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, we wish a happy 66th birthday to Texas’s greatest filmmaker, Richard Linklater!
That means that it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Films
Slacker (1991, dir by Richard Linklater)
Dazed and Confused (1993, dir by Richard Linklater)
2012’s Avalanche Sharks takes place during Spring Break.
Woo hoo! SPRIIIIIIIIING BREAAAAAAAK! If there’s anything that I truly miss about college, it’s Spring Break! What do you think about when you think about Spring Break? You think about the sun, You think about the days and the nights spent lazily lounging in a bikini. You think about the binge-drinking and the drug-taking and one night stands that you regret the next morning and the realization that you’re only young once.
Avalanche Sharks has all of that. It also has a lot of snow and also sharks.
SHARK BREAK! Woo hoo!
These aren’t any old sharks. These are ghost sharks that swim around in the snow and which pop out to eat the employees and guests of a ski resort. You may be asking yourself how a shark can swim in the snow and I’m not totally sure myself. It probably helps that they’re ghost sharks and not living sharks. Still, it seems like even a ghost shark would prefer the ocean. The film suggests that the sharks are the result of an ancient curse. It also suggests that the sharks are the result of global warming. I’m going to guess that it’s a combination. The ancient curse was reactivated by global warming. Either that or the ghost sharks escaped from a lab and there’s been a massive cover-up to try to keep people from discovering the truth. But, seriously, when has that ever happened?
The movie features the usual collection of characters whose names you will struggle to remember after the movie ends. (I struggled to remember them even before the movie ended.) It’s Spring Break, after all! Why go to the beach when you can just go to a ski resort and apparently spend several days sitting in a jacuzzi? The jacuzzi is a major location in this film and it’s also the film’s excuse to feature bikinis. Myself, I couldn’t help but notice that the characters who got in the jacuzzi apparently never got out, even to sleep. 72 hours in a jacuzzi is something you might do to win a car but it’s not necessarily a good idea when there are ghost sharks around.
“You are the sexiest Marine biologist I know,” one guy says at one point and that’s pretty much sets the standard for the film’s dialogue. The movie is quickly divided between those who know about the avalanche sharks and those who don’t but, to the film’s credit, knowledge does not equal safety. Just about anyone can and will get eaten by the sharks. Some of the gore is a bit icky. The start of the film features a skier suffering a rather serious injury and I briefly had to hide my eyes. That said, it also appears that the gore budget was used up early because the later effects aren’t quite as impressive. What is impressive is the performance of James Ouimet as crazy old Duffy. Duffy is the one who tells everyone that they’re doomed. He seeks revenge after losing his dog to the sharks. “LUNA!” he yells and you totally buy it.
As my friend Jim put it, this is a film the defies a traditional rating. Yes, it would be easy to dismiss it as being another shark movie but, at the same time, it’s so stupidly entertaining that you can’t help but watch. Someone somewhere once said, “Give them snow sharks!” and this film delivered. And for that, I say thank you.
I’ve never been that afraid of heights, but you’ll never catch me climbing up the side of a mountain or jumping out of a plane. I don’t have that daredevil gene that makes me want to do stuff like that. Back in 2023, our family visited Yellowstone, so we took a ride on the Beartooth Highway that runs through the Rocky Mountains in parts of Wyoming and Montana. As I was driving that gorgeous roadway, I will admit that I became quite “weak in the knees” a few times as I drove near some very steep edges. The more I think about it, I don’t really like heights that much, but I’m willing to deal with them as long as the payoff is awesome and the risk isn’t too crazy.
FALL is one of those movies that takes whatever fear of heights may be lurking beneath our surfaces and forces us to deal with them from the comforts of our own living rooms! I kept looking at my wife because it was hard for me to look at the screen, and my wife kept telling me her palms were sweating. This lady spent a decade as a flight medic, but she was still struggling.
The premise is about as simple as it gets. A year after a devastating mountain climbing tragedy, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) reluctantly agrees to climb an abandoned 2,000-foot television tower with her thrill-seeking, social-media obsessed best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner). Once they reach the top, the ladder collapses, leaving them stranded 200 stories above the desert with almost no supplies, no way to call for help, and only some vultures for company. This all happens in the first 30 minutes. For the remainder of the film’s 107-minute running time, the ladies will have to do whatever they can to survive.
The film succeeds because it understands exactly what it wants to be. This isn’t some deep character study about a person’s quest for the rediscovery of peace and happiness after unimaginable pain and suffering. No, this is all about creating tension, and sometimes nauseating tension at that. Every rusty rung and loose screw on the way up foreshadows the characters’ fate. Once they’re stuck at the tiny platform at the top, the camera constantly looks over the edge, forcing us to experience the mind-blowing heights and the growing desperation right alongside the characters. These are the scenes where I had to keep looking away to maintain my own sanity!
As you might imagine, this isn’t the most realistic movie in the world. It’s one of those movies that keeps setting you up to think something good is just about to happen only for things to continue to get worse. Then again, as an audience we know when watching these types of movies that things have to keep going wrong or the movie would be over way too soon. FALL definitely works best if you just go along for the tense ride, without thinking too much about some of the finer points. From that standpoint, I was able to really enjoy the film, even when some of the twists and turns along the way threatened to go too far.
I wasn’t really familiar with their prior work, but Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner do fine jobs in the lead roles. As the grief-stricken Becky, Currey does the heavy lifting as we see her go from being completely broken, to almost giving up hope, before finally finding the courage and resilience to battle for survival. As the free-spirited, certifiably insane Hunter, Gardner has plenty of enthusiasm and charisma. Once they’re stuck at the top, she also shows a lot of bravery as well. The movie spends almost its entire runtime with these two actresses, so their chemistry has to work, and it does. I’ve always liked Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and it was nice seeing him as Becky’s dad, even though it’s a small role.
One of the best things about movies is that they have the ability to take us places we would never go on our own. Not in a million years would I ever climb the rock cliff of a mountain or a 2000-foot TV tower. But FALL took me up that tower and made me feel something. It made me uncomfortable, it made me a little sick, and it made my hands sweat… and I liked it. And all from the comfort of my own living room.
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.
Happy birthday to my pre-code role model, the amazing Clara Bow!
4 Shots From 4 Clara Bow Films
It (1927, dir by Clarence G. Badger)
Wings (1928, dir by William Wellman)
Dangerous Curves (1929, dir by Lothar Mendes)
Call Her Savage (1932, dir by John Francis Dillon)
I woke up to the tragic news that Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Frames and the star of The Commitmentsand Once, was killed earlier in a motorcycle accident. He was 56 years old. In America, he’ll probably always be remembered for his enthusiastic and heartfelt speech after he was on Oscar for Best Original Song. I’ll always remember him for Once, one of the most wonderful romantic films ever made. Nearly 20 years after seeing the film, I still listen to the soundtrack.
2024’s Shark Warning opens with two boys playing on the beach. They’re brothers, and their uncle Ron (David Chokachi) is supposed to be watching them. However, Ron is more interested in having another beer than in watching his nephews. He walks away while they’re playing in the water. As soon as Ron leaves, a shark pops up and eats one of the kids. Well, these things happen up north….
Twenty years later, Alan Rogers (Andrew J. Katers), the brother who was not eaten, returns to his hometown. It’s been a rough few years for Alan. He’s haunted by the death of his younger brother and the sight of that shark. Alan says he’ll never forget that the shark had a scar above its eye. Still, Alan feels like it’s time for him to come back home and start doing something with his life. Of course, the first thing he does is punch out his Uncle Ron.
Ron says that he deserved to be punched, and he tries to reconnect with his nephew. Alan doesn’t want to have anything to do with Ron, but when a shark with a scar above its eye starts to eat the locals, Alan and Ron have no choice but to team up to get revenge!
Now, you may be asking why, after being absent for 20 years, the same shark would return to one particular fishing village. Well, blame the Mayor (Rebecca Ritz). The annual fishing festival is approaching. If the festival isn’t a hit, the town will go bankrupt. Unfortunately, the fish are being kept away from the village by a dam that was apparently built to keep the shark out. The Mayor pays someone to blow up a small portion of the dam so the fish can get through, but, unfortunately, the shark gets through as well. You just can’t trust small-town mayors!
You really have to feel bad for sharks. It’s true that sharks look fearsome and they’ve got those teeth that can pretty much bite through anything, but for the most part, sharks just swim around and eat whatever they run into. They don’t stalk people for years, despite what the movies tell us. Sharks are predators, but they’re not particularly mean-spirited about it. If you leave a shark alone, it will probably leave you alone as well. Even the Soul Surfer girl forgave that shark that bit off her arm because she knew it was nothing personal.
Unfortunately, due to the movies, people have a totally warped view of sharks and their personalities. That’s certainly the case with Shark Warning, which gives us a rather mean-spirited shark. That said, it’s an entertaining-enough film as long as you’re willing to accept the fact that it’s essentially just a low-budget remake of Jaws. It’s an Asylum film, and that pretty much tells you all there is to say about it. If you know, you know.
I did appreciate that one of the characters was named Lisa. Played by Angela Cole, Lisa owned the village’s most popular bar and sighed with frustration when her sister (Lauren Pike) decided to ditch work so she could go hang out at the beach. Both Cole and Pike were convincing in their roles. Even more importantly, from my perspective, is that I got to hear my name while watching the movie. That’s always nice. As for the rest of the cast, David Chokachi — who my sister and I nicknamed “The Bulge” when we last binged Baywatch (if you know, you know) — wasn’t particularly convincing as someone who had ever felt the slightest bit of angst, but he was still likable as Uncle Ron. I will give a shout-out to the actors who played the townspeople, especially the guy who failed to consider that the shark might bump his boat and break his bottle of strychnine. A real shark would never do that, but this is an Asylum shark!
In the end, the shark was definitely the hero of the film, and that’s the way things should be.
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, the Shattered Lens remembers director Andrew V. McLalgen, born 106 years ago on this day. It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Andrew V. McLaglen Films
McLintock! (1963, dir by Andrew V. McLaglen, DP: William H. Clothier)
Bandolero! (1968, dir by Andrew V. McLaglen, DP: WIlliam H. Clothier)
Hellfighters (1968, dir by Andrew McLaglen, DP: William H. Clothier)
Ffolkes (1980, dir by Andrew V. McLaglen, DP: Tony Imi)
Today is Hong Kong film star Donnie Yen’s 63rd birthday. The first time I remember seeing him on screen was in Yuen Woo-Ping’s 1993 film IRON MONKEY. He kicked butt then and he’s still kicking it to this day!
Celebrate with me by watching this clip from the martial arts classic!
Through the Shattered Lens 