Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010) dir. Lee Unkrich
Voices by: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Don Rickles

****

By Alan Bacchus

Those who read this blog might know my difficulty in reviewing these CG animated films and my often overly critical buzzkiller opinions of lauded Pixar films such as Cars, Wall-E or Ratatouille, films which admittedly are technical marvels, cleverly written, but suffered from a stale cartoonish sameness which has left me desiring more from the medium.

There's nothing new about Toy Story 3, after a 10 year hiatus from the series which started this new medium of animation. After all these other successful and critically acclained Pixar films, Toy Story is still the best of this bunch, consistently maxing out the potential of the computer animation technology.

So why does Toy Story 3 feel so much more entertaining from these adult eyes, than Up or Ratatouille, or Wall-E?

For one, human characters are kept to a minimum, something in which CG is still light years behind. As such crafting a story made almost entirely from inanimate toys render animate with the same scale, detail and articulation as they are in real life is the best way to present this medium.

The beautiful photorealism is as astonishing as it was in 1995. Even after all these years and all these CG films, I still haven’t gotten used to to the dramatic eye popping effect of seeing these pristine images flash before our eyes.

The opening is a rambunctious Western style action sequence aboard a train, a sequence not unlike the opening action of a Bond film, a scene which has no real narrative purpose other than to jumpstart us on the rollercoaster ride of fun.

The core story fits in naturally with the time elapsed since Toy Story 2. Andy, the owner of the loveable group of toys which includes Buzz Lightyear and Woody, has grown up and is off to college. Woody finds himself in Andy's dufflebag ready to go to college with him while the other toys, destined for the attic, inadvertantly get shipped to the local daycare. Woody escapes the duffle bag and hopes to save his buddies from onslaught of toy-destruction that is Sunnyside Daycare. Once there, the toys find a sinister authority figure in Lotso, a disgruntled stuffed bear that rules the other toys like Stalin.

Eventually Woody engineers an exciting escape from Lotso's clutches and back into their home at Andy's house. But without Andy do the toys have a purpose or are they obsolete?

Other than the technical action sequences, witty dialogue and stunning visual design of the Toy Story world, the film resonates warmly as a metaphor for the obsolence we all feel once we are past our prime and without need or purpose.

The characters we remember from the first two films are still the same, but we never get bored of Woody and Buzz, because as voiced by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen they are as endearing characters from serialized television (the best part of serialized television).

Lotso, the obsolete teddy bear make's a fine new adversary. His flashback which shows the origin of his self-loathing is particularly emotional. It not shows how his obsolence morphed into displaced anger, but 'humanizes' the enemy and even foreshadows the fate of Woody and Buzz if they can't make a new life without Andy fulfilling.

Lotso's gang of hoodlum toys provide great support. The ambiguously gay Ken doll for instance who has an obsession with his wardrobe is marvelous, same with the grotesque and brutish mute baby doll who assumes the silent strong man role of the group.

Every character seems to be given adequate attention and relevance to the grander world of Toy Story at large. Though I have no doubt Pixar could adequately produce more of these films with almost equal entertainment value, but the final moments of this film close out the lifecycle of these characters so perfectly, it's the absolute best way to go in style.

Toy Story 3 is available on Blu-Ray from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment

Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers (1995) dir. Oliver Stone
Starring; Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr. Tom Sizemore, Tommy Lee Jones

****

By Alan Bacchus

This is the first part coverage of Warner Bros' Oliver Stone Collection, a three-disc Blu-Ray featuring the director's cuts of 'Natural Born Killers', 'Any Given Sunday' and 'Alexander'.

The term "director's cut" is not what it used to be. What was once a badge of honour for filmmakers, a rare triumph of their creative vision over the tinkering hands of studio execs, has become an overused marketing tool. Despite the diluted power of the term, the fact is this version of Natural Born Killers is one of the best-ever director's cuts out there. The Blu-Ray disc essentially repackages the same collection of extras from the mid-'90s laserdisc and double VHS set ― audio commentary from Oliver Stone, featurettes, some truly awesome deleted scenes, a Charlie Rose interview and an alternate ending. A couple of mediocre new additions in high definition include an introduction from Stone reflecting on the relevance of his film 15 years later and a silly featurette postulating what kind of celebrity Mickey and Mallory might have achieved in the age of the internet.

The real treasures are the 150-plus reinstated cuts and shaved frames Stone needed to make to achieve a theatrical R-rating. Though the two cuts differ only by three minutes, these small edits skyrocket what was an enjoyable, thought-provoking, violent romp into the stratosphere of cinematic chaos. The restored scenes include more throat-slashing, body mutilation, blood splattering and, towards the end, the sight of Tommy Lee Jones's head on a stick waved around by the rioting prison mob ― moments perhaps too quick to notice but that add up to an even greater sense of nihilistic mayhem.

Watching it again, it’s hard to believe the script started off as a Quentin Tarantino film. Though the visual style and statement-making satirical tone is wholly Oliver Stone, some of the Tarantino hallmarks remain. The murderous duo, Mickey and Mallory, on the road and on the run, contain many of the humorous dialogue interaction and genre-reverence as Tarantino’s scripts for “True Romance”, “From Dusk till Dawn”. But in the hands of Stone, and his co-writers it became a beast through he could make his type of grand statements. Since it's a satire the extreme flourishes are necessary and make the statement stronger.

None of the freneticness would work if the film wasn't entertaining. Harrelson and Lewis make a wonderful fun loving couple of psychotics. If anything Juliette Lewis’ character treads too much on the performances from her other films (ie. “Kalifornia”), but Harrelson who is cast against type has the screen presence and confidence to pull off his conflicted character.

Around every corner is a number of wonderful scene stealer supporting performances. Tom Sizemore’s extreme ‘bad cop’ Jack Scagnetti and Tommy Lee Jones’ prison warden Jack McClusky are even more repulsive than Mickey and Mallory. But it’s Robert Downey Jr.’s Aussie TV talk show host Wayne Gale who shines. It's one of Downey's best characters. Although Gale is manic, absurd and goes over the edge his TV interview with Mickey brings out a sharp intelligence to his character.

The amount of media coverage the ridiculous "balloon boy" story recently garnered clearly renders NBK as relevant today as yesterday. But even those turned off by Stone's sledgehammer statement making should still marvel at the quality of his technical experimentation in mainstream storytelling. It's one of the last films in a remarkably productive ten-year run of filmmaking for Stone, which saw him hone and perfect his bold and innovative multi-format, multi-media techniques. Natural Born Killers achieves a state of nirvana for this style; it's a monumental achievement to create coherence from the almost random cornucopia of imagery and sound mashed together. In fact, in the DVD audio commentary, Stone ends his discussion by giving extra special thanks to his negative cutter, who had the hardest job on the production, assembling the final film from over 3,000 edits from multiple format sources.

The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy (1931) dir. William A. Wellman
Starring: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Mae Clarke, Leslie Fenton, Donald Cook, Robert O'Connor and Murray Kinnell

****

By Greg Klymkiw

"I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams,
They fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air."

Not once in William A. Wellman's seminal Warner Bros. gangster picture The Public Enemy do we hear a single lyric sung from I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, the famous Tin Pan Alley waltz, but we do hear the melody played as a main theme over the haunting opening titles and at other key points. And even without the lyrics, the euphonic melancholia of John Kellette's 1918 show tune takes us back, just as it would have for audiences upon the film's original release in 1931, to a time when men were men; romantically living and dying by a gun, when blondes were platinum, when Mother was sacred, when a halved breakfast grapefruit was ground into the face of a lover merely expressing her wishes and dreams - when the bootlegged booze that flowed so freely during the Prohibition period was tainted by the streams of blood from those who were brutally killed in the wars to control the illegal circulation of the devil's brew.

With a flourish that typified the best work of "The Vitaphone Orchestra", Warner Brothers' in-house music unit, staccato blasts of horns and percussion blare, clarion-call-like within the first few bars of the aforementioned song, playing over the titles on top of a bare, grey wall of bricks. Announcing a headlong plunge into a world of violence right from the opening frames of the film, the title sequence gradually switches gears when the music morphs from malevolence to a nostalgic sadness of days gone by and we're treated to a series of singles on every principal character in the film (accompanied by the name of the actor and the role they play). Each character/actor appears standing, often performing a distinctive gesture that occurs in the film and/or that best represents who the character is.

Action is everything in movies and for characters (and the actors who play them and the audiences who view them), actions indeed speak louder than words.

First to appear is principal character Tom Powers, the star-making role played by James Cagney. We get the sense that what we're seeing is Cagney as Cagney as Tom, without even a hint at the seething, psychotic we eventually come to know. Standing on a 45-degree angle, Cagney/Powers is all charm and smiles - adorned casually in a cap, black undershirt and unbuttoned grey and white smock-like garment with black stripes, he winks, wiggles his eyebrows and delivers what becomes a trademark play punch that he bestows upon those he loves as the film progresses.

Platinum blonde bombshell Jean Harlow appears as Tom's favoured moll Gwen Allen, garbed in virginal white with sexy 30s raccoon-eye makeup as she smiles pleasantly and also delivers a wink, but not as brashly as Cagney - it's subtle and ever-so come-hither.

Edward Woods as Tom's slightly dim-witted, but loyal best friend and chief partner in crime Matt, is poker-faced, with only the hint of a smile before he takes his big hand and wipes his mouth broadly.

The stunning Joan Blondell as Matt's girl Mamie, is all smiles and glitter - exuding the same warmth she displays throughout the picture.

Donald Cook as Tom's upright, honest war-hero brother Mike is completely in character - rigid and serious, adorned tightly and uncomfortably in his streetcar conductor's uniform. It's like a straight jacket.

The rest of the characters; Nails Nathan (Leslie Fenton) the dapper mobster smiles and chews his gum, Ma Powers (Beryl Mercer) smiles radiantly as only a Mom can, Paddy Ryan (Robert O'Connor), bartender-turned-hood puffs his cigar pleasurably, while the Fagin-like Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) chalks his pool cue with confidence.

These haunting introductions introduce us - not only to the characters, but the stars who play them - like odd still-life portraits that come to life. They give us a hint of the personality playing the character as well as the personality of the character. It's simple and, after all these decades since the film was unleashed, still unique. Sure, there were similar introductions to characters in silent pictures before The Public Enemy and many afterwards, but this was the first of very few instances where an introduction placed equal emphasis on character and player in a knowing and borderline cerebral fashion.

And, of course, all of these introductions are presented with the melancholy of Kellete's music. And those who would have been (or are) familiar with the lyrics - especially the chorus quoted above would have known they were about to witness a tale of those who reach for the heavens, only to have them snuffed out when the pretty bubbles of dreamland burst and all that's left is grim reality.

Like Warner Brothers' other 1931 gangster hit Little Caesar, The Public Enemy delivers a fast-paced rise and fall tale of a gangster. The difference, is that the former centres on a character who is right off his nut from the beginning and only gets meaner and crazier, while the former charts a character who is mildly irascible and becomes nastier and crazier as the thirst for power eventually leads to a taste of it and both gluttony and evil become comfy bedfellows.

While both pictures are great, the critical reputation of Little Caesar seemed to be overshadowed by that of The Public Enemy. Though both films were regarded highly as the true launching pads for stars Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney respectively, it was the latter film that garnered much of the hoopla, whilst the former was regarded almost solely for Robinson's performance.

This, of course, was nonsense.

Stylistically, the films are night and day. Though they both deliver similar rise and fall trajectories, Mervyn LeRoy's approach to Little Caesar is brilliantly, insanely relentless while Wellman takes the slow-burn approach with The Public Enemy. If one is to make any sort of contemporary comparison, Brian DePalma's crazed version of Scarface is to Little Caesar that Scorsese's brilliant, meticulous razzle dazzle of Goodfellas is to The Public Enemy. Ultimately, it's apples and oranges, save for one thing - all four pictures are iconic, separated respectively by 30 and 40 years.

Interestingly enough, we owe the gangster genre, not so much to the dabblings of Griffith and Von Sterberg within the silent era, but to the efforts of Darryl F. Zanuck, head of production at Warner Brothers during the late 20s to early 30s. Zanuck, like all GREAT producers was no paper-pusher. He was a filmmaker. His skill and knowledge in all areas of making movies was equalled only by that of David O. Selznick and Val Lewton. They were all visionaries of the highest order. Zanuck, in particular, almost single-handedly established Warners as a true force to be reckoned with and, as a studio, one that bears a style and legacy that continues to this day. (All of Scorsese's great crime pictures - Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Departed - are Warner Brothers pictures.)

This was especially remarkable since Zanuck's tenure at Warner Brothers was less than ten years and for most of his career that followed, he carved out a special niche at 20th Century Fox. At Warners, however, he was the man responsible for bringing sound to motion pictures - insisting that The Jazz Singer be the first true "talkie".

As a producer, Zanuck was not just a great filmmaker, but a storyteller par excellence. Not surprisingly, Zanuck began as a literal storyteller - a screenwriter. Even during the silent period, while most others were crafting tales of a historical nature, Zanuck was interested in the world around him and fashioned screenplays about contemporary American life. This is, in general, a marked contrast from his interest in historical drama once he took over 20th Century Fox - though even at Fox, he, like the young man he was when he ran Warners, was always interested in social issues and figuring on how to work them into drama.

This interest in contemporary social issues led to the production of Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. With these two films, not only was a genre born, but the style and approach to story - one that Warners maintained, even after his departure - had his imprint all over it.

The Public Enemy is extraordinary in a number of ways, but if anything, its success lies in creating a story that is, at first, rooted in history and nostalgia and gradually shifts focus to a contemporary social issue gangster picture. The early part of the film establishes Tom's rivalry with his do-gooder goody-two-shoes brother Mike, his brutal abusive father (a cop, no less, and enough reason for his hatred of law and authority), his love for his kind, gentle mother and his need to protect and shower her with riches and his friendship with the simple, loyal tag-along Matt and finally, his need for father figures whom he finds in criminals like the Fagin-like Putty Nose and Paddy Ryan, the patriarchal Irish barman-turned-hood.

After charting these early years, the story becomes as contemporary as the world in which the film itself was released into. Tasting money and power, Tom becomes more brutal with each passing story beat. His attraction to women is also interesting. Unlike pal Matt or brother Mike, both of whom seek and find steady women, Tom is drawn to the company of whores, or rather, ex-whores who eventually drop their attachment to easy money in exchange for sex.

Still, when his whores want more, Tom turns into a nasty, rage-ridden magma head. The iconic grapefruit he shoves into Mae Clarke's face during the famous breakfast scene is the direct result of her having dreams and wishes of normalcy. Tom doesn't want normal. He wants more money, more power and more instant gratification. Tom is only truly happy when he gets in with Gwen, a tough, sexy streetwalker who makes it clear that although she loves him, she too has a desire for money and power (the only kind she can wield, the power of her pussy). Somehow, though not surprisingly, this makes Tom love Gwen even more.

Finally, loyalty means more to Tom than anything. When loyalty is betrayed, he becomes a vengeance-ridden psychopath and it's loyalty and the need for revenge that leads to his downfall (and one of the most grotesquely, grimly powerful endings in movie history).

There's no two ways about it. The Public Enemy is a corker! One brilliant set-piece after another delivers a tale hell-bent on destruction and it's either going to be everyone and everything in Tom Powers' path or Powers himself. Redemption is never in the cards. It's all about the here and now and getting more - taking whatever one can from the trough until one explodes.

There's something brilliantly and uniquely American about all this. One of the great set-pieces has Tom hosting an opulent dinner in his mother's home with a huge keg of beer in the middle of the table (like Little Caesar, we're smack in the middle of Prohibition). The food is plentiful, of the highest quality and prepared by Ma's own hands. Tom and his pal Matt fill themselves with food and beer voraciously while brother Mike picks at his food and glares at his gluttonous criminal sibling. This silent juxtaposition slow burns into an explosion of emotion. When Mike points to the beer and suggests it's tainted with the blood of those Tom has murdered, Tom responds with disgust that Mike is surely no matter than him - that he must have enjoyed killing just as much - that all those medals won in battle came from the blood of German soldiers.

This, of course, is one of the more brilliant aspects of the story - brothers who are rivals, who detest what each other represents - Tom is freedom attained through crime, Mike is the chains of incarceration afforded through being one of the working poor - and yet, they are "both part of the same hypocrisy" (to quote the line Michael Corleone utters to Senator Geary in Godfather II). Tom kills for his family in gang wars. Mike killed for his family in war. Both are products of America. Both are America.

Thematically, The Public Enemy (in addition to many of the Warners gangster pictures) is so ahead of its time. Stylistically, it's an original and most importantly, the model for every subsequent examination of crime in America to follow.

And like our fictional counterparts, we're all part of the same hypocrisy.

Or like the song says, we're all "forever blowing bubbles..." and ultimately, all of our dreams, "they fade and die".

"The Public Enemy" is available in a extras-packed and very reasonably priced new box set of four prohibition era gangster pictures from Warner Home Entertainment under the TCM Archives banner. The package is slender and the discs are flippers, but for movie lovers, it's one of the best deals around.

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet

Romeo and Juliet (1996) dir. Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo di Caprio, Claire Danes, Dash Mihok, Harold Perrineau, Brian Dennehy, Paul Sorvino, John Leguizamo

***1/2

by Alan Bacchus

There’s nothing subtle about Baz Luhrmann’s hyper kinetic pop art rendition of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In fact there’s nothing subtle about the filmmaking of Baz Luhrmann in general. He manages to apply his unique staccato style of storytelling he demonstrated in Strictly Ballroom to William Shakespeare, a bold gesture which worked back in 1996 and still works today.

Resetting the tragic love story in the sun drenched Venice Beach, CA in a gang culture environment featuring comic book colours and ultra-hip pop music was like a sledgehammer to our heads. Not everything works perfectly in Luhrmann-land, but there’s enough visual and aesthetic innovation and a verve of energy it indeed elevates Shakespeare to another plane of melodramatic entertainment.

The colours, guns, music, hawaiian shirts is really just window dressing for the monumentally tragic core story of star-crossed lovers who together take their own lives in the name of love and war. The story is powerful in any medium, as literature, on stage, as dance, and on film through the eyes of say, Franco Zeffirelli or Baz Luhrmann.

The film’s high points are the opening act. The first 30 mins is a sprint. Before the story even starts Baz shows us a trailer for the movie we’re about to see. What?? We’re then thrown into a Sergio Leone-style standoff and shootout at a gas station, visualized with aggressive stylistic devices such as camera speed ramping, accentuated performances and sound effects, freeze frames and tight editing. These techniques combined with Shakespeare’s original loopy rhythmic dialogue is electrifying.

The Capulet party which the Montague boys, high on esctasy, crash continues the accelerated pace and heightend stylistic euphoria. Only after Romeo meets Juliet, in the wonderfully staged scene through the electric blue fish tank does the film slow down to catch its breath and engage us with the characters and conflict familiar to us in the play.

Leo and Claire make a fine romantic pairing. We feel the genuine love and passion between them, usually a tough sell considering the very quick courtship (a matter of days before they actually get married). The final moments where a combination of coincidence and unfortunate happenstance causes Romeo to take his life thinking Juliet has taken hers is still powerful, even if the art direction has about a 100 more candles in the church than it needs have.

But this is an over-the-top operatic world of melodrama. And so, in Baz Luhrmann’s church there’s a thousands candles and we accept it as so.

On Blu-Ray the film looks fantastic. Donald McAlpine’s saturated colours pop like never before. Leo has never been lit better than his beautifying star-making appearance in the film. Almost every shot seems to have him angling like a supermodel with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, backlit with a gorgeous sunset, or rimmed with a sharp white light making him look like an angel (with a Hawaiian shirt).

Romeo + Juliet is available Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Predators

Predators (2010) dir. Nimród Antal
Starring: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Lawrence Fishburne, Alice Braga

***

By Alan Bacchus

A true pleasure to see producer Robert Rodriguez exercise technological restraint in rebooting the 'Predator', which never really was a franchise, but a solid one off actioner in 1987 and then a few unnecessary and underwhelmed sequels and spin-offs (though I can't vouch for the comics, not having read them). Without any real dramatic lore in story, Rodriguez and Antal essentially repeat what made the first film so special - real world on location jungle filmmaking, muscular but fun loving action characters, and a careful build up suspense and tension over pyrotechnics.

The opening finds Royce (Adrien Brody) waking up from sleep free falling from the sky. It's no luck that he has a parachute, which allows him to land to safety in a jungle. Soon he's joined by others, all strangers with the only commonality their badass attitudes and proficiency with weapons and killing. Among them are a Japanese Yakuza, a Latin American guerrilla warrior, a Russian military officer, a prison lifer among others. Of course they all speak English, but it's Royce who does most of the talking and thinking.

Royce figures out they've been brought here to be hunted by some kind of new world sadistic game of combat. Thus, it's The Most Dangerous Game again but with a couple of monumental twists - 1) the hunters are Predators, those 7 foot tall rasta warriors with cloaking devices, shoulder-mounted laser sighted cannons and fluorescent blood, and 2) the biggest reveal, and excuse the SPOILER.....but.... it's another planet!

This second act reveal is a great moment, well timed by Antal and his writers. This means escape will be very difficult for our heroes. It's helluva ride which mimics the structure pacing, mood and even dialogue of the original McTiernan/Jim & John Thomas classic. Even John Debney's score uses the themes from Alan Silvestri's thunderous original music.

Adrien Brody immediately emerges as the leader of the group and the one with all the answers. He's a curious choice for lead, he's got the attitude but not the commanding screen presence nor muscular physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Brody even lays on a gravelly Batman voice to mask his New York City droll. Out of the minor characters some genuine emotion emerges - specifically the relationship between the prison lifer and the hardassed Russian. Lawrence Fishburne turns in a scene chewing performance as the only survivor from another game session, which has turned him into a raving lunatic.

With all the CG effects at Antal's disposal, he admirably exercises restraint in keeping the action simple, a battle of wits, which, like the original, ends up as a one-on-one combat - hunter vs. hunter. And amid the b-movie self-reverential pastiche is the social commentary of man's place in the world and top of the food chain. The final moments also wonderfully tease us to another instalment, of which I will gladly lay down my money for.

Predators is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Fair Game

FairGame (2010) dir. Doug Liman
Starring: Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Bruce McGill and Sam Shepard

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Politicians, our purported leaders, cannot be trusted. As instruments for the New World Order, they're out for themselves and their cronies. Even worse are the bureaucrats, administrators and snivelling minions below them - they're bigger whores than the elected officials since they do what their leaders want them to do either intentionally, or pathetically, because they're too stupid to know any better.

The cheapest whores of them all are the media. They're bought and paid for with junkets and dreams of exclusivity. It's a vicious circle wherein the losers are the very few amongst the aforementioned power brokers who actually want to do the right thing.

Such is the world of Fair Game, a terrific new fact-based political thriller by the estimable director Doug (Go, Swingers, The Bourne Identity) Liman.

In the tradition of such fine thrillers as The Parallax View, All the President's Men (both by Alan J. Pakula) and the best Costa-Gavras works such as Missing, Z and State of Siege, Liman's film uncovers one of the more regrettable (of the infinite) acts of deceit perpetrated by the American government against both its own people and the rest of the world.

Telling the story of former undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and her husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), the former U.S. ambassador to Niger, the film is set against the backdrop of the Bush administration as it seeks evidence that Iraq possesses Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Plame works to get Iraqis to speak the truth and in return promises anonymity and protection. Her bosses want someone to get evidence, but through more diplomatic channels. The bosses ask Plame to write an assessment and recommendation that Joe, her husband, is the right man for the job.

Needless to say, there are NO weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration chooses to ignore the espionage work by the husband and wife who risk their own lives and the lives of others to get this information.

When an irate Joe runs an op-ed piece in the New York Times that expresses his frustration and calls the American administration bald-faced liars, Bush and his sleazebag, knee-pad-adorned bureaucrats - along with the media - tar and feather Joe and his wife. Valerie remains stoic while Joe becomes openly hostile and critical towards the Bush administration.

Liman nicely balances the public and private, the political and the thriller and straight up delivers a maddening expose of a lie perpetrated by those who can't be trusted and how weasel bureaucrats deflect their fibbing and incompetence onto those who can ill-afford to withstand such an assault.

Those whom they deem expendable become the "fair game" of the title.

In reality, though, it's more than the handful of innocents who become "fair game", it's the electorate, the nation, the world as a whole who join the club of the expendables.

Both Penn and Watts sizzle in their roles and receive able support - notably from Sam Shepard as Plame's father and the fabulous character actor Bruce McGill. Liman surrounds all of them with his taut mise-en-scene which he not only directs, but photographs as well.

Watching the film will frustrate you and make you angry as hell. The exemplary filmmaking is so first-rate in clearly and simply illustrating how elected officials and their handpicked toadies in the administration and media are bald-faced incompetents, bearing little or no regard for the principles they've been chosen to uphold, but instead wade in a vat of their own fecal matter to cover their individual and collective sphincters.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my punditry for today.

Wolf Blitzer, move over.

"Fair Game" is currently in theatrical release via E1 Entertainment in Canada.

I Am Love

I Am Love (2010) Dir. Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Gabriele Ferzetti, Marisa Berenson

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

In the special features interviews of the newly released DVD director Luca Guadagnino and her actress/muse/co-producer make numerous references to Luciano Visconti (The Leopard) when discussing the inspiration for this film. It’s an appropriate reference to Visconti’s elegant bourgeois style of filmmaking in the 60’s, a tone Mr. Guadagnino has tried to capture with this film. It’s not his first feature, but his sublime sense of cinematic enthusiasm or passione brings the same feeling of excitement we felt from the first films of Godard, Tarantino, Welles, etc.

The Visconti comparisons are worthy, but a more accurate comparison would be to Tom Ford’s chiselled visual elegance in A Single Man, or even Bernardo Bertolucci’s razzle dazzle in The Conformist. Like both of these pictures I Am Love is classiness personified, showing an unabashed love for the good things in life, good clothes, good food, and nice cars. But like any good storyteller he puts his characters through the emotional ringer, spitting out his hero, Emma, on the other side a changed woman, a new zest for life.

The opening puts us in the preparations for a dinner party gathering in a gorgeous Italian estate to celebrate the birthday of Edoardo Recchi Sr, patrirach to a wealthy aristoctratic Italian family. Guadagnino’s hero, Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), daughter-in-law to Papa Recchi seems to be the head of the household making all the arrangements and coordinating everyone’s movements. A bold pronounciation by Edoardo announces his retirement and renounciation of control of the family textile business to his son (Emma’s husband) and his grandson.

As the ripple effect makes its way through the family Emma, who, by her gender and by her poor immigrant background, seems lost and forgotten in the mix, discovers love with her son’s new friend Antonio, a chef whose charm, good looks and culinary skills are an irresistable aphrodesiac. But Emma doesn’t act on her impulse immediately.

Guadagnino, admirably holds back as long as possible before putting them in the same bed together - actually I think it was a table, or a sideboard where they consummated. Either way, the moment occurs in the third act releasing a flood of overflowing silent tension which Guadagnino has built up inside Emma. It’s a great award-worthy performance from Swinton, playing an Italian immigrant, who has to speak both Russian and Italian but not English. Her character is deep and has a lifetime of angst and turmoil which reveals itself carefully. Even after Emma beds Antonio Guadagnino stays on the far side of melodrama while providing us a riproaring energetic and wholly satisfying finale, a sequence so perfectly crafted, it sends the film out with such a bang it had me on my couch at home smiling and nodding in admiration.

Deservedly, Luca Guadagnino was placed on the Variety’s annual list of top ‘10 Directors to Watch’ this year, beside, namely, Tom Ford (A Single Man), David Michod (Animal Kingdom), Sam Taylor-Wood (Nowhere Boy) and Rodrigo Cortes (Buried).

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) dir. Philip Kaufman
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartright, Art Hingle, Leonard Nimoy

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Though I hadn’t seen it in years, this film stuck in my head as an under-appreciated sequel, perhaps even better than the original 1956 Don Siegel-directed classic. Philip Kaufman is a fine director, someone who got better with age though, and like his pre-Right Stuff work, the film is marred by tonal and visual inconsistencies, and not enough to render it better than the original.

The original film famously used the robotic, soulless, doppelganger doubles as a metaphor for the uniformity and and general fear of authority in the Communist-scare McCarthy era of the 1950’s. In the 70’s, cinema attitudes were much the same, while political thrillers such All the President’s Men, Klute and Three Days of the Condor reflected the prevailing distrust of government due to Watergate, in horror the same influence could be felt.

The mix of b-movie sensabilities with covert political metaphors and much higher production values than back in day resulted in films like Soylent Green, Rollerball, Demon Seed, Capricorn One, all those Planet of the Apes movies, as well as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

To give Kaufman some credit off the top, it’s a great opening. Fantastic special effects show the arrival of the alien plant spores travelling the galaxy, arriving on earth, and inbedding themselves into the plantlife of Earth. We're then joined up with Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) who notices her husband has been acting weird and aloof of late. Not only him but others around her skulk around like zombies, devoid of emotion, but with a clear purpose or mysterious agenda. She tries to convince her colleague, restaurant health inspector Matthew Bennell, played by Donald Sutherland that something's afoot, but doesn't believe her and prescribes some treatment with her psychologist colleague played by Leonard Nimoy.

The group connect up with a pair of their friends Jack and Nancy (Veronica Cartright and Jeff Goldblum) who own a massage/mud bath parlor and together they discover the alien plot to replace everyone’s sleeping bodies with doubles created from giant eggplant-like pods.

Hero roles switch between Donald Sutherland, sporting an ugly perm and brown chevron moustache and Brooke Adams (Days of Heaven) who is delightful and better than Donald. Leonard Nimoy is decent as a celebrity psycholist not unlike Dr. Phil. Veronica Cartright is also fantastic in one of her many scene stealing character roles of her career. Jeff Goldblum appears to be acting in a totally different movie however, and on a different wavelength, even more askew than his usual twitchy performances. Kevin McCarthy even makes a fun cameo replaying his final frantic moments of the original film.

The creature effects of the bodies emerging from the pods is delightfully gory. As the film clips along, the more we learn about the extent of this silent alien invasion, the more gruesome and disturbing it becomes. At one point in the final act we see a homeless man’s head on a dog resulting from a transmutated duplication double.

Though there’s some wonderful on location work with much of the action in the picturesque San Francisco nightlife, Philip Kaufman’s camera work is marred with atrocious inconsistent camerawork. It’s that experimental style from the late 60’s, mixing traditional locked off classical compositions with silly handheld camerawork. The confrontation with the police in Brooke’s house for instance has the camera spinning around and crashing into the characters almost hitting their faces, an ugly distraction to an important and tense scene.

It’s a frantic and exciting final 10mins, which almost make up for the previous atrocious inconsistencies. We sense there is no light at the end of this tunnel. The final scene is truly a knock out, the meeting of Nancy and Matthew, both of whom are unsure if the other has been taken over or not, produces the film’s signature image, that of Mr. Sutherland...well. .. I can’t ruin the moment here... but it's terrifying.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is available on Blu-Ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Poltergeist

Poltergeist (1982) dir. Tobe Hooper
Starring: Jobeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Beatrice Straight, Heather O'Rourke, Zelda Rubenstein

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Prior to the production of ET Universal Studios allegedly had a clause in Spielberg's contract which forbade him from directing another picture while prepping that seminal film. Thus emerged rumours that Poltergeist released a week apart from ET, produced and co-scripted by Spielberg, had used Tobe Hooper as the proxy though which he could author a film in within the boundaries of his contact.

Did Spielberg take control of the directorial duties of this film? Apparently Tobe Hooper and Spielberg both have denied the rumour, same with many of the crew, though some have admitted Spielberg had a strong hand in the onset decision making. Some say, half the storyboards were created by Spielberg. Whatever happened on the set, the Spielberg ‘magic touch’ is wholly palpable when watching this film.

It’s still a wonderful frightening piece of family horror, a classic ghost/haunted house story, set in Spielberg's favourite setting, the same type of suburban sprawl as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET. Like Jaws, Duel, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg (and Hooper) managed to tap into some of those fundamental nightmares and fears we have as both children and adults. For parents, the fear of losing one’s child results in the disappearance of the innocent youngest child of the waspy Freeling family into the television. For kids Spielberg exploits our fears of inanimate objects such as a grotesque old tree perched beside young Robbie’s window, or his disturbing clown doll which overlooks him at the foot of his bed.

Spielberg essentially reworks the formula from The Exorcist to produce a friendlier and more mainstream version of Blatty/Friedkin’s chiller. Poltergeist is not 'chilling to the bones' like The Exorcist, nor will it leave any grown ups with nightmares, but it’ll still scare the shit out of children and it has enough memorable imagery to remain pop culturally relevant.

The plotting is structural perfection. First establishing the saccharine suburban community where the Freeling family have located. Then establishing the mysterious noises coming from the television, and young Carol Anne’s abilities to communicate with them. After the ghosts have some fun moving chairs around the house, things turn evil fast when Carol Anne, in a particularly evil thunderstorm disappears into the closet, only to be heard vaguely in the air and in the TV. The family employs a group of paranormal scientists to figure shit out, but eventually they realize they're in over their heads and to turn to the slight but effective soothsayer Tangina to bring Carol Anne back.

Craig T. Nelson plays the father figure much like how Richard Dreyfuss anchored his suburban family in Close Encounters. Unlike that film Spielberg makes sure the family unit stays together, and through their impenetrable bond, triumph over evil – distinctly 80’s-friendly conservative family values.

Visually the film is a stunner, in every department production value turned to the max.
As such it looks more like a ET than Texas Chainsaw Massacre that’s for sure. In fact, everything in the film points to Spielberg. The domestic naturalism of Craig T. Nelson, Jo Beth Williams and even the child performance of Heather O’Rourke have the Spielberg stamp. Same with the camera work and mise-en-scene. Watch the scene when the exit portal is released near the staircase and Carol Anne's spirit moves through her mother. The awestruck reaction shots of Nelson and the paranormal scientist evoke the same expressions of wonderment as the John Ford-influenced moments seen in almost every Spielberg film. And even though it’s a beautifully composed by Jerry Goldsmith, the score could double as John Williams.

The moment when Diane enters the light in the closet leave one breathless, like the emotional goodbye between Elliot and ET. The emergence of Dianne and Carol Anne from the supernatural world feels like a rebirth, or like the family born again and baptized in the tub in the water. Or maybe that’s too much of a stretch. In any case, it furthers the distinctly Christian values of his previous films.

As such, though it’s not a “Steven Spielberg film”, Poltergeist, in addition to ET and Close Encounters, works as an unofficial third part to a ‘suburban magic’ trilogy. Spielberg would try on numerous occasions recapture the feelings we got from these other films, and even though he's made some great films since then, they've never quite had this particular type of cinema 'magic'.

Poltergeist is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Little Caesar

Little Caesar (1930) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
Starring Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell, Ralph Ince

****

By Greg Klymkiw

" - - for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew: 26-52

The words above dissolve from a title card to a lone highway gas station in the deep night. A car imbued with purpose sails into frame and rests before the pumps. A lonely figure from within the station gets up and saunters out to greet the driver who quickly leaves his car and beelines towards the entrance. The driver, with a handgun aimed at the belly of the solitary attendant, pushes him back into the light of the seemingly safe interior which immediately goes black. The quiet is shattered and the darkness is intermittently ablaze with short repeated blasts from the gun.

So begins the classic prohibition-era morality tale Little Caesar, a film that made a star of the late, great, jowly. pug-faced and portly Edward G. Robinson. With a unique nasal intonation and clipped delivery (punctuated with occasional feline-like drawls), Robinson dazzled anyone and everyone who laid eyes upon him. Rendering every one of his extraordinary line readings with a scowl and sneer, Eddie G. as Little Caesar led the Warner Bros. charge towards box office domination during the Great Depression with a series of tragic, violent, thrilling, melancholy and strangely romantic crime thrillers that took America and the world by storm.

Under Mervyn Leroy's crisp direction, this film adaptation of W. R. Burnett's grand pulp novel (and like many pictures to follow, inspired by the real-life exploits of Chicago's notorious gangster chief Al Capone), wastes no time getting to the action of the story.

The scene following the opening robbery has Rico (Robinson) eyeing a front page newspaper caption proclaiming the ironclad underworld rule of Diamond Pete Montana (Ralph Ince). Rico jealously admits to his pal and partner Joey Massara (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) what a couple of small time hicksville hoods they are and that the city is the place to ascend to new and dizzying heights of power.

No more knocking off gas stations for Rico.

From this point on, the classic rise and fall of a hoodlum - replete with killing, dames, booze, double-crosses and more killing - careens full-tilt with the velocity of a gangster's Tommy-gun.

Little Caesar is 80 years old and while certain sequences and the technique might feel dated now, it's important to remember that outside of a few silent pictures (most notably, D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley and Josef Von Sternberg's stunning Underworld), it was the first of three seminal gangster pictures in the sound era (along with William "Wild Bill" A. Wellman's The Public Enemy and Howard Hawks's Scarface: The Shame of a Nation). As such, it set the mould for all that followed.

Martin Scorsese, for one, has always revered early Warner Bros. crime pictures and we see many dashes and dollops of these works in Marty's work. When Rico, for example, seeks a toe in the door of Chicago's organized crime, he pays a visit to Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), a lower level mob boss and proprietor of the delicious den of iniquity, the Club Palermo. Upon welcoming Rico to his "family" and christening him with the "Little Caesar" nickname, we're treated to a nicely directed moment when an off-camera Vettori introduces our hero to a motley crew of hoods, pointing to each one individually round a table as they smoke, drink and play cards.

"There's Tony Passa. Can drive a car better than any mug in this town. Otero, he's little, but he's the goods, alright. Bat Carilla, Killer Pepe, Kid Bean, and this one here, Scabby, what a smart guy he is," says Vettori. During this speech, director LeRoy moves in on a series of extreme closeups, the camera whirling in a 360 degree dolly with a slightly tilted semi-God-shot as each man is introduced - some acknowledging the intro, while others do not. It's a less showy, but still effective inspiration for what Scorsese eventually did sixty years later in Goodfellas when he introduced us to the chief mobsters via the off-screen Ray Liotta in a series of brilliant singles.

Like all great artists, Scorsese borrows from the best, then makes it his own.

Edward G. Robinson borrowed, it seems, from nobody. As an actor, he was a true original. A Romanian-Jew who immigrated to America with his family when he was ten and growing up on the Lower East Side of New York, Robinson was groomed to be a Rabbi first, and when that didn't work out, a lawyer, but it was acting that ultimately beckoned. Though he worked regularly in silent films, it was theatre where he excelled. The stage was, and in fact remained his first love. He spoke numerous languages fluently and cut his teeth in Yiddish theatre. With the coming of sound, his career really took off. His swagger, style and adeptness with language served him well. His distinctive voice created many golden opportunities for him and Little Caesar provided the role of a lifetime.

While Little Caesar is a stunning, terrific picture in every respect, it's Edward G. Robinson who ultimately owns the movie.

As Rico, Robinson creates a character who is vile, cretinous, borderline psychotic and yet, from beginning to end we're with him. The script provides no literal obvious backstory for his ruthless ambition and the way he plays the role, we don't need it. Robinson fills in the blanks perfectly.

In one scene, when Rico is confronted by his pal Joe who desperately pleads to "get out" of this life of crime, LeRoy wisely and brilliantly keeps the camera over Joe's shoulder during his lengthy monologue and trained squarely on Rico. Robinson's look of vile ambition, utter disgust and pitiful envy over the fact that his friend has found love and purpose is skin-crawling. And all the while, we simply can't take our eyes off him.

Rico's deeply closeted homosexuality is also putty in Robinson's hands. At first, we wonder why he's so close to the fey, sensitive, handsome Joe, but when Joe reveals his penchant for public performance, ballroom dancing and the love of a good woman, the jealousy, disgust and yes, even heartbreak, is clear in Robinson's performance. He displays no real (or at least no overt) love, loyalty or compassion for anyone but himself - his only desire is to possess what he can't or doesn't yet have.

Robinson commands every scene, every shot he's in. It's impossible to look away, all the more extraordinary since Rico is so utterly reprehensible.

What Robinson seems to understand and convey so extraordinarily is the humanity in evil and by the time he utters his famous closing line, "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" we even shed a tear for this hollow, vicious thug.

This, however, is no real surprise. Though Robinson played mostly gangsters sleazbags or cuckolds, he was in life, an extremely delicate, intelligent and cultured man. In fact, he was an inveterate collector of fine art and once said:

"Acting and painting have much in common. You begin with the external appearance and then strip away the layers to get to the essential core. This is reality and that is how an artist achieves truth. When you are acting, you are playing a part, you are being somebody else. You are also, at the same time, being yourself."

Now that's acting!

That's a star!

"Little Caesar" is available in a extras-packed and very reasonably priced new box set of four prohibition era gangster pictures from Warner Home Entertainment under the TCM Archives banner. The package is slender and the discs are flippers, but for movie lovers, it's one of the best deals around.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) dir. Jim Sharman
Starring: Tim Curry Susan Sarandan, Brian Brian Bostwick, Richard O’Brien, Meatloaf

***

By Alan Bacchus

I like musicals, but don’t much care for rock operas, that is, the brand of song and dance motion picture which emerged in the 70’s and featured reworked pop rock tunes instead of traditional broadway style numbers. So this is not really my cup of tea, but if there was one film I could appreciate in this subgenre it would this gleeful, irresponsible and audacious cultish schlockfest.

Susan Sarandan is Janet Weiss, a virginal small town girl betroathed to the equally nerdy and virginal Brad Majors (Bostwick). The night of their engagement they find themselves with a flat tire and stranded in heavy rain. Their nearest respite is an old haunted castle-like mansion off the beaten path. They are quickly welcomed to a group of Transylvanians singing the Timewarp song.

The leader of this cooky gang of strange and swinging group of men, women and trannies is the ultimate tranny Dr. Frank N Furter (Tim Curry), who has just finished creating his own gay version of Frankenstein’s monster, an Apollo-like beefcake figure named Rocky, who will serve as his own personal sex slave. After Frank, in disguise, beds both Janet and Brad, Janet discovers her own repressed carnality and goes sexual haywire. Then Janet and Brad’s old high school teacher Dr. Everett Scott shows up only to get killed and served for dinner to Frank’s guests. Then it turns out the Transylvanians are actually aliens from another galaxy and eventually blast off into space in the castle-cum-spaceship.

Predictable is not the word to describe the effect of watching Rocky Horror Picture, fucked up quaalude trip or ecstasy bomb might be more appropriate. The plot seemingly gets made up as the film goes along, but mostly it’s a parody of classic b-movie sci-fi of the 50’s, with a lot of gay sex.

I forgot how gay the film was actually. And I forgot how liberal the 70’s were, in comparison to the decades of the 80’s and 90’s when material like this would have been scared off by the AIDS epidemic. Few commercial or even remotely mainstream films are as graphic and shamelessly explicit.

For straight dudes, we get to at least marvel at the stunning beauty of Susan Sarandan, her saucercup eyes and ample bosum which is featured prominently in that white cross-your-heart bra she wears through most of the film.

Stylistically, Jim Sharman’s direction and camerawork embrace all the shlockiness it’s trying to parody. There’s little aesthetic continuity going on. Sharman moves between extreme camera lenses, to rough handheld work, to traditional locked off photography. As with the story, anything goes.

Though the Blu-Ray looks sharp on my 42 inches, the small screen is just too small, and insular to really capture the magic of this film. Rocky Horror should be a shared experience, preferably at midnight, in a dingy old rep theatre on Halloween night in ful regalia and chemically enhanced. Happy Halloween!

Rocky Horror Picture Show is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

How To Train Your Dragon

How To Train Your Dragon (2010) dir. Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders
Starring the voices of: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse

**

By Greg Klymkiw

There's nothing especially bad about How To Train Your Dragon, but there's also nothing especially good about it.

Each time I see a new animated feature on a big screen these days, the first question that courses through the rivulets of my brain is, "Haven't I seen this somewhere before?" The second is, "Uh, like, why did they make this?" The answer to the former is a quick and resounding "Yes!" The answer to the latter comes when I look away from the screen and/or up from a rousing game of "Bejeweled" on my iPhone and realize I'm sitting amongst several hundred little nippers and their surprisingly engaged parents. It's like what James Earl Jones says in Field of Dreams: "If you build it they will come."

Parents these days seem so starved for family entertainment that the studios just keep piling on one derivative 3-D digital delight after another. It's one of my familiar rants, actually. Why do today's parents keep dragging their kids to see this crap? There are so many other movies they could be taking them to.

When I was a kid, I saw every Disney release, to be sure, but most of them were classics from the Golden Age and re-released every seven or so years to capitalize on new generations of avid viewers. But these weren't the ONLY movies my parents took me to or that, when I hit the age of seven or eight, went to by myself. I saw the original Planet of the Apes and its multitude of sequels between the ages of 7 and 13. I went to all the Sinbad movies. I saw every John Wayne and Clint Eastwood western. Dad took me to see The Wild Bunch when I was 9. I remember making a deal with my Mom that if I had to sit through Mary Poppins, she had to promise to take me to see The Battle of the Bulge. Hell, I remember going to grindhouses as a kid and sitting through Hammer Horror films, motorcycle movies, war pictures and British Carry On sex comedies. And aside from Disney, I really don't remember there being that many animated movies being made, released or re-released. Going to the movies meant going to the movies - ANY MOVIES - so long as it wasn't pornography.

It's not like there AREN'T movies today that are similar to the abovementioned titles. There's plenty of action, fantasy, comedies and even straight-up drama for families to see. Why then, must audiences keep encouraging the studios to grind out these mostly empty and derivative bowls of treacle?

How To Train Your Dragon, as uninteresting as it is, at least has dragons in it. But, God help me, the story is appallingly familiar. A young Viking lad wants to battle dragons like his Dad. Dad doesn't think his son is ready to do so. Boy Viking makes his mark by downing a dragon but not killing it. Then (barf!) he discovers dragons are nice and he turns his former quarry into a pet. And, guess what? I'm sure this will surprise you. I know it surprised me (though in fairness, my attention drifted between the movie and "Bejeweled", so anything would have surprised me). Viking boy teaches everybody that dragons are not what they seem. Aaawwww, isn't that nice?

And aside from the annoying digital 3-D animation that will never hold a candle to traditional animation and the equally maddening cutesy-pie voice work from an all-star cast, the biggest problem with this picture, and so many others of its ilk, is just how goddamn nice it is. Makes me want to sing "Everything is Beautiful (In Its Own Way)" or worse, "Cumbaya".

Critics who don't know any better (most of them these days) and even audiences, always have this moronic knee-jerk comment about classic Disney - that it's trite and treacly.

Uh, sorry to disillusion, you all - classic Disney often borders on straight-up horror. It's deliciously cruel and perverse. That whale in Pinocchio can still scare the shit out of me. Bambi still kicks me in the stomach when the kiddie deer's Mom is shot. Dumbo separated from his mother, teased mercilessly by everyone and drunkenly facing those "Pink Elephants on Parade" all continue to knock me on my ass and give me the willies. It was even more intense as a kid. And don't even get me started on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - are we talking unrequited freak love, or what?

And what do we get now? We get mediocrities like How To Train Your Dragon - designed to make everyone feel all touchy-feely, but THAT, oh sensitive ones, is more falsely corrupt a message to shovel down our kids' throats. Classic Disney toughened the little buggers up AND entertained them, but all that this contemporary stuff does is teach lessons of conformity and understanding and getting along. And of course, that stuff is important, but it's also important for kids to know that prices are paid dearly on this Earth to even begin the process of understanding and healing, that evil and terror exists, that entertainment (and healing) should not always come easily.

When I think about the best work by Spielberg like E.T. or Joe Dante's deliciously nasty Gremlins movies, I think that THESE are the ultimate family movies. Spielberg rips your heart out and Dante microwaves gremlins until they explode. Now THAT'S entertainment! For the whole family, no less.

While some might wonder if the studios still make 'em like they used to, I can say that in the area of animation, the answer is a resounding "NO!" However, there are plenty of "adult" movies that are far better entertainment for kids than How To Train Your Dragon. I took my 9-year-old to see Vincenzo Natali's brilliant sci-fi thriller Splice. She not only loved the picture, it provided so much in the way of really intelligent and vital discourse between us. Another recent picture she saw and loved was Precious. This was perfect entertainment and of the highest order.

Look, at the end of the day, you'll see a lot worse than How To Train Your Dragon, but I'm picking on it precisely because it's so offensively inoffensive and middle of the road. It's hardly illuminating and leaves little room for any real discourse of substance with your child.

"Enough," I say. Enough with the touchy-feelie, already.

"How To Train Your Dragon" is available on homevideo in a handy Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Dreamworks, but do your kids a favour - rent or buy something like "Splice" instead.

The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1941) dir. John Huston
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Gladys George, Elisha Cook Jr.

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

“The stuff dreams are made of” is Bogey’s final line of this film, and one which ambiguously explains what exactly the Maltese Falcon really is. It’s arguably the most recognizable of maguffins in film history, a metallic statuette, made of some unknown substance, but has such innumerable value that is drives the entire story without the need of an explanation.

What is the Maltese Falcon? In cinematic terms it’s an excuse to get a punch of tough, greedy, backstabbing characters in a room together to scheme, fight and kill each other over.

For novelist Dashiell Hammett’s hero Sam Spade, the adventure starts when a lovely young woman Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor) enters his San Francisco office and hires Sam (Bogart) and his partner Miles Archer to find her sister, who has seemingly attached herself to a nefarious slimeball whom we never see named Floyd Thursby. While tailing Thursby Archer is killed, which sends Spade hell bent on revenge.

That same night Thursby is found dead as well, and according to the cops Spade is one of the suspects. So Spade not only has to clear his name but find the murderer of his partner. He tracks down Ruth and discovers a complex web of lies and deceipt which track back to the aforementioned precious artifact being transported from abroad into San Fran harbour - The Maltese Falcon.

Bogey is at his most confident here, playing Spade as a determined and unflappable gumshoe who has the ability to get out of any situation, either by his impressive abilities to find the angles in every scheme, or simply by brute force. In fact on numerous occassions when he’s targeted at gunpoint, he can simply swat the gun out of his assailant’s hand with ease without getting shot. It’s fun, but it’s also a rather shallow characterization of the protagonist. Spade, although he has the skills as Bogey’s Rick Blaine from Casablanca, he lacks the vulnerability and broken heart which makes him identifyable and endearing.

As such, like say, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon is a plot driven affair. A completely dispassionate potboiling film noir, before there was such a term. Despite its sterling reputation though, Falcon doesn’t hit the hit high water mark of Bogey’s The Big Sleep. Both are complex and confusing crime stories, but I think the difference comes down to one scene at the end of Falcon when Bogey literally asks big ol charming Sidney Greenstreet who did what and why. It’s shamefully expository and the worst scene in the movie. The Big Sleep on the other hand, is purposely oblique and baffling which adds an element of cooky brainteasing fun. One of the death in that film is never solved and is debated by film buffs to this day.

That said, Falcon is still an enjoyable and entertaining cynical and tough noir piece. Watch Spade’s continual put downs of the effeminate hoods played by Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr., a treatment which, in the documentary The Celluloid Closet, was famously analyzed as concealed homophobia. Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s a fascinating layer in subtext and characterization as well an interesting viewpoint into the time and place in which the film was made and one of the reasons why the film continues to be watched and discussed to this day.

The Maltese Falcon is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video

Goodfellas

Goodfellas (1990) dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino

****

By Alan Bacchus

What are best uses of voiceover in film? Terrence Malick in Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line perhaps, The Magnificent Amberson's maybe? The use of omniscient narration describing off screen action, motivation, character's inner thoughts can be seen as a lazy tool for screenwriters. But when it's done right, it's can be a magical thing. Few can argue the tremendous effect of the voiceover from Goodfellas, one of the great pop cultural landmark films of our time.

Martin Scorsese's return to the streetwise, low level gangster characters of Raging Bull, Mean Streets and served as kind of an antidote to the Godfather effect, that is, the glorification and romanticism of the mafia as charming, well dressed pseudo bourgeois aristocrats. Scorsese's gangsters are working class bullies who use the tantalizing temptations of capitalism to the extreme, living a life free of all control.

The opening scene in 1970, finding the body of Billy Bats still alive in the trunk of Henry Hill's car, is a classic, parachuting us into the narrative, then doubling back to continue the scene midway into the picture. And it’s not just an arbitrary scene, but the key decision in the film by the main characters which ultimately spelled their downfall. After this prelude Scorsese's hero Henry Hill opens up the story with one of the best lines - "as far back as I can remember I've always wanted to be a gangster". It begins the amusing, violent, grotesque and bystantine epic story of the New York/New Jersey mafia in the 70's and 80's.

Henry Hill's voiceover provides an intimate entry into the world so familiar in movies and TV, yet completely fresh and authentic. In the opening act, Henry moves from child wannabe to young hot shot hoodlum who ingratiates himself deep into the mafia. While he surrounds himself with two of the most ruthless gangsters we've ever seen in film - Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci) - watch closely and you'll see Henry characterized as an outsider who never really gets his hands dirty in the dirtiest parts of the business. The death of Billy Bats for instance, Scorsese is careful to show Hill's shocked reaction at Jimmy and Tommy's violent beating. This allows the audience to see the world through the eyes of a man with a conscience, and however delusional and drugged out, he's the film's everyman.

Back to the voiceover...the great moments occurs early in the film. Take the introduction Karen for instance. In the restaurant Scorsese switches from Henry’s voiceover to Karen’s voiceover, which comes completely of left field, yet, as cut by Thelma Schoonmaker and the sound editors, the transition is seemless. The voiceover reads not like inner monologue but documentary interviews. This style ties in so wonderfully in the end, in the inspired moment when Henry Hill, on the stand,suddenly breaks the fourth wall and starts talking to the camera. As if the entire movie were part of his confession to breaking the two cardinal rules told to him by Jimmy Conway, 'never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut'.

As much as the film is visceral and violent, his mix of violence with humour has never been done better. Again, the Billy Bats killing is brutal, but watch the transition into the next scene, the riotously funny dinner scene with Scorsese’s mother, a contrast which keeps the audience oscillated between these two extremes- what is it, a paw? A hoof?

Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing compresses the time brilliantly, rendering an ambitious 20 year narrative into a elegant flow of image and sound that washes over the viewer like a bedtime story. One of the best scenes is the Bamboo Lounge sequence. In a matter of 60 seconds the restaurant is partnered with the mob, they make tones of money, then it’s a losing venture and its being torched.

But when they want Scorsese and Schoonmaker slow down to highlight the key moments in Henry's journey. The best scene, and one of greatest ever set pieces in motion picture history is the day which leads up to Henry's capture. After spending almost two hours over the course of 20 years, Scorsese throws a microscope on one particular day in Henry's life. A thrilling sequence which shows Henry giving instructions to his brother over the phone how to make the pasta, in paranoia watching the skies for a helicopter which may or may not be spying on him, driving around town delivering guns for Jimmy Conway and overseeing a drug deal while coking himself out to the max. In one great scene, Scorsese sums up the lifestyle of Henry Hill playing edge at all times, and a hair's breath away from being put away for life and the reason why Goodfellas is the greatest gangster film ever made.

"Goodfellas' is available on Blu-Ray as part of Warner Home Video's compilation of his recent work for Warners called The Martin Scorsese Collection.