Retro Review: The Straight Story (1999)

Having finally seen David Lynch's oddity (now that's a first) The Straight Story (1999), my admiration for him is at an all-time high. I have berated the dung that was Dune (1984), which then reminded me that he really is an acquired taste - and it made me wonder how I acquired it in the first place. The answer lied here.

Retro Review: Dune (1984)

Quite why and how David Lynch ended up directing Dune is a whole book unto itself. The source material and the director's (up to that point) oeuvre could not be more at odds. Mind you, Lynch did not go on to direct politically-charged space operas after Dune either. It was a bad match and somebody should have seen it coming. The fact that Dune was a collosal flop the size of a brachiosaurus only pushed Lynch to go on to definitely bigger and better things. Having said that, he is still not universally adored or revered for a lot reasons.

Oscar Noir - The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is running a series called Oscar Noir this summer, screening Oscar nominated 1940s films “from Hollywood’s Dark Side.” They kicked things off last week with the film that first brought notoriety to the notorious Film Noir genre, John Huston's 1941 take on The Maltese Falcon.


Huston was just a lowly company screenwriter when he went into production on The Maltese Falcon, the film that would be his directorial debut. He’d been working for Warner Brothers, shelling out the likes of Jezebel (1938) and High Sierra (1941) before earning enough leverage to negotiate a director’s gig into his contract. Warner’s figured he’d earned that, but they weren’t too pleased with his choice of picture – based on a classic novel by respected writer Dashiell Hammett, Falcon had already been adapted for the silver screen twice, and had produced less than stellar results.

Huston was adamant, arguing that the previous renditions lapsed in their understanding of what Hammett’s novel was, and how it should be made. The studio begrudgingly supported him, but they wanted George Raft to play Sam Spade, the archetypical hard-boiled detective and the star of Falcon’s show. Huston didn’t want Raft. He wanted Humphrey Bogart, who’d impressed Huston with his work on High Sierra. But Huston had exhausted his influence – this was a fight he couldn’t win.

Retro Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

You know what A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is? It’s an idea – a really cool, really interesting and extremely frightening idea. Over the past 25 years Nightmare has maintained elite slasher flick status, propelling writer/director Wes Craven into the Horror Hall of Fame and installing Freddy Kruger as a cinematic household name. Aficionados who came up in the 80s look at it as one of the greats. It maintains an astounding (and alarming) 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, beating out other slasher classic like the original Halloween (93%), Scream (81%), and the original Friday the 13th (60%). In fact, if you don’t count Psycho (which, to be fair, isn’t structured like a slasher flick), Nightmare is the most acclaimed slasher flick of all time. And not just on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic, the New York Times, etc. all view Nightmare as a pinnacle of its genre. A truly classic horror film.

And it may in fact be just that. You may have watched this flick as a kid and been haunted in your sleep for weeks. But guess what – I watched it the other night, and I thought it sucked.

Retro Review: Battlefield Earth (2000)

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, two avid Cinewisers set out to view the Worst Film Ever Made. They ignored warnings from The Glow, a legendary Cinewiser who’d suffered the journey not once, but twice before. They misinterpreted Entertainment Weekly’s spoof poster (left), assuming a film worthy of such mockery could only be so deserving if it were “so bad it’s good”. They were (relatively) young, they were (a little bit) innocent. They believed this was a film to see for themselves.


And so, these daring young cinema explorers – known as riCan and DubMc, at least to themselves – gathered their supplies, limbered their minds and ventured into a cold, cloudy Saturday afternoon screening of Battlefield Earth (2000).

They survived 20 minutes.

Believe the anti-hype people – Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the year 3000 is the worst movie of our life time. Unbearably bad. Sickeningly bad...

Retro Review: Out of Sight (1998)

Had the Best Picture category been expanded to 10 back in 1998, you can bet your candy statue replica (is there a Oscar pez dispenser out there yet? No? Don’t anyone steal my idea!) Out of Sight would have snagged one of the nominations. Hell, it could have been the dark horse to winner Shakespeare in Love’s cuteness and Saving Private Ryan’s Academy prestige. Directed by Academy fav Steven Soderbergh (who won the Best Director award two years later for his work in Traffic), this Elmore Leonard adaptation is smart and commercial; a populist, star-studded pic shot and cut with an indie eye. It isn’t an “important” film, but it oozes so much casual classy cool it could keep star George Clooney in tuxes and scotch for a year.

Retro Review: Boiler Room (2000)

Boiler Room (2000) is a film filled with boys acting like men, dressing up in expensive suits, expensive cars and expensive homes and pretending to be that which they covet, ignorant in their inability to do so. It’s the writing/directing debut of a 28-year-old Brooklynite, and filled with young talents we can’t quite take seriously. Names like Jamie Kennedy, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Giovanni Ribisi, Scott Caan, Tom Everett Scott fill the Armani suits and Lamborghinis, running around as young bucks just happy to be a part of something cool.

But there’s something deeper in their show, something cold and grounded beneath the layers of desperate man-children naively pretending to live a life without consequences. And something I’m not sure I was ready to pick up on when I first watched this flick so long ago.

When I caught Ben Younger’s film on DVD with my college buddies circa 2001, I was drawn in by the same elements that lured the characters in – an ultra cool post-grad world with dude’s living the dude dream. Sure there was the drama, intrigue, cool young cast and foul mouthed comedy. But Boiler Room promised the same seduction of Wall Street (1987), a film it blatantly covets and honors, along with Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).

Seemingly a lifetime later, I’m drawn into the realities buried under that fantasy world, my heart sinking with the ruined family men, my soul identifying with the epic child vs adult (or more specifically, boy vs. man) themes Younger investigates. Boiler Room is a thinly but smartly veiled coming of age story, and I’m now at an age where I can honestly understand it.

Performance wise, its fun to watch Giovanni flying high on promise once shown, taking risks with his character and, most importantly, enjoying the experience of it all. It’s great to see Vin Diesel before he lived his life “a quarter mile at a time”, and it’s a hoot to see Jamie Kennedy in a pencil-thin porn stash. Perhaps more than anybody else, he embodies the idea of a young man taking himself far too seriously.

It’s great, too, to see Ron Rifkin as Ribisi’s father, at once crippled and empowered by what it means to be a man. I had a great love/hate relationship with him in Alias, and I’m reminded here why. There’s also Nicky Katt who, in Boston Public days, I thought was going to be somebody. And look – there’s Fringe’s Kirck Acevedo in a “blink and you’ll miss him” one-line role.

But it might be most fun to seen Ben Affleck, at the height of his acting fame, doing his best to channel Glengary era Alec Baldwin, and producing a so-bad-it’s-fun performance.

Boiler Room isn’t a great film, but it’s a solid effort, and a lot stronger than I once gave it credit for being. It says a lot about what it means to be a man in a modern American society obsessed with financial success. Its characters want to get rich, and get rich quick. And damn the consequences – “what’s the point of living if you’ve only got the money to barely do it?” it seems to ask. Regardless of how you feel about the subject, it’s easy to see where these misguided man-children are coming from.