of a damaged brute. It is impossible to take your eyes off him when he is on screen and that says something because his counterpart is attractive as heck and in a bathing suit for most of the film.
The script allows us to believe a few things that are unbelievable. The brief fling that Zephyr has with local Moses, becomes for him an obsession, only in a good way. The fact that Moses and Zephyr are surfers and they are connected by a particular beachfront spot, becomes a key point in building up a chance that Tucker could somehow be derailed. Zephyr knows what is coming because she also meets Heather, a fellow pawn in Tucker's twisted game. If there is any heart in the film outside of the truncated love story, it is in the few minutes that Heather and Zephyr share as they await their fate.
Sharks are in the film, but first time screenwriter Nick Lepard and director Byrne, seem to know that the fish are the least dangerous animals in the food chain of this thriller. Their role is kept to a supporting part, which makes them all the more effective when they do come into play. For some reason, this film is not getting many screens or much publicity, which is really unfortunate because, like the mother of all shark films, it is really not a horror film as much as it is a thriller. I know it is produced in partnership with Shudder, which is a horror outlet, but you are selling the movie short if you keep it in that box. This is a great twist on the great white, and in spite of the fact that it is being promoted as from the producers of the excretable "Longlegs" you should seek it out.
There are plenty of posts about the movie Jaws on this site, and I'm going to be writing more in the near future because I'm seeing the film again at least twice this summer. So I'm going to digress a little bit on this post and just talk about the experience rather than the movie itself.
The screening was at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Mueller location on the east side of Austin . We have been to this theater several times before and frankly it's not our favorite. It requires that we park in a structure that requires us to login and pay in an online app. We do get validation for the time we're at the theater, so it's not the fact that we have to pay that is the problem, it's just the technical process that is a little annoying.
The theater is located about 30 miles from our house, and we left a good hour and a half early because we want to be at the theater well before the movie starts to take in the pre-show videos and trailers that Alamo curates for us. Also we usually order dinner so we want to get there so that our meal arrives before the movie actually starts. All of those plans went to hell when we got on the highway and the rain started coming down. We had a torrential downpour of biblical proportions, and it was complicated by high winds and hailstones that were usually golf ball sized but sometimes even bigger. I had to slow down on the drive, put on my hazard lights and struggled to see the cars in front of me on the road. We finally got a break in the rain and we got to the parking garage just in time for an even stronger deluge of hail, and rain that was mostly blowing sideways. We stood in the parking garage for about 15 minutes waiting for a break. When the hail stopped we made a run for it but we're careful not to run on the ice because it would have been easy to slip and fall. However that care meant that we were in the rain long enough to be completely soaked when we got into the theater.
The theater complex has individual bathrooms that are gender neutral and then sinks outside of the toilets that are available for everybody to use. They didn't have the hand blowers that would have been helpful in drying off our clothes before we went into the theater. I had to run a couple of paper towels through my hair to dry it enough to feel like I wasn't still swimming in the ocean.
This was a movie party, and as you've probably seen before the movie parties at Alamo include some props. We got a shark fin foam hat, we got a bath bomb in the shape of the Orca, and we got a small inflatable life preserver with a simulated bite taken out of it, maybe I can use it to float a drink in the pool. I also participated in a game before the show where two people competed for the prize shark head popcorn bucket. Unfortunately for me, the game consisted of a contest to draw on a chalkboard a shark. I need a ruler and a compass to draw a straight line or a circle, so I knew I wasn't going to be winning right from the beginning. I had fun anyway.
As usual the movie was great, and as I said before I'll write about it again a couple times this summer. I can say that when I'm looking for details that I didn't always pay attention to in my previous 137 screenings, I noticed that the kids on the beach at the start of the film did in fact have some crab legs that they were gnawing on.
Although I didn't win the shark head bucket, the hostess for the show did say that it was available for purchase at the concession or concierge stand. So when the movie was done we thought we would be able to finally get this prized addition to our popcorn bucket collection. Imagine our frustration however when the concierge station was closed and we looked at the buckets that were sitting across the counter on a Shelf and we're unable to purchase one. Another frustrating experience on this excursion.
2 days later we did make a trip down to the Lakeline Alamo, and Amanda dashed in in the hopes that she would be able to get one of those popcorn buckets. Lo and behold we scored.
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.
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