Will Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

365 Films

Entry #29

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Directed by: Mel Stuart

My introduction to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory coincides precisely with my first instance of petty larceny.  Before you hit that silent alarm button under desk and rat me out to the fuzz, let me explain that while I didn’t legally “break” the law, I did act like an incredibly shitty friend.  A very close friend somewhere between the years 1991 and 1993 had loaned Willy Wonka to me.  The current year is 2013 and I still have that tape.  What possible explanation could I have for holding on to a loaned VHS for approximately twenty years?  The movie is really fucking good, that’s why.  This was my first cinematic obsession that didn’t involve Wesley Snipes or Sylvester Stallone.  I should backtrack a little bit.  Roald Dahl was my movies before I knew movies were my movies.  His books provided me with my first taste of the completely magical transporting quality of any and all fiction, printed or otherwise.  His ability to balance clever wordplay, sharply drawn characters, and completely fantastical imagery is still unmatched in its delicacy.  One was drawn to the works of Roald Dahl over and over again for a very specific reason: it was just too damn satisfying to put down.  Therefore, the idea of a real life flesh and blood Willy Wonka filling up my cinematic headspace was (to quote a friend) “like someone had taken me apart, cleaned all my pieces, and transfused my blood with sunshine”, AKA The best possible thing that could possibly happen in the history of everything.  Just one example of the many gifts Willy Wonka has to offer is how deliriously abound with visual pleasures the thing is.  Every frame of film, especially to a ten-year-old is one eye-popping spectacle after the next.  From the opening musical number in the candy shop to the introduction of the chocolate room to the final blast in the great glass elevator, it is damn near impossible to take your eyes off the screen.  It doesn’t hurt that the film whole-heartedly embraces the over-whelming psychedelia not only inherent in Dahl’s text, but also as spill over from the times in which it was made.  Willy Wonka is the kind of children’s film that does not get tamer the older you get.  If anything, the film gets even stranger and darker with each subsequent viewing.  One of the long-standing theories behind the film is that Willy Wonka is in fact, god, and that the chocolate factory is eternal paradise.  Hence, why he is standing guard over the gates of heaven and tossing out all of the undesirable elements (all the children except Charlie).  The interpretation I find more interesting however is that the entire film is actually a battle for Willy Wonka’s soul.  Each child is a potential savior and there is a rigorous screening process to figure out which one it is.  The Willy Wonka that emerges from his office after Charlie leaves behind the everlasting gobstopper is a Willy Wonka devoid of all the unrepentant bitterness that had swallowed up his soul.  And in giving the factory over to Charlie and his family, he has finally freed himself from the terrible burden that caused his livelihood to turn to rot.  I guess that means things aren’t looking too hopeful for Charlie and his family then, huh? Oh well.  I’m sticking with that. 

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

365 Films

Entry #28

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Directed by: Lasse Hallström 

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Swedish director Lasse Hallström’s quiet drama about a family coping with everyday life in Endora, Iowa is a luminous example of exactly the kind of movie a major studio refuses to make anymore.  The fact that I first saw it on another one of my patented “sick days” only adds to the nostalgic feeling of time passing that always accompanies the film for me.  I can remember the extreme hesitation I had when my Mom suggested the idea of watching it.  I was sick (I think) and being a 10-13 year old boy (I can’t quite place the exact year so bear with me), the idea of giving up a day off from school to watch something where nothing exploded seemed like a foolish idea.  After some gentle convincing, the next two hours passed by with the greatest of ease.  I sat there enraptured with the gentle rhythms of the visual style and by the humanistic style of the performances.  Gilbert Grape is a film that would have very easily fallen into the realm of torrid melodrama.  As a matter of fact, that seems to be the current stock and trade of director Lasse Hallstöm some 20 years later (see: Safe Haven, Dear John, and other assorted titles of ill-repute).  Skills gotta pay the bills as it were.  However, back in the year 1993 BS (Before Sparks) Hollström was able to keenly dial into small town life to such an extent as to tease out the drama rather than wringing it out like water from an old dishrag.  It doesn’t hurt that the cast is positively stellar.  Johnny Depp, whom nobody would consider an ordinary, average joe succeeds remarkably at playing exactly that.  The performance is all the more memorable because of Depp’s staunch refusal to sentimentalize Gilbert or his plight.  He is selfish, ornery, and sometimes flat-out abusive to his family but also gentle, giving, and loving all in the same breath.  The same goes for the rest of the cast, Leonardo DiCaprio was justifiably lauded for his performance as Arnie, and Darlene Cates is heartbreaking as Gilbert’s morbidly obese mother Bonnie.  These two bring an intensity of feeling to the parts that diminish any attempt to reduce and simplify their characters solely down to their disabilities.  It is in that humanity that the filmmakers find a story that while centered in a fictionalized Iowa town could really stand in for anywhere.  The connection hit home particularly for me because I had never seen anything close to an approximation of my hometown up on screen.  Wilmington, Delaware may not have had a general store or a town center crowded with pick-up trucks, but we definitely had people like Gilbert.  What’s sad is that budgetary constraints are not why films like this have gone by the wayside.  These films still exist, they’re just made on a tiny scale and are much more difficult to produce and finally see.  The reason they have vanished from the major studio slate is for the very reason it is justly praised. Its refusal to condescend, its gentle empathy, and its overall appreciation for the epic scope of everyday American life have all but guaranteed its extinction.  I’ll leave the final word to the late, great Harvey Pekar, “Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.”     

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

365 Films

Entry #27

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Directed by: Stephen Herek

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has one of the most ingeniously stupid premises ever concocted for a film that it’s astonishing it took the medium nearly 80 years to finally crack it.  Two dim-witted metal-head teenagers, Bill S. Preston Esq., and Ted Theodore Logan (just writing out those names makes me smile) face expulsion unless they can muster up enough intellect to pass a history class.  Failure to do so will result in the break-up of their band Wyld Stallyns thus providing a bleak future for the fate of mankind.  It’s almost as if a bunch of producers and writers were sitting around asking themselves what would happen if two Jeff Spicolis got a hold of a time machine instead of a smart, enterprising young Reaganaught like Marty McFly.  The answer is comedy gold.  That’s probably how that meeting ended too, followed by a protracted slow clap from all participants.  This is a theme I will revisit in future entries so I should perhaps introduce it presently.  That theme is called “Movies That Would Suck Without Keanu Reeves”, wordy as that title may be, it is the absolute truth.  It should be said in all fairness to Alex Winter, who provides the hyperactive yin to Mr. Reeves’ laid back yang, the duo is essential and the film simply would not work at all without those two.  If you’ll bear with me on this, it is Mr. Reeves who provides the heart and soul of the film.  It could be the way Mr. Winter looks (forgive me sir, I’m a big fan of your work) or the fact that he can’t control his throbbing biological urges towards his Stepmother, he always comes off a tad on the creepy side.  Mr. Reeves’ Ted on the other hand creates the winning persona of a dimwitted innocent launched into events far beyond his meager control.  He has a demanding, mean old sob. of a patriarch who won’t stop bullying his own son.  He even goes so far as to threaten Ted with military service upon his pre-determined failure of high school.  He won’t even entertain the possibility that his son might not be a complete fuck-up and could pass the aforementioned history class.  What Mr. Reeves does here is a imbue the character with his own inherent likability that one can’t help but find themselves rooting for Bill and Ted.  This is a tricky thing to accomplish.  Think of all those occasions where moviegoers have sat in a silent stupor, grinding their teeth with rage at the latest variation of the “noble idiot” character.  Annoyingly dumb characters in American comedies appear with the same regularity as an Adam Sandler movie.  Comedies are often easiest to appreciate when you have no problem laughing at the exaggerated antics of the cast.  This detached, cynical method definitely has its pleasures, but when a movie like Bill and Ted comes along and dares us to care, that’s when you have something people will remember.  If you don’t believe me just try walking up to someone and yelling “Sandimashighschoolfootballrules!” Or, “strange things are afoot at the circle K”, and watch what happens.  I dare you.    

Spaceballs

365 Films

Entry #26

Spaceballs (1987)

Directed by: Mel Brooks

Forgive me if I’m skipping around a bit on the chronology of these movies.  This entry was meant to be about Robin Hood: Men in Tights until I realized that Spaceballs is a much better film and a better film with which to approach an inherit film-going dilemma.  I’m sure this phenomenon applies to all generations and their antecedents but it feels particularly relevant to mine in lieu of growing up with shows like The Simpsons and Mystery Science Theater 3000.  What I’m talking about is watching a comedy that makes pointed, specific references to various pop culture or historical events that go sailing over one’s head.  Instead of making the viewer feel dumb; such enticements only lead a curious mind to explore the many intertwined facets of our collective unconscious.  Spaceballs immediately springs to mind when thinking about this because I was not the least bit aware of Star Wars when I first encountered it.  I had no idea who Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker were and quite frankly, I didn’t give a damn.  I knew the general gist of the story, it was impossible not to if you dared venture to any Disney Theme Park.  But I was not in on the joke that was the entire basis for Spaceballs’ very existence.  The reason I mentioned MST3K and The Simpsons in conjunction with this entry is because these comedic minds were brilliant enough to make the jokes stand on their own even if you didn’t know the entire story behind a particular reference.  That is precisely why I believe Spaceballs still holds up to this day.  Sure, many out there would argue (and perhaps rightly so) that this is nowhere near Brooks’ best film.  He’s definitely been more daring and inventive with many other titles in his filmography.  What makes Spaceballs special is that while the overall taste of the thing is relatively standard in terms of spoof movies (spoovies?), it’s proportion of jokes hurled vs. jokes that stick is remarkably high.  Brooks has mastered the timeless art of absurdity in such a way as to never feel dated (most of the time) and remain free of the “for Star Wars fans only” trap that so many other spoovies fall into periodically.  Spaceballs is a remarkably silly movie that is consistently funny and performed by a cast that never once winks at the camera.  Perhaps the reason this movie works is because Mr. Brooks never sought to make a Star Wars parody, he just wanted to make people laugh.  What a radical concept.         

Philadelphia

365 Films

Entry #25

Philadelphia (1993)

Directed by: Jonathan Demme

Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia is another one to add in the devastating childhood trauma bin of my early cinephile memories.  I remember openly weeping in my bedroom at the end of the tape.  To prove what an unadventurous moviegoer I was at that age, Philadelphia (like Schindler’s List) only came to my attention when Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar in 1994 ‘s Forrest Gump.  I had an additional vague interest in the film because it was named after a city I was familiar with on a proximity basis and because I remember folking out to the Bruce Springsteen song, Streets of Philadelphia.  The funny thing about that is the Neil Young song Philadelphia is actually more of a punch to gut than the Springsteen song.  When it rains, it pours, I guess.  All of this contributed to a completely devastated ten-year-old psyche.  A wound that was incredibly painful due to the fact that I had just sat through the slow and agonizing death of that incredibly nice man from Big.  Tom Hanks was not Tom Hanks yet to me so all I had to associate him with was the fun-loving hijinks of the aforementioned Josh Baskin.  I was already quite smitten with Denzel Washington from Malcolm X so I had absolutely no problem with watching him play the heroic lawyer.  The point I’m trying to make here is that when you’re young, you are burdened and gifted with an inability to care about or acknowledge the real life personalities of your favorite actors.  All you had to go on was their films.  Granted, Mr. Washington and Mr. Hanks were never two to seek out the tabloid spotlight, but even if they had, I wouldn’t have known about it.  Therefore it becomes difficult to separate them from the characters they play.  You, the viewer, bring the off-screen baggage of associating them with past roles and that can either work to their advantage or disadvantage.  In this case, it was an advantage, but it also inhibits you from seeing them stray too far from their established personas.  Philadelphia was where I learned I had to separate an actor from his or her previous characters in order to truly appreciate their craft.  As painful as it was, it had to be done.  This could also be known as the “Macauly-Culkin-Dies-At-The-End-Of-My Girl” phenomenon.  Maybe that’s why movies have such a powerful hold on us.  They reduce us to blubbering children, utterly baffled as to why the person they thought was our friend betrayed us by dying or acting like a villain at the end.  That probably doesn’t make any sense, but it seemed like a good way to close out this particular entry.  If anyone wants to re-visit Philadelphia and let me know if it is as devastating as I remember it to be, I’m game.  

Hot Shots: Part Deux

365 Films

Entry #24

Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)

Directed by: Jim Abrahams

There isn’t anything to say about this movie that I didn’t already say in the Naked Gun 2 ½ entry.  Call it a cop-out if you like but I would like to use this opportunity for all of us to bask in the Hot Shots series warm glowing warming glow.  Oh, and to exalt the comedic genius of Lloyd Bridges.  You are dearly missed, sir.

And some OG Hot Shots thrown in for good measure

And Siskel and Ebert’s scarily prescient take on the state of American comedy and its future. 

Demolition Man

365 Films

Entry #23

Demolition Man (1993)

Directed by: Marco Brambilla

I will attempt to unpack the cultural force that is Demolition Man with a personal anecdote.  I’m visiting my sister in the winter of 2009.  I arrive at Penn Station and hop on the subway to get to her apartment in Brooklyn.  I’m on the train, minding my own business and keeping to myself as per usual.  I’m traveling with my backpack and travel bag.  Flashback about three years prior to the set of Nathaniel Carota’s A Slow Dissolve in Ketchum, Idaho where I’m busting my ass while the assistant cameraman (for privacy’s sake let’s call him Gabe F. No, that’s too obvious…G. Fonseca) sits around doing absolutely nothing (as was his habit).  In our spare time G. Fonseca and I had come up with a hypothetical sequel to Demolition Man titled Demolition Man 2: Phoenix Rising.  Mr. Fonseca then attempted to write that particular title on a piece of camera tape and attach it to the slate of the film we were currently shooting.  We all had a good laugh even though I didn’t quite understand it.  But I stuck that piece of tape to my backpack as inspiration to get off my ass and make the Demolition Man we’d spent at least 10 minutes dreaming about.  Back to winter of ’09 on the NYC subway, when an unkempt youngster approaches me on the platform as we are both heading for the stairs.  “Hey, that thing on your backpack, is that real?” I reply, “No it was just a joke between my friend and I.” With a hopeful look on his face, the guy says “Oh. That’s too bad because I got really excited for a second when I thought they were actually making that movie.”  Did I mention that this was one of several random conversations I’ve had with complete strangers about our shared desire for a Demolition Man 2?  I rest my case.  Demolition Man is here and it’s here to stay.  If you thought this was a long forgotten, destined to reign as king of the dustbin in the bottom shelf of the TBS library title, then you thought WRONG my friend.  Demolition Man boasts endless re-watch value, so much so that it somehow manages to be both better and worse than you had previously thought with each subsequent viewing.  That is no small feat.  It features what is perhaps the greatest Wesley Snipes performance in the history of cinema (also no small feat).  And a vision of the future and Los Angeles that is both prescient, yet bathed in the nostalgia for the time in which it was made.  Demolition Man, in a lot of ways, is the ultimate 90’s movie.  It’s a movie in which a violent dinosaur like Stallone (who was on his way out career-wise back then…or so we thought), validates his existence and proves the need for the Joel Silver/Jerry Bruckheimer mega productions of the late 80’s early 90’s.  In its gently insidious way, Demolition Man reinforces the idea that not only do you need to watch this movie for entertainment value but that you need to watch it for the future of the human race.  If you don’t, than all we have to look forward to is Rob Schneider’s constant mockery at your inability to use the three sea shells.  If that isn’t a grim prognostication, I don’t know what is.  I will also take this time to admonish you all to read the Demolition Man novelization by Robert Tine.  I read it before I saw the movie because I could not find a suitable chaperone to accompany me when it was in theaters.  If any of you have seen The Simpsons episode where Bart is forbidden from seeing the Itchy and Scratchy movie, so he instead reads the entirety of the Norman Mailer novelization: that’s exactly what it was like. 

A Bronx Tale

365 Films

Entry #22

A Bronx Tale (1993)

Directed by: Robert DeNiro

A Bronx Tale, Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut, concerns the coming of age and subsequent battle for the soul of one Calogero Anello.  The two opposing forces are the boy’s father Lorenzo and the local crime boss Sonny.  As Caloegero navigates the tricky tight rope between a law-abiding life and that of a hoodlum, a larger portrait of the Bronx in 1960s emerges.  A Bronx Tale originated as a one-man show created by Chazz Palmenteri (who also plays Sonny in the film).  In the transition from stage to screen the film wound up in the directorial hands of Robert DeNiro (who plays Lorenzo in the film).  I offer this bit of back-story to you now because none of it made a damn bit of sense to me when I watched the movie from beginning to end on its HBO Saturday night premiere.  In collecting my thoughts about A Bronx Tale, I began to feel a deep nostalgic longing for the HBO Saturday night movie.  Creating a legacy of quality the network has long since abandoned (this years premieres included The Three Stooges, Battleship, Project X, the list goes on and on…), the Saturday night movie offered me the window into a world of film outside of the multiplex.  Don’t get me wrong, they showed a lot of crap, but films like A Bronx Tale made the indelible impression upon me that Cliffhanger wasn’t the only option at the video store anymore.   Again, none of this mattered when I switched on the TV at eight o’clock on whatever long ago Saturday night that happened to be.  It’s possible that pure chance and coincidence drew to me to this film.  The funny thing is, there is one dialogue exchange in the film that I remember in exact detail.  The scene in question is when Sonny teaches Calogero about the door test.  The door test involves determining whether a potential date is right for you by observing if she reaches over to open the driver door in your car after you have opened the passenger door for her.  Why this patriarchal and antiquated ritual stuck with me for all these years I have no idea, but that’s literally all I remember.  Even the bare bones plot description I provided came from the wikipedia summary.  You might ask why in god’s name did you pick this film to write about for your 365 blog?  I have no conclusive answer for this.  I don’t remember the film at all but I remember how it served as an introduction to the acting titan known as Robert DeNiro.  I remember the tragic inevitability of the ending and how that shaped my view of the mob sagas I would consume ravenously in the coming years.  A Bronx Tale was where I started to connect the dots between the content on screen and the personality of the creators behind the scenes.  Even if I don’t remember the specifics, I will be forever grateful to it for that.   

The Fugitive

365 Films

Entry #21

The Fugitive (1993)

Directed by: Andrew Davis

When I selected The Fugitive for this blog, I never thought about how I would eventually tackle it.  On the surface there’s nothing that remarkable embedded in my memories of it.  It’s not a film that has inspired any kind of controversial re-interpretation in the intervening years.  For lack of a better expression, it is what it is.  Then I thought about it some more and in a way, that’s kind of marvelous.  It’s fair to say that I’ve become fairly disillusioned with the state of modern actions films.  What passes for action these days is usually infested with superheroes, Jason Statham, or starring a bunch of old dinosaurs from the 80’s with Jason Statham for support.  Since we’re on the subject, I feel that I have given a pretty fair shake to Mr. Statham and his films and the only thing I can come up with is: this is the best we can do?  Getting back to the matter at hand, the years have been very kind to The Fugitive.  It has an endearing no-nonsense quality about the action and story.  The direction by Andrew Davis, while always spot-on, never distracts with that stab-you-in-the-face assaultive approach to cinema that seems to have taken over Hollywood.  We seem to have lost our patience for the workman approach to action filmmaking designated by the likes of Mr. Davis, John McTiernan, or Wolfgang Petersen.  The train/bus crash escape sequence alone is an incredible action set piece.  Filled with dynamic sudden twists of luck and an escalating sense of exhilarating danger from otherwise ordinary means of public transportation.  It’s a showstopper in the best sense of the word.  This was certainly one of my first acknowledgements of what a “set-piece” was in an action movie.  I can’t think of a better film to introduce me to this incredibly rewarding cinematic practice.  But before I fall into that trap of bemoaning the loss of how things “used to be”, I will point out that The Fugitive certainly had its moment in the sun.  It was nominated for seven academy awards, winning supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones.  It also dominated the pop-culture landscape from the year it was released to the end of the decade.  I can think of at least several different Simpsons parodies right off the top of my head.   I think all of that is a testament to what a well crafted, ingeniously devised, and character heavy action movie can accomplish when given the right amount of care.  It is entirely possible that this kind of movie can have a new renaissance in our day and age.  We just have to demand it.  

Cliffhanger

365 Films

Entry #20

Cliffhanger (1993)

Directed by: Renny Harlin

I’ll try to make this short and sweet because I really don’t have that much to say about Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone’s mountain climber-rescue-action movie Cliffhanger.  I don’t mean to disparage the film but this is definitely one of those entries wherein the entire concept of doing this blog in the first place backfires.  I’m including it because if I wish to present the entirety of my cinematic education, I have to show it as it happened, the warts and all truth.  When you are an aspiring, young cinephile, the most treasured of all your possessions is your family’s video-store rental membership card.  It’s astonishing that in such a short amount of time those elusive, idol-like objects have all but gone extinct.  My point is that when you rely on the video store as heavily as my family did, you tend to get lazy in your selections.  Why would I want to explore and seek out new and interesting directors when there is Sylvester Stallone’s face staring at me with his dead eyes as he dangles precariously over a snow-white frozen abyss?  The movie is called Cliffhanger and literally, there is a guy hanging from a cliff on the box for the videotape.  How could I resist?  That’s how it went for several weekends in our house, A trip to the video store led to the two day acquisition of Cliffhanger, followed by copious amounts of watching of Cliffhanger, culminating in the ultimate return of Cliffhanger to its home at West Coast Video.  This went on for several weekends.  It got even worse when a blizzard caused a pipe in our school to freeze and subsequently burst.  A couple of weeks off of school and unlimited time to watch Cliffhanger definitely add up to several million-brain cells killed instantly.  What’s funny about all this is whenever Cliffhanger pops up on cable these days (I do own the DVD but it’s back on the east coast, so Mom, feel free to watch that whenever you want), I’m always willing to set aside a few hours to see how Gabe Walker will salvage the one-hundred-million dollars in uncirculated treasury bills while foiling the evil schemes of former military intelligence officer Eric Qualen and ruthless gang of criminals.  All the while struggling to stay alive in an incredibly harsh and perilous region of the Rocky Mountains.  As far as action movies go, it’s an incredibly well oiled machine that serves no purpose other than to hold you tight in its vice-like grip.  Director Renny Harlin succeeds at this in remarkable fashion.  He brings a sharp-eye to pretty standard material and is inventive and clever enough in his action staging to never let the monotony of the story and setting overwhelm the experience.  The subsequent decade of Nate and I endlessly quoting the film’s most price-less lines say something about the screenplay.  What that is, I can’t be entirely certain, but it’s something.  And the trailer is pretty fuckin' awesome.   

Schindler's List

365 Films

Entry #19

Schindler’s List (1993)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

For the six of you who are still reading this thing, you may have noticed that I adopt a somewhat flippant tone for these entries.  There is no rational explanation as to why that is, I can only say that I gotta write 365 of these so let me have this one little outlet for entertaining myself, please.  That philosophy is all well and good until you come upon an entry like Schindler’s List where even the very mention of the title sends a seismic tremor of chills down my spine.  The tricky thing in writing about Schindler’s List is that I saw the film when I was ten, in the late winter of 1994.  The film had just won its seven academy awards (including best director and best picture) and Spielberg had, only a year prior, tore his way into my subconscious with the mammoth Jurassic Park.  I’m not sure if this lets me off the hook but as a ten-year-old, I had no real concept of the holocaust or World War II in general.  I had a vague notion of this film being historically significant, but at the time, I was more interested in seeing the new project by the guy who made the Jeff Goldblum-fights- dinosaurs-movie.  Its success at the Oscars merely corroborated these pieces of evidence.  We had to see this film.  What’s tricky about seeing it as such a young age is that you quickly and methodically wish to banish about 90% of its images out of your mind as soon as you leave the theatre.  All the arguments in the ensuing years about the validity of cinematic representation of atrocities go right out the window.  By that point, it’s too late, you’ve been scarred and the last thing you feel like doing is re-visiting the nightmare.  Obviously, the experience of watching a film doesn’t come within a hare’s breath of what millions of real life people suffered through and still experience to this day, but I was ten and incredibly self-absorbed.   That being said, the over-whelming nature of the film and the mythic status it has obtained as an act of remembrance instead of a film with characters and a story, make it incredibly hard to judge it with concrete aesthetic assessments.  I have only seen the film three times in my entire life (at the most its been four).  Therefore I will fail in offering you any kind of contextualization or interpretation of the film in cinematic history.  The best I can do is tell you that if The Last of the Mohicans was my “welcome to the party” introduction to the world of movies for grown-ups (I can’t say Adult Films, now can I?), Schindler’s List was when the shit got real.  From this point on, there was no turning back.  I learned that while movies have the power to entertain and delight; they also have the power to induce intense bouts of sobbing followed by curling up into a fetal position on the floor.  

Jurassic Park

365 Films

Entry #18

Jurassic Park (1993)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Some movies are so vivid that you remember the exact time, place, and date on which you saw them.  Those details begin to morph with the actual film itself and intertwine as they settle into your memories.  It gets to the point where the film and your memory of the time and place in which you saw it become inexorably linked.  When you watch the film again, not only are you taken back on that journey to a magical world were Dinosaurs have been brought to life through advanced cloning techniques, but also the time in your life when you first laid eyes on that journey.  I remember specifically that we saw Jurassic Park (that would be Mom, Nate, and Tess) on its opening day, which coincidentally was the last day of school of my third grade year in June of ’93.  In fact, school might have literally just ended as we raced out the door to get to the AMC Painter’s Crossing theater as quickly as possible.  Like pretty much all children, we were fascinated by the concept of Dinosaurs wreaking havoc on a theme park designed to contain them.  I don’t think I knew exactly who Steven Spielberg was at that time.  Rather, I had no idea of the kind of event that a film of his would promise to be.  I had not seen Jaws at this point, or Close Encounters.  I’m sure I had seen E.T. but I was far too young to register who directed it or what that meant exactly.  I think the only Spielberg film I was aware of at this point was Hook, and we all know how that turned out.  As a result, I went into Jurassic Park colder than any other Spielberg I’ve seen since.  I had no idea what to expect.  I suppose it’s moot at this point to say that the film went over like gangbusters.  It was a watershed moment for special effects, summer movies, dinosaurs, and even Jeff Goldblum.  He would go on to an incredibly lucrative second career playing the anxious and neurotic scientist in a boatload of other disaster movies.  Jurassic Park was an amazing movie-going experience for me as a nine-year-old.  I remember jumping out of my seat when the raptor bursts into frame after Sadler proudly boasts about turning on the power.  That being said, as awe-inspiring and exhilarating as it is, Jurassic Park has not aged as well as my personal favorite Spielberg films.  I don’t think it comes anywhere near Jaws in terms of a theme park ride movie, as just one example.  The Indianapolis speech in that film alone, is more gut wrenching and compellingly human than anything in Jurassic Park.  Nor does it come anywhere near his post-Saving Private Ryan oeuvre (that’s right, I used the word).  The point is: he’s made plenty more entirely satisfying movies than Jurassic Park.  But very few struck such a vivid chord as this one.  

Passenger 57

365 Films

Entry #17

Passenger 57 (1992)

Directed by: Kevin Hooks

I suppose I have some ‘splainin’ to do about this particular entry.  No, this won’t be one of those ironic appraisals of a previously-thought-to-be garbage title.  I’m not going to try and convince you that Passenger 57 is really a sub-textual journey into the paralysis of grief and how that somehow parallels with the corporatizing of private security in the airline industry.  I merely offer Passenger 57 as my gateway drug into the many pleasures that the action movie had to offer.  It also introduced me to someone who is, in my humble opinion, the greatest action movie star of the 20^th and subsequently 21^st century. I’m talking about Tom Sizemore of course, oh wait, I mean Wesley Snipes.  I always get those two mixed up.  Getting back to the point, Passenger 57 is the film that introduced the world to Wesley Snipes: action star!  After making a big splash with a series of sports comedies followed by a trio of dramas, two of which were directed by Spike Lee, Snipes became a household name with Passenger 57.  In what barely passes for a warmed-over Die Hard rip-off, Snipes plays John Cutter, an airline security expert who finds himself on a passenger plane held hostage by terrorist Charles Rane and his all-star team of international freelance terrorists. Cutter teams up with a plucky female flight attendant named Marti to end the “Rane of Terror” on board.  That’s about it.  There’s a diversion to a county fair just so the entire action of the movie doesn’t take place on a plane, and everything turns out exactly as you hope it would.  It’s literally Under Siege on a plane, that’s how far removed we are from even a Die Hard knock-off.  I shouldn’t slag on the movie too much.  It provided me with thrills a-plenty when I first encountered it.  Plus, it introduced me to my first movie star obsession in Mr. Snipes.  I followed his career with great interest through the years and while his subsequent legal troubles have robbed us of his cinematic presence, Passenger 57 is a sufficient reminder of just how valuable he was to action movies.  He is (in my opinion) the best actor of all the late-80’s/early-90’s action stars and he had the most charisma of the bunch by far.  It’s no wonder they’ve been desperately trying to get him to do an Expendables movie.  Snipes’ performance in Passenger 57 has certain stillness to it (I know, I know, shut up) and while most action stars of that era amped up their machismo, what appealed to me about Snipes was his discipline. He wasn’t an improviser like Willis, or a brick shit house like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, or Van-Damme.  Snipes is a thinking man’s action hero who strategizes the next move instead of impulsively impaling people with steam pipes   And he knows karate! I miss him every day.

    

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

365 Films

Entry #16

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)

Directed by Chris Columbus

I need to tread very delicately over this next entry because I have come very close to losing a lot of friendships over my opinions on this film and the one that preceded it.  On second thought, forget it, I fucking hate Home Alone and Home Alone 2.  Admittedly I said that just to see if I still had your attention, so I wouldn’t say that statement signifies the entirety of complicated emotions that these films inspire.  That is the reason why I am including this film (and I guess, by association the first one) on my 365 list; I wish to point out what happens when a film doesn’t grow up with you.  Don’t get me wrong; I loved Home Alone just as much as the next kid in 1990.  The child-hood fantasy of getting the house all to yourself, coupled with the kid-power-friendly annihilation of two nefarious burglars (all with home-made booby traps no less) was completely irresistible to me.   Next up was Home Alone 2 and the filmmakers pulled off quite a clever ruse in delivering the exact same movie dressed up like the city of New York.  They even have the resourceful Kevin McAllister find an apartment in the middle of renovation just to spring more booby-traps on the (apparently) amnesiac, (definitely) moronic criminals.  Then I spent another ten to fifteen years watching and re-watching the movies on video and something clicked along the way.  The “Old Man Marley” subplot always bugged me in Home Alone.  I never understood why it was necessary.  Is it to prove that you shouldn’t judge people, no matter how scary they look, or what rumors you’ve heard about them? That’s all well and good, except for the fact that it rings totally false when you consider the movie spends the last thirty minutes pummeling two hapless, small-time burglars into a near death stupor.  Shouldn’t Kevin have instead welcomed Harry and Marv into his house with open arms and seek conference with them on why they have chosen a life of crime? The same thing happens in Home Alone 2 when Kevin meets the Bird Lady of central park.  Only this time it’s somehow even more offensive.  A good portion of the narrative is dedicated to Kevin learning about her life, about the pain she experienced because of certain choices she made.  The filmmakers are asking us (again) to look past the surface and see the true nature of people.  Why then, at the rousing finale of the film, does Kevin merely wave to her from his penthouse at the plaza hotel? Shouldn’t the Christmas spirit have compelled him to, I don’t know, fucking invite her upstairs instead of banishing her to the bitter cold of Central Park?  This is a long-winded way of saying that these movies are complete and utter horseshit.  They want to pluck our heart-strings by a mother and son reuniting while laughing uproariously at two men getting shot, stabbed, set on fire, crushed from above, and left for dead by a sadistic ten-year-old.  Then again, the movie made 800 billion dollars so what the hell do I know.  And to be perfectly honest, I watch the fucking thing every time it’s on TV at Christmas.  Don’t listen to me.  Gremlins 2 still kicks its ass as far as childhood memories of New York on film go.  We all have those, right?