Movies That Changed My Life: Raiders Of The Lost Ark

During spring break of 1981, my parents took me to Washington DC. I was nearly nine years old and elated about the trip. We saw the capitol and the White House. There were visits to the various halls of the Smithsonian and while eating at a table in front of a pizza joint, a motorcade went by with Anwar Sadat and his aides inside. Do you have any idea how exciting it is for an eight - almost nine - year old to get to see the President of Egypt in the flesh? As great as that was, and still is, the highlight of the trip would be going to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit. Except that when we arrived, the dino exhibit was "Closed For Renovations".

After a full fifteen minutes of sobbing, snot-wiping and wishing it to not be so, my folks corralled me away from the gathered onlookers and took me for ice cream. Even a double scoop of chocolate chip could not heal my wounds that day. So, my parents began hatching a plan to remedy the situation later that very summer. They said that after school let out, we would take a trip to Toronto.

Now you know you're loved when your folks plan another vacation just to make up for the fact that the dinosaurs you've pined so hard for, were unseeable. I mean it's just bones and wire, but my third grade soul could accept no substitute. We soldiered happily through our remaining time in the nation's capitol and I began to fantasize about the collection of T-Rexes and Brachiosaurs that the Royal Ontario Museum had to offer.

After the school year ended my folks made good on their promise. We packed the car and headed to Canada, which from our home in Michigan's thumb, was only four or so hours away. That evening we checked in to our hotel and in the lobby I found a brochure for the Royal Ontario Museum. I pored over its contents and photos until I finally fell asleep, dreaming of running with the Stegosaurus and watching the Pterodactyls fly overhead.

We arrived the hour the museum opened and I insisted that we head for the dinosaurs first. Our tickets were handed over and guide maps were doled out and I bee-lined for the dinosaur wing. Almost immediately, I saw the sign. CLOSED FOR RENOVATION. Could this be possible? Was there some great conspiracy to prevent me from seeing the creatures of the Jurassic era? After the initial stage of denial, I moved to the second and most prolonged stage of grief for the American eight year old: Anger and Tears.

A full meltdown ensued and it was worse than the D.C. episode. My sobs and cries echoed back and forth of the marble halls of Toronto's glorious old museum. There is much of the next several hours that I have blocked out of my memory completely. It seems that we must have seen the rest of the museum, but I have no memory of it. Until our early dinner that evening at the Spaghetti Factory, I can recall virtually nothing.

After dinner, the suggestion surfaced that maybe a movie would cheer me up. I was not in the mood, but I was quickly instructed that I would not, "Sit in the hotel room feeling sorry for myself". The vacation was a family outing and we were going to see a movie.

Arriving at the theater, I saw a cartoonish poster with a series of images that included snakes, a man appearing to be in mid-scream, and a guy with a whip wearing a fancy hat. My bullshit meter went through the roof and I assumed that I was being dragged to some dumb-ass Disney thing with a couple of clever kids and an evil witch or some shit. Never mind that there were no kids anywhere on the poster. It seemed certain that I was being patronized with a sort of dreck I didn't even like anymore. The sophisticated tastes of a Midwestern nine year old were too much for my parents to handle and they just ducked into the first movie hall they could find with a "family style film" showing that night. Oh Lord, how wrong I was.

It seems certain to me now that after thirty years of consideration, in many ways I had not truly seen a film before Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Sure, I had watched lots of movies, and even enjoyed them greatly. But, this was an experience alone unto itself.

The music made the blood pump faster. Harrison Ford's charm and cool and wit made you positive he was the coolest dude on the planet. I watched Nazis and Egyptian and Gypsies fight over lost relics and talk about the Bible like a treasure map in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel and not like some boring ass Sunday school lesson. This shit can make the Bible seem interesting? I'm sold.

From the motorcycle chases to fighting natives in the jungle to wondering why it had to be snakes, and of course to that massive and unforgettable boulder, I was utterly transfixed. The memory of missed dinosaurs vanished and I was ready to trade my natural history penchant in for a pith helmet and an Archaeology workshop at a moment's notice. The misery and horror from earlier that very day had melted away in the powerful glow of a projector.

Hundreds of movies have this effect on millions of people. It is corny and trite and obvious to say that movies are transformative. That of course, is inherent in their nature. What happened to me in that theater in a country not so far away was that I noticed that power for the first time. I realized I was in the church of the cinema and I was a devout believer.

I now have children of my own and have watched Raiders with them. For them it is another movie they sort of enjoyed that their old man likes a little too much. It feels great to watch it with them and I still love it a great deal. But even with them, it can never be like that first time that night in Toronto when I was just a sad little boy hunting for dinosaurs.

Dark Shadows Pics Revealed, or Why Tim Burton Must Be Stopped

Some production stills from the Tim Burton film treatment of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, have very recently surfaced on the intertubes, and just one image can bring on a whole bag of ughhh to the ribcage! In the first place, they've made Johnny Depp look precisely what Elliott from ET: The Extra Terrestrial would like if he had gone goth and become a recluse in a secluded New England castle. Furthermore, these images serve as a reminder of why the remake is an awful idea, why Tim Burton is a terrible filmmaker these days, and what a waste of talent it is to see Johnny Depp play these kinds of roles.

A flurry of emotions gobsmacked me across the chaw when I saw these photos. Not because of how they looked or even what they were of, but that the Dark Shadows project encapsulates so many things worth hating about Hollywood right now. So, let's get them all out before I show you the other still.

Someone needs to take Tim Burton's camera and notepads away. He's run out of original ideas and we're sick and goddamned tired of watching him filch source material only to make it worse. From Alice In Wonderland to Planet Of The Apes to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, he's taken good things and sullied them with his deliberate weirdness and pseudo-gothic bullshit.

The Dark Shadows television program doesn't even hold any allure to me and yet I still feel like he's ruining it. There is a sense that Burton has this cadre of things he loves and wants to control, so he remakes them. Yet, this only leads to an inferior version of the thing he loved. It is sad to watch and damaging to the source material. Someone make him stop.

Johnny Depp is a very talented actor and yet he keeps palling around with Burton hoping to rekindle that Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood magic. Those are very good films, but that light has long since gone out and now one gets the sens that Depp will play out his days as Jack Sparrow in a rest home, doing the bidding of the evil Dr. Burton or, after the failure of Rum Punch, perhaps just continue making bad film adaptations of Hunter S. Thompson novels. Dude, just get back to being an actor and stop trying to be a movie star.

Finally, we get down to the whole vampire nonsense. Between this, the Underworld franchise, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and that Twilight Saga bullshit, the American movie making syndicate have basically created a cottage industry for fake blood purveyors and the makers of prosthetic fangs. At what point will the movie going public overload on this horseshit? It's hard to tell what teenage girls will be into next, but anything other than bloodsucking douchebags would be a wonderful reprieve for this cineaste.

Enough of my vitriol, here are some more stills.

WATCH: Criterion Releases Blu-Ray Of "Belle Du Jour"

For the last year and change, the esteemed Criterion Collection has been updating much of their vast catalog for Blu-Ray. Most of these Criterion Blu-Ray titles get a digital remastering and have newly included bonus material as well. It's a veritable, if rather expensive to own, treasure trove of important indepent, foreign and classic cinema.

Amongst the slate of January releases is the iconic 1967 Luis Bunuel film, Belle Du Jour starring the mesmerizing Catherine Deneuve. To celebrate the Blu-Ray release of this famous psycho-sexual tale of existential longing, Criterion has issued another in its series of Three Reasons vids. Essentially, these are trailers for their releases that focus on three aspects of a film they love.

In addition to a great visual peek at Belle Du Jour, the Criterion site is now featuring a terrific essay by Village Voice writer, Melissa Anderson on the making of the film and the affect it had on both the star and the director. It's an interesting study of the film fit both for the first time viewer and the seasoned vet who'd like to dig a bit deeper into Deneuve's famous character, the damaged housewife, Severine.

You can watch the video for Criterion's Belle Du Jour: Three Reasons below.

Harold and Maude And My Dad

In the summer of 1984, at the age of 12, my family forced me to move to a little town I had never heard of and didn't give a damn about.  At the time, we were living a miraculously happy and idyllic existence in the heart of Michigan's thumb region in a little berg known as Sandusky.  My school, my friends, my little league team and therefore my entire life was located squarely in Sandusky.  Moving was not an option.  How was I expected to survive?  Like virtually every middle-schooler in the history of time that has ever been forced to do anything they were not 100% thrilled with, I hated this idea.  More importantly, I hated my parents for coming up with the idea and loathed them still further for bringing the plan to fruition and relocating our family to some bullshit place.

The summer was rough and fall sucked once school started.  A ping pong table installed in the basement was about the only saving grace of our first few months in Bath, a tiny nothing of a town just north of East Lansing.  Change is difficult for any adolescent, but especially so for me.  New friends were made slowly and the reduction of my fury over the move cooled very, very slowly and the transition took even longer than under normal circumstances due to my self-inflicted emotional duress.

One Saturday evening after dinner, my Dad and I were down in the basement playing ping pong and talking intermittently.  He would ask about school or make inconsequential chit chat.  Every effort was being made to have a real conversation or to get me to open up, but I was having none of it.  Then at the end of a volley, a point which I won by the way, he asked if I wanted to go to a movie.

After a discussion of what the movie was called and what it was about, I was able to glean, basically, that my old man wanted to drag me out to see a movie about a teenager who befriends an old lady because he's depressed and lonely.  In fact, they begin their friendly bonds by running into one another at a funeral.  Old lady, weird friendship, depression, funerals for amusement - no thanks dude.

Was my father doing this because he thought of this as my way out?  I mean, I was depressed and lonely and perhaps he thought that I could start spending time with some old bitty in the neighborhood to make up for the fact that I hated my new school, I hated our new house and reminded my folks daily of the nearly complete absence of any friends within a 125 mile radius.  Let's just say I was dubious.

There were two factors that aligned to get me to the theater that night.  The first was that as an adolescent and young adult, I was absolutely terrible about telling people how I genuinely felt about stuff, if it made anyone feel bad; even when their feeling bad was my partial intent.  Therefore, the only way to get across the message of my lack of enthusiasm for this particular flick trip was to not react much to it all.  My physical reaction of indifference was then completely overwhelmed by factor number two; the movie didn't start until midnight.

Now as a twelve year old there was still some cache to being up past midnight.  This endeavor was fully two gears past that.  Not only would we be up past midnight, our thing didn't start until midnight.  And the event was outside the house!  As such I would be rolling home at 2:00 in the morning like a real, actual adult.  Dad thought I would like this thing so much, he was willing to take me out at the witching hour to see a weird movie at an arthouse theater to show it to me.  I tried to conceal my sudden and bursting desire to go, so I simply said, "That sounds like it might be alright".

The theater, called The Odeon, was incredibly small.  It was situated in a sort of strip mall sort of building and couldn't hold more than 60 or 70 people.  I remember the smells vividly; a concoction of popcorn, cigarettes and adulthood.  The seats creaked loudly when you pulled them down to sit and were filled with cracked tributaries of torn pleather.  Sticky sweet sheers of gum and sodas spills glazed the floor like a kind of carnival velcro.  After loading up on popcorn and Cokes, we found some creaky seats in which to park ourselves and sat down.  There might have been something like 20 other people in the room, but I really don't remember.  For the next two hours it was just me and Steve.

As much as the theater and time of night wowed me, I still had little or no hope for the movie.  The description left a lot to be desired and after my initiation to the after dark ambience of The Odeon I began to fixate on people and things in the theater that would hold my attention once I got bored from the lame picture.  I spent some time watching the older guy with a balding crown, beard and corduroy jacket laughing awkwardly with a lady much younger than he was.  It seemed likely that he was a professor at the college or something, but beyond that I was out of my element and not that interested.  Had this event taken place about four years later, I would have invented an entire Woody Allen film about him in my head.  Middle aged nerds, a couple of lonely women, and my Dad and I made up the rest of the crowd.

Over the next two hours I felt transformed.  If you've ever seen just a few minutes of Harold and Maude you know precisely what I'm talking about.  If you haven't seen it, there is no way for me to explain it to you.  I laughed at things that I had never imagined could possibly be funny.  The dark humor of the film and its myriad oddities spoke to me instantly.  Yet what I was mostly shocked by was that I had been brought to this movie by father - at midnight.

On the ride home I just felt happy.  Genuinely happy.  Other than going to a baseball game I could never remember another time when I felt like a friend to my Dad.  This however, was a different thing entirely.   My Dad had displayed the faith in me to share something weird and odd that he cared for in a sincere way as if to show me that he gave a damn.  He went out of his way to get me to laugh at life's absurdity and to take me to a place that I probably didn't belong at a time when I probably shouldn't be there.  He wanted to be my friend and to lift me up out of my shitty adolescent malaise that he surely felt some responsibility for.  While he may not know it, he succeeded admirably.

Now, I am the parent of adolescents.  With the perspective of parenthood, I know that whatever I got out of that night at the Odeon, my Dad got just as much if not more if he paid any attention at all.  It is my hope that someday, or if I am very lucky, maybe already, I have given my kids a moment something even close to this.  While this essay is meant to be a thank you to my Father for that night and what it means, perhaps the best thank you I could give to him would be to learn by his example.  Thanks Dad.

The Kids Are Alright - Review

Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are Alright deserves credit for a few things, not the least of which is that it treats gay marriage as a thing that exists even if it isn't legally recognized.  The lesson that Cholodenko should have learned was that this fact alone was not enough to propel a mediocre film to higher places.


Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have been together for two decades.  During that time they have raised two children that they sired using donated sperm.  Shortly after Joni (Mia Wasikowska) turns 18, her 15 year old brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson) talks her into contacting the donation bank to learn the identity of their biological father.  Meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo) a restaurant owner and one time sperm donor who will turn their world upside down.


Of course, Nic and Jules are reticent about inviting Paul into their lives and this tension begins to scratch the surface of a union that is already rocky.  Nic drinks too much.  Jules is flighty and doesn't have a regular job.  There are moments of cliched relationship criticism that are designed to not only draw attention to the issues of the connection between these two, but also remind us that marriage is hard.


Jules ends up having a fling with Paul.  It's not a question of her becoming interested in men, but she needs someone to have a connection with.  Here is where the film asks for narrative forgiveness because its set-up is so unique.  It doesn't work.  The first 30 minutes of the film do a very nice job establishing that this is a marriage like any other and when it begins to crumble under the weight of mistrust and infidelity it attempts to fall back on the crutch of their relationship's unique ingredients.  The problem is that it's difficult to care.


While Moore and Bening are perfectly fine in the film, there just isn't much there to work with.  These characters are simply not very engaging and the film plays like a lesbian retelling of a poor John Updike short story.  The kids are rebelling in the way that teens rebel against their parents whether they're black or white, gay or straight.  But it never goes anywhere.  No emotional wells are mined and no truth is ever revealed.


The Kids Are Alright just can't ever seem to make up its mind as to what it wants to grow up to be one day.  One moment it's two teens searching for a biological identity.  The next it's diving into the deep end of a lesbian marriage and a infidelity saga told like a low-level version of a Douglas Sirk melodrama.  It's a melange of good ideas and half-starts, but the film is lettered with disappointments, screw-ups and apologies that never seem to be truly honest.    Yes, marriage is hard no matter who is involved.  As it turns out, so is making a movie about it.

The Grand Illusion - Review

The Grand Illusion (1937)

directed by Jean Renoir

If someone ever made a Rupert Murdoch biopic, they’d have no choice but to compete with Citizen Kane  -- and they would come up short.  There is no other option; the story of a media tycoon has been told already, and it was done artfully and beautifully enough that in all likelihood no filmmaker will ever surpass it when making a film about a media tycoon.  It’s inevitable.  

Geniuses, auteurs, propangandists and budding filmmakers have been dutifully making war movies in the 74 years since Jean Renoir made The Grand Illusion.  Many of the films made in that time have been truly great, yet in one way or another they are forced to stand in the shadow of this World War I epic.

After their plane is shot down over enemy territory during a reconnaisance mission, Lieutenant Marechal (Jean Gabin), a blue collar pilot and his commanding officer, the refined, upper class Captain Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) find themselves in the custody of the German army.  Because they’re officers they are well treated and they find compatriots in their fellow French captives. Renoir displays a wonderful knack for using humor and music to convey the bond between the imprisoned men without giving his audience the mistaken impression that the life in camp is simple and easy.  Food is shipped in to their well heeled bunk mate Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) and they have blankets, books and a stove.  Things could be worse.  Yet, they are not free.  Naturally, they attempt to escape.  

Their plan is to dig a tunnel under the barracks (sound familiar?) that leads to the outside garden and from there they can sprint to their freedom.  However, before they can implement their plan to completion, the prisoners are packed up and shipped off to another camp deep inside the German lines.

It is in the new camp that Capitan Boeldieu has the added benefit of finding himself in the generous good graces of his captor Captain von Rauffenstein played with an elegant vigor by Erich von Stroheimm.  Rauffenstein senses an immediate connection with Boeldieu because they share a bond of old world class and all the proper social graces. The two share cigars and talk about life before the war.  These sequences not only reinforce the class warfare angle in the film -- which never becomes boorish -- but also help to greatly humanize the German captor.  Stroheimm’s effortless ease with multiple languages and his empathy for his new French friend make him seem the most cosmopolitan and gentle warden one could possibly imagine, furthering the sensation of absurdity in wartime mores.  It is also a marvelous device to display the identical nature of the day to day life of the French and German soldier before they were charged with killing each other.  These are just a hint of the brilliantly subtle masterstrokes used by Renoir to make his anti-war statements without ever stooping to soapbox aggrandizement.  

Boeldieu eventually uses cunning and his connections with Rauffenstein to give his comrades Marechal and Rosenthal an opportunity to escape.  The sequence that follows is a simultaneously thrilling escape scene and an exceedingly poignant display of selflessness.  In Renoir’s capable hands, the mood is never overstated nor does the action ever become didactic. Renoir doesn’t merely explore these themes of sacrifice, duty and the struggle of survival, he reinvents them; shattering preconceived notions on the barbarism of war and the cut and dried natures of its participants.

Gabin and Fresnay are wonderful together.  Their class differences supply the subtext for virtually every interaction they share without falling into tedium.  And while there is never any actual rift between the two, this separation of upbringing translates into wonderfully palpable tension between a pair of soldiers angling for the same gain; their own freedom.   

The supporting cast is astonishingly good, especially Dita Parlo who plays the lonely farm woman Elsa.  Her beautifully quiet presence is a beacon in the last third of the film and she shines within every frame that she occupies.  

This is Gabin’s film though, and he flourishes.  He is at times coarse and vulgar, other times lovable and humble.  It's an emotional honesty and profundity that is rare and almost non-existent in today's cinema.  Gabin’s Lt. Marechal contains a complexity so richly honest he forges a completely visceral presence on-screen. 

Renoir’s anti-war masterpiece is perhaps the finest film ever made about war, but maybe even more lastingly, it also defined many of the individual aspects of the entire genre.  There are prison break sequences that helped to set a course for films like The Great Escape.  The boredom and comraderie of POW life displayed so artfully here are echoed throughout Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17.  Many of Renoir's anti-war devices are also implemented quite well into anti-war classics like Breaker Morant and Paths Of Glory.  And these examples can only begin to scratch the surface of its sphere of influence.

Much like Casablanca after it, The Grand Illusion has been copied so many times because it is so perfect.  Every worthwhile war film made since seems merely to be an homage to this peerless classic.  And Renoir does it all with fewer than ten gunshots.  How's that for efficiency?  If war films were lightbulbs, Jean Renoir would be Thomas Alva Edison.

Wages Of Fear

The Wages Of Fear (1953)
directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot


"Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less and stop watching ourselves live." - Chomfort


On the surface, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Wages Of Fear appears to be, very simply, a thrilling adventure epic of four men on a suicidal trucking mission through the mountains of Central America.  Clouzot, however, aimed higher; tying elements of imperialism, tense comraderie and the revival of a zest for life into his exquisitely gut-wrenching narrative arc.  By melding the thrillingly suspenseful trucking sequence with an exploration of man's desire to go back and fix the mistakes of his past, Clouzot creates a sort of Greek tragedy in the third world desert.  In many ways, Wages Of Fear feels like the most ambitious Hitchcock film ever made.


At the outset we're introduced to a sleepy, wayward Central American village where life is not only difficult and dreary, it's soul crushing - a sort of desert prison of poverty, contempt and regret.  Drifters from across the world who have haphazardly wound up in this go nowhere backwater invariably end up converging on the town's saloon; drowning their sorrows in liquor (when the funds are available), avoiding the scorching blaze of the sun and wondering how and when they'll ever get the hell out their malaise and back to some sort of life.


Mario (Yves Montand) is a sort of de facto leader and example of the ex-Pats and part-time lover of Linda, the saloon's bar maid.  Through a series of his own missteps Mario has landed in this dead end town.  He clings to his most prized possession, a Parisian Metro ticket, his talisman for returning back to his home.  Montand exudes a sort of Bogart-like charm with cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth and kerchief covered neck.  It's such a nod to Bogart there are times when you feel as if Montand's Mario is a spitting image of Bogart's Charlie Alnutt from The African Queen.  You can't help but be drawn to his magnetism and yet, Mario's callous treatment of Linda is an indication of his contempt for the current state of his existence.  Montand manages to bridge the gap in Mario's shortcomings beautifully.  Like Bogart's Spade his panache and cool make him so enigmatic that you can forgive his sometimes severe foibles.


Throughout lengthy set pieces in the first hour of the film, Clouzot reinforces, if a bit too much that life in this part of the world is hardly worth living.  A protest soon breaks out within the natives of the town when the area's true ruler, American oil company SOC has a derrick explosion and several men, mostly local workers are killed.  SOC needs a ton of nitroglycerine trucked into the area where the explosion occurred.  Due to pressure from the natives, scapegoats must be found for this suicide mission.  The slightest bump could send the entire truck into oblivion and none of SOC's union employees can be selected for the job.  Therefore, SOC offers $2000 a man for the 300 mile trek across the mountain, and Mario, his pal Jo, his former friend Luigi and holocaust survivor Bimba are chosen to set out in two separate trucks to deliver the nitro.  If they survive they will earn their ticket to freedom and a new life.


Clouzot's most remarkable gift in the 90 minute mountain drive sequence is his uncanny knack for timing.  This is most beautifully illustrated when a narrow mountain road requires a turnaround on a half-finished wooden platform. Seconds seem to pass like minutes as the harrowing maneuver is delicately handled with marvelous editing and superb camera angles.  It would be easy for Clouzot to simply make this scene a thriller, but he also sets it up as a major plot point and one of the film's primary character definitions.  It is a scene for the ages.


By playing with the confined space of a truck cab, Clouzot has created a little world inside a world where all cursory distractions have been eliminated and the battle of life versus death can commence on the open road.  Marvelous cinematography by Armand Thirard reinforce the claustrophobic confines of the truck's cab and juxtapose that with intercut wide shots of the open road to create a whole new sort of fear.


At times, early in the film, Clouzot's heavy handed efforts to portray the American imperialist influence of SOC do get a bit overbearing and repetitive.  The ugly Americans theme, while valid, could have been delivered in a more efficient manner and Clouzot ought to have clarified the drudgery of daily life in his third world hell-hole in probably half the time he chose to use.  However, it is these same elements of timing that make the majority of the nitro mission so fascinating to watch.  While the opening hour keeps the film from being perfect it is understandable why Clouzot made the choice he did in the opening sequence and even if it drags a bit, the rest of the film more than makes up for it.


It seems ridiculously ambitious for a film-maker to attempt to create a thrilling action film, a political set piece and throw in themes on the division of labor and human cowardice/courage all while delivering some of the finest and most terrifying sequences this side of Psycho.  Yet, Clouzot manages all of this and more with Wages Of Fear, a film which, if you've not had the pleasure of seeing it, may completely redefine what a thriller is for you.


Rating: 9/10