The Conversation

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Writer: Francis Ford Coppola
Released: 1974
Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Williams, Robert Duvall

Easy Rider

Director: Dennis Hopper
Writers: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern
Released: 1969
Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson

Chinatown

Director: Roman Polanski
Writer: Robert Towne
Released: 1974
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, James Hong, Burt Young

STEVE says: Every fledgling screenwriter should have a look at this script. It's perfect. Hits every beat with atomic-clock precision, it never lags, and it never telegraphs exactly what's going on, yet makes it all seem inevitable in the end. And of course it is. Right from the beginning.

5/5

Harold and Maude

Director: Hal Ashby
Writer: Colin Higgins
Released: 1971
Cast: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, Vivian Pickles, Charles Tyner

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Director: Kenneth Bowser
Writer: Kenneth Bowser
Released: 2003
Cast: Roger Corman, Peter Bogdanovich, Karen Black, Dennis Hopper, Peter Bart, Peter Fonda, Mickey Dolenz, Richard Dreyfuss

STEVE says: For film class this term I thought we'd watch flicks from the guys who changed the way films were made - at least for a little while. To introduce the class to the type of films we'd be looking at, I decided to show them this doco first.

Good as it is, it's pretty much what you'd expect - Corman, Nicholson, Bogdanovich and Hopper give way to Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese as the doco chronicles Hollywood's brief taking-over by the long-hairs after the demise of the studio system, only to wrest control away from them in the end. Sad, really.

Got me thinking, though - next term we might just watch movies about movies. Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, The Player, State and Main, or some docos like and Hearts of Darkness and Lost in La Mancha.

3.5/5

Nikki did not view.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills

Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Released: 1996
Cast: Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, Jessie Miskelly, John Mark Byers

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, dir. Don Siegel (1956)

House of Wax, dir. Andre De Toth (1953)

Shaun of the Dead, dir. Edgar Wright (2004)

The Big Lebowski, dir. Joel Coen (1998)

The Prestige, dir. Christopher Nolan (2006)

Barton Fink, dir. Joel Coen (1991)

STEVE says:
You can have Fargo and No Country for Old Men. This is the best Coen Brothers movie out there. I'm not sure I completely understand it, but that's part of its appeal: Barton Fink is like a cinematic Rorschach test - it's going to be different things to different people.

I've never had the guts to do it, but I always thought Barton Fink would make a great triple bill with Naked Lunch and Eraserhead. We could make t-shirts up and give them away as prizes to anyone who makes through all three without becoming a drooling mass in the end.

5/5

Nikki did not view.

Out of the Past, dir. Jacques Tourneur (1947)

The Maltese Falcon, dir. John Huston (1941)

Double Indemnity, dir. Billy Wilder (1944)

STEVE says:
Well, what can you say? Double Indemnity is simply one of the best films ever made. Where do you go from there?

Showed this one to my class tonight. I've got them looking into Film Noir this term and since Double Indemnity was the first Noir I saw (not the first I'd watched, but the first I really saw for something other than just "an old movie"), I decided to open with it. As I'd hoped, it blew them away. The dialog, the plotting, Edward G. Robinson's "little man"; it all made an impact, and elicited some spirited discussion afterwards.

Something I learned while researching the movie for class: It's based on an actual event. In Queens in 1927, a woman named Ruth Snyder talked her boyfriend into killing her husband Albert, after having Albert take out a big insurance policy with a double-indemnity clause. This inspired James M. Cain to write not only his novel Double Indemnity, but also The Postman Always Rings Twice. Apparently this story struck quite a chord with Mr. Cain.

5/5

Nikki did not view.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Director: Tobe Hooper
Writers: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper
Released: 1974
Cast: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Terri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen

NIKKI says:
It was really by chance that we ended up watching this one. Our month of culling the To-Watch pile is about to come to an end, so we wanted to use these last few days of March to power through whatever we could. Instead, as we had a visitor interested in a bit of horror movie history, we ended up choosing this one.

I was a bit sad as I pretty much silently vowed never to watch this again. Not that I think it's a bad movie, I just find it very hard to watch. I'm fine until Kirk get it, then I just want to hide under the covers until all the screaming stops.

We had some great discussions after the movie about what worked and what didn't, why this was scary, what it all meant. It's a great film to examine because it raises so many issues and feelings and, for me, I never quite know if it's exploitation or genuine social commentary. I think it's after so long at that damn dinner table that I start to go, All right, can we move on? But no, that's when Grampa needs to try and hit Sally over the head, which I think is just the grossest thing ever filmed. What's the social relevance of this!?

I really don't know why this film creeps me out so much. It could be testament to the writing here that I get such a sense of whacked-out reality from the family members. It's as if it's all real, and I don't want to look at it. I get the same vibe from The Hills Have Eyes, and other horror films from the 1970s. I won't watch Last House in the Left again for this same reason. It's just too graphic for me, because it feels so real.

I will say, though, that this viewing of Chain Saw was the easiest yet. I worked out it's maybe the fourth time I've seen the movie, and I found myself hiding a bit less. I was prepared for the hitchhiker cutting himself, then for Kirk getting hit, then for the hook, and then for the hammer. So it wasn't so bad. I still wanted to kick the TV, run away, and never come back during the finger sucking bit, though.

The final moments of this film are still hugely effective. After so much darkness and evil, here we all are, plunged into the light, sun overhead. And this horrible thing still goes on. Sally's insane cry-laugh as she drives away is just incredible, and Leatherface lives on, in his mixture of anger and confusion.

My love-hate relationship with this film continues. I know it's good, but I hate it for all the reason why.

4/5

STEVE says:
I used to hate this movie. I didn't think it was scary at all, just some cheap-looking schlock that skimped on effects (meaning, in those days, Savini-esque blood and gore), and took waaaay too long to get to the first kill. In fact, the first time I attempted to watch it, I fell asleep.

Looking back on it, I'm sure it was a mixture of ignorance and general contrariness that informed my opinion, as well as the fact that I'd been up for 36 hours straight (long story) when I sat down to watch it and subsequently fell asleep because, years later, for whatever reason, I decided to give it another go and I discovered - as I would later with films like Dawn of the Dead and 2001: A Space Odyssey - that it was my fault and not the movie's.

I've since come to see Chain Saw for what it is - a revolutionary film by a maverick filmmaker, without which the landscape of modern horror would be significantly less interesting. But at 15, not so much. I didn't see that the first half was taking its time on purpose, lulling me into a false sense of security until Kirk walks into the house and encounters Leatherface. Didn't know that the quick-as-a-flash kills were meant to startle and shock, unlike the lingering blood and gore kills I was used to from the likes of the Friday the 13th movies. It took me - and I say this with all possible humility - well into my 30s to recognize the genius behind this movie.

4/5

[Steve watched again on 11/5 with film class.]

Land of the Dead, dir. George A. Romero (2005)

Groundhog Day, dir. Harold Ramis (1993)

STEVE says:
So I run this film class in Echuca on Wednesday nights, where a group of us get together once every two weeks, watch a film and discuss it afterwards. I set this up largely because, apart from Nikki, I can't find anyone around here who actually likes to think about a movie as they're watching it. The first movie we watched was Blade Runner: The Final Cut (which I didn't blog about because Nikki and I had watched it only a few weeks previous), and that went over pretty well, so I thought I'd do a complete 180 and give them a comedy - albeit a deeper comedy than they were probably expecting.

This movie works on two levels: You can enjoy it just as a silly Bill Murray comedy, or you can look at it philosophically and see that it holds a deeper spiritual meaning than, for example, The Passion of the Christ. Either way, you know.

Groundhog Day uses the Kübler-Ross model as a template, taking Bill Murray's Phil Connors through the five stages of grief and tragedy - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance - as he relives the same day over and over again for what director Harold Ramis tells us on the commentary is ten years (but what screenwriter Danny Rubin, a Zen-Buddhist, originally conceived as 10,000 years). During the discussion afterwards, we found that Phil was indeed in denial at first, questioning whether someone was playing a large-scale practical joke on him, or whether he was, in fact, insane; then he became angry, which manifest itself in more of a playful, devilish Phil than a truly angry Phil, where we figured he'd be lashing out at people; when depression set in, he began killing himself over and over and over again - and this is when he started to get really mean to people, displaying some of the anger we'd expected before; and finally into acceptance of his fate, which is what broke the spell - he started doing good things for others, solely because it was the right thing to do, rather than thinking about how it might benefit him.

The one stage we couldn't identify in the movie, thought, was Bargaining. Arguments were made that each time he attempted to change something from a previous "day", it could be construed as bargaining, but I felt that it was more of a gamble, as Phil wasn't giving anything up in order to make things right. But even so, what a fascinating model for a film that, on the surface, seems to be a light romantic comedy!

I was struck by the fact Phil is pretty much the same guy Murray played in Scrooged - the jerk who's reformed in the end by realizing that humanity on the whole is greater than himself. It's part of the "Cinderella" archetype (goodness triumphant after being initially despised). Makes me wonder if Murray isn't drawn to this sort of story.

3.5/5

Nikki did not view.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut, dir. Ridley Scott (1982/2007)

NIKKI says:
The first time I watched Blade Runner was at the Allen Theatre in Annville, PA, with Steve and his brother, Mike. I fell asleep. I can't remember why, exactly. But I missed much of the movie, and, therefore, really didn't know all that much about it, apart from stuff Steve has mentioned over the years. Basically, it was a film I considered an indisputable classic, not because of my own opinion, but how revered it is, and, now, of course, because it merits a massive DVD release featuring five version of the thing. Does any film need five versions? What other movies out there would fans want to watch five times in five different ways? Maybe Star Wars... and Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, after viewing the movie again, I realised just why it's so revered. It really is a great picture, from storytelling to visuals. Hard to believe, sometimes, it was made back at the beginning of the '80s when "special effects" were just cheesy neon shooty lights and wires and stuff. This didn't have any cheesiness to it at all, really, which surprised me. I was also taken by the seriousness of the whole thing -- illegal robots inhabiting Los Angeles in 2019 and a rogue-ish cop is sent to destroy them! The potential for unintentional comedy is written all over that, but this was gripping. It was emotionally scarring. That's really what I'm taking away from it was just how sad I felt at the end that the replicants had to die. I was cursing the society that built them more than anything, which is likely the point. And, in turn, Harrison Ford's character wasn't really a hero. He was sad, too, in that he went about his robot slaying really without question. A job, sure, but more than that, especially after learning of Rachel's identity and listening to Roy Batty's speech at the end. I don't remember Ford questioning himself.

I can't compare the version I just saw with any other version, but I know Ford's character was debated as far as his replicant status in early versions, whereas this final version make it fairly clear he, too, is a replicant and that he and Rachel only have a short time together. I love this element of the story and I think it's beautiful. The end was great, with Ford finding the unicorn, and the other cop (Edward James Olmos) saying that it's a shame Rachel won't live. Just perfect, so tragic.

Great movie. In a way I'm annoyed I haven't enjoyed it more frequently over years. But then I'm happy this was the version I was able to see as my "first" experience of the story, because it was really effective.

Now, can someone get me the five-disc edition of The Breakfast Club? I'd watch that.

4/5

STEVE says:
Watching Ridley Scott's Final Cut of Blade Runner, I've finally come to realize what a wank George Lucas is.

Lucas' rape and pillage of the original Star Wars trilogy soured me on the idea of director's cuts and special editions. The original movies never met with his approval because special effects at the time couldn't bring his true vision to fruition. By 1997, though, technology had caught up with him and he released the Star Wars Special Editions. But by adding state-of-the-art effects to these classic films, he did nothing more than remove the credibility of the existing effects, making them look even dodgier by comparison than they did to begin with. As an artist, I can appreciate his wanting to see his vision realized. What I'm against is his refusal to let us enjoy the original movies.

I can't think of another special edition or director's cut where this is the case, especially since the DVD revolution. The Abyss, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, even Stargate, all come with the original as well as the special edition. Lucas, in a childish fit of "they're mine, not yours, I'll do what I want with them" has refused to release the original trilogy (even the new 2-disc editions of the original films only offer a pan and scan version, instead of the original widescreen presentation).

Ridley Scott, however, knows how to do a special edition. This new Blade Runner set has five versions of the movie: the original theatrical release, the international release (which doubled as the original vhs release in the States), the 1992 Director's Cut (which wasn't), the new Final Cut (which is), and just for fun, an early work-print. Good grief, Ridley.

Apart from the narration and the happy ending, the differences are mostly cosmetic: tighter editing, re-touched special effects, that sort of thing. When I heard that Scott got Joanna Cassidy back to re-film her character Zorah's death scene, I cringed, thinking immediately of Lucas and his retro-fitting. But it works here. I don't know why. Maybe it's just a psychological thing; I'm not offended by Scott's touch-ups because I know, should I want to, I can go back and watch the original version where it's not Cassidy but an obviously be-wigged stunt woman crashing through panes of glass and dying on the sidewalk. Not that I'm going to, but the option is there.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut gets a perfect score - 5/5

[Viewed again by Steve on Feb 13.]