The film that has had the most lasting influence on action cinema is Buster Keaton’s 1926 masterpiece The General. Inspired by an actual Civil War train chase across Tennessee and Georgia, The General contains some of the most incredible stunts ever performed for film — all of them done by Keaton himself.
There’s a straight line between The General and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the 1981 Steven Spielberg/George Lucas collaboration that perfected the kinetic filmmaking style the two friends had been groping towards with Star Wars, Jaws, and 1941. Their not-so-secret weapon was Harrison Ford, who didn’t quite do all of his own stunts like Keaton, but who still did a lot more stuff than Lucasfilm’s insurers were comfortable with.
When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, the rights to Indiana Jones came with it, and soon after the House of Mouse pointed out that Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford had signed a five-film deal in 1979. That meant that even after the classic 80s run of Raiders, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade, and 2008’s much-maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they were owed one more. Thus was born Indiana Jones and the Contractual Obligation, aka Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Spielberg and Lucas fulfilled their contractual obligations by executive producing this go-round, handing off directorial duties to James Mangold, and a script cobbled together from years of false starts.
But without Ford, there’s no Indy. Any doubts that the 80-year-old Ford could still wear the fedora are quickly dispelled in The Dial of Destiny. When the action opens, Ford gets ILM’s patented de-aging treatment. It’s 1945, and the Third Reich is falling. Indy and his Oxford archeologist colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) try to sneak into a German castle where Nazis are hoarding looted treasures. They’re looking for the Lance of Longious, the Roman spear that pierced Christ’s side, but in the ensuing fracas, Indy half-accidentally comes into possession of the Antikythera, half of a mysterious clockwork artifact from ancient Greece allegedly created by Archimedes.
Mangold’s assignment is to imitate the master, and the opening chase sequence, which pays homage to The General, is prime Spielbergian thrill-ride cinema. Then we flash forward to 1969, where a depressed, aging Indy is just trying to get some peace and quiet in his Brooklyn apartment. The script gets the old man jokes out of the way early, when Indy takes a baseball bat to hush up the hippies downstairs, who were blasting “Magical Mystery Tour” way too loud. The hippies are in a celebratory mood, because it’s the day of the ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts. It’s also retirement day for Indy, who has fallen from Princeton to a tiny liberal arts college. I guess it’s hard to get tenure when you’re a globe-trotting adventurer. His son with Marion, Mutt, has died in Vietnam, and the couple have split, leaving Indy with memories and whiskey.
Ford, who has phoned in performances in his time, comes alive in a scene where Indy tries to teach his class of bored, stoned co-eds about Archimedes. One student who is listening is Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who reveals herself to Indy as the daughter of Basil, and his goddaughter. Helena is in the family business, but her brand of archeology is closer to Indy’s mercenary Temple of Doom approach than the guy who exclaimed “It belongs in a museum!” She wants to know what happened to the Antikythera all those years ago. Also interested in the subject is Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a former Nazi turned NASA rocket scientist, who believes the Antikythera holds the key to time travel. Indy’s retirement is upended by a three-way chase through the streets and subways of New York, as the ticker-tape parade is in progress.
Mangold takes a lot of big swings, and most of them connect. Waller-Bridge proves a much better foil for Ford than Shia LaBeouf was in Crystal Skull. There are some great sentimental cameos, but they’re handled deftly enough that it doesn’t become a nonstop nostalgia party.
Best of all is Ford, who doesn’t treat this as a victory lap. His joints are stiffer, but when he says he’s been shot nine times, you believe him. It’s a great joy to see anti-fascist icon Indiana Jones still out there punching Nazis. We need him now more than ever.
The nominations for the 94th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning. Jane Campion’s Western The Power of the Dog leads the list with 12 nods, including Best Picture, Best Director, and acting nominations for Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Coming 2 America, the sequel to Eddie Murphy’s beloved 1988 star vehicle, earned a nomination for Mike Marino, Stacey Morris, and Carla Farmer’s work in Makeup and Hairstyling. The film was directed by Memphian Craig Brewer. Upon its release in January, 2021, Coming 2 America became became Amazon Studios biggest hit to date. You can read the story behind its making in this Memphis Flyer cover story.
Coming 2 America will compete in the Hair and Makeup category against Disney’s Cruella, Denis Villaneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune, the Jessica Chastain-led biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Ridley Scott’s melodrama House of Gucci. Brewer’s 2005 film Hustle & Flow earned a Best Original Song Academy Award for Three Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” and a Best Actor nomination for star Terrance Howard.
Best Picture nominees also included Dune, which earned a total of 10 nominations. Kenneth Brannaugh’s period drama Belfast was nominated in both Best Picture and Best Director categories, as well as Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench and Supporting Actor for Ciarán Hinds. Adam McKay’s climate change satire Don’t Look Up, another Best Picture nominee, was also listed for Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. Will Smith earned a Best Actor nominee for sports flick and Best Picture nominee King Richard. Paul Thomas Anderson’s 70’s rom-com Licorice Pizza received both Best Picture and Best Director noms, as did Ryuske Hamaguchi’s meditative Drive My Car, which was also Japan’s entry in the Best International Feature category. Steven Spielberg’s re-adaptation of West Side Story made him the first person to be nominated for Best Director in six different decades, while Ariana DeBose was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Anita. Gueillermo del Toro’s carnival noir Nightmare Alley, and Sundance hit CODA rounded out the Best Picture nods.
Elsewhere, Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s story of an Afghan refugee named Amin Nawabi, made history as the first film to ever earn nominations in the Best Documentary, Best Animated, and Best International Feature categories.
Ariana DeBose, Hamilton alum, stuns audiences as Anita, even as she plays opposite Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing the Shark girl in 1961.
Over and over again in Steven Spielberg’s stunning adaptation of West Side Story, people face off against each other from the opposing sides of the screen. The Sharks and the Jets do it, as you would expect from theater’s dancing-est street gangs. Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler) do it, first underneath the bleachers at the high school dance, then in the church where they declare their love. And the men and women of New York’s Upper West Side Puerto Rican immigrant community do it as they sing about “America.”
West Side Story is about the contradictions at the heart of the American experiment. Yes, we’re all created equal and, since we have the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we are free to love whom we want. But, as lyricist Stephen Sondheim put it, “Life is all right in America/If you’re all white in America.”
Sondheim, who passed away at age 91 just days before Spielberg’s film was released, was the newcomer in 1957 when he co-created West Side Story with composer Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Robbins. It was Robbins’ idea to set Romeo and Juliet in what was then the poor neighborhood on Manhattan island and transform Shakespeare’s feuding “two households, both alike in dignity” into the Jets and Sharks, two groups of poor New Yorkers separated mostly by the timing of their ancestors’ immigration to America. Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s adaptation, makes this explicit when he has police Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) call out the Jets as the last white people who can’t make it in America.
Most of the onus of updating West Side Story for a 21st century America falls on Kushner as the screenwriter, and the Angels in America scribe succeeds beyond all expectations. This film is not a remake of the 1961 Best Picture Oscar winner; it’s an adaptation of the original play. The order of the songs reflect the play, which makes a lot more sense, plot-wise. The difference with the Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins version begins immediately. The camera pans across an urban wasteland of demolished buildings until it lands on a sign announcing the upcoming construction of Lincoln Center. The little square of turf the Sharks and Jets fight and die to control is doomed from the start. Later, in the Gimbels department store where Maria works as a cleaner (another Kushner addition), one of her co-workers expresses the hope that they will be able to stay in the neighborhood and live in a nice, new apartment. Another maid shoots her down — those apartments will be for rich people and we’ll have to move.
Spielberg has never made a musical before, although he has dabbled, such as the opening “Anything Goes” number in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I figured he would do a good job, but I didn’t think his first foray into the genre would be a perfect film. His staging and camera moves are on another level from everyone else working today. The dance at the school gym where Tony and Maria meet rivals the kinetic action sequences of Mad Max: Fury Road.
There’s not a sour note in the acting. Rachel Zegler is a first-time film actor who was one of 30,000 people who auditioned in an open casting call; her last role was as Maria in a community theater production of West Side Story in Englewood, New Jersey. She is absolutely radiant. Hamilton veteran Ariana DeBose nails the picture’s most difficult role as Anita, the Shark girl caught between love and anger. Just to add another layer of difficulty, DeBose has to play opposite Rita Moreno, who won an Oscar for playing Anita in 1961. Moreno takes on the shopkeeper’s role as Valentina and delivers a showstopper in a show made of nothing but showstoppers. In Moreno’s hands, “Somewhere” is transformed into a paean for an American dream of equality that always seems just out of reach.
Kodi Smit-McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch ride the range in The Power Of The Dog.
The Power of the Dog swept the Southeastern Film Critics Association’s annual awards poll, earning not only the Best Picture award, but also Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Supporting Actress for Kirsten Dunst, Best Supporting Actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Campion’s work transforming novelist Thomas Savage’s story for the screen.
“Jane Campion has been one of our finest directors for decades, and I’m thrilled that our members chose to recognize her exquisite work on The Power of the Dog,” says SEFCA President Matt Goldberg. “Campion has crafted a unique Western that gets to the core of the genre while still feeling fresh and vital. It’s an absolute triumph of mood, performances, and craft that will certainly go down as one of her finest movies in a career full of marvelous filmmaking.”
Kristen Stewart as Diana in Spencer.
Kristen Stewart won Best Actress for her portrayal of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, in Spencer. The Best Ensemble acting award went to Wes Anderson’s sprawling tribute to journalism, The French Dispatch.
Greg Frayser’s work on Dune earned him the SEFCA’s Best Cinematography award.
Best Original Screenplay went to Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza. The sci-fi epic, Dune, won Best Cinematography and Best Score for Hans Zimmer.
Best Documentary went to Summer of Soul, which also placed #10 in the overall rankings. Best Animated Feature went to The Mitchells vs. The Machines. In what must surely be a first, the experimental documentary Flee placed second in both the documentary and animated film categories.
Sly Stone performs at the Harlem Cultural Festival, a concert series of the same caliber as Woodstock, but long buried in music history until now.
As a member in good standing, your columnist voted in the poll. You can see how my choices differed from the consensus choices in the December 23rd issue of the Memphis Flyer. Here is the complete list of awards winners for 2021:
Top 10 Films
1. The Power of the Dog
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Belfast
4. The Green Knight
5. West Side Story
6. The French Dispatch
7. Tick, Tick…BOOM!
8. Drive My Car
9. Dune
10. Summer of Soul
Best Actor
Winner: Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
The weather in Memphis couldn’t be more perfect, and Saturday night at the Malco Summer Drive-In you can spend a night under the stars with some summer movie season classics. Black Lodge’s Time Warp Drive-In celebrates May with Suburban Dreams: The ’80s Kids Adventure Films.
First on the list is the greatest of the bunch, and a perfect film. After Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind became an unexpectedly huge hit in 1977, he envisioned a sequel under the working title Watch the Skies. Based on an infamous UFO sighting from Kentucky, in which a Hopkinsville family claimed their farm was terrorized by aliens, the project got as far as a screenplay by Brother From Another Planet director John Sayles before Spielberg ditched the overt horror elements. Screenwriter Melissa Matheson came up with the line “E.T. phone home,” which became the jumping-off point for a new story of an alien who is accidentally left behind by a UFO. He (they?) are discovered hiding in a backyard shed by Elliott (Henry Thomas), a 10-year-old suburban kid whose family is in the midst of a painful divorce. With his older brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) and younger sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore, in a star-making role) Elliott tries to evade government scientists led by Peter Coyote (known only as “Keys”) and help E.T. rendezvous with a rescue ship.
E.T. is Spielberg at his most manipulative, and I mean that as a compliment. It is, strangely enough, an autobiographical story: E.T. was inspired by Spielberg’s imaginary friend who helped him get through his own parent’s divorce. Released in 1982, it held the title of highest-grossing film in history for eight years until another Spielberg film, Jurassic Park, displaced it at the top. It was also the first film as a producer for Kathleen Kennedy, the current head of Lucasfilm. In hindsight, what’s most remarkable about the story is its commitment to staying entirely within the secret world of kids, as you can see from this clip featuring a hopelessly endearing performance by a 7-year-old Drew Barrymore.
The logo of Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment comes from E.T. and Elliott’s famous nighttime bicycle flight. The second film of the night is another Amblin production, this one from 1985. The Goonies started life as a story Spielberg came up with, then passed on to director Richard Donner, pioneering director of the 1978 Superman. A group of misfit kids from the poor neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, find a map to pirate treasure and race through an escalating series of Indiana Jones-inspired situations to save their families from eviction. Starring the future Samwise Gamgee Sean Austin and Josh Brolin in early roles, The Goonies is an irreverent, hyperactive adventure that has attracted a cult following over the years. Austin would later go on to star in the Goonies-inspired Netflix series Stranger Things.
The third and final film of the evening came out the same year as The Goonies. Proof of E.T.‘s long shadow, the story of Joe Dante’s Explorers is kind of the reverse of its inspiration. Instead of an alien coming down to Earth and secretly befriending kids, it’s a group of kids building a spaceship and flying up to meet the aliens. The best part of the film is the cast: It’s the debut film for both Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix, who are both terrific.
The Time Warp Drive-In films start at dusk, around 7:45 p.m. They will be preceded by a performance by The Becomers, a band whose members range in age from 7 to 12 years old. Admission is $25 per car, so bring the family for a night of impeccable entertainment.
Lots of new and old sights to see this week in Memphis.
James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause
First off, tonight at Malco Ridgeway, Indie Memphis presents an unusual biopic. Nico, 1988 is set in the last year of the life of Christa Päffgen, the German actor, model, singer, and Warhol superstar who sang with the Velvet Underground on their first album. Nico has been called the “first Goth girl”, and led a short but eventful life. Italian director Susanna Niccharelli’s film chronicles her last tour of Europe, and her attempts to come to grips with her chaotic past and reconnect with the son she left behind years before. Tickets are available on the Indie Memphis website.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin
Meanwhile, at the Paradiso, Universal celebrates the 25th anniversary of a classic. Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is widely considered to be the birth of the modern CGI era, and it’s a rip-roaring good time to boot. This birthday celebration will be unique, because it features a crowdsourced, fan-made remake of the film. If it’s anything nearly as good as the Star Wars Uncut project, it’s totally worth your time.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin (5)
On Wednesday at Crosstown Arts, Indie Memphis presents Drifting Towards The Crescent. Laura A Stewart’s moody, experimental documentary focuses on the poor, rural communities in Iowa and Missouri that sit on the banks of the Mississippi river. This film premiered at last year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, and you can get tix on their website.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin (2)
Over at the Paradiso, a harrowing story of obsession and rock climbing. The Dawn Wall documents Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson’s attempt to climb the last stretch of unconquered rock in America, El Capitan’s eastern face, known as the Dawn Wall. The show starts at 7 PM.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin (3)
On Thursday at the Paradiso, it’s a film of a stage production that is itself an adaption of a film that was inspired by an orchestral rhapsody. The 1951 film An American In Paris was an MGM musical starring Gene Kelly and directed by Vincent Minelli, both at the height of their powers. It was loosely based on George Gershwin’s visit to the City of Lights during the bohemian 1920s, when he composed the title track as a student of Maurice Ravel. The Broadway production helmed by director Christopher Wheeldon captured in this film won a Tony award in 2015.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin (4)
Friday at Crosstown Arts, the Wish Book series brings artist John Pearson to town for a retrospective of his experimental photography and film work. “Lay of the Land” is an exhibit of Pearson’s California landscape photography, made without film or cameras, and a retrospective of his experimental video works from 1999 to present. You can get more information at the Crosstown Arts website.
From John Pearson’s ‘Lay of the Land’ exhibit at Crosstown Arts
Finally, on Sunday, September 23, Turner Classic Movies presents film legend James Dean’s greatest role, and a founding document of American teenager-hood. Rebel Without A Cause was directed by Nicholas Ray, and released about three weeks after Dean’s death in an automotive accident in 1955. It’s a gorgeous CinemaScope production with a memorable scene at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. Dean is amazing, of course, but also very good are co stars Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood, Jim Backus, and a young Dennis Hopper. Showtime is 2 PM at the Paradiso.
This Week At The Cinema: Rebels, Dinosaurs, and Gershwin (6)
When future digital archeologists look at the internet, I wonder what they will make of the millions of pages of stories about Kirk and Spock having sex. Or Buffy and Hermione’s doomed love affair. Or the novel-length work about wrapping Roy Orbison in cling film. (Google it and weep for humanity.)
Fan fiction, as this stuff is loosely called, predates the internet, but it was only with the coming of the world wide web that the art form could flourish. It’s not true that no one wants to read my carefully thought-out story of R2-D2’s rich inner life — maybe a hundred people would like it, and since they’re all on LiveJournal writing robosexual fantasies, I know where to find them.
Fanfic is a way for the consumers of popular culture to take control of it, even if it’s in a small, limited way. Its reputation for bad writing is well-earned, but it’s not all amateurs out there. The entire Fifty Shades of Grey franchise started life as as an extremely popular BDSM Twilight fanfic — author E.L. James just changed vampires to rich people. But discounting Roy Orbison in cling film, fanfic’s crowning achievement is Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Cline’s protagonist Wade Watts lives in the teeming slums of the ruined future, but escapes into The Oasis, a fully immersive virtual world populated by billions who act out their fantasies in real time. Wade is one of thousands of other players on a years-long quest to solve a series of puzzles set out by James Halliday, the system’s creator. Halliday’s obsession was popular culture he loved as a kid, so Ready Player One’s great game is steeped in 1980s references, from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to Zork. The first to find the three hidden keys can unlock the “easter egg” and be awarded ownership of the entire system.
The late creator envisioned a Willy Wonka scenario, but control of this virtual world would be fantastically lucrative, so Innovative Online Industries (IOI) CEO Nolan Sorrento is spending a lot of money and manpower to leverage gaming as a form of hostile corporate takeover. When Wade makes a breakthrough in the game, he becomes the target of Sorrento, who pursues him in both the virtual and real worlds.
Ready Player One is no literary masterpiece, but it is a good beach read. Once it became a bestseller, it was kind of inevitable that the film adaptation would be directed by Steven Spielberg, the man responsible for much of the ’80s aesthetic Cline is nostalgic for. Spielberg got Industrial Light and Magic on board, and worked his wizardry. He and screenwriter Zak Penn sanded off the book’s rough edges and worked around the inevitable intellectual property licensing conflicts inherent in a story that climaxes with Voltron dueling Mechagodzilla. (There’s a glaring lack of Star Wars, for example, and Voltron is demoted to just “a gundam.”)
Eager as I was to see the director of Raiders of the Lost Ark bring D&D creator Gary Gygax’s trap-tastic Tomb of Horrors to life, Spielberg’s virtuosic comedy-action sequence built around The Shining more than justifies his decision to dial back the book’s more esoteric digressions. But you don’t have to be a hopeless geek like me to get it when everything clicks, like when Wade (Tye Sheridan) and his Magic Pixie Dream Girl Art3mis (Oliva Cooke) float into an ethereal zero-G dance club with “Blue Monday” booming over the sound system. Cline’s book wants to be edgy YA dystopian fiction, but in Speilberg’s hands, it’s more Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
As long as he delivers the goods, Spielberg could be forgiven if he just made a delicious confection. But this film, though steeped in nostalgia, feels very much of the moment. As Sorrento, Ben Mendelsohn is doing a sly imitation of Principal Vernon from The Breakfast Club, but he’s also Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to control the world through domination of information flows. Mark Rylance plays Oasis creator Halliday as the archetypal computer geek hero who wants both information and people to be free. The characters believe their assumed online identities are more real than the ones they’re stuck with IRL.
Ready Player One is a lot of fun, but it also feels like the end of something. Now that Spielberg is filming his own fanfic, maybe postmodernism has reached its final form. Remixing the past is all fine and good, but now it’s time to go back to the future.
Lesson number five in Yale history professor Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century is “Remember Professional Ethics.” Snyder writes, “When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitment to just practice becomes more important.”
Few people have ever accused Hollywood of having “professional ethics.” Long gone are the days when Dalton Trumbo would write a patriotic paean like Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and then get hauled in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee for his troubles, or where John Sturges could condemn Japanese internment with Bad Day at Black Rock, or where Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford could star in All the President’s Men and make it one of the biggest movies of the year. Nope, these days it’s all $100 million toy commercials and fascist dreck like 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. Do successful filmmakers have a duty to the Republic? Don’t make Michael Bay laugh into his Porsche collection.
This is why, even if The Post wasn’t a rip roaring great movie, it would still be a remarkable presence in the theaters of 2018. At age 71, with an estimated net worth of $3 billion, Steven Spielberg didn’t have to make this movie. Producer Amy Pascal, former head of Sony, didn’t have to pony up for a script by struggling screenwriter Liz Hannah about Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post in the Watergate era. Who in their right mind would do such a thing when My Little Pony is just hanging there, ripe for transformation into a cinematic universe?
Maybe they did it because The Post is the movie that needs to be made right now. Maybe that’s the same reason Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks signed on, as Graham and Post editor Ben Bradlee, respectively.
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep lead a star-studded cast in The Post, Steven Spielberg’s remarkable new film about the release of the Pentagon Papers
Hanks has another potential reason: He’s an obsessive typewriter collector, and the newsrooms of 1971 would be like Candyland for him. Dial-up phone fans will also be in heaven for the 116-minute running time. So will political junkies and actual patriots who value the First Amendment, the separation of powers, and representative democracy.
If you’re a fan of good film craft — as all right-thinking people should be — you will flip for The Post. Spielberg may be the best steward of old-school film grammar we have left, and all of the classic virtues are on display. The Post tells the story of the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers, which explained in great detail that former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) and the U.S. Government knew that the Vietnam War was unwinnable as early as 1965, a full decade and tens of thousands of casualties before it ignominiously ended. It is that most dreaded of script genres: People talking in rooms without brandishing guns. The practice of journalism is mostly people on telephones, or as film producers call it, slow box office death. There probably aren’t five people on the planet who could have pulled off this story with the same excitement and urgency as Spielberg. What most contemporary directors would take five cuts to accomplish, he can do with a focus pull, such as when Bradlee crashes Graham’s birthday party with urgent clandestine news, and Spielberg meticulously reveals McNamara, the one person who can’t know what’s going on, in the crowd. The director is in complete control of where your eyes are focused on the screen at all times, and it feels great, not intrusive or forced. Information is revealed at exactly the right pace, and dense exposition flows like drawn butter.
Hanks leads a murderer’s row of contemporary acting talent that includes Sarah Paulson as Bradlee’s wife Tony, Bob Odenkirk as reporter Ben Bagdikian, Matthew Rhys as leaker Daniel Ellsberg, Jesse Plemons as Post lawyer Roger Clark, and David Cross as reporter Howard Simons. But it’s Streep who shines brightest. Graham starts the film as a socialite and dilettante as interested in rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful as she is in running a paper. By the end, she walks determinedly out of the Supreme Court to be greeted by a silent phalanx of young women looking to her example of powerful, patriotic womanhood. Streep’s arc is one of the most finely shaded and complex of her storied career. The Post pursues the personal, the political, and professional spheres of life all at once, and its story of putting duty to country and humanity over personal loyalty and professional advancement couldn’t be more timely. I hope this group of artists’ example is seen far and wide in our troubled country.
Francois Truffault as Claude LaCombe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
A fully restored, 4K version of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind is currently in theaters to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release. In this edition of Never Seen It, I took Memphis experimental filmmaker and Memphis Flyer contributor Ben Siler to see the film at the Malco Paradiso. It’s one of my desert island, all-time favorites, but it seems Ben and I had very different experiences at this screening.
Before Close Encounters:
Chris McCoy: What do you know about Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
Ben Siler: The song, mashed potatoes, beautiful UFOs at the end, Francois Truffaut is somewhere inside.
Afterwards, we retired to Whole Foods for lunch of chicken and mashed potatoes.
BS: It’s my knee jerk response to be critical about Spielberg.
CM: What’s your beef with Spielberg?
BS: Well, he’s schmaltzy, and he doesn’t know how to end a movie. He hasn’t for fifteen years. He’s a very skilled person, and great and wonderful, but I think he’s had enough praise, and it’s right to be skeptical of him. He’s not a wunderkind any more, I guess, so what he’s selling is a little more obvious. But this was a great film.
CM: So you just knew the highlight reel scenes, right? The infamous mashed potatoes, and the pretty spaceships at the end. What about the rest of it? Did it go where you thought it was going to go?
BS: It reminded me of Lost. J. J. Abrams was in the [retrospective documentary] short at the beginning. I loved the tension, and the buildup—basically, the globetrotting, finding the elements and putting them together to solve the mystery. I thought it was really nicely handled.
But again, I have a knee jerk thing against Spielberg. It all built up to the pretty lights and the schmaltz. Which is OK. I like different things to be emphasized when you’re dealing with the unknown and spirituality. It’s pretty spiritual and religious. It was a movie that, on my best day, I could dream about making maybe one frame of. But still, my favorite thing about that whole last sequence was Richard Dreyfuss kissing Melinda Dillon. That was tacky and kind of offensive and gross, and that’s what real life is like. It’s not hermetically sealed pretty lights that take you away out of your crappy 1970s marriage to Terri Garr. I feel like it needed more details like that, which was really a tone deaf thing put in there by Spielberg.
The movie is saying that you’ll transcend through your obsessions. I feel like Star Wars is much healthier when it comes to technology, and I’m not the first to say this. In that, technology is clunky and old, and you can bend it to your will to do amazing things. You can travel the universe, but it’s clunky and crappy and it’s old and you have to work with it to go really fast. In this, [Roy Neary’s] obsession is just this spiritual thing. He has this marriage that is really…loud. There are a lot of loud things in the foreground, throughout the entire movie. The TV is always on, and five different people are talking while they tell the story visually. There’s a lot of people speaking French and Hindi.
Again, I’m primed to pounce on him. But the message is, your obsession will save you, it will be transcendent, it will carry you away, and it will be beautiful. In my experience, that’s just not the case.
Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, model maker.
I was most excited about Terri Garr and Richard Dreyfuss’ crappy marriage, and how unhappy it was. I like angry Terri Garr. I love Lost, and J. J. Abrams makes facsimiles of other people’s work. He made Super 8, which works for about 30 minutes, then it’s complete shit. This is what he was imitating. It’s a silver platter, a beautifully made film. I felt all of the emotions I was supposed to be feeling: Awe, wonderment, but tinged with horror.
I was just listening to a thing about those pilots who were lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Spielberg takes the unknown, and answers it with this quasi religious thing where they come back from the dead.
Bob Balaban finds Flight 19.
CM: I think you’re really onto it with the spiritual aspect. This is a non-religious, religious experience. That’s what this is about. Have you ever read Childhood’s End? It struck me this time that there’s a lot of Childhood’s End in Close Encounters. It’s a first contact story: What does first contact look like? Why is first contact with aliens even important? Why do we even care? It’s a transcendent, quasi-religious moment. Is there a sense that the aliens were going to come and solve everybody’s problems?
BS:That may be something I was adding into it.
CSM: They solved Roy Neary’s problems. But they also caused a lot of Roy Neary’s problems.
BS: They didn’t solve Mrs. Neary’s problems. They took away her husband.
Terri Garr as Ronnie Neary.
CM: He was a pretty crappy husband, anyway. Spielberg said the only thing he regrets about this movie is that Roy Neary goes away with the aliens at the end and leaves his family. He said if he made it today, Roy Neary wouldn’t leave his family.
BS: I feel that would weaken it. He’s not interested in his family.
CM: I think the character also has to make a sacrifice to make what happens next meaningful. The sacrifice is his normality.
BS: You said first contact. I read this book about Captain Cook. It was just a long list of first contacts with people in the South Pacific. They were kind of interesting and fun. His main thing was, he would talk to people, and they would have a different concept of ownership than him. They would end up stealing one of his men’s canoes. Then he would go with a gun and an armed guard, find the chief of the town, and take him back to his ship and say, ‘You’ve got to return my canoe. Until then, I’m holding your chief hostage.’ That’s how he got killed. He tried that in Hawai’i, and someone brained him. That’s what first contacts are like. They’re not like, a spiritual transcendence. I looked at it through the lens of his marriage. She said they needed to go to couples’ therapy. Yeah, he should have gone to couple’s therapy.
CM: Terri Garr is fantastic in this.
BS: Old Terri Garr got angry. There’s a long interview in the AV Club where she says everyone she ever worked with was a sexist asshole. She names names…It’s refreshing to see elderly Terri Garr get angry about that. I thought their marriage was funny. I would like to see a movie about their failing marriage, and at the end, something unhappy happens. That would make me so much more excited. He has a marriage, for conditioned reasons, and three kids in Speilbergian suburbia. It’s not doing it for him. They don’t even like Pinocchio. I’m assuming because he’s a protagonist in a movie that he’s unhappy at first. Then he gets a new religion, which is, pretty lights in the sky, they’re special, and they’re special to him. I didn’t notice if the dudes in the red suits went off in the end. Did they just choose the obsessive nerd?
CM: Yes
BS: Only Richard Dreyfuss got to go off with the aliens in the end?
CM:He was the one they invited. If Melinda Dillon had been in the front row, they would have taken her, too. They were invited.
BS: Not a great use of Melinda Dillon, I thought. She’s much better in Christmas Story and Slap Shot, when she’s being sarcastic and mean. My favorite part with her was when her little boy was running away from her, and she was running after him. Your little boy is about to get run over! When she was the beleaguered housewife, that was better than her being sad all the time.
Spielberg was obsessed with film. He snuck onto the lot of Universal and he started making movies. His obsession rewarded him many times over. He’s a billionaire. I feel like, for most people, it’s not good advice to follow your dreams…
CM: Well that’s horrifying.
BS: …at least not at the expense of your children. Maybe I have a really big axe to grind with Spielberg.
CM:I think it doesn’t work if he doesn’t go with the aliens. The crying in the shower scene was cut from the 1977 version. It goes straight from the mashed potatoes to working on the model train set. He wakes up and sees his kid there, watching a Marvin the Martian cartoon, and decides this whole thing has been stupid. Then when he tries to tear down his Devil’s Tower model, his obsession is renewed. He goes on to build an even bigger and better Devil’s Tower model that leads to the end of his marriage.
But this version we saw had the crying in the shower scene. That’s the most intense family conflict part. I think it’s an entirely different movie with that scene in it. You see the effect of Roy’s obsession on his family.
BS: Well, the kid was crying with the mashed potatoes.
CM: Yeah, but when they’re screaming and banging the door, it’s really intense. It’s hard for me to watch.
BS: I really liked that part.
CM: So basically, you just want to see scenes from Roy and Ronnie’s marriage.
BS: It’s more what life is like. Inside the spaceship, it could be like “To Serve Man”. It could be a slaughterhouse in there.
Roy Neary is chosen by the aliens.
CM: It’s difficult to separate this from the 1970s. There was a huge interest in the paranormal. It was the second American UFO wave—the 1950s and the 1970s. I love it that the Air Force guy is actually telling the truth. People shot six billion pictures in 1977 and none of them had any aliens in them. One of my favorite lines from the Ferguson Era has been, “Before everybody was running around with cameras in their pockets, we thought that UFOs were real and there was no police brutality towards black people. But now that everyone’s carrying a camera, there are no UFOs, and there’s police brutality towards black people.”
There was a huge cultural obsession with all of that stuff: The Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, all of it…When the neighbor lady wakes up, she has a paperback on her chest that she had fallen asleep reading. That’s where all that stuff lived, in cheap paperbacks. People read a lot more, and cheap paperbacks about paranormal stuff was a huge industry. J. Alan Hynek, the guy with the goatee and the pipe who had an unexplained close up in the finale, was credited as technical advisor. He was selling millions of books about UFOs, and that’s what Spielberg was reading. The whole UFO myth is a redemption myth. They’re angels. My life is crap. Take me away. I think that’s what the UFO stuff in the 1970s was about, a longing for transcendence.
Carry Guffy as Barry, about to be taken away by the aliens.
BS: Spielberg said in the intro that this was inspired by Watergate. If there was a conspiracy to cover up Watergate, then there could be an even larger conspiracy to cover up aliens. I think that’s a strange lesson to take from Watergate.
I used to watch TV shows about aliens, and then I would have trouble sleeping at night. I remember one night, I saw a reflection in my window. It was probably my own reflection, but I interpreted it as possibly an alien. So I froze, slowly lowered the blinds, and backed away. I was terrified of shadows. You take the unknown, and it’s exciting. But there needs to be a messiness to it. That ending is really clean.
I really love this YouTuber…actually, I don’t love him…This guy has made a three hour documentary called Ancient Aliens Debunked. He’s an archeologist, and he takes every episode of Ancient Aliens and inserts his debunking of each and every single claim. One of the guys from the show is Erik von Däniken, who wrote Chariots of the Gods. I bought that book for 50 cents at Burke’s Books and tried to read it. I got like four pages into it. It was fucking terrible. Spielberg is a better writer and craftsman than Erik von Däniken, but he’s selling a similar story: Not that aliens helped build ancient civilizations, but that aliens are some sort of place to look to. What about Larry, the guy who got gassed and couldn’t see the aliens? Nobody in America got to see that stuff, just some self-appointed assholes in government had a transcendent moment. Everybody else got screwed.
CM: But that wasn’t the aliens’ intention. The aliens invited all these people. It was the government assholes who got in the way.
BS: There was only transcendence for one person. I find that lousy.
CM: That’s very interesting, because one of the things I love about Spielberg is that he makes almost Soviet movies. This is a movie about a mass movement of people, like Battleship Potemkin. There is no real single antagonist, a group is the antagonist—the government. Roy is the one that we follow, but there is a whole movement of people who saw the UFOs and want to meet them at Devil’s Tower. There are whole groups of people who do things, and that things happen to, in this movie. 1941 is the same way, and the first half of Jaws is like that, before they get on the boat. It’s about what happens to Amity, the beach town, not just to one or two people. American movies are much more individualistic than Soviet movies, but not how Spielberg makes them. Amistad is about a mass movement of people. A group of people is a single character.
BS: Yeah, but in War of the Worlds, the aliens are mean, and Tom Cruise is trying to connect with his son. When I was a little kid, I read Jurassic Park. I loved evil John Hammond in the book. I thought the addition of Alan Grant’s problems with kids and divorce had nothing to do with Jurassic Park. It was just cynically put in to sell tickets. It doesn’t matter if Jeff Goldblum is there to say stuff about lunch boxes.
I wanted to say, the Ancient Aliens Debunked show, in the end, it turns around and becomes a commercial for “The Bible is real!” The archeologist who put this on his YouTube channel literally thinks that giants and angels are making all this stuff. It’s insane. What’s so lovely about that is, you start off thinking this guy is skeptical about all this stuff, then he turns around a makes a ridiculous claim. He’s an unreliable narrator, and kinda crazy. That’s awesome. He also has a very calming voice, which is good to fall asleep to.
Never Seen It: Watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Filmmaker Ben Siler (2)
It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.
Worst Picture: Pixels
I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.
Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.
Most Divisive: Inherent Vice
Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.
Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room
Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.
Chewbacca
Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca
Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.
Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers
Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.
Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace
In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.
Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows
What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.
Best Animation: Inside Out
The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.
It Follows
Best Horror: It Follows
The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.
Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl
2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.
Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.
Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy
The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.
Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.
Sicario
Best Cinematography: Sicario
From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.
He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies
While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”
To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”
Well, yeah, I am.
Hot Topic: Journalism
Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.
Had To Be There: The Walk
Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.
MVP: Samuel L. Jackson
First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?
Best Documentary: Best of Enemies
Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.
Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road
From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.
