Cult-TV Movie Review: Starflight One: The Plane that Couldn't Land (1983)

Gazing back upon 1983’s TV-movie, Starflight One: The Plane that Couldn’t Land, the most significant question it raises involves timing.

How -- years after the theatrical releases of spoofs such as Airplane (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) -- did filmmakers believe they could produce a serious version of the same tired premise that had informed films such as Airport (1970), Airport’ 75 (1975), Airport ’77 (1977) and Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979)?

You remember that premise of the Airport (and Airplane) franchise right? A group of diverse passengers and a stalwart plane crew, including a heroic pilot, are jeopardized mid-flight, by some kind of disaster, whether a terrorist bomb, a design flaw, or a ground attack.

Worse, by 1983, the year of Starflight One's premiere, the disaster film in general had pretty much run its course thanks to theatrical misfires such as Irwin Allen’s The Swarm (1978). Airport ’79 had also proven a giant flop at the box office, failing to earn back, even, its production budget.

Unfortunately, Starflight One: The Plane that Couldn’t Land slavishly resurrects all the tired old character clichés of the Airport films (which were based on the 1968 best seller by Arthur Hailey). 

There’s a love-affair going on between a pilot and a passenger (here Lee Majors and Lauren Hutton); there’s an elderly woman on her first plane flight (though not Helen Hayes), and an untrustworthy passenger whose actions jeopardize the survival of the plane (Terry Kiser).  

Meanwhile, resourceful personnel on the ground and in the air (here including Hal Linden -- in both places!) struggle to pull a rabbit out of a hat and save the imperiled plane from fiery disaster.  

Such roles, through their sheer repetition in the disaster genre, are largely thankless here, and the cast can't do much to make them memorable.

So, who thought Starflight One could have been a good idea, coming along in 1983, at the end of the 

Airport and disaster film cycle? 

Well, historically speaking, the TV-movie’s premiere in February of 1983 on ABC followed-up on another ABC event of great importance. 

Nine months earlier -- in May of 1982 -- ABC had broadcast an extended, three-hour version of Concorde: Airport 79 for sweeps, and it earned big ratings, regardless of its earlier failure at the box office. It ranked in tenth place the week of its airing.

So, to accountants at ABC no doubt, Starflight One seemed like it could plausibly repeat the same magic in the Nielsen ratings. 

Add to the mix the special effects creations of Star Wars (1977) guru, John Dykstra, and Starflight One must have seemed like a slam dunk right?

Well, not exactly. The movie finished second in its time-slot, but it was victorious, at least over one of its prime-time competitors: Cocaine: One Man's Seduction (1983).

And artistically? How does Starflight One rank?

Well, to my surprise, there are indeed aspects of this film -- about an hour or so in -- that succeed far better than I expected they would have. 

There are, for example two extremely creative and tense “rescue” scenes set in space during the TV-movie's second act. These moments in Starflight One are far more effective than they should be, especially given that so much of the film seems to run on auto-pilot and on tired, stock situations and characters.

These scenes succeed, and more than that, actually qualify as nail-biting. It’s just a shame that the rest of the movie can’t sustain the pace and interest of these inventive sequences.  

Instead, one leaves a viewing of Starflight One considering how much, truly, the filmmakers get wrong, particularly about the workings and capabilities of the space shuttle Columbia.

 “The eyes of the world will be on Starflight One.”

The world's first hypersonic plane -- Thornwell’s Starflight One -- is scheduled for its historic maiden flight from the U.S. to Australia, with pilot Cody Briggs (Lee Majors) at the controls. 

Also aboard for the flight are the plane’s designer, Josh Gilliam (Hal Linden), who would prefer the flight be delayed while he irons out some final details, and Brody’s mistress, Erica Hansen (Lauren Hutton). 

Other passengers include a man, Freddie Barrett (Terry Kiser), who is attempting to get a new satellite into orbit, and rushing the rocket launch in Australia.

Once Starflight One is in the air, Barrett’s rocket explodes, and debris from it strikes the hypersonic plane. A rocket engine on Starflight One continues to burn, out-of-control -- its instrumentation short-circuited -- and it ascends to orbit…to space itself.

Now, Josh Gilliam must find a way to get the craft back down to Earth. 

The problem is that the hypersonic plane possesses no heat shields, and will burn up in re-entry. The shuttle Columbia joins Starflight One in space and makes a handful of dedicated attempts to transfer passengers from the damaged craft to the shuttle.

Meanwhile, Starflight One’s orbit is decaying, and the clock is ticking down towards death and destruction...

“They’re talking. But they’re not saying much.”

Starflight One is mostly slow and rote, with sleepy performances from the likes of Lee Majors and Hal Linden. But in its superior second act, the TV-movie unexpectedly turns riveting for about a half-hour.

Here’s the situation: NASA needs Josh Gilliam (Linden) -- the hypersonic plane’s architect -- on the ground. But he is aboard the plane and must be transferred to the shuttle.  Fortunately, the plane is carrying the body of a recently-deceased Australian ambassador in its cargo hold. The bright idea is struck upon that the shuttle astronauts can transfer Gilliam from the plane to the shuttle in the ambassador’s coffin!

As Josh settles into the casket, it is checked for any signs of air leaks and then closed…with him inside.  

We see a view of the nervous Josh, inside the sealed coffin, as the transfer across several hundred meters -- in orbit -- is broached. Josh’s fear and discomfort are palpable, and the special effects, which have often been criticized by critics as sub-par, do a good job of revealing the risky and vulnerable nature of this transfer. 

Suspense ratchets up to a high-point when Josh detects an air-leak in the coffin, his mode of transport, and realizes that unless he does something soon, he will run out of air before the transfer is complete.

There's a commendable if ghoulish kind of gallows humor about this sequence, especially since it follows another involving the death of a co-pilot in the airlock.  One realizes that Josh's transport, his coffin, is an appropriate final resting place, should the mission fail.

The second suspenseful scene in the film is even more disturbing. 

With Josh safely on the ground, the decision is made to transfer twenty of the stranded passengers from the hypersonic plane to the space shuttle.  

A thin, wobbly “air tube” is connected between the vessels’ airlocks, and five passengers  traverse the long, unsteady tunnel at a time. The film shows the audience every step of that long, arduous trip, as the first five passengers make their way successfully across the passageway. Their progress is recorded with a torturous, methodical camera. Again, the desired effect of suspense is achieved.

Then, the second five passengers -- including Kiser’s character and the kindly old lady -- begin making their transfer.  

The sparking, damaged hull of Starflight One, however, impacts with the travel tube, and fiery, horrible disaster ensues.  

Again, I can give the film no higher compliment than to suggest that it has reached a Poseidon Adventure (1972) threshold of suspense and horror at this juncture.  Had I caught this film on TV in '83, when I was thirteen, I would have no doubt been riveted, and the space scenes (and death scenes set in that venue) are not only imaginative, but the stuff of nightmares.

Alas, the last act of Starflight One, including the climactic re-entry scene, fails entirely to live up to the early moments of nail-biting drama and suspense. And, knowing what we do of the space shuttle’s capabilities, the film loses much of its sense of plausibility in the last hour too.

In Starflight One, for instance, the space shuttle launches, meets the hypersonic plane in flight, and brings Josh back to terra firma. Within a 17 hour window, it then re-launches, vets the aforementioned passenger tube debacle, and lands with its five rescued passengers.  Then, in the same window of time, it launches a third time, picks-up all remaining passengers inside an empty fuel container, and lands again. 

In real life, it would take a shuttle a minimum of two weeks between launches. Here, it makes three journeys in less than a day’s time.

Then, at the end of the film, and quite miraculously, a second shuttle (also bafflingly named Columbia) -- the XU-5 -- appears, already in orbit, and guides Starflight One through safe re-entry.  

Basically this second shuttle, of which the audience had no prior knowledge, acts as the heat shield that brings the hypersonic flight home.

Okay, I will buy all that.  

But, all the going back and forth with Columbia (on the ground and in space) -- not to mention the death of five passengers and one crew-member -- could have been prevented since the XU-5 was already in orbit.  

And since it was already in orbit, why not come up with this safe re-entry gambit right out the gate, five hours earlier? 

Many lives (and much rocket fuel...) would have been spared.

Poetic license, I suppose.  

Yet when Starflight One was over, I felt that it had all been for nothing. The moments that hooked me were powerful and well-vetted, but buried and suffocated by many routine elements. 

Which brings me back to my original point.

It’s really, really difficult to tell this particular story in a serious way, after the likes of Airplane or Airplane II: The Sequel. 

Those films are so perfect, so relentless in their chiseling away at the tropes of the disaster/Airport formula, that it’s nearly impossible to take the idea seriously again in their aftermath.

The saddest thing about Starflight One, however, is that, in the moments I described in my review above, the TV-movie actually comes close to climbing that seemingly insurmountable mountain.

In the final analysis, however Starflight One: The Plane that Couldn’t Land is the movie that just couldn’t stick its landing. 

MOVIE REVIEW: Righteous Kill (2008)

One of my all-time favorite movies -- and one of the best films of the 1990s -- is Heat (1995) directed by Michael Mann. Hopefully you've seen it many times, but if you haven't, the crime saga pits a dedicated cop (Al Pacino) against a genius thief (Robert De Niro).

That log-line hardly does the epic Heat justice. There's also a thrilling bank-robbery/gun-fight in the film, and an exciting/tragic final confrontation between the De Niro and Pacino characters.

I don't need to remind you that these actors are veritable giants of the crime saga/cop genres. Or that they can hold the audience rapt with their magnetism, grit, charisma and intensity.

Now, almost fifteen years after Heat, these great cinematic lions roar back to the screen in another collaboration, Jon Avnet's cop-thriller Righteous Kill. De Niro and Pacino remain, as always, eminently watchable. But let me summarize the film this way: Righteous Kill is no Heat.

In fact, it's not even lukewarm.

I saw a preview for Righteous Kill in a theater last year and I could discern even from that brief trailer that it was going to be a less-than-superb outing for these respected veterans. But, as I told my wife, Kathryn when she saw that Righteous Kill had arrived via Netflix, I simply could not resist the draw of another De Niro/Pacino match-up. Better yet, this time they would be playing partners, not antagonists...a virtual guarantee, I hoped, of silver screen frisson.

Sadly, Pacino and De Niro don't share much chemistry or again - heat - It's a result, I believe of a mechanical, gimmicky script that requires both men to play their cards close to the vest in the vain hope that a lame "twist" ending will have at least a shot at working.

Unfortunately, the final twist won't surprise anyone, and that fact makes Righteous Kill a total bust. The film is loaded with ridiculous red herrings so that the final "surprise" will (hopefully) shatter your senses, but these red herrings are all recognizable as such....and terribly trite. Since the entire film is structured simply to deceive you in the last act, there's no human interest remaining when the trick ending arrives. Just a feeling of a wasted opportunity and deflation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Righteous Kill dramatizes the story of two NYPD vets, the hotheaded Turk (Robert De Niro) and cool-as-a-cucumber chess-master "Rooster" (Al Pacino). As the film opens, we watch a videotape of what appears to be a confession. Turk explains to the camera how -- in his thirty years on the force -- he has secretly murdered fourteen law-breaking scum-balls. They deserved it, of course,. but he still broke the law, framing them for crimes and committing homicide.

Inter cut with De Niro's confession tape is the story of the investigation that (we believe...) finally brings Turk to account for his crimes. We learn how, following the murder of a little girl, Turk framed the perpetrator, Charlie Randell, after the thug was acquitted by a jury. And, how, afterwards, Turk "lost his faith." Where the legal system wouldn't work, Turk would intervene, murdering pimps, drug dealers and even pedophile priests. He plants evidence and leaves cryptic poems at the crime scenes. Or so we are led to believe.

Now, by a twist of fate, Turk and Rooster investigate together the very murders Turk ostensibly committed. The trail of murders suggests that a cop is behind them. Is Turk covering his trail, or does he want to get caught?

Joining in this homicide investigation is a sexy medical examiner, Karen (Carla Gugino), Turk's girlfriend. Karen conveniently (for plot's sake...) enjoys very rough sex, and she and Turk play kinky games to keep their affair hot. One night, he breaks into her apartment and assaults her when she's not expecting him. Afterwards, she suggests it wasn't rough enough for her. On another occasion, Karen gets all hot and bothered as Rooster describes how roughly Turk subdued a drug dealer, Spider (50 Cent). Could Karen be the murderer? Why else does she have files about all the victims on her home computer?

Investigating alongside Turk, Rooster and Karen are two up-and-coming young cops, played by Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo. Leguizamo's character seems to carry a grudge against Turk, and he tells the precinct captain (Brian Dennehy) that Turk is the murderer. Is he framing Turk for some hidden agenda?

What all this nonsense comes down to, essentially, is a final revelation scene in which the killer is exposed and then quickly killed so that we don't have to examine the morality of his actions. Speaking in generalities, Righteous Kill is about partners -- one fire, one ice -- and one of them is a murderer.

Watching Righteous Kill, you desperately want the film to play as tragedy -- the story of a good man who has, because of his job, because of his time dealing with criminals -- lost his way and fallen from grace. What you get, however, is something much less...righteous. This is a robot narrative in which motives remain oblique and the final revelation packs no punch...because Turk and Rooster simply don't stand out as "real" people. They are machines serving a larger machine, telling us only what we need to know to preserve the sanctity of the film's denouement.

Because Righteous Kill desires more than anything to surprise you, to trick you, it straitjackets all the actors to an unacceptable degree. It makes them preserve a secret that isn't worth hiding in the first place. The actors thus cloak the very qualities we want from them: some sense of humanity, tragedy or understanding. It's strange how Righteous Kill subverts itself. By tagging the trick ending as the most important aspect of the film, nothing else works. You get two great actors in De Niro and Pacino and handcuff them to a script that won't let them act, except as grinding exposition cogs.

I can see how Righteous Kill might have been a remarkable movie, but the screenplay would require a massive rewrite. You'd have to ditch the surprise ending and get into the hearts and souls of these two wounded men -- into their family lives, into their histories, into their disappointments and victories. You'd have to see how their jobs affected them, and how -- over the years -- the job took away hope, innocence and idealism.

You know the kind of movie I'm talking about, right? It would be like one Michael Mann, Brian De Palma or Martin Scorsese might direct

In that scenario, De Niro and Pacino would be free to do what they do best. They'd be permitted to emote, instead of acting on remote.

MOVIE REVIEW: The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

Belief isn't easy to come by these days. But - despite most reviews - I still believe in The X-Files.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this new film (sub-titled I Want to Believe) arises not from the stars (or the production itself), but from ourselves, and -- specifically -- our expectations.

Based on the savage reviews proliferating on the web and in print, audiences and critics apparently desired a Wrath of Khan, when what they actually get is...The Search for Spock.

In other words, X-Files: I Want to Believe is a more intimate, cerebral adventure than it is a "big event" summer movie. There are virtually no optical special effects in this movie. I could detect no (or very little) CGI. There are few action sequences.

There is little violence of any kind, actually (I don't believe a single gun is fired...). Mulder and Scully never even carry fire-arms, as far as I can detect. And there are no explosions whatsoever.

All the fireworks, rather...are purely human; emotional. Accordingly, the climax is one that relies on the specific nuances of human interaction and relationships, not fights, chases, or gun-fire. The film's success hinges on such old--fashioned elements as atmosphere and mood. A wintry, oppressive location -- West Virginia -- is practically a supporting character here, and the build-up of real suspense is generated through effective use of solid film techniques such as cross-cutting. This is good work, beautifully photographed; it's merely out-of-step with the kind of movies being offered in our cineplexes today.

Honestly, I Want to Believe's greatest failing has nothing to do with what it is; but rather what it is not; what people apparently "wanted" to believe about the form it would take.

One of The X-Files' trademark phrases was "Resist or Serve" and I remembered that catchphrase with bemusement while I watched I Want to Believe. The new movie daringly resists formula and classification. It flouts expectation, and what I've detected so far in the criticism of the film is a total unwillingness to engage with what the movie actually is about. I suppose if a movie isn't exactly like Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, or Dark Knight, well...critics don't know what to make of it.

Audiences apparently feel the same way: the film opened in fourth place this weekend and grossed a disappointing ten million dollars (roughly the same opening week haul of Serenity in 2005). Yet The X-Files I Want to Believe was made cheaply - at under thirty five million dollars. Just a bit of history: that's what it cost, or thereabouts, to make Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in 1989. Almost twenty years ago. At the very least, Carter and his team were frugal...and that fact may be a saving grace for the franchise. Which - reviews to the contrary - has a lot of life and energy left in it. It's only a "dull" or "boring" movie (as critics assert), if you choose not to engage with it.

I Want to Believe picks up six years after the finale of the popular Fox series (which ended in 2002). Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) are living together in a small but comfortable house, and Mulder has grown a beard and pretty much retreated from the world. Despite the fact he knows his sister is dead, Mulder has not given up searching for "the truth" about what happened to her. Meanwhile, Scully is a successful medical doctor at a Catholic hospital and enmeshed in the treatment of a very sick little boy; one with a terminal illness.

It's a quiet, relatively "normal" life for the most part; a normality that is shattered when the FBI solicits Mulder's help in solving a new and urgent "X-File" (in return for a pardon...). An F.B.I. agent named Monica Bannon has disappeared in the snows of gloomy West Virginia, and a fallen priest named Father Joe (Billy Connolly) claims to be experiencing psychic visions related to her case. In fact, he leads a team of FBI searchers to a burial ground of body parts in a vast, foreboding ice field (a beautifully-filmed, tense sequence).

But Father Joe may not be credible...in part because of his past. He's a convicted pedophile, you see. Mulder and Scully each boast a different perspective on Father Joe (naturally...), and their viewpoints are so contradictory that these opinions threaten to fracture their (now longstanding...) emotional relationship. This case revives Mulder's obsessive, brooding nature; and it reminds Scully of the darkness she has sought to escape.

So...what is The X-Files: I Want to Believe really about? In a deep, meaningful way, it concerns the concept of redemption. I don't mean that the movie pays lip service to the notion of redemption as that concept currently exists in the superficial popular culture lexicon (see: Angel). There's nothing comfortable or easy about how this film portrays the central moral dilemma. The crimes Father Joe committed against the innocent are utterly monstrous, as Scully rightly points out. Father Joe knows that society will never forgive him, but wonders if God can do so.

And here's where things get....murky. Father Joe castrated himself at age 26 in order to "kill" the horrible, seething appetite that led him to commit such crimes. And now, Father Joe chooses to live in a group home for pedophiles, one where sex offenders live in shame and police each other's behavior. It is a sort of Hell on Earth to live amongst such scum, especially for a Man of God. Are these signs he has changed?

And, of course, Father Joe claims he is experiencing psychic visions about that missing FBI agent, and wants to help the police find her. Is he to be trusted? Would the Divine empower a man like Father Joe with second sight? If his visions are real, are they from God? The Devil? Or is he just an accomplice in Monica's capture...?

The underlying moral quandary is this: What great "right" can undo a great "wrong?" In the fantastic and noble tradition of The X-Files, Scully and Mulder view Father Joe and his predicament in radically different ways. The series always concerned the opposing viewpoints of these two characters, and how their beliefs (and biases) shaped their perception of reality. It's the same thing here. Scully believes Father Joe is a depraved attention-seeking monster, that his visions are a hoax and a cry for attention. Mulder wants to believe that men like Father Joe can change, that redemption is possible, and that Father Joe's psychic visions are legitimate.

Pretty serious stuff. No summer movie featuring a convicted pedophile in a central role is ever going to find popularity in America. That's a fact. We go to movies to escape, generally, not to engage and this may simply be one bridge too far for mass audiences. Father Joe's inclusion and role in the story is a courageous (perhaps even self-destructive) choice on the part of writers Spotnitz and Carter because the film's central dilemma makes audiences confront the idea of real redemption in a very tangible, very challenging, very realistic way.

It is easy to forgive someone who seems heroic; someone who is beautiful; or someone who had an excuse for what he did. But what about forgiving someone for committing the worst crime (a crime against a child...) imaginable? I'm not saying you should forgive; that anyone should forgive. However, if you are not willing to forgive Father Joe, there are repercussions to that decision. The biggest one is that you can't say you believe in redemption, can you? If you don't let "good works" account for something in the cosmic tally of morality, you can't claim you believe in forgiveness, either. Nor can you claim to be a Christian, because forgiveness is the very crucible -- the beating heart -- of Christianity. I'm not condoning any particular interpretation....just commenting on the moral implications of this film. It will challenge your beliefs, and force you to evaluate what you think when the decision "to forgive" is not easy; not superficial.

I still can't believe a mainstream film (and a franchise film; and a sequel, for god's sake...) tread so deeply (and bravely) into this unsettling territory, but I'm glad it did. The X-Files: I Want to Believe effectively holds a mirror up to all those who claim belief in Christ's teachings yet actually thrive on hate and draconian notions of punishment and morality. In doing so, it comments explicitly on our times; an epoch when religion is often used to codify hatred of "the other" in our society (and in other societies). This paradigm - this Father Joe Dilemma - is true to everything The X-Files has always been about.

The mystery concerning the severed body parts (and the agent's disappearance) has apparently disappointed some critics and viewers too, but it is also very true to The X-Files' history. The series has always concerned our two world-views (belief vs. skepticism/Mulder vs. Scully) vetting mysterious "horror stories" and in the process giving them new life and energy. Spontaneous combustion, demonic possession, ESP, vampires, werewolves, succubi, golems, out-of-body experiences, and other old concepts in the genre were always re-purposed for the show to incorporate the latest advances in paranormal and medical literature and study. I Want to Believe explicitly continues that tradition with a plot concerning organ transplants, stem cell research, and a cadre of outlaw (Russian...) scientists playing Frankenstein. Is it ridiculous? Well...is a man who turns into a giant green superhero when he's angry also ridiculous? Is a man with a leather fetish wearing a black bat suit ridiculous? You may find the specifics of this X-File on the verge of ludicrous (one critic compared it to They Saved Hitler's Brain), but again, the tradition of taking hoary "monster"/horror chestnuts and granting them new (intelligent...) life is a long-standing facet of Chris Carter's creation. The franchise has been around for fifteen years now; so you likely have already decided whether or not this kind of thing works for you.

There's another aspect of I Want to Believe that works surprisingly well. It too has been ridiculed by reviewers. It's a brief comment said - oddly enough - by Father Joe. He urges Scully not to "give up" at a critical point, yet - as he himself readily admits - he has no reason to have said it to her. "Don't give up" may seem like an easy platitude (gee, like "with great power comes great responsibility?"), but it is actually kind of touching here; a short-hand for much good material. Especially when played between Mulder and Scully. In Duchovny and Anderson's deft hands, "don't give up" is one lover's comment to another in the face of hardship, past hurts and regret. Scully can't give up on the boy whom she is treating now because of the little boy (William) she once gave up on. And balanced against the Mulder/Scully relationship is a man (Callum Keith Rennie) -- a villain -- who steadfastly refuses to "give up" on the life of his lover...and goes to extreme (and really, really radical...) means to see that his lover survives. One plot is played against the other, and I found the balance elegant and touching, not cheesy.

Another theme here is the "burying" or cleansing of the past. The criminals responsible for Bannon's abduction attempt to bury the past (and their crimes) in the ice. Mulder hopes to cleanse his past too (if he just saves this one woman, he will have made up for failing his sister all those years ago). Scully, by saving her patient believes she can be cleansed of her guilt over William. But along comes Father Joe - a man with a past anyone would want to hide - who instead focuses on digging up the past (digging in the ice, in the snow, literally). Things keep coming to the surface. Things that must be dealt with.

The violent scenes in this film are tense, and make surprisingly strong use of a snowplow as a weapon. The bleak locale and the hidden secrets there keeps you alert, looking for clues amidst the ubiquitous falling snow. The location reflects the dark heart of the characters, and the final moment (post-credits) is a splendid (if brief...) catharsis; a release from the blinding white snow of Somerset, WV. More emotionally touching than exciting; more moody and lugubrious than spectacular, more contemplative than action-packed, more dark and foreboding than shocking, this is an uneasy, unsettling X-Files movie in which the truth isn't "out there" but rather "in here" - in us. In the endless mysteries of the human heart and human behavior.

MOVIE REVIEW: 10,000 BC

"Some truths do not survive the ages," admonishes the gravel-voiced narrator (Omar Sharif) of 10,000 BC, the first film of 2008 to cross the two-hundred million dollar mark. "Only time can teach us what is true and what is legend," the same narrator also pointedly suggests.

You think he's trying to tell us something?

These words are, essentially, director Roland Emmerich's attempt to inoculate himself and his production from carping film critics who complain that his prehistoric film - a heroic love poem - is historically inaccurate. Good luck with that one, Roland. Let me know how that works out for you...

Even with the opening disclaimer, it is extraordinarily difficult to deny that this film is amazingly, recklessly, wantonly, brazenly inaccurate. Sorry.

For instance, the film's events (a journey across several continents, it seems...) takes place in 10,000 BC, yet the main protagonist, D'Lea (Steven Strait) ends up battling Egyptian slavers on the plains of Giza (by the Nile), against the backdrop of the Sphinx of Giza, and the Great Pyramids (under construction....)

Now Roland, my friend, the Pyramids were likely constructed sometime between 2589 and 2566 BC. And the Sphinx? Perhaps around 1400 BC. Is D'Lea secretly using a Stone Age D'Lorean to time travel?

D'Lea's village is also attacked by Egyptian warlords on horseback, but the domestication of horses for man's use likely did not occur until somewhere around 5000 BC, right? And the use of sailing ships (deployed by Egyptians here too) likely occurred somewhere around 4000 BC. Jeez.

Still, give the film some plaudits. In depicting the opening of the Mesolithic Age, 10,000 BC does capture some of the events we understand to have occurred at that time: the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, for example, and the alleged extinction of the still-controversial "brother of man, homo floresiensis (here depicted as a possibly psychic Old Mother). 10,000 BC also dramatizes the glacier melts of approximately 9600 BC, when many lands in Europe became more habitable. 10,000 BC? 9600 BC? What's a few hundred years between friends?

And, I must point out in defense of 10,000 BC, that the goofy stupidity of the film itself is matched, in large part, by the arrogance of swaggering mainstream film critics, who chose not to complain about these (myriad...) historical accuracies but instead laughed and savaged the film because the cavemen like D'Lea and his kin spoke modern English. (Tee hee. Tee fucking hee). I mean, that's a fair criticism?

Let's examine that. What language did the Ancient Romans of Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) speak? (Hint: Perfect English). What did the Ancient Spartans of 300 speak? (Hint, same thing). What do the extra-terrestrial Romulans of Star Trek speak? (Ditto!). What do Nazis speak in most war movies? Russians? What do historical Americans speak in most period pieces? In Westerns and so forth? Yep, modern English. If mainstream critics feel that cave men speaking English in a movie designed for English-speaking audiences is a disqualifier in terms of quality, then legitimate criticism has devolved to the Mesolithic era along with Emmerich's storytelling abilities.

There are plenty of reasons to deride 10,000 BC -- and boy do I mean plenty -- but the fact that stars Steven Strait and Camilla Belle speak our language is surely not one of them. My primary problem with the film is that it is unremittingly dull, emotionally flat, and over-long. The whole thing just feels empty to me, perhaps because the primary characters seem to possess no inner life or individual spirit. We watch them suffer; we watch them perform heroic acts, we watch them speak of "love," yet somehow we don't truly feel their pain or enjoy their triumphs. There's something emotionally-remote about 10,000 BC; something that prevents the viewer from taking firm interest even in the love story.

I've tried to pinpoint my problems with the film in terms of specifics, and here's what I've come up with: As a thinking viewer, I had a difficult time suspending disbelief when the cave-men encountered the Pyramids, and found the slaves lorded over by someone who was -- apparently -- a fugitive from technologically-advanced Atlantis. It sort of reminds of me of funny old time travel TV shows where the writers felt they had to shoehorn every major historical event of the 1930s into an episode set in 1933. You know what I mean? If you miraculously ended up in 1933, what are the chances you would meet a young Hitler, bump into Clark Gable, and dodge a stockbroker falling out of his window during the stock market crash? If you were lucky (very lucky...), you might encounter one of the three. 10,000 BC simply tries too hard to shoe-horn in thousands of years of human history when it isn't necessary (witness the brilliant Quest for Fire [1982] ).

The scope of the story should have been scaled back. Why not just tell the story of D'Lea's people; of the end of "nomadism" and the beginning of agriculturalism? Why not tell the story of survival when the environment changed so rapidly, and the glaciers melted (sort of a Day Before Yesterday)?

You know, before 10,000 BC was over, I was certain D'Lea would unearth a stargate in the sand and meet James Spader and that kid from The Crying Game...

But all that's just really my own intellectual masturbation. (Ewww). I mean, Gladiator is completely inaccurate in terms of the fate of historical figures and governments (Rome became a Republic again after Commodus was killed in the gladiator ring by a slave?! -- oh, I didn't realize...), and yet I find the Scott film an emotionally-involving effort, rich with human interest. So clearly, we can overlook questions of historical accuracy when we want to, can't we? So the matter must simply be that the characters here aren't interesting or dynamic enough to hold the screen in 10,000 BC.

Also, I found the special effects distracting. The early portions of the film make extensive (and I mean EXTENSIVE) use of green screen in moments that wouldn't seem to require such visual gymnastics. The production company shot the film in Namibia, New Zealand and Thailand, so what's the deal with all the overt studio fakery? I wonder if some footage was damaged or something. Whatever the cause, some of the green screen shots in the film's quieter moments (dialogue scenes for instance), I found jarring, risible and easily detectable.

The CGI in 10,000 BC is highly variable too. The first appearance of a Woolly Mammoth herd is ultra-impressive, but the stampede is terrible. The saber-tooth tiger (of the poster) is terribly fake in detail and movement. Again, I hasten to add that bad special effects aren't an automatic disqualifier for me in terms of liking/not liking a film, so the fault is elsewhere. These things wouldn't seem so important if we *felt* the story along with the characters.

Watching the film, I felt for much of the running time that 10,000 BC was a pale (very pale...) imitation of Conan the Barbarian (1982), only with no Conan in the picture. Just imagine how dull that would be...and you might get a sense of why this movie fails. It attempts to tell us a "legend" of a "great hero" but D'Lea is just... D'ull.

And also, the rules of this world are not carefully established by the screenwriters or by Emmerich. Is the Atlantean a god from another planet? Is the Old Mother legitimately psychic? Is there magic in the world (suggested by Evolet's miraculous third-act resurrection and the fulfillment of a long-held prophecy), or not? The film never settles on an approach or single vision. Is this prehistoric adventure or magical prehistoric fantasy?

Also, the film's other major deficit is the total lack of self-awareness and humor. Humor is an essential quality in the human equation. It existed in caveman times, just as it exists now. Humor is a coping mechanism; it is a catharsis. Yet in addition to being very flat, 10,000 BC is very, very dour and serious. A moment or two of humor might have made D'Lea's long journey a bit more bearable.

10,000 BC received reviews much more cruel and savage than it deserved. By no means is this a good film, and by no means do I recommend you see it, but jeez -- it received worse reviews than The Love Guru did!!! I found the film dull, lugubrious and inaccurate, but is it the worst thing I've ever seen? Not by a long shot. It's not even the worst thing I've seen this year. The film isn't good or exciting, but nor is it offensive, so I don't really comprehend the derisive hostility towards it. Hollywood has a long history, after all, of making historically inaccurate, silly caveman movies. A lot of people I know cherish those films. A lot of people I know would rush to the theater just to see a silly caveman movie...

I will say this, ultimately, for 10,000 BC: your enjoyment of it may vary entirely on your actual (or mental) age. If this film came out in 1979, aired on the 4:30 PM movie, and I was ten years old...I would have absolutely loved it. There's a great chase scene with giant ostriches (or "Terror Birds"), pitting man against prehistoric monster, and were I an unjaded kid, I would have really, really dug it.

But by the same token, once the mammoth stampede ended; once the saber-tooth tiger was tamed, once the terror birds turned the fleeing cave-men into lunch, I think -- even as a child -- I would have found the rest of the film really, really boring.

Where's Raquel Welch and her fur bikini when you need her?

MOVIE REVIEW: The Happening (2008)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray...
-Alfred Joyce Kilmer

Who would have guessed that the world would end (sort of...) with a whimper instead of a bang? At least if we consider the "revenge of nature" story depicted in the new film, The Happening. In this film, man's destruction is carried like a whisper on the wind.

Of this, however, I do know for certain: the cinematic works of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan tend to fiercely divide modern film-goers. Some of the smartest, most film centric people I know despise his work deeply. And they have their reasons. I've heard them, and I respect them.

Others - of equally good taste, I hasten to add - find the director's work fascinating and love with a passion every film he's crafted. His titles, in case you've forgotten include: The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2001), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006) and this summer's The Happening (2008).

Personally, I enjoy Shyamalan's work very much. I admire a few of his films with reservations (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), love a few of them with admittedly irrational exuberance (Signs, The Village) and am deeply, irrevocably conflicted about one (Lady in the Water). As for The Happening...the good news is that it's far better than Lady in the Water.

But the reason I consistently appreciate M. Night Shyamalan as a filmmaker is that he -- like John Carpenter, Mira Nair or even Rob Zombie -- makes films that are uniquely his own. They come straight from his soul; from his heart and you ALWAYS know when you are watching one of his efforts. It is impossible to mistake his work for that of any other director. That fact alone certainly doesn't mean his films are always perfect (any more than every Carpenter or Zombie film is perfect...) but in today's suffocating climate of cookie-cutter blockbusters, Shyamalan's work stands apart as that of a true individual; a true artist. Love him or hate him, you can't deny that his films represent the consistent oeuvre of one (sometimes flawed) storyteller. I find his individuality refreshing and commendable, and when people are bashing him, what they are really saying, I think, is: that's not my thing. He's not my guy.
Okay, well that's not always the case either...but that's what I sense when I hear intelligent people complain about his work. Like I said, they have their reasons and those reasons are valid...it's sort of just how you weigh those flaws against other facets of his work, I guess, that results in your binary decision of "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."

The most ill-founded criticism of Shyamalan comes from my own peeps, alas -- film critics taking pot shots at his films over "the twist" ending scenarios portrayed in his features. Pick-up any mainstream review of a Shymalan film in a newspaper and you'll find critics who are complaining that the twist either works (meaning they didn't see it coming...) or that it doesn't (meaning they saw it coming and guessed it correctly). Sometimes different critics report different problems with the same twist ending, which shows you just how hard it is to please people.

For example, the reviews I've read about The Happening tend to be disappointed because there is no twist ending. So now Shyamalan is being reviewed on the basis of what's not in his film? Nice. I think this really stinks; and is brutally unfair to the artist: to reduce a director's work to whether or not there is a twist ending and whether or not it subjectively works. If Rod Serling were making The Twilight Zone today, I bet he'd get the same wrong-headed notices. Why do I say they are wrong headed? Well, in my experience you can't judge an entire film on whether or not you were successfully tricked...that's just poor movie reviewing.

Secondly, after watching all of Shyamalan's films several times (save for The Happening, which I've seen just once), I would argue that the director doesn't make films with twist endings at all. Critics just misperceive them that way.

On the contrary, Shyamalan makes films that reveal more than one perspective. We are watching them from one perspective, only to learn -- often in the last act -- that our perception, our perspective was wrong to begin with. We often learn this fact right beside the main characters, which makes the characters sometimes tragic; sometimes all the more human. Technically, this approach isn't a twist: rather this is a clever director dramatizing for us a story from a variety of angles. If he cheats all the way through, there's reason to be angry, I suppose. If he's consistent and we're surprised or touched, I suggest we have reason to feel satisfied. How many films even have one perspective to begin with? In M. Night Shyamalan's work we are fortunate enough to have a filmmaker who can see that his story has shades; and more to the point -- reveal to us those shades. That takes talent, and no small amount of subtlety. We think we're seeing one thing; but we're actually seeing something else all together.

Tell me: the second time you watch The Sixth Sense, what's the "twist?" Ditto Unbreakable? And heck, what's the twist the first time you watch Signs?
See? Critics have pigeonholed Shyamalan as a "twist" director and so they all review every one of his films based on that viewpoint. And, if you'll forgive the pun -- given the subject matter of The Happening - they've missed the forest for the trees in the process.

Again, I'm not saying you'll like every film this guy makes. I'm just saying that he makes distinctive, individual films (a good thing, no?) and that it is wrong for critics to judge him entirely on the misperception that his films must feature a twist ending. And on top of that, a GREAT twist ending.

Now, I've made the claim that M. Night Shyamalan's films are unique and individual, and so I need to back up that assertion by mentioning a few of his consistent conceits (besides the multiple perception bit). In all of Shyamalan's films (save for Lady in the Water), for example, we see strongly the director's sense of morality. Not his moralizing, mind you, but his morality. And by that, I mean simply that he presents a moral universe where a family unit of some type is forced to countenance with...a happening, for lack of a better word. Sometimes the family unit is "unofficial" (not biological); but there's always a parental figure and a child (or young person) involved in some capacity. In the course of the film, and often because of the "happening," the family learns to move past tragedy and grow closer. You could even argue that the family in Lady in the Water is actually a community - a larger family, I suppose. Regardless, Shyamalan clearly has an affinity for blending regular family life with the unreal and super-real (whether ghosts, an alien invasion, superheroes, mermaids, or a deadly plague).

But what separates Shyamalan from another family-oriented director (like, say, Spielberg), is that he genuflects to the reality of unhappy endings in life. A mother is killed in Signs. A small girl loses both her biological parents in The Happening, and so forth. There's a shocking scene in this film when two young boys are shot in cold blood. In these tragedies, the survivors don't merely learn to grow closer, they somehow express a dawning sense of spirituality; and an acknowledgment of their interconnectedness. This is not religiosity (which is totally different), but true spirituality. Things like fate (in who survives and who doesn't) and belief and synchronicity are examined in the director's films in the most oblique and often wonderful ways.

I believe that these twin ideas of synchronicity and spirituality are the most important factor in Shyamalan's films, and that's why he often sets his climaxes in small, unspectacular settings. A swimming pool (Unbreakable, Lady in the Water), or basements (Signs, The Happening). It's an unconventional choice - and an uncommercial one as well, but perfectly in keeping with Shyamalan's storytelling ethos. His stories aren't about the alien invasions, superheroes, ghosts or deadly happenings, but rather our simple, emotional, grasping, human response to them.

I am perfectly willing to admit this is my bias but I love that idea. When so many films are satisfied with the lowest common denominator, I welcome the lens of Shyamalan's world view. He may occasionally talk down to us; but he universally comes from a place of intelligence, morality and heart, and frankly those qualities are often missing from today's blockbusters. There is nothing canned or phoned-in lurking in Shyamalan's vision, and even if his vision is occasionally schmaltzy, I dig it. A lot. Mea culpa.

So The Happening? Honestly, It boasts in roughly the same percentages the same strengths and the same flaws as Shyamalan's other films. It is long on heart and short on spectacle. It is long on humanity but short, occasionally, on plot. Like much of his work, it straddles the line between being absolutely inspired and absolutely derivative. At times it stretches for brilliance and achieves it, and at other times it retracts to basic truisms and hackneyed explanations that leave you cursing at their banality.

The film's storyline involves a science teacher Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) who is estranged from his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel). One day, this couple (and dozens of other citizens...) flee Philadelphia when what appears to be a terrorist nerve gas attack is responsible for the (gruesome) deaths of many New Yorkers. The attack begins in Central Park, but before long, it seems to be following the Moores to rural Pennsylvania. They continue to flee, in ever smaller population circles, as the entire North East is decimated by an attack that seems to be carried on the wind, but which originates not with foreign fighters...but with Mother Nature.

As I wrote above, this is "Revenge of Nature" film like Frogs (1972), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) and Day of the Animals (1977). You know the meme:-- man's pollution causes nature to go haywire in response and self-correction. Only The Happening takes a vegetarian slant on the threat, an idea that has been explored in the sci-fi genre for generations (notably in One Step Beyond's "Moment of Hate" and Space:1999's "The Troubled Spirit.") But perhaps the closest antecedent for The Happening is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, The Birds (1963). There, as you will recall, a swarm of birds suddenly and inexplicably went on the attack and nearly took out an entire town. There was no explanation for the battle and the bird assault ended as mysteriously as it began. Same deal here, save for an entirely unnecessary explanatory coda (more like Psycho than The Birds), in which a talking-head on a cable news show makes an entirely too heavy-handed environmental point. I liked the the message and the metaphor (that by destroying nature we are killing ourselves), but I didn't need the spoon-feeding.

Still, The Happening carries a commendable aura of impending, escalating doom. Put simply, the movie is never less than utterly spellbinding. The characters also grow on you considerably, and viewers will find themselves invested in their survival. John Leguizamo plays a character who sees his end coming from a distance, and his performance is haunting and memorable. The Happening also forges a unique threat unlike any seen before, and makes it clear that this threat is inescapable. Most importantly, the film focuses on the ties that bind us (and the reasons they bind us...) and finds humanity at both his most noble and his most ugly (depending on the person) in a time of crisis.

So sue me: I really, really liked this movie. Yet I have a creeping suspicion I will be one of the few (along with Roger Ebert). Some of you may not like The Happening at all. If you go, try to see it with your mind and heart open and the "twist" you may find at film's end is that there's a lot to inspire you here.

MOVIE REVIEW: Michael Clayton (2007)

My mother-in-law and father-in-law are in town this weekend to visit Kathryn, Joel and me, so last night we all (except Joel, of course...) watched Michael Clayton (2007), a recent drama starring George Clooney as the titular character, a legal "fixer;" a janitor who cleans up messes for his firm's clients. In particular, Michael Clayton is assigned to clean up a mess left by his manic-depressive associate, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), who was defending a corrupt agro-business (U-North) for marketing a pesticide that also happened to be - in Arthur's words - a "superb cancer delivery system." U-North is represented by Oscar Winner Tilda Swinton's character, an immoral attorney who eventually sends assassins after both Arthur and Michael in an attempt to silence U-North's accusers.

So - first things first - I enjoyed watching the film. But while I was watching it, I also paid close attention - for some reason - to how I was enjoying it. And suddenly, while viewing the movie, I began to realize that this was one of those films that is "good" and even "pleasurable" only in the absolutely predictable ways that it reinforces things you already believe. It moves the plot machinations in such a rote, familiar way that you feel sort of "happy" because you have to countenance nothing new or unexpected. It's like a roller coaster you've already been on a hundred times. The bumps, falls and curves are all old friends...so when you hit them, you smile...but you don't scream.

So in Michael Clayton, we are asked to understand that a big corporation, U-North is corrupt and greedy. (Didn't see that one coming did ya?). And that big, powerful law firms sometimes represent corrupt, greedy corporations for huge sums of money. (Another shocker!) And who is really surprised that Michael Clayton - a divorced, addictive personality (he's a gambler) - is going to stand-up for the little guy against his firm and the corporation? Now, I'm not belittling these points or ideals. I like to see the little guy fight City Hall and win; and I like to see evil corporations exposed. But this old chestnut is the stuff of Academy Award winning drama in 2007? This old, old, old, often-done tale of bad big business getting a comeuppance is the best of the best? All-righty then.

I'm sure it sounds as though I'm being condescending to Michael Clayton, but I'm not. It's just that I've seen this movie when it was A Civil Action and when it was Erin Brockovich. And, setting an extremely low bar here, the movie is "good" only if you're into comforting, reinforcing entertainment. I know, for myself, that there are moments indeed when films like this -- or the latest John Grisham adaptation for that matter -- go down just right. Like smooth vanilla ice cream. You know what I mean - you're not in the mood to be challenged; or even particularly active in your viewing. You just want to sit there in the cinematic bath tub and soak up the generic, nice-smelling bubbles.

At times, I felt that Michael Clayton sought to accomplish more than that, and I suppose that's why the film critic-within found something to be disappointed about at the end of the day. There's a remarkable "life synchronicity" moment that goes unexplained in the film, and I appreciated the dedicated ambiguity. This moment involves horses standing on a picturesque hillside, and the fact that the unusual image appears to Michael twice in the film. Once in the pages of an illustrated book; and the second time out his driver's side window during early morn. The fact that he sees this equestrian image saves Michael's life. But how and why this image should re-appear is unexplored. Is it God, trying to save his life? A coincidence? A synchronicity? Is Michael's son - who left Michael the book - psychic? In a film of stereotypically evil businessmen and equally stereotypically amoral lawyers, a moment as ambiguous as this one stands out as exceptional and special. It's a funny little symbolic grace note. And it has nothing explicit to do with the rest of the film.

Near the end of the movie, there's also a terrific overhead shot of two escalators moving automatically on opposite tracks, in opposite directions. On one, Michael Clayton is "going down;" and the other - abandoned - rolls up. The shot is lingered upon for a good long time, until you start to see all the possibilities, symbolic and otherwise of the staging. The set-up seems to suggest that Michael is headed one way; life in general the other. That - hero that he is - he's going against the grain; against the mechanical "business-as-usual" flow. Again, it's a better staging than the film's story probably deserves. Still...a good shot is a good shot.

I suppose it doesn't help the film either that Michael's valedictory speech and moment of anger ("I'm the guy you pay off, not the guy you kill...") is also the clip that was played most frequently when the film was being promoted. I had seen this scene in previews and reviews probably a dozen times, and since it serves as the movie's high point, it kind of falls flat in context. Watching it, I was suddenly reminded of Wayne's World and the melodramatic, false-emotional moment when the words "Oscar Clip" were flashed on the screen. That's precisely how the scene plays: an Oscar clip.

Which brings us to George Clooney. He doesn't bob his head as much here as he did circa Batman & Robin (1997) and that's a blessing. One time, just for kicks, Kathryn and I watched that Batman film on laserdisc (which I purchased for 99 cents) and counted how many times George Clooney bobbed his head. We stopped counting at over two hundred bobs. Seriously, Clooney has grown a lot as an actor and is very good here. I know he's involved in the project because his buddy, Soderbergh, is a producer, but I wonder why he couldn't see just how familiar and uninventive the movie's story is. I'm a big admirer of Clooney and Soderbergh's Solaris (which most people I know hated with a passion...), and there's more invention - more daring - in the first ten minutes of that film than there is in the entirety of Michael Clayton. That film is filled with interesting, rarely-expressed human truths (what my late mentor Johnny Byrne sometimes called the little verities) and I guess the antidote for Michael Clayton is Solaris.

Again, I had a really good time watching this movie. But my brain was on auto-pilot the whole time. How much you like this movie will depend on how you're feeling, I suppose. On a family night, it went down easy enough (but what I really wanted to watch - and couldn't - was Atonement...)