Good Morning, Vietnam

I try not to worry about people who don't like Good Morning, Vietnam. I wonder if they're exactly the type of people Robin Williams' character wouldn't like anyway.

If so, then they probably wouldn't like me either.

In high school, I got a copy of this film on glorious VHS. Within a few weeks, I had most of Robin Williams' lines memorized. My buddy Josh and I used to recite Williams' on-air monologues and annoy anybody within earshot.

"Too much time on your hands," people used to say.

Williams plays a fictionalized version of Adrian Cronauer, an Air Force radio personality, but everything I've read indicates that Cronauer's life and experiences differ substantially from the film. I don't care. That's not the point.

Williams made radio look like a ginormous amount of fun — all smartass remarks and rock music — and for a teenager, that was perfect.

My high school had a student radio station, and so did my college. I pissed off the management in both places. I've never been good with uptight people.

I went on the air for the first time in high school. I was 17. I didn't know what I was doing, and I was so nervous, I nearly yacked on the microphone. I didn't know what to say between songs. What Robin Williams made look so easy, I couldn't do at all.

I got comfortable while doing off-air production and reading the news on-air. In an act of rebellion and as a challenge to myself, I refused to rehearse the news, just so I could cold-read on the air and not mess up. Yeah, I still messed up.

I pissed off the station manager a few times. I once read Bush vs. Clinton presidential campaign slurs over "The Star Spangled Banner," which got his panties in a twist. I played "banned" music from artists such as the horrifying Simon & Garfunkel and the obscene Bachman Turner Overdrive on the air.

For good reason, the station manager had to keep a tight grip on things. You don't let a bunch of teenagers have their run of an FM radio station, even in the middle of nowhere with a 10-watt transmitter. I understand the risks now, but at the time, I couldn't help but compare that station manager to Cronauer's superiors in this film. The man, trying to keep me down.

In college, I joined the student station and started playing my own CDs, which I learned later was forbidden. Then I ran my mouth a little too much one night (shocker).

I was throwing my show to the next guy, and as I was talking, I realized I'd never listened to the next guy's show — or any other show on that station.

So I said, "You know, I'd love to tell you about the next guy's show, but to be honest, I never listen to this radio station." Funny to me at the time. Not so much to the students who managed the station. They made a big deal of that. Meh.

Eventually, I got away from radio when I realized I couldn't just screw around all the time, and that there were no jobs and thus, no future for me. I started realizing how much I liked writing more — I could edit myself before I blurted out something stupid.

Mom really loved Good Morning, Vietnam. When Williams goes on the air for the first time, he riffed so fast that Mom couldn't stop laughing. Then Williams went to the music. That quick shot of the VU meter clearly pegging the red prompted Mom to say, "Man, he's really pumping it out."

She knew all the songs in the film. She'd heard of most of the places. Her brother, my uncle Paul, served in Vietnam. He joined the Marines. I don't know the story exactly, but apparently someone near him stepped on a land mine, and he caught some of the shrapnel. He was honorably discharged and sent home, and was never right again.

The film devolves into sentimentalizing the conflict a bit, and as a result, some people — especially some veterans — tune out. If the filmmakers deliberately tried to minimize the conflict or pull a little revisionist history for the sake of drama, I still don't care.

For me, the film still resonates. "What A Wonderful World" juxtaposed with explosions and fighting now seems pretty heavy-handed, but I still don't care. War films aren't all John Wayne dodging bullets and coming out unscathed. This was one of several Vietnam-themed films of the '80s that made Americans acknowledge the kind of shit they sent people to do.

Ah, but this film is sneaky. You're lured in with a cracking good soundtrack and some hilarious monologues, but then the film starts turning, starts revealing a soul, as if the smartass were just a Trojan horse for a message. Don't like the message? Still don't care.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I needed Italians to make me a fan of the American west.

Until college, I'd really never watched an Italian western. I saw The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for the first time in my film genres course when I was doing my undergrad at Ball State. My prof articulated how the Italians interpreted the American west — more cynical, more violent, more style.

When I was growing up, my dad and granddad often watched westerns on television, but usually these were John Wayne's pictures or Clint Eastwood's American work — rarely an Italian western. I always thought John Wayne films were boring and corny, and Clint Eastwood's American work left me wanting something — I'm not sure what.

Dad called the Italian efforts "spaghetti westerns," which I found out later was a common term for the Italians' attempts to emulate this distinctly American genre. Dad generally never liked "dubbers" (foreign films dubbed in English) and to this day he doesn't really like these "spaghetti westerns."

That didn't stop me from going out one year and buying Dad a copy of this film on glorious VHS, replete with sterling 4:3 full-screen aspect ratio and muddy, warbling 2.0 stereo sound. I'm not sure he ever watched that tape. I never bought him a copy on DVD.

This gets at the question of owning a copy of a film on disc (or any other format). Dad is 63 years old, and he's as healthy as 63 gets in Indiana. I hope he has plenty of time left, but realistically, how many more times will a 63 year old man watch a 3-hour western that's partially dubbed?

For that matter, how many more times will I watch this? Assuming I don't skip around my DVD collection and watch all of them straight through, I might not get back to this one until 2014 sometime. By then, we'll be looking at a new media format for home video. For ten years, I built this library of DVDs that soon will be obsolete. So much for the idea of a library, you know? I don't really like thinking about that.

My wife spent a summer working in Santa Fe a few years before we got married. Around that same time, I picked up The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on DVD, and noticed the special features explored the Civil War-era west, much of which took place in New Mexico. Although she and I were separated by hundreds of miles, watching this film and the enclosed special features made me feel closer to her in a way.

My dad simply prefers other westerns — The Outlaw Josey Wales is his favorite — and many of my friends prefer other Leone films — Once Upon a Time in the West, For A Few Dollars More, The Colossus of Rhodes (kidding) — but The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is my favorite. This was the one that opened the door and instilled in me an appreciation of the American western, whether filmed here, in English, or otherwise.

Although I don't often agree with people about The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, the point is not necessarily which film we prefer, but that despite our differences, we appreciate the American western and the idea of the west. That's just one example of all the connections we can have through film, and the sort of thing that made me want to own all these DVDs in the first place.

Goldfinger

Goldfinger, the peak of Sean Connery's efforts as 007, and possibly the most iconic Bond film ever, also features James Bond in a very short onesie.

This is another one of those Bond films that often appeared on ABC as the movie of the week, and my dad and I would watch. I was too young to follow the story or understand the more mature situations, but I liked the gadgets.

As with most Bond films, the theme music is over the top and ridiculous, but the Goldfinger theme stands apart as both unabashedly awful and awesome at the same time.

Holy shit, Shirley Bassey sings loudly — okay, she's just pushed way forward in the mix, but still — listen to this!



All the 007 staples are here — gadgets, gorgeous locations, evil henchmen, implausible situations, quaint film techniques and special effects, and a guy who throws a hat.

Oddly, Oddjob's hat cuts off the head of a statue at Goldfinger's country club, but the same hat does not slice off Tilly Masterson's head later in the film.

Maybe Oddjob took a little something off when he threw at the girl. Yes.

Behold, Bond driving his Aston Martin into a brick wall and doing more damage to the wall. Behold, the frequent use of obvious frame rate adjustments to accentuate tension and action. Behold, the frickin' laser heading toward 007's balls. There's a lot to pick on here.

But that's not the point. Part of Goldfinger takes place in Kentucky, my dad's home state, where Goldfinger attempts to set off an atomic bomb inside Fort Knox and wreck the economy in the west. So here's a spy thriller with beautiful women, fast cars, guns, gadgets, and...Kentucky.

Goldfinger is a great Bond film — maybe the greatest — full of everything we wanted to see back then. And now.

GoldenEye

GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan's first outing as James Bond 007, felt like my generation had a James Bond for the first time, an idea helped along when the film turned out to be damned good.

For those of us who came of age in the 1980s watching the mummified corpse of Roger Moore and a wooden plank with Timothy Dalton's face painted on, Pierce Brosnan was a welcome addition. He is by no means the most charismatic, athletic, or even best looking of all the actors who played Bond, but he does have the best hair. Hair matters.

Easily the craziest, hair-raising opening to any Bond film, this is the one where Bond hops a motorcycle and chases after a runaway single-engine plane on a snow-covered runway somewhere in Russia. You might remember how this goes.

The plane rides right off the edge of a cliff, and Bond bikes off right behind, leaping off the bike in mid-air, somehow defying physics and falling faster than the plane in order to catch up, climb in, and pull the plane out of the dive. Impossible. Impossibly cool.

If I had one complaint with GoldenEye, I'd point to the scene that follows, supposedly several years later. Bond drives along with a woman who must be a librarian, while toying with another, much hotter woman, who follows in another car and eventually overtakes him.

Famke Jannsen's introduction as the hot woman in the red sports car reminds me of Clark Griswold's flirtation with the hot woman in the red sports car.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

In addition to Brosnan's first film as Bond, this is Dame Judy Dench's first appearance as M. I always have a tough time watching Dench, as she bears a striking resemblance to my late grandmother, whom I miss every day. When I see Dench, I'm taken out of the film a little each time. I'm not sure how to work on this.

Tonight, I noticed that Minnie Driver plays a Russian dancer in this film, adding her name to the long list of actors who passed through Bond films unnoticed early in their careers. I never spotted her before, and I've seen this film at least a half dozen times:

But back to the Bond-of-a-generation thing. After Timothy Dalton's two films, the Bond franchise needed a jolt (sound familiar?). Enter Brosnan, who had been courted to take over the starring role before. I have a hard time envisioning Brosnan in the Bond role for the two Dalton films, but that almost happened.

Regardless, Brosnan makes good here, as GoldenEye is not only the best Brosnan Bond film by miles, but might be the franchise's best since Connery (Daniel Craig's efforts notwithstanding).

I'm not too wild about any of the other Brosnan 007 films, but for me, GoldenEye stands up well to repeat viewings because of a solid script, inventive yet faithful direction, and good hair.

Go

Go was the closest I ever got to rave culture (or drug culture, really).

I just never cared about that stuff. I came of age listening to Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye spout off about straight-edgery, so this film didn't resonate with me in that way.

Instead, I just liked seeing a film with young people (instead of the usual gangsters) with a twisty plot that jumped about in time and spun out in all these directions from the perspective of different characters. For me, John August's script had all the best elements of '90s film.

I had a copy of Go on glorious VHS, and I took that tape with me to film school, along with Doug Liman's other, better film, Swingers. Although film school was a real growing experience for me, I was creatively bankrupt. I was reaching for whatever seemed like a motivator or an inspiration. Everything I wrote was garbage. No, really. And no, you can't read any of it.

After seeing Swingers, I was pretty stoked to hear Liman had made another film, and I wasn't disappointed with Go. This isn't a film that stands up well to many repeat viewings, but revisiting now and again is interesting, if only to see how the music, hair, and clothing styles slowly get more and more dated.

Also, I really enjoy watching William Fichtner's slow burn. "It's Confederated Products. It's a different company. It's a different quality of product." The whole bit about the pyramid scheme seems so random, but still fits so well here. Kudos to John August for getting that bit to work here.

I suppose even though I was never into all the culture, I pulled my share of all-nighters out with people. I used to get so cold then, when sleep deprivation and a dash of hungry took over just as the temperature reached the coldest point of the night. You get a specific kind of shivering then -- part exhaustion, part freezing, part excitement.

Sometimes on those nights, I'd roll the windows down to keep myself awake on the way home (on nights I went home). I miss those nights. I miss that shivering. Luckily I can put on Go now and then and get a snapshot.

Gladiator

"What we do in life...echoes in eternity."

Here's a film that grapples with the concept of what makes a person great. One's life is not a series of achievements, but a series of deeds.

We are not our résumé. We are not our awards, our trophies. Our greatness is predicated on what we do, yes, but in my view, greatness is about who we reach, not what we reach.

I think about this sort of thing when I watch Gladiator. I see the film as a (three-hour) parable. I look back on what I've accomplished with my own life: degrees, awards, recognition. I'm not satisfied, and I don't want to be proud of this stuff; pride leads to arrogance and complacency.

I'm not done yet. I don't ever want to be done. I might not know what to do next (in fact, sometimes I think I'm frozen in place), but I still want to do things.

Seven years ago, I stood at my grandmother's grave and vowed to live a life that would make her proud of me. Two months ago, I stood at my mother's grave and promised the same thing. And, as I will not speak to either of them again in this life, I won't know if I've made either of them proud enough.

So I just keep doing what I'm doing. Live a good life, do good things, make a difference, and all that stuff. Hope they're watching.

These themes are what bring me back to this film. I know deep down that Gladiator is not nearly as good as its thematic predecessor, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. I know there are some over the top Hollywood histrionics at play here, what with the whole "Are you not entertained?" thing. None of that stuff matters.

I've probably seen Gladiator a dozen times over the years. I re-watch because the film is gorgeous — the kind of huge film with a simple, universal story that resonates with me, and makes me want to be better. I keep watching, and I keep doing.

"I will see you again. But not yet. Not yet."

Ghostbusters/Ghostbusters 2

I was 9 years old when Ghostbusters came out, so I might've been too young for this film, but thankfully, my parents let me watch anyway.

I wasn't alone. My brother was 6; my sister was 4. I can't remember whether we all piled up and went to a movie theater (unlikely) or the drive-in theater a mile from our house (more likely), or whether we rented this one on glorious VHS (most likely, and most glorious). Point being, my parents didn't care.

I bring this up because I was looking at reviews of Ghostbusters on Netflix and couldn't get over how many uptight parents see this film as inappropriate for children based on the sexual content and language.

So, the demonic hell-dogs are cool for a 9-year-old? How about the ghost of the old woman in the library — the one that transforms into a vicious she-beast? General freaky things? Glowing red eyes? Decomposing bodies driving taxicabs? Parents are dumb.

At one point in the '80s, a neighbor had the Ghostbusters computer game, which had a simple premise: capture ghosts, make money, and buy more crap. I usually got stuck with the VW Beetle and not enough money to do anything except drive around, but sometimes, I did well enough to buy the bambalance. Of course, no video game is a substitute for buying the real thing. I miss that game.

I'm told I look like the main character in the modern Ghostbusters video game. I'm also told that game is reminiscent of the classic PC game, but after playing the demo and getting frustrated, I'm not so sure. I just wanted a bambalance.

So here's a question I've often pondered. When the Ghostbusters are told to choose the form of the destructor, and Venkman says, "So if you think of J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us," how come J. Edgar Hoover doesn't show up? Does Ray think of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man before Venkman thinks of Hoover? These are important questions, people.

These two films are best viewed as a double feature. At least that way, you don't have to try to make a special event of sitting through the vastly inferior sequel, which I still enjoy for some reason. Maybe that's because I enjoy seeing a bit more of these characters and how they ended up a few years later.

Another upside: I can't look at Viggo Mortensen in any film without shouting, "He is Viggo!" Sometimes, I follow this with the optional: "You are like the buzzing of flies to him!" I don't care if I'm watching Lord of the Rings or The Prophecy or A History of Violence. I never said I was easy to hang out with.

(Artwork by Kory, one of my students.)

Strangely, I don't come back to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2 often. Even though I enjoy both films, I sort of forget they're there. The films are classic, though, and I'm glad to have an excuse to revisit both in the same night.

Maybe someday I'll get to watch all three.

Garden State

"They will see us waving from such great heights, 'Come down now,' they'll say..."

My friend Michael and I view Garden State differently.

As a high school drama teacher for several years, Michael obviously spent most of his time around teenagers, many of whom were medicated and impressionable. To him, Garden State appeared to send the message that if you stop your meds, you'll be fine. You might even feel better than ever. He found the implication reckless, and the film fundamentally flawed as a result.

I don't want to speak too much for Michael; he's entitled to see the film his way and I don't begrudge him a different opinion. In fact, I see the logic of his opinion a lot more clearly now (probably because I've been exposed to a few hundred more at-risk college students in the last several years, and some days I fear the future). I didn't see the film that way at the time, though.

For me, Garden State was a watershed film that seemed to echo and therefore validate the work of Hal Ashby, Billy Wilder, and Cameron Crowe all over again. Zach Braff made me feel a little less weird for loving their quiet, quirky little character pieces so much, when none of my friends and few of my students had the patience to see what I saw.

In 2004, I'd just started teaching screenwriting to college students, and Garden State validated much of what I thought about storytelling, even underscoring many of the same lessons I was trying to teach.

As a writer, the film also gave me hope that, yeah, the stories I like to tell might have an audience after all. I had just started writing scripts again, and I was trying to capture little moments rather than high concepts. I was still a year away from starting a full-length script, but I'd be lying if I said Garden State didn't influence my ideas.

My script had a protagonist who went home after a long absence and had to deal with the loss of his mother and with the presence of his odd, distant father. My details were different, but the template was there. Shell-of-a-guy goes home, can't connect with his dad, meets plucky girl, and magically gets his life in order while indie rock plays on the soundtrack. There's a whole subgenre of these films now.

In a way, that script continues to haunt me. I wrote my protagonist's mother out because I had no relationship with my own mother at the time, and I didn't know how to imagine one.

Compared to the rest of Braff's career thus far, Garden State looks like an astonishing high water mark — a film (and soundtrack) that spoke to a generation of listless wanderers and continues to do so today.

I wonder if my own high water mark is ahead of me or behind. I find myself thinking about that script, and whether I can even do that again. I think about Mom and all the things I should've said, and consider writing that shit down. I wonder if what I'm feeling means a thing, and if she understands me at all now.

The Full Monty

I saw this film in a theater in 1997ish, and I think I was on a date at the time. The Full Monty as a date movie? Yep. I remember laughing quite a lot. Simon Beaufoy's script is solid work.

Later, I found that The Full Monty seemed to lose impact on the small screen. (Write your own joke.) In this way, the film is a lot like There's Something About Mary, which had people rolling in theaters, but isn't nearly as bust-a-gut funny at home. In part, that's why I did not own a copy on DVD until recently.

I was in a Kmart a few weeks before Christmas this year (looking for Crispy M&Ms, which we'd heard were still available there), when I passed a display of DVDs and saw a copy of The Full Monty for $5. Yoink!

(We never found Crispy M&Ms, and since then we have determined they are long gone, a revelation that leaves my wife wanting. But I got this film on DVD — perhaps the last DVD that I'll ever purchase, so there's that.)

I remember not being able to understand half the dialogue in the theater (untrained ears 12 years ahead of marrying into a Brit family). Some lines still elude me without subtitles. I don't remember noticing the odd use of the word "soccer" in the intro, which doesn't fit at all (but probably got inserted to spare U.S. audiences).

One thing I don't recall is ever judging this film or feeling "icky" about the prospect of these middle-aged men turning to a life of stripping to make ends meet. Sure, say what you will about Robert Carlyle's character having his son along for things he probably shouldn't see, but aside from that, there's not much here to get worked up about, is there?

Consider it this way: Sheffield was once a booming steel town, and now it isn't. Reminds me a lot of my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, or really, the whole rust belt of America. People do what they can to survive even after the jobs have gone. They don't have a choice, do they?

There are worse things to turn to in times of desperation. Consider the meth problem, or the crime rate in general, of so many rust belt towns. Stripping for money seems rather tame in comparison to selling drugs to little kids or killing people.

If, in the Sheffield of The Full Monty, this is how depressed things have become, and if this is how desperate the people of Sheffield have become, then who are we to judge if these people find a little escape in going out to a strip club? Who are we to judge if people dance in one to make money to survive? What are people supposed to do?

I was unemployed for a time. (No, I never turned to stripping.) I remember the frustration of wanting to work and no one giving me a chance. I didn't want to work so I could eat, pay bills, etc. That was secondary to simply having a purpose and making something of myself. We forge our identities, in part, from our careers. I couldn't. That was incredibly painful.

During the '80s, my dad went through something similar. He was laid off from his factory job for 2 1/2 years. (No, he never turned to stripping, either.) He took a job cleaning RVs, and another job as a janitor. He drove farm trucks and tractors. He worked on cars. He opened his own farm equipment shop with my uncle. He took odd jobs. He did what he had to do, and life was very, very hard. At one point, my mom was in a panic because they only had $45 in the bank. My mom worked in a gas station and became the only source of income. My dad's identity as the breadwinner of the family was lost for a time. He seemed untethered, unhinged. He was miserable.

Now I understand, and I'm able to identify with the characters in The Full Monty quite a lot. These characters are out of options. They can't be choosy. They don't have the luxury of waiting for happiness and self-actualization. Sometimes happiness is just a warm plate of food.

By the end of the film, these men have overcome their own faults, for the most part, and their own insecurities. Their loved ones are proud of them for doing something in a town where nothing ever happens and where there are no opportunities. These men carved out their own opportunity and boldly went ahead.

We all do that, in a way. My parents did. I eventually did. You probably did. That's life.

The Fugitive

If I'm flipping channels, and I find The Fugitive with Harrison Ford playing, regardless of the point in the story, I can't change the channel until the film is over.

I probably have seen this film two dozen times over the years — mostly on television, replete with commercial interruptions that I dutifully sit through so I can watch the rest of the movie. Again.

There are a few other films like that. Die Hard and The Silence of the Lambs come to mind, among others, but not one of them works like The Fugitive.

As a still-aspiring screenwriter, I've read a lot about Jeb Stuart and David Twohy's script, which has one of the best stories of any action/suspense pictures in the last 30 years. The Fugitive is easily the best work of either Stuart or Twohy's career.

The film isn't perfect, but The Fugitive is great entertainment. Sure, there are a couple of plot holes and implausible sequences. (The dam jump, anyone?) But that stuff is easy to pass off as one-in-a-million chances that work out for Kimble.

Maybe the most frustrating aspect of the film is the opening credits, which run off and on for the first 15 minutes of the movie. They seem endless. A film this suspenseful loses impact if you distract viewers with opening credits that drag so long into Act One. Mercifully, the credits end at 14:49, just before the iconic bus/train sequence.

The film doesn't have another sequence quite like the train accident. The rooftop chase is fine, but nothing like the rooftop sequence in, say, Die Hard. The climactic chase through the laundry is weakly symbolic (Kimble delving into someone else's dirty laundry to exonerate himself). But...I don't care.

In a way, re-watching The Fugitive is like doing a job I really love. I get to do this fun and exciting thing and get the same or similar result every time. I get to think about the time I spent in Chicago, the memories of which are bittersweet at best.

Much of this film is shot within the Chicago city limits, with easily recognizable locations — especially along Randolph St., near the Thompson Center. When I lived in Chicago, I worked about two blocks from there. When Chicago weather allowed, I used to walk to the Thompson Center to eat lunch and get my hair cut (on good days, I could afford both).

Chicago was a rough period for me, which I've mentioned here before and don't want to belabor. I had ambitions of doing improv and finding work as an advertising copywriter. I did the improv, but most of the ad agencies I contacted responded with indifference. Of course they did — I had no experience, and the economy tanked right around November 2000, when I moved to town. One creative director seemed interested, but she had no job openings. She said, "You never know, though — things change."

Not much changed except the weather. Eventually, I realized I could neither eat nor pay my bills regardless of whether I kept my job. So I quit. A few weeks later, I left town and went back to grad school.

I've done improv only a handful of times in the 10 years since. Imagine my surprise when I learned that much of the dialogue in The Fugitive was improvised or otherwise invented by the actors, including Tommy Lee Jones' famous "I don't care."

I learned at The Second City that most of the sketch revues are written through improvisation and refinement rather than clacking away at a keyboard. Improv is just another form of writing. That said, an ordinary script can become extraordinary in the hands of the right actors. That's exactly what happened to The Fugitive.

Neither Jeb Stuart nor David Twohy ever have written what you'd call critically bulletproof material, but put the writing in front of Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, give them some freedom, and see what happens.

That's more than enough to keep me watching. Again.

From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love is the second 007 film, and I can't for the life of me remember the plot. Something about SPECTRE going after Bond with some blond-haired tough guy and sending some blonde-haired woman...not that plot matters, but here's the IMDB logline:

"James Bond willingly falls into an assassination ploy involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retrieve a Soviet encryption device that was stolen by SPECTRE."

As in Dr. No, the 007 theme music appears frequently, though not enough to be as much of a distraction as in the previous film. Still, sometimes I notice James Bond's most trivial movements accompanied by the theme. Walking into a hotel — play the Bond theme. Drive a car — play the Bond theme. Raise an eyebrow — play the Bond theme.

I'm rather glad the Daniel Craig iterations don't feature the Bond theme so prominently.

Watching early Bond films can be difficult, thanks to the efforts of Mike Myers and the Austin Powers franchise. Frau Farbissina, Dr. Evil, and Number Two all have equivalents in this picture. I can't help some inadvertent laughing.

I can forgive the quaintness, but I can't get past my inner monologue, saying the name "Frau Farbissina" while impersonating Dr. Evil. It got weird.

The "chick fight" at around the 43:00 mark? The two women who fight for a husband? Yeah, that fight looks pretty bad now. I get the impression that fight was choreographed by a man. There's just not enough screeching and hair-pulling. They look like two members of G.L.O.W.

Speaking of appearances, how about Robert Shaw as Donald Grant, the Bond heavy here? He looks like a congressman from my home state of Indiana:

My biggest complaint with From Russia With Love is the rather abrupt ending. Stuff blows up, then Bondandthegirlrideawayinaboattheend.

Again, though, that complaint sort of gets at the writing, and criticizing the writing of a Bond film is rather like kicking a baby. All of the Bond films have varying degrees of bad writing, from cheesy dialogue to general implausibility. Who gives a crap?

Caring isn't worth the trouble. I like Bond films for the escape they deliver, and as I'm going through the grieving process and settling my mother's estate, this stupid stuff is the perfect antidote.

From Dusk Till Dawn

Remember when vampires were a surprise?

In From Dusk Till Dawn, we get no hint of vampires for the first hour of the film.  Nobody mentions anything about vampires. Nothing.

This isn't like everybody talking about Harry Lime in The Third Man for the first hour or so, and then Orson Welles finally shows up in the shadows. In that film, they established the character's presence in the world of the film because other characters talked about him, and then he finally showed up.

This isn't really like Psycho, either, in which Janet Leigh's character goes on the lam, only to die in the shower in the middle of the film. Psycho goes on from there with different, new main characters, sort of rebooting the narrative.

Strangely, From Dusk Till Dawn is a bit like both. We get no clue about vampires, and when all hell finally breaks loose near the one-hour mark, we spend the remaining 40 minutes watching the characters (some new, some newly dead) deal with the consequences of the choices they made before the vampires appeared.

The Gecko brothers choose to flee the law to Mexico. They choose to kidnap a family with an RV.  The family chooses to go along rather than try to get away, fight, or attract the attention of the border patrol to get help. The family, in fact, chooses to travel by RV, yet stay in the hotel where they run into the Gecko brothers. From Dusk Till Dawn is a film about extreme consequences to even the most minor choices.

From Dusk Till Dawn is a screed about the merits of personal responsibility, and I don't think that's my sleep-deprived state talking. In the end, all the characters drive off by themselves, presumably to take care of themselves.  The two surviving characters have no one left to care for them, and no one left to care for, either. They're only responsible for themselves. Why not? Everyone else they've known in the last 12 hours turned into a monster.

That's part of what brings me back to this film. You get the standard Tarantino/Rodriguez touches — the hyperviolence, the clever language informed by '70s television, etc. But this film takes real risks, not the least of which is randomly throwing vampires into the mess after an hour of weird choices. This is what can happen if you are dumb, mean, or psychotic, the film seems to say. But this film also seems to tout the merits of self-reliance rather than some dipshit sparkly vampire bliggety blah.

Yes, blah blah blah, vampires possess some kind of romantic or sexual allure. Someone is always falling in love with a vampire, either in some trance or by choice. Here, that doesn't happen. This film is more about the mayhem and gore rather than the paranormal necrophilia of something like "True Blood" or the Twilight series. I prefer the mayhem. If vampires exist, this is probably what you'd get if you found a vampire bar out in the middle of nowhere. They don't have to be sneaky.

Ah, but tween girls don't line up to watch a movie with Cheech Marin as the vampire. You don't have HBO making an entire softcore porn series out of Mexican vampires in a truck stop/topless bar. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino weren't writing and selling gazillions of formulaic "paranormal romance" novels. Doesn't happen.

In defense of "True Blood," though, you do see them touching on social issues much more than in a film like From Dusk Till Dawn. Indeed, Rodriguez's film eschews political correctness, such as when George Clooney's character refers to the Asian character as a "Jap" when in fact the character is Chinese. (When corrected, Clooney's character says something along the lines of "Excuse the hell out of me.") This sort of apolitical correctness is present in most of Tarantino's films as well. Characters are often racist, sexist, etc. They want money, sex, alcohol, and other id-driven desires. These characters are not seeking some kind of sociopolitical redemption. They don't want to evolve.

From Dusk Till Dawn is not a great film (when I re-watch this one, I'm usually floored by how many bad, silly moments are here), but this is an interesting example of '90s cinema. My first look came in the mid-'90s, when everything Tarantino and Rodriguez did was "awesome" but no fanboy could explain why. Now, with some distance, context, and education, I can sort of articulate what's happening here — or at least, what I can make of this now. I like that.

The Frighteners

Lord of the Rings would not have happened without The Frighteners.

In Peter Jackson's introduction to this DVD release, he notes how many computers and hard drives WETA ended up with after post-production on The Frighteners — going from just one machine to something like 35.  What to do with all that technology?

That set WETA up to be one of the few digital effects houses in the world that could handle something like the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  When they finished The Frighteners, that's what they were thinking, too.

This film marks Michael J. Fox's last starring role in a live-action motion picture.  Although he went on to lead voice-acting roles in the Stuart Little pictures and supporting roles in a couple films and various television shows, this is pretty much the end of Michael J. Fox's career as a bankable lead actor.  There's a certain peace to be found in watching this film.  Like the Back to the Future trilogy, he's forever young(er) here.

Peter Jackson's career was a blind spot for me prior to film school.  My old roommate Justin sat me down in the summer of 2000 and made me watch Dead-Alive and The Frighteners.  I remember noting distinct stylistic similarities between the two films.  We might have watched them on separate days — I can't recall.  Justin was always making me watch a movie, and even though we eventually lost touch, I owe a lot to that guy for pushing me into unfamiliar movies.

I pushed myself into watching this one again today.

Here's a film that depicts a spectral serial killer who kills the living by inflicting heart attacks — squeezing the life out of his victims.  When characters die, we see a light tunnel open above them, and their spectral selves emerge from their bodies, and they ascend.

Yeah, that's a little hard to watch right now.  Pretty much anything about death is hard to watch since losing Mom, but I'm going ahead anyway.  What's harder is not getting back to normal things, like spending a Sunday afternoon watching a silly movie and writing.