Remember when the Da Vinci Code came out and every toadsucker in the world suddenly thought they were an expert on both art history and Catholic theology?
“The Magdalene was actually the beloved disciple and, by having Jesus’s children, she gave birth the French royal family blah blah blah blah blah..”
Yeah, everyone wants to deny it now and pretend like they were too smart to fall for Dan Brown’s BS but, just ten years ago, Da Vinci Code was a big deal. I never had much use for it because, as an art history major, it was obvious to me that Dan Brown didn’t know a damn thing about Leonardo Da Vinci or The Last Supper.
Anyway, Ron Howard, Dan Brown, and Tom Hanks are all back with Inferno! Inferno is going to suck but here’s the trailer anyway:
My advise is that you skip Ron Howard’s Inferno and instead, watch Dario Argento’s!
Dario Argento’s Inferno — now, that’s a good movie!
I just finished watching the TCM premiere of the 1995 Best Picture nominee, Apollo 13. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I had seen it. Apollo 13 is one of those films that always seems to be playing somewhere and why not? It’s a good movie, telling a story that is all the more remarkable and inspiring for being true. In 1970, the Apollo 13 flight to the moon was interrupted by a sudden explosion, stranding three astronauts in space. Fighting a desperate battle against, NASA had to figure out how to bring them home. Apollo 13 tells the story of that accident and that rescue.
There’s a scene that happens about halfway through Apollo 13. The heavily damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft is orbiting the moon. Originally the plan was for Apollo 13 to land on the moon but, following that explosion on the craft, those plans have been cancelled. Inside the spacecraft, three astronauts can only stare down at the lunar surface below them.
As Commander Jim Lovell stares out the craft’s window, we suddenly see him fantasizing about what it would be like if the explosion hadn’t happened and if he actually could fulfill his dream of walking on the moon. We watch as Lovell (and, while we know the character is Jim Lovell, we are also very much aware that he’s being played by beloved cinematic icon Tom Hanks) leaves his foot print on the lunar surface. Lovell opens up his visor and, for a few seconds, stands there and takes in the with the vastness of space before him and making the scene all the more poignant is knowing that Tom Hanks, before he became an award-winning actor, wanted to be a astronaut just like Jim Lovell. Then, suddenly, we snap back to the film’s reality. Back inside the spacecraft, Lovell takes one final look at the moon and accepts that he will never get to walk upon its surface. “I’d like to go home,” he announces.
It’s a totally earnest and unabashedly sentimental moment, one that epitomizes the film as a whole. There is not a hint of cynicism to be found in Apollo 13. Instead, it’s a big, old-fashioned epic, a story about a crisis and how a bunch of determined, no-nonsense professionals came together to save the day. “Houston,” Lovell famously says at one point, “we have a problem.” It’s a celebrated line but Apollo 13 is less about the problem and more about celebrating the men who, through their own ingenuity, solved that problem.
That Apollo 13 is a crowd-pleaser should come as no surprise. It was directed by Ron Howard and I don’t know that Howard has ever directed a film that wasn’t designed to make audiences break into applause during the end credits. When Howard fails, the results can be maudlin and heavy-handed. But when he succeeds, as he does with Apollo 13, he proves that there’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned, inspirational entertainment.
Of course, since Apollo 13 is a Ron Howard film, that means that Clint Howard gets a small role. In Apollo 13, Clint shows up as a bespectacled flight engineer. When astronaut Jack Swiggert (Kevin Bacon) mentions having forgotten to pay his taxes before going into space, Clint says, “He shouldn’t joke about that, they’ll get him.” It’s a great line and Clint does a great job delivering it.
Apollo 13 is usually thought of as being a Tom Hanks film but actually, it’s an ensemble piece. Every role, from the smallest to the biggest, is perfectly cast. Not surprisingly, Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Kathleen Quinlan, and Ed Harris all turn in excellent performances. But, even beyond the marquee names, Apollo 13 is full of memorable performances. Watching it tonight, I especially noticed an actor named Loren Dean, who played a NASA engineer named John Aaron. Dean didn’t get many lines but he was totally believable in his role. You looked at him and you thought, “If I’m ever trapped in space, this is the guy who I want working to bring me home.”
Apollo 13 was nominated for best picture but it lost to Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart. Personally, out of the nominees, I probably would have picked Sense and Sensibility but Apollo 13 more than deserved the nomination.
I saw Bridge of Spies last weekend and I’m a little bit surprised that I haven’t gotten around to writing a review until now. After all, this is not only the latest film from Steven Spielberg but it also stars the universally beloved Tom Hanks and it’s currently being touted as a possible best picture nominee. (Mark Rylance, who plays an imprisoned spy in this film, is also emerging as a front runner for best supporting actor.) The screenplay was written by the Coen Brothers. (Oddly enough, films scripted by the Coens — like Unbroken, for instance — tend to be far more conventional and far less snarky than films actually directed by the Coens.) Even beyond its impressive pedigree, Bridge of Spies is a historical drama and by now, everyone should know how much I love historical dramas.
And the thing is, I enjoyed Bridge of Spies. I thought it was a well-made film. I thought that Tom Hanks was well-cast as an idealistic lawyer who stands up for truth, justice, and the Constitution. I agreed with the pundits who thought Mark Rylance was award-worthy. It’s become a bit of a cliché for Amy Ryan to show up as an understanding wife but it’s a role she plays well and she made the most of her scenes with Tom Hanks. Steven Spielberg knows how to put a good film together. This really should have been a film about which I rushed home to rave.
And yet, at the same time, I just could not work up that much enthusiasm for Bridge of Spies. It’s a good film but there’s nothing unexpected about it. There’s nothing surprising about the film. Steven Spielberg is one of the most commercially successful directors in history and the American film establishment pretty much orbits around him. He’s good at what he does and he deserves his success. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a subversive bone in his body. Bridge of Spies is a lot like his previous Oscar contender, Lincoln. It’s very well-made. It’s the epitome of competence. But there’s not a truly surprising or unexpected moment to be found in the film.
And I have to admit that, even as I enjoyed Bridge of Spies, I still found myself frustrated by just how risk-adverse a film it truly was. After all, we’re living in the age of Ex Machina, Upstream Color, and Sicario. Bridge of Spies is a good movie and, in many ways, it provides a very valuable history lesson. (The film’s best moments were the one that contrasted the U.S. with the cold desolation of communist-controlled East Germany.) But, overall, it just didn’t make a huge impression on me. It was just a a little bit too safe in its approach.
For today’s Horror on The Lens, we present 1980’s He Knows You’re Alone!
He Knows You’re Alone is an old school slasher film, which means that it’s basically about one stalking killer and a bunch of people who have absolutely no common sense. The gimmick here is that the slasher is stalks young brides-to-be. Admittedly, this is all pretty standard stuff, though the film does have a clever opening and features some good cinematography and —
OH MY GOD, IS THAT TOM HANKS!?
Yes, He Knows You’re Alone is the debut film of Tom Hanks and he’s so young in this film that he still has a chin. He plays a college student named Eliot. Nowadays, He Knows You’re Alone is usually described as “starring Tom Hanks” but actually, Tom’s role is pretty small. But he’s still probably the most likable person in the film.
Anyway, He Knows You’re Alone is an above average slasher flick and it’s definitely not safe for work so stop watching movies while on the clock! Wait until you get home to enjoy He Knows You’re Alone!
It’s shaping up to be a strange Oscar race. Here we are halfway through the year and, yet, there are no front-runners. Some very acclaimed films have been released this year and yet, few of them seem to be getting the type of buzz that usually accompanies a surprise Oscar nomination. Last year at this time, there was cautious buzz for Grand Budapest Hotel while almost everyone felt pretty safe assuming that Sundance favorites like Boyhoodand Whiplash would be players in the Oscar race and many of us were highly anticipating the release of films like Birdman and The Imitation Game. (For that matter, a lot of people were also still convinced that Unbroken would win best picture. The buzz is not always correct but still, the buzz was still there.)
This year, some people are hoping that Mad Max: Fury Road will somehow break through the Academy’s aversion to “genre” filmmaking. (And seriously, the Doof Warrior deserves some sort of award, don’t you think?) Quite a few are hoping that Ex Machina will not be forgotten. Personally, I have high hopes for Inside Out.The buzz around Bridge of Spies is respectful, largely because it seems like the type of film that usually would be be nominated. (That said, this film also seems like it could bring out the worst impulses of both Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, leading to a movie that will have more in common with The Terminal than with War Horse.) Carol was beloved at Cannes.
So there are definitely possibilities out there. When I made my Oscar predictions for this month, I didn’t quite have to blindly guess as much as I did way back in January. But still, it cannot be denied that — as of right now — this race is wide open and there’s a lot of room for surprise.
Below, you’ll find my Oscar predictions for July. You can also check out my previous Oscar predictions for January, February, March,April, May, and June!
Actually, I don’t know if Tom Hanks really saves America in Steven Spielberg’s latest film. But it does sound like something that Tom Hanks would do, doesn’t it?
Today marks the 71st Anniversary of the Normandy Landings on D-Day. As the day winds down I thought it best to share one of my favorite scenes from a film that tried to capture the chaos and death of the fateful day on June 6, 1944. The film in question is Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. This is the film which won him his second Best Director Oscar (I still think the film should’ve won Best Picture over Shakespeare In Love) and the film which helped redefine not just how war films were shot from 1998 on, but also de-glorify World War II on film.
This scene showed the opening moments of the D-Day Landings on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. It’s a scene that’s over 22-minutes in length and shows the utter chaos and destruction heaped on American troops as they attempted to land on the beach to take their objectives. While there have been war film before Saving Private Ryan that depicted war as the hell it truly is they were mostly about the Vietnam War. Rarely did we ever get a World War II-based war film which showed war in realistic fashion. Spielberg broke that taboo by making the battle scenes in his film — especially this extended opening sequence — done as realistic as possible without actually having people killed for real on-screen.
When this film first came out in the summer of 1998 no one knew what to make of it. This opening sequence became the talk of everyone who went to see the film. To say that they were shocked by what they saw was an understatement. Even now with over a decade since the film was released and people having seen this scene over and over again it still retain it’s impact. It’s not even the grand scale of the production required to film this action sequence which made this scene so memorable. It were the little things. Like a mortally wounded American GI crying out to his mother while trying to keep his blown out insides from spilling out. Then there’s the scene of another young soldier praying furiously with his rosary beads as men around him die by the score.
This scene also showed what most World War II films of the past failed to do. It showed both sides behaving barbarically. In the past, only the Germans were shown in a bad light. In Saving Private Ryan, we see that American soldiers were also prone at shooting surrendering troops and/or not mercy-killing enemy soldiers being burned alive (actions that have been well-documented by historians). This scene also showed just how courageous the young men of this generation which Tom Brokaw has called “The Greatest Generation”. Men who went off to war not for material gains, but for an idea that they had to stop evil (Nazi and Hitler) from taking all of Europe and, maybe, the world itself.
There’s a reason why Saving Private Ryan is in my list for greatest films of all-time and why this scene remains one of my all-time favorites.
Lisa Marie is not the only history nerd in this here place. I don’t think it was a coincidence that TSL’s co-founders ended up being both history nerds. We both love films the depict historical events. Some of them turn out to be great while some end up on the trash heap.
One filmmaker who has made a career late in his life of making historical films is Steven Spielberg. The same one who gave us great blockbusters in the scifi, thriller and fantasy genres has also given us some excellent historical films such as Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Munich and Lincoln.
We have the first trailer for Spielberg’s latest film which is based on the real-life events surrounding the 1960 U-2 spy plane incident where American pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while on a mission over the Soviet Union and was subsequently swapped back into US custody for a Soviet spy that the Americans were holding.
Bridge of Spies showcases the events which led to that swap and how contentious the negotiations had been before it finally came about. Everyone knows the Cuban Missile Crisis put the world very close to nuclear annihilation, but what many don’t know is how the Gary Powers Incident also pushed the two nuclear powers very close to the brink.
Bridge of Spies is set for an OCt. 16, 2015 release date…just in time for the start of Lisa Marie’s favorite film season: Awards Season.
It’s amazing the things that you find when you randomly search the DVD section of Half-Price Books. For instance, I found a very cheap DVD of the 1982 made-for-TV film Mazes and Monsters and I simply had to buy it.
Why?
Well, just look at the cover above. Look at the ominous castle. Look at the shadowy dragons flying around it. Look at that Shining-style maze. Look at the ominous tag line: “Danger lurks between fantasy and reality.” And especially be sure to look at Tom Hanks gazing serenely over it all.
“Wow,” I thought, “Tom Hanks fights a dragon? This is something that I’ve got to see!”
Well, there are no dragons in Mazes and Monsters. There are a few monsters but they’re only briefly seen figments of Tom Hanks’s imagination. The film is about a group of college students who obsessively play an RPG called Mazes and Monsters. When one of the students (an annoying genius who wears wacky hats and is played by an actor with the surprisingly poetic name of Chris Makepeace) suggests that they play Mazes and Monsters “for real” in some caverns near the college, it leads to Robbie (Tom Hanks) have a mental breakdown. Soon, Robbie is convinced that he’s actually a monk. He breaks up with his girlfriend because he doesn’t want to violate his vow of celibacy. (Of course, the real fantasy is that a college student obsessed with playing Mazes and Monsters would have a girlfriend in the first place but anyway…) He keeps seeing imaginary minotaurs lurking in the shadows. Finally, he runs off to New York on a quest to find “the great Hall.” It’s up to his friends to find him and hopefully impart an important lesson about the dangerous reality of RPG addiction.
Or something.
Listen, to be honest, if not for Tom Hanks, there would be no reason to watch Mazes and Monsters. It’s poorly acted. It’s written and directed with a heavy hand. There’s some nice shots of downtown New York City but otherwise, it’s visually drab.
But, because Tom Hanks is in it and he’s playing a role that demands that he go totally over-the-top in his performance, Mazes and Monsters is totally worth watching. If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks wander around New York City while dressed like a monk, this is the film for you. If you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks start to tremble while explaining that, as a monk, he’s not allowed to kill minotaurs, this is the movie for you. Most of all, if you’ve ever wanted to see Tom Hanks shrieking, “THERE’S BLOOD ON MY KNIFE!” while standing in an old school phone booth, this is definitely the movie for you!
Seriously.
Considering that Tom Hanks is currently viewed as being some sort of elder statesman of American film (and, even more importantly, Hanks seems to view himself as being some sort of national treasure), there’s something oddly satisfying about seeing him before he became THE Tom Hanks. It’s good to be reminded that, at one time, he was just another young actor doing his best in a crappy made-for-TV movie.
Through the Shattered Lens 