Category: Film Review

Not many films instilled as much wide-eyed wonder in me as a youthful movie-lover as The Flight of the Navigator, which was released in the summer of 1986, and while not attaining the runaway big-screen blockbuster status that it truly deserved, has lived on throughout the years as an all-time cult favorite for many children of the 80’s. Directed with a terrific sense of old-school movie-magic by Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Big Top Pee-wee) and written with gee-whiz excitement by Michael Burton and Matt MacManus from a story by Mark Baker, child star (and future bank robber…) Joey Kramer got the role of a lifetime as a kid who gets abducted by a friendly alien (voiced by Paul Reubens but credited as Paul Mall!) who then takes him forward in time from 1978 to 1986, all the while battling the charms of a then extremely young Sarah Jessica Parker. The supporting cast included Cliff De Young, Veronica Cartwright, Matt Adler, and Howard Hesseman, but the film’s narrative was squarely placed on Kramer’s young shoulders, and he did a great job interacting with the various creatures and showing genuine responses to his otherworldly craft.

The Flight of the Navigator included some of the earliest full-on CGI effects, and features strong cinematography from James Glennon (About Schmidt, Election, Deadwood, Carnivale) and a lively musical score from Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future, Predator, The Delta Force). The film had a weird gestation, as it was first attempted to be set up as a Disney production, with the Mouse House ultimately declining to produce, but agreeing to distribute. The film was lensed on location in Florida with the scenes set aboard the ship shot in Norway on a budget of $9 million, with box office receipts reaching nearly $20 million in America; critical response was favorable. And over the years, it’s become one of those treasured items for many people that feels too refreshingly quaint to be remade in today’s overly slick and cynical CGI movie landscape, though an update has recently been threatened. I hope they leave this property alone, as it works just fine as is, and no amount of money will be able to replicate the original’s sense of overall wonderment. The Flight of the Navigator is available on Blu-ray and DVD, and as an Amazon and YouTube streaming option.

Robert Redford’s brilliant family drama Ordinary People is a great movie. How could it not be? It’s real. It’s genuine. Nothing is overdone. And everything works. Redford’s invisible direction, for which he won an Oscar in no less than his directorial debut, is sublime, never showboating in any aesthetic fashion, instead allowing Alvin Sargent’s sensitive and deeply layered screenplay (which was based on Judith Guest’s novel) to do all the heavy lifting. And because Sargent was a master when it came to dialogue and crafting scenes that felt inherently real and honest, there’s nothing about Ordinary People that rings false or feels ill-conceived. The exemplary performances are beyond description. Donald Sutherland as the nice-guy father trying to keep his family together, Mary Tyler Moore with her bottled up rage and intense emotional repression, Timothy Hutton dropping a tour de force performance as an anguished, suicidal teen, Judd Hirsch as the kind shrink who takes a liking to Hutton, fresh-faced Elizabeth McGovern as Hutton’s object of desire – everyone was absolutely remarkable in this delicate piece of work. John Bailey’s plain and focused cinematography is a clear-cut lesson in less is more; sometimes you just need to frame the actors and hold the shots for a bit longer than normal (Jeff Kanew’s patient editing is superb) and pure movie magic will become the result. Marvin Hamlisch’s piano-centric score is the icing on the cake. The winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Hutton), Ordinary People was a critical favorite and box-office smash, and despite 37 years elapsing since its release, its power remains undiluted. No major studio would be interested in making this film today and that’s a really sad fact of life.

The Nickel Ride is a cool as a cucumber crime film from 1974, patiently directed by Robert Mulligan (Summer of ’42, The Stalking Moon, To Kill A Mockingbird) from a sly, morally ambiguous screenplay by then-newbie Eric Roth (Munich, Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Insider). The plot centers on a “key-man” named Cooper (Jason Miller), who works for a local crime syndicate, and always carries his ubiquitous key chain at all times. His job is to run a group of Los Angeles-based warehouses that house stolen goods, but things get complicated when a real estate deal turns south and local gangsters led by an evil John Hillerman who feel threatened by Cooper’s knowledge of the ins and outs of the various illegal activities. Before he knows it, someone has been sent to kill him. But who? And why? Roth’s script is clever and shifty, never giving up its full hand until the final moments, and it must be said that Miller’s ability to convey pensive, sullen, broken-down alpha males was truly signature.

The film is more about its tense atmosphere and the anxiety that Miller projects as an actor than it is about anything else; his underplayed performance rests in his eyes and body language and the way his sullen face is captured within the frame. The Nickel Ride was shot in 2.35:1 widescreen with a love for shadows and darkness by legendary cinematography Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner, Cutter’s Way, Altered States, Rolling Thunder) and features a low-key musical score from Dave Grusin (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Three Days of the Condor, Oscar-winner for The Milagro Beanfield War). The Nickel Ride screened at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d’Or before getting lost in the theatrical market with less than a $2 million domestic gross. The film is available on DVD as a double feature with the outlandishly entertaining John Frankenheimer oddity 99 and 44/100% Dead from Shout! Factory, and would easily fit the bill for a great night of 70’s crime cinema where you never can truly guess how things will end up.

Nate and Tim are joined by Frank, Kyle and Bill to discuss the first two hours of David Lynch’s triumphant return to the small town filled with secrets.

“The Fox and the Hound” (1981) dir. Ted Berman, Richard Rich, Art Stevens

One of Disney’s more adult efforts, ‘The Fox and the Hound’ is an endearing morality tale depicting the negative long term effects of tribalism. Todd, a fox and Cooper, a hound become childhood best friends only to realize as they grow older that they must adhere to the roles of their respective cultures and cannot be the friends they once were.

The filmmakers do a remarkable job at the outset of developing the friendship between the young hound and the young fox. It is extremely genuine. A tad hammy but not false. This foundation holds the film together. Cooper is derided by his peers for befriending a fox but is given the benefit of the doubt because of his youth. The older hunting dog Chief and the master, Mr. Slade, are metaphorically unabashed racists as the film brazenly makes its case that bigotry is not inherent in the young but is instead learned by one’s elders and their culture. This film is also astute enough to point out that even the seemingly enlightened woodland creatures who befriend Todd are just as responsible for the general state of things. While they may acknowledge that societal prejudice is wrong, their refusal to do anything about it makes them benign accomplices all the same.

It should be noted that ‘The Fox and the Hound’ features to-die-for voice work by Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Corey Feldman, Sandy Duncan, Pat Buttram and Pearl Bailey. Hard to imagine what this film would have been like without them.

Much has been made about whether or not Chief should have been killed. The new blood at Disney working on the project argued vehemently the Chief should be killed but the old guard voted them down. I certainly agree that the film would have had more narrative bite (ha!) if Chief had been killed. As it stands the retribution seems a little wonky even for Disney logic but it doesn’t raise much of an eyebrow. In my opinion it was a small price to pay in order to get the film’s message across.

Life is unfair, people. And as this film shows us, most of life is spent within the grey areas as opposed to the blacks and whites. Even the most dramatic moments in our lives end in neither clear victory nor defeat. When Cooper stands up to Mr. Slade at the end of the film, refusing to betray Todd – it is merely a truce of sorts. It is no victory for multiculturalism nor defeat for isolationism. There is merely a mournful acceptance that the fox and the hound cannot coexist for many frustrating reasons. But for a brief period of time, Todd and Cooper proved that they could. Society, my friends, can be a very oppressive force. One that influences people far too often to betray their more noble instincts for the ‘good’ of the pack. We could all be more mindful of this.

Stanley Kramer’s timeless drama Inherit the Wind still has the capacity to rouse and startle, and remains scarily relevant in today’s increasingly Idiocracy-leaning society. Co-written by blacklisted screenwriter Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith, the film was based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and inspired by the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” in 1925, where creationism vs. evolution was up for debate. Starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric Marsh, Gene Kelly, Dick York, Donna Anderson, Claude Akins, Harry Morgan, and Elliot Reed, there’s not a bad performance in the entire bunch, and the film’s black and white photography by Ernest Laszlo is consistently dynamic, which was no small feat considering that much of the action takes place in a courtroom. I was introduced to this film by my father early in my formative movie-buff years, and I’ve revisited it numerous times as it always provides an intellectual punch, and serves as a potent reminder of how mixing religion with law is a terrible idea.