There are 974 posts filed in Movies (this is page 1 of 140).
A strong finish to this year’s Ape-ril. So strong it could rip your jaw off, play with it for a bit, and then politely try to put it back on like nothing happened. I sat down to watch Johannes Roberts’s tight 89-minute ape-fueled gore-a-rama the other night with a gummy and half a pint of Chunky Monkey, and let me tell ya, it was hittin’. Almost as hard as Ben the chimp. Apes are strong, in case you haven’t picked up on that by now.
Did you know right now there’s a chimp civil war happening in Uganda? The once-strong Ngogo chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park, one of the largest ever studied, with around 200 apes at its peak, has splintered over the past several years in a bloody power struggle for ape supremacy. It’s wild, because it sounds like a story ripped straight from a Michael Crichton novel.
Like Brian De Palma, Aussie director Richard Franklin was very much a disciple of Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, Franklin was such a devotee that, while attending USC, he was determined to get Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) screened on campus. This effort led to Hitchcock personally calling the school, and Franklin inviting him to give a lecture, which he did. The two struck up a friendship, and years later, in 1983, Franklin would go on to direct Psycho II.
A glance at Franklin’s filmography paints the picture of a true genre filmmaker. The guy loved horror and suspense, high-concept ideas that practically pitch themselves. Movies that feel Hitchcockian, but updated for modern audiences. Like in 1979, when Franklin landed on the idea: “What if someone made Jaws… but with chimps?”
Not since the dawn of man (around 2014) have I dedicated an entire month to ape cinema, but I’m back, and this time it’s personal! After listening to every album by Gorillaz and finishing Donkey Kong Bananza a few months ago, my body is ready. *Starts beating chest. This month I’m gonna live like an Apeman. Hey, you gonna eat that nanner over there?
Last time, I reviewed the OG Planet of the Apes films, but this time I’m tackling KILLER ape movies. “Oh sweet, like Shakma and Monkey Shines?” NO! WRONG! Those are monkeys. I’m talking about apes, which turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated if the goal was to watch GOOD movies.
56th Academy Awards (1984)
Nominations: 5
Wins: 2
We end our shortened week of Oscar reviews with the type of film that usually pops up here or there at the Oscars each year. I’m talking about the small film that serves as an actor’s showcase, and thus gets its star nominated for an acting Oscar, but rarely also gets nominated for Best Picture. Well, that wasn’t the case with Tender Mercies, which nabbed a Best Picture nom as well as a second Best Screenplay Oscar for Horton Foote. But when you get down to it, this is a film built around an Oscar-winning performance by Robert Duvall, an actor who was never entirely built to be a leading man, but in a low budget, unshowy film like this, gets to show all that he’s capable of. This was very satisfying to see in the wake of his recent passing, especially when I’m sure we’ll get to see this prolific actor mentioned in the “In Memoriam” section of the Oscars tonight.
60th Academy Awards (1988)
Nominations: 9
Wins: 9
A month ago, I posted a list of my “Top Ten Horny Movies” where I crowned Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers as my number one. The film has become such a favorite of mine I had to see what else Bertolucci had to offer. Which is tough, because his two biggest movies are 1) A movie no one likes to talk about anymore because of a a sex scene that traumatized its female star and 2) A film about the life of China’s last monarch of the Qing Dynasty, which sounds like a movie I’d watch stretched over a week in school.
Not to mention The Last Emperor is an ’80s Oscar movie. I wrote in my review of Ordinary People last year that I believe the 1980s weren’t just a boring decade for the Oscars, but a boring decade for cinema in general. Now hold on, there’s no need to run me down in your DeLorean just yet. Yes, of course there were good movies in the ’80s, lots of them, but the center of gravity in Hollywood had shifted.
The risky, director-driven “New Hollywood” of the ’70s had been replaced by a more corporate, risk-averse system. Studios had learned the lesson of the blockbuster and weren’t eager to bankroll messy, morally ambiguous adult dramas anymore. Instead, they gravitated toward high-concept hits, sequels, and polished prestige pictures, the kind of films that looked expensive, respectable, and safe chillin’ on an awards ballot.
The Last Emperor is interesting because on one hand it does feel like your typical award-season pabulum. It’s a biopic, it’s long, it’s expensive, but it also did something no Western film had done since 1949. It was shot entirely in China, including extensive scenes inside Beijing’s Forbidden City. That alone was a gamble. The production depended entirely on the cooperation of the Chinese government, which meant the film could have collapsed at any moment if political winds shifted. For a massive international epic, building the entire production around that uncertainty was a risk in itself.
But is it any good?
65th Academy Awards (1993)
Nominations: 4
Wins: 1
“What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?” This clip, from Pacino’s big “courtroom” scene at the end of Scent of a Woman opened up every episode of the podcast Filmspotting, or at least did for as long as I listened to it until Matty Ballgame left. So to me, it’s just about as iconic a Pacino quote as there can be. And the Nineties were a very quotable period for Big Al, giving us hits like “she’s got a great ass and you’ve got your head all the way up it” and “just when I think I’m out they pull me back in.” So since I was in the area already, I figured I should probably finally watch this damn thing. Hoo-ah!
