Category: Film Review

There’s a key moment in Joe Dante’s heartfelt children’s adventure film Explorers when an extraterrestrial utters the iconic cinematic phrase: “The stuff that dreams are made of.” That sentiment essentially applies to Explorers as a whole; the film feels as if it were born from my childhood dreams, and I’ll bet that many others share this same emotion. This is an all-time favorite from my formative years, and a film that has held up so well through the decades because of the honest sense of love it conveys in all departments. I have heard and read the stories that Dante wasn’t happy with the final cut due to a rushed schedule and studio interference. And I respect his comments. I’m not a filmmaker, so I can’t imagine what it must be like to see a film you’ve worked so hard on to be sent out in a compromised state. But his sentiments have done nothing to diminish how much this movie means to me on a personal level.

There were a core group of films for me as a child that truly spoke to me, films like D.A.R.Y.L., Flight of the Navigator, The Last Starfighter, The Monster Squad, My Science Project, The Goonies, Cloak & Dagger, Dragonslayer, Legend, The Dark Crystal, Harry and the Hendersons, and so many others. But there was something so unique, so truly special about Explorers that it’s rather hard to sum it up into words. There’s a graceful sense of uncynical, gee-whiz-wonder in Eric Luke’s perceptive and wise screenplay, and because Dante has always known how to blend amazing special effects with stories that have a lot of heart, this is the sort of film that qualifies as total movie magic. If you’re addicted to something like Stranger Things, or really enjoyed this year’s absurdly underrated Midnight Special, do yourself a favor and check out Explorers.

The plot centers on a trio of extremely adventurous young boys, played by Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, and Jason Presson, all of whom are obsessed with computers and inventions and sci-fi movies and video games. They all start to have the same interconnected-dreams, which inspires them to build a homemade spaceship, which they then use to blast off into outer space, where they’re greeted by some pop-culture loving aliens who have some interesting ideas about what’s going down on planet Earth. John Hora’s phenomenal, Amblin-esque cinematography busted out the lens flares and made everything look casually stylish if never ostentatious. Look out for James Cromwell, Dick Miller, Robert Picardo, and Mary Kay Place in supporting roles.

Nothing is forced, the film has an innate understanding of what it’s like to be a 12 year old boy, the sense of discovery is palpable all throughout the narrative, and it absolutely nails those feelings of your first crush (lovely Amanda Peterson was the object of affection for Hawke on-screen, and whose attention was apparently competed for by Hawke and Phoenix off-camera, or so the rumor goes). Released in 1985 and featuring imagination-stirring special effects work by ILM and extremely fun make-up effects for the aliens, which were designed by cinematic legend Rob Bottin, Explorers didn’t catch on at the box office, slipping in and out of theaters before becoming a massive cult favorite due to the explosion of VHS in the 80’s. The masterful score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Breezy, funny, and feeling almost cinematically stoned, Robert Altman’s genial yet somehow distressing gambling comedy California Split is a film that has a deceptive undercurrent of sadness to match its potent study of male bonding while exploring the importance of true camaraderie. Centering on two life-long casino-junkies, one a bit more slightly involved than the other initially, the playful and observant narrative pivots on Charlie Waters (Elliot Gould in one of his loosest performances) and his buddy Bill Denny (George Segal, amazing as always), as we watch them search for the biggest jackpot of their lives in Reno. Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles were both extremely funny in supporting roles as Charlie’s prostitute roommates, and the film features an early screen appearance from Jeff Goldblum. I loved the naturalistic cinematography by Paul Lohmann, who had just previously shot the iconic Blaxploitation movie Coffy and would become a frequent Altman collaborator, while the editing kept a very quick pace without sacrificing any sense of heft or dramatic importance. The script was written by Joseph Walsh (who also appeared as Bill’s bookie, Sparkie), who reportedly worked on the script with Steven Spielberg for close to a year during the earliest stages of the script’s life.

Steve McQueen, Peter Falk, and Robert De Niro were all attached at various points during the film’s lengthy development process (it changed studios from MGM to Universal), and at one point while the film was at MGM, the studio wanted to position it as a Dean Martin-led project with a mafia flavor. Reviews were extremely positive and the film did solid box office despite not having a long theatrical life; various rights issues, mostly stemming from musical inclusions, have prevented Altman’s original cut to hit the physical media market. Former world champion poker player Amarillo Slim appeared as himself during the climactic match. The film is also famous for its pioneering sound techniques, as it’s the first movie ever to use the eight-track sound system, which allowed for eight separate audio channels to be recorded, which of course fed directly into Altman’s personal obsession with overlapping dialogue and ambient sounds. Last year’s fantastic and vastly underseen Mississippi Grind, with Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds, was essentially a very smart updating of this timeless material. Available on DVD from Mill Creek, sans extras/special features, but showcased in 2.35:1 widescreen.

**** (out of ****)
Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall, Al Freeman Jr., Delroy Lindo.
Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Lee and Arnold Perl, based on the book by Alex Haley and Malcolm X.
Rated R. 203 minutes. 1992.

Like Amadeus and Raging Bull a decade before it, and Ali and The Aviator a decade after, Spike Lee’s galvanizing Malcolm X is one of the great screen biographies (joining Nixon in that categories for a pair from the 1990s), never taking for granted the hero status of its polarizing figure, but examining his psychology and what made the man into the martyr. Superficially, the structure is not uncommon. We see his upbringing, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, to a father later probably killed by the Ku Klux Klan in a “streetcar accident” and a mother who loses her nerve as swiftly as she loses the ability to support Malcolm and his brothers. He later leads a life of drugs, pimping, gambling, and racketeering, before being imprisoned, partially for cavorting with white women while doing so. In prison and after, he becomes smitten with the teachings of Islam, in particular through the mentoring of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation Islam. Black supremacy, in the guise of black self-reliance, is the subject of the teachings, as Malcolm, who sheds his “slave” surname and replaces it with the letter “x,” learns that all white men are devil spawn. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, he becomes considerably less radically anti-white, though returning the African diaspora from the Americas, Europe, or anywhere else to their mother continent remains his message until his violent assassination, probably by Elijah Muhammad’s henchmen within the Nation of Islam,  with which he becomes increasingly disenfranchised over the course of his life. Here is that life, entirely and sprawling, portrayed in just less than three-and-a-half hours by Lee and co-screenwriter Arnold Perl (adapting Malcolm X’s own autobiography, co-written by Alex Haley, presumably after the man’s murder), who earn the gargantuan film’s every minute. We see this man live, breathe, fear, love, hate, doubt, firmly believe, and orate, and in an astonishing performance that ranks among the best in the movies, Denzel Washington captures the spirit, the controversy, and the humanity of this great man. Surrounding him is a superb supporting cast, each of whom I could name, but at the center is Washington’s disappearance into the role of any actor’s lifetime. It’s a performance of great courage in a film of great candor.

**** (out of ****)
Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Sissy Spacek.
Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Stone and Zachary Sklar, based on the book by Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs.
Rated R. 201 minutes. 1991.

Note: This mini-review is based on a viewing of the director’s cut of JFK.

The late, great Roger Ebert once said, “I don’t have the slightest idea whether Oliver Stone knows who killed President John F. Kennedy,” and that pretty much sums up my own thoughts on the matter. Oliver Stone’s JFK is, purely, simply, and truly, an examination of so-called “facts,” a conclusion that those facts are likely made of whole cloth, and a hypothesis that fills in the gaps with what Stone believes are probably the events. He is imparting truth here, not procedural facts about the killing of the 35th President of the United States of America. He tackles, through his protagonist Jim Garrison, the man on whose book (co-written by Jim Marrs) Stone’s screenplay (co-written by Zachary Sklar) is based and who is played by Kevin Costner, the facts of the assassination as provided to the American public by the government who investigated it. Garrison finds damning evidence in every nook and cranny, as witnesses and accomplices are killed with impunity and under curious circumstances or otherwise bought to keep silent, a series of connections are uncovered between the American government, the Dallas Police Department, and the branch of the Dallas mob that resided in the metroplex, and supposed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt begins to appear increasingly coincidental. The footage of the actual shooting, captured by onlooker Abraham Zapruder, establishes, rather unexpectedly, evidence of more than one rifle used in the crime. A mysterious former military man lays the groundwork for Kennedy’s assassination at the feet of a U.S. government that desires war for financial viability. Stone’s most monumental achievement lay in Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia’s editing, which makes sense of the labyrinthine investigation laid out before Garrison, and in the astounding cast: Costner, sympathetic as Garrison; Tommy Lee Jones, superbly indifferent as primary defendant Clay Shaw; Gary Oldman, adopting Oswald’s unique vocal inflection and affording great humanity to a man seen around the world as a villain; Joe Pesci, a bundle of nerves as getaway pilot David Ferrie; Sissy Spacek as Liz Garrison, increasingly tired of her husband’s seeming obsession with the assassination; Jay O. Sanders, Michael Rooker, Wayne Knight, Gary Grubbs, and Laurie Metcalf as Garrison’s army of investigators; Donald Sutherland, fascinating in his single-sequence appearance as “X,” the mysterious whistle-blower later identified as Fletcher Prouty, who offers crucial points in Garrison’s investigation; Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Kevin Bacon, and John Candy, all solid as various figures within the investigation itself. The film weaves in, around, and through the varied ways that Oswald could not have acted alone. This, Garrison and the film reckon, was a conspiracy, and the result was a murder of great mystique, political expediency, and, worst, arrogance that led a consortium to believe a story with this many holes would survive scrutiny.