AWN Blogs

The idea of the film grabbed me from the first moment I read about it and the film grabbed me from the first moment I started watching it. Directed by Robert Altman (GOSFORD PARK, MCCABE & MRS. MILLER) and starring Bud Cort (HAROLD AND MAUDE), the film follows Brewster McCloud (Cort), who lives in a bomb shelter in the Houston Astrodome as he sets out to create a pair of wings so that he can fly. For Altman, this film was his follow-up to M*A*S*H, which was a huge success. This film is the kind of pet project that a filmmaker gets to make only because he’s the hot guy on the block.

Helping out Brewster is his de-winged guardian angel Louise (Sally Kellerman, M*A*S*H). In the process of getting material and information for building the wings, Brewster and Louise get caught up in a string of murders. One of the deaths is Abraham Wright (Stacy Keach, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER), Brewster’s former employer, a vile landlord who makes the landlord in Chaplin's silent classic THE KID seem understanding. Wright was also a brother of two other brothers who may be of interest to someone who wants to build a pair of wings. The victims are always found with bird crap on them. The evidence against Brewster seems undeniable. But like everything in this film, nothing is as it seems.

Writer Lawrence Kasdan made his directing debut with this neo-noir film, which brought back the femme fatale to the big screen. The set-up is pretty standard, but the pay-off is what makes the film so great.

In the first scene, we meet low-brow lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt, THE ACCIDENTIAL TOURIST), who is a ladies man with stale lines that he even admits only work on women who haven’t been around too long. One night he meets Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner, ROMANCING THE STONE), who’s married and blows him off. They meet up again and soon enough are wrapped up in a sultry affair set to the humid summer temperature of southern Florida. Their affair heats up and talk begins about wanting Matty’s millionaire husband Edmund (Richard Crenna, FIRST BLOOD) dead.

In the opinion of many critics and film scholars Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER is one of, if not the best, Western ever made. It’s hard for me to say if it’s better than HIGH NOON, STAGE COACH, WILD BUNCH or THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, but it ranks up there with them.

Thomas Dunson (John Wayne, THE QUIET MAN) is a grizzled frontier man who leaves his wagon train and his woman to set up a ranch in Texas. After he sees the burning of the wagons in the far distance, he knows his love Fen (Coleen Gray, RIDING HIGH) is dead. Soon he encounters a boy, who survived the attack, named Matt Garth who has a cow. With Dunson’s bull and Matt’s cow, Dunson adopts the boy and starts their ranch. After 10 years, Dunson has built, by any means necessary, his ranch into the biggest in Texas.

The film is like a mirror opposite of DEAD POET’S SOCIETY. An unconventional teacher instills art and individualism in the students against the wishes of the school’s establishment. The differences are that MISS JEAN BRODIE takes place in a girl’s school and the film looks at the free-thinking teacher negatively.

In an Oscar winning performance, Maggie Smith (HARRY POTTER) plays Jean Brodie, a bohemian teacher whose personality brightens the room when she enters, but also singes the drapes as well. Each year, Brodie picks four girls to become her special “Brodie Girls,” which she tries to mold in an image that she feels fit. The students we meet are the dependable Sandy (Pamela Franklin, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE), the beautiful Jenny (Diane Grayson, BLIND TERROR), the emotional Monica (Shirley Steedman, 1970’s JANE ERYE) and the stutter Mary Macgregor (Jane Carr, TV’s DEAR JOHN).

The idea of a Sin Eater is fascinating. The devil, in some twisted screw you to God, allows sinners outside the Catholic Church to rid their sins and enter heaven by having a Sin Eater eat the person’s sins.

In the beginning of the film, we meet a priest named Dominic (Francesco Carnelutti, EXCELLENT CADAVERS), who is the leader of an ancient sect of Catholicism, which searches for knowledge of all things, especially the supernatural. They fight ghosts and demons as well as look for Sin Eaters. That’s when William Eden (Benno Furmann, MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA), a Sin Eater, comes to visit. Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU) and Thomas Garrett (Mark Addy, THE FULL MONTY) are the last of the Order and set out to find what happened to Dominic and where the Sin Eater is located. Along for the ride is escaped asylum patient Mara Sinclair (Shannyn Sossamon, THE RULES OF ATTRACTION), who has had a crush on Alex for years. Pulling the strings over Alex and Thomas’ mission is the Vatican’s liaison Driscoll (Peter Weller, ROBOCOP).

Based on a true story, this is the film that put the term Turkish Prison into the national vocabulary. Billy Hayes (Brad Davis, CHARIOTS OF FIRE) and his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle, PUPPET MASTER) are on a trip in Turkey. Unknown to Susan, Billy has decided to smuggle hashish out of the country to sell in the States. He gets caught at the airport and imprisoned.

In jail, Billy becomes friends with kind Swede Erich (Norbert Weisser, POLLOCK), drugged out British intellectual Max (John Hurt, THE ELEPHANT MAN) and angry American Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW). Billy and his friends have to endure unthinkable torture physically, mentally and sexually. Hamidou (Paul L. Smith, DUNE) is the harsh head guard of the prison and finds enjoyment in beating the prisoners. He’ll even come on his day off to beat prisoners with his two young boys in tow. The last scene with him opens up a whole new psychological dimension to the character who seemed simply cruel at first. Also a key person in the prison is Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli, JOHNNY STECCHINO), a prisoner who serves as a snitch to the guards and a supplier of tea and drugs to the prisoners.

In the wake of recent lawsuits filed against fast food chains claiming that the restaurants made the defendants obese, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock set out to see what the effects of eating McDonalds food for a month for breakfast, lunch and dinner would be. The stipulations of the experiment were that he couldn’t eat anything that wasn’t on the McDonalds menu, had to at least eat everything on the menu once and if he was asked to super size a meal he had to say yes.

He started out the diet very healthy at 185 lbs. and ended up 210 lbs by the end of the month. He had added on nearly 10 lbs. in the first week. Even surprising the doctors in the film, his liver began to fail. One doctor described the affects as the same as an alcoholic on a binge. Maybe the title of the film should have been LEAVING LAS MCDONALDS. He also experiences emotional and sexual problems as well as the feelings of junky who only feels better if he gets his sugar and fat high.

Not to be confused with the charming 1992 romantic comedy starring Jami Gertz, this film is director Kevin Smith’s first foray into more mature material that does not contain his famous characters Jay and Silent Bob. It’s a winning, heartfelt film that warms its audience over by dealing with conflicting emotions in a truthful way.

The film follows high-powered PR man Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck, GOOD WILL HUNTING) as he suffers the death of his wife (Jennifer Lopez, ANGEL EYES) forcing him to raise their daughter, Gertie (Raquel Castro, forthcoming LITTLE FUGITIVE), on his own. For Ollie, his fast paced life in the city is in total conflict with raising a child, so he enlists the help of his father (George Carlin, DOGMA). The film deals honestly with the issues of balancing work with family and the sacrifices we have to make when having kids.

This film is solid family entertainment that kind of looses its steam closer to the end. The start of this film is brilliant. The satire of Hollywood is dead on. Bugs Bunny is about to make a new picture, but Daffy Duck wants more respect. Warner Bros. exec Kate (Jenna Elfman, TV’s DARHMA & GREG) shows the other execs that Daffy isn’t as popular as Bugs in addition to being difficult. So she fires Daffy and recruits security guard/wanna-be stunt man DJ Drake (Brendan Fraser, GODS & MONSTERS) to kick Daffy off the studio lot.

The beginning is zany and truly captures the feel of the classic Looney Tunes. Director Joe Dante (GREMLINS) and animation director Eric Goldberg (FANTASIA/2000) have obvious respect for the source material unlike so many associated with the dreg that was SPACE JAM. The in-jokes fly fast and furious. Two of my favorite bits are Shaggy and Scooby confronting Matthew Lillard about his performance in SCOOBY-DOO and Fraser as DJ Drake commenting about Brendan Fraser in THE MUMMY movies.

Based on the famous Mexican novel, this film tries to capture the traditions of magical realism on film. Told by a narrator as a family legend, the story follows the love tale of Tita (Lumi Cavazos, BOTTLE ROCKET) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO). Pedro wants to marry Tita, but her mother Elena (Regina Torne, TV’s RIVALES POR ACCIDENTE) won’t let her because she is the youngest, and tradition states that she must take care of her mother until her mother dies. So as a way to stay close to Tita, Pedro agrees to marry Tita’s oldest sister Rosaura (Yareli Arizmendi, A DAY WITHOUT A MEXICAN).

At first, I hated the heated soap opera material this film presented. It was melodrama to the nth degree. However, once the magical realism kicked in, I found myself drawn in and captivated by the grand tale and the originality of the metaphors. I will always remember Tita’s quilt, her rose petal quail dinner, the cake she makes for her sister’s wedding and the story of the matches. These are the details that bring life to the melodrama.

It’s amazing that a film about the making of another film turns out better than the original film. SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG exploded into cinemas in 1971, starting on only two screens in the U.S. and becoming the highest grossing independent film of that year. Even more importantly, the film started the sub-genre of blaxploitation films. If there were no Sweetback; there wouldn’t have been a Super Fly or a Mack or even a Shaft.

Melvin Van Peebles will be remembered as the man who opened up America to a poor black man’s perspective as well as telling America that films with black heroes can be box office successes. And who better to tell Melvin’s story than his own son Mario.