In Theaters: PROMETHEUS (2012)

PROMETHEUS
(US, 2012)

Directed by Ridley Scott.  Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof.  Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Patrick Wilson, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, Kate Dickie.  (R, 126 mins)

After several years of coy, "is it an ALIEN prequel or not?" teasing, Ridley Scott's highly-anticipated PROMETHEUS is finally here.  Returning to the universe created in Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror classic, PROMETHEUS is a study in dualities:  the filmmakers never openly said "This is a prequel," but it clearly is.  It strives to provide answers but ends with only more questions.  It wants to be a serious sci-fi film but is compelled (obligated?) to be a big CGI extravaganza.  It's one of the most exhilarating film experiences of the year and at the same time, one of the most frustrating.

Dr. Shaw (Noomi Rapace) encounters some unanticipated problems

In 2093, the crew of the space vessel Prometheus is on a secret, $1 trillion mission privately funded by the elderly Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, under a ton of old-age prosthetics).  Weyland was intrigued by the work of archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace, the original GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who have tracked cave paintings, up to 35,000 years old and all from different cultures and time periods, depicting a unique star formation.  The religious Shaw interprets these paintings as invitations from the "Engineers," what she terms the early examples of humanity, and she believes the outer reaches of space hold the key to man's origins, or could even direct them to God himself.

Michael Fassbender as David

Along for the ride, in addition to Janek (Idris Elba), the captain, are other scientists and medical staff, but also Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), an ice-cold Weyland bean-counter and ballbuster, and David (Michael Fassbender), a dream-reading android with motives of his own, but ostensibly in charge of general maintenance during the crew's two-year hypersleep to their destination.  Once there (a distant moon called LV-223), they find a large pyramid-type structure filled with remains of an alien life form, as well as large cylinders containing a black fluid.  But who are these aliens?  Why did they land at LV-223?  Why do they share human DNA?  And what is Weyland's real purpose in funding this exploration?

Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers

With many references, callbacks, and visual cues (the H.R. Giger interiors, the overtly phallic and vaginal alien imagery) from ALIEN, let's get the major question out of the way first:  yes, it IS a prequel to ALIEN, despite all the talk that it was a separate story that "takes place in the ALIEN universe."  Which is also true, but yes, it's a prequel.  Written by LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts (who penned last year's dreadful THE DARKEST HOUR), PROMETHEUS is 2/3 of a terrific film.  It moves slowly and methodically, much like the 1979 film.  Made in 3-D and filled with stunning visuals and astonishing production design, PROMETHEUS is an often breathtaking cinematic achievement just from a filmmaking perspective.  Scott is at the top of his game through most of PROMETHEUS, and its central theme of the origins of life, humanity's place in the universe, and what happens when we die make this feel like a very personal film for the director.  Scott is still going strong at 74 and doesn't appear to be slowing down, but 74 is closer to the sunset of a life than say, 50.  But about 2/3 of the way through, something happens.  I don't know if it was scripted that way or if something hit them in the editing room, but suddenly, it switches from philosophical and meditative (read: uncommercial) to a by-the-numbers, big-budget summer movie, almost as if someone else came in and started calling the shots. Scenes seem to be missing.  It switches gears and becomes a huge sci-fi action movie, and the characters start doing stupid things that stupid characters do in big, stupid action movies.  ALIEN was mostly quiet, controlled suspense with expertly-timed jolts, and in the last 1/3 of PROMETHEUS, Scott channels his "Ray Liotta eating his own brain in HANNIBAL" side and goes for uncharacteristic slime and gross-out moments, with a couple of sequences that recall old-school David Cronenberg. 

It almost feels like Scott starts to lose interest in the film, and, around 90 minutes in, it just flies off the rails and almost completely implodes.  Not that it becomes a bad movie, but it just suddenly becomes a very different movie.  Even the final scene comes off like a hastily-added coda that was probably tacked on at the last minute in an attempt to keep the internet fanboys from crashing message boards and social media with their list of grievances detailing why Ridley Scott owes them.  I've seen enough films to know behind-the-scenes discord when I see it, and the last 35 or so minutes of PROMETHEUS have the distinct aura of a studio exec breathing down Scott's neck and telling him to philosophically ponder man's place in the universe on someone else's dime and start showing some aliens, gore, and crashing spaceships.

Ridley Scott directing Rapace

PROMETHEUS is still a fascinating film that's worth seeing, especially on the big screen.  But it's also a very flawed one that still seems like a letdown in some ways.  At Scott's age, this could've been his defining career statement, but by the end, you wonder what, if anything, the film was trying to say at all.  It'll be interesting to see if the DVD/Blu-ray release includes a director's cut (as is often the case with Scott's films), because despite its many moments of brilliance, this PROMETHEUS ultimately feels compromised and incomplete.

The Cannon Files/New on Blu-ray: MISSING IN ACTION (1984); MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING (1985); THE DELTA FORCE (1986)

This week, Fox/MGM released three Chuck Norris/Cannon classics on Blu-ray, presumably to take advantage of his co-starring role in the upcoming THE EXPENDABLES 2, which will be the action star's first widely-released theatrical film since 1995's TOP DOG.  The Blu-ray editions of MISSING IN ACTION (1984), MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING (1985), and THE DELTA FORCE (1986), with new artwork draping Chuck in the American flag, are exclusively available at Wal-Mart for now, but will be available through other retailers at some point in the next several months.  Fox/MGM are also releasing a pair of other non-Cannon Norris films on Blu-ray on July 17 (not retailer exclusives):  LONE WOLF MCQUADE (1983) and what many consider his best film, CODE OF SILENCE (1985).




MISSING IN ACTION
(US, 1984)

The Vietnam War was still a raw, open wound for America in the 1980s, and before Oliver Stone's PLATOON (1986) paved the way for serious examination and reflection, there was a brief explosion of action-oriented "the war's not over till the last man comes home!" films, or for lack of a better term, "Namsploitation." After several years of films depicting Vietnam vets as madmen, psychos, and killers (TAXI DRIVER, THE EXTERMINATOR, and even FIRST BLOOD to some extent), Namsploitation films were, in essense, a chance for misunderstood, outcast American heroes to go back to 'Nam, kick ass, free the remaining POWs that many believed were still being held captive, and add another chapter to the story:  one where America wins. 1985's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (in which Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo morphs from withdrawn, shell-shocked loner to Commie-killing cartoon) is probably the most famous example, though 1983's UNCOMMON VALOR really got the ball rolling.  Cannon had MISSING IN ACTION in theaters several months before RAMBO, and it was a surprise hit for the studio and for star Chuck Norris, until then generally known as a martial arts star, though he'd been attempting to move out of that genre for a couple of years.  Here, Norris is Col. James Braddock, a pissed-off vet forced into a diplomatic mission to present-day Vietnam.  He's there to prove MIA American soldiers are still being held captive, and neither spineless, useless American Sen. Porter (David Tress) nor the Vietnamese government, represented by Gen. Trau (James Hong!) will listen to him (Trau accuses of Braddock of war crimes against the Vietnamese people).  When Trau's right-hand man Vinh (Ernie Ortega), who held Braddock captive during the war, has him kicked out of the county, Braddock makes his way to Bangkok, meets up with wily old Army buddy Tuck (M. Emmet Walsh), who's still living it up in the city's red light district, and cajoles him into helping him sneak back into Vietnam by boat. 

MISSING IN ACTION ended up being one of Cannon's most successful films, and is arguably the point where American moviegoers finally recognized Norris as a legitimate action star and stopped boxing him in as "just" a martial arts guy.  The whole one-man-wrecking-crew motif is inherently absurd, but for the most part, MISSING IN ACTION is played totally straight, unlike many of the increasingly ridiculous films of the subgenre that came down the pike later (like many of the Italian ones, particularly 1987's STRIKE COMMANDO).  The stoical Norris is a tough, mean bastard throughout, and for a Cannon genre outing, it gets better direction that you'd expect from Joseph Zito (who had FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER in theaters the same year).  Zito often relies on long takes with fluid camera movements (watch the opening sequence) that do an effective job of making the action immediate and real.  Watching it again after all these years, I was surprised to see that MISSING IN ACTION is not the non-stop shoot 'em up that you'd think it is.  Rather, it plays more like a suspense thriller with periodic bursts of action.  It's a revisionist fantasy (complete with the iconic shot of Norris rising from the water, gun blazing, blowing away some cackling VC, plus a great crowd-pleasing final shot), but it's surprisingly grim, respectful of its subject (Norris had a younger brother who was killed in Vietnam), and non-exploitative, which is more than you can say for a lot of the films that followed in its and RAMBO's wake.  MGM's Blu-ray is framed at 1.85 and while not demo quality, is a definite upgrade from previous DVD editions, with a nice level of grain, texture, and detail throughout.  Also with Roger Corman vet Lenore Kasdorf (FLY ME) as a State Dept. representative, a terrible Bangkok karaoke version of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy," and, credited among the stuntmen, one "J. Claude Van Damme."  (R, 102 mins)


MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING
(US, 1985)

MISSING IN ACTION was released in November 1984 and became a sleeper hit, and it was followed less then four months later by the prequel MISSING IN ACTION 2: THE BEGINNING.  Critics remarked that it was a cheap, quickly-shot cash-in of a follow-up, but in fact, both films were shot back-to-back and it was shot before MISSING IN ACTION and was intended to be released first.  What became MISSING IN ACTION was supposed to be a sequel.  Cannon honchos Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus liked Joseph Zito's MISSING IN ACTION more and decided to release it first.  When it proved popular with audiences, this film was sold as a prequel.  This explains at least one oddity about MISSING IN ACTION: why there's a "Based on Characters Created by" credit when it's ostensibly the first of two films. You wouldn't know they were shot back-to-back without being told: Norris is the only actor in both films, which have different directors (Lance Hool helms MIA 2) and different shooting locations (MIA was shot in the Philippines, MIA 2 in Mexico and on St. Kitts).  Where MISSING IN ACTION was handled relatively seriously, MISSING IN ACTION 2 (co-written by then-19-year-old millionaire investor/philanthropist and future tabloid fixture Steve "father of Elizabeth Hurley's kid" Bing), focusing on Braddock's time in a POW camp under the merciless rule of cardboard villain Col. Yin (Soon-Teck Oh), looks cheaper and feels more in line with the Namsploitation ripoffs that would come from the Philippines and Italy a year or so down the road.  There's much more of an emphasis on violence and gore, including the infamous "rat hood" scene, and Braddock and Yin have a totally out-of-place climactic karate battle. Taken for what it is, MISSING IN ACTION 2 is very entertaining, but it's interesting to see how two films intended to go together, and shot and released in such close proximity to one another, could be so vastly different in tone, style, and technique.  Zito has always been an underrated genre director (his FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER is easily the best of the sequels) who should've gone on to bigger things.  Lance Hool, while competent, doesn't have the same directorial flair.  It's easy to see why Golan & Globus, always out to make a quick buck but also craving respectability, opted to position the Zito film first, even though there's clearly more action in Hool's film. 

Chuck Norris 1, Huge Rat 0

Oddly, MGM's Blu-ray transfer (again framed at 1.85:1) actually looks and sounds better than MISSING IN ACTION.  Norris returned in 1988's forgettable BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III, and in the meantime, Golan & Globus returned to the Namsploitation genre with 1986's P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE (with David Carradine) and 1988's PLATOON LEADER (with Michael Dudikoff) in addition to the serious, post-PLATOON parade with Lionel Chetwynd's 1987 right-wing, Jane Fonda-bashing THE HANOI HILTON.  (R, 95 mins)


THE DELTA FORCE
(US, 1986)

Drawing heavily from the harrowing summer 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, THE DELTA FORCE is one of Cannon and Chuck Norris' most ambitious action films.  Directed by the big guy himself, Menahem Golan, the film pairs Norris with the legendary Lee Marvin (in his last film) as the leaders of the elite Delta Force, called to duty when an Athens-to-Rome-to-NYC flight is hijacked by Ayatollah Khomeini-supporting Lebanese terrorists led by Abdul Rifi (Robert Forster).  The hijacking takes up the first half of the film, and the rest deals with the Delta Force's attempted rescue of the American hostages who were removed from the plane during a stop in Beirut.  To his credit, Golan does a great job of keeping the film on track and not succumbing to camp and overacting, a miraculous feat given the Golan-Globus-by-way-of-Irwin Allen supporting cast (the poster art even uses the Allen-pioneered classic '70s "faces in boxes" design for all-star disaster movies!):  Bo Svenson as the pilot, Robert Vaughn as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Fassbinder ingenue Hanna Schygulla as the German flight attendant/Uli Derickson stand-in, Kim Delaney as a nun, Steve James as one of the Delta Force, and, straight from a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, there's Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters, George Kennedy, Susan Strasberg, Joey Bishop, and Lainie Kazan as hostages.  They aren't asked to do much after the initial hijacking, but Kennedy, Bishop, and Balsam (as a Holocaust survivor) all get poignant moments in the spotlight, and even Winters keeps the shrieking to a minimum.  Forster is quite good as the fanatical terrorist, taking what could've easily been a politically incorrect caricature and turning it into something plausible and not embarrassing. 

Lee Marvin (1924-1987)

The film does get increasingly silly as it goes on, when Golan shifts the focus to nonstop explosions, stunts, guys engulfed in flames, and endless Norris fetishizing, which reaches its apex during a "How 1986 is this?" shot of Chuck on a motorcycle, silhouetted against the sky, his mullet blowing in the breeze, accompanied by Alan Silvestri's rousing, synth-and-drum-machine-propelled score.  And it's nice to see Marvin going out with one last solid tough guy role.  He was already having health problems at this point and looks much older than 62, but in no way lacking in energy or screen presence.  It's certainly a product of its time, but it holds up as an essential 1980s action flick.  Norris returned in 1990's DELTA FORCE 2, and his son Mike Norris starred (along with other less famous relatives of bigger names like Nick Cassavetes, Eric Douglas, and Matthew Penn) in 1991's DELTA FORCE 3.  Several years later, Cannon cover band NuImage released a series of five (!) similar OPERATION DELTA FORCE films. The Blu-ray offers a solid HD presentation, framed at 1.78:1, cropped slightly from the theatrical 1.85:1.  There were apparently some subtitling issues in a previous DVD edition, but that seems to have been corrected here.  (R, 129 mins)

New on DVD/Blu-ray: JOHN CARTER (2012) and GONE (2012)

JOHN CARTER
(US, 2012)

There's really no need to conduct another postmortem of what's become the HEAVEN'S GATE of its generation.  In a lot of ways, JOHN CARTER is a perfect example of everything that's wrong with Hollywood today.  In an era when films routinely cost $150 million or more to make, the budget was grossly bloated at $250 million, the marketing plan was terrible, the title change (from JOHN CARTER OF MARS) nonsensical, and Pixar director Andrew Stanton was out of his element on his first live action feature, shooting much of the film twice and even saying "I'm not going to get it right the first time." But it also exemplifies what's wrong with "fans" and the internet:  once the pre-release hate started brewing, it just became a toxic, pile-on mentality that certainly had a hand in killing JOHN CARTER before anybody even saw it.  Disney was banking on making a franchise out of the Barsoom series of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, but that seems highly unlikely now.  And the movie?  It's not bad.  It's not particularly good, but it doesn't deserve its pariah status as the new symbol of cinematic failure.  AVATAR was inspired in part by the Barsoom series and for all its problems, I'll take JOHN CARTER over AVATAR any day.  It's uneven, stars Taylor Kitsch (as John Carter) and Lynn Collins (as Dejah Thoris) aren't ready to carry a movie of this size and it's a real slog when it's focused on them, and too many of the action sequences (primarily Carter's sudden extreme jumping ability) look like a video game.  But there's a lot stretches where JOHN CARTER works in fits and starts, mostly early on or when the Tharks are onscreen.  The alien race is portrayed in terrific motion capture performances by Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, and Thomas Haden Church, and they, along with John Carter's faithful Barsoom companion Woola, provide many of the film's most enjoyable moments.  JOHN CARTER is an ambitious, gargantuan production that ultimately, despite Stanton's dedication, unfortunately feels like just another soulless, assembly-line product.  It's big and it's impressive-looking, but it's curiously empty.  Oddly, its colossal tanking has made it more memorable than if it had gone on to gross $250 million.  Then, it would've just been another blockbuster that everybody saw and forgot about ten minutes after leaving the theater.  (PG-13, 132 mins)


GONE
(US, 2012)

Almost nothing works in the ridiculous thriller GONE, but it gets a surprising amount of oomph from Amanda Seyfried's committed performance as a possibly crazy young woman who may or may not have been kidnapped and thinks the perp has abducted her sister.  Jill (Seyfried) was kidnapped a year earlier and managed to escape from her captor.  Now waiting tables at a diner, still traumatized by the incident and always paranoid, she practically goes off the deep end when her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears without explanation.  The cops, of course, think she's overreacting and doubt she was even kidnapped in the first place, so Jill takes her unregistered, illegal firearm and goes on a rampage across Portland, OR trying to find Molly's kidnapper.

Pointless and hilarious red herrings abound in Allison Burnett's (UNTRACEABLE, UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING) script, which doesn't appear to have been worked on beyond a hastily-constructed first draft.  There's the creepy detective (Wes Bentley) who mentions having a thing for crazy chicks and disappears at a pivotal moment so he can take soup to his sick mother.  There's the weird locksmith (Joel David Moore) who just lets a total stranger borrow his van.  There's Jill's co-worker Sharon (Jennifer Carpenter), a twitchy-acting single mom who drives an SUV and lives in a huge house in a strangely nice neighborhood for someone who works the graveyard shift at a greasy spoon.  There's Molly's boyfriend Billy (Sebastian Stan), who's a natural suspect because he's the boyfriend.  Or there's the plausible possibility that Jill, a compulsive liar in the first place, really is making it all up.  That explains why, other than eager new guy Bentley, the rest of the detectives involved (RESCUE ME's Daniel Sunjata, Michael Pare, and THE L WORD's Katherine Moennig, sporting the most jarring, inexplicable, clock-stoppingly bad hairstyle imaginable), more or less blow her off.  Director Hector Dhalia generates a little suspense with a late sequence involving a long drive into an increasingly ominous forest, but overall, this is just silly, ludicrous stuff that doesn't feel all that different from a typical episode of a CBS police procedural, especially with most of the cast coming straight from TV.  GONE does her no favors, but Seyfried's energetic performance shows that she's at least capable of carrying a serious, well-written thriller should the opportunity present itself.  (PG-13, 95 mins)

Summer of 1982: STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN and POLTERGEIST (June 4, 1982)

1979's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE made $82 million, but was the rare blockbuster that not many people liked.  People have warmed up to it in the ensuing decades but at the time, it was deemed too slow and too difficult to follow, with too abstract an antagonist in "V'ger," and not always in the spirit of the TV show.  Filled with innovative visual effects, it cost $46 million to make, an astronomical sum in 1979, and though it turned a sizable profit, Paramount was hesitant to go along with series creator Gene Roddenberry's idea for a sequel.  When Roddenberry was more or less ousted from the picture, producer Harve Bennett promised Paramount he'd keep costs low, and STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN was shot for a mere $11 million.  It opened June 4, 1982, and made back its budget and change with a $16 million opening weekend on its way to $78 million overall (oddly, still less than the take of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE) and was the sixth highest-grossing film of 1982. 

But more importantly for fans, it successfully recaptured the spirit of the 1966-1969 TV series in ways that the 1979 film didn't.  With Roddenberry given a respectful "Executive Consultant" credit after essentially being told his services were no longer needed, the film was developed by Bennett, sole credited screenwriter Jack B. Sowards, and director/uncredited co-writer Nicholas Meyer (THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION, TIME AFTER TIME).  Neither Bennett nor Meyer had seen the TV show before taking on this project, and in going over the series, it's conceivable that fresh eyes and new blood were instrumental in giving STAR TREK II some sense of purpose and direction that THE MOTION PICTURE lacked.  It was Bennett who decided to bring supervillain Khan into the film.  Khan (Ricardo Montalban) was first seen in the first-season episode "Space Seed," where he hijacks the Enterprise and tries to kill Captain Kirk (William Shatner), who banishes him to the abandoned planet Ceti Alpha V.  STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN serves as more of a sequel to "Space Seed" than to THE MOTION PICTURE.  Khan is back, vowing revenge on now-Admiral Kirk.  Kirk is forced back into action with his old crew, joined by Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) Vulcan protege Saavik ("introducing Kirstie Alley"), when Khan attacks the Enterprise and steals the Genesis Device--created by Kirk's ex, Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch)--which can create inhabitable worlds where life doesn't exist, and at the same time, destroy worlds where life has been sustained.

Ricardo Montalban as Khan

STAR TREK II humanizes these familiar characters in ways we hadn't previously seen. Of course, fans found the crew of the Enterprise akin to old friends at this point anyway, but the stakes are higher than they've ever been:  Khan's mad, destructive quest for revenge is personal.  Kirk has much to lose with Carol and their son David (Merritt Butrick) in jeopardy.  And when Spock makes the ultimate sacrifice ("the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one"), it's the most emotionally devastating moment in the entire STAR TREK canon.  And, it should go without saying, STAR TREK II gives us arguably Shatner's most "Shatner" moment:

It's hard to find a celebrity more eager to mock himself than Shatner.  Never taking himself too seriously and always in on the joke, Shatner is completely self-aware when it comes to his hammy tendencies.  He's such a willing punchline that it's easy to forget that he can be a terrific actor when he wants to be.  STAR TREK II features his best performance as Kirk and gives Shatner a wide range of emotions to play, and he brings his A-game.  There's none of ironic silliness that comes with putting Shatner in anything today.  At the end of the day, Shatner is Shatner and we love him for it (even if his STAR TREK co-stars haven't had many nice things to say about him over the years), but it's interesting to ponder how his career might've panned out if he'd taken himself and his abilities a little more seriously.  Very early in his career, he held his own with a large cast of Hollywood legends in 1961's JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG.  The guy's got the chops, and STAR TREK II gives him plenty of opportunities to prove it.  He's matched by Montalban, who turns in the performance of his career as Khan.  Montalban's scenes were shot last because he was busy working on the TV series FANTASY ISLAND.  The tense standoff scenes between Kirk and Khan, where they communicate via screen on each of their ships, demonstrate the power of good editing and good acting when you consider that Shatner and Montalban's portions of those scenes were shot four months apart.  Shatner and the Enterprise actors (except Walter Koenig's Chekov, who has scenes with Khan on Ceti Alpha V) were done with their work by the time Montalban arrived.  Shatner and Montalban never even saw each other during filming.

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is considered by many to be the best of the films that feature the original crew, though STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986) and STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991) are held in high regard as well.  STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984) is solid entertainment, and most have even come around to appreciating STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.  That leaves the Shatner-directed STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989) as the odd man out, a misfire that pleased even less people than THE MOTION PICTURE.  Perhaps STAR TREK V's day will come, but don't count on it.

Opening the same weekend was the Steven Spielberg production POLTERGEIST, directed by Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, SALEM'S LOT).  Budgeted at just under $11 million, it made $76 million to become the eighth highest-grossing film of 1982.  Spielberg co-wrote the script with Michael Grais and Mark Victor, and depending on who's telling the story, was either a "supervisory" figure on the set or was the de-facto director.  Spielberg himself has described the working relationship with Hooper as "collaborative," while some cast members say Spielberg was present nearly every day of the shoot and was calling the shots even when Hooper was on the set.  Just as many say Hooper was the director. The controversy was enough for the Director's Guild of America to launch a largely inconclusive investigation, and to this day (and for other, more tragic reasons as well), many of the people associated with POLTERGEIST have elected to not discuss the film at all, which is uncommon for something held in such high esteem.

Regardless of who directed it, POLTERGEIST became a much-referenced and much-parodied horror classic that introduced "They're heeeeere!" into the annals of popular culture. The story of five-year-old Carol Anne Freeling (Heather O'Rourke) abducted by vengeful spirits communicating through the TV hooked audiences and forever warned real estate developers to avoid cutting corners in the construction of any subdivision development.  Carol Anne's dad Steve (Craig T. Nelson) helped design the planned community Cuesta Verde.  The mayhem is taking place because not only did Steve's boss (James Karen) have the community built over a cemetery, but he never had the graves properly and respectfully moved; he only paid to have the tombstones moved.  And the spirits of the dead are pissed off.

Zelda Rubinstein as "cleaner" Tangina Barrons

Stylistically and structurally, POLTERGEIST has Spielberg's fingerprints all over it.  Not just with the thrills and chills and the liberal doses of humor, but with the centerpiece being a close family disrupted by outside forces.  The Freeling family is one of the most likably appealing he's ever presented.  And they're handled unpredictably:  was it common in the era of "Just Say No" to depict loving, stable parents like Steve and Diane (Jobeth Williams) as recreational pot smokers?  And Steve and Diane are untraditionally young to have a 16-year-old daughter, Dana (Dominique Dunne), who's significantly older than the other two children, Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Carol Anne.  It's mentioned in passing that Steve and Diane had Dana when they were 16, and it's never brought up again, because it's not an issue in this family. That made the Freelings seem like a lot of families that many of us knew.  Not the "perfect" family, but normal and real.  Even the supporting characters exhibit their own flaws:  parapsychologist Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight) is a respected expert in her field, but also a functioning alcoholic. Spielberg often focuses on flawed protagonists who might seem like "bad" people in today's more socially conservative world (could CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND be made today with the same ending, with Richard Dreyfuss simply abandoning his family and his responsibilities to leave with the aliens?).  To Spielberg, they're just regular people and he had an unusually strong ability to connect with that and convey it in his films.  One reason his films connected with audiences was his way of understanding average, everyday people and using that in the creation of his characters.

During this same period, Spielberg was known for pushing the PG rating about as far as it can go, and in a couple of years, films like INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM and the Spielberg-produced GREMLINS were PG-rated releases that were instrumental in the MPAA's creation of the PG-13 rating in 1984.  The PG-rated POLTERGEIST is probably still worthy of a PG-13 today, with some truly intense sequences throughout and one scene of a guy peeling off chunks of his own face that has to rank as one of the most horrifying visuals ever seen in a PG-rated film.

Heather O'Rourke (1975-1988)

POLTERGEIST spawned two inferior sequels, 1986's POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE and 1988's especially ill-fated POLTERGEIST III, and a 1996-1999 Canadian-made TV series POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY, that had no relation to the films other than using the title. Tragedy also followed the franchise with the deaths of two of the Freeling children.  22-year-old Dominique Dunne (daughter of writer/journalist Dominick Dunne) was strangled to death by an angry ex-boyfriend just five months after the film's release.  Heather O'Rourke died in early 1988 of septic shock during surgery to repair a bowel obstruction.  She was only 12 years old and had been diagnosed with Crohn's disease a year earlier.  Steroidal medication was the cause of her distractingly puffy, bloated appearance in POLTERGEIST III, which was ultimately released--against the wishes of stars Tom Skerritt and Nancy Allen, and director Gary Sherman, who asked MGM to shelve it--in the summer of 1988, several months after O'Rourke's death. 

With STAR TREK II and POLTERGEIST opening, the comedy HANKY PANKY was the red-headed stepchild of the June 4 weekend.  Originally intended as a STIR CRAZY follow-up for Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor and director Sidney Poitier, the script was retooled for ex-SNL star Gilda Radner when Pryor backed out.  The film grossed $9 million and was a dud for the popular Wilder, but he would come back in 1984 with the sleeper hit THE WOMAN IN RED.  The only significant thing to come out of HANKY PANKY was its serendipitous pairing of Wilder and Radner, who became close friends during filming and a couple shortly after.  They were married in 1984 until Radner's death from ovarian cancer in 1989 at age 42.

The summer of 1982 was huge for Spielberg with the success of POLTERGEIST and the planned July re-release of 1981's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.  But the next week would unveil Spielberg's crowning achievement to that point, and what would become not just a surprise smash, but for a decade and a half, the highest-grossing film of all time.

New on DVD/Blu-ray: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011) and CORIOLANUS (2011)

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
(UK/US, 2011)

Director Lynne Ramsay's first feature since since 2002's acclaimed MORVERN CALLAR is a difficult, demanding, profoundly depressing look at familial dysfunction taken to tragic extremes.  Working from an epistolary novel by Lionel Shriver, Ramsay and co-writer Rory Stewart Kinnear restructure the film into a more fragmented, Innaratu-esque stream-of-consciousness format that can be frustrating in the early going but every scene and every detail are vital by the end.  Even an archery target board in the distant background of one shot carries incredible significance by the end.  Travel writer Eva Khachadourian (Tilda Swinton) is unable to connect with sullen, antagonistic, and possibly evil teenage son Kevin (Ezra Miller).  He's the kind of kid who plants a virus on her computer and, when caught masturbating by his mom, just glares and smirks at her and starts jerking faster.  And that's just the harmless stuff.  We can piece together the basics fairly quickly: something unspeakable has happened. Kevin is in jail, Eva has become the town pariah, and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) and young daughter Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich) are out of the picture. The once well-to-do Eva now lives alone in a small house that gets vandalized regularly.  Ordinary people walk up to her outside the supermarket, belt her across the face and tell her to burn in hell.  The only person we see who's nice to her is a teenager in a wheelchair who affectionately calls her "Mrs. K," asks how she's doing, and mentions there's a possibility he'll walk again.  Ramsay cuts between the past and the present as we witness the difficult relationship between Eva and Kevin, going all the way back to his infancy. 

To say anything more would risk spoilers, but even when you think you've got the story figured out, you don't.  Shriver's novel was written in the form of letters from Eva to Franklin, and readers only get her (possibly unreliable) take on the events.  The film doesn't have that literary luxury, but there's enough here to illustrate that Kevin is more like his mother than Eva wishes to believe, or at least representative of her worst traits gone unchecked.  Kevin is unquestionably a horrible, monstrous human being, but to what extent is Eva culpable for what he is?  She's the only person who sees the "real" Kevin, who certainly doesn't make himself known to his well-meaning but (perhaps purposely) clueless dad.  Swinton, Reilly, and Miller are superb in this emotionally exhausting work that deserved more attention than it got, but admittedly, is a pretty tough sell and offers no easy answers.  One of 2011's best films. (R, 112 mins)



CORIOLANUS
(Serbia/UK/US, 2011)

Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in this ambitious contemporary adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy, shot in some war-ravaged areas in Belgrade and other parts of Serbia.  It was a longtime pet project of the two-time Oscar nominee and first-time director, who saw his labor of love acquired by The Weinstein Company only to get lost in their end-of-the-year Oscar shuffle with THE ARTIST, THE IRON LADY, and MY WEEK WITH MARILYN.  Briefly considered for a big Weinstein Oscar push, CORIOLANUS was ultimately the child left behind, ending up on just 21 screens at its widest release and grossing around $750,000, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews from those who managed to see it.  Set in "A place calling itself Rome," CORIOLANUS focuses on General Caius Martius (Fiennes), a highly-revered war hero who has just defeated the Volscian forces of General Tullis Aufidius (Gerard Butler).  Prodded by his mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) and opportunistic Senator Menenius (Brian Cox) to enter politics, the arrogant Martius proves to have nothing but contempt for the common people ("Bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean").  He's been conditioned to know nothing but war and has little respect for those who haven't fought for their country.  A pair of tribunes, Sicinius (James Nesbitt) and Brutus (Paul Jesson) turn the people against Martius, who is branded a traitor and banished after lashing out against them.  Forced out of "Rome," Martius, previously bestowed the honorary name Coriolanus, makes his way to the Volscian stronghold of Aufidius and proposes that they set aside their personal differences and launch an attack on Rome.  Coriolanus' anger and need for vengeance knows no bounds, and even Menenius remarks "There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger."

CORIOLANUS covers a lot of ground in two hours, but Fiennes and prolific screenwriter John Logan (RANGO, HUGO, and the upcoming SKYFALL and LINCOLN) do a brilliant job of conveying important exposition by displaying it in the form of "Breaking News!" alerts on a ubiquitous 24-hour cable news network (it seems there's a TV on in every room).  Fiennes is keenly aware of how the themes of Shakespeare's play are relevant to today's political situation, particularly in the way the politicians, both conservative and liberal, manipulate the gullible populace and put their own interests above the people they represent.  Ultimately, the modernized CORIOLANUS is a dead-on allegory for the politics of today, proving that things really haven't changed.  Brutal, unflinching, and deeply cynical, CORIOLANUS is gripping throughout, with a terrific performance by Fiennes (his "I banish you!" outburst is a career highlight), who gets strong support from Butler (who seems to be making a sincere effort to stop being in so many terrible Hollywood movies), Cox, Jessica Chastain (as Martius' wife), and Redgrave, who really does some Oscar-caliber work here.  Like WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, this is a bold, challenging film and it deserved better treatment by the Weinstein Company.  (R, 123 mins)

In Theaters: SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (2012)

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
(US, 2012)

Directed by Rupert Sanders.  Written by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock, Hossein Amini.  Cast: Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Sam Claflin, Sam Spruell, Johnny Harris, Brian Gleeson, Vincent Regan, Lily Cole, Noah Huntley. (PG-13, 127 mins)

The danger of doing a revisionist take on anything these days is that no matter what, the purists will bitch and moan just as loudly as they would if the filmmakers simply redid the same old story as it's always been told.  SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is faced with that dilemma and works on both sides of it at various times throughout, and while it isn't always successful, it hits much more often than it misses.

After marrying and murdering the widower King (Noah Huntley) and imprisoning his young daughter Snow White in one of the castle towers, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) takes control, remaining ever-youthful as the years by as her kingdom withers and dies, with the people suffering under her poisonous rule.  When her Magic Mirror informs her that Snow White is now the fairest of them all, Ravenna orders her devoted brother Finn (Sam Spruell)--definite incestuous implications here--to kill the now-grown Snow White (Kristen Stewart), who manages to escape, fleeing the castle grounds.  Ravenna sends drunken widower/mercenary huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) to find her, promising to return his late wife from the dead.  Discovering, just as Finn and his soldiers try to kill him, that is one of the few powers Ravenna doesn't possess, Eric decides to protect Snow White and they're on the run from village to village, through the Dark Forest and beyond, with Finn in hot pursuit.

Kristen Stewart as Snow White

Many of the core elements of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale are here, just not where you'd typically expect them:  there's the mirror, there's a poisoned apple, there's the Queen disguising herself in an attempt to trick Snow White, there's a prince, an hallucinatory, almost acid-trip-level enchanted forest (with googly-eyed, blinking mushrooms!), and there's dwarves.  Eight of them, to be exact, gregariously played with extensive CGI assistance by a veritable supergroup of British Character Actor Hall of Famers like Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, and Nick Frost.  But even with fleeting humor, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN is grim, dark, and downbeat, with occasional horrific overtones (though not as overtly horrific as 1997's SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR, with Sigourney Weaver), a sort-of "Snow White" by way of LORD OF THE RINGS and GAME OF THRONES.  It ends not with a wedding, but with a war, as Snow White leads a rebel attack on Ravenna's castle.

Chris Hemsworth as The Huntsman, with the dwarves,
led by Ian McShane and Bob Hoskins.

With a frankly ridiculous budget of $170 million, SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN looks stunning.  The visual effects, the CGI work, and the production design are absolutely top-notch.  I don't see it making its money back on US screens, but it seems with each passing week, these mega-budget American films are doing better overseas than they are domestically (BATTLESHIP is a flop in the States, but a hit across the ocean).  This has always been the case to some degree, but recently, the American box office take isn't carrying the importance it once did.  Confidence in the foreign market may explain why Universal was willing to hand such a large-budget film to first-time director Rupert Sanders.  Sanders, a veteran of TV commercials, does a good job but doesn't really distinguish himself with anything that looks like a future "Sandersian" calling card.  He does resort to a couple of annoying cliches, like the "sweeping aerial shot over a small band of warriors, walking along the top of a mountain, accompanied by a soaring, majestic score," and the increasingly tiresome "something smudging/splattering against the camera lens and staying there for several seconds."  This has really been overused in recent years, and it's particularly ridiculous here when it comes after what they think is Ravenna dissolves into a flock of ravens, one of whom is hit and appears to splatter on the lens.  It's stupid because a) it's a brief distraction that takes the viewer out of the moment and the period setting and calls attention to the camera, and b) we all know it's a CGI bird, so why would a piece of it stick to the camera lens?  A more experienced filmmaker wouldn't have resorted to such a "check this out!" move.  Especially one as beaten-to-death as this.

Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna

But I've spent half a paragraph discussing a problem that constitutes maybe six seconds of screen time.  The film is really firing on all cylinders when Theron is onscreen.  Playing the mad Ravenna with shrieking gusto but never crossing the line into camp, Theron gives it everything she's got.  The script, by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock (THE BLIND SIDE), and Hossein Amini (DRIVE) gives Ravenna a backstory that provides the Queen with somewhat different motivation than mere vanity.  Stewart handles herself well and I found her believable throughout, even in the "Snow White as angry warrior" finale, but the thing with Stewart and her TWILIGHT fame is that there's just as many people who love her as there are that love to hate her.  Who knows why?  I've seen none of the TWILIGHT films, but while she's not yet a great actress by any means, I've never seen her stop a movie cold.  Of course, she's upstaged by Theron here, but she's fine in the role.  In what seems like a concession to the TWILIGHT crowd simply because she's Kristen Stewart, there's hints of a love triangle developing between Snow White, the Huntsman, and a prince (Sam Claflin), but it seems to get cast aside in favor of the final battle.

I can see audiences not warming up to SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN:  it'll be too gray, grim, and muddy for some and there's not nearly enough romance for the Stewart base.  But like Ridley Scott's ROBIN HOOD (2010), another recent, widely disparaged revisionist take on a famous story, it works perfectly fine if taken on its own terms and not just in the context of what a viewer wants it to be or what they've already seen and feel it should be.

New on Netflix Streaming: THE HEIR APPARENT: LARGO WINCH (2008) and KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND (2010)

THE HEIR APPARENT: LARGO WINCH
(France/Belgium, 2008; US release 2011)

Based on a series of popular Belgian comic books and graphic novels, LARGO WINCH ("THE HEIR APPARENT" was added by US distributor Music Box) was a hit in Europe, but took three years to get a limited US release.  It drew comparisons to early 007 films, but it really feels more like what might happen if the Bond films focused less on action and thrills and more on meetings in M's office and the behind-the-scenes stuff at Universal Exports.  With a globetrotting plot that eventually crosses over into the incomprehensible, LARGO WINCH focuses on the titular hero (the bland Tomer Sisley), the adopted son of recently-murdered billionaire industrialist Nerio Winch (Miki Manojlovic).  At the time of his father's murder, Largo, estranged from the old man and traveling around the world, is being imprisoned in Brazil after mystery woman Lea (Melanie Thierry) plants drugs on him.  Busting out of jail and making his way back to the Winch headquarters in Hong Kong, Largo gets embroiled in all manner of corporate espionage and an attempted takeover by his father's nefarious rival Korsky (Karel Roden).  Most of the rest of the film deals with endless blathering about shares, files, accounts, debts, and Hong Kong.  Once in a while, there's an action scene or a stunning aerial shot of Hong Kong to keep you awake.  Despite game effort from a qualified supporting cast (including Kristin Scott Thomas, Benedict Wong, Anne Consigny, Steven Waddington, and the awesomely-named Wolfgang Pissors), and an admittedly spectacular climactic rooftop fight sequence, the film moves along at a snail's pace, and much of the blame lies with Sisley, suffering from a severe charisma deficiency in the starring role.  Looking like a more toned Sacha Baron Cohen, Sisley does his own stunts (though who knows why he's being chased?), but elsewhere registers zero regardless of what language he's speaking (the film is split about 50/50 in French and English).  A movie like this lives or dies with its star, and Sisley, going for cool but coming off catatonic, is either miscast or just bored when he's not in motion.  And on top of that, what the hell kind of thriller ends with a slow-clapping scene?  Sisley returned for 2011's THE BURMA CONSPIRACY: LARGO WINCH II, which co-stars Sharon Stone, but has yet to secure US distribution. (Unrated, 109 mins)


KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND
(Norway/Poland/France/Sweden, 2010; US release 2011)

Based on a true story, KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND is a frequently harrowing look at the events leading up to the 1915 rebellion of the so-called "Bastoy Boys" at the Bastoy Island boys reform school, off the coast of Norway.  What's here isn't really anything new, and director Marius Holst lets it drag on a bit long and lays the Moby Dick analogies on a little too thick, but overall, it's very well-acted and beautifully shot.  When Erling (Benjamin Helstad) arrives at Bastoy amidst talk that he killed someone, it doesn't take long for him to establish his bona fides as the school's resident rebel.  He forms an uneasy alliance with Olav (Trond Nilsson), who's been installed as the group leader by Bastoy head Governor Bestyreren (Stellan Skarsgard), who lives in a very ornate house on the other side of the island with his young wife (Ellen Dorrit Petersen).  Olav is due to be released soon and has grown accustomed to looking the other way at assorted injustices and cruelties, but it's Olav who tries to tell the Governor about his top aide, housefather Brathen (Kristoffer Joner) being a pedophile who regularly molests slow-witted Ivar (Magnus Langlete) in the laundry room.  For his own reasons, the Governor sweeps Olav's accusations under the rug, and a final tragedy involving Ivar, which finally prompts the boys to rally behind Erling and Olav and revolt.  Skarsgard's Governor is a fascinating character who, despite his stern and unbending manner, feels a duty to rehabilitate the boys and doesn't believe in the cruelty practiced by his underlings.  He's torn about doing nothing about Brathen, but in doing so, puts his own interests ahead of the boys.  Holst doesn't keep the momentum going all the way up to the very end and it occasionally succumbs to cliche and familiarity (a lot of it recalls THE MAGDELENE SISTERS), but KING OF DEVIL'S ISLAND goes far on the performances of Skarsgard, Joner, Helstad, and Nilsson. (Unrated, 116 mins)