Reviews

"Silverado" is a milestone in cinema. It's the last truly traditional Western made on a big budget. The major Westerns of the '90's have been revisionist to at least some extent. From "Unforgiven" to "Tombstone" and "Open Range," if you went back in time and played them to a 1940's audience they would storm out on the film. However, "Silverado" would have made perfect sense to them.

The plot is a distillation of hundreds of classic Westerns. The script is free from profanity and is straight enough to have come out of one of the big studios of old. The film itself is traditional, with no strange angles or excessive hand camera work. Many long shots are taken, breathing air into the film in a way that reminds the viewer of John Ford's Monument Valley westerns. And most remarkably, the film ignores the gritty realism that had already come to characterize modern Westerns by the mid-80's.

No big-budget Western since "Silverado" has tackled the genre in such a traditional fashion, and it's doubtful one ever will. Thankfully, it's a fine endcap to any library of traditional Westerns.

I'm not sure how the IMDb "weighted average" came up with such a low rating on this film. It is in my opinion and by all other accounts an overlooked gem of a movie. Rip Torn is fantastic as the stubborn Noel Lord, and Tantoo Cardinal superlative as his housemate. Torn and Cardinal are both underrated actors who are finally given a stage to work their craft on.

Their relationship isn't always pleasant, but it's very real. This is NOT the "humerous and touching love story" it's billed as on the DVD jacket. In the end it is a tragedy. Lord simply aims too high and ignores all the advice to take the money offered by the power company to move.

The music is fantastic, as are the period sets.

I think the film did a good job of capturing this strange writer and his relationship with his universe. In his mind, the heroes and gods fought epic battles across the Texas landscape. I knew Howard's biography before I saw the film, and had read many of Lovecraft's letters. My only complaint with the film was that it didn't bring Lovecraft into the picture. There was a personality clash! The Providence sage and the Texas wildman. Yet both had much in common--including dependence on their mothers. Lovecraft overcame his, but Howard clearly didn't.

I suppose that would have distracted from the main story, but it would have been interesting nontheless.

I think Aliens is one of the top ten action movies of all time. Its success isn't accidental. Cameron knew exactly how to make a good action film, and when you analyze this movie you can see what's missing in many lesser films. The opening sequence, with some basic shots and just a few lines of dialog, manages to summarize the entire film.

"Bio-readouts are all in the green, looks like she's alive! There goes our salvage."

The first sequence establishes so many things which the film fleshes out. We know:

--Ripley survived --Corporations and the pursuit of money are still motivating factors in this universe --On a broader level, this is a universe that does not care about Ripley. There is no safe haven for her. The salvage crew would have preferred it if she had been dead. The Company would also prefer it if she had not made waves. --This universe cares more about its physical things than human life. This is fleshed out in Burke's resistance to the idea of nuking the colony, which has a substantial dollar value.

I also like this sequence because it links the film back to us. It implies that the ships of the future will still abide by the ancient maritime laws of Earth, which do indeed prevent a claim of salvage or prize money if a living person is found on board. This link is maintained with the future technology, which includes elements of our own world just as our world includes elements from past generations.

Cameron keeps the pace going from there. It's a uniquely cold and harsh action movie. We are not at all certain that the heroes will win or that good will triumph. Death is ever-present. And we see that human greed is the real cause of it all. Added to this is the analogy to Vietnam, where our well-armed soldiers were apparently overcome by low-tech VC.

This is a whole lot more than your typical shoot-em-up action movie can offer. Yet Aliens also manages to include some of the greatest action sequences ever filmed. It compares favorably with any current fare. It actually relies on some very old-fashioned special effects ranging from blue screen to people in Alien suits, yet thanks to expert camera work it does not look dated at all. If anything it looks much better than a CG fest such as "Starship Troopers."

I'm a great fan of 19th and early 20th century safari narratives. There are a bunch of classics, including "The Man Eaters of Tsavo", currently in print under the Capstick label. It's also reproduced many places on line, since there is no copyright on it at this point.

While certainly based on the true story, "The Ghost and the Darkness" takes quite a few liberties with it. In real life, the lions really were incredibly hard to catch and they did kill many people. But Michael Douglas' character is wholly fictional, as are many events relating to him. The first contact with the lion, where the big rifle malfunctions, is basically how it happened. It was a double gun in real life, and Patterson forgot to fire the second barrel. But I can see why that was left out! The killing of the first lion is overdramatized, but gets the basic idea across.

But the events after the death of the first lion are almost all fictional. I don't see why they had to have a silly fight on the bridge. In real life, Patterson was sure he nailed #2 with two massive slugs, but after a few days quiet the "dead" lion came back to life and started killing again. Patterson and Mahina finally finished it after much difficulty. In the end they counted six bullet holes in the lion.

The film left out the workers' mutiny and attempts to murder Patterson. I'm not sure why, as it would have made the film more interesting.

Overall, "Ghost" is worth watching, but it's a shame Sillywood had to interfere so much with the true story.

"Tremors" is a modern homage to and satire of the B-grade monster movies of the '50's and '60's. It finds a perfect balance between making fun of the monster movie and actually making a monster movie. Thus, the stock character of scientist-in-lab-coat-who-explains-everything is transformed into Finn Carter's graduate student who can't explain anything. Bacon and Ward fill the lead roles of Val and Earl. They argue with each other like an old couple. The invasion of giant worms literally blocks their way out of Perfection. At the same time, though, it transforms them from low-end ranch hands to cowboys, riding off to save the town.

I am particularly fond of Michael Gross and Reba McEntire as the survivalist couple, Burt and Heather. Burt is prepared for anything--except giant underground worms. His basement also reminds me of my own. "Tremors" should get an award for being the only film ever to feature a brass tumbler as a major prop! It also features a .600 Nitro Express elephant gun in all its glory. Somebody behind this film knew something about firearms.

"Tremors" could easly have become too mocking of itself and the genre, like "Evolution." But in the end it's much easier to make fun of the old B movies than to actually make one yourself.

The battle of Mogadishu was in some respects America's Roarks' Drift. A handful of soldiers are trapped and surrounded by overwhelming numbers of enraged locals. In the case of Roarks' drift, the locals were Zuli wariors, fresh from slaughtering a British army at Ishwandla. Against them were a tiny group of British soldiers. Yet against the odds the British held off the Zulus and most of them survived.

Roarks' drift was, of course, made into the fantastic film "Zulu" with Michael Cain and Stanley Baker as the two mis-matched lieutenants in charge of the impossible task of defending the British position. "Black Hawk Down" could have been a great retelling of this classic--reflecting both the heroism of the soldiers and the uncomfortable links between British colonialism and modern "nation building." Sadly, Scott opts to stay as close to the events of the real battle as possible. This means flooding the audience with a confusing array of soldiers from several distinct organizations. I didn't understand it all until I read the book. Even then it took many viewings to get everyone straight.

Scott should have taken more liberties with reality if he wanted to make a great film. There are many great potential conflicts in the story, but none are expanded upon. Scott should have focused on two or three main characters and used their conflict to tell the larger story.

But, as it is, "Black Hawk Down" is a fine war film, especially if you can watch it several times with the book in hand. It gets high marks for using the actual sound of the weapons in quesion, from the big fifties of the Technicals to the SAW's and M-16A2's. This may have upset some in the audience, but it improves the film in my opinion. Firearms should sound like firearms, not like some bizarre combination of cannons and .38 Special blanks. The combat scenes also get high marks in my book. They are nasty and brutal. When the first soldier gets hit in the head, he falls like a dead piece of meat. It hits home. The rest of the fatalities follow reality pretty closely, down to a severed thumb and a live RPG stuck in a body. This is how combat should be shown.

I like to contrast "Saving Private Ryan" with "Thin Red Line." Both came out in 1998, and both deal with WWII from the American perspective. Yet it would be difficult to find two more radically different films. Each has strong and weak points. "Saving Private Ryan's" strong point is its intense realism. Viewers who were used to the traditional WWII movies of the '40's or '50's, or even later WWII epics, were not prepared for the intense violence of this film. For the first time, we saw what sighted-in MG-42's and a line of Mausers can do to advancing troops. This was not gratuitous. It is important for us to remember that the Nazis did not simply fall over. The allies, including our own soldiers, had to fight very hard to beat them.

Yet "Saving Private Ryan's" strength doesn't go nearly as deep as "Thin Red Line." SPR is at heart a sharpened version of all the WWII movies that came before. It is a very good war movie, but that's all it is. There is no deeper exploration of the characters or the nature of humanity. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

"Midnight Clear" has a great premise. A group of over-educated, overly bright GI's are sent out by incompetent leaders on a vague mission to patrol around an isolated farm house on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. The GI's encounter a group of battle-weary German regulars, and it becomes clear that they don't want to fight anymore.

Therein lies the problem. It's really pretty simple. If the Germans want to surrender, they do so and that's the end of the movie. If the Germans want to fight, they do so and that's also the end of the movie. So instead of doing either the GI's and Germans play games with each other, even throwing snowballs at one point. Interesting for one or two scenes, but it soon becomes very annoying. After all, these are GERMANS. The enemy. Nothing in this film makes me think they should not be either taken prisoner or shot. The film does noting to make them more human. In fact, much of what the German characters did made ME want to shoot them, including one scene where the German officer refuses to deal with a Jew or to surrender to a mere enlisted man! Why should I care about such characters? Just shoot them and let's move on to the Battle of the Bulge. It's much more interesting, anyway.

One good scene: The GI's are returning from a recon of the German position, where they had the Germans in their sights but did not fire. While walking across a clearing, they realize a group of Germans have their Mausers leveled at them. The Germans are about 100 yards away. The GIs then do something I've NEVER seen any GI's do in any Sillywood movie. They throw down their rifles and throw up their hands! Unusual as this may be in films, it is an entirely sensible reaction to having a rifle aimed at you from that distance. Though it seems far, in reality it's point-blank range for those rifles. I'll lay odds that someone working on this film was a cruffler!

I would rank "The Deer Hunter" alongside "The Thin Red Line" as the best war movie that isn't just a war movie. "The Deer Hunter" is about Vietnam, but it goes far beyond that war to explore the interplay of three archetypes of the human condition. There are very few actual combat scenes in the movie, which helps keep the viewer focused on the characters rather than the dynamics of any particular battle.

Also worthy of note are the film's hunting scenes. The film is called "The Deer Hunter," after all, and a great deal of effort went into these scenes, both the pre-war and post-war hunts. Watch the astonishing beauty of the pre-war hunt. DeNiro's character strides up a rocky crag, rifle in hand, and follows through on his "one shot" motto. Nick lingers behind, content to simply take in the beauty. For those of us who hunt, it pretty much captures the ideal kill. More significantly, it stands in contrast to the post-war hunting trip, where everything falls apart.