4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we pay tribute to the year 1981 with….
4 Shots From 4 1981 Films
Christiane F. (1981, dir b Uli Edel, DP: Justus Pankau and Jürgen Jürges)
The Beyond (1981, dir by Lucio Fulci, DP; Sergio Salvati)
Escape From New York (1981, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Dean Cundey)
Today is actor William Forsythe’s 70th birthday. Forsythe is a good character actor, and I’ve always had a fondness for a movie he appeared in called STONE COLD, because it was partially filmed in the town of Conway, Arkansas, which is about seven miles from the house I grew up in. I even remember when they had the downtown blocked off so they could film their scenes. STONE COLD starred All-American football player Brian Bosworth, who was making his film debut. As was the norm back in those days, Forsythe played a really bad guy. So happy birthday, Mr. Forsythe! Enjoy!
Liam Neeson is John Ottway, a sharpshooter who works for an oil company in Alaska. His job is to protect the company’s employees from dangerous wildlife in the area. He’s flying with a group of his co-workers from a remote drilling site when the plane crashes out in the middle of nowhere. There’s a small group of survivors who must now face harsh weather conditions with very little supplies. If that isn’t bad enough, a pack of hungry wolves are after them. Ottway takes charge of the group and tries to lead them out of the remote, frozen wilderness to safety. As impossible as it all seems, it turns out to be even worse, and all of those lucky enough to survive the plane crash must try to come to terms with the difficult moments that lie ahead.
I’ll go ahead and say that THE GREY is my favorite film starring Liam Neeson. When I first saw the movie in the theater back in 2012, I was expecting more of a typical “man versus nature” survival thriller. I wasn’t expecting director Joe Carnahan to deliver a powerful story that would transcend its basic premise and force me to assess the meaning of my life! When I watch THE GREY, I think about the things that make my life meaningful, and if I truly appreciate those things. I think about my own mortality, and if I am living a life that makes a real difference to anyone. I think about the need to take advantage of every moment in my life, and I’m doing this while I’m watching a movie where men are desperately trying not to be eaten by big wolves. Carnahan pulls off this feat brilliantly! With that said, if you’re looking for mindless wall-to-wall action, THE GREY is probably not the movie for you. This is a thinking person’s film, and even though I wasn’t expecting that element when I first watched it, I love it!
Liam Neeson gives an incredible performance as a man who goes from being so emotionally damaged at the beginning of the film that he considers killing himself, to a man who’s willing to go one on one with a giant black alpha male wolf for one more chance at life! For a man who played Oskar Schindler, I don’t think Neeson has ever been better than he is in THE GREY. If you don’t get misty-eyed in the scene where he holds a man’s hand as he’s dying and talks him through his fear, then you must have a heart of stone. It’s a beautifully acted scene by Neeson and actor James Badge Dale. There are other good performances in the film, mainly from Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, and Dallas Roberts as the plane crash survivors that make it deep into the story with Neeson. Each of these actors have strong moments at different times. But make no mistake, Neeson’s performance is the backbone of the story and elevates THE GREY to something special.
Throughout the story, Neeson’s character recites a poem that was written by his father:
Once more into the fray, into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day, live and die on this day.
In THE GREY, we see various characters live their lives and face their deaths in different ways. While none of them wants to die, some fight harder for life than others. At the end of the day, we have to honestly ask ourselves… are our own lives really worth fighting for?
Welcome to the year 2293. Savages known as the Brutals live in a wasteland and worship a giant stone head named Zardoz, who comes out of the sky, tells them to shoot guns and not have sex, and then dumps hundreds of firearms on them. One Brutal, Zed (Sean Connery, wearing what appears to be a big red diaper) jumps into Zardoz’s mouth and discovers that Zardoz is actually a spaceship that is piloted by Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy). Zed shoots Arthur and then flies with Zardoz to the Vortex, where a bunch of overdressed and overaffected Immortals are having a perpetual garden party.
The Immortals, who can live forever because they’ve mentally learned how to slow the aging process, take an immediate interest in Zed. They want to know where Arthur is. Zed wants to explore the Vortex and learn what’s going on. The Immortals assign Zed to do menial tasks. Consuela (Charlotte Rampling) falls in love with Zed but keeps trying to kill him. If you could live forever, the film asks, wouldn’t you eventually want to die? I would not.
John Boorman, you nut! Boorman is one of the greatest directors ever, responsible for PointBlank, Deliverance, and Excalibur. Zardoz shows what happens when a great filmmaker falls so in love with his vision that no one can tell him that it’s not working. Zardoz is pure Boorman, obsessed with nature, curious about paganism, and cynical about religion. Boorman had something that he wanted to say about nature and humanity and he deserves a lot of credit for that. He had just directed Deliverance and could have had his pick of projects in 1974. He could have directed an action spectacular or he could have just gone home to Europe and counted his money. Instead, Boorman decided to go with a dream project that he had been trying to put together for years.
Did it work? No, it did not. A few stunning images (that stone head!) aside, the movie itself is slow and talky and Sean Connery, with his deep brogue, is miscast as Zed. (As Lisa said last night, “I’m glad to see Scotland survived the apocalypse.”) With his pony tail and his handle-bar mustache, Connery seemed like he was doing a dry run for his Highlander character. Charlotte Rampling is beautiful as Consuela and some viewers — mostly men — will appreciate her costumes, but the society of the Immortals is never as interesting as Boorman seems to think it is.
Zardoz is bad but still compelling because Boorman was so dedicated to whatever it was he thought the message of the movie was. Watch it with a bud and try to figure it out,
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today’s “4 Shots From 4 Films” celebrate the 73rd birthday of Liam Neeson!! Enjoy!
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting Horror of Party Beach!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 78th birthday to actor Robert Englund.
Englund will forever be identified with the horror genre and Freddy Krueger. That said, before he first played Krueger in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, he was a busy character actor who appeared in roles both big and small. He was considered for Star Wars. He even played some sympathetic characters!
Of course, he’s not particularly sympathetic in today’s scene that I love. Here he is in 1975’s Hustle, bringing his intense style to the small role of a thief who pulls a gun on Burt Reynolds. This scene stands out for both Englund’s menace and Reynolds’s trademark cool. Of course, if you’ve seen the film, you know what this scene is going to lead to. The 70s were a dark time!
When Johnny Hume was just a young boy, he witnessed his entire family being killed by a group of bandits led by the mysterious Cat. Johnny grows up to be a trick-shot artist but, despite his skill with a gun, he can’t stand to point it at anyone or to be near any sort of gunfights. When a fight breaks out in a saloon, he hides behind a bar and is labeled a coward.
Still, Johnny and his sidekick (Syd Saylor) somehow find the strength to run off a bunch of stagecoach robbers and save passenger Ethel Carson (Billie Seward). Johnny is offered a chance to become the new town marshal. Johnny, despite his fear of gunfights, accepts after he hears that the Cat is back in business. Johnny wants revenge but the Cat turns out to be not who he was expecting.
BrandedACoward may be a zero-budget Poverty Row western but it’s actually has an interesting story and a good (if not entirely unexpected) twist towards the end. Johnny Mack Brown was one of the better actors amongst the cowboys who starred in the westerns put out by PRC and directed by Sam Newfield. Brown does a good job portraying Johnny’s fear and also his determination to get justice for his family. Johnny proves he’s no coward but at what cost?
The plot here is a little darker than most of the westerns that were coming out at this time. Every Poverty Row western featured a comic relief sidekick but this might be the only to feature the sidekick getting killed. In the role of Oscar, Syd Saylor leaned very heavily on his fake stuttering shtick, to the extent that it actually got offensive. I wasn’t sorry to see his character go. Johnny Mack Brown didn’t need any help to get justice.
On Sunday, the Tonys will be handed out on and, if you want to watch the ceremony, it’ll be televised on CBS. However, if you’d just rather watch some movies about backstage life, I’ve got a few suggestions.
The Broadway Melody (1929) is a historically important film, in that it was the first sound film and the first musical to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The story is nothing special. Two sisters (Anita Page and Bessie Love) attempt to make the transition for Vaudeville to Broadway. One sister becomes a success and almost loses herself in the process. The other sister remains determined to become a star. Watching the film today, it’s obvious that the cast and the crew were still figuring out how to work with sound. That said, it’s a historical oddity and an interesting look at the film industry making the transition into the sound era. If you’re into that sort of thing — and I certainly am! — the film is now available on Tubi.
Far more entertaining is the same year’s Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929). Produced by MGM, HollywoodRevue features all of the MGM featured players showing off what they could do. It’s a plotless parade of variety acts, hosted by the suave Conrad Nagel and featuring everyone from Joan Crawford to Marion Davies to Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Lionel Barrymore, John Gilbert, and Jack Benny! The goal here was to not only show off MGM’s roster of stars but also to show audiences that MGM knew how make sound pictures. It’s actually a really fun little movie. The cast appears to be having fun and there’s something really enjoyable about seeing so many talented people all in one movie. It also features a song called Singin’ In The Rain. The film can be viewed on YouTube.
Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz (1979) is a masterpiece, following choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) as he directs both a film and a musical at the same time while popping pills, having heart attacks, and flirting with the Angel of Death (Jessica Lange). The scene where Gideon watches as his daughter and his girlfriend perform a dance routine that they’ve prepared for him is one of the most heartfelt moments that I’ve ever seen in a movie. The film’s surreal ending manages to be satirical, heart-breaking, oddly funny, and sad. Fosse based Gideon on himself and sadly, they both shared the same fate. It can be viewed on Tubi.
Finally, Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright (1987) is one of the best horror films to ever be set in a theater. Have you ever wondered why the victims in slasher films don’t just leave the house or the theater? Have you ever said, “Don’t split up, you idiots!” Well, in this one, everyone sticks together and everyone tries to leave and it doesn’t do a bit of good. (Unfortunately, their director has a cocaine problem.) This film has an absolutely brilliant opening sequence. I always laugh when the Marilyn Monroe look-alike starts playing the saxophone. The much-missed Giovanni Lombardo Radice has a small role. Director Soavi appears as a cop who asks, “Do you think I look like James Dean?” The film is on Tubi.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we pay tribute to the year 1944 with….
4 Shots From 4 1944 Films
Murder, My Sweet (1944, dir by Edward Dmytryk, DP: Harry J. Wild)
Double Indemnity (1944, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: John Seitz)
To Have and Have Not (1944, dir by Howard Hawks, DP: Sidney Hickox)
House of Frankenstein (1944, dir by Erle C. Kenton, DP: George Robinson)
Through the Shattered Lens