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Brick (2005)
A Cross between Touch of Evil and High School Caesar
Brick is a terrific film that captures your attention from the first scene and holds it through the winding plot. A cross between film noir and a juvenile delinquent film, it is an experiment in genre bending and genre mixing. Brick is Touch of Evil meets High School Ceasar with terrific pulp fiction (old magazine and paperback style, not Tarantino) dialogue that's delivered in straight, rapid fire. The out-of-place lingo and desolated parking lots, athletic fields and school grounds give Brick a hard-edged quality that takes the viewer out of his ordinary world.
The composition of the scenes are reminiscent of Orson Wells and the plot elements are gathered from a variety of different crime movies. The performances are superb.
Grand Canyon (1991)
A sham for the gullible
Grand Canyon is a marshmallow of a movie: soft, squishy, blandly sweet and utterly lacking nutritious value. Many reviewers here have called this "underrated" in fact, it is underwhelming. If Grand Canyon were really all the things its admirers claimed it was it would be far better than the film it actually is. Its somber tones and earnest observations provide a coating of weighty significance over a rusting hunk of zero. There are no revelations here, no great insights into the human condition, just the illusion of something stirring.
Fans of Grand Canyon argue that those who see through its pretense are insufficiently "sensitive" to appreciate the movie's philosophical merits. But any truly perceptive observer will spot the film's obvious contradictions and glory in its unintentionally humorous aspects. One character states, "When you sit on the edge of (the Grand Canyon) you realize what a joke we people really are... what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much... thinking that our time here means (nothing) to those rocks
Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries." If this is so, then why should any of the principles even bother going to the trouble of contemplating all that they pretend to contemplate? And why should anyone watching this sop give a damn about anyone in this film that strives so hard to make you care? Essentially, the Grand Canyon is meant to be a metaphor for the chasm that exists between people; between perceptions and reality, but if you listen carefully to how the characters express this, the Grand Canyon becomes more an allegory about the abyss within people who talk about the existence of miracles without daring to contemplate their source.
The characters are familiar: Kevin Kline is the feckless white (liberal) dope so feeble that he is rescued from the potentially fatal consequences of his own lame-brained actions twice. Danny Glover is the Magic Negro. Mary McDonald is the wise wife who obeys the voices she hears emitting from a mute homeless man. Naturally, Grand Canyon is set in Los Angeles and features attorneys and film producers who veer into the paths of wrecker drivers.
Grand Canyon appeals to a particular kind of sucker, the kind that prefers to believe in a poetic truth conjured in his own mind than the literal one staring him in the face; the kind of people who confuse style and substance. That so many of them have posted positive reviews of the film does not surprise me, what does are the many who claim it moved them to tears. Really? Cussing was inserted into the dialog so that viewers knew that they weren't watching some warmed over Hallmark Channel offering.
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
1970s paranoia
Many people like to attack or mock the anti-communist films of the 1950s for "paranoia" and "hysteria." They do this despite the fact that Soviet intelligence, using many prominent Americans like Alger Hiss who was highly placed in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration, made deep penetrations into U.S. institutions.
But more than thirty-years after the National Socialists were defeated in World War II -- with thousands of Soviet warheads aimed at the United States -- Hollywood resurrected the Nazis in a string of films of which "The Boys From Brazil" is one. Nevermind that Hitler never had anything close to the Fifth Column Stalin had or that Nazism was irrevocably ground into the earth with Germany's defeat of 1945, the Nazi Threat was back with a vengeance.
"The Boys From Brazil" isn't a really bad film but, when one weighs the respective threat of Nazism to communism at the time, it is hilariously paranoid. At the time this film flickered to life in threaters, the real Josef Mengele (a detestable ass) was living quietly in a bungalow in a suburb of São Paulo. Yet no one would dare call "The Boys From Brazil" or "Marathon Man" a hysterical relic of the 1970s!
Once Before I Die (1966)
Needs to be seen to be believed
Yeah, the story is a mess and some of the performances are wacked-out but it has its moments. Has anybody mentioned that Ursula Andress looks grrrrrrrrreeeeat in a wet, white blouse? Derek's films, though lacking coherence, could be visually impressive and this one was ahead of its time with some psychedelic shots that would eventually become tiresome by about 1969. Ron Ely (from Amarillo, Texas) gives a pretty good performance and the U.S. Cavalry uniforms are well done But, Andress is such a dolt that you pray she'll meet a slow and agonizing death. After a low flying Zero strafes a polo match, leaving Filipino corpses strewn about, Miss Andress pouts and whines about needing to take her puppy with her on the long trek to Manila. Pretty boy singer Rod Lauren does his best James Dean and scores with Ursula while the rest of the gang takes out a Japanese tank. Talk about dereliction of duty! Ursula's charms then make him impervious to enemy bullets. As for Richard Jaeckel, I will just have to believe that he was a psycho from the word go.
"Once Before I Die," you won't understand it but you may love it!
The Young Warriors (1967)
Worth watching despite the familiar plot
Pretty interesting war film despite the well-grooved plot involving an experienced sergeant leading a squad of young, inexperienced infantry soldiers into battle. Presumably set in Italy (some combat sequences were lifted from the Audie Murphy flick "To Hell and Back") the story centers upon the relationship that develops between the squad leader, Cooley (James Dury) and one of his charges, Hacker (played by Steve Carlson).
Square-jawed and rugged, Drury was born for his role. Best known for the TV western "The Virginian," it's a shame Drury wasn't in more combat films. Carlson is fine as a surly private but he is overshadowed by the wise-cracking (and sometimes irritating) Jon Daly who plays the unit comedian.
Norman Fell has a tiny role in this film and a young Robert Pine is interesting as sensitive trooper. Look closely for Kent "Adam 12" McCord (billed under his real name, Kent McWhirter) who pops up here and there as a lieutenant. It might have been more interesting to cast McCord in the role of Hacker.
I Want to Live (1983)
Bland TVer
This is a dreadful remake but it has its moments. I doubt Lindsay Wagner ever looked better even though she can't act to save her life. Harry Dean Stanton does an odd Emmett Perkins and Seymour Cassel is fine as the evil John Santo. But Pam Reed as the gratuitous bitchy feminist reporter is ridiculous. Robert Ginty is also good as Bab's junkie husband, Henry.
Just like the original, this bland made-for-TV flick tries to paint Barbara Graham as a well trod-upon girl-who-never-got-a-break. It also tries to make her out as innocent of the Mabel Monohan murder. That is all bull hockey. Babs was a mean as hell and guilty to boot. Throw in the obvious feminist slant and it's enough to put you off your TV dinner.
Freedom Fighter (1988)
A modest TV movie that could have been better
Although Tony Danza's name is likely to scare away serious movie fans, this made-for-TV film isn't as bad as one might suspect.
The story of the American GI in love with the German girl in East Berlin in the bad old Cold War days of 1961 is recycled but this version offers some interesting and unique escape scenarios that I imagine were available at the time. Several scenes of East Berliners risking their lives to make their getaway from the communists are quite well done. One in particular, which was based on an actual attempt caught on film, is excellent. It demonstrates not only the brutality with which the East Germans dealt with these people but also the sense of frustration U.S. soldiers must have felt at being armed to the teeth yet totally helpless in their ability to come to their aid.
When you pause to think of the significance of the Berlin Wall and all the dramatic stories that could be wrung from it, one has to wonder why Hollywood prefers to ignore it in favor of garbage like "The Beverly Hillbillies."
Prisoner of War (1954)
Good movie with a great deal of fact behind it.
I would suspect that some of the negative reviews of this movie stem from the fact that 1.) Ronald Reagan is the star and 2.) it would tend to fall in the very small category of anti-communist films produced by Hollywood. But for people who like good movies, this is a pretty good little film.
More importantly, the film has a basis in fact. The screenwriter, Allen Rivkin, drew on true stories from those who suffered in those camps. When the Army transport "General Walker" docked in San Francisco carrying the first group of returning American POWs from North Korea, Rivkin was there and personally interviewed sixty of them. These ex-POWs told him of the harsh treatment, lack of food, freezing weather, poor medical treatment, and brainwashing sessions that were just some of the horrors they had lived through. In addition, Capt. Robert H. Wise served as the technical adviser on the film. Wise, who had spent a year as a prisoner of the Germans during World War II, spent three years in a North Korean prison camp. He nearly starved to death, dropping 90 pounds during his ordeal. His input lent invaluable veracity to the details of the film.
So when you watch the scenes of torture, deprivation and mind control in "Prisoner of War," they are authentic. As for the statement that these scenes become homo-erotic "beefcake in bondage," the unfocused mind can conjure many things, but more often than not a cigar is just a cigar.
A small film shot on a low budget, there is much to recommend "Prisoner of War" including its treatment of the subject post-war American defectors. A handful of Westerners opted to stay with the communists after the war (as opposed to thousands and thousands of captured Chinese and North Koreans who preferred not to go back to the Reds)and this film has an interesting twist on the subject.
Might make a good B feature with "The Manchurian Candidate."
The Gravy Train (1974)
Lost but not forgotten
I used to catch this quirky product of the 1970s late at night on KTRK, Houston's ABC affiliate. I could never let this little gem go by without trying to catch a little of it and usually couldn't let go of it once I started.
Stacy Keach is the more "sophisticated" of the two Dion brothers, simply because he has chosen to sample the world outside their West Virginia coal mining community. He quits his factory job and returns to lure his bumpkin brother (played wonderfully by Waxahachie, Texas native Fredric Forrest) into a scheme to establish a seafood restaurant. The trouble is, the restaurant is to be financed via an armored car robbery with a gang that includes Denny Miller and Richard Romanus. Romanus double crosses the group and the Dion brothers take out after him. Yeah, Margot Kidder shows up but so does stuntman, director, writer & actor Hal Needham in an uncredited role as a guy in a bathtub.