Movies, Films, Flicks...: April 2012

Saturday 28 April 2012

10 Best Movie Casts

Forget your huge explosions and CGI extravaganzas – there is nothing more awe-inspiring to watch on screen than a great line up of famous actors bouncing off each other.

This here list disregards ‘ensemble casts’ – movies that follow multiple storylines and are often somewhat cynically designed to sell on the strength of the line-up alone. So recent efforts such as He’s Just Not That Into You, Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Day don’t count, and neither do all-star disaster flicks. I also discounted multiple interlocking epic story type efforts, so much of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson’s output. In short, no movie that feels like it’s trying to have a star-studded cast. Which also, sadly, rules out the Expendables films, which are heavily marketed around their gimmicky casts.

Each entry had to have at least ten names in the cast list that can legitimately be described as ‘recognisable’ – either by name or face. So although I considered titles like Glengarry Glenn Ross, The Big Chill and Troy, for all their quality they simply don’t have the quantity.

So here’s the top ten (and a couple of special cases):

10. Top Gun (1986) AKA ‘The 80s Special’

Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, Meg Ryan, Val Kilmer, Rick Rossovich, Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside, Tim Robbins, James Tolkan

Sunday 22 April 2012

True Romance (1993)

Starring: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper,

Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Michael Rapaport, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn

Directed by: Tony Scott

Written by: Quentin Tarantino

Duration: 2hrs

Rating: 5 out of 5

Certainly in my top twenty favourite flicks, True Romance is the ultimate example of style over substance working in a movie’s favour. It’s a joyously consequence-free exercise in male wish-fulfilment that throws classic scenes, star turns and great characters at you with such abandon that you just have to just soak it all up and enjoy the ride.

In fact, those supporting characters are so well-rounded that many could be the star of their own spin-off movie. Christian Slater’s comic book store geek Clarence Worely is obviously a vicarious vessel for Tarantino’s adolescent wet dreams, but several of the others are strong enough to make the leap to protagonist themselves.

To wit:

Alabama Worley (Patricia Arquette)

"OKEY-DOKIE DOGGY-DADDY!"

During his personal ‘chapter’ in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr White mentions a dame he knocks around with named Alabama. Since characters often turn up in multiple places in the Tarantinoverse, it’s not a stretch to imagine that he’s talking about the same gal. So what about a prequel, where Alabama and ‘White’ (real name: Larry Dimmick) travel around the country living off his robbery takings, until one disastrous L.A. heist results in him dead and her fleeing to Detroit.

Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper)

"SLOW IT DOWN, MAN!"

Before he retired to be a security guard living in a shitty trailer, Clifford was a maverick beat cop. An alcoholic with a psychotic edge, Cliff was nevertheless devoted to law enforcement and got the job done with a steely efficiency and anti-establishment stance. Frank Booth (from Blue Velvet) meets Frank Serpico.

Drexel Spivey (Gary Oldman)

"NAH, IT AIN'T WHITE BOY DAY."

New Jack City set in Detroit, the odious pimp’s Achilles' heel being his sensitivity to enquiries about his racial origins.

Virgil (James Gandolfini)

"SHIT, NOW I JUST DO IT TO SEE THEIR EXPRESSIONS CHANGE."

The early days of a pre-made, Tony Soprano-esque wise guy – including that first difficult hit that served as his initiation.

Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport)

"ALL I GOT IS FUCKIN' FLOYD."

The bumbling adventures of an east coast guy trying to make it as an actor in Hollywood, struggling to overcome disadvantages that include a mooching roommate, no talent and lack of pot or window.

Floyd (Brad Pitt)

"EXACTLY ROOM MATES."

Already covered in David Gordon Green's Pineapple Express.

Nicky Dimes (Chris Penn) and Cody Nicholson (Tom Sizemore)

“I LIKE THIS CLARENCE GUY, THIS KID'S CRAZY!”

The gritty but humorous exploits of two wisecracking L.A. narcotic cops. In keeping with the theme of their own names, colleagues/perps could include Captain Dollar, Detective Pete Penny, and their ultimate nemesis, the nefarious coke lord Harlan Quarter.

Big Don (Samuel L. Jackson)

“I EAT THE PUSSY, I EAT THE BUTT, I EAT EVERY MOTHERFUCKIN' THANG."

A Kinsey-style exploration of heterosexual male attitudes towards administering oral sex.

OK, I’ll stop now… *****

Sunday 15 April 2012

10 Best Horror Movie Scores

This list of spine-tinglers is compiled in order of release.

Psycho (1960) – Bernard Hermann

Few pieces of film music are so utterly attached to their source as this classic. That ree ree ree! of the knife stabbing is idiosyncratic and, together with masterful editing, helps the audience to fill in the blanks of what Hitchcock couldn’t show in the shower, resulting in an experience more traumatic than a thousand explicit Saw efforts.

The Exorcist (1973) – Mike Oldfield

Oldfield's tubular sound creates eerily satanic church bells, ringing as you're chased through the courtyard at midnight by something that never actually shows itself but will never stop stalking you – and so is all the more terrifying.

The Omen (1976) – Jerry Goldsmith

Less subtle than The Exorcist, but an equally unnerving religious-tinged bombast. The son of the Devil is here, and he’s not going to obediently go and sit on the naughty step.

Jaws (1975) – John Williams

No movie since Psycho has made people so afraid to be around water. Amongst the most recognisable themes of all time; hell, the opening two notes alone are iconic...

Halloween (1978) – John Carpenter

Escalating dread. That's the feeling you get watching John Carpenter’s master work, not least because of its peerless score. Carpenter’s music is often dismissed by purists as a catalogue of simplistic synthesizer-reliant relics; I have a place in my heart for all of them, but even the biggest music snob must bow down to the Halloween theme.

Alien (1979) – Jerry Goldsmith

Ridley Scott’s upcoming return to the Alien universe has been getting a lot of people very excited. If he can deliver an experience that matches one tenth of the crippling, isolated, no-one-will-ever-hear-your-screams-let-alone-care terror of Goldsmith’s score for the one that started it all, than Prometheus will have been worth the wait.

The Shining (1980) – Krzysztof Penderecki

This score hints at the isolated, maddening horror the Torrence family are letting themselves in for at the Overlook hotel, with undertones of the Native American burial ground that someone decided to build a hotel on. Not such a great investment when caretakers can’t stop hacking up their families.

The Thing (1982) – Ennio Morricone

The best John Carpenter score that he never wrote. The definition of minimalism, each du-dum throb mimics the audience’s heartbeat as they experience the unease of being in a hot terror sweat whilst trapped in a frozen, barren hell.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – Charles Bernstein

Memorable, obliquely spine-tingling with a taunting undercurrent – this vastly underrated score is just like Freddy himself. One of the many mistakes the turgid remake got wrong was abandoning it.

The Fly (1986) – Howard Shore

Shore manages to capture the wonder of scientific discovery, the empowering catalyst of love, the doom of fucking with nature and the operatic tragedy that combining these elements propagates. Impressive stuff.

See also:

5 Horror Remakes That Do the Originals Justice

5 of the Very Worst Horror Remakes

10 Best Action/Adventure Movie Scores

Sunday 8 April 2012

Prince of Darkness (1987)

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Victor Wong,

Jameson Parker, Lisa Blount, Dennis Dun

Directed by: John Carpenter

Written by: John Carpenter

Duration: 1hr 42mins

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Prince of Darkness is a personal favourite that I've seen more times than I can recall. And yet I’m actually reluctant to re-watch my most revered movies too often – I always want to recapture at least some of the joy of that first viewing, when I was utterly absorbed in the story and not mentally ticking off what happens next.

FOR SOME MEN, EVERY MONTH IS MOVEMBER

This is ‘familiarity fear’: the fact that you love the film and know it back to front makes you want to watch it again, but at the same time you’re afraid to because you’re worried it’s too familiar, and that watching it whilst you still remember it so well will render the experience inferior. I try to leave at least two years between viewings of flicks like this, but sometimes you inadvertently catch a bit on TV, which re-familiarises you with the film and pushes the process back.

SCIENCE VS RELIGION DONE BETTER

THAN ANY DAN BROWN ADAPTATION

Sometimes the best solution to this phenomenon is to watch the film with someone who’s never seen it before. Introducing one of your favourites to a new viewer lets you experience it through new eyes, and vicariously re-experience some of that first-time wonder.

So when I had the urge to watch Prince of Darkness again after a long gap, I did so with my girlfriend. She has stated many times that she ‘doesn’t like scary movies’, but hey – I’ve sat through Kate Hudson romcoms with her, which is a horrific experience for me, and aren’t relationships supposed to be about compromise?

HAPPY EASTER!

Anyway, I put the film on and we’re confronted by the prerequisite eerie John Carpenter opening (featuring his best horror score, after Halloween). My dearest gets into the atmosphere, as an elderly priest's death places an ancient key into Father Loomis's (Donald Pleasence) possession and he visits Victor Wong's physics professor for assistance. But things go downhill swiftly when the hero of the piece, Jameson Parker, struts onto the university campus. My first-time viewer is unconvinced of the protagonist's status as a grad student (Parker was 33 at the time) and, worse still, his full-on 80s moustache raises titters. I'm fearing that my promise to expose her to what I dubbed ‘one of the scariest movies ever’ is going to be laughed off.

Parker and his fellow science majors are summoned by Pleasence and Wong to a cavernous church, where they’ll spend the weekend investigating a mysterious vat of green liquid that looms in the building’s previously locked basement. Things are simmering away nicely, as the bafflingly convoluted backstory (the vat contains the devil’s son; Christ was really an alien; there’s been a church cover-up for centuries) mixes in with a religion vs science debate between the father and professor and the gradual build-up of unease brought on by the creepy vagrants who are gathering zombie-like in increasing hoards to stand around outside the church and stare at it. (‘Is that Alice Cooper?’, my beloved asks, rightly identifying the rock legend.)

I’m enjoying the movie, as is she, but it does seem rather tame, and a tad slow. But things soon kick up a notch: one character has a run in with the erstwhile dormant vat that leaves her demoniacally posessed; Cooper attacks a nerdy scientist in an alley; other members of the group start turning on each other; and (in my favourite moment) one bearded guy collapses into a pile of bugs, seconds after delivering the following in a demonic monotone: “I’ve got a message for you. You’re not going to like it: 'Pray for death.'”

ELEMENTS OF A SCARY/WEIRD MOVIE:

A HUGE GREEN TEST TUBE CANISTER THING…

... THAT DRIPS UPWARDS...

… AND IS AN IMPROMPTU DRINKING FOUNTAIN…

... THAT TURNS RATIONAL SCIENTISTS

INTO MURDEROUS DEVIL-WORSHIPPERS…

... AND CAUSES WORMS STICK TO WINDOWS...

… AND COMPUTERS TO DISPLAY OMINOUS TEXT…

… AND PEOPLE TO TURN INTO COCKROACHES…

… AND ALICE COOPER TO STAB A COMPUTER

TECHNICIAN TO DEATH WITH A BROKEN BICYCLE

Throughout these happenings, I gradually notice a change in my viewing partner. The quips about the dated fashions and hairdos die down, the giggles at the archaic computers stop, the shuffling and whines of ‘when is something going to happen?’ cease. And what replaces all this is a prone figure, staring wide-eyed at the screen, blanket pulled up tight, totally involved; the only movements are winces at the gruesome bits and a quick duck under the covers to avoid the scariest parts. And watching this, surpressing my smirk so as not to be mean, I remember how I felt the first time I watched it, more than fifteen years ago.

THIS IS A GREAT ENDING... TRUST ME

Because this is a scary movie. There’s no use in having a slow build-up if there’s no climax, but boy does Prince of Darkness deliver in its third act. Dawn approaches, and those who are still human hide out from their possessed colleagues as the shit really starts to make the fan's acquaintance, with the demon of the title deciding he wants break on through to our world, leading to a good vs evil face-off that notches the tension up to a near-unbearable level. You want high stakes? How about the end of the bloody world? And it all comes to a head with the best Carpenter ending; better, even, than The Thing. Phew!

Next time, I’ll put on The Shining. Well, I’ll wait for her to recover from this one first… ****1/2