The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

I have only recently -- admittedly, belatedly -- come to really appreciate what a remarkable set of circumstances was made possible by BBS Productions in the late '60s and early '70s, and certainly what a remarkable group of films was produced by the company during that time. While I had always appreciated and admired the significance of Easy Rider, the company's breakout success, it was really the comparatively low-key, painfully honest and still-relevant Five Easy Pieces, which impressed me most deeply and made me pay close attention to the films produced by the company.

The King of Marvin Gardens re-unites director Bob Rafelson with star Jack Nicholson, though it is not merely a follow-up to Five Easy Pieces. Set against the backdrop of a decaying Atlantic City, Nicholson plays David Staebler, an intellectual late-night talk radio host, who comes to the boardwalk to help out his brother Jason (Bruce Dern), recently released from jail and trying to get his latest property development venture off the ground while dealing with difficult relationships with the women in his life (Ellen Burstyn and Julia Anne Robinson) and the local crime racket with whom he is involved. Nicholson's David is a quiet but sharp observer, fiercely loyal to his brother despite his misguided efforts. He seems to view himself as somewhat aloof, perhaps using his role as radio host to distance himself from the situations and people around him, but he nevertheless proves himself willing to step up and take action when circumstances call for it.

Nicholson's performance is a revelation -- restrained and burning with a quiet intensity, working in perfect synergy with the similarly restrained but intense style that Rafelson brings to the film. Rafelson brilliantly uses the decaying boardwalk, once a symbol for opportunity and wealth, and now run-down with corruption, as a metaphor for America.

Shooting on Film Again

Perhaps in keeping with the idea that "What's old is new again", it certainly seems that there is a good deal of excitement among film enthusiasts toward shooting on film again. Following the intense hype surrounding Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, shot - and released, albeit in limited engagements - in the 70mm format, Kodak came out with an intriguing announcement, regarding the company's revival of the Super 8 format.

The announcement comes at an interesting time for "analog" formats, given the resurgence in popularity of vinyl records in recent years. As someone who recently began shooting on film again myself (I purchased a 16mm Bolex this past summer), I will be especially interested to see how other filmmakers react to this development, and whether or not the Super 8 format does indeed see a revival as a result.

Ultimately, I think it will come down to a question of what individual filmmakers hope to accomplish by shooting in the format. As a learning tool, it could prove to be highly valuable to a generation of filmmakers trained on digital formats. At the same time, the greater cost and cumbersome nature of the technology may well stymie many of these same filmmakers in their tracks. Shooting on film rewards patience and meticulous attention to detail, qualities that digital tends to work against with its ability to obtain good results with less work (and I say that not to denigrate those artists and craftsmen who approach working on digital with the same care and quality as they would film; but the format does make it easier for the lazy and sloppy to achieve passable results).

Whether or not Kodak's planned revival of Super 8 leads to wider embrace of the format, or whether it remains largely marketing hype, it has certainly sparked some strong interest and contributed to the ongoing discussion about the relative merits of film and digital. The following statement from Steven Spielberg, quoted in Kodak's announcement, sums up my feelings on the subject:

"Paintings done on a computer and paintings done on canvas require an artist to make us feel something. To be the curser or the brush, that is the question and certainly both can produce remarkable results. But doesn't the same hold true for the cinematic arts? Digital or celluloid? Vive la difference! Shouldn't both be made available for an artist to choose?"

The Birds (1963)

Sometimes regarded as Alfred Hitchcock's last true masterpiece, The Birds is a frustrating and at times maddening film, constantly flirting with and skirting around answers and solutions to the unexplained bird attacks that descend upon the Northern California coastal town of Bodega Bay. It is also a brilliant and deceptively complex film for the same reason, with Hitchcock playing on the human need to make sense of horrible things in order to understand how they happened and to assuage our fears in the process. In The Birds, he robs of us that relief, presenting a horror for which there is no explanation -- it just is, and that is the most frightening thing of all. By making that horror a natural one -- in this case, the birds with which we associate peace and harmony -- Hitchcock also reminds us of man's utter helplessness in the face of nature, should nature ever decide to turn on him.

In no other Hitchcock film is there such a constant feeling of dread lurking throughout. Take the opening scene, in which society girl Tippi Hedren and lawyer Rod Taylor "meet cute" in a bird shop. There is a moment when one of the small birds escapes from its cage and flits around the ceiling a bit before being captured and returned. Normally, this little bit of business would be humorous and played for laughs (which it seemingly is here, at first), but there is something about the bird's escape, and the brief pandemonium that it causes while flying about the shop, that creates a feeling of tension and unease in its unpredictability and the way that the bird upsets the order of things. The scene ends, leaving you feeling a bit uneasy, but you can't quite be sure just why.

The best example of what Hitchcock is up to here is the scene in which Tippi Hedren, for no apparent reason, wanders up to a top-floor room of the house, which has just been devastated by a bird attack. She slowly creeps up the dark stairs, flashlight in hand, as Hitchcock pulls out all the tricks in the books to make the audience anticipate something awful about to happen. When she enters the room, she spots a gaping hole in the ceiling, through which a hundred birds immediately come rushing in, mercilessly pecking and attacking her in a way that suggests a rape. Why, we wonder, did she ever go up to the room in the first place? Why do the birds attack? Is it meant to suggest a metaphor for sexual assault? And if so, why? Hitchcock is careful -- methodically so -- to avoid anything that could be construed as an explanation for any of it.

Perhaps the best way to think of The Birds is as a colossal joke on the academics and critics who were beginning to take Hitchcock's work very seriously around this time. It's as if the Master, with characteristically sly humor, offered them a film that seemed to be packed with layers of symbolism to be dissected for its meaning, but which ultimately mean nothing, like a puzzle that cannot be solved.

If so, Hitchcock had the last laugh.

Independent Filmmaking circa 1959

Occasionally on this blog, I like to let readers know about particularly interesting articles, video essays, or other external links that I think will be of interest.

This is an excellent Filmmaker Magazine article from 2013, by Allen Baron, the writer, director and star behind the 1961 independent film noir classic, BLAST OF SILENCE (also one of the best Christmas movies ever made). In the article, Baron talks about the resources that were required to make an independent film around the time he made BLAST OF SILENCE in 1959, and the experience of shooting on location in New York guerrilla style. The article also gives a good sense of the opportunities available to independent filmmakers at the time. As Baron notes, the higher number of independent productions today makes it more difficult for films to be discovered by potential distributors (BLAST OF SILENCE was distributed by Universal and led to a studio contract for Baron), but the advent of digital video has also made it much easier to get your independent film made, and there are more festivals in which to showcase them.

Here is the link to the article. It is a fascinating (and inspiring) read by an absolutely brilliant filmmaker.

Blast of Silence (1961)

Now this is an unconventional Christmas movie!

This low-budget noir stars Allen Baron (who also wrote and directed) as a small-time Cleveland hit man who comes to New York around Christmastime to bump off a mobster, but gets in over his head when he lets slip that he wants this to be his last job. Much of the film consists of shots of the hit man walking the streets of New York, alone with his thoughts (narrated by Lionel Stander). It is ultimately a tragic tale, though never one tainted by cheap sentiment or unearned, misguided calls for sympathy. It is hard-edged, brutal, and terrifyingly honest in many ways.

The locations of NYC play such an integral part in the film, heightening the hit man's sense of loneliness and alienation amid the crowds. Without exaggeration, the location photography here is some of the finest, and certainly most effective, that I have yet seen. A climactic sequence taking place in the Meadowlands of New Jersey is particularly striking for its stark, bleak imagery (clearly filmed during a brutal windstorm) as a backdrop in which the violent final shoot-out takes place. The haunting, lyrical shots of raindrops falling in the water, the reeds blowing in the wind, and the contrast between the marshes and the busy highway visible in the background, achieve a real poetry.

I really have no idea how I never saw this one before, but it's certainly one of those movies that I instantly connected with after just one viewing. This is a special film, to be sure.

Polyester (1981)

John Waters' first mainstream film is a clever if uneven satire of early '80s suburbia, filtered through the style and conventions of '50s melodramas by directors like Douglas Sirk, about much put-upon housewife Francine Fishpaw (Divine) whose life falls apart around her in a series of comically over-the-top circumstances. POLYESTER is very much a mid-point film for the director, coming as it does between his underground features and later, more polished films. Despite its place as Waters' first mainstream effort, it keeps one foot firmly planted in the outrageous, "shock value" sensibilities of his earlier work, and therefore has more in common with his most recent films (especially A DIRTY SHAME) which strike that same balance, rather than the two films that immediately proceeded it (the nostalgic HAIRSPRAY and CRY-BABY).

The satire is greatly aided by the level of production value afforded by the higher budget, with the skillfully-executed lighting and set design doing an excellent job of visually referencing the films that served as Waters' model here. Divine gives a fine performance, taking his usual characterization in a new direction here, and Tab Hunter (an inspired bit of casting) clearly has a lot of fun playing a caricature of his '50s heartthrob persona. The rest of the cast is made up largely of Waters' regular stock company, including Edith Massey and Mink Stole, as well as punk rocker Stiv Bators as a neighborhood delinquent.

Unseen Horrors: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project remains one of the most successful examples of the Val Lewton approach to the horror film: that is, creating scares out of what we don't see. Every time I re-visit the film, I am struck by just how really effective it is in its use of "found footage", a technique that has become utterly overused in the past 15 years, though it is no more fair to blame the unprecedented success of Blair Witch for inspiring such countless cheap knock-offs and imitations than it would be to blame The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the plethora of mindless slasher flicks that followed in its wake. For like that highly influential horror film, The Blair Witch Project was a game-changer to be sure, by tapping into our deepest fears.

The "found footage" approach here allows directors Dan Myrick and Ed Sanchez the freedom to conjure up whole unseen horrors -- the kind that we find ourselves fearing are lurking in the dark. As the three documentary filmmakers panic and lose their way, venturing further and further into the bowels of the forest, they are menaced by unseen sounds and sensations that disorient them and confuse them, until they lose all sense of their surroundings. Even with the passing of several days, time seems to stand still for them in the middle of the woods, as they slowly lose their perception of reality. This descent is captured so viscerally through the increasingly chaotic and disorienting movements of the camera, which manages to create some of the most unsettling and truly terrifying effects when simply pointed into the vast, black void of the nocturnal forest.

The idea of getting "lost in the woods" touches on some of our deepest mythologies and fears about the forest and the potential evil that dwells within in it, a black vastness that can swallow up those who dare to enter. At one point in the film, one of the characters reassures her companions that it is impossible to truly get lost in the woods in America in this day and age, since man has done such a thorough job of de-foresting our natural landscapes. But as they discover, nature is an unstoppable, merciless force. In the end, it is not the Blair Witch that ultimately proves to be their undoing, but rather, their helplessness in the face of the forces of nature.

Book Review: "English Hitchcock" by Charles Barr

With a few exceptions, the films made by Alfred Hitchcock during the early part of his career in England are too often relegated to a footnote in his filmography, or are even misunderstood by people coming to them expecting to see work more clearly recognizable as that of the same director who made films such as North by Northwest and Psycho.

In English Hitchcock (Cameron Books, 2000), film scholar Charles Barr offers the most comprehensive study of this period of Hitchcock's career, which is actually quite varied and interesting for those studying the evolution of the director's work. Barr covers every film, though he does so by grouping certain films together for the purposes of comparison, an approach that helps to clearly demonstrate the relationship between films that at first seem to bear little in common with each other. He pays special attention to Hitchcock's literary influences, as well as his screenwriting collaborators, Eliot Stannard and Charles Bennett.

Barr does an excellent job of tracing Hitchcock's journey in filmmaking from his time as an apprentice in the British film industry and formative directing work, to his professional struggles with studio-assigned projects during the early '30s, and his eventual success with suspense thrillers such as The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps before accepting the call to come to Hollywood. Through his careful analysis, Barr also offers an appreciation of such lesser-known and less-examined titles as The Farmer's Wife and Number Seventeen, which are worth a second look.

English Hitchcock provides a much-needed critical context in which to view this important, if sometimes erratic and seemingly disparate, group of films that Hitchcock directed during his time in England.

Screen Space in the Films of Edison and Lumiere

In formal terms, one of the most striking differences between the films of the Edison Company and the Lumiere brothers is in their approaches to screen space and depth of field. Although films from both companies initially restricted themselves to a single camera set-up, lasting for the entire duration of a roll of film, their approaches to the compositions within the shot could not be more different from each other.

The difference in approach is largely a result of their respective filming conditions: Edison shot his films inside a specially-built studio, dubbed "The Black Maria", which was constructed on a rotating platform with a retractable roof that could be re-positioned at all times for optimal sunlight. The studio was a small, tarpaper-covered affair that allowed just enough room for performers and camera. Characteristic of the Edison company's films was an emphasis on the performer or subject, illuminated by bright sunlight against the black backdrop of this studio. The effect of the sunlight resembles a spotlight being shone on the performer, as in a theatrical setting.



Conversely, the Lumieres shot outdoors, in natural lighting, which likewise gave their films a naturalistic style that differed from Edison's more theatrical arrangements. In the Lumiere films, the subject is often life itself -- the daily routines of workers leaving the factory, for example, or the family feeding their baby. In the latter film, for instance, the fascination for early audiences was as much with the foliage moving about in the breeze in the background, as it was with the subject in the foreground of the shot.

Where the difference is most striking, however, is in the use of depth of field. Edison's films, at least those shot inside the studio, are flat, lacking any sense of the space between foreground and background. By eliminating the background completely and replacing it with a black void, Edison ensured that the focus would be on the performer. The Lumieres, in contrast, not only provided distinctive backgrounds with their own details, but even allowed their subjects to interact with those backgrounds.



Take one of their most famous films, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896). The shot is set up so that the train station is visible on the left of the screen, the platform is on the right, and the track runs roughly down the middle of the shot. The track serves as the linking visual element that brings the subject (the train) from the background into the foreground, and right past the camera as it comes to a stop. The film's first audiences reportedly reacted with panic at the sight of the train rushing toward them -- a testament to the power of the Lumieres' use of the screen space.

Then, there are the little background details that make the film so vital and rich: the crowds milling about on the platform, the conductor running from the background to the foreground to catch up with the slowing train, and the disembarking passengers who exit the train. Throughout the entirety of the shot, there is no unused or dead space within the frame; the Lumieres find all of the details and film the scene so that they are all visible.


Within a couple years of the development of cinema, these techniques would become more commonplace among producers. Edison, for example, made his own "train" film, Black Diamond Express, later in the same year that the Lumieres had made Arrival of a Train. Eventually, the distinctions become blurred as filmmakers learned from and copied each other's techniques, while other approaches became outmoded or discarded entirely. But the fundamental difference between the Edison and Lumiere approaches to composition is exemplified by their respective uses of screen space in their earliest experimental films.

She's Funny That Way (2014)

A deliberately old-fashioned throwback to the heyday of screwball comedies, Peter Bogdanovich's latest film is a heartfelt and charming farce, even if the humor misses more than it hits. The premise involves a prominent theater director (Owen Wilson), in New York to direct his latest play, who spends the night with a Brooklyn call-girl (Imogen Poots) and pays her $30,000 if she promises to quit her job and pursue her dreams instead. It turns out her dreams involve being an actress, and she auditions for the play that Wilson just happens to be directing. Turns out she's great, and the rest of the cast pressure Wilson into giving her the part. Needless to say, this complicates things greatly, especially since the play stars the director's wife (whom the leading man also harbors a long-lasting romantic desire for). This being a farce, the zany cast of characters all intersect at inopportune moments, leading to much comic confusion and mishaps, but of course, all is set right in the end.

Bogdanovich obviously has a real love for the models that he's working from here, and peppers the script (co-written by Louise Stratten) with references to many of Hollywood's great romantic comedies (most notably Lubitsch's Cluny Brown, which provides the film with its running joke about the line "squirrels to the nuts"). He works with a splendid cast here, headed by Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, Jennifer Aniston, Kathryn Hahn, Rhys Ifans, Will Forte, Austin Pendleton, Illeana Douglas, and Cybill Shepherd and Richard Lewis, who are especially funny as the aspiring actress's bickering, working-class parents.

Most of the reviews I have read dwell on the fact that the film is old-fashioned. The comedy is old-fashioned, certainly, though not always in the way Bogdanovich may have intended. It was evidently originally conceived as a vehicle for John Ritter in the 1990s, and feels very much like the kind of mid-budget Indie comedy that might have been made at that time. Still, there's an undeniable charm about it that works, thanks to the sheer fun that the cast seems to be having. There are not really any surprises here, sure, and it is unlikely to be remembered as one of Bogdanovich's better films, but it's an affectionate tribute to the fine comedies from Hollywood's golden age, made by a filmmaker (one of our greatest) who clearly loves those films.

The Social Network (2010) Re-visited

Back in 2007, when I was in film school, I enrolled in a course on the films of David Cronenberg. It was the final course that I needed to complete in order to earn the credits to graduate, and since it was offered in the summer, the long class periods allowed us to immerse ourselves in lengthy discussions about the films. Even after screening nearly all of Cronenberg's filmography (excepting maybe two or three minor works), the film that made the greatest impression on me was his prophetic 1983 science fiction thriller, Videodrome, which certainly gave me much to think about in terms of the film's prescient views of the ways in which humans interact with technology.

A comparison can be made between the ways in which Cronenberg depicts his characters' relationship with television, and the relationship between Internet users and social media sites today. I was especially intrigued by the character of the McLuhan-esque media theorist, who only appears "on television" -- that is, via a televised image. His representation in the form of a video image is accepted as "real" by the flesh-and-blood characters, but when Max Renn tries to meet the professor in person, he learns that he has recently passed away, and "lives on" only through pre-recorded videotapes, which are naturally limited in terms of the experiences and interactions they can provide.

In watching the film, I was struck by the similarities to the depiction of the professor's video representation being accepted as reality, and the digital representations of users on social networking sites like Facebook that come to create an illusion of reality of their own, which are accepted by other users, but are similarly limited in terms of the experiences and relationships it can provide.

Because of this fascination with thinking about these ideas in relation to social media, I have also been interested in thinking about them in relation to The Social Network, the 2010 film -- written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher -- about the creation and rise of the popular social networking site. I had avoided the film when it premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2010, as well as on its theatrical run, perhaps because I was concerned that the critical enthusiasm surrounding it was a misplaced excitement for the website itself, and that the film would turn out to be little more than a ride on the wave of Facebook's growing popularity.

When I finally caught up with the film last December, I was struck by just what a good film it is in many ways, and by just how much it "got right" from the vantage point of 2010, when the site was hardly in its infancy, but when its future seemed a lot less certain in terms of what directions it might take. As a biographical drama, it succeeds in creating a vivid portrayal of the historical moment in which the website appeared, and the factors that contributed to its longevity and success where other similar sites of the period failed.

It seems to me that the trick in writing a film about any social phenomenon is to avoid falling into the trap of becoming instantly dated, of creating something that quickly becomes the target of camp condescension for its laughably inaccurate predictions of the future. If Facebook had gone the way of MySpace or Friendster, say, in the intervening years since the film's release, it would no doubt look very different today.

It is difficult to fathom how incredibly important Facebook has become to the lives of many of its users in those intervening years. And, I think, where the film is most effective is in how neatly it explores the seductive ways in which the site becomes accepted as a substitute for real interaction, through book-ending scenes depicting opposing moments in the life of its creator: from the early popularity-seeking and competitive self-comparisons of the college years, to the wistful reflection on the people with whom connections have been broken over the years, and the (false) hope of re-kindling those connections through digital representations.

Berberian Sound Studio (2013)

An intriguing little thriller about a meek, sheltered English sound engineer who accepts a job working on an especially disturbing Italian horror film, an experience which gradually begins to alter his perception of reality as he loses himself in the work of creating the soundtrack for the film's brutal, violent images.

The plot is a model of economy, conjuring up a real sense of dread and isolation in the claustrophobic little dubbing studio in which most of the action takes place. Unfortunately, after a strong first half, the interesting premise loses direction toward the end, which feels both protracted and rather confused. The fine character actor Toby Jones perfectly embodies the awkward, withdrawn sound man, who finds himself something of a stranger in a strange land, and slowly reveals aspects of his character, including hints of suppressed rage, that are at turns pathetic and sinister. Despite the problems with the ending, director Peter Strickland creates a thoughtful, dark character study made with a real attention to period detail and the genre conventions of the film-within-the-film, which should be especially appealing to fans of Italian giallo cinema.

Scream (1996)

When Wes Craven passed away earlier this year, and as I read several of the tributes to the director and his career, it occurred to me that -- as much as his work had been a major part of the pop cultural landscape during my childhood and teen years -- I had seen surprisingly little of his films. In fact, outside of Last House on the Left, I couldn't swear to it that I had seen any of his films at all (not even the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise).

I was 12 when Scream was released, and although I did not see it then, there were few films at that time that I recall creating more excitement among my peers, who talked endlessly about it. So by the time I finally got around to seeing the film 19 years later, there weren't too many surprises. I was already familiar with the premise (a girl is stalked by a serial killer on the anniversary of her mother's murder), its clever approach to the genre (a post-modern, self-aware take on the slasher film), its much-publicized casting gimmick (Drew Barrymore's character is killed off in the first ten minutes), and of course its now-iconic "ghost face" serial killer character.

Scream is still not the kind of film I typically care for, but Craven is clearly committed to the material and has fun with the self-aware approach to the genre that he had made such an indelible mark on, and it is to his credit that it actually works, rather than just serving as a glossary of the genre's tropes, or name-dropping famous movies or scenes for their own sake, as lesser films might have.

There's something else about this film that I enjoyed immensely, and that was the performance of Matthew Lillard. Whatever happened to him? He emerged as one of the most interesting, offbeat character actors of the 1990s, thanks to his roles in John Waters' Serial Mom, Hackers, and a fine starring turn in the indie black comedy Dead Man's Curve, but I have not seen him in anything since 2004's Without a Paddle (an otherwise forgettable comedy). His performance in Scream was a highlight of the film for me, and reminder of just what a unique and immensely talented actor he is.

A Werewolf Triple Feature

With Halloween right around the corner, I recently had the opportunity to attend a triple feature screening of "Werewolf" movies at the historic Loew's Jersey theater in Jersey City. For any film enthusiast who has not had the pleasure of seeing a movie in this gorgeous 1929 movie palace, you owe it to yourself to check it out if you're ever in the New York City area. Each Halloween, the Loew's puts on a great program of classic horror films (in years past I've seen such favorites as Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein there).

This year's program included a trio of "werewolf" movies that provide a neat evolution of the genre:

Werewolf of London (1935)
Universal's first attempt at creating a "werewolf" franchise as part of its horror cycle, it's clear why this film failed to take off with audiences in the way the studio's earlier efforts had. The single biggest problem is the rather unremarkable performance of stage actor Henry Hull in the title role. Hull lacked the larger-than-life presence and charisma that had made the performances of Lugosi and Karloff instantly iconic. Apparently, Hull objected to makeup man Jack Pierce's proposed makeup design, as he felt it obscured too much of his face, an attitude which exemplifies the problems with Hull's performance here. Additionally, director Stuart Walker was not a visual stylist on the level of Tod Browning or James Whale, and as a result, the film's look is flat and uninspired. Perhaps the best way to describe the film is "forgettable". It's not bad; it just fails to make much of an impact at all.

The Wolfman (1941)
Everything the studio got wrong in Werewolf of London, it got right in The Wolfman, starting with the inspired casting of Lon Chaney Jr. in the title role. He manages to create a great deal of sympathy in his portrayal of a good-natured everyman who becomes tortured by guilt after committing acts of killing that he cannot control. Director George Waggner was a reliable craftsman who made full use of the studio's resources to create the highly evocative atmosphere that the earlier film lacked. Makeup man Jack Pierce was also allowed to use his original makeup design for the Wolfman, which is far more effective than the compromised look he was forced to settle on before. I had forgotten what a really great supporting cast the film has, too, including Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Warren William, Maria Ouspenskaya, and even Bela Lugosi in a brief but memorable appearance, plus the usual array of great character types who populated the world of the Universal horror film. If the Universal horror cycle was beginning to run out of steam by the early '40s, this film proves that the studio was still capable of turning out a really first-rate, genre-defining classic.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)
John Landis remains one of the most critically-neglected American filmmakers of the post-'70s/New Hollywood era. Perhaps that's because he works in highly commercial genres and directs hit crowd-pleasers, such as Animal House and The Blues Brothers, which -- like the work of his contemporary Steven Spielberg -- can be easy to take for granted. But as a filmmaker, he has a distinct and unique sensibility that provides him with the quite rare gift of being able to make a film that spans the genres of comedy and horror without ever compromising either the laughs or the scares (most recently evidenced by his very funny, and grossly underrated, Burke and Hare). An American Werewolf in London is perhaps his best film, filled with self-aware irony and humor while simultaneously creating a modern "werewolf" classic for a new generation.

The Martian (2015)

Note: As this is a current release still in theaters, I am issuing a spoiler warning with this review as it deals with key plot points of the story.

I'm not normally a fan of science fiction, and tend to prefer those films in the genre that deal with larger existential questions about our place in the universe or the attraction of exploration and wondering "what's out there?", such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Contact, along with a few others. When I first learned the premise of The Martian -- based on a hit novel by Andy Weir, which I have not yet read -- about a botanist (played by Matt Damon) stranded on Mars and his ingenious efforts to survive until a rescue mission can arrive, I had hoped that the film would follow in the vein of the aforementioned films in tackling the larger existential themes with which the situation would seem to be ripe.

Because of that, I was mildly disappointed with The Martian upon initial viewing, but after giving it more thought, I realized that I was unfair in my reaction, which amounted to expecting the film to be something it is not. What it is is an solid adventure film, expertly directed with characteristic skill and polish by Ridley Scott, whose earlier Alien and Blade Runner remain two of the most highly influential entries in the genre of the past half century. Compared to those two films, The Martian is decidedly lighter fare. There's none of the dark, brooding tone of Blade Runner, or the horror elements of Alien. Indeed, there's little suspense at all for that matter, as there's never any real doubt that the astronaut will make it safely back to Earth.

A large part of the appeal seems to be the sheer likability of Damon's unflappable astronaut, whose reaction to realizing that he has been abandoned on Mars and left for dead by his crewmates is to make sarcastic comments into his computer's video diary log, more like a smarmy YouTube vlogger rather than a man who has just found himself utterly alone on a foreign planet. To be sure, the incessant dialogue lacks poetry and avoids dealing with the existential implications of the situation, but Damon is undeniably likable in the role, and portrays just the kind of hero the script calls for -- an everyman who also happens to possess nearly superhuman resourcefulness and intelligence.

Perhaps more frustrating are the long stretches of screen time spent back on Earth, where the team at NASA is running a race against the clock to bring the astronaut home before he runs out of food. These scenes are all perfectly well-handled, helped by such fine performers as Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiorfor and Kristen Wiig, but they can't help feeling a little dull compared to the scenes detailing Damon's ingenious methods of survival, which seem rushed and glossed over in comparison.

Similarly, the scenes on board the spaceship, with Damon's loyal crewmates deciding to take matters into their own hands to attempt a risky rescue procedure, are weakened by being a little too pat in their handling of the complexities between the characters' responsibilities to their families and their original mission, and their sense of duty toward a fellow astronaut. Rather than delving deeper into these conflicts, Scott pads the rescue scenes out with the expected eleventh-hour complications and repeated shots of large crowds across the world, gathered in recognizable locations and watching with bated breath as the rescue mission plays out live on TV.

But to harp on these weaknesses is to ignore where the film really succeeds, which is on the strength of its brash, rich images (especially stunning when seen in the 3-D presentation), its vivid evocation of Mars, and above all, in telling a splendid, escapist adventure story about an intrepid individual trapped in a most unusual situation, and the people dedicated to bringing him home safely.

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Spielberg is in top form with this Cold War-era political drama about a Brooklyn attorney (Tom Hanks) who is recruited by the CIA to negotiate the return of an imprisoned Soviet spy (Mark Rylance) in exchange for a captured American pilot. The plot itself is fairly predictable and familiar, which works against the dramatic potential of key scenes, but Spielberg's skillful handling of the material is typically assured, involved, and exceptionally well-paced, even if the writing (by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers) and performances are a bit too mannered at times. There really aren't any surprises here, but it's always worth seeing Spielberg at the top of his game.

1941 (1979)

A rare comic effort from Steven Spielberg, 1941 is also one of the director's rare misfires. A big, loud spectacle that recalls an earlier generation of comedy epics like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Great Race, 1941 unevenly combines the broad physical gags of those films with the equally broad satire of wartime paranoia in films such as The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! The premise involves a Japanese sub that surfaces off the coast of California shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, inspiring mass hysteria among the citizens.

The ensemble cast includes such names as Tim Matheson and Nancy Allen as the nominal romantic leads whose amorous escapades in a runaway airplane over Los Angeles precipitate a hysterical reaction from the military and townspeople, John Belushi as crazed fighter pilot Wild Bill Kelso, Dan Aykroyd as no-nonsense Sgt. Frank Tree, Ned Beatty as a meek family man whose backyard is commandeered as the site of anti-aircraft gun, Lorraine Gary as his long-suffering wife, Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese sub commander, Christopher Lee as the German officer, Murray Hamilton and Eddie Deezen as a couple of goofy civilians put on guard duty atop a Ferris wheel, Slim Pickens as the unsuspecting hick who discovers the Japanese sub, and in one of the film's most inspired bits of casting, Robert Stack as Major General Stilwell, who would rather take care of more important business like watching Disney's Dumbo than deal with distractions such as the pending invasion of Los Angeles and riots in the streets. As with his performance in the following year's Airplane!, Stack's stoical, straight man characterization is the perfect complement to the zany goings-on around him.

Unfortunately, none of the performers are ever really on-screen long enough, or given enough to do individually, to make much of an impression. Because of the structure of the script -- by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (who also wrote the story along with John Milius) -- the zany situations piled on top of one another don't add up to much of anything, since the escalating comic chaos is never given much of a chance to build naturally. Instead, it's one forced, manic set-piece after another, with gratuitous slapstick violence that eventually just begins to drag the pace down and feel repetitive. The plane chase scenes through LA are undoubtedly impressively-staged, and are a remarkable achievement for their scale and execution. But as comedy, it quickly begins to feel like overkill.

Spielberg's direction feels unsure and even uncomfortable working with the broad comedy material, which was certainly never his forte in any case. It's difficult to pinpoint just where his direction goes wrong here, but perhaps it is simply too heavy-handed, which works against the lightning-paced cartoon antics called for by the script and even dilutes the effectiveness of the satire due to the total lack of subtlety. John Landis, or the team of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker, would have been ideal choices for this material, since they could have perhaps reigned in some of the more extravagant excesses that tend to swamp the comedy (even the non-stop parade of sight gags in Airplane! are handled in such a way that the viewer is rewarded for paying attention to the kinds of small jokes which are virtually non-existent here).

As one of our greatest filmmakers, even a lesser Spielberg effort like 1941 is still of interest, if only for an example of the director working outside his comfort zone, exploring new material and trying something different. Even if the result is ultimately a failure, it is an interesting failure.

Sabotage (1936)

Sabotage was the first of Hitchcock's British films that I had the opportunity to see, though it was not a film that I especially sought out for itself. Instead, I came across it rather by chance. In the days of VHS, the local Best Buy had a shelf consisting of nothing but the "Hollywood Classics" tapes from Madacy home video. Madacy was notorious as perhaps the worst of the bargain-basement video dealers at that time, with cassettes mastered from sub-par elements in the low-quality EP speed. Their selection of public domain titles littered the shelves at numerous video stores I frequented.

Still, as a budding cinephile on a tight budget, their affordable price tag (about $5 a pop, if I recall) made them an attractive option, especially for films that were not out in any other edition, and I'd frequently check out their selection on trips to Best Buy. Scouring the shelf on one such trip, I came across Sabotage, which caught my attention because it was a Hitchcock film, and I was making it a point to see all the Hitchcock films I could find in order to check them off my list. I knew little about Sabotage, other than that it was one of his early, British films, a period of his career with which I was woefully inexperienced. Watching the film in that low-quality, blurry tape, I was nonetheless gripped by the suspenseful plot, and impressed by the imaginative techniques (especially in the editing) that appealed to me as an aspiring filmmaker.

Later, as I read more critical appreciations of Hitchcock's body of work, I was surprised to learn that Sabotage had its detractors, including Hitchcock himself, who had misgivings about his decision to include what would become the film's most memorable and suspenseful scene, involving a young boy who unknowingly carries a bomb onto a London bus and is blown to bits. That particular scene is indeed deeply disturbing, all the more so as it is followed immediately by a shot of other characters laughing at something unrelated, which still cannot help but leave a sour taste, as if the whole incident is being treated as a sick joke (Hitchcock used a similar device to greater effect in The 39 Steps). But it is also so expertly handled, such a tour-de-force of editing and structure, that I couldn't help but marvel at the sheer brilliance of its execution. I studied Hitchcock's shot selection and editing, watching the scene multiple times.

It is certainly one of Hitchcock's darkest films, both in terms of its subject matter but also in terms of its shadowy, claustrophobic atmosphere, and a sense of despair hangs over the characters, who seem trapped in a humdrum existence that borders on the oppressive. Mrs. Verloc's marriage to the much older, emotionally distant Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka) isn't exactly an unhappy one, though it's certainly not conventionally happy, either. It seems to be more a case of mutual dependence. Mrs. Verloc also takes care of her awkward, gangly adolescent brother (Desmond Tester), with whom she moved from America to England some years before, ostensibly to look for better employment opportunities, but hinting at something more complicated.

As the film opens, London is in the midst of a blackout, the result of an act of sabotage perpetrated by Mr. Verloc. It is unclear whether Mrs. Verloc is genuinely oblivious to her husband's involvement in the blackout, or whether she might be in denial about it, but in any case, Mr. Verloc the attention of a Scotland Yard detective (John Loder), who uses Mrs. Verloc as a conduit to investigate her husband's activities. In the end, Mrs. Verloc loses her brother, and is betrayed, or at least deceived, by both her husband and by the young detective (though the latter does stand by her and protect her in the film's final moments).

While it is an uncharacteristically grim film from Hitchcock, the mood never feels artificially imposed, and it makes for an interesting contrast with the director's usual approach. There is only one scene that employs Hitchcock's playfully morbid sense of humor: after learning of her brother's demise, Mrs. Verloc, in a state of shock, wanders into the cinema, where a Disney cartoon ("Who Killed Cock Robin?") is playing on the screen, and whose plot offers an ironic commentary on the events of the film. Hitchcock excels in his juxtaposition of the familiar with the sinister.

The Night Has Eyes (1942)

Sometimes you can stumble upon a movie in the most unlikely of circumstances. I came across this one for the first time about 20 years ago, when I found a VHS copy from Goodtimes Home Video at a tent sale in a shopping mall parking lot in Pennsylvania. It sounded interesting enough from the description on the box cover copy, but I decided not to buy it (probably due to a lack of allowance money -- I was only 12 or 13!) and came away empty handed.

The description of the film stuck in my mind, and over the years I would try to find a copy, but to no avail. Recently, however, thanks to the magic of the Internet, I finally had the opportunity to see it for the first time, and was pleasantly surprised by what a really entertaining, tightly-constructed little thriller it is. The premise involves a couple of young schoolteachers on vacation in the Yorkshire Moors, where one of their colleagues had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances. When they become stranded on the moor on a dark and stormy night, the women seek shelter in an old house belonging to a brilliant but troubled pianist (James Mason), with whom one of the women falls instantly, madly in love. But when it becomes apparent that Mason is harboring dark secrets from his past, and is given to violent episodes, the two women begin to fear that they are in danger, especially when they learn that their colleague had also been staying in the house at the time of her disappearance.

Directed by Leslie Arliss, from a script by Arliss and John Argyle adapted from a novel by Alan Kennington, with Gunther Krampf's stylish, high-contrast cinematography giving it just the right look, and a colorful supporting cast including Joyce Howard, Tucker McGuire, Mary Clare, Wilfrid Lawson and John Fernald, this is a superb wartime British thriller, oozing mystery and atmosphere, and perfect viewing for a cold, gray, rainy night.

The Sugarland Express (1974)

This early Spielberg film is a rollicking, fast-paced road picture about a Texas couple who kidnap a policeman and force him to drive them across the state to reunite with their child, who has been taken out of their custody by the state. Goldie Hawn and William Atherton make the most of their rather one-dimensional characters, though at times it seems as though they are appearing in two different movies (with Hawn too frequently playing her part in broad caricature, while Atherton seems to be trying to get at something darker and more intense with his performance). Michael Sacks is effective enough if rather bland as the young officer forced to drive the pair across the state against his will, though his transformation at the end, sympathizing with the outlaws and betraying his duties to the law by alerting his abductors to a potential police ambush, is handled too abruptly and without any real explanation as to why he (or the audience) should care so much about these two. Ben Johnson gives the film's strongest performance, as the weary old lawman leading the difficult pursuit to bring the couple to justice.

Overall, it's a skillfully-made debut theatrical feature from Spielberg, who proves himself especially effective in his handling of the large-scale, high-speed car chases (recalling his celebrated work on DUEL a few years earlier), though the pacing frequently lags between these set pieces, bogged down by heavy-handed commentary on gun violence, police corruption, and the nature of celebrity in America. It's not that these points aren't relevant to the events in the film, but Spielberg's handling of them is too self-conscious and telegraphed to be really effective. Coming between his brilliant early work on DUEL, and his first full-fledged masterpiece, JAWS, the following year, THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS perhaps can't help but feel like a minor effort in Spielberg's filmography.