Movies Watched The Week of 3/8 - 3/14

Hi everybody! We got a new post coming at ya.  And my oh my, we got a good week here.  This inadvertently turned into a week of looking at the past, specifically the 70s for the most part.  Three of them were made then, and it’s due in part to a specific figure I got a bit obsessed with this week.  He’s the subject of one, directed/wrote another, and rewrote a part of another.  So sit back and look at some movies you may likely have not heard about.

The Good Shepherd (March 8th, 2015)

Director: Robert DeNiro

Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, John Turturro, and Eddie Redmayne

He’s only made two movies, but Robert DeNiro is a really good director.  He’s not one of the greats, he won’t make anyone rethink cinema nor will he change it significantly.  But in his years of working with some of the greats, he definitely picked some things up.  And while A Bronx Tale is one of those small scale, humble classics, The Good Shepherd got a bad rap on it’s release.  I can see why.  It had the stench of Awards baiting going on in the lead up to it, with the hype and promotional materials giving that feel off.  And I can understand that.  The movie does have a very self serious, polished period piece feel about it.  It may be a little too long, a little too cold, and a little too subtle with it’s narrative.  All that is fair criticism.  But I really dug this movie, about the early days of the CIA and the good ole Ivy Leaguers that formed the Agency.  Matt Damon is really good as the internal and very dedicated man tasked with helping forming the CIA, essentially the founder of counter intelligence.  Angelina Jolie has a thankless role, but does what she can to highlight what a cold and heartless bastard Damon is for the most part.  There’s other supporting players, like Michael Gambon as a mentor and Robert DeNiro as the General that rounds up the crew that became the CIA.  Also a short but nice turn from the retired Joe Pesci as a Mafia boss, essentially playing Sam Giancana.  The CIA has always been a interesting subject to me, so this may very well be a personal bias making me like this movie alot than most.  But I do honestly think that this is a solidly made, interesting movie about the morally fucked up world of counter intelligence.

Rating: 8.5/10

Milius (March 8th, 2015)
Directors: Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson
Starring: John Milius, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese

Even if you don’t know his name, you know his work and have felt his impact.  John Milius came up with the USC crew of filmmakers that changed cinema in the 70s. The like of Steven Spileberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas came up with him and all looked up to him.  These masters, these house hold names all thought he was an otherworldly talent.  That his way with words made him one of the best writers around.  And the only one he didn’t work with was Lucas, having penned Apocalypse Now for Coppola and the Indianapolis scene from Jaws for Spielberg. But being a great writer isn’t the only reason he gets a documentary.  Milius was a character.  A big, loud man with a lot of right wing ideas and no compunction with telling people off.  A short cut version to describe Milius is to watch John Goodman in The Big Lebowski, Milius being the Coens' inspiration for Walter in that.  What’s great about this movie is the love that filmmakers have for the man and how he’s inspired everyone.  You see how his work has reverberated through time.  The biggest, or most obvious, being that he was the one who made Schwarzenneger a viable actor with Conan The Barbarian.  But what really makes the movie is the home stretch, where tragedy strikes.  The most touching scene being the absolute visible distress that Milius’ misfortune brings to Spielberg, his friends pain being that upsetting.  This is a great doc for all film fans, and for anyone who admires artists who forge their own path for better or worse.  I know he’s become a new filmmaking hero to me.

Rating: 10/10

The Hunt For Red October (March 10th, 2015)
Director: John McTiernan
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Sean Connery, Sam Neill, and Scott Glenn

John McTiernan went on a hell of a run in the mid 80s to the early 90s.  Predator, Die Hard, and Die Hard With A Vengeance all being big hits.  Die Hard especially, the apex of the action genre and begat its own subgenre in the action field.  And in that time he also made this Tom Clancy adaptation, about a potentially rogue Soviet submarine commander heading for America.  Connery is that rogue commander, and we don’t know what his intentions are for a bit.  But then we do, and it works.  Baldwin plays Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst who brings this info to his superiors and gets roped into the situation in the field.  The Generals and politicians think Connery is heading out to start a war.  Baldwin thinks he’s trying to defect from the Soviet Union.  The tension lies for a bit in what way he actually goes, but then the majority of the movie is if the rest of the world finds out in time to make a difference.  This is a tight, tense little movie.  It runs a little too long, dragging some scenes out and being a little too technical, which is the risk of a Clancy adaptation.  And some of the action scenes aren’t that great too look at, with it’s primitive effects not being all too good.  But the cast is great, the ambiguity is real sound and the movie sticks the landing.  It’s no Crimson Tide, but it’ll do.

Rating: 8/10

The Wind and The Lion (March 14th, 2015)
Director: John Milius
Starring: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, and Geoffrey Lewis

John Milius is quite the crazy son of a gun.  I mean, you’d have to be to cast Sean Connery as an Arab freedom fighter.  But despite having an accent of the Scots while delivering lines in Arabic, he does give a good performance.  He isn’t leaning on hid Bond persona, he gives a really good performance as a man with absolute belief in his cause.  A man with a code and with honor and bravery.  He is one of the main characters in this story.  The others are Bergen and Keith.  Bergen plays an American woman in Morocco who is kidnapped by Connery.  Connery does this as a means to embarrass the ruler of the land, and ideally cause a civil war.  The other main character, though slightly less focused on, is Keith as Teddy Roosevelt.  Roosevelt has to keep up the appearance of American strength and green lights some sort of rescue mission.  All this ends up in a big skirmish to save Bergen, and for the Moroccans to maybe capture Connery.  This is a movie of pretty decent scale, and it’s a gorgeous movie.  Milius definitely watched Lawrence of Arabia.  The cast is all great, my favorite being Keith because Teddy Roosevelt is just awesome and he does the guy service.  The story gets a little bit too cluttered, maybe being too hard to follow for some.  Lots of names and allegiances to keep track of.  I’ll admit I had to do a little work to keep track of everything.  But it was worth it.  There’s a real soul here, a beating heart of masculinity and honor.  Connery and Keith work as both sides of the same coin.  Connery wants to protect his land, where Keith wants to broaden and strengthen his.  Bergen is fine, if a little too shrewy for some of the hand wringers in the world.  The cumulative power of the movie makes all of the short comings (the few that there are) not too important.  Maybe a little streamlining could have helped, but this is a solid little movie.  Another gem from the 70s.

Rating: 8.5/10

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (March 14th, 2015)
Director: Joseph Sargent
Starring: Walther Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, and Jerry Stiller

If you ever wanted to see a gritty, tight and inventive 70s crime flick with Walter Matthau as the Cop in the situation, well have I got a movie for you.  Robert Shaw leads a group of men to hijack the Pelham 123 train for a $1 Million ransom.  And the movie really is just simply about trying to get the money to these men as quick as possible before they start shooting hostages.  Simple and to the point, with a nice heaping of a middle finger at the ineffectual government structure.  They straight up say that politicians are just mincing assholes looking for the easy way out and to look good to voters. While all this goes down, Matthau tries to talk to Shaw to maybe lengthen the deadline and maybe get some helpful info out of him on the sly.  It’s a quick, to the point little thriller.  Very minimal violence is here to keep us interested.  It’s mainly the characters and the simple but ingenious plot.  Sargent gives the movie a nice, gritty edge and captures a NYC long gone.  Dirty and gritty with a sense of danger, he also captures the old curmudgeons of the age with no compunction to let loose some sexist or racist sentiment.  It’s a nice little time capsule of an era gone by, like The French Connection or Taxi Driver or The Warriors.  Capturing a hard time pretty much lost to the ether.  You want a good, ole fashioned little thriller from the 70s, this is a damn good entry. 

Rating: 9/10






Top Movies

1. Milius
2. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three
3. The Good Shepherd
4. The Wind and The Lion
5. The Hunt For Red October

- Tom Lorenzo