Timeline

Michael Crichton’s Timeline read like a movie treatment.  I didn’t mind.  Crichton, after all, had no qualms about his status as a mainstream writer.  He crafted marketable thrillers, which is no mean feat.  He also managed to work the fruits of his research into them, using a vehicle like Timeline to give the reader a crash course in medievalism.

The filmed version of Timeline eschews all that medievalist nonsense, other than to use it as a pretense to move from one action bit to another.  It’s aided in this by able performers Paul Walker (who earned my goodwill through the underappreciated RUNNING SCARED), Gerard Butler, David Thewlis, and Neal McDonough; as well as a Brian Tyler score that tells us exactly what to feel and when to feel it.  But action without context has no meaning.  TIMELINE the film fails to create the context that will make the audience care who’s killing whom and why.

See, here’s the deal: a team of medievalist archeologists travels back in time to France in the 1350s.  An English force menaces the village and keep of Castlegard, and the film’s intrepid heroes join forces with the Frenchmen to save the day for, uh, French stuff.  But so what?  What’s so bad about the English, anyway?  I mean, I like Newcastle Brown Ale.  Add that the English lord prosecuting this particular attack is genre favorite Michael Sheen, while the French leaders are no-names, and I’m thinking, ‘Blimey, let’s save these Frogs from eating snails and turn ‘em on to the glories of shepherd’s pie.’

Which, of course, leads us to the problem with taking sides in any feudal-era battle.  As a member of the peasant class, what do I care which nobleman is oppressing me?  Whether it’s a Valois or a Plantagenet stealing the fruits of my labor, I get ripped off either way.

Whoah, settle down, Trotsky.  This isn’t about to become an explication of dialectic materialism’s application to the medieval era.  I’m just sayin’.

Back to the movie.  TIMELINE gives me perfectly acceptable heroes, but it gives me no reason to root for them, to believe in their cause.  Neither does it teach me anything about the medieval era in general or the Hundred Years’ War in particular.  In other words, it fails to achieve any reason for existing.  Give this one a pass.

Groundhog Day

GROUNDHOG DAY is a perfect movie.

You can watch it with the sound off and it works just as well. You can watch it while distracted and it works just as well. You can put the kids to bed, dim the lights and kick on the surround, and it works just as well. It’s seamless.

Plenty of movies are seamless, of course. GROUNDHOG DAY stands apart because, in addition to being seamless and funny and quotable and all that, it’s a near-perfect depiction of samsara.

Hey, wait a minute! Somebody else already wrote what I was going to write, but better! Here’s the relevant passage from a piece on Bill Murray in The Onion AV Club:

… “samsara”—the endless cycle of birth and rebirth that can only be escaped when one achieves total enlightenment. In the film, Murray’s sarcastic, self-serving weatherman is forced to repeat a single day out of his life until he comes to terms with the Four Noble Truths: 1) Life is suffering (but that doesn’t mean you have to add to it by being a jerk). 2) The origin of suffering is attachment to desire (so don’t spend your days robbing banks, stuffing your face with danishes, and trying to bamboozle your way into Andie MacDowell’s pants). 3) There is a way out (by dedicating your time to bettering yourself), and 4) it involves following the “eightfold path,” which means revoking self-indulgence and becoming a “bodhisattva”—someone who acquires skills and uses them in the selfless service of others (like changing an old lady’s tire, saving kids who fall out of trees, and performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim). As a result of Murray’s generous acts, he receives the love of the whole town—a oneness with the universe—and is allowed to evolve past the cycle of samsara to nirvana.

That is all.

Pandora's Box

Some women are trouble.  You can tell just by looking at them.  Louise Brooks is trouble.

In PANDORA’S BOX, Brooks plays Lulu, a woman who begins on top of the world.  She has a lovely apartment, a great wardrobe, and a sure-fire way to keep the meter reader happy and reporting her consumption as something very close to zero.  I wouldn’t call her a slattern, or even a hooker, really.  Rather, she reminds me of a girl with whom I once had the following conversation:

“You sleep with pretty much everyone.  Why?”

“When guys are having sex, they’re happy.  Me – I like to see people happy.”

(NB: This girl went on to develop into an exurban, Volvo-driving soccer mom.  Thanks for the update, Facebook!)

Lulu’s all about the happy.  If it should happen to net her a high standard of living, so much the better.  Problem is, the people in her life don’t see things quite that way.  For them, sex is freighted with emotion.  Before long, those emotions start doing serious damage.

Hence, my opening comment about dangerous women.  Someone like Lulu doesn’t even need to try to be dangerous.  The simple reality of her approach to sexuality in a world that sees things so very differently makes her radioactive.  She hurts people without knowing why.  People retaliate for reasons she cannot understand.  Ultimately, even her style of basic kindness turns against her.

And Louise Brooks, whose checkered personal life must have influenced her performance, brings her to life.  She captures our imagination and breaks our hearts, keeping us in her corner right to the very end.  Lulu’s someone she makes us want to get to know, even though we know she’s nothing but trouble.

I Vitelloni

Federico Fellini’s I VITELLONI (The Guys) captures the desperation and sense of stunted ambition that comes from being stuck in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Trust me on this. I’m from a small town in the middle of nowhere.

But there’s something this film doesn’t know, and it’s something I didn’t realize until fairly recently: there’s a lot to be said for staying in, or coming back to, one’s small town. See, I got out of my town as fast as I could, making my way to the nearest metropolis I could find. In the nearly twenty-five years since, I’ve made every effort to live in or near big cities, cities alive with culture and history, cities where ideas matter, for it’s in cities where I belong. But the magic of the Internet has reintroduced me to a set of people who’ve chosen an entirely different path: the ones who stayed, or who came back.

The kids I grew up with in that small town, the kids who are now parents and grandparents, contractors and firemen and teachers (and even the editor of the local paper), share a profound sense of place, of belonging. They’ve known one another for so long that few secrets can hide among them. When you’re young and the world beckons, such a future seems stifling. Now, there’s something about it that I find very appealing (he thinks as he writes, jet-lagged, in the early morning hours. I’d probably feel the walls closing after, oh, maybe Week Two.).

I VITELLONI doesn’t know this, but perhaps it isn’t supposed to know this. It is, after all, a movie about The Guys, young men hearing the call of the great wide world but who, for one reason or another, never actually get on that train to go find it. Perhaps, in the end, they’ll be glad they didn’t.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

I doubt that I can come up with even 200 words about ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS.  The film; an innocuous, mildly amusing adventure tale for kids; looks fine, features professional performances, and generally achieves its goals.

If only it had bigger goals. 

This, the third film in the ICE AGE franchise, continues the series’ theme of family and fidelity.  It features exciting set-pieces that frightened and amused my children on cue.  I mean, it’s fine, really.  It didn’t make me look at my watch.  But there’s nothing more there.  There’s nothing to chew on, nothing to give the film resonance.  It just is what it is.

Yeah, 140 words.  That about does it.  Pony up for a rental of ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS, and you’ll get what you paid for.  I suppose that’s a fair deal.

Terror of Mechagodzilla

TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA (or GODZILLA XV, if you’re counting), starts poorly, then develops into one of the very best of the Showa series.

Wait – what? What’s the Showa series? Well, I’m glad you asked: pull up a chair! The Showa series ran from 1954-1975. It consisted of the first 15 Godzilla pictures, beginning with the genuinely scary GOJIRA and proceeding through a variety of entries ranging from the decent (MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA) to the lazy (GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN) to the ridiculous (GODZILLA VS. THE SEA MONSTER). There’s also a 7-film Heisei series, which ran from 1984-1995; and a 6-film Millenium series, which featured the second-best of all the Godzilla films: GODZILLA, MOTHRA, AND KING GHIDORAH: GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK.

Ok, back to the film at hand.

As I said, TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA starts poorly. It treats us to a full ten minutes of a droning voice over recycled footage from previous entries in the series, ostensibly to bring us up to speed on the deep and complex Godzilla history. It felt like padding to me. Then we see this film’s villains: alien invaders in costumes so silly that one surmises they’re here merely to access our textile infrastructure.

I’ll admit it: I fell asleep fifteen minutes in. Not even Inishiro Honda’s name under the director’s credit could keep me up much longer than that.

But the next day, I reattacked. And I’m glad I did. Once I got past the silly costuming, I found TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA to be a fine alien invasion yarn. It features heroic cops, mad scientists, young women torn between conflicting duties, and plenty of hot Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla action.

A note about the aforementioned action: cinematographer Sokei Tomioka TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA nails it in this one. The monsters look monstrous (yet just fake enough to not unduly frighten the little ones), the miniatures look fantastic, and the action sequences made thematic and practical sense.

This is a fun movie that delivers everything you could want from a film entitled TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA. See it with a 9-year-old boy.

Amreeka

Oh, the Immigration Story.  Is there any narrative more essential to the American Legend?  Someone hopes for a better life and comes to America.  They leave behind family, friends, careers, and ties.  The chemist becomes a cab driver.  The schoolteacher, a janitor.  The accountant, a waitress.  But they do it, and they struggle, and they face prejudice and discrimination, and they give their kids a better life. 

AMREEKA is one such story.  Nisreen Faour is Muna Farah, an Palestinian who wins the green card lottery and, along with her son, is granted entrance to the United States.  At Customs, she replies to the question “Occupation?” with, “Yes, we are occupied.”

Things do not begin well.

It’s hard to find a job or find your place in a new school in America if you’re an Arab fresh from the Levant.  People stare.  Your prior achievements don’t hold much weight.  And there’s a difference between studying a language and actually speaking its vernacular.

But Muna gives it her best shot and takes her lumps.  It isn’t easy, and AMREEKA gives us no assurances that it ever will be easy.  But, step by step, she and her son begin to get it.  And little by little, they begin to share their culture with Americans they come to know.  That’s how it works.

I hate to give the impression that AMREEKA is a Hallmark card about the Great American Melting Pot.  It’s too honest for that.  Instead, it stands as a fine retelling of the Immigration Story, one that reminds us of this crucial part of the American Experience.

Now I need to call my mother and thank her for working ‘til her fingers bled to provide my sister and me with the opportunity for a better life.  I need to thank her for coming to America.

Godzilla

Here's a review by my eldest son & Godzilla aficionado, Ian:

“GODZILLA (1998)" Is a cool movie. It has a good tune in the beginning of the movie that sounds mysterious, which  I think they were going for.  They used it when they showed the thing’s origin, & used it some more throughout the movie.

“GODZILLA (1998)” has a cool monster with a good “to be continued” ending.

ON TO THE  STORY: in “GODZILLA (1998)” Zilla is a mutated hybrid created from a nuclear  French test, & attacks fishing boats, then  rampages through New York city. Finally the navy kills it....Or so they thought…Anyway  the hero, & some French guys disguised as American soldiers go after the creature’s nest while the female hero and another dude follow them. Then they meet. Then after the baby Zillas already hatched, the main characters call the military to destroy the nest. So they send some pilots to bomb the nest in their fighter planes, which they succeed in doing. But then it turns out adult Zilla survived , so  it chases them. Then they hop into an unguarded taxi, & Zilla  goes after them. Then the military comes, & bombs Zilla. Then, for less than a second, Zilla looks the hero in the eye. They were probably trying to make you feel pitty for the gigantic dying creature. It ends with one Zilla egg that hasn’t hatched yet, & survived the bombing , hatching, makin’ way for the show GODZILLA THE SERIES.

I recommend watching this. I liked the monster .’Twas a cool monster, because it could sprint. Most giant monsters can’t do that.

The Merry Gentleman

Michael Keaton directed THE MERRY GENTLEMAN. Turns out, he’s good at it. Not only did he give his film a smooth, professional look, but he got some terrific performances out of his actors.

First among them we find Kelly MacDonald in the lead role. Before anyone utters the film’s first line of dialogue, we learn that her husband beat her, that she ran, and that she set up a new life in a new town far away. This matters as more than a reason to isolate her and give her character some texture, for her experience as both a victim of abuse and a woman with the courage to escape informs nearly every word she says, every thing she does. Watch her in this film. Watch her eyes and her body language. Watch the choices she makes and the way she makes them. Keaton the director was surely watching, and he showed the wisdom to follow her with his camera, to observe her as she thought and spoke and acted.

Next, we have Tom Bastounes, with whom I’m unfamiliar, as a detective who investigates a crime to which MacDonald has borne witness. He’s a large man, gone to seed and following a bottle on an inexorable down slope. But he has a ways to go, and his professional policeman’s demeanor hides a vulnerability that makes him all the more surprising when it’s time to play hardball.

And then there’s Keaton himself, playing the supporting role without which nothing else in the film would be possible. This is the best I’ve seen him, contained and mature, seeing everything and revealing nothing. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me that Michael Keaton could be scary. But he can, particularly when he’s trying not to be.

THE MERRY GENTLEMAN won’t change your life. It isn’t big, it isn’t flashy, it isn’t groundbreaking. But it is a carefully told story, well performed and realized. I’m impressed.

Funny People

There are two Adam Sandlers.  The first, the guy from BILLY MADISON, is vulgar and silly and childish.  The second, the guy from PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, is smart and thoughtful and sensitive.  I don’t think the BILLY MADISON guy could have existed if the PUNCH DRUNK LOVE guy hadn’t made him up.

In FUNNY PEOPLE, Sandler plays a smart and sensitive comedian who makes vulgar and childish movies.  Then he learns that he’s going to die.  Now what?  He has no friends, not really, and he’s pushed away everyone who’s ever loved him.  Maybe he can hire a guy.

Does this sound like comic material to you?  I suppose it could be, if played broadly.  But director Judd Apatow doesn’t play it broadly.  He plays it close to the bone, eliciting one of Sandler’s best performances and surprising us with the first real work of Seth Rogen, who shows us that he’s capable of handling more than straight comedy.  FUNNY PEOPLE is, indeed, a funny movie, but it’s more a human drama set in the world of professional comedy than a laugh fest.  It works.

Departures

DEPARTURES is a sad, beautiful, well-told tale. It helps to know a little about Japanese culture to enjoy it, but that knowledge isn’t absolutely required. The best stories transcend culture, and DEPARTURES is one of these.

Daigo, a cellist, has lost his job after his orchestra folded. Out of options (the market for cellists being rather saturated), he and his wife move to his hometown and the house his mother left him. Once there, Daigo finds work as an apprentice to a dresser of the dead. A dresser isn’t an undertaker. Rather, he conducts the ceremonial preparation of the body for burial, an exacting, honorable, and precise function for which his years of disciplined practice as a musician has readied him.

But life in the death business has its challenges. It’s socially unacceptable to all but those who, through the loss of a loved one, have benefitted from seeing it done well. Aspects of it are difficult and disgusting. And what musician has mortician in mind as a viable backup plan? For that matter, what musician’s wife has mortician’s wife in mind as a viable backup plan?

DEPARTURES, then, uses Daigo’s journey as an exploration of the nature of dignity, of love, of duty. The credit for its success goes, in no small part, to Masahiro Motoki, the actor who plays him. He’s very Japanese, meaning that he’s a contained man who would view the American practice of wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve with horror. But Motoki brings us into his character’s desperation, his shame, and his ultimate fulfillment with wit and honor.

This is a marvelous story, one well worth your time. I give it my unqualified recommendation.

The Hurt Locker

Guy Pearce works in explosive ordnance disposal.  He’s an E-8, a senior enlisted man, and he goes by the book.  The book’s a good thing in a combat zone like Baghdad in 2004, but there’s no guarantee it’ll keep you alive.

And so we begin with Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER, a film about combat soldiering in the modern age.  About more than just soldiering, THE HURT LOCKER is about the kind of people who soldier: those who are made for it, those who become made for it, and those who should never step outside the wire.  Made with knowledge, empathy, and skill, THE HURT LOCKER takes us into the lives of people who neutralize bombs for a living and into the hearts of people who have to rocket back and forth between the safety of their Army camp and the hostile uncertainty of urban warfare every single day.

While the movie suffers from feeling more like a series of set pieces than an organic narrative, Bigelow’s directorial style makes us feel that we’re on the ground with these people, ducking for cover with them and trying to manage our emotions with them.  And when (some of them) come home, we feel their confusion with civilian life and understand their need to return to the place they’d so desperately wished to escape.

While I’ve never wanted to be in the Army and I’ve never wanted to play with bombs, THE HURT LOCKER put me in the shoes of those who are and do.  It made me see through their eyes for a time, and I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor.

District 9

Hey, who’s this Sharlto Copley guy?

The actor gives perhaps the best performance of the year as Wikus Van De Merwe, a mid-level office functionary for the lazily named Multi-National United, or MNU. MNU has successfully contracted for authority to run District 9, the refugee camp for the disgusting aliens of the eponymous film, and it has gained the authority to relocate the squalid camp and its inhabitants to a location far away. It falls to the none-too-bright Van De Merwe to manage the program. He’s in over his head.

Let’s back up a minute. The aliens arrived around 1985, hungry and exhausted, when their ship came to a stop in the skies above Johannesburg. They looked horrible, smelled bad, and were both stupid and destructive – it was like having a giant frat house dropped right into the middle of your neighborhood. These beings were not going to integrate into human society, so there was just one thing for them: refugee status. But their foul refugee camp has been stinking up Johannesburg for far too long – it’s time to move them to the desert.

So now we’re back to Van De Merwe, the putz. He’s a jovial guy, happily torching Prawn (as the aliens are called) breeding grounds and kicking down doors, completely unaware of the monstrosity of his actions. Then something goes wrong, and Van De Merwe starts to see the other side of the coin.

That’s when Sharlto Copley begins to shine. We see his character break down, and Copley takes us through every step of the process. We believe his fear, his outrage, his crippling inability to process what’s happening as his world turns inside out. This guy shows us a breathtaking range of emotions and reactions, and never for one minute did I doubt that I was on a journey with a real human being.

The film overall? Oh, yeah, it’s terrific. It does what the best science fiction’s supposed to do: take an ambitious concept and use it to comment on an aspect of contemporary society in a fresh and possibly jarring way. It looks great, sounds great, and seamlessly weaves CGI and practical to create an immersive and believable world.

So see DISTRICT 9 if you like science fiction. See it if you like social commentary. Most of all, see it to enjoy a powerhouse performance from one Sharlto Copley. I can’t wait to see what this guy does next.

Airport '79

AIRPORT '79 is crap.

They couldn’t figure out what kind of airplane disaster movie they wanted to make, so they basically made two airplane disaster movies linked by a story out of a spy thriller.  The first one was “concorde must outmaneuver military aircraft to survive,” and the second was “concorde must crash land in the Alps.”  And they didn’t even think to include any cannibalism in that second one.

George Kennedy’s Mr. Patroni, the ace mechanic from the first film, airline exec from the second, and stander around from the third, is now a salty pilot with thousands of hours in every airplane ever made.  He shares the cockpit with Alain Delon, master of the poker face, and David Warner, who had much more fun in TRON.  A variety of B-listers, each with their own little story, ride in the back.  There’s much screaming and throwing about of paper, but little actual excitement.

In fact, I just didn’t care about anything that happened onscreen during AIRPORT ’79.  When it comes to this franchise, go for the first and third installments.  Numbers two and four aren’t worth your time.

Cries and Whispers

CRIES AND WHISPERS horrifies me.

Set in a home dominated by hellish reds of fire and blood, CRIES AND WHISPERS brings us into the lives of three sisters and a maid. One of the sisters, who may love the maid, lies on her deathbed. The other two have come to join the deathwatch, but they lack the compassion or the empathy or the basic human kindness to do more than go through the motions.

Much of creator Ingmar Bergman’s work deals with the existential horror of life without faith. In a post-faith world, to what bulwark can we cling? The four women of CRIES AND WHISPERS walk different paths, two destructive and two constructive. One chooses bitterness and despair. Another embodies narcissism. A third, kindness. And the last, perhaps the luckiest, never joined the antichristian revolt of Europe’s learned class.

We learn that kindness presents the only alternative to the post-faith world’s existential crisis. The cries of despair and the whispers of hate carry so much power that only faith and kindness, or perhaps simply kindness, can provide shelter. They can’t stop the selfish from acting selfishly, the cruel from behaving cruelly. But perhaps they can give some peace when the time comes to lay one’s head on one’s pillow.

But this is not a film in which everyone learns a handy lesson. The world of CRIES AND WHISPERS horrifies because it has us bear witness to the alternatives to kindness. It dramatizes the power of unkindness and the toll it demands upon those who exercise it and those upon whom it is exercised. And it leads to damnation, for one needn’t wait for death to be damned. We can bring it on ourselves and experience it today, tomorrow, and ‘til the day we die. CRIES AND WHISPERS shows us a great deal of horror in the days of its narrative, but it greatest horror lies in the knowledge that these people will go on living as they do to the end of their days.

Airport '77

The creators of AIRPORT ’77 must have realized what a failure AIRPORT ’75 had been, so they went in a different direction.  Instead of making an airborne disaster movie that tried to recreate how the various part of the Air Safety System work together in a crisis, they made a submarine rescue movie.

You read that right: a submarine rescue movie entitled AIRPORT ’77.  They put the airplane about forty feet underwater, see.  Once it’s there, engineers can look at the bulkheads and exclaim how they’ll buckle under just a little more pressure.  Crewmen can listen for the sounds of ships passing overhead.  A guy can volunteer for a deadly mission that may save the ship but will almost certainly drown him.  You know – submarine movie stuff.

Surprisingly, it works.  Jack Lemmon makes the transition from 747 pilot to submarine commander, as the situation requires, quite admirably.  Christopher Lee, as the volunteer, reminds us why we love him even though he was in the Prequels.  And Darren McGavin makes one hell of an engineer.

I’m not in the submarine rescue business, but I appreciated how the film depicted the use of Navy and Coast Guard search and rescue assets with (what I perceived as) remarkable accuracy.  Rescue swimmers did things like letting the sling touch the water before reaching for the cable.  Divers dressed and acted like divers.  Heck, there was even plenty of egregious hot helo action, to boot.

After AIRPORT ’75, I was ready for the worst.  ’77, however, redeems the franchise.  I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I actually look forward to AIRPORT ’79.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

What a sad, pitiless, heartbreaking film.

Warren Beatty is McCabe, an entrepreneur who comes to a Cascade mining town and sets up shop running the world’s second-oldest business. Julie Christie is Mrs. Miller, a lifetime whore and a natural businesswoman. Together, they make a go of things. That is, until real businessmen come to town.

Robert Altman directed this film, giving it a textured, living feel of conversations half-heard, buildings half-completed, and people with lives of their own. The great Leonard Cohen provided the music, a folk-influenced group of songs that speak of loss and longing and the sad, sad hope for a better day.

I admit that I never really got Warren Beatty before this picture. He’s funny in HEAVEN CAN WAIT, but even there Jack McCorkle outclasses him. In MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, Beatty incandesces with hope and hustle and an innocently amoral belief in the sanctity of business and the assurances of older, supposedly wiser men. I believed in his character from the moment I saw him, and felt for his character on every step of his seemingly inexorable journey.

Julie Christie, however, I got the first time I saw her in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. She’s smart, tough, and vulnerable, all at once. I believed in her past and her present, and I felt for her, as well.

Many other characters live in the world of this film, and Altman is the kind of director who gives them lives beyond the edges of the frame. Perhaps this is the film’s greatest accomplishment: I never felt that I was watching actors come on, hit their marks, and say their lines. I felt that I was something of a recording angel, swirling around and about these real people as they made their decisions and tried to find their respective places. This may be the film’s greatest accomplishment: the creation of an entire world in a snowy mountain town, and the conjuration of spirits to live in them.

Airport '75

AIRPORT got my hopes up.  The film was technically accurate (within reason), well plotted, and an all-around good time at the movies.  AIRPORT ‘75, unfortunately, does not live up to the standards of its predecessor.

Yes, the film has its share of big stars, including Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson, and Larry Storch.  Yes, George Kennedy is back to play The George Kennedy Role.  And, yes, there’s another plane in peril.  But AIRPORT ’75 isn’t technically accurate, tightly plotted, or even all that much fun.

Let’s start with the technical inaccuracies.  Where AIRPORT’s Air Traffic Control calls sounded realistic to my professional ear, AIRPORT ‘75’s sounded like they were written by a guy whose only exposure to them came from watching AIRPORT.  The airplane itself did not respond in a manner consistent with the damage it was supposed to have taken at the end of the first act.  And the relationships between the corporate, governmental, and military stakeholders in the aviation system had no relation to reality whatsoever.  Part of the fun of AIRPORT was the sense it gave us that, in the event of a situation such as the one depicted in the film, this was how events could generally be expected to play out.  AIRPORT ’75 can’t provide that because it doesn’t even try to stay grounded in reality.

As I wrote, ’75 isn’t tightly plotted.  There are entire subplots about faulty engines and fuel leaks that go precisely nowhere.  There’s a long bit about sick girl that’s resolved so sloppily that it’s clear the screenwriters forgot all about her until the last minute.  And the film makes it difficult to invest in the plucky flight attendant who saves the day by painting her as mouth-breathing moron.

But at least AIRPORT ’75 can offer tedium.  It gives us pointless celebrity cameos, characters that do nothing, and a secondary female lead whose only function is to stand around and appeal to the subsection of the male demographic that isn’t attracted to the first female lead.  This is a bad movie and an unworthy successor to AIRPORT.  How I dread AIRPORT ’77.

Sudden Fear

The creepiest moment in SUDDEN FEAR occurs in the first five minutes. An actor onstage recites the lines, “You are all the women in my life. You are the sister I never had, the mother I’ve almost forgotten, the wife I have always dreamed of. There isn’t a relationship you can name which exists between a man and a woman in which I wouldn’t say, ’Let it be you.’” Jack Palance plays the actor. Joan Crawford plays the writer of those cringe-inducing words.

Ms. Crawford goes on to fire Mr. Palance in short order, and it’s in the first act of SUDDEN FEAR that she shines. She plays a driven, hard-bitten woman who knows what she wants and knows how to get it, and I bought her in the role. When she and Palance meet again, I settled in for a battle of titans. Alas, I didn’t get one, for Palance blows Crawford off the screen for the rest of the picture. Palance charms Crawford, you see, and Joan Crawford simply does not do “charmed.” While I believed in Palance’s actions and motives, the only thing I believed about Crawford was that she spent too much time at the makeup counter.

Fortunately, there’s more to SUDDEN FEAR than Joan Crawford. The story is first-class noir; Elmer Bernstein’s score is first rate; and the photography, well, the photography shows us yet again that black and white can suggest silky depths of which color can only dream.

So perhaps the female lead will put you off. But pay no mind, for Jack Palance makes up for it. SUDDEN FEAR may not hold a spot among the elite of the noirs, but it remains a solid entry all the same. It’s just the thing for a long trip.

Airport

Sooner or later, I had to get around to watching AIRPORT. Technically accurate (w/in the limits of the dramatic imperative), well cast, and remarkably engaging, this turned out to be a pretty doggone good movie.

Burt Lancaster plays an airport manager having the worst day of his life. A blizzard is making conditions at his airport the worst they’ve been in ten years. Some bonehead pilot has taxied off the primary runway and into a snowdrift. His wife’s mad at him. His boss is on his butt. And now his jerkwad brother in law, a no-good airline pilot (and really, is there any other kind?) just declared an emergency because some moron blew a hole in the side of his plane. Someone picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

This is a well-made picture. The folks behind it did their research, because they nailed many of the technical details. Air Traffic Control calls sound like Air Traffic Control calls. Cockpit banter sounds like cockpit banter. Things function and people work together in a manner that generally mirrors my experience in the airline industry. That surprised me, and it helped me stay in the moment for the duration of the film.

Further, AIRPORT is exceptionally well cast. I don’t know whether this was the first all-star disaster movie, but you certainly can’t go wrong with performers like the aforementioned Mr. Lancaster, Dean Martin as the no-good pilot, George Kennedy in what would come to be known as “The George Kennedy Role,” and even Helen Hayes as the little old felonious lady.

Finally, the film moves right along, making two hours and sixteen minutes fly right by. Knowing that we know it’s going to be a disaster movie, AIRPORT takes its time setting up the crisis. We get to know the featured players. We come to care about them. When the hits start coming, we’ve locked in. I bit my nails nearly to the end credits.

While I never watch films I don’t think I’ll enjoy, I fired up AIRPORT half-expecting a campy, ridiculous pantomime of a film. I’m pleasantly surprised, and I look forward to AIRPORT 75.