Month: May 2024

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

By Marc S. Sanders

George Miller has never gone deep with his Mad Max movies.  The director treasures the inventions of his auto chases and the tricked out diesel junk contraptions that participate in high speed pursuits through his apocalyptic desert wasteland.  The more outrageous the vehicles and the crazier the stunts are, the more fulfilled Miller appears to be with his filmmaking.  However, the fifth film within this gonzo world of barbaric S & M dressed drivers invites us to explore the past of a surprisingly treasured character,  introduced in the prior film.  Her name is Furiosa and this time we see what she experienced as a young child (Alyla Browne), followed by what she learns as a young adult (Anya Taylor- Joy).  This fifth film in the franchise serves as a prequel to the last film, Mad Max: Fury Road.

As a pre-teen, Furiosa is abducted by the bandits who serve under the pompous and proud Dr. Dementis (Chris Hemsworth, playing his Thor role as if the Marvel character was a celebratory villain). A thrilling prologue covers this sequence of events with rescue efforts from the would-be heroine’s mother to save Furiosa and bring her back to their secret home of green vegetation located beyond the desert plains.  There are heart stopping motorcycle chases with the warrior mother bearing a sniper rifle and fighting with her last breath through the whole sequence.  Charlee Fraser portrays the title character’s mother. Thanks to her performance, she had me convinced me that the rescue will deem successful, accompanied by Miller’s reliable direction.  An absolutely thrilling opening.

Dementis rides his esteemed tri-motorcycle chariot steed, inspired by the sword and sandal adventures of Ben Hur and Gladiator.  A hilarious over the top vehicle to see Chris Hemsworth piloting.  His biker gang is in tow along with young Furiosa as they journey to the Citadel, first seen in Fury Road.  Dementis puts his conceit against that of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hume) the skeleton masked ruler of The Citadel for a chance at…what else?  Conquest and power.

Furiosa grows up a few years and gets mentored by a trucker named Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke).  I still love these character names by the way.  The truck chase is the highlight of the picture, with paragliding motorcycle riders swooping in like large attack birds trying to sabotage the weaponized rig full of delightful surprises that’ll make you shout “OH!!!” in the middle of the theater.  It is sequences like this that audiences adore in the Mad Max pictures. 

Unlike the other films though, Furiosa gets a little lethargic during the story set ups which are angles that never anchored the other better installments, The Road Warrior and Fury Road.  Reintroducing the Immortan Joe character is not as interesting this time and this desert picture gets a little too waterlogged when he enters the story.  He just doesn’t feel very necessary.  The two younger Furiosas and the self absorbed Dementis are plenty with just enough story opportunities to make a solid movie.  Retreading on other characters slow this fifth installment down a bit.

The whole cast looks great.  Anya Taylor-Joy is the best bad ass version of a younger Charlize Theron, who originated the role.  She hardly has any lines but her expressions on camera beneath the war paint, grease, dirt and long hair extensions look awesome.  Though the lead actress is hilariously dwarfed by Hemsworth’s Dementis, they make for a great dichotomy of hero vs villain.  She’s the quiet reserved David.  He’s the proud Goliath.  This is a dream casting pair.

Practical stunts are done once again and George Miller does impressive work with his camera.  His tactics for filming action scenes demonstrate why a Michael Bay normally fails.  Nothing is a quick take edit.  You watch these motorcycle riders and Furiosa hold onto to the bottom of the speeding truck and Miller will circle the camera, with no cuts in the take, so we see what is happening next to both sides of her profile.  The camera will then swoop up to see who’s running and holding on to the top of rig or who is parasailing from a great height while tethered to some kind of buggy vehicle below.  Amazing work.

However, seeing Furiosa on a large Dolby screen, it’s not hard to see a computer enhanced finish applied to the photography.  It’s very glossy and nowhere is it grainy like the very early Mad Max films from over forty years ago.  Yet, as dirty as these vehicles and characters are, the cleanliness of the cinematography sometimes does not clash well with what’s on the screen.  It’s a little distracting honestly and that was a surprise to me considering how perfect Fury Road looks on my 65-inch flat screen at home.  This one looks a little too perfect.  This might be that film where less may have been more.  

The background story work on Furiosa is not a terrible grievance.  The final print of the picture is acceptable.  All of it is definitely worth watching and I hope box office picks up following a sluggish opening weekend because I encourage anyone to see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on a big screen first.  I just think George Miller and company may have leaped much further than necessary this time around.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

By Marc S. Sanders

After watching Mad Max: Fury Road, you will feel like you need a shower.  Strike that, you will need a shower in aloe first, then a traditional shower and then a weeklong bath in aloe.  It’s a baked in environment that gives you the feel of grainy sands and burning sunbeams.

George Miller’s return to the gonzo, apocalyptic diesel future franchise is exciting from the moment the Warner Bros logo appears with the vroom vroom blaring through your sound system’s speakers.  Miller hardly surrenders the breakneck speed of his two-hour picture to let an audience catch a breath, and because the director is so unforgiving it makes this a tour de force of action entertainment that other adventure films can only strive to at least match.  Still, the movie has next to no story, and that’s fine.

Up until this 2015 reinvention, Mel Gibson was the Aussie Road Warrior donned in leather fighting to survive against lawless bandits coming from any direction in the sand swept plains of an earth afterlife.  Now Tom Hardy takes over the role.  Frankly, it could have been anyone who got recast in the part.  Hardy has few lines and for half the film his face is caged in a grotesque, steel bar mask while he is strapped to the front of a hot rod, gear grinding, amalgamation of a vehicle, simply to be a kind of three-dimensional hood ornament.  This Max is suffering through high-speed chases with his head trapped in animalistic headgear and his arms and legs bound behind his back while he’s tethered to this four-wheeler.  It’s brutal and we can feel how tortuous it is for Hardy’s character.  Yet, we love it!!!!  Keep it going, George!

The real star of Fury Road is Charlize Theron as a one arm rebel caked in black grease with a shaven head.  Her name? Imperatour Furiosa.  What a name!!!!!  Furiosa attaches a steering wheel to the driving hilt of an 18 – no 20, maybe 24-wheeler (it could even be 36) big rig with a big ball of fuel hitched to the back. She detours away from a band of outlaw drivers ruled over by Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Burn).  Yes!  His name is Immortan Joe. 

In tow with Furiosa are Joe’s pregnant concubines whose fetuses are declared his property.  These lovely lasses dressed only in bed sheets have names like Capable, Cheedo The Fragile, The Dag, Toast The Knowing and The Splendid Angharad (Riley Keogh, Courtney Eaton, Abby Lee, Zoë Kravitz and Rosie Huntington-Whitley).  What is the point of listing off these ladies’ identities? Well, the script for the film doesn’t do so. Yet, the end credits do in a heavy metal kind of font, and it is clear that George Miller is proud of every name, every piece of junk that flies through the air in one crash and bash after another, and every flame that exhausts out of a pipe or even a death metal rock guitar orchestrated by a guy simply known as The Doof Warrior (played by a musician named Iota).  Incidentally, The Doof Warrior is garbed in red long johns and tethered by chains to a big rig with the biggest, blastiest speakers known to man.  The Doof Warrior serves no purpose except to scratch on the guitar while flames shoot out of the stem.  I’m laughing as I type this all out.  This whole display is thankfully ridiculous while all of these figures have the most outlandish and greatest names of all time!!!!

When Furiosa diverts away in the mighty big rig with the pregnant women, Joe follows suit with his endless band of albino crazies in one tricked out vehicle after another.  One car has the chassis of a Mercedes wedged on to the fattest wheels ever conceived.  Another is a Chrysler (I think) resting atop a pair armored tank tracks.  Joe’s automobile looks like it got disqualified from a monster truck rally because it was caught taking diesel steroids. 

Anyway, Mad Max eventually catches up with Furiosa and the ladies.  His last name is not something simple like Jones, Smith, Sanders or Rodriguez.  It’s ROCKATANSKY!!!!!  BOOM! That is awesome!!! A one-time underling of Joe’s, named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), eventually sways over to the heroes’ side as well, and the pursuit carries on.  Furiosa’s destination is a location of green, beyond the desert wasteland.

It’s a wonder that Mad Max: Fury Road was applauded so much in 2015.  However, take a moment to consider the construction of this two-hour operatic noise fest and you cannot help but salute all the merits that went into the final product.  First the nominated visual effects are primarily practical with little to no CGI.  If George Miller is going to make another Mad Max film, he’s going all the way.  The cinematography is gorgeous in a tan, orange, and yellow sun burning desert, while the night scenes are unhidden due to a pure, bright blue.  The interior of the truck seems cramped and uncomfortable, and yet Miller leaves enough room for the viewer to sit inside and uncover every hidden firearm plus get up close with the driver and the lady passengers.  There’s even a cool weapon found in the stick shift.  Wait until you see that!  The editing is relentless with perfectly captured close ups of so many character drivers and passengers all in a matter of seconds.  Plus, wide overhead shots and extended ground captions make it easy to understand just how many vehicles are included in this endless demolition derby.  I’m talking hundreds of monster machines ready for weaponized destructions. The choreographed action scenes of gun shots firing and vehicular collisions is like a ballet of a perfect derby show.  Monster razor blades are given their due, along with an assortment flame throwers. Also, kamikaze suicidal albinos are ready to act like destructive grenades.  Not one scene or shot in a Transformers CGI picture of metal vomit comes close to a millisecond of George Miller’s craft.

No other film could be as deserving of Academy Awards for sound, cinematography and editing as well as nominations for Best Picture and Best Director.  Even the warped-out S&M costume designs and make up are eye popping; merits that also earned Oscars.  You might have a fondness for art house cinema like Fellini or perhaps a Daniel Day-Lewis piece that invests in the method of caliber acting performances, but you cannot deny the artistic efforts vested by George Miller, his editor wife Margaret Sixel, and the rest of the crew. Mad Max: Fury Road was placed on so many top ten lists in the year 2015, and its because the film succeeds in the best of technical achievements. 

George Miller operates like that nasty kid named Sid from the Toy Story pictures.  He assembles his set pieces in the most tricked out, ugly and grotesque combinations of auto body parts, gives them engines that breathe fire and roar like vicious beasts that smell like diesel and then collides them altogether in a wide open plain.  Try to imagine Miller as a young child with his Matchbox cars on his bedroom floor.  His parents might have had some concern while observing his play activity.  What’s appreciated though is that this director never settled for simple with his Mad Max films and he never repeated what he’s already demonstrated.  No car crash looks the same.  No single shot is  repetitive.  This is how a director of any film genre should operate.  When they take attentive care to every frame they capture with their camera, then they get a Mad Max: Fury Road. 

One of the best films of the twenty-first century!

NOTE: I originally saw this film in 3-D in the theaters.  Wanna know my sentiments towards 3-D? Well, I hated this film after I saw it.  I gave up five minutes into the piece because the 3-D was unforgiving in distraction and dark beyond comprehension and measure.  Watching Mad Max: Fury Road again, a number of years later in a standard 4K on my 65-inch flat screen, you can likely tell by my write up that my sentiments have drastically changed for the picture.  It’s also telling to note that the new prequel film Furiosa is not being presented in 3-D.  Unless it is a James Cameron film or a special exception like Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, modern 3-D is as big a failure as the new formula Coke was back in the 1980s. 

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

By Marc S. Sanders

The revival of the Planet Of The Apes films within the last decade and a half remain impressive.  Moreover, the first film, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, led to a global epidemic that wiped out most of humanity, well before we ever heard the term COVID, or used the word pandemic in our everyday vernacular.  That first film was guided by James Franco with fast food science summarization, but it was a thrilling film in context of storytelling and most especially in the visual effects delivered by WETA (who worked on Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films) convincing audiences that apes inherited a superior intelligence to overthrow the dominant human species.  A chimp character named Caesar led the rebellion and he was masterfully played by Andy Serkis.  Caesar did for the retelling of Planet Of The Apes what Wolverine did for X-Men.

In this 2024 fourth installment titled Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes, Caesar has now passed away and this universe jumps many generations into the future.  The new ape hero is Noa played by Tampa native Owen Teague.  The mannerisms of Noa are just as convincing as what we saw in Caesar, even if the character is not written with as much nuance or magnetic care that we found in Serkis’ performance over the prior three films.

In this film, practically all of humanity is wiped out.  This ape population, Earth location unknown, has formed a bond with the bird community and Noa and friends find adventure while retrieving eggs from high birds’ nests to be used for a symbolic ceremony within their village.  

However, just as real-life human history teaches us, other ape factions adopt man’s nature to control and conquer.  Noa finds himself on a horseback sojourn to rescue his village members who were harshly taken from camp.  Along the way he meets wizened orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) who apprises Noa of the legend of Caesar.  Curiously, a mute teen girl (Freya Allen) is found as well.  They engage in a united trek that will test them as encounters with danger present themselves.  In particular, they come upon the sadistic tribe overruled by the mighty gorilla Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand).

All of these ape portrayals are marvelous to observe.  The expressions and change in facial features plus the flex of limbs and torsos with involuntary motion are unbelievable to see as the characters deliver their dialogue and converse or debate with one another.  The hand-to-hand combat interactions are perfectly enacted. You remain impressed through the course of the entire film, even if the picture is unnecessarily longer than it needs to be.

Kingdom moves episodically through Noa’s eyes.  The movie begins with one story.  Then as additional characters are introduced it moves on to something else until it gets to a mildly sinister (PG fare, really) telling of Proximus forcing his chimp followers to heed his command by opening a large steel vault door of a beached ocean cruiser from the long-lost days of human occupation.  What’s in the vault?  Well, I was never expecting much, but Proximus believes the contents to be revolutionary. By commanding under a misleading guise of what the original Caesar stood for, he’s a vicious figurehead to the apes he holds hostage.

The interesting aspect to Kingdom is by this fourth film we know who the real Caesar was.  Though, Noa was never educated on the messianic purpose of that leader.  So, we find Proximus to be a deceitful evangelist to his underlings. While it’s not a major requirement to know what occurred in the prior films, it helps to know what Caesar stood for versus how he is regarded in this further future.  Ministers deceive biblical teachings and the figures within the holy text to capture their congregations’ impressions.  Proximus functions in a similar way.

The prior films kept a divide between the apes and the few human survivors as a means to set up conflicts.  With Kingdom, we witness beyond what Caesar oversaw generations later, and how divisions within the ape species serve only to live quietly or govern with a domineering crown and the symbol of a legend to deliver an updated mantra.

Socially speaking, like the best Ape films and going back to the French novel adaptation from Pierre Boule (known for also writing The Bridge On The River Kwai), these stories work when they explore new aspects of intelligent developments within the ape communities.  Some function with selfishness and a need for power.  Others lean towards love, friendship and a moral compass.  Blend these ideals together and in turn comes conflict – the nucleus of effective storytelling.

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is perhaps the weakest of the four most recent films.  The film is too long with unnecessary exposition.  Noa is not the hero that Caesar was. Though some turn up, humans are primarily absent from the whole film, and they are still the best opponents against the ape communities.  

The cliffhanging ending keeps me excited for more subsequent tales because I’ve not grown tired of this franchise yet.  These films are more dazzling than James Cameron’s two Avatar films combined.  

I must confess I was hoping this movie would address some hanging threads that stem all the way back to Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.  Still those topics have regrettably not been addressed and I hope those moments were not just some random wink ‘n nod.  Specifically, I’m referring to the rocket that astronauts launched in the direction of Mars just before the virus spread across the planet and Caesar’s band took over Earth.

There’s a good story in Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes.  I was just hoping for a few other angles than some of what were offered up this time around.

HOMICIDE (1991)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: David Mamet
CAST: Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Pidgeon
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 88% Fresh

PLOT: A Jewish homicide detective investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result.


Homicide is one of those movies where the lead character experiences just one damn thing after another until he winds up in a situation that is not even barely hinted at in the film’s first half hour.  If I didn’t think it was being a little pretentious – and maybe if I understood the term just a little more – I’d call it Kafkaesque.  It reminds me a bit of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, where that lead character is drawn unwittingly into the unexplored jungles of New York City at night.  Likewise, Detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) starts the film on a manhunt, searching for a wanted killer, and thirty-six hours later winds up begging Zionist activists to let him be involved in blowing up a storefront suspected of printing Nazi pamphlets.

In other hands, the events of the film leading up to Gold’s digression into racial/social activism could come off as comic.  First, he’s put on the manhunt case, searching for a man named Randolph.  Then a weirdo booked for killing his family wigs out at the station and attacks Gold, ripping the strap off his holster, and giving him a bump on the head that’s visible for the rest of the movie.  (I was unavoidably reminded of Jake Gittes’s nose in Chinatown.  Both wounds serve as constant reminders of either the odds the characters face or of the unpredictability of the world they inhabit.)  On their way to interrogate Randolph’s mother for his whereabouts, Gold and his partner, Sullivan (William H. Macy), randomly run into what looks like a hostage situation which turns out to be a cop cornered by a vicious dog in a candy store.  In the store is a dead woman.  The commanding sergeant arrives at the scene and gives Gold the dead woman case.  Turns out the dead woman is Jewish.  Her family shows up at the scene, learns Gold is Jewish, and insist he be their personal liaison for the case.  Meanwhile, Sullivan has to carry on with the Randolph case on his own.  A recurring theme will be how Gold keeps missing out on important events with the Randolph case while babysitting the family of the dead woman, a case he considers unimportant.

What happens next unfolds so naturally and surprisingly that I will not spoil it for you.  What I will say is that Mamet turns a standard police procedural into a searing character study of a man who has never really considered who he is in terms of his heritage.  At one point, he speaks with a Jewish scholar who shows him a page of Hebrew text.  Gold says, “I can’t read it.”  The scholar tells him, “You say you’re a Jew and you can’t read Hebrew.  What are you then?”  This is a question that Gold will try to answer for the rest of the film.

On a personal note, that bit of dialogue resonated quite a bit with me.  I’m full-blooded Puerto Rican on both sides of my family.  Yet my knowledge of Spanish is barely passable.  When faced with reading Spanish text, I can sound out the words, but my comprehension level is probably only 60 to 70%.  My conversation with fluent Spanish speakers is halting, at best.  I just never took the time to learn it as thoroughly as my parents or my sister did.  Does that make me any less Puerto Rican?  I don’t think so, and I might feel resentment towards a stranger telling me that I’m not Puerto Rican just because I don’t speak Spanish.  I know who and what I am, and my identity is not tied to what language I speak.

But things are different for Detective Gold.  Earlier in the film, he talks to his partner, Sullivan, on the phone and talks about how the Jewish family he’s now working for, or with, are high-strung, crying wolf (they claim someone is shooting at them from the building next door, but there are no bullet holes to prove it), how they saved ten bucks a week by letting the old lady work at the store herself, how they’re “not MY people, baby.”  Only after he realizes he’s been overheard does he feel immense guilt and obligation to help the family.  Not to just solve the case, but to “find the killer.”  So, he’s experiencing all sorts of new emotions that may or may not be interfering with his ability to do his job impassively.

The people in Homicide sound as if they are speaking in subtext only, using Mamet’s unique writing style to bypass what we think of as “normal” speech and deliver lines that are almost poetic, even when laced with racial epithets and curse words.  This makes the overall tone of any Mamet-scripted film seem hyper-stylized, as if the characters are one level removed from reality, but not in a bad way.  It elevates the film somehow.  I’m at a loss to describe it more accurately.

One bit of dialogue exemplifies what I’m talking about.  Gold is being thrown out of a building.  The gentleman at the door tells him, “Don’t bother to return.  The next time you come, there’ll be nobody here.”  Don’t bother to return?  That’s unnecessarily decorous.  “Normal” conversation would be something like, “Don’t bother coming back.  If you do, we won’t be here.”  However, Mamet’s signature word choices here suggest an almost Shakesperean construction, as if the words are being shoehorned into a buried structure or pattern that operates subconsciously.  Based on what happens with Gold throughout the film, I could theorize that Mamet is trying to create a mood reminiscent of Greek tragedy, and the actors are reciting dialogue that has been translated from Greek or some other language.

But that’s just me.

The experience of watching Homicide will never be quite as exciting or kinetic as other superlative crime dramas like, say, Heat or The Departed, movies that also examine their characters in detail, sending them on similar journeys of self-discovery.  Those other movies are defined as much by their action as by their intelligence.  In Homicide, any “standard” action scenes are purely incidental, or sometimes accidental, intended not to thrill but to move the plot forward with a minimum of fuss.

In any event, the action is not the linchpin of this film.  We watch Homicide, not to see who Gold kills or who tries to kill Gold, but to see if he is capable of resurrecting the person within himself that he thought he had killed long ago, a sacrifice he made on the altar of being a good cop.  He has a painful conversation where he realizes that everything he’s done to suppress his own self has been, “Not for me.  All for someone else.”  He must decide whether to act in service of his conscience or his sworn duty as a cop.  The choices he makes have consequences he never anticipated, as with all good tragedies.  Homicide reminds us of that inescapable fact, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the calm, flat gaze of an impassive Greek god who lets us draw our own conclusions.

THE PROFESSIONAL (Léon)

By Marc S. Sanders

The cult following that has come with Luc Besson’s first American made film seems unwarranted to me.  It’s currently listed as number 40 on IMDB’s top 250. I have no idea why. I recognize the artistic style of the picture, but what is here to relish beyond an enlightening introductory performance from would be Oscar winner Natalie Portman?

To watch Besson’s use of the camera makes me feel like a viewer from the director’s native France.  The setting is Little Italy, New York and it has a feel to it like Besson just stepped off the plane and decided to hone his lens on a condensed city section, but lacking an education of its culture or history.  The Professional certainly doesn’t look or feel like Dog Day Afternoon, When Harry Met Sally…, or Die Hard With A Vengeance.  (Perhaps the music from Éric Serra altered my mood.)  I never took issue with this aspect of the movie. It is unfortunate however that Besson’s film comes off too perverse in its storytelling, especially with its character blend.

Portman is Mathilda, a spunky kid who survives the murder of her family when a corrupt, drug dealing DEA agent named Stansfield (a way over the top Gary Oldman) carries out the slaughter after her father fails to pay a debt.  Fortunately, as Mathilda is returning home and coming upon the bloody aftermath, Stansfield and his crony of killers opt not to take her out too as they believe she belongs with the occupant of her neighboring apartment.  Léon lives there and happens to be a skillful hitman and weapons expert who pulls Mathilda inside to safety.  He’s played by Jean Reno.  These killers who massacre by day have no care to eliminate the other tenants living on the same floor, including a little old lady.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe they called in sick on the day assassination school covered “Chapter 6: Leave No Witnesses.”

Besson does not apply much brainpower to the script he wrote and directed.  Oldman’s characterization could not be more obvious with how unhinged he behaves.  His department colleagues who take less than a minute and a half to question him don’t even raise an eyebrow.  While the storyline can be dismissed as a pulpy kind of graphic novel come to life, isn’t it lucky that if your family is going to get shot up, you have a professional hitman living right next door? I mean c’mon.  This is only the set-up of the picture, within the first ten minutes, and my suspension of disbelief never arrived.  

The most egregious lack of consideration falls within the relationship between Reno and Portman’s characters though.  She’s twelve.  He’s in his late thirties or early forties, but his silence implies it is time for assisted living.  When they are not relocating from apartment to apartment, trying to stay out of sight of Oldman’s gang, they are valuing the life of Léon’s beloved plant, drinking milk and demonstrating the fine art of sniper operations.  That’s fine – it’s the stuff of Tarantino fare.  

However, when the pair decide to entertain each other with Portman doing routines of Madonna and Chaplin for play fun, there’s a cringey temperature to the picture.  Besson was seeking out a relationship between a random man and child without any element of sexual proclivities involved and yet, it’s there.  In another writer/director’s hands, there would have been a stronger attempt to develop a paternal relationship between the two characters.  Yet, Natalie Portman doing a childlike song and dance performance of “Like A Virgin,” with Jean Reno’s Léon acting unaware seems artificial and perversely moving in the wrong direction.  When danger crosses their path later and they both say “I love you” to one another, I can’t help but question how this bond might have turned out if they were never forced to separate and save themselves from the bad guys while continuing to live a quiet life with a house plant and gallons of milk.

The final third of The Professional has the inevitable shootout and explosions.  Out of context, it looks good but again this is New York.  So, when Stansfield brings in the firepower of the entire city police to force Léon and Mathilda out of the tenement building, shouldn’t someone be questioning someone?  Anyone? It’s ridiculous.  None of the neighbors run for cover or are given warnings to divert away as a small rocket launcher is propped up for blasting the front door open, along with anyone inside.  

The Professional contains a boring, inappropriate middle section accompanied with a ridiculous opening and ending.  Therefore, I have trouble locating the merits for this piece.  I can recognize the potential of Natalie Portman in her performance.  Yet, if this were the first film I ever saw Gary Oldman in, I might not be so prone to watching anything by this best of the best character actors.  “EVERYONE!!!!” he screams, shouts, screeches, and bellows all at the same time.  Whether you’ve seen the film or not, most cinephiles relish in that sound byte from him on social media. I’d argue it’s in no way a salute to the actor.  Frankly, it’s indicative of the material when a guy as accomplished as Gary Oldman cannot uncover enough of a quirk in a bad guy from a very unimaginative script.  It’s not your fault Gary, so much as it is Mr. Besson’s.

Jean Reno has a cool looking, silent poise to Léon, the professional hitman, but there’s nothing lent to him to work with except a pair of opaque, circular sunglasses, milk, a plant and at least as many guns and ammo as found in The Matrix.  Reno functions on little dialogue and no background save for a few scenes he shares with Danny Aiello as the mob boss who frequently hires him for jobs.  Reno’s scenes with Natalie Portman only demonstrate how inappropriate their connection as actors in a scene are, as well as how their characters are supposed to serve each other. 

The faults of The Professional ultimately lie with its puppet master, Luc Besson.

THE MAN IN THE MOON (1991)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Mulligan
CAST: Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, Reese Witherspoon, Jason London, Emily Warfield
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Fresh

PLOT: A 14-year-old girl in 1957 comes of age when she develops a crush on a handsome neighbor…who only has eyes for her older sister.


The Man in the Moon has a plot that sounds like a high-concept pitch somewhere between an ABC After-School Special and a third-tier soap opera.  But somehow, magically, it transcends the trappings of soap opera and veers towards the truly operatic, touching on grand emotions while keeping itself grounded in reality.  I watched the movie in awe, wondering how something so sappy was holding my interest the whole way through.  Afterwards, I came up with two overarching reasons: the spectacular debut performance of a 14-year-old Reese Witherspoon, and the sure-footed direction from one of Hollywood’s old masters, Robert Mulligan, who cut his teeth on stage plays for television in the 1950s before directing his masterpiece in 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Like Mockingbird, The Man in the Moon takes place in the deep South.  The time is 1957, when Elvis was king and children were still encouraged to say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” to their parents.  Dani Trant (Witherspoon) is still young and tomboyish enough to escape her Sunday chores by dashing off to the local swimming hole after church.  Her older sister, Maureen (Emily Warfield), is set to start college at Duke in a few months.  Their close relationship is established in a sweet opening scene where they sit in their outdoor, screened-in bedroom, doing each other’s hair and talking about life and Maureen’s doubts and how Dani envies Maureen, and so on.  Like in real life, the conversation touches on deep topics, but never really resolves anything.  It just feels good to talk, to know the other person is really listening.  This scene is mirrored in the movie’s final scene in a fantastic bit of screenwriting where the conversation is very different, but the emotions being discussed are more or less the same.

One day, Dani goes skinny dipping in the watering hole and finds an unexpected visitor: Cort Foster (Jason London), 17, whose mother and younger brothers have just moved back to their old farm next door.  Turns out Cort’s mother, Marie, is an old friend of Dani’s mom, Abigail.  This is the kind of stuff soap operas thrive on, but even at that point, even though I was aware of the contrivances of the story, I never felt overly manipulated.  It all just felt very…real.  Once again, it’s a testament to the director’s skill in making sure nothing gets punched up unless there’s a reason for it.  It’s never bland, don’t get me wrong.  But it never feels fake.  I don’t like the word “organic” in connection with acting or directing, but that feels like the right word to use here.

Things move swiftly.  Dani and Cort become quick friends, but when things get a little too flirtatious at the swimming hole, Cort backs away and admonishes Dani.  “You almost got more than kissed, little girl.”  Dani asks Maureen for tips on kissing boys.  It looks as if Cort is always on the verge of making a bad decision, but he has the good sense to put on the brakes.  The film is making you think the movie is going to be about one thing, but then there’s a family crisis, and in the hubbub, Cort meets Maureen, there’s an instant attraction, Dani feels left out…

But that’s enough summarizing.  Based on what I’ve written, you may already think you know the arc of the film, but I can assure you, you’re wrong.

Let’s talk instead about Reese Witherspoon’s performance.  It must be seen to be believed.  It belongs in the pantheon of the greatest debut performances of all time.  She is as self-assured and confident and natural as she was in her Oscar-winning performance in Walk the Line.  It’s almost like watching some of the early films of Marilyn Monroe; the screen just seems a little brighter when she’s present.  Watch her facial expressions when Cort realizes who she is after their first encounter at the swimming hole.  Watch her smile after her first kiss.  Look at her self-control when she tells her father she understands why he had to take the strap to her (that’s a long story that I won’t spoil).  For the most part, I just watched her performance in awe, but once or twice I turned on my analytical mode and tried to see if I could “catch” her acting.  Couldn’t do it.  The fact she wasn’t at least nominated for an Oscar for this movie is a complete freaking mystery to me.

For that matter, the whole movie is a mystery to me.  Before watching it, I had only heard about it from a rave review by Roger Ebert.  I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere so I had to pay a relatively pretty penny to get it on Blu ray, sight unseen.  (Spoiler alert: it was worth it.)  Yet here is a brilliant gem of a film that tells a simple story of love and sadness and doubt and everything in between.  There are some plot surprises – I won’t say twists, exactly, it’s not a Shyamalan movie – that I absolutely did not see coming.  In retrospect, maybe I should have, but the storytelling kept me engrossed in the moment.  It kept me focused on the here and now, so I never felt the need to try and guess what was around the corner.  I hesitate to use this word, too, but it was mesmerizing.  To tell a story this cornball (on the surface!) and keep it fresh and alive is some kind of miracle.

It’s been said that no good movie is too long.  The Man in the Moon clocks in at just under 100 minutes with credits, but I was prepared to stick with it for at least another half hour, just to see what these characters would do and say, and how they would deal with the next challenges life throws at them.  When the movie ends, it doesn’t feel like an ending.  It has the good sense not to make things too final, as if the solutions to all the issues in the film could be wrapped up in a bow.  All that remains is the bond between two sisters, and if they have that, that’s all that matters.

THE FALL GUY

By Marc S. Sanders

Indulge me please while I spout off a number of movie titles. 

I am big fan of Emily Blunt.  She justifiably earned her first Oscar nomination for Oppenheimer.  She was Mary Poppins – a damn good one.  She’s good in her husband John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place monster movies.  Have you seen Sicario? The first one?  You should!  As well, there’s the role that put her on the map with The Devil Wears Prada.  Just a great actress with a huge repertoire of sensational performances under her belt.

I am also a big admirer of Ryan Gosling.  Magnificent in the long-awaited Blade Runner sequel.  He’s a dancing wunderkind and musical genius as well with films like La La Land.  You ever seen The Nice Guys where he partnered with Russell Crowe?  Another one you should see.  Also find him in The Ides Of March, directed by George Clooney.  He got his umpteenth nomination for Barbie recently, but let’s face it, after that Oscar show performance for Best Song the man only overshadowed what he blew our eyes out with, and now I believe they should bow to his dancing feet for hosting duties.  Plus, the guy is now the pinnacle live action Beavis to go with Mikey Day’s Butthead.  Is there nothing this guy can’t do?

I think back to all of these sensational cinematic achievements, and I am dumbfounded that when this pair finally, at long last, team up it is for wasteful bash up/smash up junk like a television adaptation of the Lee Majors’ ABC action series The Fall Guy.  It’s been a long time since I was so bored watching a stunt filled two-hour flick with zero spice or flavor.  There are fire balls aplomb in this movie and I don’t think Gosling ever feels the burn.

I’ve seen the Die Hards and the Lethal Weapons with the fight scenes and car chases and bombastic explosions. Amid all nine of those pictures (well maybe not the last Die Hard movie) the action usually drove at least some semblance of story, suspense and amazement.

The Fall Guy, directed by former stuntman David Leitch, proudly declares itself a stunt movie because the hero, Colt Seavers (Gosling) is a stunt man for action movies.  However, the audience is shortchanged on…well…the stunts.  I remember Miguel and I watching The Fast And The Furious for the first time.  We both agreed the movie failed because it did not provide what it was selling, namely car chases and car stunts.  At least not enough of them.  Instead, we got Paul Walker and Vin Diesel getting all Terms Of Endearment like and we asked ourselves, when are they going to get in a car and drive.

Consider the opening sequence of The Fall Guy.  First I’m dazzled by a well-done Steadicam shot the runs at least four minutes as it follows Colt talking on his cell phone as he struts from his movie set trailer then on into the lobby of a sky rise building, through a crowd of movie extras, crew and cameras, up an elevator and then over to a platform ledge where a harness is strapped to his uniform and he is suspended high above the ground below, while facing up.  A fall is gonna happen, right? And it does, but then we do not see the finish of the fall.  This one shot walk for Gosling cuts the legs out from under us. Just as the fall is about to finish, it cuts to the guy in a stretcher being wheeled into an ambulance. 

Now you can insist to me that is the start of the story.  Colt breaks his back in a stunt fall gone wrong and thus he’s now retired and surely 18 months later, he will be called back to do his best bidding and set the wheels in motion for the rest of the movie.  Okay.  Fine.  I’m with you.  The hero comes out of retirement for one last job. Yet, THE RYAN GOSLING just did the actual fall and we couldn’t see THE RYAN GOSLING finish the fall.  This wasn’t a stunt double as far as I could tell.  I’ve used this analogy before, but this is like Moe throwing the cream pie at Curly, only you don’t get to see the pie make impact with Curly’s face.  I feel cheated, and I felt cheated during most of The Fall Guy.

This approach is done often during Leitch’s film.  He’ll put Colt into a stunt sequence but then cut away to something else.  Later in the movie, Colt gets into a fist fight with some bad dudes while trying to hang on to a runaway truck and trailer careening through the streets of Sydney, Australia.  Colt throws punches.  He gets punched.  He falls.  He hangs on.  He gets up again.  Wash, dry, repeat.  The problem is that Leitch opts to cut away after each punch or fall to Emily Blunt doing a rendition of “Against All Odds” in a karaoke bar.  This whole action scene is chopped up for no purpose that keeps me in the film.  It’s like when I would have to ask my kid to stop interrupting while the grown ups are still talking.  I love watching Emily Blunt sing.  I love watching Ryan Gosling do his version of what a kamikaze Mel Gibson used to do in his younger years.  Can we just have one thing at a time though?  This kind of juxtaposition is not intriguing or beguiling or whatever the filmmaker wants it to be, and it does no favors for either lead.

The story is pretty simple and pedestrian. Nor does it follow the theme of the TV show that everyone has forgotten or that this generation has ever heard of.  Blunt plays Jody Moreno, a maybe former flame/middle school crush of Colt’s.  Unbeknownst to her, the producer (Hannah Waddingham) of the science fiction film Jody is directing has reached out to Colt a year and a half after his broken back accident to come to Australia and not only work on the set but also track down the star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) of the picture who has disappeared without a trace.  Colt is not very bright and he’s especially not a detective of any sort. 

Once this is all set up, The Fall Guy flip flops from the search, over to Colt getting set on fire repeatedly on the set, and then back to the search, followed by the inevitable twist, which is in no way a twist because the surprise seems known as soon as movie begins. 

I was not expecting utter brilliance here, but I was hoping for substance.  Gosling and Blunt are two of the biggest stars out there right now and can have their pick of the litter in what they do next.  It only makes sense that these two should pair up for a movie, but this is what they choose?  The script has less wit or intelligence than a coloring book that has yet to be scribbled in by a four-year-old.  I remember the hype around a picture called The Mexican with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, the biggest stars of the time finally teaming up, and just like it is with The Fall Guy, they had zero chemistry, and they barely shared any scenes together.  When they did, they hardly acknowledged each other.  Filmmakers cannot just stop working when they get the marquee names to sign a contract for the film.  They gotta work to live up to the hype that comes with these capably appealing actors.

In his pursuit, Colt gets drugged and then we see a unicorn standing next to him for a long sequence.  The audience sees the unicorn, but Colt hardly acknowledges it.  I don’t get where the ha ha ha is supposed to come from this bit.  I think the writers were maybe going for an Airplane!/Naked Gun gag.  Colt gets thrown through glass walls.  He tells us he was part of the Miami Vice stunt show at Universal Studios by simply wearing a jacket that says it, but so what?  There’s no dimension to any of this. (I did appreciate hearing the theme song during a very brief nighttime boat chase.)

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Kick Ass, and one time James Bond candidate) is another fine actor, not doing his best work.  He’s a jerk here with bleach blond locks and nothing to do.  He’s just unlikable and unfunny.  Hannah Waddingham?  Never heard of her, but I can only imagine she’s got something better lined than this obnoxious movie producer role with an annoying over the top Australian accent.  If she’s really Australian, then I’ll have to surrender to the fact that I just don’t know the down under dialect.  Frankly, she’s just terrible. 

Never thought I’d say this but Gosling and Blunt had a thousand times more chemistry when they did that presentation at the 2024 Oscars jabbing at the Barbenheimer trend and shamelessly promoting the upcoming release of this film.  In this movie, they look like they are not making eye contact with one another or listening to what the other actor is saying. I don’t blame them, though.  I call foul on David Leitch for lousy directing.

The most interesting thing about the film adaptation of The Fall Guy are post credit behind the scenes footage where I got to see all of these stunts in their uninterrupted entirety, but without the glossy cinematography finish.  However, an Easter egg scene shows up with THE LEE MAJORS and the other blond Heather from the 1980s, THE HEATHER THOMAS.  She is given blond wig and probably an unseen muzzle because she has no dialogue to say except stand there in a cop’s uniform with her butt and boobs sticking out.  Majors is left to be dull, like he probably was in the final season of the show when it was jumping the shark.  If the writers of this movie just used a tenth of their imagination, they could have kept Lee Majors as the original Colt Seaver who mentors Gosling into being THE FALL GUY of today.  Why couldn’t Lee Majors have a substantial role in this picture?  It would have worked.  However, that is not likely because there’s barely a plot, character, or even stunt scene that implies the makers of this movie have that kind of capable imagination. 

Find another movie for Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. STAT! They are so much more worthy then the building they jumped off of only to land in this fire ball blasted junk resting below.

THE GRIFTERS (1990)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears
CAST: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, Charles Napier, J.T. Walsh
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A small-time con man has torn loyalties between his new girlfriend and his estranged mother, a high stakes grifter working for the mob.


Imagine your favorite film noir from the 1940s and ‘50s.  The Big Heat, say, or Double Indemnity.  Now imagine someone remade it, set it in the modern world, retained most, if not all, of the hard-boiled dialogue and characters, threw in some gratuitous nudity, and added some Freudian subtext that would have made Oedipus blush.  Oh, and imagine David Mamet directed it.  Voila…you’ve got 1990’s The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears and co-produced by none other than Martin Scorsese.  It tends to move just a tad slow at times, but all that simmering pays off in the movie’s phenomenal final reel.  I am going to have to tread carefully indeed to avoid spoiling some of the movie’s best surprises.  Here goes:

As the movie opens, we are introduced to three very different characters, at least on the surface.  Lilly (Anjelica Huston) works for the mob by visiting horse racing tracks across the country and laying pricey bets on long shots to bring the odds down just in case they pay off.  She also skims just enough off the top to stay under the radar.  Roy (John Cusack) is a young man pulling small-time cons of his own, like the one where he flashes a $20 bill at a bartender, then pays with a $10 bill instead, getting $20 worth of change at half the price.  And Myra Langtry (Annette Bening in her breakout role) is first glimpsed attempting a lame con at a jewelry shop that ends with her offering her body to the jeweler instead.  (I like the fact that nearly everyone calls her “Mrs. Langtry” even though no one seems to have laid eyes on her husband.)

Myra is Roy’s vivacious new girlfriend.  Lilly is Roy’s estranged mother; she had him when she was fourteen years old (yikes) and he left home at 17, as he puts it, “with nothing but stuff I bought and paid for myself.”  Roy values his independence above all else, maybe even more than the money he’s “earned” and stashed away behind the ugly clown paintings in his living room.  So, when Lilly unexpectedly drops by his apartment in Los Angeles (which she always pronounces “Los Ann-guh-leez”) on her way to the track at La Jolla, he lies about his livelihood.  The last thing he wants is a concerned grifter mother trying to partner up with him.  He learned that from a mentor years ago, seen in a flashback: “You take a partner, you put an apple on your head and hand the other guy a shotgun.”

Due to an injury sustained from a bartender who caught him in a grift, Roy winds up in the hospital, where Lilly meets Myra for the first time.  They are not impressed with each other; their introductory conversation is brief, but it plays like Bette Davis clashing with Joan Crawford.  We get a little more information about Myra’s situation when we see her go home to her apartment where she is met by her landlord, Joe, who demands payment on her outstanding bill.  Her response is to bat her eyes and launch into a patter of what sounds like a radio or TV commercial.  “You, too, could learn to dance!  All you need is a magic step!”  After some more back and forth, she lies down naked on her bed and offers Joe a choice: “Only one choice to a customer, the lady or the loot.  What’s it gonna be?”

What makes a scene like that sparkle, along with virtually every scene in the film, is the fierce individuality displayed by the characters.  They are each wholly original, not simply placeholders for foregone dialogue or plot developments.  In classic film noir, the lead character is usually a smart guy (or gal) who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else but gets caught off guard by his own desires.  In The Grifters, all the main characters are smart…and they stay that way the whole movie.  There is not one single plot development that evolves because anyone makes a dumb decision.  You can see that they all have a clear view of all the angles, and no one is going to make a stupid choice for the sake of the script.  I can’t tell you how rare that is.  The plot and the story unwind and are wound up like a precision watch.  By the time the credits roll, you can see exactly why each character made the decisions they did, leading them to the shocking finale in the last reel.

I really can’t say more about the plot without simply retelling scenes or giving away spoilers.  Throughout the film, Huston, Cusack, and Bening deliver performances that would be right at home in a Mamet film.  They’re allowed to show more emotion than can usually be found in Mamet (I’m thinking particularly of House of Games), but their pared-down, hard-boiled dialogue cuts to the heart of the matter without being flowery.  There’s a scene involving Lilly’s boss, Bobo, played by Pat Hingle with a flat-eyed menace that would make Sonny Corleone run for cover.  His deadpan dialogue with Lilly about oranges is one of the tensest gangland conversations I’ve ever seen, and he does it without ever raising his voice.  Brilliantly written.

If this review has been vague, it’s because I am trying to preserve the unexpected twists and turns about who’s who, and who’s hiding what, and why.  If you find yourself wondering why things are moving kind of slow in the first 30-45 minutes, just be patient and let your ears bask in the hum of the crisp dialogue; observe how each character behaves according to their character, not according to a script; and marvel how a movie set in modern day can still have dizzy dames and classy broads and world-weary heroes and not feel like a relic from the 1940s, but instead feels as fresh as a movie that was released yesterday.  The Grifters is nearly-buried treasure that deserves to be rediscovered.

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone
CAST: Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley, Caroline Kava, Willem Dafoe
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 84% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A biography of Ron Kovic, a fiercely patriotic Marine who fights in Vietnam, is paralyzed in battle, and experiences a dramatic turnaround upon his return home.


I can already tell this is going to be a difficult review to write.

There is nothing overtly wrong with Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July.  It is expertly directed, and the pacing never flags.  Tom Cruise’s Oscar-nominated performance is deservedly legendary; he leaves nothing in the tank, a fierce rebuttal to critics who thought he was nothing but a pretty face.  But even though there is much to admire, when the closing credits rolled, I felt oddly detached.  The movie kept me at arm’s length from really engaging with the lead character.  Or maybe I kept the movie at arm’s length.

Could it be that I simply don’t care for Vietnam films anymore?  Not likely.  One of my absolute favorite films is Michael Cimino’s masterpiece The Deer Hunter.  In fact, the opening scenes of Born on the Fourth of July are reminiscent of that earlier film in that it takes its time establishing the main character, Ron Kovic, as a young man in the early-to-mid 1960s at the dawn of the Vietnam War.  Born and raised in Massapequa, New York, his strict Catholic upbringing and his devotion to high-school wrestling instill a strong sense of right and wrong in the world.  A point is made about how America had never lost a war up to that time.  Kovic’s wrestling coach exhorts him and his teammates as if he were a Marine drill instructor.  “I want you to kill!  You hear me?! …You got to pay the price for victory, and the price is sacrifice!!”  It’s not very subtle, but Stone is making it clear that, in those days leading up to the Vietnam quagmire, the American credo was, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing.”

Kovic enlists, sees combat, and during two horrific sequences, he experiences: an unintended massacre of Vietnamese civilians, the accidental shooting of a fellow soldier (with Kovic himself behind the trigger), and a fateful gun battle during which a bullet went through his right shoulder, collapsing a lung and severing his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down.  These scenes are appropriately skittish and terrifying, putting us in Kovic’s boots and making us feel the unimaginable stress of fighting a war where half the time you weren’t sure who or what you were shooting at.  Kovic is shipped stateside…and here, as they say, is where his troubles REALLY began.

If the scenes set at the VA Hospital during Ron Kovic’s convalescence weren’t based on his actual experiences, I would denounce them as sensationalistic and manipulative.  Rats roam free among the beds.  (A nurse provides spectacularly unhelpful advice: “You don’t bother them, they ain’t gonna bother you.”)  Orderlies spend their down time getting high on marijuana or worse.  Unchecked catheters get backed up.  When a vital blood pump malfunctions, a doctor has to go to the basement to “rig up a substitute.”  And through it all, Ron Kovic does everything in his power to prove to the (correctly) pessimistic doctors that he will walk again, even re-injuring himself in the process.

(It’s futile, I know, to critique a film for what it’s not instead of what it is, but I can’t help wondering if I might have developed a more emotional reaction or attachment to the film if the entire film had focused on Kovic’s tenure at the VA hospital…although I will admit that would be a thoroughly depressing film.  Also, it might have developed some unintentional similarities to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Who knows.)

The rest of the film details Kovic’s return home to his family, his emotional swings between the lowest kind of depression (“Who’s going to love me, Dad?  Who’s ever going to love me?”) and angry shouting matches with his parents and occasional bar fights.  Eventually, Kovic has a revelation: he still loves his country, but he can’t stand the government that sent him and his friends halfway around the world for a cause he no longer understands.  After a short hiatus in Mexico (I won’t get into too many details about that plot point because it’s the one section of the film that borders on boring), he returns home and dedicates his life to speaking up for the men and women who returned from Vietnam to a country that, at worst, hated them, and at best, simply didn’t care about them.

Again, the film is a stirring portrait of a man and a life.  However, as much as I want to, I can’t pin down what it is about the movie that failed to reach me at the kind of emotional level that other biographies have done before.  I just recently watched My Left Foot, with Daniel Day-Lewis’s towering performance at its center.  Another film biography, another main character confined to a wheelchair, a character who comes to terms with himself and how the world responds to him and comes up with a way to respond to the world.  But My Left Foot made my heart soar in a way that Born on the Fourth of July never achieved.  I watched the movie intently, focusing on every plot development and every nuance.  But it just didn’t grab me.  I am at a loss to explain why.

Could it be because of the presence of Tom Cruise in the lead role?  He showed these kinds of acting chops again ten years later in Magnolia, giving another Oscar-nominated performance.  In that movie, he completely disappeared into the role, despite having one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.  Perhaps the younger Tom Cruise (only 27 at the time) emits the kind of wattage that overshadows those around him?  So that you’re aware of the face first and the character second?  Maybe.  So why doesn’t the same thing happen in Magnolia or even The Last Samurai?  Perhaps it took him ten years to find a way to modulate or customize his performance so that, when it counts, the character comes first and the Cruise persona second.

I’m speculating.  The bottom line is, Born on the Fourth of July is a worthy addition to the resumes of both Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise.  It knows the story it wants to tell and resolutely sticks with it the whole way.  There are no sidetracks at any time, not even when he becomes an activist.  The focus is always on Ron Kovic, not the cause.  Stone and his screenwriters trusted that the story of Ron Kovic would draw enough attention to the cause on its own.  That approach would work with just about any other film.  This time, it had the effect of diluting the emotional experience while still holding my attention all the way through.  I would still recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it, if for nothing else to see Cruise play a role where he gets to sound notes he rarely got to play in his early career.  Would I watch it again?  Maybe.  I think the story is important enough for me to try to see what I might have missed this time around.

DEKALOG (Poland, 1989-1990)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Krzysztof Kieslowski
CAST: A host of Polish actors unknown to me
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: Not Rated

PLOT: Director Krzysztof Kieslowski presents ten short films, each related in one way or another with one or more of the biblical Ten Commandments.


Nearly every review or description I’ve ever read of Kieslowski’s Dekalog states that the ten 1-hour films in this ambitious cycle are each based on one of the biblical Ten Commandments.  Not so.  I also assumed that each film would somehow be a moral tale ending with an unequivocal statement about right and wrong.  Also not true.  These films are the most mature and literate explorations, not of morals, but of ethics, that I’ve ever seen.  We believe we know what’s right and what’s wrong, and that we would have the ethical fortitude to do what’s right, given the option.  Dekalog argues that, in today’s world, whether it’s late-1980s Poland or present-day America, the moral absolutes dictated by the Ten Commandments are unachievable.  All we can do is choose what we believe is the right thing and hope for the best.

Kieslowski, much better known perhaps for his Three Colors trilogy, seems to have written these films, along with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, as case studies or thought experiments for ethical quandaries.  In Dekalog Two, a woman has a semi-comatose husband.  She approaches the doctor with a dilemma: she is pregnant with another man’s child, so she must know whether her husband will recover or if he is beyond hope.  If the doctor says he will recover, she will get an abortion.  If the doctor says he will die, she’ll keep the baby.  Now the doctor has two lives in his hands.

In Dekalog Four, a young woman’s father is away on business.  She discovers a letter, hidden by her father, from her dead mother, that says, “Open after my death.”  She opens it (dishonoring her father’s obvious wish that it not be found), and what she finds could radically redefine her relationship with her father, along with resolving some sexually ambiguous feelings she’s been having lately.

I could go on and on.  For the curious, a full synopsis of each film in the cycle can be found online.  But you get the idea.  Each self-contained story is a “what would you do” scenario where your answer may tell you more about yourself than you anticipated.  They seem more inspired by the format of Jesus’ parables instead of Moses’ tablets, just without the neat and tidy ending.  (Well, Dekalog Ten’s ending is cut-and-dried, but that’s all you’ll get out of me in terms of endings.)

For me, the weakest of the ten films was Dekalog Two, despite its sensational premise.  It gets a little too mystical for its own good at one point.  But setting that one aside, I was amazed at how enthralled I was while watching each chapter.  Kieslowski begins each film almost as if you were walking into the middle of the story instead of starting cleanly at the beginning.  Characters are introduced who appear to have no connection whatsoever, and you must be a little patient as the story develops.  At first, I found this approach a little discombobulating, but as I got more accustomed to it, I thought I could see its purpose.  This is real life, not the kind of storytelling we are accustomed to from Hollywood and (let it be said) elsewhere.  The stories we remember and retell from our lives don’t begin with a lovely credit sequence and stirring music.  It’s usually something like, “So there I was, at the doctor’s office, and he told me I was impotent…”

This method also had the effect of sharpening my attention as each film began.  Since I wasn’t being spoon-fed the story, I paid close attention to each shot, trying to memorize a face or recall a name.  And each story had this remarkable ability to lure me into complacency or banality, and suddenly BANG, a monkey gets thrown into the wrench, reshaping everything you just saw, or what you thought you were going to see.  I’m thinking especially of Dekalog Four, with the dead mother’s letter; Dekalog Seven with the ostensible kidnapping with hidden motives; and Dekalog Ten where a father’s death brings two estranged brothers together for one last surprise in his heavily secured apartment.

Because I was watching so carefully, there were several things I noticed that carried over from one seemingly unrelated tale to the next:

  • REFLECTIONS: Every film makes liberal use of reflections for some compositions, whether it’s a scene shot in a mirror or a pane of glass or a puddle or even just reflections on the lens of the camera.  I am not enough of a film scholar to elaborate what that could mean, aside from the obvious: these films are intended to elicit self-reflection from the viewer.  Passive viewing of these films simply will not do.
  • CAMEOS: All ten films take place mostly in or around the same imposing apartment complex in Warsaw.  (Look closely at the structures and the beams for the outside porches resemble church crosses.)  As such, characters from one chapter will “bleed” into at least one of the others.  The father in Dekalog One appears near the beginning of Dekalog Three.  The pregnant wife in Dekalog Two is trying to catch a cab in Dekalog Five.  The impotent husband in Dekalog Nine shows up in reverse order as a bike rider in Dekalog Six.
  • EXTERIORS: I cannot recall more than two or three shots in all ten films that showed an unambiguously sunny day.  Daytimes in Dekalog are invariably overcast and gloomy.  If we are meant to interpret that as a symbol, and the apartment complex is the world we all inhabit, then Kieslowski seems to be saying that the world is a dark and dreary place, indeed.  Is there any hope at all in this gray cycle of films?  I think so.  Many of the films end on, if not exactly a happy note, then at least a hopeful note.  For myself, I watch the credits roll on each one and I imagine the characters making peace with their choices, because…well, that’s what I have to do daily.  If I can do it, they can do it.  Or vice versa.
  • THE WATCHER: There is one actor who appears in nine of the ten films in Dekalog.  He never speaks, is never named (on IMDb, he is credited simply as “Young Man”), and never directly interacts with any other character.  I took to calling him The Watcher, after the Marvel Comics character who is doomed to spend eternity witnessing human history without the ability to help in any way.  What does he represent?  Is he an angel, in keeping with the cycle’s biblical name?  He seems to appear whenever a main character is about to make a choice of some kind; in one instance, he gives an almost imperceptible shake of the head as if to say, “Don’t do this.”  If you ask me, I would say the Young Man is the embodiment of guilt, a warning stare from some cosmic force that is saying, “Can you live with what you’re about to do?”  The main characters make their own choices, deciding what they can or can’t live with.  Discuss.

I hope all this mumbo jumbo hasn’t deterred you from seeking out this series and giving it a go.  All the same, as much as I do recommend Dekalog, I’m a little stuck on who exactly I would recommend it to.  All told, it’s a 9-hour-34-minute excursion into the kind of ethical dilemmas that could occupy an entire semester at a film school…and probably has.  On the other hand, with streaming popularity at an all-time high (depending on who you ask), one can think of it as a 10-part HBO miniseries…in Polish.  After all, that’s how it was originally envisioned anyway, as a limited series for Polish television. Take a chance.  Find a copy to buy online.  Or stream it if anyone is offering it.  I promise, you will be mulling over these films long after the latest Venom movie has faded from memory.  (Sorry, cheap shot, couldn’t resist, but you know I’m right.)