Tag Archives: Paramount Pictures

Film Review: Flight of the Intruder (dir. by John Milius)

Posted on by Arleigh

“I do know the difference between dying for something and dying for nothing.” — Jake Grafton

There is a difference between knowing how to fly into danger and knowing what that danger is supposed to accomplish. That gap gives Flight of the Intruder its most interesting material. John Milius’s 1991 war film follows men who trust their training, their aircraft, and each other far more than they trust the decisions sending them into combat. Adapted from Stephen Coonts’s novel of the same name, it mixes a story of wartime disillusionment with an old-fashioned action adventure. Those two sides do not always fit together, but the friction gives this uneven movie more personality than a routine military thriller.

Brad Johnson plays Lieutenant Jake Grafton, a Navy pilot flying an A-6 Intruder during the Vietnam War. When his bombardier is killed on a mission against a seemingly worthless target, Grafton begins questioning the purpose behind the daily cycle of takeoffs, bombing runs, and dangerous returns. He is not afraid of doing his job. He is angry that doing it well might make no difference. That distinction gives the character an accessible emotional foundation. Even when the screenplay pushes him toward predictable acts of rebellion, his initial frustration feels like something more substantial than the usual action hero’s dislike of authority.

The film’s central idea is that Grafton needs to recover a sense of purpose, but it gets into trouble when it starts treating that need as its own justification. His answer is an unauthorized strike against a missile depot in Hanoi, undertaken with veteran bombardier Virgil Cole. It is an exciting premise because the mission carries both military danger and personal consequences. As an answer to Grafton’s disillusionment, though, it feels suspiciously convenient. The movie raises difficult questions about waste and obedience, then suggests that choosing a better target might settle them. The action becomes clearer just as the thinking becomes fuzzier.

Johnson gives Grafton a restrained, earnest quality that generally suits the role. He looks comfortable playing someone who expresses himself more easily through work than conversation. That reserve helps sell the character’s professionalism, although it also limits the emotional impact of scenes that need him to reveal more. There are moments when Grafton seems less like a man struggling with grief than a leading man waiting for the next plot development. Johnson is never a fatal weakness, but he does not consistently provide the intensity needed to make every stage of Grafton’s transformation feel fully earned.

Willem Dafoe is much more immediately engaging as Cole. He brings an unpredictable edge that keeps their partnership from becoming a simple arrangement between an inexperienced hothead and a wise veteran. Cole has experience, certainly, but Dafoe makes that experience look potentially dangerous rather than automatically reassuring. His confidence suggests someone who has spent enough time around death to develop an unusual relationship with it. That gives his scenes with Johnson a welcome tension. Grafton wants reassurance that his anger means something, while Cole seems ready to turn that anger into action without offering much comfort about the consequences.

Danny Glover gives the movie another useful source of resistance as commanding officer Frank Camparelli. His job is partly to stand between frustrated men and the decisions they might make when frustration takes over. Glover brings enough authority to prevent Camparelli from feeling like a cardboard obstacle placed in the heroes’ path. You can understand why Grafton resents restrictions while also recognizing that somebody has to think beyond the emotional needs of one crew. The film is more interesting whenever it allows that disagreement to remain unresolved. It becomes less interesting when military discipline is treated mainly as something adventurous men must work around.

Once the aircraft leave the carrier, the movie becomes noticeably more assured. The cockpit sequences give the action a sense of process: these men have equipment to manage, threats to interpret, and very little time to make decisions. That practical detail makes the danger engaging. Instead of relying entirely on spectacle, the better scenes build suspense around what the crews can see, what they cannot see, and how quickly their situation might change. Some effects have aged better than others, but the flying still supplies the film’s strongest argument for watching it. Competence under pressure remains compelling even when the visuals look dated.

The ground-level material is considerably patchier. Drinking, banter, and romantic interludes are meant to show what these men do with the time between missions, but too much of it feels borrowed from other military movies. The romantic subplot involving Rosanna Arquette is especially thin, offering a softer side of Grafton without developing much emotional momentum of its own. These scenes should make the next flight matter more by showing what exists outside the cockpit. Instead, they sometimes make you impatient for another launch. The issue is not that a combat film needs constant action; its quieter moments simply need more individuality.

Milius is better at conveying loyalty than examining the assumptions behind it. The bonds between the aviators have weight, and the later rescue-centered action draws real energy from their refusal to abandon one another. Yet the film’s perspective stays narrow. Vietnamese lives remain largely outside its emotional focus, while American courage receives sustained attention. That imbalance matters because the story wants its heroes’ frustration to carry moral significance, not merely dramatic interest. It understands how war damages these men, but seems less curious about what their determination might cost anyone else. The result is emotionally direct without being especially searching.

By the end, Flight of the Intruder has made a stronger case for the men’s devotion to each other than for the decisions they make. That is both its saving grace and its limitation. Dafoe’s sharp presence, Glover’s authority, and the tense flying sequences give it enough substance to remain watchable through the slower stretches. Still, the film keeps reaching for complicated questions and accepting action-movie answers. It is worth seeing as an imperfect combat adventure, especially for its cockpit tension, but its most revealing moments occur when skill and courage stop being enough—when getting home safely cannot explain why the mission mattered.

Film Review: The Bridges at Toko-Ri (dir. by Mark Robson)

Posted on by Arleigh

“All through history, men have had to fight the wrong war in the wrong place, but that’s the one they’re stuck with.” — Rear Admiral George Tarrant

Mark Robson’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri looks like a straightforward military tribute, but it leaves a much more uncomfortable impression. There are aircraft carriers, daring pilots, and impressive combat sequences, yet the strongest feeling is how badly its central character wants to go home. This is a war movie about courage that never makes courage look easy or especially rewarding. Adapted from James A. Michener’s story, it balances admiration for servicemen with serious doubts about what their service costs. That ambivalence makes it more interesting than a simple flag-waving adventure.

William Holden plays Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, a Navy reservist recalled to combat during the Korean War after already serving in World War II. Back home, he has a law practice, a wife, and two daughters. He isn’t looking for another chance to prove himself. He feels he has already done his share, and his resentment gives the movie its emotional center. His assignment to help destroy heavily defended bridges becomes more than a dangerous mission: it represents the military’s claim on a life he thought belonged to him again.

Holden is a strong fit because he can make frustration feel contained rather than theatrical. Brubaker doesn’t need constant speeches to communicate exhaustion; his reluctance comes through in his guarded manner and conversations with Rear Admiral George Tarrant, played by Fredric March. Tarrant sees an excellent aviator and potential career officer, while Brubaker sees a civilian whose future keeps getting interrupted. Their disagreement gives the film a useful tension. Neither man is presented as a fool, but they clearly aren’t measuring the value of military service in quite the same way.

Grace Kelly’s Nancy Brubaker gives that tension a domestic dimension. The family’s reunion in Japan shows what Harry stands to lose, making the danger personal rather than abstract. Nancy initially wants distance from the frightening details of his work, but eventually insists that he tell her about the bridges and the risks involved. That shift matters: she becomes someone trying to face reality alongside him rather than simply a comforting image of home. The family interlude slows the action, but it also gives the action consequences. Without it, Harry would be another pilot in trouble.

The supporting material is less consistently effective. Mickey Rooney brings energy to helicopter rescue pilot Mike Forney, whose green hat and romantic troubles provide a broad change of pace. Some of that business feels like a detour from the more compelling drama, especially when the comedy leans heavily on his unruly personality. Still, the humor serves a purpose beyond filling time. It gives the military setting a sense of everyday life, reminding us that these men have interests and problems that exist outside their assignments. Rooney’s liveliness also provides a useful contrast to Holden’s tightly controlled anxiety.

Robson gets considerable mileage out of the physical business of naval aviation. Launching, landing, and keeping men and aircraft moving become sources of suspense before the major attack even begins. The Navy’s cooperation gave the production access to real carrier operations, and that material lends weight to the spectacle. The machinery looks impressive, but it also makes the men seem vulnerable: a damaged plane or a failed landing can turn routine procedure into disaster. The film’s Academy Award for special effects feels appropriate, although the technical achievement works best when it supports that vulnerability.

What makes The Bridges at Toko-Ri especially interesting is its willingness to accommodate anti-war feelings within a patriotic framework. It emerged during the Red Scare, when Hollywood blacklisting made suspected Communist associations professionally devastating and political dissent could invite accusations of disloyalty. It would be too sweeping to say every anti-war sentiment was automatically considered un-American, but the atmosphere certainly discouraged challenges to Cold War orthodoxy. Against that background, allowing a capable American serviceman to question why he must fight in Korea gives the film a striking edge. His unhappiness is not simply treated as cowardice.

That doesn’t make the movie an outright rejection of the war, though. Tarrant explicitly argues that America must resist Communism, and the production opens with a tribute to the Navy. Its unusual quality lies in the friction between that official justification and the emotional experience it depicts. The admiral can explain why the mission matters without making Brubaker’s predicament feel fair. For me, this is where the film’s anti-war undertones are strongest: not in a declaration that all fighting is pointless, but in its refusal to let strategic necessity erase individual suffering.

As the bridge assignment approaches, the film draws its strongest suspense from the gap between professional competence and private fear. Brubaker knows how to do his job; that doesn’t mean he can switch off his awareness of everything riding on it. Robson makes that distinction count without needing to turn every conversation into a debate. There are dated comic passages and occasional stretches of stiff dialogue, but the central conflict remains compelling. The Bridges at Toko-Ri can admire military skill and still question the demands placed on the people who possess it. That tension gives its action an emotional weight that outlasts the spectacle.

Horror Film Review: Zodiac (dir. by David Fincher)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it’s not true.” — Robert Graysmith

There’s a particular kind of dread in watching capable people do everything they can and still come up short. That’s the feeling David Fincher taps into throughout Zodiac, a movie where a promising lead can be almost as unnerving as a dead end. Every possibility raises hopes, invites scrutiny, and threatens to pull someone deeper into a mystery that refuses to settle. Released in 2007, it’s a remarkably absorbing thriller about a serial killer, but it’s just as interested in the people left sorting through his damage. Catching him is the goal. Living with the failure to catch him becomes the story.

The film approaches the Zodiac investigation through three men with different relationships to the case. Newspaper cartoonist Robert Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, becomes fascinated by its puzzles. Crime reporter Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr., follows it professionally, while police inspector Dave Toschi, played by Mark Ruffalo, works to build a prosecutable case. James Vanderbilt’s screenplay, adapted from Graysmith’s books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked, lets their paths overlap without making them a conventional crime-solving team. They share information and frustrations, but their responsibilities, methods, and personal stakes aren’t interchangeable. That distinction gives the investigation texture.

Although Zodiac isn’t a typical horror movie, its story and themes firmly belong in serial-killer horror. The fear comes from more than what happens at individual crime scenes. This is an entire region being terrorized by someone whose next move nobody can reliably predict. His letters extend that fear into homes and workplaces, keeping the possibility of another attack alive. The authorities appear almost helpless to provide reassurance, despite their efforts. Fincher doesn’t reduce that helplessness to incompetence. The disturbing point is that people can work diligently, follow procedures, and pursue credible leads without gaining the power to prevent another killing.

The early attacks make that threat feel horribly concrete. Fincher doesn’t treat the victims as disposable figures whose only purpose is to establish how dangerous the killer is. There’s an uncomfortable attention to their vulnerability, especially during the Lake Berryessa sequence. Its daylight setting strips away the familiar suggestion that darkness is what makes a place unsafe. Everything is visible, yet visibility offers no protection. The pacing is agonizing because it allows the situation to become clear without offering an escape from it. Rather than making the violence exciting, Fincher makes it something you want desperately to interrupt.

Once the film turns toward the investigation, it finds suspense in the distance between a discovery and a usable answer. Handwriting comparisons, witness descriptions, phone calls, and jurisdictional obstacles become compelling because their consequences are clear. A detail might matter enormously, but only if someone can verify it or connect it to something stronger. Fincher gets you invested in that process without making it look smooth. Information arrives late, recollections complicate things, and apparent breakthroughs lose their shape. The movie keeps generating momentum, then showing how easily that momentum can disappear. Progress is possible, but it’s never secure.

Ruffalo gives that uncertainty a persuasive human center. His Toschi is smart, engaged, and occasionally funny, but he isn’t presented as a detective whose instincts automatically outrank the evidence. He can suspect someone without possessing what he needs to move forward. Ruffalo makes that limitation frustrating without turning every setback into a speech. A tired expression or clipped response often carries the scene. His performance also gives the procedural material an emotional foundation: this isn’t paperwork for its own sake. It’s the work standing between an investigator’s conviction and the possibility of holding someone accountable.

Downey’s Avery brings a looser, more abrasive rhythm to the film. He’s comfortable with a cutting remark, and his humor initially makes him seem insulated from the ugliness he covers. Gradually, that apparent insulation wears thin. Downey lets the character’s wit remain recognizable even as the confidence behind it becomes less convincing. It’s an effective performance because the deterioration doesn’t feel like a separate dramatic subplot pasted onto the investigation. It grows out of his involvement. Avery’s trajectory also makes Graysmith’s increasing enthusiasm uneasy to watch. One man is getting pulled in while another shows the damage that involvement can leave behind.

Gyllenhaal handles Graysmith’s transformation with similar care. His curiosity starts out as something approachable: he likes puzzles, notices details, and wants people to take his observations seriously. Those qualities don’t vanish when his interest becomes obsession. They simply stop having sensible limits. Gyllenhaal makes it easy to understand the appeal of another conversation or another possible connection, even when the cost becomes obvious. The family scenes matter because they expose what the investigation can obscure. Time spent chasing the case is also time taken from people who need him, and being sincere doesn’t make him less capable of neglect.

Fincher’s control is evident in how naturally the movie makes years accumulate. The period setting feels functional rather than decorative, and the changing dates gradually become reminders of how much life this investigation consumes. Even the suspense changes character. Early fear of an attack develops into anxiety about what might have been missed or misunderstood. The basement sequence brings those feelings together beautifully. Graysmith goes looking for information, only to find himself questioning the safety of the room he’s standing in. It’s a genuinely frightening scene built around uncertain knowledge rather than a clear, visible threat.

The deliberate approach does have drawbacks. The volume of names and disputed details can become tiring, and viewers looking for a steadily escalating chase may find the later stretches repetitive. The shift toward Graysmith also sacrifices some of the balance that makes the earlier sections so engaging. There’s another tension worth keeping in mind: the film’s dramatic investment in a suspect isn’t the same as definitive proof. Its storytelling can make an interpretation feel persuasive without resolving every doubt. That distinction matters in a movie so concerned with how easily the desire for an answer can outrun the available evidence.

What makes Zodiac exceptional is that it never lets the investigation become separate from the lives carrying it. The suspense isn’t only about whether someone will find the right clue; it’s about what another year of searching will do to them. Fincher delivers frightening scenes, excellent performances, and an engrossing procedural, but the cumulative effect is more troubling than any single moment. The killer doesn’t need to remain constantly on-screen to dominate the movie. His absence leaves room for suspicion, fear, and unfinished business to spread—and for everyone else to discover how little control they have over where it ends.

Guilty Pleasure No. 129: Congo (dir. by Frank Marshall)

Posted on by Arleigh

Congo is the kind of movie that makes perfect sense as a guilty pleasure because it is always hovering just above the level of complete nonsense, yet it has enough energy and conviction to remain enormously watchable. Directed by Frank Marshall, the 1995 film turns Michael Crichton’s jungle-thriller premise into a sprawling mixture of monster movie, treasure hunt, corporate conspiracy, technological anxiety, and old-fashioned adventure serial. It is loud, messy, often ridiculous, and loaded with moments that should not work at all. But that is the pleasure of Congo: it commits so completely to its bizarre material that the movie becomes difficult to dislike.

The setup is wonderfully overstuffed. A corporate expedition disappears while searching for a legendary diamond mine in the Congo, apparently after encountering some mysterious, deadly force. At the same time, primatologist Peter Elliot is preparing to return Amy, a gorilla he has raised and taught sign language, to the wild. Amy has recurring dreams—or perhaps memories—of a strange jungle city, and she communicates through a glove that translates her signs into a robotic voice. Before long, Peter, Amy, corporate representative Karen Ross, Romanian explorer Herkermer Homolka, and a mercenary guide named Captain Munro Kelly are all headed toward the same lost city, where diamonds, ancient ruins, and murderous white gorillas await.

That synopsis alone explains why Congo has developed such a devoted guilty-pleasure reputation. It is a movie where satellites, laser weapons, genetically engineered guard apes, corporate greed, sign-language research, volcanoes, and ancient African mythology all exist in the same story without anyone pausing to question the sheer overload of it. The movie treats every development with sincere urgency, even when the audience is watching Amy the gorilla say “Amy good gorilla” through a computerized voice device. It is impossible not to admire the confidence. Congo never winks at the audience, never admits that its premise is wild, and never cuts itself down to a more manageable size. It simply keeps adding more adventure-movie ingredients until the whole thing becomes strangely hypnotic.

Laura Linney’s Karen Ross and Dylan Walsh’s Peter Elliot are meant to anchor all of that craziness, but they are also among the film’s blandest elements. Linney is a talented actress, and she brings a professional focus to Karen’s corporate mission, but the character is written in such functional terms that she rarely feels like more than the person carrying the plot’s technological and business-related exposition. Karen is competent, determined, and occasionally vulnerable, but she never develops a particularly distinctive personality. Linney plays her with a seriousness that fits the film’s overall tone, yet that seriousness can make her feel oddly distant. She is there to make sure the satellite plot, the diamond plot, and the rescue plot keep moving, rather than to provide much spark on her own.

Walsh has an even tougher assignment as Peter. He is essentially the emotional center of Amy’s story, and the film needs the audience to believe in his paternal, almost codependent relationship with her. But Peter is such a mild, generic protagonist that he often gets swallowed by the movie’s more eccentric ideas. Walsh is not bad, exactly; he is simply too subdued for a film filled with volcanic eruptions, killer gorillas, and Tim Curry speaking every line as though he is announcing the end of civilization. His performance has a sincere gentleness that helps the scenes with Amy, but it also makes him feel like he wandered in from a quieter, more conventional family adventure. When the movie becomes bigger and stranger, Peter’s personality does not expand with it.

That blandness becomes especially noticeable because Ernie Hudson and Tim Curry are having such an obviously fantastic time in their roles. Hudson plays Captain Munro Kelly with the relaxed confidence of someone who knows he is the coolest person in the room. Munro is a professional guide, a fighter, a pilot, and a survivor, but Hudson does not turn him into a grim action-movie cliché. He gives the character humor, charisma, and a reassuring calm under pressure. Whenever the group faces another disaster—whether it is hostile terrain, dangerous animals, mercenaries, or the increasingly unhinged situation inside the lost city—Hudson makes Munro feel like the one person who might actually know what he is doing.

Hudson’s performance also gives Congo a sense of fun that the central characters sometimes lack. He has an easy screen presence, and he seems to understand that the film works best when it leans into the pleasures of a grand, pulpy adventure. Munro is not a particularly deep character, but Hudson makes him memorable through timing, attitude, and sheer likability. The movie becomes livelier whenever he takes charge, whether he is negotiating with people in the field or calmly reacting to another completely absurd revelation. If Karen and Peter are the story’s functional leads, Munro is the character who gives the audience someone to enjoy following.

Then there is Tim Curry as Herkermer Homolka, who delivers what can only be described as a masterclass in hammy, scenery-chewing entertainment. Curry does not merely play Homolka; he devours the role with a kind of operatic enthusiasm. Every line is delivered in his grand Romanian accent with the force of a proclamation, and every gesture suggests that Homolka believes he is the hero of the greatest expedition in history. Curry appears to be enjoying himself so much that it becomes infectious. He is not interested in realism, restraint, or subtle characterization. He is there to make every scene larger, louder, and more theatrical.

Homolka is already a ridiculous figure on the page: a pompous explorer with a famous family name, an exaggerated ego, and a dramatic flair that makes him seem less like a real adventurer than a flamboyant villain from a lost serial. Curry recognizes that the only correct way to play him is at maximum volume. His performance turns every bit of dialogue into an event. He gives the impression that he has spent years preparing speeches for this exact jungle expedition, waiting for the chance to announce his discoveries to the world. Even when Homolka is making selfish or foolish decisions, Curry makes him too entertaining to hate.

The contrast between Curry and the more restrained leads is one of the reasons Congo feels so odd. Linney and Walsh approach the material with a level of seriousness that suggests they are trying to preserve some emotional credibility. Hudson and Curry, by contrast, seem to recognize that credibility is not really the point. Hudson brings a cool, knowing charm, while Curry turns the movie into a one-man theatrical spectacle whenever he appears. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but the difference creates a tonal imbalance. The film’s heroes feel flat because its supporting players are so much more alive.

The killer gorillas, of course, are another major source of the film’s guilty-pleasure appeal. These are not normal gorillas defending their territory. They are pale, vicious creatures bred to protect the diamond city of Zinj, and they attack with the exaggerated menace of monsters in a haunted-house ride. The effects have not aged gracefully. The suits and animatronics are visible, the movements can be stiff, and the creatures are often more amusing than frightening. Yet they remain memorable because the movie gives them a distinct, nightmarish look: white fur, glowing eyes, sharp teeth, and sudden appearances from dark corridors or jungle fog.

Frank Marshall directs the action with enough pace and polish to keep Congo from collapsing under the weight of its own silliness. The jungle setting, the ruined city, the expedition equipment, the satellite imagery, and the volcanic finale all give the movie a bigger sense of scale than its reputation might suggest. It feels like a genuine studio blockbuster from a time when Hollywood would spend serious money on an unapologetically strange idea. The film is not elegant, and it is certainly not believable, but it is never boring for long.

As a conventional adventure movie, Congo is uneven. Its African setting is often treated as a vague, dangerous backdrop, and its plot is overloaded with enough corporate jargon and techno-babble to distract from the more entertaining monster-movie material. But as a guilty pleasure, it is hard to beat. The movie is too bizarre to be generic and too sincere to feel cynical. Laura Linney and Dylan Walsh may be stuck playing bland characters at the center of the chaos, but Ernie Hudson and especially Tim Curry make the journey worth taking. Curry’s performance alone is a treasure: a joyous, magnificent display of overacting that turns Congo from a merely strange blockbuster into something genuinely unforgettable.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

  1. Half-Baked
  2. Save The Last Dance
  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
  4. The Jeremy Kyle Show
  5. Invasion USA
  6. The Golden Child
  7. Final Destination 2
  8. Paparazzi
  9. The Principal
  10. The Substitute
  11. Terror In The Family
  12. Pandorum
  13. Lambada
  14. Fear
  15. Cocktail
  16. Keep Off The Grass
  17. Girls, Girls, Girls
  18. Class
  19. Tart
  20. King Kong vs. Godzilla
  21. Hawk the Slayer
  22. Battle Beyond the Stars
  23. Meridian
  24. Walk of Shame
  25. From Justin To Kelly
  26. Project Greenlight
  27. Sex Decoy: Love Stings
  28. Swimfan
  29. On the Line
  30. Wolfen
  31. Hail Caesar!
  32. It’s So Cold In The D
  33. In the Mix
  34. Healed By Grace
  35. Valley of the Dolls
  36. The Legend of Billie Jean
  37. Death Wish
  38. Shipping Wars
  39. Ghost Whisperer
  40. Parking Wars
  41. The Dead Are After Me
  42. Harper’s Island
  43. The Resurrection of Gavin Stone
  44. Paranormal State
  45. Utopia
  46. Bar Rescue
  47. The Powers of Matthew Star
  48. Spiker
  49. Heavenly Bodies
  50. Maid in Manhattan
  51. Rage and Honor
  52. Saved By The Bell 3. 21 “No Hope With Dope”
  53. Happy Gilmore
  54. Solarbabies
  55. The Dawn of Correction
  56. Once You Understand
  57. The Voyeurs 
  58. Robot Jox
  59. Teen Wolf
  60. The Running Man
  61. Double Dragon
  62. Backtrack
  63. Julie and Jack
  64. Karate Warrior
  65. Invaders From Mars
  66. Cloverfield
  67. Aerobicide 
  68. Blood Harvest
  69. Shocking Dark
  70. Face The Truth
  71. Submerged
  72. The Canyons
  73. Days of Thunder
  74. Van Helsing
  75. The Night Comes for Us
  76. Code of Silence
  77. Captain Ron
  78. Armageddon
  79. Kate’s Secret
  80. Point Break
  81. The Replacements
  82. The Shadow
  83. Meteor
  84. Last Action Hero
  85. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
  86. The Horror at 37,000 Feet
  87. The ‘Burbs
  88. Lifeforce
  89. Highschool of the Dead
  90. Ice Station Zebra
  91. No One Lives
  92. Brewster’s Millions
  93. Porky’s
  94. Revenge of the Nerds
  95. The Delta Force
  96. The Hidden
  97. Roller Boogie
  98. Raw Deal
  99. Death Merchant Series
  100. Ski Patrol
  101. The Executioner Series
  102. The Destroyer Series
  103. Private Teacher
  104. The Parker Series
  105. Ramba
  106. The Troubles of Janice
  107. Ironwood
  108. Interspecies Reviewers
  109. SST — Death Flight
  110. Undercover Brother
  111. Out for Justice
  112. Food Wars!
  113. Cherry
  114. Death Race
  115. The Beast Within
  116. Girl Series
  117. Gone in 60 Seconds
  118. Swordfish
  119. Marked For Death
  120. The Internship
  121. The Angry Red Planet
  122. 2012
  123. Old School
  124. No Escape
  125. In Death Series
  126. Alligator
  127. Little Annie Fanny
  128. Wicked Wanda

Review: Zulu (dir. by Cy Endfield)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us. — Color Sergeant Frank Bourne

Cy Endfield’s Zulu is one of those old-fashioned war films that earns its epic reputation less through grand speeches or sentimental manipulation than through patience, physical detail, and an almost brutally simple premise: a small British force at Rorke’s Drift must hold its position against a vastly larger Zulu army. Released in 1964 and set during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, the film takes a historical event that could easily have become a stiff patriotic pageant and turns it into something tense, visually overwhelming, and surprisingly measured for its era. It is certainly built around British soldiers as its main point of identification, and it cannot fully escape the colonial framing of its story, but it gives the Zulu fighters a degree of discipline, courage, and humanity that many comparable films of the period would have denied them.

The opening has a deliberately sober quality. Before the siege gets underway, Endfield establishes the aftermath of the British disaster at Isandlwana, an event that hangs heavily over every decision made at the isolated mission station. Lieutenant John Chard, played by Stanley Baker, is not introduced as an obvious hero. He is an engineer officer who finds himself unexpectedly in command, unsure of what authority he truly has and visibly aware that the situation may be hopeless. Michael Caine, in one of his early major roles, plays Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead as the more aristocratic and initially dismissive counterpart. Their relationship is a familiar clash of temperaments, but the actors keep it from becoming too cartoonish. Baker gives Chard a practical, weary steadiness, while Caine makes Bromhead’s pride feel like both a weakness and a defense mechanism.

What makes Zulu work so well is how clearly it understands the mechanics of a siege. The film takes time to show men sorting supplies, moving mealie bags, organizing firing lines, reinforcing walls, and deciding which buildings can or cannot be held. That attention to logistics gives the action real weight. When the Zulu army finally appears along the hillsides, it is not just a cue for spectacle. It is the moment when every earlier decision becomes frighteningly important. The defenders are not winning through superhuman skill; they are surviving because they build, adapt, reload, retreat, and improvise faster than the situation can collapse around them.

Endfield’s command of scale is still impressive. The broad South African landscapes make the station seem tiny and exposed, while the formations of Zulu warriors moving across the terrain have a force that CGI-heavy battle scenes often struggle to recreate. The action is not especially graphic by contemporary standards, but it is physically convincing. Bodies fall, rifles jam, ammunition runs low, and the walls that seemed secure a few minutes earlier suddenly look inadequate. The battles have a clean visual geography as well. You can generally understand where the soldiers are positioned, where the attacks are coming from, and why a breach in one area threatens everyone else. That clarity is a major reason the film remains so watchable.

The Zulu warriors are filmed with genuine awe. They are the opposition in a military sense, but the movie rarely treats them as faceless monsters. Their attacks are coordinated, their persistence is formidable, and the British soldiers repeatedly acknowledge their courage. One of the film’s strongest ideas is that the men on both sides are forced to recognize the ability of the other. The final exchange of salutes is still powerful because it does not feel like a cheap declaration that war is noble. Instead, it feels like exhausted recognition after a catastrophe that has demanded terrible losses from everyone involved.

The film deserves credit for this, particularly considering the era in which it was made, although it still gives the Zulu perspective far less interiority than the British one. Individual British soldiers receive backstories, doubts, comic beats, and personal arcs; the Zulu fighters are mainly presented as a collective force. That limitation matters because the actual Anglo-Zulu War was not simply a neutral contest between two equally situated military forces. It occurred within the larger reality of British colonial expansion, and the film only lightly touches the political forces that made the battle possible. Zulu is more respectful than many older war movies, but it is not free of the assumptions of its time.

The historical side of Zulu is one of its most interesting qualities. The film does a very good job at historical accuracy, which is a rarity for films depicting real-life historical events, especially in the way it presents the basic structure of the defense at Rorke’s Drift: a badly outnumbered British garrison fortifying the station and enduring repeated Zulu assaults. Its investment in terrain, formations, material conditions, and the general progression of the battle makes the event feel researched rather than casually invented. The staging has a sense of military procedure that helps sell the defense as something grounded in a real crisis rather than merely a legend inflated for the screen.

That said, the characterization of the historical people involved was not as accurate, which is where the dramatic license comes in. The most famous example is Private Henry Hook, played with rough comic energy by James Booth. In the film, Hook begins as an unruly alcoholic and apparent coward before proving himself under fire. The real Henry Hook was a disciplined soldier and a teetotaler, making the movie version an almost total reinvention built around the satisfying “unlikely hero” arc. Bromhead is also simplified into a more inexperienced upper-class officer than the historical man appears to have been, while Colour Sergeant Bourne is made into a weathered older veteran despite having been only 24 at the time. These choices make sense as storytelling devices, but they are worth recognizing because they shape the viewer’s emotional understanding of the people involved.

There are other liberties that are harder to overlook once you know the history. The film presents the 24th Regiment as strongly Welsh and builds toward the memorable use of “Men of Harlech,” even though the regiment was not formally the South Wales Borderers at the time and the song was not its regimental song during the battle. The famous singing exchange between the defenders and the Zulus is also pure cinema rather than a recorded historical occurrence. It is a great scene on its own terms—moving, tense, and an effective pause before the final strain of the battle—but it also shows how Zulu turns history into myth. The movie is at its best when its embellishments intensify the human stakes without pretending that they are literal fact.

The performances throughout are solid, even when the writing leans into broad types. Stanley Baker holds the center with quiet authority, avoiding the temptation to make Chard a conventionally inspirational leader. Michael Caine is more visibly theatrical, but that suits Bromhead’s gradual shift from aloofness to responsibility. Jack Hawkins brings warmth and moral conviction to Reverend Witt, while Nigel Green’s Colour Sergeant Bourne provides the hard military backbone of the defense. James Booth is entertaining as Hook, even if the character’s historical distortion is unfortunate. The ensemble works because the film makes room for fear, resentment, class tension, and stubborn professionalism. These men do not suddenly become perfect comrades; they simply realize they have no choice but to depend on one another.

John Barry’s score deserves mention too. The music has the grandeur expected from a film of this size, but it does not overwhelm every scene with triumph. It often emphasizes rhythm and mounting pressure instead, helping the battle feel like a sustained ordeal. The sound of rifle fire, shouted commands, and the Zulu war chants combines with the score to create an atmosphere that is both stirring and unnerving. Even viewers who know the outcome can feel the uncertainty of each new attack because the film never lets the defense seem comfortably under control.

Ultimately, Zulu is a compelling and visually magnificent war film that remains worth watching precisely because it is not as simple as its reputation might suggest. It can be thrilling without being entirely celebratory, respectful without being fully equitable, and historically attentive without being historically pure. Its battle reconstruction is unusually convincing, while its treatment of real individuals often bends the truth to create clearer dramatic roles. That tension is part of what makes the film so fascinating. It is a classic piece of large-scale filmmaking, anchored by memorable performances and superb action staging, but it is also a reminder that even a relatively careful historical movie can turn real people and complex colonial history into a more streamlined story. Zulu does not offer the final word on Rorke’s Drift, but as cinema, it remains tough, exciting, and far more thoughtful than a standard war spectacle.

Review: The Hunted (dir. by William Friedkin)

Posted on by Arleigh

“Once you are able to kill mentally, the physical part will be easy. The difficult part… is learning how to turn it off.” — L.T. Bonham

The Hunted (2003) is one of those films that feels like it slipped through the cracks of early 2000s cinema—a gritty, atmospheric thriller directed by William Friedkin, a filmmaker whose name alone should’ve guaranteed more attention. Friedkin, the man behind The French Connection and The Exorcist, has always had a knack for tension and raw, almost documentary-like realism, and The Hunted carries that same DNA. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a fascinating one, a slow-burn chase film that trades explosive set pieces for mood, character, and a kind of existential dread that lingers long after the credits roll.

The story follows L.T. Bonham, a former survival instructor played by Tommy Lee Jones, who’s called back to help the authorities when a series of brutal murders points to a former student of his, Aaron Hallam, played by Benicio del Toro. Hallam, a highly trained assassin, has gone rogue, and Bonham is the only one who can track him down. The premise is simple, almost minimalist: two men, one hunting the other, with the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest serving as their battleground. There’s no grand conspiracy, no world-ending stakes—just a personal, almost primal duel between mentor and protégé. The film’s strength lies in its refusal to overcomplicate things. It’s a character study disguised as a thriller, and it’s all the better for it.

What’s immediately striking about The Hunted is its pacing. Friedkin doesn’t rush. The film takes its time establishing Bonham’s world—a quiet, isolated life in the woods, where he trains soldiers in the art of survival and combat. There’s a sense of routine, of discipline, and when Hallam re-enters his life, it’s not with a bang but with a whisper. The first act is deliberate, almost meditative, as Bonham pieces together the clues and realizes the man he’s after isn’t just any killer, but someone he once shaped. This isn’t a film about action for action’s sake. It’s about the weight of violence, the cost of skill, and the thin line between hunter and hunted.

Benicio del Toro is the standout here. Hallam is a role that could’ve easily been reduced to a one-dimensional villain, but del Toro imbues him with a quiet, unsettling intensity. There’s a scene early on where Hallam, having just committed a particularly gruesome murder, calmly walks away from the crime scene, his face a mask of detached focus. It’s chilling not because he’s raging or unhinged, but because he’s so controlled. Hallam isn’t a monster in the traditional sense; he’s a man who’s been trained to kill and has embraced that role with terrifying efficiency. Del Toro plays him with a stillness that’s unnerving, his eyes always calculating, always three steps ahead. It’s a performance that relies more on presence than dialogue, and it’s one of his most underrated.

Tommy Lee Jones, on the other hand, is a different kind of compelling. Bonham is a man of few words, a hardened veteran who’s seen too much to be rattled by much. Jones, with his gravelly voice and weathered demeanor, sells the role of a man who’s spent a lifetime in the shadows. There’s a weariness to him, a sense that he’s not just chasing Hallam to stop the killings, but to confront his own past. The dynamic between the two is electric, even when they’re not in the same scene. Their eventual face-to-face encounters crackle with tension, not because of what they say, but because of what they don’t. These are two men who understand each other on a level that most people never will, and that mutual recognition makes their conflict all the more tragic.

Friedkin’s direction is, as always, masterful in its restraint. He’s never been one for flashy camerawork or overly stylized shots, and The Hunted is no exception. The cinematography is stark and functional, emphasizing the cold, unforgiving landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The forests, rivers, and small towns feel like characters in their own right, vast and indifferent to the human drama unfolding within them. There’s a scene where Bonham and a local sheriff, played by Connie Nielsen, track Hallam through the woods. The camera lingers on the trees, the mud, the rain—details that ground the film in a tangible, almost tactile reality. It’s not just a chase; it’s a test of endurance, both physical and psychological.

The film shares some striking thematic ground with First Blood, another story about soldiers haunted by what they’ve seen and done in war. Both films explore men who are not just racked with guilt but suffering from PTSD, their minds fractured by the horrors of combat. But where First Blood ultimately offered a glimmer of hope—that understanding and redemption might be possible—The Hunted takes a far bleaker view. Bonham and Hallam aren’t just damaged; they’re broken in ways that can’t be fixed. Hallam, in particular, represents the idea that some soldiers simply cannot come back from the brink of their experiences. There’s no catharsis for him, no moment of clarity or salvation. The film suggests that for some, the training and the trauma run too deep, and the only way out is through violence. It’s a brutal, unflinching perspective that sets The Hunted apart from more sentimental takes on the same themes.

The film’s action sequences, when they do arrive, are brutal and concise. There’s no shaky cam or rapid editing here—Friedkin lets the violence unfold in long, unflinching takes. A knife fight in a motel room is particularly memorable, not for its choreography, but for its rawness. It’s messy, desperate, and over in seconds. There’s no glorification, no slow-motion heroics. Just two men trying to kill each other in the most efficient way possible. It’s a far cry from the hyper-stylized action of the era, and it’s all the more effective for it.

Unfortunately, the film’s strengths are bogged down by its weaknesses, particularly in how it handles its secondary characters. The supporting cast, including Connie Nielsen as the sheriff, often feel thinly written, existing primarily as obstacles to delay the inevitable showdown between Bonham and Hallam. Their motivations and personalities are barely sketched out, making them feel more like narrative speed bumps than fully realized people. It’s frustrating because the film’s core dynamic is so compelling that these underdeveloped side characters only serve to slow down the momentum. And despite its brisk 90-plus minute runtime, The Hunted still manages to drag at times. The deliberate pacing that works so well in establishing atmosphere starts to feel indulgent when the story isn’t moving forward, leaving the audience waiting for the next meaningful interaction between its two leads.

If The Hunted has other weaknesses, it’s that it might be a little too restrained for some viewers. The slow burn won’t be for everyone, especially in an era where audiences have come to expect constant stimulation. The film demands patience, and those who aren’t willing to meet it on its terms might find it dull. There are also moments where the plot feels a bit thin, as if Friedkin and screenwriter Art Monterastelli were more interested in atmosphere than narrative complexity. But that’s also part of its charm. The Hunted isn’t trying to be a puzzle-box thriller or a high-octane spectacle. It’s a mood piece, a meditation on violence and the men who wield it.

The ending, without spoiling too much, is ambiguous in a way that feels true to the film’s themes. There’s no neat resolution, no easy answers. It’s a conclusion that lingers, forcing the audience to sit with the uncomfortable questions it raises. Is justice served? Is Hallam truly defeated, or is he just the first of many? The film doesn’t provide answers, and that’s to its credit. It’s more interested in the journey than the destination, in the hunt rather than the catch. While First Blood left room for healing, The Hunted closes the door on that possibility for some, reinforcing its bleak worldview.

In the grand scheme of Friedkin’s filmography, The Hunted might not rank alongside his most iconic works, but it’s a fascinating entry in his body of work. It’s a film that feels out of time, both in its style and its themes. Released in 2003, it arrived in a cinematic landscape dominated by CGI spectacle and franchise filmmaking, and it’s easy to see why it didn’t make a bigger splash at the time. But for those willing to seek it out, The Hunted is a hidden gem—a tense, thought-provoking thriller that rewards patience and close attention. It’s a film about the cost of violence, the weight of the past, and the thin line between the hunter and the hunted. And in an era where action movies often prioritize style over substance, its grounded, no-nonsense approach feels like a breath of fresh air.

Review: War of the Worlds (dir. by Steven Spielberg)

Posted on by Arleigh

“This is not a war any more than there’s a war between men and maggots… This is an extermination.” — Harlan Ogilvy

When looking back at the vast filmography of Steven Spielberg, science fiction usually evokes a sense of sweeping wonder, starry-eyed optimism, or at the very least, a deeply felt humanism. Films like Close Encounters of the Third Kindand E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial taught generations to look at the stars with hope rather than dread. Even when things took a darker turn in Jurassic Park or the neon-drenched corridors of Minority Report, there remained a foundational thrill—a cinematic ride that ultimately leaves the audience exhilarated. However, his 2005 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel, War of the Worlds, stands as a radically different beast altogether. It is arguably the bleakest, most claustrophobic blockbuster Spielberg ever directed, operating less as an adventurous alien invasion epic and more as a raw, nerve-shredding analog for collective trauma. Emerging a mere four years after the collapse of the Twin Towers, the film strips away the romanticism of cosmic exploration and replaces it with a visceral, ground-level nightmare of sudden, inexplicable annihilation.

The brilliance of Spielberg’s approach, working alongside screenwriter David Koepp, lies in how intensely localized the narrative remains. Rather than tracking the invasion from the traditional perspective of military command centers, global leaders, or brilliant scientists, the audience is trapped inside the chaotic, deeply flawed perspective of Ray Ferrier, played with a brilliant, unheroic franticness by Tom Cruise. Ray is not a savior; he is a deadbeat, blue-collar crane operator living in a graying New Jersey suburb. He is the kind of father who doesn’t know his son’s school schedule and has an empty refrigerator when his ex-wife drops off their two children, Robbie and Rachel. By centering the apocalypse around a fractured, working-class American family, Spielberg roots the cosmic terror in a painful reality. The impending destruction of the planet mirrors the collapse of Ray’s domestic stability, forcing a man who can barely manage basic parental accountability to suddenly navigate the literal end of the world.

From a purely technical standpoint, the first act of War of the Worlds features some of the most masterful suspense and terror ever committed to celluloid, heavily leaning on a barrage of explicit 9/11 visual imagery. The sequence where the first Martian Tripod emerges from beneath a New Jersey intersection is a masterclass in modern cinematic dread, directly weaponizing the fresh, collective trauma of the post-9/11 American public. Spielberg eschews the clean, omniscient visual language of standard disaster cinema for an organic, chaotic documentary style, mirroring the sudden, disorienting informational and electronic blackout experienced by millions during the real-world attacks. The camera lingers on heavy, ominous storm clouds moving against the wind, the eerie crackle of localized lightning strikes, and the unsettling silence of a neighborhood stripped of electronic life. When the asphalt fractures and the colossal, three-legged war machine rises from the earth, the sound design hits the audience like a physical blow. The Tripod’s horn—a terrifying, mechanical foghorn groan—instantly triggers an ancient, mammalian fight-or-flight response. As the machine opens fire with its disintegration beams, turning nearby pedestrians into literal puffs of ash, the camera tracks Ray running for his life through a massive, rolling cloud of dust and debris. When Ray finally makes it back to his house, the ash of his vaporized neighbors covers his clothes and face, an unmistakable and deeply unsettling visual that explicitly echoes the horrific reality of the streets of Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

This deliberate invocation of post-9/11 anxiety is the thematic engine that drives the entire film. Spielberg does not hide these parallels; he highlights them with a devastating accuracy that makes the film difficult to watch even decades later. When the invasion begins, a terrified, screaming Rachel asks her father if it is “the terrorists,” a line that perfectly encapsulates the collective, reactionary psyche of the mid-2000s American consciousness, where any sudden, catastrophic violence was instantly filtered through the lens of domestic terrorism. The imagery of walls plastered with photocopied missing-persons flyers, crowds of refugees trudging down desolate highways with whatever belongings they can carry, and a derailed, blazing passenger train hurtling past an abandoned station all tap into a very specific, historical vulnerability. In Independence Day, an alien invasion was an opportunity for global unity and triumphant, cigar-chomping counter-offensives. In Spielberg’s hands, the invasion is an overwhelming, asymmetric slaughter that reduces the world’s most powerful military to a collection of burning tanks rolling over a ridge into an invisible abyss.

However, while the film masterfully handles the grand-scale terror of the invasion, it stumbles significantly when navigating its internal family dynamics, particularly regarding Ray’s son, Robbie, played by Justin Chatwin. I completely agree with the widespread criticism that Robbie is an intensely annoying, deeply self-destructive presence whose actions and decisions repeatedly defy basic human survival instincts. Throughout the crisis, his behavior goes beyond typical teenage rebellion and crosses into pure narrative absurdity. Instead of helping protect his traumatized, screaming younger sister, Robbie consistently sabotages his family’s safety to aggressively gawk at a hopeless war zone. His sudden, obsessive urge to join a military force that is clearly being pulverized by an unearthly power feels entirely unearned and maddening to watch. His character arc reaches a peak of irritation when he blindly runs over a burning ridge directly into a mechanical meat grinder, abandoning his family for a bizarre, suicidal patriotic impulse. This makes his miraculous survival at the end of the film a massive narrative misstep; having him casually show up at his grandparents’ pristine Boston home after witnessing a literal military massacre completely undermines the high-stakes realism Spielberg spent two hours building, turning what should have been a tragic consequence of his own foolishness into a cheap, unearned happy ending.

As the narrative progresses past the family friction, the film shifts its focus from external spectacle to the internal breakdown of human morality under the weight of existential terror. This transition is embodied by the mid-movie introduction of Harlan Ogilvy, played with an unsettling, unhinged intensity by Tim Robbins. Trapped in a dark basement while the Martians harvest the surrounding countryside, Ray and Ogilvy represent two radically different, yet entirely believable, reactions to trauma. Ogilvy is consumed by a vengeful, nihilistic madness, obsessed with digging tunnels and launching a futile, suicidal guerrilla war against an enemy that operates on a completely different evolutionary plane. Ray, conversely, is driven solely by a desperate, animalistic urge to protect his daughter. The sequence culminating in Ray’s decision to kill Ogilvy behind closed doors to keep him from alerting the aliens is one of the darkest thematic beats in Spielberg’s career. It forces the audience to confront a disturbing truth: the true horror of the apocalypse is not just what the monsters do to us, but what we are willing to do to each other to survive another hour.

The film’s visual palette, masterfully crafted by cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, reinforces this pervasive sense of rot and despair. Kamiński utilizes a heavily bleached, high-contrast aesthetic that drains the world of vibrant color, leaving behind a cold, metallic landscape dominated by sickly slates, deep shadows, and stark whites. This visual harshness reaches its zenith during the infamous “Red Weed” sequence. As the Tripods begin carpet-bombing the landscape with human blood to fertilize an invasive, crimson alien flora, the film transforms into a surrealist, gothic horror show. The Earth itself is literally being terraformed by the bodily fluids of the slaughtered, creating a grotesque, bleeding ecosystem that visually mirrors the internal rot of the surviving human populations. It is a sequence that feels closer to the cinematic nightmares of H.R. Giger than the traditional whimsy of a Spielbergian adventure.

Despite its immense strengths, War of the Worlds is frequently criticized for its final act, a critique that deserves a nuanced evaluation. The abrupt resolution—wherein the seemingly invincible Martians suddenly succumb to Earth’s microscopic bacteria—is lifted directly from H.G. Wells’ original 1898 text. While narratively faithful, its execution in a modern Hollywood blockbuster can feel jarring, functioning as a biological deus ex machina that robs the human protagonists of a traditional, heroic victory. Furthermore, Robbie’s unearned survival represents a sudden, almost desperate pivot back toward Spielberg’s traditional family-first sentimentality. This neat resolution feels somewhat unearned given the preceding two hours of unrelenting, uncompromising nihilism, momentarily fracturing the film’s gritty, documentary-like reality.

Yet, looking past these structural stumbles, the final voiceover adaptation of Wells’ text offers a profound philosophical punctuation mark to the nightmare. The realization that humanity has earned its right to survive on this planet not through military might or moral superiority, but through millions of years of evolutionary struggle alongside the tiniest microbes, recontextualizes the entire ordeal. It reminds the audience of our inherent fragility and the hubris of believing ourselves to be permanently secure in our modern, technological fortresses. Spielberg’s War of the Worlds remains an incredibly potent piece of mainstream filmmaking precisely because it refuses to comfort its audience for the majority of its runtime. It stands as a brilliant, terrifying time capsule of an era defined by sudden vulnerability, demonstrating that even the master of cinematic wonder could look into the abyss of the cosmos and see nothing but our own reflections looking back in sheer terror.

Review: Hamburger Hill (dir. by John Irvin)

Posted on by Arleigh

“If you want to walk out of this fucking place, you will listen to people who know!” — Spc. Abraham “Doc” Johnson

Hamburger Hill is one of those Vietnam War movies that doesn’t really bother decorating the war with grand metaphors or tortured soul‑searching; it just puts you on the hill with the grunts and makes you feel every miserable inch of the climb. Released in 1987 and directed by John Irvin, the film is a fictionalized but tightly focused take on the real week‑long “Battle of Hamburger Hill” in the A Sầu Valley, a piece of rugged terrain in central Vietnam that saw some of the bloodiest fighting between U.S. and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces in May 1969. The movie dramatizes the 101st Airborne’s 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment as they’re ordered to assault a heavily fortified hill over and over again, and it leans hard into the idea that the battle is less about grand strategy and more about raw endurance and attrition.

One of the first things that strikes you about Hamburger Hill is how deliberately it avoids big stars and splashy heroics. The ensemble is made up mostly of young, relatively unknown actors, which ironically makes the cast feel more authentic. You’re not watching a famous movie star playing a grunt; you’re watching a squad of guys who could actually be kids your age sent halfway across the world to die in the mud. The central figure is second‑lieutenant Al Frantz, played by a young Dylan McDermott, who’s stepping up from a desk job into direct combat command. He’s not some infallible war‑hero archetype; he’s earnest, nervous, and visibly out of depth, which makes his slow hardening under fire feel earned rather than heroic. Watching him wrestle with guilt, responsibility, and the absurdity of the orders he’s obeying gives the film a quiet moral backbone without sliding into preachy territory.

The movie is structured around roughly ten days of repeated assaults on “Hamburger Hill,” a soggy, razor‑sharp ridge in the A Sầu Valley that the NVA had turned into a killing zone. Each push uphill is more brutal than the last, and the film doesn’t soften the violence. When someone gets hit, they don’t go down in a graceful slow‑motion shot; they drop suddenly, sometimes mid‑sentence, in a spray of gore that feels uncomfortably real. The script doesn’t fetishize the blood and mud, but it refuses to look away from it either, which makes the whole thing feel like a visceral anti‑glory tract. By the time audiences get to the tenth assault, trudging through torrents of rain and mud while bullets stitch the air around them, the sequence has the effect of a slow, grinding nightmare. It’s less about who’s “winning” and more about the fact that everyone involved is being slowly chewed up by the same machine.

What really keeps Hamburger Hill from feeling like a simple, grim slaughter‑fest is its attention to the characters in the squad. The film invests time in a handful of men—White, Black, and Latino—whose camaraderie, tensions, and private doubts slowly emerge between patrols and firefights. There’s Doc Johnson, the company medic played by Courtney B. Vance, who holds himself together with a veneer of calm professionalism while quietly absorbing the emotional toll of patching up one friend after another. Doc becomes a kind of moral anchor, someone who sees the humanity in every soldier while still recognizing the war’s dehumanizing logic. His presence also lets the film quietly deal with racial friction and class differences without turning them into tidy, feel‑good sermons. The way the soldiers talk over each other, argue about politics back home, and joke about their own fear turns squad life into a cramped, sweaty microcosm of America itself.

The political backdrop of the late‑Vietnam era is always in the background, too. The men occasionally hear distorted chunks of anti‑war protests and news coverage over the radio, and you can see how that information chips away at their sense of purpose. Some of the older soldiers, like the gruff Sgt. Worcester played by Steve Weber, have already lost whatever idealism they might have had and just want to get through the next day. Newer guys, meanwhile, are still wrestling with why they’re there at all, and whether the hill they’re dying for means anything to anyone back in the States. The film doesn’t answer those questions directly; it just lets you feel the uncertainty. That ambivalence is part of what makes Hamburger Hill feel historically grounded. It’s less interested in telling you who was right or wrong in the Vietnam War and more interested in showing what it actually felt like to be a small‑arms infantryman in late‑1969, during one of the bloodiest stretches of fighting in the A Sầu Valley.

Visually, the movie leans into a muddy, washed‑out palette that makes the Philippines‑standing‑in‑for‑Vietnam locations feel appropriately oppressive. The hill itself—the real‑life “Hamburger Hill” in the A Sầu Valley—is a constant, looming presence: slick with rain, choked with barbed wire, and studded with foxholes and bunkers. The camera often stays at ground level, jostling with the soldiers as they crawl, scramble, and stumble upward, which makes the terrain feel like an active enemy. The sound design is similarly unglamorous—gunfire isn’t especially stylized, explosions are chaotic rather than cool, and the constant hiss of rain and distant artillery keeps the film in a state of low‑grade dread. Even the score, a Philip Glass–style arrangement of repetitive, slightly unnerving motifs, adds to the feeling of being trapped in a loop of violence you can’t escape. Everything in the film is built to make the combat feel routine, exhausting, and numbing, rather than spectacular.

Another thing Hamburger Hill handles surprisingly well is the way it dovetails the physical horror of the battle with the men’s private lives back home. In quieter moments between attacks, the soldiers talk about girlfriends, family, and their plans for “after the war,” even though, for some of them, those plans are clearly not going to happen. The film doesn’t milk this stuff for melodrama; instead, it floats just beneath the surface, turning every casual conversation into a quiet pre‑eulogy. When someone makes a joke about getting back to Chicago or New York or wherever they’re from, the line feels both genuine and heartbreaking, because you know the movie might quietly erase that future a few scenes later. That low‑key sense of fragility makes the emotional impact of each death feel more personal, because the film has already taken the time to show you who these guys are when they’re not being shot at.

Narratively, the film doesn’t try to convince you that taking the hill is some great strategic triumph. If anything, it’s openly skeptical about the rationale behind the whole operation. The soldiers keep getting told to “take it, hold it, then fall back,” and the repetition of that order drives home the sense that the hill is more of a symbolic goal than a tactical necessity. The film doesn’t stage a big, dramatic monologue about this; it just lets the repetition of the mission, the rising body count, and the unanswered questions hang in the air. That choice aligns Hamburger Hill more with a film like Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket in spirit, even though its tone is far more straightforward and less stylized. It’s less interested in mythmaking and more interested in capturing the eerie timelessness of infantrymen being sent to die for reasons they don’t fully understand, during one of the fiercest set‑pieces of the Vietnam War.

In terms of its legacy, Hamburger Hill often gets overshadowed by Oliver Stone’s Platoon, which came out a year earlier and snagged the Oscars’ attention. But in a lot of ways, Irvin’s film is a grittier, more unsentimental companion piece. It doesn’t try to map the Vietnam War onto a single moral allegory, and it doesn’t give you a hero to latch onto and cheer for. Instead, it gives you a squad of men, flaws and all, and asks you to watch them go through hell while trying to keep their foothold on each other. That ensemble‑driven approach, combined with the unrelenting realism of the battle sequences, is what makes Hamburger Hill feel like less of a “movie” and more like a grim, ground‑level documentary rooted in the real‑world horror of the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

By the end, the film doesn’t offer a clean sense of resolution. The soldiers do eventually take the hill, but the victory is so hollow and so costly that it hardly feels like a win at all. The last few scenes linger on survivors looking shell‑shocked and exhausted, many of them quietly wondering what the point of it was. The movie doesn’t spell that out in a clumsy voice‑over; it trusts you to feel the absurdity and the weight of what they’ve been through. That refusal to wrap things up with a neat moral bow is one of Hamburger Hill’s strengths. It understands that sometimes the most honest thing a war film can do is show you the damage and then leave you with the questions.

In the crowded field of Vietnam War movies, Hamburger Hill stands out because it strips away the spectacle and just focuses on the brutal, day‑to‑day reality of trying to take a piece of ground that probably shouldn’t matter as much as it does. It’s not a flashy, revolutionary film, but it’s a stubbornly honest one, anchored in the real‑world carnage of the week‑long Battle of Hamburger Hill in the A Sầu Valley. It’s a movie that would rather make you feel the mud squeeze between your toes, hear the too‑close sound of automatic fire, and watch the faces of guys who’ve run out of explanations for why they’re still climbing. If you’re looking for a Vietnam film that doesn’t sugarcoat the war or overdress it in symbolism, Hamburger Hill is the kind of movie that sticks with you precisely because it doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is: a raw, claustrophobic portrait of a squad walking into a meat grinder, one rain‑soaked step at a time.

Review: Primate (dir. by Johannes Roberts)

Posted on by Arleigh

“There’s something wrong with Ben.” — Lucy Pinborough

Primate is the kind of nasty little horror movie that knows exactly what it is: a killer-chimp siege flick with a mean streak, a surprising amount of craft, and just enough emotional texture to keep it from feeling like pure junk food. It is also, very unapologetically, a January-release bloodbath built around one simple promise: you came to watch a chimp rip people apart, and the film is absolutely going to deliver on that.

Set on a remote, luxury house carved into a Hawaiian cliffside, Primate follows Lucy, a college student returning home to her deaf father Adam, younger sister Erin, and Ben—their adopted chimpanzee, who has been taught to communicate using a custom soundboard. The setup leans a bit into family melodrama and awkward-friends-on-vacation vibes: Lucy brings her buddies Kate and Nick, Kate drags along wildcard Hannah, and a pair of party bros, Drew and Brad, orbit the group on the way to a weekend of drinking by the infinity pool. Things tilt into horror when Ben is bitten by a rabid mongoose, starts behaving erratically, and eventually tears the face off the local vet before busting out of his enclosure and turning the house into a kill zone. From there, the movie pretty much drops the pretense of being about anything except survival, creative carnage, and the miserable logistics of trying to outrun a furious primate on a cliff.

Director Johannes Roberts, who previously did 47 Meters Down and The Strangers: Prey at Night, brings that same B-movie efficiency here—minimal fat, fast escalation, and a willingness to lean into the ridiculous without winking too hard. Once Ben escapes, the film basically becomes a series of tightly staged, high-tension set pieces: kids trapped in a pool while a chimp stalks the edge, frantic dashes through glass corridors, and messy, up-close attacks where you really feel the weight and speed of the animal. The pool sequence in particular is a great example of Roberts finding one strong visual idea—humans stranded in water because the predator can’t swim—and milking it for all the dread he can. It’s simple, almost old-fashioned monster-movie blocking, but it works because the geography is clear and the danger feels immediate rather than abstract.

Visually, the film is punching above what you might expect from “rabid chimp horror.” The cliffside house setting gives Roberts and his team a lot to play with: long glass walls, sharp drops, tight stairwells, and that infinity pool hanging over nothing. The camera favors clean, legible compositions instead of frantic shaky-cam, which means when the violence happens, you actually see it—and the movie is proud of that. There’s a grimy 80s-video-store energy to the way kills are framed and lingered on just long enough to be uncomfortable, but not so long that they turn into camp. Adrian Johnston’s synth-heavy score leans into that retro horror vibe too; it buzzes and screeches like someone let a demon loose on a cheap keyboard, and it matches the film’s mix of nasty and playful pretty well.

The real secret weapon here is Ben himself. Rather than going full CGI or trying to work with a real chimp, the production uses a combination of suit performance, animatronics, and careful staging, with Miguel Torres Umba giving the creature its physical personality. The result is surprisingly convincing; there are stretches where it feels like you’re watching a real animal charge people on stairs or slam into doors, which makes the violence land harder. You can tell the effects team put in serious work on the costume and facial mechanics—Ben’s expressions shift from confused, childlike attachment to full-on feral rage, and that emotional readability helps sell him as a character instead of just a prop. Importantly, the film avoids the “PS3 cutscene” problem of bad CG animals, which would have killed the tension immediately.

Performance-wise, this is very much “do your job and don’t get in the way” acting, and that’s mostly a compliment. Johnny Sequoyah makes Lucy feel grounded enough that you buy her as both final girl and guilty older sister who’s been away too long. Troy Kotsur, as Adam, is probably the standout human presence; his scenes use sign language not as a gimmick, but as part of how the family actually lives, and his mixture of vulnerability and stubbornness gives the movie a little heart. The rest of the cast—Jessica Alexander, Victoria Wyant, Gia Hunter, Benjamin Cheng, and the cannon-fodder guys—do what’s asked: they feel like actual young adults rather than complete idiots, which helps when the film needs you to invest in whether they make it out. Nobody is delivering awards-caliber work, but nobody is embarrassing themselves either, and in a film where a chimp tears someone’s jaw off, that’s honestly the sweet spot.

Tonally, Primate walks a line between brutal and darkly funny, and your mileage will depend on how much you enjoy mean-spirited genre films. This is not a movie that’s precious about its characters; the script makes it clear that almost anyone can get obliterated at any moment, and the kill scenes are loud, wet, and often abrupt. There’s a streak of black comedy in how casually some of the deaths happen—a rock to the head here, a shovel to the face there—but Roberts never tips fully into self-parody. At the same time, the film does gesture at something sadder in the idea of a beloved family member suddenly turning dangerous because of a disease, and in the way Lucy has to reconcile her childhood bond with Ben with the reality of what he’s become. The movie doesn’t dig into that theme deeply, but it’s present enough to keep things from feeling completely hollow.

Where Primate stumbles is mostly in its limitations, and whether those feel like flaws or just genre boundaries will depend on what you’re looking for. The script is extremely straightforward: characters have clear, basic motivations, relationships are sketched in a few lines, and then everyone gets funneled into the survival engine. If you want layered character work, subtext about animal ethics, or a big commentary on captivity and communication, this is not that movie, even though the setup with a sign-literate chimp and a linguist mother hints at richer territory. The film also indulges in the usual horror conveniences—texts ignored, warnings missed, people splitting up when they probably shouldn’t—though to its credit, the characters generally behave less stupidly once they understand the situation. And as gnarly as the gore is, the movie’s reliance on shock and escalation can make the back half feel a bit repetitive: Ben appears, someone gets mauled, survivors scramble, repeat.

From an honesty standpoint, Primate is absolutely worth watching if you have a soft spot for creature-features, killer-animal movies, or throwback 80s-style horror that doesn’t pretend to be more than a vicious good time. It’s tightly paced, well shot, and anchored by a genuinely impressive creature performance that justifies the whole exercise. If you’re squeamish about animal violence, or you want your horror to come with metaphor, political commentary, or emotional catharsis, you’ll probably bounce off this pretty quickly. But if you can meet it on its own trashy, committed wavelength, there’s something satisfying about watching a studio-backed film go this hard, this graphically, on such a simple premise. It feels like the kind of bloody, fast-moving B-movie you’d have rented on VHS for a sleepover, only now it’s playing in theaters with a slicker finish and a killer chimp named Ben waiting to wreck your night.

Review: 48 Hrs. (dir. by Walter Hill)

Posted on by Arleigh

“This ain’t no god damn way to start a partnership.” – Reggie Hammond

48 Hrs. bursts onto the screen with a gritty prison breakout that sets the stage for chaos in the foggy streets of San Francisco, where a pair of ruthless killers slip away after gunning down a cop’s partner in cold blood. Jack Cates, the surviving detective, is left battered and furious, piecing together a case that points to a slick convict named Reggie Hammond holding the key to the crooks’ whereabouts—and a stash of stolen cash. With time ticking down, Jack pulls strings to get Reggie out on a 48-hour pass, thrusting these two polar opposites into a reluctant alliance that turns the city into their personal battlefield of bullets, banter, and bad blood.

From the jump, Jack comes across as the ultimate rough-around-the-edges cop, nursing a flask under his trench coat, snapping at colleagues, and charging headfirst into danger like a man who’s got nothing left to lose. His apartment is a mess of empty bottles and regret, and his rocky relationship with his girlfriend underscores how the job has chewed him up and spit him out, leaving him more beast than man. Reggie, by contrast, rolls in with street-honed swagger, his prison jumpsuit barely containing the energy of a guy who’s survived by being quicker on his feet and sharper with his mouth than anyone around him. He’s got a girlfriend waiting with that hidden money, and no intention of playing nice with a cop who’s eyeing him like fresh meat.

The beauty of their pairing lies in how the film lets their friction spark from the very first shared car ride, where Jack’s growled commands clash against Reggie’s nonstop ribbing, turning a simple stakeout into a verbal demolition derby. Picture them peeling out after a lead goes south, tires screeching through narrow alleys while Reggie gripes about the beat-up car and Jack slams the dash in frustration—it’s these raw, unscripted-feeling moments that make the movie breathe. As they hit up seedy bars, chase informants through strip joints, and dodge ambushes, the script peels back layers: Jack’s not just a bully, he’s haunted by close calls; Reggie’s bravado masks real fear of ending up dead or broke.

One standout sequence drops them into a hillbilly roadhouse packed with hostile locals, where Reggie grabs the mic for an impromptu takedown that flips the room from menace to mayhem, buying them time while Jack backs him up with sheer firepower. It’s tense, hilarious, and perfectly timed, showing how their skills complement each other—Jack’s brute force meeting Reggie’s silver tongue—in ways neither saw coming. The villains, led by a stone-cold Luther and his trigger-happy sidekick, keep the heat cranked high, popping up for savage hits that leave bodies in the gutter and force the duo to improvise on the fly, like hot-wiring rides or shaking down lowlifes for scraps of intel.

Walter Hill’s direction keeps it all taut and visceral, with handheld cameras capturing the sweat and grime of every punch thrown or shot fired, no glossy filters to soften the blows. The San Francisco backdrop shines through rain-slicked hills, neon-lit dives, and shadowy piers, giving the action a grounded, almost documentary edge that amps up the stakes. Sound design punches too—the roar of engines, the crack of gunfire, the thud of fists—layered over a pulsing ’80s score that shifts from funky grooves during chases to ominous drones in quieter beats, mirroring the push-pull between comedy and threat.

Diving deeper into the characters, Jack’s arc feels earned through small touches: a hesitant phone call to his ex, a flicker of respect when Reggie saves his skin, moments that humanize the hardass without forcing redemption. Reggie evolves too, his initial scam-artist vibe giving way to flashes of loyalty, like when he risks his neck to protect that cash not just for himself, but to build something real outside the walls. Supporting roles flesh out the world—the precinct captain barking orders, the sultry singer tangled with the bad guys, Reggie’s tough-as-nails woman who won’t take guff—but they never overshadow the core duo, serving as sparks for conflict or comic relief.

Pacing-wise, the film rarely pauses for breath, clocking in under two hours yet packing in a full meal of twists, from double-crosses at motels to a frantic foot chase across rooftops that leaves you winded. The 48-hour ticking clock adds urgency without gimmicks, every dead end ramping tension as dawn breaks on their deadline. Humor lands organically too, not from slapstick but from character-driven zingers—Reggie calling out Jack’s outdated tough-guy schtick, Jack grumbling about Reggie’s flashy clothes—keeping the tone light even as blood spills.

Of course, watching through modern eyes, the dialogue packs some era-specific punches, with raw language around race, cops, and crooks that reflects ’80s attitudes head-on, for better or worse. It’s unapologetic, mirroring the film’s macho pulse, but adds texture to the time capsule feel, making replays fascinating for how boldly it leaned into taboos. The women, while fierce in spots, often play second fiddle to the bromance brewing, a hallmark of the genre that 48 Hrs. helped cement before it evolved.

What elevates this beyond standard action fare is how it nails the buddy dynamic’s slow burn: no instant high-fives, just gradual thaw from shared survival, culminating in a dockside finale where alliances solidify amid explosions and last stands. The editing zips between high-octane set pieces and downtime breather scenes, like a roadside diner heart-to-heart that reveals backstories without halting momentum. Cinematography plays with shadows and neon to heighten paranoia, turning everyday spots into pressure cookers.

Influence-wise, you can trace lines straight to later hits—the grizzled vet and smooth-talking newbie formula got refined here, blending Lethal Weapon grit with Beverly Hills Cop wit years ahead of schedule. Performances anchor it all: the leads’ chemistry crackles, carrying weaker beats on sheer charisma, while Hill’s lean style ensures every frame earns its keep. Runtime flies because it’s efficient, no fat, just muscle.

Final stretch ramps to operatic violence on those windswept docks, bullets flying as personal scores settle, leaving our heroes bloodied but bonded in a way that feels hard-won. 48 Hrs. endures as a rowdy blueprint for the genre, blending laughs, thrills, and toughness into a package that’s addictive on first watch and rewarding on revisit. It’s got heart under the bruises, edge in the jokes, and a vibe that’s pure ’80s adrenaline—grab it for a night of no-holds-barred entertainment that still packs a wallop over four decades later.