 Jeremy Irons gave one of my favorite Oscar acceptance speeches. Upon winning Best Actor for his shrewd performance as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune, he gave a very special penultimate acknowledgement: “Thank you also, and some of you may understand why…thank you David Cronenberg.” Those who had seen Dead Ringers just two years earlier understood exactly why he had thanked the director, as his dual performance as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle is – without exaggeration – one for the ages.
Irons plays both twins with such specificity that after only a few minutes it becomes obvious which one is Elliot and which one is Beverly, even when one of them is pretending to be the other. Both deeply nuanced portrayals of these characters draw out two sides of what amounts to essentially the same person – men who complete each other yet are undone by their own unbearable closeness. Read more on Historical Circuit: Dead Ringers (****)…
 Twilight (2008) – (**)
It’s so bad, it’s almost good. I guess that’s how I and those who aren’t 15 year old girls would characterize Twilight. Catherine Hardwicke brings Stephenie Meyers beloved series Twilight to the screen, a story about the love between a teenage girl Bella Swan and a vampire, Edward Cullen.
Isabella Swan moves to a town called Forks to live with her father. While there she attends a new school and quickly becomes popular despite her awkward ways of interacting with people. Everybody wants to be her friend, but she only cares about becoming close with one person, Edward Cullen.
I will avoid getting into plot details for those who already know what happens. Girl meets boy, girl finds out boy is vampire and they fall in love. La Dee Da. But what makes this series of movies so engaging that we form an obsession over them? Twilight, the most corny of the series so far, is so unbelievably bad that you can’t help but watch. The dialogue between Edward and Bella is downright awkward, yet filled with romance and need. The special effects are horrendous, they almost ruin the film, and the acting is another story.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Twilight Saga…
Categories: Historical Circuit Tags: breaking dawn part I, eclipse, Historical Circuit, kristen stewart, michael sheen, new moon, nikki reed, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, the twilight saga, Twilight
 There is no horror film more sinister or more brilliant than that of John Carpenter’s Halloween. Released October 25, 1978, Carpenter’s film went on gross more than $47 million dollars, making it the eighth highest grossing film of the year. The film tells the haunting tale of Michael Myers, a 21 year old man who fifteen years earlier, murdered his 17 year old sister Judith on Halloween night after she finished having sex. At six years old, Michael was placed in a mental institution where Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) becomes his primary psychiatrist. Dr. Loomis however, sees a darkness in Michael that can’t be explained. He spent a few years attempting to get through to him and the rest trying to keep him locked up. On Halloween 1978, Michael escapes and goes on a murder rampage through Haddonfield, Illinois attempting to get to his one last blood relative Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis).
Read more on Historical Circuit: Halloween (1978) – (***½)…
 This is actually my first ever Historical Circuit review…go figure. One would have thought that I would have done a few in the past couple of years, but they always escaped me. That changes now. The subject for my de-virgining is 1982′s ‘The Thing’. This version of ‘The Thing’ is a different animal than the 1951 Howard Hawkes film ‘The Thing from Another World’, so even though it’s a remake it’s worth approaching on its own terms. More graphic/gory and actually more faithful to the story upon which it’s based than the Hawkes flick (which I fully confess to never having gotten the chance to watch), this is a sci-fi action/thriller/horror hybrid that is now considered a classic. In my eyes, it’s not quite an untouchable work of cinema, which makes me somewhat curious about the impending remake coming this week. It’s not a perfect movie, but I do think that for its time it was an impressive film to behold. Director John Carpenter really knows what he’s doing, and while I think he did his best work elsewhere, this is still a very solid outing for him. Featuring state of the art special effects at the time, audiences got something very different when they sat down to take in ‘The Thing’. Those who were fans of the original flick or the original story were in for a gruesome time.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Thing (***)…
 In anticipation of the upcoming Blackthorn, a “What If” on the exploits on an old Butch Cassidy, I decided to take a look back at Hollywood’s classic tale of the infamous duo. The top grossing film of its year, at the time the top grossing western of all time and a critical success (at the time), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was one of four westerns released in the last year of the sixties, and in hindsight, the weakest of the lot. Watching the film through the seventies in re-releases, I was always bothered that not a whole lot happened throughout the picture, but like everyone else was captivated by the chemistry between the two actors, Paul Newman and Robert Redford. When I became serious about film, I realized that not a whole lot was happening in the film, and that indeed, writer William Goldman had relied very heavily on the hope that the actors possessed a strong chemistry together. Without it, the film would be forgotten by now. God with it, the film is not remembered all that fondly. Read more on Historical Circuit: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (**)…
 Let me be clear before I begin writing this and you begin reading…I do not believe for one minute that Citizen Kane (1941) is the greatest American film ever made. Cue the howls of protest now please. Sorry.
Though the American Film Institute has twice voted the film such, in 1997 and again in 2007, and the annual poll conducted by Sight and Sound states the same, I think other films have gone past the film in terms of their brilliance, namely The Godfather: Part II (1974), The Godfather (1972), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Schindler’s List (1993), Raging Bull (1980), and The Searchers (1956) to name a few. My opinion does not bring into the mix that Citizen Kane (1941) is not among the greatest films ever made, (it is), and it might be the most innovative film ever made, changing the way directors made their movies forever, but greatest of all time? Nope. Read more on Historical Circuit: Citizen Kane (****)…
 From Kramer vs. Kramer conquering the Oscars at the peak of second-wave feminism to Wag the Dog hitting theaters at around the time then-President Clinton ordered a military strike on suspected terrorist sites in the midst of his own notorious sex scandal, many Dustin Hoffman-headlined films take on a strange cultural topicality. In 1995, Wolfgang Petersen’s bio-thriller Outbreak happened to hit theaters at a time when Ebola was killing hundreds of people in Central Africa, kicking off a number of debates in America over what the CDC really would do if a disease like that hit the homeland.
It had quite the impact back then, and even today the film is referenced when discussing the latest scare disease or epidemic feared to be the next Black Death. Such a standard-setter for the subject of epidemiological paranoia…and I don’t particularly care for it.
The main problem with Outbreak stems from a type of mindset that plagued (no pun intended) 90’s Hollywood studios. For some reason, there was distrust in seemingly every serious-minded American movie with a budget of over $50 million dollars to allow their own conceits to sell themselves. Especially obvious in the glut of John Grisham adaptations that flooded that decade, several star-studded, contemporary, ostensibly cerebral thrillers were often turgid affairs that kept eschewing a juicy premise for the sake of cheap sentiment. Read more on Historical Circuit: Outbreak (**)…
Categories: Historical Circuit Tags: Contagion, Cuba Gooding Jr., Donald Sutherland, Dustin Hoffman, Historical Circuit, joyless mediocrity, Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman, Outbreak, paranoia, Rene Russo, Steven Soderbergh, studio interference, Wolfgang Petersen
 There is a moment in Cabaret, in my mind the single greatest musical ever made, that sets the film far apart from all other films of the genre. It happens in the second half of the in an outdoor beer garden where Sally, Brian and Max have stopped for refreshment. A beautiful young boy stands up and begins to sing, his face that of an angel, his blonde hair shining in the mid-day sun, his blue eyes almost piercing. His song, ”Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is an anthem for the youth, a soaring song about the joy the world holds for the youth of the next generation. The camera slowly pans down from the teenager’s face to reveal that he is a member of the Nazi Brown Shirt Party, and suddenly the mood shifts to something dark and terribly sinister. He becomes obsessed with the song, his passion and voice rising, the people in the outdoor garden joining in singing to the increasingly passionate lyrics, though the elderly decline. We see at once how Hitler seduced Germany, through its youth, through promises of a bright tomorrow and suddenly Cabaret becomes unlike any movie musical ever made.
Of all the genres in film, the musical is my least favorite, though I count this one as one of the greatest films, not musicals, films ever made. No bursting in song in the middle of the Alps, no running through the streets singing songs with no story point at all, but rather an intense dark look at the impact of Nazism on Berlin in 1931 and the effect it would have on the lives of two young lovers from different parts of the world. Brain (Michael York) comes to Berlin to teach English and meets night club singer Sally Bowles (Minnelli) a talented woman who will do anything for success, including sleep her way to the top. He enters into a relationship with Sally which he must know is doomed from the beginning, and they walk a precarious line towards a threesome with a wealthy bi-sexual Max, who has larger eyes for Brian than he does Sally. Finding out that Max and Brian have sletp together Sally is stunned at the betrayal, but far worse more upset at being pregnant and not knowing who the father is. Brian agrees to marry her and raise the child, but Sally unable to leave her dream of being famous, sells her fur coat to pay for an abortion, enraging Brian who leaves her to continue singing her heart out for the audience, now mostly Nazis of the Kit Kat Club.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Cabaret (****)…
 The trees sway gently back and forth, as the screen goes from black to this image. It is a tropical jungle setting, and in the distance we here something oddly familiar. Helicopters? A yellow mist moves across the screen, and the beginnings of a song are heard on the track. Suddenly the jungle explodes in an inferno of fire, helicopters zipping by and Jim Morrison of The Doors begins to croon, ‘This is the end, my only friend, the end.” The apocalypse, this apocalypse has begun and we have been plunged into the nightmare that was American involvement in Viet Nam. Willard (Martin Sheen) an army assassin is waiting for a mission, slowly becoming unhinged in his filthy hotel room, drinking heavily and sparring naked
with his reflection in the mirror he will break, coating his face with the blood that seeps from his wounded hand, before he falls over sobbing on the floor. He gets his mission, sent into the dark jungle of Cambodia to terminate “with extreme prejudice” a decorated Colonel who has lost control and waged his own war against both the Americans and the Viet Cong. Willard is being sent to kill Kurtz (Marlon Brando) one of the military’s most decorated men, who has seen too much and lost touch with reality. By the time he has completed his journey, Willard will
understand what happened to Kurtz and come to know precisely why he went mad. The journey upriver takes him through the nightmare that is Viet Nam, where we see soldiers fighting a war without a commanding officer, and an entire village wiped out so a Colonel can see his boys go surfing. Encountering Kilgore (Robert Duvall) takes the film to such a fever pitch, it never quite recovers, but it is one of the most astonishing sequences ever filmed.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Apocalypse Now (****)…
 Not only is Tootsie (1982) the finest American comedy ever made, it is without question the greatest movie made about the art of acting! No other film has ever so fully displayed the intense passion with which an actor approaches a role, the manner in which they are willing to live in abject poverty waiting for that big break, the love they possess for the character they are portraying, or that moment when they know they have ceased to be the actor and become the character, inhabiting their character as though they were its soul. Tootsie portrays the truth in acting, making clear how essential truth is for the art to be complete. How they managed to make a film about both is quite incredible, but how they managed to make it so damned good is quite another level of brilliance. When I say the greatest American comedy ever made, I mean a film that is impeccably acted and directed, superbly written and edited, everything coming together to create a film that was hugely funny, deeply moving, a monster hit with audiences and adored by critics. The great strengths of Tootsie are the performances, though at the center of the film is Dustin Hoffman giving what is his greatest performance, one that should have won him a second Academy Award, and a performance that I believe to be
one of the greatest ever put on film.
Tootsie is that great.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Tootsie (****)…
 Michael Cimino’s much maligned western epic is often discussed as being among the worst films ever made and the greatest failure in cinema history. It is neither, though it does represent the film that ended the directors’ era of the seventies, a time when filmmakers had complete freedom and access to the deep pockets of the studios. Heaven’s Gate (1980) is an example of a film ruined by the directors’ ego, self indulgence, and blind belief in his project without ever having the ability to see what was happening around him. Cimino was the toast of the town when United Artists signed him to direct Heaven’s Gate, a film based on his own screenplay, and originally budgeted at nine million dollars. He had recently won Academy Awards for best director and best picture for his searing study of the impact of
the Viet Nam war on a small community in The Deer Hunter (1978). United Artists (UA) believed that Cimino could helm the studio’s next great film, their next Oscar winner and their belief led them to give the director whatever he wanted, which was the beginning of the nightmare that would bankrupt the studio. Over the course of 1978 through to the ill fated release of the film in November of 1980, the studio marched silently towards bankruptcy, caused directly by Cimino and his overages on this film. What started at nine, quickly elevated to thirteen, then eighteen, then twenty five at which point the studio panicked and spoke to another director about finishing the film. Knowing that the union would never stand for their recent Directors Guild of America Award as Best Director being fired from his own film, the studio decided to finish the film, for thirty million. Still Cimino kept up his nonsense and the budget tapped out at forty four million dollars. The picture was delivered more than a year late, ran five hours, and was unwatchable. Beyond being vastly overlong, the film is noisy, and many sequences cannot be seen because of the dust on the screen. Where the average battle scene in a film takes twenty minutes, the one in Heaven’s Gate goes on and on and on.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Heaven’s Gate (**)…
 With the release of the new Peter Biskind book Star, a biography and study of actor-director-producer-writer Warren Beatty, I took a look at Reds (1981) the other night, his seminal study of John Reed and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, as seen through the eyes of Reed who wrote the first great journalistic book Ten Days That Shook the World. Long a passion project of Beatty’s he was never comfortable being a movie star,
wanting to be taken seriously as an artist, producing the brilliant work Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and dabbling in direction for the first time with Heaven Can Wait (1978) a remake of the classic Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1942). For his work on that romantic comedy he received four Academy Award nominations, as Best Actor, Best Director (shared), Best Producer (shared) and Best Screenplay (shared), a feat not accomplished since Orson Welles with Citizen Kane (1941). Never comfortable as a mere movie star, Beatty saw himself as an artist and his obsession with John Reed turned fever pitch when he went to Paramount to ask them to finance a film about Reed to the tune of twenty five million dollars. At one point the head of Paramount told him to take twenty five million, spend one million on any movie and pocket the rest but do not make Reds. Too late, Beatty was hooked.The result was a massive epic in which the director never lost sight of the fact he was making an intimate study about people, artists like himself.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Reds (****)…
John Ford was the greatest American director of the classic era, a poet with a camera, able to convery volumes of dialogue with a single image. Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas each cite Ford as one of their strongest influences, and Orson Welles once said he studied directing under the three masters, being “John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.” High praise indeed. Ford once introduced himself as “My name is John Ford, I make westerns” at a famous meeting of the Directors Guild in which his speech ended a divide and coup that was taking place engineered by rabid American Cecil B. Demille. In a few short sentences, Ford cut the pompous Demille down to size, and then left the meeting, perhaps going home to read or play poker with John Wayne and Ward Bond. Ford won four Academy Awards as Best Director, ironically not one of them came for a western though that is the genre with which he is most associated. His finest The Searchers (1956) is also the greates of the genre, a masterpiece of visual poetry with a towering, seething performance from John Wayne that marked the greatest work of Wayne’s career. Never before had Wayne portrayed such a conflicted, twisted man as Ethan Edwards, a warrior at war with himself more than any man he ever fights. His deep hatred for the Indians will emerge over the course of the film, after the slaughter of his brother’s family at the hands of a murder raid in which the two your neices of Ethan’s are taken. One girl is found, the eldest, raped and murdered in a canyon where Ethan forever scarred by the sight, wraps her in his coat and gently buries her. The youngest, Debbie, becomes the obsession of Ethan’s search, spanning the years, with Ethan always coming, never stopping, forever chasing down the tribe and cief that took Debbie to raise as one of their own.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Searchers (****)…
 When it was first released The Shining, directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick, was not the great success, or critical hit it was hoped it would be. In fact some of the scenes drew laughter in the theater, in particular some of Nicholson’s scenes, which I remember hearing people saying was “over the top,”. I never felt that way.
Playboy film critic Bruce Williamson wrote, “the film was terrifying…I forgot to breathe for minutes at a time” which was how I felt. I found the film terrifying, and Nicholson’s performance to be utterly perfect. How did people miss it? How did they NOT recognize Kubrick’s slow building masterpiece of terror, that was as perverse as it was terrifying? What so many people forget when they watch a film directed by the great Kubrick was that never did he intend his audience to merely watch the film, but rather to experience the work, placing themselves in the film. If it is you on the other side of the door as Jack Torrance (Nicholson) wields an axe, bursting through with the sick cry, “Here’s Johnny!!!”, how funny is that? It provoked laughter the first time I saw it, but those that really get the film are not laughing, those that have placed themselves in the shoes of Wendy (Shelly Duvall) are not at all amused. THAT is why The Shining is terrifying, because the director creates such a creepy atmosphere, claustrophobic, haunting and placed in it a man slowly losing his grip on reality. The target of his attack becomes his family, and that to me is frightening.
There are I believe clues to how Kubrick directed the Nicholson performance, which borders on being cartoon, making it all the more terrifying. As Danny watches TV we hear the familiar Warner Brothers tune, ‘If you’re on a highway, a road runner goes bee…beep…” while later, Torrance knocks on the door as the big bad wolf and threatens to huff and puff and blow the house in. The wonderful bike Danny rides through the hotel is called a road runner, thus Torrance becomes the coyote. What is entertaining in childhood becomes an abomination when seen as this. This coyote, like the cartoon, keeps getting up after injury, though unlike the cartoon there is blood and injury and consequences for failure. On the other side, for Danny and Wendy there is the chance of death should he catch up to them.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Shining (****)…
 Religious groups went out of their minds after viewing Mel Gibson’s extraordinary study of the last few hours in Christ’s life because they were expecting a film about his life. Instead Gibson made a brilliant, scalding work about his death, and what a terrible death it was. We have all the stories of the crucifixion, but never before had we truly understood the punishment Christ went through on the way to Golgotha and his destiny, if we truly believe in that sort of thing?
Seeing The Passion of the Christ was an amazing experience for me, an atheist who struggles with religion and what it stands for. I am bothered that more people have died in the name of God than for any other reason in the history of recorded mankind, but I do believe Christ walked the earth. Whether or not he was the son of God is not for me to decide, but he was special, there is no doubt of that. How can I say that with such boldness and certainty?
His story has survived two thousand years.
To this day in churches around the globe people bow down in the name of Jesus Christ and give thanks for what he gave to us, or to ask for his forgiveness. I struggle with all organized religions, I struggle with the facts of the Old Testament, I struggle with the theories of Van Daniken and how science has answered many historical questions for us, but emerging from this film, I struggled with a firm belief in Christ no more. Even if he was not the son of God, he believed himself to be, he must have to allow himself to be put through this extreme torture and horrible manner of death. And if he was not truly the son of God, so what, does it really matter? He was an astounding man who taught important things to mankind at the time, at least those who would listen to him. The miracles? I don’t know. I know I got out of a car accident I had no business surviving, I know my sister came back to us after being taken off life support and lingering for ten days while we waited for her to die, having been told by her medical team she had no brain activity. People have said to me those are miracles, and there are thousands more through history, many we have never heard of. Mel Gibson is devoutly religious, he believes in God and Jesus Christ and he wanted to make a film that was about the last hours in the life of Jesus that explored realistically went this man went through, what he endured to fulfill whatever destiny he believed he had on earth.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Passion of the Christ (****)…
 One of the more under appreciated films of the eighties, True Confessions earned strong reviews upon being released, but sadly never really found an audience, never really did well at the box office and somewhat sadly slipped out of theaters before audiences had a chance to discover the movie. One would think the pairing of Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro would draw audiences in as the pair were at the height of their careers, De Niro fresh from an Oscar winning performance in Raging Bull (1980) and Duvall having just been declared America’s greatest actor by the New York Times.
The film is a classic film noir, beginning in present day (circa 1981) where an old man, Tom (Duvall) is driving through the desert, his destination an old church where his brother, Des (De Niro) is the priest. They greet one another with genuine fondness and then begin to discuss the crime that in ruining Des’s aspirations within the church served to bring them closer together in every way.
We move back to the forties, where Tom is a detective for the Los Angeles Police Department and his brother Des is a fast rising priest within the Catholic Church, often turning a blind eye to the political goings on. When a young woman is literally cut in half, her body left to rot, Tom begins connecting the dots of the crime and all arrows point to the Church. Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning) is a crooked businessman who donates a great deal of money to the church, who in turn look the other way on his criminal activities. Knowing that his brother is connected, or at the very least has knowledge of the crime, Tom targets Amsterdam, recognizing his brother may be ruined. Obsessed with the law, with upholding the law, Tom barges through the case indeed taking Amsterdam down, but in the process, destroys his brother’s career.
Read more on Historical Circuit: True Confessions (***)…
Jane Fonda’s angry attack on the United States and President Richard Nixon for American involvement in Viet Nam earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane” and the hatred of the American government. Fonda had begun her career as a light comic actress- sex kitten before becoming a major dramatic actress with her Oscar nominated performance in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) which would win her the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress. Two years later she was back on the stage of the Academy Awards accepting an Oscar for her brilliant performance in Klute (1971) which won her a second Best Actress plaque from the New York Film Critics Circle. That performance, as a hooker being stalked by a murderous client, the actress gave one of the cinema’s greatest performances, surpassed by only Meryl Streep in Sophie’s
Choice (1982) and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939). Her career was soaring, she was on the cusp of becoming America’s greatest actress, and she turned her back on film to protest the war in Viet Nam.
Fonda made a major comeback in 1977 with a superb performance in Julia (1977) which earned her a third Oscar nomination, and proved her box office power with the hit film Fun with Dick and Jane (1977). During this time Fonda was also working on a film about the war in Viet Nam, initially entitled Buffalo Soldiers. Screenwriter Nancy Dowd, best known for the superb Slap Shot (1977) screenplay fashioned a powerful story that Fonda would produce and take a role in the film. After being turned down by Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Sylvester Stallone for the male lead, she turned to Jon Voight who at once headed to a veterans hospital and sat himself in a wheelchair that he refused to get out for the entire shoot. Character actor Bruce Dern was cast as Fonda’s husband, a man who cannot wait to get to war, but once there finds it is very different than he believed it would be. Hal Ashy was invited to direct the film, and working with Fonda quickly made it his own picture, bringing that brilliant insight Ashby brought to all of his work.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Coming Home (****)…
 I would bet my soul that one year after the Academy Awards were dominated by Richard Attenborough’s old fashioned biography of Gandhi (1982), the voters were wishing they could do it all again and perhaps honor the right film, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982). Even Attenborough recognized that Spielberg had made the better picture, stopping on his way to the podium to tell Spielberg exactly that. The Academy got caught up in honoring the man, honoring Gandhi and not the film. Indeed what Gandhi did for India was extraordinary, the act of a brilliant, selfless man who deserves to be remembered for what he did and what he was? If indeed they had made a film that properly explored his life, warts and all, then indeed that film should be so honored, but they did not. Instead Attenborough made the mistake of falling in love with his subject to the point he saw no warts, he saw only goodness. Had the Gandhi in this film suddenly walked on water I would not have been shocked. Rather than make a biography Attenborough made a film that was akin to Gandhi: The Greatest Hits and explored the best things he did in his life, many of which we already knew. Why not do what Spike Lee did with Malcolm X (1992); show the man has flaws?? Do what Oliver Stone did with Nixon (1995); show how those flaws impacted his life and those around him!! We know Gandhi slept between two teenage girls in his later years to test his celibacy, so why not show that?? Why did his celibacy have to be tested? Perhaps because he worried he was weak?? Show that!! He seemed always surrounded by pretty women, why? Show us, help us understand!! His treatment of his wife was often terrible, making her live for him rather than live her own life. And he certainly enjoyed those cameras that were often turned on him. Show these things because these flaws, if they can be called such, humanize him!! Rather than giving us a virtual saint, and that is what Attenborough does, give us a man, a simple man who did great things.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Gandhi (**)…
 Written as a pulp novel, the studio brought in little known director-writer Francis Ford Coppola believing they could control him to make the film they wanted to see, something very different from The Arrangement (1969)…something successful. Paramount had no idea that they had just hired one of the most stubborn and willful young men in the business, who saw his chance to make a film about something different than just the book, but rather a film about the corruption of the America Dream, and family.
Think about it for a minute.
The Corleone family are of Italian descent, Vito having been born in Italy but forced to flee as a child, left alone to be raised by strangers, but who found love, had a family, made the decision to murder and prospered as a criminal, rising to the position of Don of the most powerful Mafia family in New York in the years after the war. He allows his sons to work for him but does not ask of them to do so. There is enormous love between this father and his sons, and they truly love one another. They are a family just as we have families, but their business happens to include murder. He brought to the film an operatic story of a father and his sons and their business, and the tragedy that befalls the youngest son, being drawn into the family business after being a war hero, never wanting to be involved, but doing so to avenge an attempt on his father’s life.Coppola had no interest in the cast Paramount suggested, which included Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Frank Sinatra or Laurence Olivier as the Don, with Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, David Carradine or Martin Sheen as any one of the sons. Coppola had other ideas. He wanted little known Al Pacino for the role of Michael, easily the film’s best part, James Caan as the hot headed Sonny, John Cazale as the weak Fredo, Robert Duvall as the adopted son Tom, and in the coveted role of the Don, he wanted Marlon Brando. Aghast the studio shut the idea down, at which point Coppola threw himself on the floor in the throes of some sort of seizure.Obviously he got his cast, and the rest, as they say is history.
Well almost.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The Godfather (****)…
 I confess to leaping (as much as I can these days) for joy when the courier delivered my press copy DVD of this outstanding film.
FINALLY!!!!! IT’S HERE!!!
For the first time since the creation of these lovely little discs, The African Queen (1951) makes its way to the digital realm in alls its glory, having been lovingly retsored by the wizards who work their magic behind the scenes. Shot on location in the African Congo when director John Huston insisted on doing so, the behind the scenes making of the movie was every bit the adventure the film itself became. In fact Clint Eastwood would direct White Hunter Black Heart (1990), a superb study of the film’s making, in which he portrayed a thinly disguised version of John Huston.
Huston was a wild man, feared by the studios, adored by actors and admired by critics for his literate, often beautiful films that were very much a slice of life. His greatest film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) won him an Oscar for Best Director and Screenplay, as well as an award for his father’s supporting performance. Years later he would direct his daughter Anjelica to an Oscar in Prizzi’s Honor (1985) the last great film he made. Most of his films were adpatations of great literary works, be it classics such as Moby Dick (1956) or The Man Who Would Be King (1975) or modern pot boilers such as The Maltese Falcon (1941) of the aforementioned Prizzi’s Honor (1985). He lived life hard, drinking his way through much of his existence, fighting whenever the spirit moved him, and making some of the greatest movies of the last century. One of his best friends was Humphrey Bogart, an equally hard drinking, hard living man, who was under the direction of Huston a brilliant actor. In the manner that John Ford knew which buttons to push with John Wayne, or Martin Scorsese with Robert de Niro, Huston understood Bogart and guided from him some of the actors darkest performances.
Read more on Historical Circuit: The African Queen (****)…
 President Richard Nixon was re-elected in 1972 to his second term by one of the greatest landslides in the history of the United States Presidency. One of the most controversial Presidents in American history, it is my opinion that over the course of history Nixon will come to be recognized as a great President. In many ways, it has already begun to happen. Each and every President that followed Nixon sought his advice and counsel on matters of foreign policy, and when he died all living Presidents attended his funeral as a tribute to a man who become known as a great statesmen. What a shame that two years after being re-elected to a second term by such a massive majority of votes, Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate affair.
Two reporters from the Washington Post were assigned to a story about a break in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. Their findings led them to believe that the break-in was connected to the highest office in the land, and slowly they began piecing the story together, hitting dead ends, find witnesses that then vanished, and guided gently by an inside spy known only as Deep Throat. The writers, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were dogged in their attempts to find where the story led, though they always believed Nixon was involved, even though the editor of the newspaper, Ben Bradlee was nervous in the beginning at where “the boys” were going with the writing. In the end he stood by them and their story changed the face of the United States of America in the seventies, led to the resignation of a recently re-elected President and led to a sense of mistrust that exists to this day.
Read more on Historical Circuit: All the President’s Men (****)…
 So much has been written about the film’s stunning opening sequence, and the closing battle that I often fear the film’s greatest moment is missed. It comes mid-way through the picture after the death of the little medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi). We watch as Wade, shot several times, tries to help Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) identify the wounds and where they are. The look of terror that crosses his face when he realizes his liver has been shot through is heartbreaking because we know that he knows he is doomed to die on that field. Slowly, and in great pain, he does indeed pass with the shots of morphine dulling the pain, nothing more, until his body lies still. Miller, devastated by the loss, walks away to be alone behind a hill. There he begins to break down, slowly at first, fearful that his men may hear him weeping, and then the sobs escape him as though from his very soul. We see for the first time that the stoic Captain, the leader is just as terrified as the men he is leading into battle. He is us, we are him; we know that man, we are that man.
Thousands of miles from home, at war with another nation for a cause he believes to be right, he leads his men quietly terrified, concerned each day that one of his decisions may lead to their death, and he will have yet another dead soldier on his conscience. Nothing he had done in his life before the war prepared him for what he was dealing with when he got there, he led like he taught in the classroom, with efficiency and integrity, his soldiers trusting him as the children he taught back in Philadelphia trusted him. Eventually the sobs subside, and he gathers himself together and goes back to his men, where he will again make life and death decisions each and every day.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Saving Private Ryan (****)…
 How many films made almost forty years ago retain their power? Moreover, how many science fiction films made nearly forty years ago still look futuristic in 2010? The answers to both questions is the same: very few. Yet Kubrick’s overwhelming work A Clockwork Orange seems today as fresh, as controversial, as dark and as brilliant as it was when first screened to stunned audiences in 1971. They emerged from theaters not quite believing what they had seen, some hailing it a masterpiece, others dismissing as the work of a self indulgent artist in love with his own mind. The picture was banned in England until 2006, and hit with the dreaded X rating in North America, feared for the impact the rating had on
potential box office. When the gusty New York Film Critics Circle honored the film with their Best Film and Best Director awards, it became clear that the film could be an Oscar favorite, and the Hollywood Foreign Press saw the film nominated in three categories including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Director. Gregory Peck threatened to resign his post as President of the Motion Picture Academy if the film was to win Best Film, giving some insight into what the more conservative members of the Academy thought about the picture. Yet despite Peck’s hard hitting statement, the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Film Editing. How and why actor Malcolm MacDowell was overlooked for a nomination as Best Actor remains startling, as was the fact the film was snubbed for cinematography, sound and art direction. The film of course won nothing yet of the nominees that year A Clockwork Orange remains vastly more important and substantial than The Last Picture Show (1971) or the eventual winner The French Connection (1971), fine films both, but lacking the searing power of the Kubrick work.
Read more on Historical Circuit: A Clockwork Orange (****)…
 Without sounding condescending, which is clearly not my intent, this film will grow to mean more to you as you age. As you move further and further from your high school days, there will be something familiar about American Graffiti that allows you to appreciate the film more and more. Perhaps there is someone in the film you connect with, or maybe you too grew up in a small town and spent Friday nights driving around town. More than likely though you see a reflection of yourself and the kids you grew up with in the film. Maybe your best friend was like John Milner (Paul Le Mat) or you knew a girl like Debbie (Candy Clark). I think everyone knew someone like Steve (Ron Howard) or Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) and perhaps secretly longed for their lives, never really understanding they had issues of their own. There is something of burnished memory within the film, something that speaks to each one of us in a unique way, which of course is the grand power of George Lucas’ best film. The characters that inhabit American Graffiti are so much a part of our past it is as though Lucas had tapped into our minds and downloaded our memories. We knew these people, hell we were those people in our youth. And then Lucas does something brilliant at the end of the film, something that gives the picture a bittersweet, almost tragic edge to it, by telling us what happens to these kids a few years down the road. We leave the theater knowing that John Milner dies in a drunk driver wreck, his greatest fear, and that Terry the Toad (Charles Martin Smith) is MIA in Viet Nam, a place he has no business being. We know that Steve and Laurie (Cindy Williams) do indeed marry, and then divorce, and that Curt is a writer living in Canada, no doubt to escape the draft that takes his friend Terry. By knowing what becomes of the kids we have spent two hours with, we the audience are forced to grow up as we leave the theater, while they are left forever as they are on the screen, ageless, never to go beyond the years portrayed in the film.
Read more on Historical Circuit: American Graffiti (****)…
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Jeremy Irons gave one of my favorite Oscar acceptance speeches. Upon winning Best Actor for his shrewd performance as Claus von Bülow in Reversal of Fortune, he gave a very special penultimate acknowledgement: “Thank you also, and some of you may understand why…thank you David Cronenberg.” Those who had seen Dead Ringers just two years earlier understood exactly why he had thanked the director, as his dual performance as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle is – without exaggeration – one for the ages.
