Review: Da 5 Bloods — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Da 5 Bloods
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Rating: R
Run Time: 2 hours 34 minutes
Stars: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Chadwick Boseman
Writers: Danny Bilson, Paul De Meo, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee
Director: Spike Lee
Among the most thoughtful, riveting war movies of any year, Spike Lee’s searing story of four Black Vietnam War vets who return to Southeast Asia to clean up some unfinished business made a brief splash when it arrived on Netflix in June, but deserves a second look now that the belated awards season is here.
We meet the men in a plush hotel lobby in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, a garish real-life parody of communist/corporate excess. Way back in the days when this place was known as Saigon, the four came to call themselves Da 5 Bloods — a number that at the time included their platoon officer, a Malcolm X-quoting intellectual nicknamed Stormin’ Norman. He was killed in battle, and the grieving survivors were forced to leave him behind, buried in the mountains.
Now, decades later, the Bloods have told friends and neighbors they’re on a mission to find Norman’s remains and return them to his family, but that’s exactly half the story: They’re also planning to dig up a literal treasure chest of gold bullion — originally intended as payment from the U.S. government to Vietnamese collaborators — that they’d found on a crashed transport plane. The Bloods buried that, too, not far from Norman’s hastily excavated grave.
It’s a crackerjack set-up, just the sort of plot you’d expect as a vehicle for Bruce Willis. And, indeed, this film’s script started out as a standard-issue Hollywood action movie. Miraculously, it ended up in the hands of Lee, one of our most inventive and resourceful filmmakers, who took the bare bones of a caper film and layered upon it issues ranging from America’s historic willingness to send Black soldiers to defend freedoms they do not themselves enjoy to survivor’s guilt to the continuing threat of buried landmines in former war zones.
And all the while, while deftly shifting his spotlight among the various issues he wants us to consider, Lee never misses a beat in relating a pulse-pounding narrative of adventure, double-dealing, comradeship and, at times, horrific, out-of-nowhere violence (a warning regarding that: Besides copious amounts of movie blood and carnage, Lee sometimes lingers on grisly photos of actual wartime atrocities involving men, women, and children).
To be sure, Lee’s monumental task is made easier by his utterly committed ensemble. Delroy Lindo (Get Shorty), Clarke Peters (The Wire), Norm Lewis (Scandal) and Isiah Whitlock Jr. (BlacKkKlansman) are the Bloods, men who have achieved varying levels of success in their lives, but all of whom remain scarred by their experiences in ‘Nam. They tussle like kids and fight like brothers, at times seething with resentment toward society — and sometimes each other.
As Paul, the vet with the deepest psychic wounds, Lindo does the heaviest lifting. Alternately laughing, snarling and sobbing, Lindo embodies a man paralyzed by guilt, roiling with suspicion, broken by racism, and tortured by a deeply troubled relationship with his son David (Jonathan Majors), who has unexpectedly tagged along for the expedition to Vietnam’s interior. Indeed, Lee has in some ways overburdened the character of Paul, asking him to swing from one grand emotion to another, leaving us to wonder where the core of his true personality lies. Lindo, however, never lets us lose sight of Paul’s essential, pitiful humanity.
And then there’s the man whose remains the Bloods have traveled all this way to retrieve. Stormin’ Norman is played in flashbacks by Chadwick Boseman, and as powerful as his performance was when Da 5 Bloods was released in June, it now becomes positively mesmerizing following his August death from colon cancer. He plays Norman as a complex man of war who nevertheless values life above all else; who preaches a gospel of love even while wielding a machine gun, and without a single note of irony. Boseman’s final scene, a mystical passage in which one of the Bloods envisions Norman visiting him with a message of forgiveness, was originally merely the emotional high point of the film; now it seems almost supernaturally inspired.
Still, the most permeating presence in Da 5 Bloods is Spike Lee, perhaps the most deliberate director of his generation. Not a minute of the film’s 2-1/2-hour run time goes by without his fingerprint appearing someplace. I most often get annoyed at directors who keep reminding me they’re behind the camera (don’t get me started on Jean-Luc Godard), but Lee nearly always manages to lift his hand just before it becomes too heavy. For his Vietnam war flashbacks, Lee does not insert younger actors to play earlier versions of his main characters — he enlists his 60-something stars to plunge into battle, an ingenious reminder that today’s Vietnam vets are every bit the men they were 50 years ago. He shifts the size of the image — from wide screen for the present day to a narrower, more constrained look for wartime scenes — and accompanies the battles with the kind of thumping, faux-heroic music you’d expect from a Lee Marvin war epic. Lee also plays games with the film’s chronology: It’s clearly set in the present day, or at least within the past five years, as one of the Bloods proudly sports a Make America Great Again ball cap. Yet to chronicle the voyage, one Blood uses an old school pistol grip videotape camera, and another snaps pictures on 35 mm film. In fact, even while the men walk the strobing streets of downtown Ho Chi Minh City, there’s not a single smart phone—or even flip phone—in sight. What’s more, many of the characters who seem to have been alive during the war are clearly way too young. From just about any other director, such elements would find their way into the “oops” column, but Lee is too meticulous for that.
Whatever Lee’s intention, the overall effect here is to create a universe of fluidity. None of us live our lives solely in the present, Lee seems to be saying; the sum of our experiences contribute to our whole. For Lee, of course, that message extends far beyond the personal: He sees our nation’s history, particularly its racial one, in precisely the same way. In Da 5 Bloods — and especially in his final benediction — Lee reminds us that no society’s history can be discerned from a snapshot. You’ve also got to account for every moment of time up until the click of the shutter.
Featured image: Scene from Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Review: Kindred — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Kindred
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
Starring: Tamara Lawrance, Fiona Shaw, Jack Lowden, Edward Holcroft
Writers: Joe Marcantonio, Jason McColgan
Director: Joe Marcantonio
In Theaters and Streaming
A snappy British thriller that lives in the same twisted neighborhood as Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Kindred neither shies away from the social issues that drive its plot — nor forgets for one instant to keep the creepy chills coming with exhausting fervor.
When we meet young Charlotte and Ben (Tamara Lawrance and Edward Holcroft), the handsome, obviously madly-in-love couple are on their way to visit the sprawling, if crumbling, country estate of Ben’s mother Margaret (Fiona Shaw). Ben is white, Charlotte is black, and, yes, it is worth noting that this is almost exactly the same set-up Peele constructed for Get Out.
Unlike the disturbingly friendly parents of the former film, however, Ben’s mom is decidedly frosty and domineering — and Ben’s stepbrother Thomas (Jack Lowden), while friendly enough, seems weirdly detached from reality. What’s worse, the pair have come to tell Mother they are moving to Australia. She takes the news as badly as you’d expect — and doubly so when the couple inform her they are also expecting a baby. A series of awful events leads to Charlotte becoming a virtual prisoner in Margaret’s manse, where all involved await the birth of her baby with varying displays of growing anticipation and mounting horror.
The trouble with reviewing a film like Kindred is that the reader must take a lot of what the critic has to say on faith: Too much plot description will inevitably ruin the surprises first-time director/cowriter Joe Marcantonio has in store. Indeed, for my money the official description of the story gives away entirely too much detail, so I won’t even go that far here.
Kindred’s performances, however, are too splendid to ignore. The cast is composed almost entirely of acclaimed British stage actors — not always a good thing, as stage and screen acting are virtually separate arts. In this case, director Marcantonio masterfully ushers them between the subtleties of movie acting and the histrionics of stagecraft, putting both skill sets to effective use. As Charlotte, Lawrance artfully evokes the growing dread of a woman who must overcome loss and confusion to assert herself against a dementedly imperious host. Lowden’s Thomas is a clearly damaged soul, cowed by his mother and attracted to Charlotte’s obvious intelligence and humanity.
The film’s towering performance, though, comes from Shaw, one of Britain’s most beloved actors, known to most filmgoers as Harry Potter’s fussy Aunt Petunia but also fondly remembered as the doctor who rescued Daniel Day-Lewis from his crippled prison in My Left Foot. Marcantonio knows he’s got a good thing in Shaw, and he gives her enough screen time to breathe life into Margaret — most notably in one extraordinary scene, a single-shot masterpiece, in which the woman relates her long-ago transition from a distant, disinterested mother into an obsessively attentive one. Shaw’s monologue, a breathless example of the actor’s art, hauntingly embodies a woman teetering on the precipice between the maternal and the monstrous.
Kindred is rich in such moments; interludes that not only give the audience a moment to catch its breath but also endow the characters, even the perceived villains, with uncommon humanity. For one extended scene, Marcantonio has Charlotte and Thomas sit down at a piano together to engage in a four-handed rendition of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune.” The film could have survived without the passage, but it adds layers of nuance to the pair’s complicated (to say the least) relationship and has, on its own merits, a distinct visual and aural beauty.
The lush look of Kindred provides a fitting canvas for the film’s shadowy narrative. Cinematographer Carlos Catalán uses the visual language of supernatural cinema to evoke the very real horrors of an anguished mind, and Margaret’s classic scary old house — a once-grand estate now creaking with peeling paint and dusty paintings — is as much an emotional prison as a physical one.
But like Jordan Peele in Get Out, Marcantonio has more than the fictional traumas of his characters in mind. Although Charlotte’s race is never mentioned, she is quite emphatically the only character in the film of African descent. At every turn, she is marginalized and controlled by others. Even her beloved Ben sees nothing wrong with having been informed of Charlotte’s pregnancy by his mother, who’s gotten the word through back channels from Charlotte’s doctor — played to truly disturbing effect Anton Lesser (Wolf Hall) as a bow-tied cross between Dr. Spock and Dr. Jekyll.
Is Charlotte the victim of racism? Sexism? Or is she truly in need of the kind of paternalistic dominance being heaped on her by everyone in her orbit? Like all good filmmakers, Marcantonio leaves the conclusions up to us. It’s his job to present us with the clues, which he does with admirable style and intelligence.
Featured image: Fiona Shaw, Tamara Lawrance and Jack Lowden in Kindred (Courtesy of IFC Midnight)
25 James Bond Films, Ranked
Editor’s note: This article was updated in November 2021 to include the latest Bond movie, No Time to Die.
No Time to Die, the 25th 007 film, was set to open this month, after two pandemic-induced delays. Well, those plans went out the window, again because of COVID-19, and we won’t see the new adventures of Bond, James Bond, until April 2021. But I thought fans of the movies would still like to celebrate Bond this week — especially in light of the death of the greatest Bond, Sean Connery — so I’ve ranked all of the films from worst to best (not including the original Casino Royale from 1967 or 1983’s Never Say Never Again because they’re not part of the official Bond canon).
25. Spectre (2015)
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To be honest, there are worse Bond movies, quality-wise (like the next four on this list), but I give Spectre the nod for worst because it’s illogical, silly, and frustrating, with a needless plot involving arch-nemesis Blofeld that makes no sense (and practically ruins the other Daniel Craig-era Bond films). He’s Bond’s…foster brother? And they give him an alias just because it will trick viewers but in reality means nothing to Bond or anyone else in the film? Sigh.
I don’t know why the most recent Bond movies feel the need to give Bond either an origin story or an “I quit” story almost every time but it’s getting ridiculous. It also has a boring car chase and one of the worst theme songs too.
(They even screw up the film’s title. It should be SPECTRE.)
24. A View to a Kill (1985)
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At this point, Roger Moore could barely walk let alone run or fight bad guys. It was his final Bond film. Christopher Walken is a great villain though. Too bad the movie that surrounds him is one of the worst.
23. Moonraker (1979)
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Because of the success of movies like Star Wars, Bond had to travel to outer space, which tells you all you need to know about Moonraker. It has a good opening scene though, where Bond is pushed out of a plane without a parachute.
22. Live and Let Die (1973)
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Moore’s first 007 outing just isn’t much fun, with a dreary plot involving drugs and voodoo. The best thing about it is the theme song by Paul McCartney and Wings.
21. Die Another Day (2002)
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Pierce Brosnan’s final Bond movie has a great opening sequence, but it also has Madonna as a fencing instructor, CGI action scenes that look more like a video game, and a freakin’ invisible car.
20. The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
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Christopher Lee could have been the greatest Bond villain of all-time; too bad the rest of the movie is rather lame. The best thing about it is a spectacular car stunt I still don’t know how they pulled off.
19. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
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This has one of my favorite opening scenes — Bond has to steal a plane armed with nuclear bombs — but also one of the worst endings. In between there’s an invigorating action scene with a remote-controlled car in a parking garage, but that’s about it. I don’t believe for one second that Teri Hatcher was the love of Bond’s life.
The story goes that the title was supposed to be Tomorrow Never Lies but the fax with the title was smudged and they misread it. It certainly would have made more sense.
18. The World is Not Enough (1999)
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The Brosnan entries all have great opening scenes but then they get worse and worse as the movie goes along. Why is that?
17: The Living Daylights (1987)
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Timothy Dalton’s first outing (of only two) isn’t bad, it’s just a little “meh,” even if he is a solid choice after the Moore years. Great soundtrack.
16. Octopussy (1983)
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There are a couple of good action sequences, and Louis Jourdan is a fun villain, but you should also be aware that during the film, Bond dresses as a clown and swings on a vine like Tarzan.
15. No Time to Die (2021)
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The first hour or so of Daniel Craig’s last 007 film is great. The last hour or so is a bit of a drag, like a by-the-numbers video game where a player goes around shooting people in doorways and blowing up things. The movie is too long, even if it is stylishly directed, gorgeous to look at, and has some terrific individual scenes (Ana de Armas completely steals the movie and I’d watch a spinoff franchise featuring her character). This could have been one of the great Bond films, but the movie wants to be EPIC and IMPORTANT and provide closure, and that leads to one of the stupidest endings in the history of pop culture (I won’t spoil it here), so ultimately it doesn’t matter how well-made it is.
14. Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
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Connery quit the franchise after You Only Live Twice but was convinced to come back when George Lazenby didn’t return for a second film. And it’s…not bad! Not great, but not bad!
13. Quantum of Solace (2008)
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This didn’t get great reviews — maybe people were expecting too much after Casino Royale — but I think it’s the Bond movie that will be looked upon more and more kindly as the years go by, even if the theme song by Jack White and Alicia Keys is horrendous.
12. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
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This has a nice balance of the serious and the silly, but I feel it has always been a bit overrated.
11. For Your Eyes Only (1981)
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Many consider this Moore’s best, because it takes things a little more seriously after all of the goofiness of the ’70’s films. Except for a truly bizarre opening where Bond drops Blofeld down a smokestack, the villain pleading for his life by promising to buy Bond a delicatessen, “in stainless steel!”
10. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
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Many people consider this the best 007 film. It’s not, but it’s quite good, and Lazenby, a model plucked out of nowhere for the role, is underrated. This is the one where Bond gets married.
Trivia: Lazenby was once married to tennis player/commentator Pam Shriver.
9. Thunderball (1965)
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This film is a bit overlong — and there are probably too many underwater scenes — but it’s undeniably fun.
8. You Only Live Twice (1967)
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When you think of big, epic Bond adventures, this is the movie you’re thinking of, with its outrageous villain’s-lair-hidden-in-a-volcano set.
7. Dr. No (1962)
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The first 007 big-screen adventure, more low-key and with no opening theme song but a great introduction to the character and his world. Oh, and it has this iconic scene.
6. From Russia with Love (1963)
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This is also often cited as the best Bond movie, and it’s not a bad choice. It’s a serious spy story with just enough crazy elements (Rosa Klebb and her poison-tipped shoes) to make it classic fun. It includes the first appearance of Blofeld (called Number 1 here) and a great scene on a train where Bond fights henchman Robert Shaw.
5. License to Kill (1989)
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The most underrated 007 film. Some people think it’s too action-oriented (?), too gritty (!), too ’80’s. Those people are nuts. It’s actually one of the more satisfying entries in the series, as Bond infiltrates a drug cartel to avenge the murder of a friend’s wife.
4. Goldeneye (1995)
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Brosnan’s first Bond film is his best Bond film, a stylish and fun adventure that feels both ’60’s-ish and ’90’s-ish, a throwback to the Connery era and a new vision for the future. I’ve seen many 007 films in the theater, but this is still the only one where the audience actually applauded after a scene (where Bond flies off the cliff and takes control of a plane).
By the way, this movie inspired one of the greatest video games of all-time.
3. Casino Royale (2006)
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Daniel Craig’s first Bond film has not one but two great opening scenes, a black-and-white meeting with another agent that shows how Bond got his 007 status, and a terrific scene where Bond chases a rather athletic bad guy through a construction area. This is a return that makes you forget all about Brosnan’s last film.
2. Skyfall (2012)
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I didn’t think the makers of the Bond movies could top Craig’s first film, but they did it with Skyfall. It’s really a tie between the two. If they had decided to end the Bond series for some reason, this would have made for a great send-off. It introduces Moneypenny and Q, gives Bond a “comeback” story and emotional scenes with Judi Dench, and is exquisitely shot and directed.
1. Goldfinger (1964)
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This is number one on most lists for a reason, because it really sets up all of the Bond elements for the rest of the series: the big theme song, the evil villain with the master plan, the henchman Bond has to fight, the sexy girl with the crazy name (Pussy Galore!). A film so good you don’t care how ridiculous it is (I’ve seen it 20 times and I still don’t get why Goldfinger kills the mob guys) or how many mistakes there are.
Featured image: RichartPhotos / Shutterstock
Sean Connery Never Forgot His Humble Beginnings
“I suppose more than anything else,” Sean Connery said in 1964, “I’d like to be an old man with a good face.” No one could deny that his wish came true, particularly after he became the oldest recipient of People’s Sexiest Man Alive honor in 1989 at 59 years old.
Connery passed away in his sleep over the weekend at 90 years old, leaving behind a legacy of popular film roles like his principal portrayal of James Bond.
Though he was widely regarded to have the charm of Cary Grant and the toughness of Marlon Brando, Connery’s foray into show business was a sort of happy accident. He was born into a poor Scottish family and spent his early working years as a truck driver, a cement mixer, and even a coffin polisher. When he landed a role in a touring South Pacific company in London in 1953, he found a passion for performance.
Connery’s debut as Agent 007 in 1962’s Dr. No launched the lucrative spy movie franchise that continues to this day. He became an overnight star, known for bringing tall, dark, handsome life to Ian Fleming’s British agent. Pete Hamill profiled the newly-famous Connery in this magazine in 1964, making much of the Scotsman’s ability to throw his weight around Hollywood. Connery declined interviews, carefully negotiated his contracts, and even demanded to read a Hitchcock script (Marnie) before agreeing to take part. “Compared to the fatuous James Bond, Connery comes off as an admirable, self-effacing, modest, 100-percent, levelheaded good guy,” Hamill wrote.
After Bond, Connery’s career in action and adventure movies chugged along, with roles in Murder on the Orient Express, A Bridge Too Far, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He won an Oscar in 1988 for playing Jim Malone in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. Though his career seemed to be predicated on sex appeal, Connery found lasting success through his willingness to play along as a character actor.
In 2000, Connery was finally knighted by Queen Elizabeth II after being denied the honor for several years, possibly because of his support for Scottish independence.
Even the most diehard Bond fans might have missed Connery’s right-arm tattoos, barely noticeable in his shirtless scenes. He received them during his service in the Royal Navy, and they signified a firm commitment to his humble roots: “Scotland Forever” and “Mum and Dad.”
Featured image: pv brothers / Shutterstock
Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott: Hail to the Movie Chiefs
See all Movies for the Rest of Us.
Featured image: Joseph Henabery in The Birth of a Nation
Review: Radium Girls — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Radium Girls
⭐⭐⭐
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes
Stars: Joey King, Abby Quinn
Writers: Ginny Mohler, Brittany Shaw
Directors: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Ginny Mohler
In Theaters and on Streaming Services
Think they treat you badly at work? Consider the subjects of Radium Girls, an infuriating and engrossing drama based on the true story of 1920s factory women who endured deadly radiation poisoning — contracted from the dabs of fluorescent paint they applied to watch faces day after day, year after year.
In history, the U.S. Radium Company employed hundreds of young women at its East Orange, NJ, plant, paying top wages for their painstaking hours tracing luminous radium paint onto the faces of watches and airplane instruments. To keep the paintbrush tips pointy, they were told to lick the brush between each number — the worst possible advice, as the highly radioactive paint was slowly absorbed into their bones and teeth.
“If you swallow any radium, it will make your cheeks rosy,” they were told.
To make matters worse, as one young woman after another fell to jaw cancer, the company doctor assigned them all with the same fictional diagnosis: untreatable syphilis. Of course, rather than face public humiliation, nearly all of them went to their graves quietly, thinking they’d had no one to blame but themselves.
All those lowlights are grimly enumerated here by co-directors Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler (Mohler also co-wrote the script with Brittany Shaw). The name of the offending company is changed to American Radium and the real-life drama’s primary characters are consolidated into two fictional sisters, Bessie and Josephine — heartbreakingly portrayed, respectively, by Joey King (Hulu’s The Act) and Abby Quinn (Little Women). Tentatively asserting their rights in a world where women have been voting for barely a decade, the sisters lean on each other for moral — and at times physical — support. The actresses bring just the right blend of defiance and vulnerability to the roles (although the illusion of living in a bygone era is sometimes thwarted by their decidedly Millennial speech patterns, particularly when they drop “t’s” from words like “but” and “important”).
If you want the full story, by all means read Kate Moore’s exhaustive 506-page account, Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, which teems with colorful, tragic characters and despicable corporate shills. The film, however, is an excellent and soul-stirring primer; a corporate horror story made all the more terrifying because it’s true. Spared the effects of radiation because she instinctively feels licking those brushes isn’t a good idea — and facing constant ridicule at work for that reason — Bessie watches with growing concern as Josephine’s teeth loosen and fall out. Her cheeks seem to suffer from constant sunburn, despite the fact that she’s inside all day. And when the oily company doctor (Neal Huff) arrives at the women’s home late one night with his scandalous diagnosis, they know for sure something is very wrong — Josephine’s never even had a boyfriend.
Plucky in that uniquely cinematic sense, the women get themselves a lawyer and try to enlist their co-workers to join them in a lawsuit against the company. But the money is too good and the work environment is relatively pleasant, so few want anything to do with the suit. In fact, many are openly hostile to the idea.
Eventually Radium Girls winds its way to a climactic courtroom scene. At this point, after having let the story unfold at a satisfying pace, the film hurtles into unrealistic overdrive: Events that in a real court would require months of wrangling unfold here in a matter of days. (In the actual proceedings, company lawyers cruelly dragged the matter out for years in hopes that the plaintiffs would die before they’d have to pay out a single penny.)
Reflecting the real-life resolution of the Radium Girls case, the film ends on a note that is neither stand-up-and-cheer nor shake-your-head-and-cry. For the most part, outrage is the order of the day in Radium Girls; anger that corporate greed could have so callously doomed loyal employees to protracted, painful deaths — and the nagging suspicion that there remain quarters of our world where things have not changed all that much.
Featured image: Still from Radium Girls (Juno Films)
The OTHER Classic Halloween Movies
It’s hard to make a more iconic Halloween movie than Halloween, but that’s not to say that there aren’t legions of other films where Halloween plays a critical role. Much like Christmas, Halloween is such a big holiday in the American imagination that it appears in a number of films that aren’t directly about Halloween, or even horror. Last year, the Post took a look at “The OTHER Classic Christmas Movies,” so it’s only fair that we do the same for Halloween.
10. Batman Forever (1995)
Batman Forever on YouTube Movies
For some reason, the first three modern Batman films all rotated around some kind of holiday celebration. 1989’s Batman featured the Gotham City bicentennial, 1992’s Batman Returns took place at Christmas, and 1995’s Batman Forever landed on Halloween. The holiday doesn’t have a huge impact on the overall plot, but it shows up significantly later in the film. Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and The Riddler (Jim Carrey), having discovered Batman’s secret identity and fool an unusually dim Alfred (Michael Gough) using Halloween costumes. With Alfred’s guard down, the villains and their henchmen invade Wayne Manor, destroying much of the mansion and Batcave while kidnapping Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) and setting up a final showdown between the villains, Batman (Val Kilmer), and his new partner, Robin (Chris O’Donnell).
9. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Esther discovers the truth about the street car prank (Uploaded to YouTube by WarnerArchive)
EVERYBODY knows that Meet Me in St. Louis is where we got “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” But not everyone quite recalls that the movie basically takes place over most of a year from 1903 until the World’s Fair opens in 1904. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Sally Benson, which was originally presented as a string of short stories in The New Yorker. The Halloween sequence represents a pivotal moment in the plot’s central relationship. Esther (Judy Garland) has been in love with John (Tom Drake) from a distance for a while. However, her sister Tootie alleges that John hurt her while Tootie was out for trick-or-treat. Esther attacks John in a rage, but Tootie admits that John actually protected her and sister Agnes from the police after a bungled prank. Esther’s apology to John leads to their first kiss.
8. Mean Girls (2004)
Halloween from Mean Girls (Uploaded to YouTube by The Paramount Vault)
Tina Fey took on a terrifying subject when she adapted Mean Girls from Rosalind Wiseman’s book, Queen Bees and Wannabees, and that was the teenage trauma associated with high school cliques. Mean Girls covers a lot of ground when it comes to how young women interact, including social expectations versus reality, the spitefulness that can arise in a compressed setting like a high school, and how kids are often unaware of the damage that words can do. One key scene takes place at a Halloween party; the lead-in starts off light, playing off of the ongoing trend of hyper-sexualized costumes, but it takes a turn when Cady (Lindsay Lohan) is betrayed at the party, setting her on a course that affects the rest of the film.
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
The trailer for We Need to Talk About Kevin (Uploaded to Movieclips Trailers)
A soul-crushing novel made into a soul-crushing movie, We Need to Talk About Kevin deals with one of the worst possible nightmares for a parent: what do you do when your child is the one who conducts a school massacre? The epistolary novel by Lionel Shriver was made into a haunting film starring Tilda Swinton as Kevin’s mother, Eva. As Eva drives home one night, the demons plaguing her and her family seem to come to life, moving in and out of the shadows as she sees them out her car window. It is, however, only Halloween, but the frightening vista underscores Eva’s own inner turmoil and the tragedy that has played out over the course of Kevin’s life.
6. The Harry Potter Series (2001-2011)
The Mountain Troll scene (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips)
Take a hugely successful book series. Recruit appealing newcomers for the young leads. Add some of the most accomplished adult actors in England. Never stray too far from the books. Spend ten years becoming of the one best loved movie series of all time. We all watched that work for the Harry Potter series. Obviously, the magic-based series lends itself to Halloween. Moreover, since every book roughly covers one school year, it’s easy to slot those scenes in the plot. Each book at least references Halloween. Not all of the films touch on it, although there are recurring references. A running concern is the fact that Voldemort was originally defeated on Halloween Night. Rowling also tied important events to the holiday in the first four books. Easily one of the most memorable Halloween scenes is in the first book and first film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. When a Mountain Troll gets into the school, the student body panics. Only Harry and Ron keep their cool to try to find Hermione. Making their way to the girls’ restroom, they find Hermione under attack by the creature. Encouraged by Hermione, Ron performs a spell that uses the troll’s own club to knock him out. Not everyone is pleased (Quirrell is a double-agent, Snape is annoyed), but Professor McGonagall gives the lads points for saving their friend.
5. The Crow (1994)
The Crow trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips Classic Trailers)
The supernatural revenge thriller based on the comic book series by James O’Barr found tragedy in the on-set death of leading man Brandon Lee and triumph in the critical and financial success of the film and its soundtrack. The plot turns around October 30th, once known as Devil’s Night in Detroit for a phenomenon of arsons taking place on that date over several decades; on one Devil’s Night, Eric Draven and his fiancée, Shelly, are murdered on the day before their wedding (which would have been Halloween). Draven returns one year later to deal out harsh vengeance on those responsible. The city, already portrayed in a dark and gothic manner by director Alex Proyas, also has the trappings of Halloween, including trick-or-treating children that pass Draven in costume.
4. Watchmen (2009)
Watchmen trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Legendary)
Based on the medium-changing comic book series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (seriously; it’s on Time’s list of 100 Best Novels from 1923 onward), Zach Snyder’s Watchmen takes great pains to present an adaptation that’s as close to the page and panel as possible. The story takes place in an alternative 1985 where Nixon is still president and America won the Vietnam War thanks to the intervention of the super-powered Dr. Manhattan. Though the story constantly jumps in time, the main narrative is set in 1985 on the verge of Halloween . . . and nuclear holocaust. Halloween imagery sneaks in at the edges, and several critical plot developments (many of which are horrifying in their own right) occur across October 31 and November 1.
3. The Karate Kid (1984)
The trailer for The Karate Kid (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips Classic Trailers)
One of the more memorable Halloween scenes from any high school-related film happens in The Karate Kid. At a Halloween dance, Daniel (Ralph Macchio) wants to be with Ali (Elisabeth Shue), but he’s been trying avoid the bullying of Johnny and his Cobra Kai buddies. Daniel cleverly dresses in a shower costume to conceal his identity. But when Johnny breaks off from the other Cobra Kais (who are all dressed in matching skeleton costumes and facepaint) to smoke weed in the bathroom, Daniel takes the opportunity to rig up a hose and douse Johnny. The Cobra Kais chase Daniel down and deal him a violent beating until Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita) intervenes. Miyagi dismantles the bullies by himself and helps treat Daniel’s injuries. Soon after, Miyagi begins to train Daniel so that he can confront the Kais at the All-Valley Tournament.
2. E.T. (1982)
The Halloween scene from E.T. (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips)
Is there anyone who doesn’t know E.T.? What you might not recall is that Halloween actually plays a crucial role in advancing the plot. E.T. wants to “phone home” so that his people can come back for him. However, Elliott and his brother Michael need to sneak E.T. and the communication array he’s built to the nearby woods where they’ll have a better chance of making contact. That’s where Halloween comes in. The boys use that most reliable of disguises (from a kid’s point of view): a white sheet ghost costume. They first have to convince their mother that they’re actually taking their little sister, Gertie, out, which works. Although a chance encounter with a kid dressed as Yoda distracts the alien, they are still able to get him to the forest to make his call.
1. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Halloween attack from To Kill a Mockingbird (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips)
Speaking of important scenes occurring at Halloween . . . the climactic action of To Kill a Mockingbird happens on Halloween night after a pageant where Scout is dressed as a giant ham. As Scout and her brother Jem walk through the woods toward home, they are attacked. Scout can’t see much because of her costume, but she realizes that someone else stopped their attacker. It soon becomes clear that they were attacked by Bob Ewell, whom Atticus had shamed in court. The man who saved them was their reclusive neighbor, Arthur “Boo” Radley. As Atticus and Sheriff Tate piece together events, they realize that Boo stabbed Ewell, killing him. However, Tate decides to list it as an accident, sparing Boo the attention and circus of a trial.
Featured image: leolintang / Shutterstock
Review: Small Group — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Small Group
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute
Stars: Sterling Hurst, Emily Dunlop, Matt Chastain
Writer/Director: Matt Chastain
In Select Theaters and on Most Streaming Services
One of the reasons faith-based movies don’t ordinarily clean up at the box office is because the faithful too seldom see themselves accurately represented in them — and also because to the uninitiated, believers in these movies seem kind of, well, weird.
Those opposing perceptions are attacked head-on in Small Group, a good-natured faith-based comedy that explores the tentative dance Americans choreograph every day as the faithful and faithless try to find common ground without sacrificing their core beliefs — or lack thereof.
Sterling Hurst stars as Scott, a documentary filmmaker who’s been hired by a sleazy film producer (Robert Riechel Jr.) to make a movie that rips the cloak of hypocrisy from a community of Atlanta Christians, revealing them to be the fakers he’s convinced they are. A generally good-natured agnostic with no religious axe to grind, Scott at first resists. But a job is a job, so he dons a pair of Google Glass-like camera/eyeglasses and embeds himself in the fellowship, recording every interaction along the way.
The film merrily skirts the probability that this sort of Candid Camera scam would most likely land someone in jail. But Hurst is such an appealing actor, reminiscent of Daniel Stern in his goofily clueless Home Alone days, that we immediately give his character the benefit of the doubt. Along for the ride is Scott’s wife Mary (Emily Dunlop of TV’s Doom Patrol), trying to be supportive but uneasy about making “friends” with the subjects of her hubby’s guerrilla documentary.
Small Group wrings its laughs — and a few thoughtful moments — from the couple’s fish-in-baptismal-water experiences. An uncomfortable Sunday service seems to them more like a rock concert than a worship event, and they’re distressed when their brand-new red letter Bible proves no match for the digital Scriptures their pew mates wield on their smart phones.
Of course, once they’re enlisted into a small group of church members, the couple soon discover this is not the flock of weirdos they’d expected. And once Scott’s ruse is inevitably discovered, his enraged subjects have to decide whether or not there’s a place in their hearts for unbelieving — and occasionally duplicitous — outsiders.
It’s all as light as an Easter morning balloon launch — until the film takes an unexpectedly dramatic, almost documentarian turn when Scott is invited to accompany the men folk on a mission trip to Guatemala City. There, writer/director Matt Chastain (who also plays one of the small group guys) turns his camera on the real-life squalor of the city’s slums — and the work of Engadi Ministries, a program that tries to save young men from hurling themselves into the dead-end violence of local street gangs. Through Scott’s eyes, we meet several of these youngsters — their bodies covered with tattoos, their eyes ablaze with suspicion and anger — playing themselves with riveting intensity.
It’s quite a transition, admirably pulled off by first-time director Chastain, who momentarily sheds the friendly confines of an off-kilter Sunday School comedy to dip his toes into a kind of street-smart cinematic realism that owes more to Rossellini’s Rome: Open City than to Heaven Is for Real.
Too often, faith-based movies get written off as second-class cinematic citizens. But the genre has given us some of Martin Scorsese’s most thoughtful work (The Last Temptation of Christ; Silence), more than a few Best Picture Oscar Winners (Chariots of Fire and A Man for All Seasons among them), and even a classic comedy (Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty). Small Group doesn’t quite breathe that same rarified air, yet it succeeds in using film to explore the kinds of crosstalk that can build bridges among people of all faiths — or no faith at all.
Featured image: Still from Small Group (Limesoda Films)
Review: Herb Alpert Is… — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Herb Alpert Is…
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes
Stars: Herb Alpert, Sting, Billy Bob Thornton, Lani Hall, Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Sergio Mendez
Director: John Scheinfeld
In Theaters and on Video On Demand
It’s always a good feeling when a movie offers reassurance that you are, despite your darkest suspicions, absolutely normal. That’s how I felt while watching the new documentary about Herb Alpert, the now-84-year-old trumpeter who revolutionized popular music in the 1960s with his Tijuana Brass.
The affirming moment comes about a half-hour into the film, at the point where Alpert releases his 1965 record Whipped Cream and Other Delights, the album that featured on its cover model Dolores Erickson wearing nothing but a mound of whipped cream. She was, as they say, quite something.
“I was obsessed with that woman,” says Police frontman Sting, who was an adolescent at the time.
“I actually had guilt,” confesses Billy Bob Thornton. “I would sneak into my mom’s room and look at the cover of that album when she was in the kitchen.”
And no, it does nothing to dim my fevered recollections of that time when, in the film, Alpert reveals that the model was covered not with dessert topping, but shaving cream.
The music was pretty good, too. I would defy anyone, no matter their age or musical inclinations, to sit through Herb Alpert Is… and resist tapping their toes, humming along, or even rising to their feet for a dance or two. “The Lonely Bull,” “Tijuana Taxi,” “Taste of Honey,” “This Guy’s in Love With You,” along with dozens more Alpert instant standards, jockey for position in a soundtrack that is so infectious at times you wish everyone would stop talking (even when the talking heads include the likes of Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Sergio Mendez, Quest Love, and Bill Moyers).
Still, in the hands of director John Scheinfeld (The Happy Days of Gary Marshall, Who is Harry Nilsson?) the story of Herb Alpert is a lot more than a snappy greatest hits collection; it’s a deep dive into the agonies and ecstasies that drive profoundly creative people like Alpert — a guy who not only recorded some of the 20th century’s most memorable music, but also made his mark in the fields of painting and sculpture.
Narrating his own story, Alpert is an affable, if somewhat selective guide. For reasons known only to him, he glosses over the early days of Tijuana Brass, essentially ignoring the rather remarkable fact that the first TJB records consisted primarily of Alpert alone, recording in his garage, relentlessly overdubbing his own trumpet solos to create the illusion of a full band. Only when audiences began demanding live performances did he hire a team of crack studio musicians to play with him.
Besides his music wizardry, Alpert also possessed a keen nose for talent, and along with his partner Jerry Moss (the “M” in their label, A&M Records) he released albums by a Who’s Who of ’70s and ’80s legends including Carole King, The Carpenters, Peter Frampton, Janet Jackson and Chuck Mangione. Many of A&M’s titles still reside on the list of best-selling albums of all time.
Still, Alpert insists, there was a dark side to his fairy tale.
“I’m famous, I’m rich,” he recalls thinking at the height of his fame. “But I’m miserable.”
Admittedly, it’s hard to really feel bad for a guy whose chief problem is he’s too successful. Still, a gallery of archive footage does seem to reveal a man who pastes on his dimpled smile while cranking it up onstage, but whose demeanor crashes the moment the curtain closes.
He ultimately found happiness sharing his success — with his clearly adoring wife, singer Lani Hall, and a growing circle of charitable groups. Aside from the soundtrack you never want to stop, Herb Alpert Is… becomes most satisfying in its coda, exploring the musician’s latter-day obsession with promoting arts in America’s schools. Reading in a newspaper that Harlem’s storied School of the Arts was going under due to a lack of funding, he rode to the rescue with a half-million-dollar grant — just one installment in the more than $150 million he’s donated to non-profits over the years.
Here the camera follows Alpert through the halls of the Harlem campus, stopping in classrooms to hear students feel their way through compositions classical, jazz, and pop.
To these kids, he’s a nice old man who has taken an interest in their aspirations. To the rest of us, Herb Alpert emerges as a reminder of our youthful passions — and our responsibility to help today’s kids realize theirs.
You can do that, Herb Alpert Is… says — even if you haven’t sold 72 million records.
Featured image: Still from the documentary Herb Alpert Is…(Abramorama)
Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott: The Toronto International Film Festival
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Featured image: kchiu / Shutterstock
Review: Blackbird — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Blackbird
⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes
Rating: R
Stars: Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, Rainn Wilson, Lindsay Duncan
Writer: Christian Thorpe
Director: Roger Michell
In Theaters
Blackbird, the story of a terminally ill woman (Susan Sarandon) summoning her family for one last weekend together, doesn’t take us anywhere we haven’t been before — but with a cast that boasts 12 Oscar, 13 Golden Globe and 5 Emmy nominations among them, it’s one first-class ride.
Matriarch Lily (Sarandon) is suffering from one of those undisclosed movie illness that is progressively but rapidly weakening her body. Right now she’s having trouble walking and one arm is useless, but as more than one character observes, “She’s not so bad.” Lily is bad enough, however, that she and her physician hubby Paul (Sam Neill, whose piercing eyes nearly match Sarandon’s in laser-like intensity) have decided she should end it all now, while she can still lift her own glass of hemlock (actually, phenobarbital).
But first, of course, there must be a final, not-so-fun family weekend at Lily and Paul’s plush seaside home — for all movies about life and death must take place by the water.
The kids arrive one by one. Here comes Jennifer (Kate Winslet), the “good” girl who has spent her entire life desperately trying to measure up to her mother’s expectations — and projecting those same unreasonable goals onto her son Jonathan (Anson Boon). Jennifer has a nebbish husband (The Office’s Rainn Wilson) who is a font of historical and scientific trivia but clueless when it comes to making actual human connections.
Next comes Anna (Mia Wasikowska) with her girlfriend Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus) in tow. Anna is immediately confronted with questions about why she almost never has contact with the rest of the family. Don’t worry — we’ll get the answer soon enough.
And finally there’s Liz (Lindsay Duncan), Lily and Paul’s oldest and closest friend. Just how close? Patience. That particularly juicy reveal will have to wait until just before Lily’s fatal gulp.
For reasons known only to Lily, the weekend must include a non-chronological celebration of Christmas, complete with presents and a freshly chopped-down Christmas tree. Unfortunately, Lily’s Christmas soon devolves into a high-stakes version of Frank Costanza’s Festivus — with an emphasis on the traditional Airing of Grievances.
Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill, Hyde Park on the Hudson) is just the guy to corral all this histrionic star power. He gives each cast member ample time to strut their stuff in the service of a cluttered script that bristles with long-simmering family conflicts — all standing patiently in line, waiting to be tackled one-by-one as the film’s brisk hour-and-a-half proceeds apace.
In lesser hands, Blackbird (the meaning of the title is, to my knowledge, never really addressed) would rank little higher than your standard issue high-calorie, low-protein Hallmark Channel movie. But the entire cast hurls itself into this sentimental stew with such abandon you come away from Lily’s farewell party unexpectedly sated.
Just don’t drink the digestif.
Featured image: Rainn Wilson as Michael, Sam Neill as Paul, Bex Taylor-Klaus as Chris, Mia Wasikowska as Anna, Lindsay Duncan as Liz, Susan Sarandon as Lily, and Anson Boon as Jonathan. Blackbird arrives in theaters and on demand on September 18, 2020 from Screen Media. (Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh, Courtesy of Screen Media)
Dolly, Belushi, Mystery: Seriously Good Film and TV
The Library That Dolly Built (September 21)
There’s a smattering of classic songs in this documentary about country icon Dolly Parton, but the focus is on the star’s offstage work for the past 25 years: her Imagination Library. Summoning a powerful cocktail of charm, determination, and shrewd business sense, Dolly mounts a small program to put more than 100 million free books into the hands of children, first in her hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee, but soon marshaling an army of allies to expand far into the English-speaking world. Yes, it’s an adoring portrait. But doggone it, the lady’s just plain adorable.
Belushi (Showtime, November 22)
Nearly 40 years after John Belushi’s death of a drug overdose in an L.A. hotel, documentarian R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) collaborated with the Saturday Night Live star’s widow, Judith Belushi Pisano, to mount this definitive look at the tragic star’s meteoric career. Through previously unreleased interviews, voice recordings, and archival footage, the film not only explores Belushi’s uncommon success (he simultaneously had a top-rated TV show, a No.1 music record, and the nation’s top box-office film) but also his enduring impact on comedy and music. (Note: The film’s premiere shifted from September to November as we were going to press.)
Mystery Road (Acorn TV, September)
No Country for Old Men meets True Detective in the second six-episode series of this dust-choked, death-soaked drama set on the craggy coast of western Australia. It starts with a decapitated body floating among the mangroves and ends with an epic shootout, and in between, Aaron Pederson mesmerizes as a brooding indigenous cop. Directors Warwick Thornton and Wayne Blair, themselves indigenous Australians, pause to contemplate Australia’s complex social structure — fractured in ways that often echo the American experience.
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This article is featured in the September/October 2020 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
Featured image: Courtesy Land Grant Films
Review: Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Director: Mary Wharton
Stars: Jimmy Carter, Garth Brooks, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Larry Gatlin
In theaters and virtual theater video on demand
Bill Clinton may have been the first U.S. President born after World War II, but as this tuneful, nostalgic documentary reminds us, it was Jimmy Carter who first harnessed the energy of rock and roll to catapult himself to the highest office in the land.
James Earl Carter, born in 1924, went to war to the music of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey — but he was a Georgia boy whose childhood soundtrack was dominated by the gospel tunes he sang in church and the barn dance music that crackled through the air from the Grand Ole Opry.
By the time he ran for President in 1976, Carter’s musical tastes had already morphed into a love of country-tinged rock and roll, and he brought that sensibility to his campaign.
In fact, if not for his rockabilly roots, the film suggests that Carter might not have become president at all. Director Mary Wharton — a long-time producer/director for PBS’s American Masters series — explores how, in the early days of his campaign, the candidate would come up with desperately needed cash simply by calling on the likes of The Marshall Tucker Band or the Allman Brothers to drop what they were doing to mount a fundraising concert.
“We’d have a concert on Saturday,” a former campaign worker recalls, “and use that money to buy advertising on Wednesday.”
As Carter himself tells Wharton, “It was the Allman Brothers who put me in the White House.”
The film makes clear that Carter was no simple opportunist; his love of music infused every aspect of his life, from the spiritual to the political. Bob Dylan marvels that on their first meeting in the White House, Carter recited many of the songwriter’s lyrics, weaving them into a personal and religious testimony.
“I realized my songs had reached into the establishment world,” Dylan tells the camera. “It made me a little uneasy.”
After his arrival in the White House, Carter filled those historic halls with music of all sorts: giants of classical, rock, gospel, and jazz all took their turns on the stage. One of the film’s most disarming passages involves trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie coaxing the prez, who famously got his start as a peanut farmer, into sort-of singing an awkward rendition of “Hot Peanuts.” Carter hosted the likes of Herbie Hancock, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Cher (who drank from her finger bowl) and Willie Nelson (who came to D.C. straight from incarceration after a drug bust in Jamaica).
If music enlivened Carter’s White House years, it also saw him through his darkest hours as president: At the height of the Iran hostage crisis he closed himself into his office and listened to Willie Nelson sing gospel songs.
In the end, the Carter/music connection was not enough to save his presidency. Still, there’s the sense here that it is music that continues to feed his soul — and has helped him become our greatest ex-president.
“I think music is the best proof,” Carter concludes, “that people have (at least) one thing in common, no matter where they live, no matter what language they speak.”
Featured image: Jimmy Carter with Willie Nelson, 1980 (Credit: Courtesy The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library)
Review: The Personal History of David Copperfield — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott
The Personal History of David Copperfield
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Rating: PG
Run Time: 1 hour 59 minutes
Stars: Dev Patel, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whishaw, Morfydd Clark, Rosalind Eleazar
In theaters; streaming dates to be announced
Forget every Charles Dickens screen adaptation you’ve ever seen — Armando Ianucci’s take on David Copperfield is the funniest, freshest, most fulfilling cinematic foray into Victorian England since, maybe, ever.
You would be hard-pressed to imagine a more appealing cast — from the top-tier stars to the smallest supporting players — than in this lush, sentimental retelling of Dickens’ ultimate up-from-the-gutter story. Effervescent where previous versions are stodgy; irreverent where others are ponderously deferential to the source material, this is a Copperfield for the 21st Century: energetic, sprightly, and all-embracing.
For those who were not compelled to read Dickens’ 600-plus-page 1850 novel in elementary school, the story involves a young man who, after an appropriately dark Victorian childhood in a British workhouse, finds his way into the home of some wealthy relatives and then forges his own place in the world. Dickens infused a lot of his own life into the story (He called the title character “my favorite child”), which makes it perhaps the most engaging of his novels. It’s also his most free-form work — Dickens had no idea how some plot elements would pan out even as he was still serializing it — a quality that writer-director Ianucci (The Death of Stalin) puts to excellent use. Through clever transitions and comically mannered delivery, he finds a subliminal chipperness in the material that has eluded other filmmakers (Although George Cukor did give it a go in 1935 when he cast W.C. Fields as young David’s kind-hearted benefactor Mr. Micawber). It’s a trick Baz Luhrman tried in his version of Romeo and Juliet, but while his effort felt shoehorned into the Elizabethan universe, here the ploy fits as nicely as a gentlewoman’s high-button shoes.
As the wide-eyed, ever-optimistic title character, Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) has us rooting for him from the moment he appears on screen. Even while employing an admirably diverse cast, Ianucci’s decision to cast an actor of Indian descent may seem bold. But it’s totally in line with Britain’s long history of trade with the subcontinent and the racially mixed families that settled in and around London at the time. In any case, Patel makes a perfect Copperfield, his wide-open face a palate on which he paints successive expressions of humiliation, wonder, and ultimately triumph. Tilda Swinton is adorable (yes, you read that right) as his eccentric aunt. And Hugh Laurie should be Oscar nomination-bound for his performance as David’s perpetually confused but ultimately sharp-as-a-tack uncle. As the unctuous-but-scheming Uriah Heep, Ben Whishaw is gleefully infuriating, his eyes beading menacingly from under a Dumb and Dumber haircut.
The undisputed all-time master of opening sentences, Dickens starts Copperfield’s narrative with this line: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
True to his source, Iannucci begins his movie with those same words. And as he squeezes every possible laugh from Dickens’ tale while leaving plenty of room for authentic sentiment, Iannucci becomes a hero of sorts himself, boldly throwing open new windows on a story we thought we already knew.
Featured image: Dev Patel and Hugh Laurie in the film THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD. Photo by Dean Rogers. © 2020 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved
Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott: Movies About Movies
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Vampire Soap Opera Dark Shadows Crept into Film 50 Years Ago
It’s unusual, but not unheard of, for a TV series to break out into theaters as the regular show continues to run on television. It’s slightly more common with animation (or puppetry), with examples like The Simpsons, South Park, and The Muppet Show all pulling it off during their runs. In terms of live-action, the list is much smaller, with notable efforts being the 1960s Batman and The X-Files, which scored a hit film between seasons five and six of the series. However, Dark Shadows managed to put a feature film on the big screen featuring a number of main cast members while the series continued to run daily. It wasn’t a surprise that the show bucked tradition or expectations; after all, it had been doing just that since its 1966 debut.
Dark Shadows was the brainchild of Dan Curtis, a writer, director, and producer whose output had a seismic impact on the horror television genre. Over the years, Curtis hopped back and forth between television and film. His 1975 TV movie Trilogy of Terror, based on three stories by Richard Matheson, is routinely listed among the best horror films ever made for the medium. He adapted a number of classic horror novels for TV to great success, including the 1973 version of Dracula with Jack Palance in the lead. In the 1980s, he adapted Herman Wouk’s World War II novels The Winds of War and War and Remembrance into a pair of mini-series that were nominated for a combined 19 Emmy Awards, Remembrance winning for Best Mini-Series. He also directed The Night Stalker, the film that introduced Jeff Rice’s intrepid reporter character Carl Kolchak to wider audiences; the 1972 TV film was the highest rated TV film of all time at that point, with 48 percent of all TV viewers in the U.S. tuned into the movie on the night it ran. That film led to a hit sequel, The Night Strangler, and the spin-off series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Curtis formed the idea of Dark Shadows around a dream he had of a woman on a train. Encouraged by his wife, his successfully pitched his concept of a Gothic soap opera to ABC in 1965. He teamed up with Art Wallace, a seasoned writer with years of genre TV experience, to flesh out the overall idea and story bible for the new series. Wallace and Curtis wrote the first eight weeks of the series (40 episodes), and then Wallace traded back and forth with screenwriter and playwright Francis Swann on the next nine weeks.
The series began by leaning on the more traditional tropes of Gothic romance, with Curtis’s “woman on the train” becoming Victoria Winters, who was drawn into a Jane Eyre-inspired plotline. Less than a year into the run of the show, ratings were less than great. In an effort to boost interest, Curtis went all-in on the horror angle by introducing vampire Barnabas Collins, played by Jonathan Frid. The show exploded in popularity, picking up three million viewers in a year. The daily timeslot (usually 4 p.m., though it had runs at 3:30 p.m.) gave teens the chance to discover the show after school, and they became a solid component of the audience. Emboldened by their success with Barnabas, the creators went full steam ahead with ghosts, witches, werewolves, and more. Time-travel became a component, with entire weeks of the series spent in different time periods; of course, Barnabas (as a vampire) and others could appear up and down the timeline, while some actors simply played their ancestors or descendants as needed.
A scene from House of Dark Shadows (Uploaded to YouTube by Warner Bros. Entertainment)
With the show, and Barnabas in particular, taking off, Curtis started pitching for a theatrical film spin-off and sold MGM on the idea. One early concept had the creative team re-editing series episodes into a film, but that was abandoned in favor of doing a tight, film-length version of Barnabas’s main story. Curtis and the writers and producers of the daily show coordinated to write out the necessary members of the main cast for when they would needed during the six-week film shoot. Some of the same sets and locations were used. However, the film milieu obviously provided greater leverage for violence and scares, allowing for things that were out on TV (like dripping blood from vampire fang-induced neck wounds) to be shown. The film was released on August 25, 1970, and while it wasn’t a runaway success, it did double its budget, allowing MGM to greenlight a second film.
The Night of Dark Shadows trailer (Uploaded to YouTube by Warner Bros. Entertainment)
Unfortunately, the ratings for the daily show started to taper off. After a high of seven to nine million viewers a day in mid-to-late 1969, viewership went into a skid. There are a number of theories for this, running from the 1970 recession forcing budget cuts, to the loss of ratings leading to local stations dropping the show and feeding a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Whatever the final reason, Dark Shadows aired its last episode on April 2, 1971. A few months later, the second film, Night of Dark Shadows, hit theaters. This time, due to the unavailability of Jonathan Frid, who had gone on to other projects after the cancellation of the series, the movie focused on Barnabas Collins’s descendant Quentin and the witch Angelique. At the last minute, MGM forced Curtis to cut more than 35 minutes from the film to get its run-time down; all involved felt this hurt the film in a number of ways. When the movie opened, it made back its budget, but that was it for the original TV and film incarnations of Dark Shadows.
Over the years, the show has been subject to a number of reboot attempts. NBC put a new version on the air in early 1991, starring Ben Cross as Barnabas. Initial ratings were huge, but the show was quickly derailed by pre-emptions brought on by ongoing coverage of the Gulf War. The show was cancelled after a single season. A pilot was made for the WB in 2004, but didn’t get a series order. Tim Burton directed a new big-screen version in 2012, which starred his frequent collaborator Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins; although the film made money, it was something of an overall miss. Jonathan Frid put in a cameo for the film, which was his last screen appearance before he passed away that year. Since the fall of 2019, Warner Bros. Television and The CW have been developing a sequel to the original series, tentatively titled Dark Shadows: Reincarnation. Dan Curtis passed in 2006, but his daughters Tracy and Cathy hold the rights to the series and are involved in the production of the potential new version.
The work of Dan Curtis in general and Dark Shadows in particular continues to resonate across media. The X-Files creator Chris Carter spoken often of the debt his show owed to Kolchak. You can see its echoes in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, among others, and in the number of daytime soaps that adopted supernatural plotlines, including Days of Our Lives and the almost entirely supernatural General Hospital spin-off, Port Charles. Perhaps a new version will jump up and seize the zeitgeist again; maybe it will even be popular enough to produce new films while the new series runs. If Dark Shadows has taught us anything, it’s that nothing stays dead for long.
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