The story begins with Joey’s birth and ends with his ascension to the stars like E.T. (note: some facts have been altered) and in between he goes through a harrowing journey in turnip farming, WWI, etc. His primary equine-human relationship is with a youth named Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who is there at his birth and later becomes his owner and trainer. Despite going way beyond anyone’s expectations in his indentured servitude, the purchase of non-plow-ready pretty boy Joey financially ruins the family, their lives are destroyed and they have to sell him for cheap to the army for even more cruel and unusual treatment by different noble, handsome Englishmen.

During his tenure as a war horse the ownership of Joey’s body, soul and dignity is transferred between the British army, the German army and a little French farm girl. So we briefly see the war from different perspectives and we see that the people on both sides and caught in the middle are all just people. They have different accents but they all conveniently speak English and all share a love of forcing this particular horse to nearly kill itself by carrying people around and dragging heavy metal equipment through rough terrain. So why do we have wars? We’re all the same.

What I heard about this movie that I thought sounded promising was that it was about “war as seen through the eyes of a horse.” What I should’ve realized is that that means through the emotionless, uncomprehending eyes of a horse. I mean jesus, we’ve seen a thousand movies about how man can’t comprehend war. What, is a horse gonna figure out a new angle where it makes more sense? Are his simple animal ways gonna solve a puzzle we’re overthinking? And then is he gonna stamp his foot in Morse code to explain it to us?

No, this horse doesn’t radiate any kind of intelligence or feeling. I get nothing. In his defense, he is a horse. He probly hasn’t gotten a chance to hone his skills on the stage or anything like that. In fact there is a play version of this and they used a puppet. Probly didn’t even let this guy audition. Nobody gives horses a chance.

I guess the play itself is based on a children’s book which is told in the point of view of the horse, giving him human words and thoughts. In the movie he doesn’t talk, so he’s just a horse. He doesn’t even get a part where there’s a girl horse and they flutter their eyes at each other because of love. He’s not so much a character as a mcmuffin, a thing that everybody’s trying to get because of its buttery English muffin bun. Yeah, he runs around, does a little horse parkour on the battlefield, but he doesn’t have much in the way of thoughts or emotions and not too many deliberate actions. He’s on a leash or in a barn, he’s auctioned off a couple times, sold a couple times, found and claimed a couple times, gets rescued. He’s a slave, used as a vehicle or a tool to pull cannons up a hill. Even in the hands of his true owner he’s forced to nearly kill himself plowing a field full of rocks. And he’s not the Cinque of beasts of burden. He never figures out how to say “Give us us free.”

By the way Joey also has a horse buddy that goes through alot of the adventures with him. Like Morgan Freeman in AMISTAD he adds his dignified presence but doesn’t get a huge amount to do.

I’ll say this about Joey, even if it doesn’t translate to film he’s clearly got alot of charisma. For some reason Albert’s dad willingly pisses off his landlord and sinks his whole farm to buy Joey, believing he’s not the type of horse he needs, just because “he’s something, isn’t he?” Albert knows as soon as he sees him that he’ll be “the one to save us,” only Mom sees him and immediately thinks he’ll be the end of them. When a guy in charge of war horses first sees him he’s so impressed by him that he’s sad that he has to use him for this purpose. The British captain loves this horse, so do the German soldiers that get him, and the little girl, and the two opposing soldiers that save him and then argue over who gets to keep him. Then the soldiers all come together to try to convince the doctor not to execute the horse. Yeah, sure, he’s dying, but he’s something!

Joey’s something all right. He’s lucky. Not wild desert horse lucky, but manages-to-survive-a-bunch-of-torment lucky, at least. He miraculously makes it through the horrors of WWI trench warfare, and then what does he do? Does he stop to reflect? No. While the soldiers ring a bell to commemorate the end of the war, and talk about how important it is to remember and appreciate all the brothers they’ve lost, Joey is in the barn eating hay like nothing happened. Because – and I cannot emphasis this enough – he is a horse.

The humans talk about Joey like he’s a hero for making it through that nightmare, like war is as profound an experience for him as for them. But is the horse gonna have PTSD? Actually, he might. I wouldn’t be surprised if animals could get that. I think I read something about pets being traumatized by Hurricane Katrina. But will he go to his grave with the guilt and shame of having taken lives, like Albert’s father does? No. He’s a horse. Even if he’d killed anybody I don’t think he’d give it another thought. He’d just eat more hay, later casually take a shit right where he’s standing, etc.

So I don’t have the connection to the horse that I think you’re supposed to have, and in fact having all the people linked by the horse kinda made it harder for me to relate to them, because their whole lives seem to revolve around a horse. What am I supposed to think about a kid who tries to enlist so he can go to war with his horse? One of the soldiers even seems creeped out by Albert’s emotional farewell to Joey before he’s old enough to go with him (it’s meant as a joke though because he suggests that it wouldn’t be weird if it was a dog).

Later Albert becomes a soldier and he carries a drawing of Joey that he looks at like it’s a picture of his girlfriend back at home. Some dick makes fun of him, asking if he’s gonna write a letter to his horse. I’m not sure if this is the case, but it makes it seem like the whole reason he’s in the military is to look for his horse. Come on kid, I know it’s sad that your dad gave away a horse you liked, but this is years later. You are just becoming a man. You are in a war zone. I’m pretty damn sure you’ve never been with a woman. You may very well die, and will definitely see your peers dying all around you. If you haven’t already taken human lives, you’re about to. That’s your job. And you know how your dad feels about what he did in his war, he won’t even talk about it. What I am saying to you is that if you’re still mooning about your pet horsey you’re a fucking idiot.

Yeah, I know, beautiful creatures, blah blah blah. A connection between a man and his steed. And not in a ZOO type of way. I get it. But Albert doesn’t know he’s in a movie about a horse. He should have, like, other shit that he thinks about sometimes. Girls. Baseball. Botany. Something. When the horse comes back into your life we’ll be happy for you. But you gotta have a life first.

So this presented a problem for me as a viewer. I can’t relate to the horse and then the humans aren’t in it enough for me to build a strong connection to them. So when one character who has come in contact with the horse returns unexpectedly later it’s a great turn of events but I feel like it doesn’t have as much impact as it should because that seemed like just one short chapter earlier and not a full emotional experience.

Despite all this I still kind of liked this movie because it really started to click with me in the last third or so. It started with that shot you’ve seen in the trailer where Joey is running through a huge battle, leaping over trenches and dodging bombs. The first part of the movie is an old-fashioned, heart-on-its-sleeve, Walt Disney Pictures type feel. But then it leaves the idyllic BABE-like farm (complete with comic relief goose) for the grey skies of hopeless combat. A BLACK STALLION type movie gives way to a harsher-than-expected PG-13 version of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN type battle scenes. But for the most part Spielberg doesn’t go for that Fubar/combat photographer style he popularized. The running scene especially has smooth pans through the gorgeously photographed horrors. It’s pretty enthralling.

There is a harrowing SPOILER moment when Joey starts to get tangled in barbed wire, and he’s dragging a bunch of shit and still hauling ass and I went from oh no, he’s in trouble to oh wait, it’s like the plow, he’s gonna get through this! to oh shit, that doesn’t look like CGI, how the fuck do they do that? And then I won’t say what it is but this leads to by far the most compelling sequence of the movie, which is not so much about the horse but about two humans from opposite sides of the war having an odd bonding experience. That, at least, is a classic scene.

I guess in a way WAR HORSE is an animal version of EMPIRE OF THE SUN. Like Jamie he’s not able to understand the uncontrollable forces at work around him. He just has to accept the shit life throws at him and try to, like, run through it really fast, and jump over some stuff. But we see what’s going on around him so we have a little more of an understanding of it than he does, and also are able to see what the different sides have in common. He doesn’t really worry about obtaining material possessions (unless you count hay) and doesn’t learn as much as Jamie, but he does manage to keep transporting Albert’s dad’s war pendant, so that’s sort of like his version of Jamie’s box of mementos or Victor in THE TERMINAL’s peanut can full of jazzman autographs.

Despite those similarities I’m very skeptical as to whether this horse will go on to the type of career Christian Bale has. I’d love to be proven wrong, but I doubt I will.

But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like.

Just like everybody always said, this is an extremely well made movie. But I also shoulda known it was important for me to watch as one of the key originators of our current low point in action filmatism. Much like JAWS accidentally unleashed decades of expensive summer movies this great sequence convinced a thousand lesser directors that if the camera isn’t steady the action is automatically more thrilling. Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski (COOL AS ICE [seriously, look it up]) shot the battle like a combat photographer, putting our point of view on shaky ground right in the thick of it. Bullets and shrapnel whiz by our ears, things explode all around us, at least once blood gets on the lens, acknowledging that we are watching this through a camera.

But of course this is Steven Spielberg, he’s a professional. He has pride. He’s not gonna just whip the thing around at random and pretend he was filming something good. Even while intentionally creating chaos he’s secretly being careful, maintaining the audience’s sense of geography. We feel like we need to stay on our toes to know what’s going on, but we do know what’s going on. The soldiers repeatedly use and discuss the meaning of the word “fubar,” so it’s only right that the style be called fubar style. But when Spielberg uses it it’s not beyond all recognition. It’s only when other people use it.

It’s also telling that even after the huge popularity of this scene Spielberg didn’t keep using the handheld style. For example WAR HORSE has big battle scenes (SPOILER) and they use the more traditionally Spielbergian smooth crane shots. He obviously considered it to be the right way to shoot this particular movie, not every action scene made for now on. I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding there, I hope it gets cleared up.

As great as the scene is I have to think I missed out on some of its power by seeing it all these years later after many imitators and hearing all about it. At the time it was considered so shocking they sent out warnings to the theaters, and there were reports of veterans not being able to handle it because they’d never seen their experience depicted as accurately (or as horrifyingly?) on screen. There are guts spilling and way too many people dying and shit, but I guess I’m desensitized.

What I really like about this sequence is the look on the face of Tom Hanks as everything goes south. It could’ve been some grizzled Tom Berenger type, and it would’ve made alot of sense, but putting Hanks in the role changes it. He’s not a traditional movie warrior, he has vulnerability. It makes sense when he says he’s a school teacher back at home. He’s a professional, he’s good at his job, he stays quiet until something needs to be said, and they all respect him for it. But also when he gets on that beach and sees human bodies exploding all around him – his men, that he led there – he looks horrified. He’s Tom Hanks, not Rambo.

Man, this cast is a real who-was-about-to-be-who of late ’90s Hollywood. I knew Vin Diesel was gonna be in there in his first not-directed-by-himself role – didn’t know what a big part it was, though. Matt Damon fresh off of GOOD WILL HUNTING. Paul Giamatti the year after he blew up in PRIVATE PARTS (he mainly did movies with “Private” in the title). Giovanni Ribisi before, uh, THE OTHER SISTER. Tom Sizemore before DTV and sex tapes. Did you know the wrong Private Ryan they find first is that guy Nathan Fillion that the internet loves? And I noticed Max Martini from REDBELT. And of course Jeremy Davies from Justified, Barry Pepper from THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA, Ed Burns, Adam Goldberg, Dennis Farina, Leland Orser (the guy who freaks out in ALIEN RESURRECTION), Harve Presnell, Bryan Cranston… even Ted Danson? Shit man, everybody’s in this movie. Unless they’re a woman, then they’re pretty much for sure not in it. Sorry ladies.

They put together a good group of characters and put them in an interesting situation. First we see the worst nightmare of combat, a total massacre. Then we find out how back home this poor woman has lost all but one of her sons. We see concern about this old lady somehow make its way through the bureaucracy to the top and become a mission: go find this Private Ryan dude and get him the fuck out of there in one piece for the sake of his poor mother. I mean they signed up for it and everything but we don’t want that on our consciences.

It’s a nice idea: war is hell, save this guy’s ass, this family has sacrificed enough, cut them a small break. But when the idea is actually put into motion it brings up alot of questions. What about these guys on the mission, what if a bunch of them die trying to save one guy? What about their mothers? And of course when they actually find him what do you think he’s gonna do, is he gonna want to go home? No, he’s there to fight. If his brothers have all died for the cause he has all the more reason to stubbornly keep going. So nobody’s exactly happy with this situation. There is some complaining, some arguing, some learning, some intense sniper attacks reminiscent of FULL METAL JACKET.

To me Davies has the most tragic character. He’s the one that hasn’t been burned by war yet. He holds onto his pre-war values. He has a sense of honor. Instead of killing an enemy soldier he lets him go, with the idea that his threat has been neutralized and it’s better to save a human life, and what if the tables were turned, what would he want to happen to himself. But then that’s the guy that ends up shooting Hanks. So this kid’s whole code is crushed. The lesson he learns is the same one that Diesel learned too late: don’t do “the decent thing” (in his case trying to carry a little girl to safety). So at the end this guy’s a total mess, his decency proven unsuitable for the world. He’s the one I want to see in the graveyard at the end, because what the hell happened to that poor guy?

You know, I I used to always confuse Jeremy Davies with Henry Thomas. It would’ve been kinda cool to see Elliott show up in other Spielberg pictures. Maybe Thomas turned it down so they decided to hire a lookalike and he turned out to be good. I don’t know that to be true but maybe I’ll go ahead and submit it to IMDB trivia.

Another missed opportunity for a Spielberg self-homage is when they talk about the same plane li’l Christian Bale was so excited about in EMPIRE OF THE SUN. “They’re Tankbusters, sir. P-51s.” Would it have killed ‘im to say “Cadillac of the Sky”?

I know some people think the wraparound scenes of elderly Private Ryan visiting the cemetery are corny, but it seemed to me like they make the movie’s point. Without those scenes it’s another story of things that happened a long time ago, removed from our lives. With them it connects “the war” to our everyday lives back home, the grey faded film stock to a sunny afternoon. It shows us how everybody that survives a war is a person with a life and a family.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is all about the horrible math of war: Miller tells himself that every man that dies under his command is being traded for more lives saved. And they worry that the Germans they don’t kill could go on to kill other Americans. Ryan is left his whole life worrying about whether he lived a life that justified that equation. And that also asks those of us who aren’t veterans to live lives that justify all those sacrifices. Shit, I gotta get going.

Like Jamie in EMPIRE OF THE SUN these are innocent people trapped in a complex set of conflicting rules put in place to explain an inherently wicked practice – society’s fancy way of convincing themselves that barbarism is civilized. Even the heroic abolitionist lawyers who defend the Africans (led by Matthew McConaughey as an 1800s version of the John Grisham brilliant underdog lawyer) are forced to discuss these human beings as “property,” looking through laws about possessions, slaves, treaties, all that shit. It’s like they’re not even people, it’s like they found a shipment of cigarettes or something and gotta decide who gets to keep them. And while these white people try to straighten that out the Africans have to sit there in the court room, not having any clue what’s going on because of the language barrier.

We were born just a hundred and change years later, and it’s unfathomable to us. It’s like fucking let them go. Give them free. But to the characters in the movie it’s a complicated case, an interesting debate. They enjoy arguing the minutia of it. The international slave trade is banned, but people born to slaves are still considered slaves. So they gotta argue about where these people were born to prove whether they’re free or if not who “owns” them. Is it the two surviving white guys on the boat, the 11 year-old Queen of Spain (Anna Paquin), the Americans who “salvaged” the boat?

Even if they’re free are they killers and mutineers? If they do let them go, is that gonna be that, or do they lock up the two guys for being slavers? These were all big serious arguments back then, and then the Van Beuren administration makes matters worse by trying to influence and interfere with the case in order to appease the li’l Queen and the South. Fuckin Van Beuren, man.

It’s a terrifying idea that this bratty kid, because she’s inherited the mantle of Queen by the laws and traditions of one country, has a say in the human rights of people all around the world. It’s kind of like now days how some of the world leaders gotta bite their tongue and try to be nice to the crazy dictators so they can try to negotiate deals and shit. Here it’s a little girl, shown jumping up and down on her bed in one part.

Since it’s mainly a court room drama AMISTAD isn’t nearly as exciting as SCHINDLER’S LIST. It’s powered mostly by the interesting situation and the Oscary performances by a cast of then and future A-listers, not as much on Spielberg’s potent filmatism. But a couple times the script by David Franzoni (JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH) does drop the speechifying and allow for classic image-based sequences that take place overseas. The opening Amistad uprising – kicked off by Cinque’s bloody fingers managing to pull a nail out of a plank on the ship – weirdly reminded me of the unseen first dinosaur in JURASSIC PARK. It’s dark and chaotic, an unexpected nightmare, not an action sequence. Later, the crisp Spielberg visual storytelling comes into play for a horrifying flashback from Cinque’s capture to his near-escape. As harrowing as the whole thing is, it also makes him seem like a great action hero. It’s a history lesson but it’s also a little CONAN. I not only wanted to see this guy escape, I wanted him to go on and have other adventures. In fact, that could be a great adventure movie, whether history-based or entirely fictional: a rousing epic about a badass that leads a slave uprising. I understand why people choose the Serious approach for this horrible era of our history, but if you can have a pulpy action hero who fights Nazis or the Klan or whatever we could use more that fight against slavers. (I guess/hope that’s sort of what Tarantino’s doing with his next one.)

Anyway, that great flashback scene starts as Cinque telling the story to the lawyers through an interpreter (Chiwetel Ejiofor!), when it ends it’s McConaughey telling it to the court. Economical storytelling for a movie that’s mostly dialogue.

Morgan Freeman plays Theodore Joadson, a colleague of McConaughey’s lawyer character. Of course he’s always good, and his presence creates a contrast between the slaves and the educated free black men that also existed at that time, and got to wear top hats and shit. It’s an interesting tension between Joadson and the people who are worse off than him, and also between him and the white men (including his friends) who can’t understand racism like he can. But at times he feels kind of like the token African-American character put in there just so it won’t seem like as much of an “Isn’t It Great What White People Did To Stop Racism?” type movie like THE HELP. He doesn’t get a huge amount to do, and since he’s a fictional character sometimes when he does have something to do (like finding a Mende translator in a clever way) it’s taking away credit from the people who really did it.

Anthony Hopkins is good and show-offy as John Quincy Adams, the weirdo ex-president, abolitionist and lawyer who McConaughey convinces to step out of his father’s shadow by getting involved in the case. His part is like Orson Welles in COMPULSION – mostly an epic court room speech. But the obvious acting highlight is Hounsou in his first major role. He doesn’t speak or understand English, so the whole movie is a struggle to communicate. The actors playing the Africans all do a good job of looking like they have no idea what’s being said, but he’s the one that figures out 3 words and tries to use them. He’s a compelling character because he’s a brave warrior in battle, he’s smart when he ends up in court, but he’s not some perfect noble hero. He can be belligerent. When he flips out you can see why these white people would be afraid of him. Better hope he doesn’t find a nail.

If you think about it Cinque is McConaughey’s E.T. He takes him in, dresses him up, draws a map in the dirt to try to ask him where he’s from. Everybody has to come together to save him from government custody and send him home. At the end he’s learned a couple words for a farewell message. I only wish he used some tradition African salve to heal a cut, and that Morgan Freeman said he didn’t like his feet.

(It should be noted that Hopkins’s Adams looks and moves more like E.T. than Cinque does, and shows a strong interest in botany.)

There’s a subplot about one of the Africans looking through a Bible all the time. He can’t read it but he likes the pictures and comes up with an interpretation of the story of Jesus and how it relates to their situation. He even looks up at the masts of boats and sees crosses. I wonder if he just sees a symbol of salvation or if he’s thinking that being chained up on a slave ship is like being nailed to a cross. The amount of stuff he’s able to figure out from the pictures is far-fetched, but it’s an interesting explanation for Christianity replacing the previous religions of many Africans. In fact, it wouldn’t seem so weird if it was reversed, a white man stranded in Africa deciding to learn and practice their religion. It would seem pretty enlightened, it wouldn’t seem like a sad denial of his own culture. I think that sort of happens in THE PHANTOM for example.

I always feel a little uncomfortable with these type of stories, it’s always gotta be the white people as the main characters. Good job, white people. But (like SCHINDLER’S LIST and its Jew-saving Nazi party member) it is an interesting episode in history that I never heard of before, and a legitimate example of people on the wrong side doing an extraordinary thing to help the right side. Cinque is a very memorable character with both physical and mental strength and it’s nice (even funny at times) to see the exchange between these two cultures. This might be Spielberg’s weakest historical drama, but it’s still a good and unique one.

Would you believe this was my first time seeing SCHINDLER’S LIST? It’s getting toward 20 years old and I remembered I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet. It’s kind of a heavy decision to make one day: hey, I got 3 hours before I gotta leave for work, maybe I should watch SCHINDLER’S LIST? Never had the urge I guess.

But recently I did just that and I gotta admit it didn’t bum me out as much as I expect, because it left me high on how good the movie was. It’s a great movie, and all the more impressive to watch right after HOOK. Spielberg must’ve felt real guilty about that one to follow it up with the JURASSIC PARK/SCHINDLER’S LIST one-two punch. And after years of avoidance I gotta say SCHINDLER’S LIST is not what I expected. Of course it’s really emotional, but it’s not at all a chore to watch. Is it bad to say that this is an entertaining movie?

It begins with Spielberg’s mastery of imagery. A candle dissolves into what looks like a smokestack – a horrific sight in a WWII movie, but as the camera pulls out – phew, it’s just a steam train. But oh shit, wait – trains are usually bad too! In this case it’s bad, but not as bad as I feared for a second there. It’s Polish Jews arriving at the Warsaw ghetto. The beginning of the horror. They don’t realize yet how bad it’s gonna get. (Later they even have discussions about it, and there are varying levels of optimism.)

Next we see a man getting ready for a night on the town. No face, just glamorous closeups of him putting on his watch and jewelry, his cufflinks, money clip, lighter. This is some suave motherfucker. Then the last thing you see is his swastika pin. Ah shit, cinema tricked us into thinking this guy was cool! Now we feel like assholes.

But of course it’s Liam DARKMAN Neeson as Oskar Schindler, future list-writer, current player, schmoozer and businessman. As the movie and war begin he’s hatching a scheme to buy a pot and pan factory and use it to become the king of black market goods. He finds a brilliant Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and convinces him to use his connections in the community to find investors and employees. In a way it kind of feels like a crime movie like GOODFELLAS, AMERICAN GANGSTER, KILL THE IRISHMAN or anything where you watch a charismatic outside-of-the-box-thinker ingeniously build an empire. Obviously the difference is he never feels like a bad guy or an anti-hero. He’s a criminal against the fuckin Nazi regime. He’s dealing in goods that are only black market because the place got invaded. It’s nice suits and stuff. ‘Cause he likes that stuff. Same thing Diddy would do.

So he’s a good guy, but he’s not exactly Superman or Robin Hood because the only reason he’s sheltering Jews is he thinks it’s “good for business.” Just a convenient part of his money-making scheme, more like a paying-illegal-immigrants-under-the-table type of deal than an intentional good deed. His accountant Stern (Ben Kingsley) is the one that starts claiming old amputees as essential workers to save their lives. But hey, the boss man doesn’t stop him. So he’s a good guy.

Man, what about that scene where Stern doesn’t have his work permit with him and gets put on a train, and Schindler has to threaten the soldiers in charge with getting them fired, then run along the side of the train yelling for Stern until he finds him? It’s an intense struggle to rescue an important man that’s ultimately gonna save hundreds of lives, but at the same time it’s so cold-hearted and uncomfortable – he’s looking past all these people who are gonna be put to their death, searching for the other guy to save. Sorry folks, just looking for my accountant.

Of course this and other experiences lead to a gradual awakening and eventually his activities do become completely about saving lives at great risk to himself. It’s not a business anymore, it’s a front. He even turns it into an ammunition factory for the war effort and then intentionally makes defective ammo. Straight up sabotage. He’s brilliant at justifying his actions with logic that will make sense to Nazis. For example he claims he needs children in his factory because their tiny fingers are the best way to polish the inside of .45 shells. Nazis are assholes, they must love child labor so he’s throwing it out there for them.

And in some sense he is Superman, because there’s something unrelatable about his specific type of heroism. Schindler is not an Everyman. We’re not in his position of power, and even if we were we can’t imagine ourselves ever encountering an evil on the level of the Holocaust. Still, what he does is relevant to any time, ’cause there’s always gonna be business people that could grow a conscience and some balls and use their resources and connections to try to do the right thing and make the world a better place. In some cases it might even be like Schindler at the beginning, it might be “good for business.” There could be profits in getting us off fossil fuels, in letting gay people have weddings, whatever. Or even if there’s not, still you can “Go home to your families as men, not murderers” for doing what you knew in your heart was right.

Ralph Fiennes as the Nazi commandant Goeth is a hell of character too. He’s an evil fucking bastard – some mornings he likes to go out on the porch shirtless and pick off random prisoners with a sniper rifle – but like Verhoeven did later in BLACK BOOK Spielberg dares to give him the monster a few human qualities. His lust for a Jewish woman makes him fantasize about running off with her after the war, and that in turn makes him stand up for Schindler when he gets in trouble for kissing a Jewish woman. It almost seems like they’re building a real friendship, but of course it’s more of a working relationship. Schindler’s gotta butter this guy up to get what he needs out of him, just like buying drinks for the officers in the opening scene. He’s gotta become sort of buddies so he can spray the train cars with hoses (to get much needed water to the prisoners) and make Goeth think it’s a funny, cruel trick. Ha ha, let’s spray ‘em with hoses.

This guy is one of history’s biggest monsters, but in his mind he’s just a hard-working joe who never catches a break. In one amazing scene he complains to Schindler about what a pain in the ass it was to build a concentration camp. I mean, have you ever worked with barbed wire? You don’t really think about how hard it is to string that shit up. It’s hard to imagine somebody being so oblivious to whine about something like that, but of course if somebody was gonna do it it would be the fuckin Nazis. Something felt really horribly true about that scene. I believed that he probly really felt that way.

SCHINDLER’S LIST is obviously a story about an exceptionally heroic operation, but I think it’s comforting just to know there were some people in Germany and Poland who tried to do something, didn’t just go along with the program. The Bad Germans, maybe you’d call them. I read that Adi Dassler of Adidas did a little bit of that, giving jobs in his factory to Jews in order to shield them. Obviously not on the same level as Schindler, but I wonder how widespread that was? It’s nice if alot of places were doing it. I mean, what do we sacrifice these days to try to make the world better? Maybe drive a Prius?

There are a hundred little details in the filmmaking that work brilliantly. In the opening, as hundreds of Jews are brought to the ghetto on trains, he starts to focus in on a bureaucrat’s preparations of pen and ink, so he can put their names on a list. Of course this is later reflected with the preparations of the titular list to save as many of them as possible. Another great early scene – one that feels very loose for Spielberg – has a bunch of Jews standing around talking about life in the ghetto, offering different opinions of it, because none of them really realize how bad it’s gonna get. I swear it’s like a Spike Lee scene, like Mother Sister or Da Mayor talking to Martin Lawrence and the other kids in DO THE RIGHT THING.

I don’t know specifically why Spielberg went with the black and white, but it’s perfect. When people use it now black and white can be very stylized, another step away from reality, and a way to emphasize shadows and contrasts, create a dreamy film noir type of atmosphere. That’s not what this is at all. This looks raw and real, like a newsreel maybe. Spielberg tried out more stripped down documentary type of camerawork, but not the kind where it shakes around and looks like crap. I guess he didn’t use cranes or steadicams and did almost half of it with handheld cameras, so it looks different from his other movies. I think subconsciously it feels a little more “real,” but without sacrificing his usual clear visual storytelling and energetic cuts.

Some day if somebody wants to humiliate me they could confront me with all the movies I have publicly admitted to crying at part of. And alright you assholes, you can add this one to the list. I gotta admit I was unprepared for the little epilogue at the end where real life surviving “Schindler Jews” visit his grave. I thought I was through the woods with my manhood intact and that fucker snuck up on me. It could’ve ended with the ol’ onscreen text telling you how many lives Schindler saved, but it takes the next step and makes you actually see real live people who would not exist if not for the events depicted in the movie. I mean, I thought Neeson was really good in DARKMAN too, but it didn’t end with actual saved lives.

Nothing against DARKMAN, I also like DARKMAN. Part 3 is pretty good too. SCHINDLER’S LIST is not very much like the DARKMANs in my opinion but I still recommend it highly.

This one’s about the pilots who dump the red stuff on forest fires, and the Tom Cruise of red-stuff-dumpers is former shark expert and Close Encounterer Richard Dreyfus. The Anthony Edwards is John Goodman and the Kelly McGillis is Holly Hunter. Actually, Dreyfus looks kinda like Paul Newman in this one, strutting around in aviators, leather jacket, baseball cap and grey mustache. The point is he thinks he’s awesome, and everybody else agrees. His girl seems to have when are we gonna settle down? type issues, but he makes her happy by buying her a nice dress, something you don’t see around the base much because she’s the only woman there.

There’s a constant wackiness in the movie that’s pretty grating. Goodman does things like drink a Twinkie with a straw or not notice that he shook hands with a guy covered in oil and then find six different ways to unknowingly rub it all over his face. Painfully contrived. The first section reminds me of other movies that glorify the blue collar workers of a specialized type of firefighting – specifically ON DEADLY GROUND and FIRESTORM – except everybody has a wiseass grin on their face. It tries to pull you into their world by sticking you in the middle of all their camaraderie and in-jokes.

But it also gets into some serious stuff. There’s something really true to life about the way the night rolls lazily from good times to serious talk and possible breakup. Hunter can’t live with the fear anymore of her guy dying, putting his life on the line to save trees. And he can’t believe she wants him to quit the one thing he loves, the one thing that makes him awesome, that earned him the right to wear the shades/mustache/hat combo.

I dare somebody to have this airbrushed on the side of their van.

I was glad I managed to watch this forgetting what it was gonna actually be about, so I’ll put a SPOILER WARNING here. I was surprised when Hunter rushed to the runway to tell him she loved him before he took off, and then he tried to tell her he loved her for the first time ever but she didn’t hear him over the engines. I was like oh shit, he’s gonna die? Is this a PSYCHO move, it’s gonna be about somebody else now? Well, not really. After he dies heroically he gets to come back to earth to inspire a young pilot (Brad Johnson). He’s invisible like Patrick Swayze but he speaks to him and plants ideas in his subconscious. He also gets to see his old friends.

Call me an old softie, but some of this emotional shit worked on me a little. It’s a nice idea from both directions – nice to think you might get to stick around and tie up loose threads after you bite it, and nice to think that your deceased loved ones and dead homiez are literally there with you giving you support and inspiration and you just don’t know it.

And then, this being a Spielberg movie, it manages to combine that with a thrilling action climax. Good flying and fire effects and a tense scene where all kinds of emotional business gets to be worked out: the girl getting to be the one to risk herself, the fire fighters getting to heroically save lives instead of just trees, him getting to tell her he loves her and also being able to leave her behind so she can live her own life while he goes off to less earthly ghostly duties like trying to kill Pac-Man or whatever.

Kinda odd that this is such a minor Spielberg – obviously not one of the greats, but not notorious like 1941 or HOOK or anything. Just one of the okay forgotten ones. The reason it’s odd is because it was kind of a dream project for Spielberg. It’s a remake of a 1943 movie called A GUY NAMED JOE which apparently he and Dreyfuss quoted all the time on the set of JAWS, and he put it on the TV in POLTERGEIST.

Spielberg didn’t write it though. Wikipedia says the script was started by Diane Thomas, a waitress who had pitched ROMANCING THE STONE to Michael Douglas one day when he was a customer. She had been promoted to writing the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK sequel when she died in a car accident in 1985. ALWAYS was finished by Jerry Belson, whose other credits include EVIL ROY SLADE and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II.

Spielberg bungles some of the comedy I think, but for the most part he directs the shit out of it and makes it way better than some Joe Johnston or somebody would’ve. He gives the characters gravity with the way he shoots them, he heightens the drama with the scary firefighting sequences.

I like Goodman in this too. He does that thing he did on Roseanne where he’s a goofball most of the time and then all the sudden you start noticing the serious undertones. He’s not only a loyal bud but turns out to be a really caring and supportive friend to Hunter after his buddy’s dead. It’s real sweet. In fact now that I think about it, Holly Hunter and Laurie Metcalf have always kind of reminded me of each other. Probly because of this:

And that’s almost the same relationship Goodman’s Dan had with Metcalf’s Jackie on Roseanne. Except without ever having had a thing for her. He’s such a good friend to her that he encourages her to see another, younger dude. He doesn’t try keep a manly loyalty to the dead guy or anything. He’s realistic about it. Life goes on. Always.

That’s kind of a dumb name. Fits the movie though. Pretty corny. I liked it though.

(I recommend playing those at the same time.)

“Excuse me everyone – I surrender!”

Wow – for some reason I never had any interest in EMPIRE OF THE SUN before. Turns out it’s great and sort of a beginning for alot of things. It’s Spielberg’s first WWII drama. One of Christian Bale’s first movies. The one that gave Ben Stiller the idea for TROPIC THUNDER. etc.
It’s a great story about a kid trapped in a conflict he could never understand – not just in the sense that war is incomprehensible, but also in the sense that his situation is fuckin complicated. In fact he spends an early chunk of the movie going around trying to surrender and everybody just laughs at him.

See, Bale plays this kid Jamie and he’s not an idealized kid, he’s kind of a little brat. His family is British but they live in a mansion in Shanghai, a city under the control of Japan. Colonists under occupation. They can tell something’s going on with the Japanese soldiers – that’s because they’re on standby because they’re about to attack Pearl Harbor (is this a prequel to 1941!?) and then the everyday conflict between China and Japan is gonna become much more serious.

Jamie’s family sides with the Chinese, because they feel like that’s their people, but the Chinese – being their maids and drivers and shit – don’t exactly side with them. Jamie likes the Japanese because he’s obsessed with airplanes and he thinks their Zeros are cool. To him the ominous signs of looming war are an exciting time, like a parade coming through town. I mean, what the hell does he know about war other than a list of the coolest planes and the romantic painting on the huge GONE WITH THE WIND billboard he walks past in town?

When the shit goes down Jamie gets separated from his parents – we don’t even know if they’re alive or not. Spielberg didn’t know that the key to box office gold was to have some bungling burglars come after him and he throws stuff at their testes, so instead the movie is about his struggle to survive through the war.

First he pulls an OMEGA MAN and lives in abandoned mansions scrounging canned food and candy. In one great scene he rides a bike through the house. It’s a joyful moment of rebellion and playfulness and at the same time kind of a scary sign that this kid might not be cut out to survive this situation. Does he understand how serious this is? No, he’s just a spoiled little boy. Well, he was. Not so spoiled anymore. Now it’s time for him to prove his salt.

Eventually he ends up in a series of internment camps, where he befriends Basie (John Malkovich), a resourceful survivor of questionable morals, plus other adults (Joe Pantoliano, Ben Stiller) and learns lessons about disease, ass-kissing, looting dead bodies, networking and protecting your stuff. He has to deal with sadistic generals, adults who’ve lost their minds under the stress, people trying to steal his stuff. Doesn’t ever have to do homework though, so that’s probly a plus for a kid I guess.

Jamie was just born into this. It’s not his fault his ancestors colonized this place, or that his family is rich. Give him some blame for bossing the maids around like they were Shane Hurlbut, but he’s too young to know better. He’s got nothing to do with any of this. He’s just a dumb little kid who loves airplanes. He builds a relationship with a Japanese kid on the other side of the barbed wire who plays with toy planes just like he does. We see glimpses of that kid’s life and how he wants nothing more than to fly one of those Zeros. How did they convince this kid that the best thing in the world would be a suicide mission? Well, Jamie would probly want the same thing in his shoes. Some higher up assholes set this machine in motion and kids like this don’t even know they’re getting crushed between the gears.

Basie teaches Jamie all about stuff: getting stuff, protecting stuff. He knows where all the top grade stuff is, so even when he gets out he’s all about driving around finding the best loot. He dresses like he’s in ROAD WARRIOR! Jamie has to learn for himself that there’s more to life than stuff.

It is also important to note that FIST OF LEGEND took place in the Shanghai International Settlement a few years before these events begin. It’s possible that little Jamie pranced condescendingly past Chen Zhen on the street at some point.

For about a year David Lean was gonna direct this, with Spielberg producing. Eventually Lean gave up and tagged in Spielberg, saying he was better at directing kids. Kinda similar to what happened with Kubrick and A.I. in a way. Sadly Lean only directed one more movie, the sequel ANOTHER STAKEOUT, before his death in 1991. (more trivia for you: I made that up, he didn’t direct any more movies, including that one.) The script was by Tom Stoppard, the playwright known for ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD as well as BRAZIL and of course that Craig Baxley movie starring Charlie Sheen as a fireman who snaps and instead of going on tour like Charlie did in real life he goes on a rampage.

Spielberg also got an uncredited rewrite out of Menno Meyjes (RICOCHET). It’s based on a book written by J.G. Ballard which was in turn partly based on a life lived by J.G. Ballard. He didn’t get separated from his parents, but did live in camps like that. I should’ve figured out it was semi-autobiographical ’cause the kid is always excited about words. Oh, writers.

I never read a J.G. Ballard but of course he’s the guy who wrote the book that became Cronenberg’s CRASH. Believe it or not this does have some parallels thanks to Jamie’s fetishistic love of airplanes. When he’s on that roof he yells about “touching” the plane by feeling its heat, about tasting it – “Oil and cordite!” A precursor to Deborah Kara Unger touching her nipples to a plane to get off.

This is a great story and it’s full of great moments, odd little occurrences that reflect the surreal unpredictability of war: little Jamie dressed as a pirate for a party stumbling into an entire platoon of soldiers hiding behind a hill. Accidentally amusing his captors by saluting their planes. Bewildering them by singing with a voice that seems like a dream inside a prison camp (a special skill he learned in the choir at school).

It also has some incredible effects and stunts involving the planes. When Jamie’s on the roof some pilots fly by really low and god damn if it doesn’t look real. If so I can’t believe Spielberg did that after what happened on THE TWILIGHT ZONE. But obviously they were more careful on this one.

Turns out Bale was a good child actor. Here he is playing children of privilege like Bruce Wayne and Patrick Bateman, but without having to learn an accent. I really think this experience probly helped form him into the actor he is now. His character has the intense focus and then he starts to crack under the pressure. I love that scene I already mentioned where he’s on the roof watching Allied bombers attack. He should be ducking for cover but instead he’s nerding out about the aircraft, yelling about the “P-51 – Cadillac of the sky!” When he’s reduced to just “HORSE POWER!!!” I think that’s the crazy Bale we know today.

It’s one of those movies that keeps you riveted and leaves you feeling exhausted at the end, you’ve been through so much. I mean, they’re not trying to kill him as much but it still reminded me a little bit of THE PIANIST. He goes through this whole ordeal and it’s a breath of fresh air when it’s finally over. You feel so good for him. Except he’s so young he’s kind of clueless about what’s going on around him. Spielberg has that reputation as some kind of saccharine, happy ending type of guy, which I don’t think is fair (except TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE and HOOK). This movie turns that accusation on its head.

That’s the best trick of the movie: it’s cleverly shown from Jamie’s naive perspective. He doesn’t always understand what’s going on, so the John Williams score doesn’t either. The best example of this is when he sees the atomic bomb blast but he thinks it’s a soul going up to Heaven. He watches in awe and the music acts like he’s watching E.T.’s space ship or something. The filmatism makes it look beautiful, and we know better, but the music doesn’t let on.

(Weirdly, Spielberg and Williams did a similar thing with a mushroom cloud in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but it was more of an action setpiece punchline in that one.)

(Have you guys checked that one out yet? I still think you would like it.)

EMPIRE OF THE SUN is a good one. I know it got good reviews and everything but if there is an under-appreciated Spielberg joint this might be it. It doesn’t come up that much after the huge success of the other two WWII movies he did, but it’s another really interesting and completely different perspective of the same worldwide catastrophe.

THE NATIVITY STORY is the movie version of the Nativity story, from the director of TWILIGHT, adapted from the book by God featuring Luke and Matthew. Academy Award nominee, whale rider and Queen Amidala successor Keisha Castle-Hughes plays Mary, the mother of Jesus. Some baby plays Jesus. I’m not sure if it’s a baby that has done anything else. It wasn’t a particularly memorable baby or anything. I mean, it was fine, I’m not criticizing the baby.

But of course this is mostly the story leading up to the birth of Jesus. Mary is just your typical Nazareth round-the-way girl, she says prayers and carries jugs of water around or whatever. Helps with the kids. Joseph is an older guy that has his eye on her, and in this culture it’s not considered pervy so her dad is cool with that. So why not? He gives her marriage to him. Joseph is played by Oscar Isaac, a great actor who I’m sure is about to blow up. He was great as the bad guy in SUCKER PUNCH and the husband in DRIVE and he brings a little bit of that menace to the initial Joseph scenes. Then you realize he’s a nice guy. That would be weird if Jesus’s dad was a total dick. Although I guess they’re not blood relatives, they don’t share any genetics. It’s more of a Papa Kent/Superman type of relationship.

Well, fuckin King Herod (played by the same guy that played Caesar in Rome) is being a dick. They don’t show this in the movie but I bet people are carrying around signs of him with a Hitler mustache. His soldiers are collecting taxes but the thing is they’re real wasteful with tax money, for example they take a guy’s goat and then say right in front of him that they’re gonna kill the goat ’cause they have too many already. Like everybody, Herod has heard this prophecy that’s been going around about God hooking up a new King. It makes Herod jealous so he’s snooping around trying to find the King to kill or maybe just ask him politely to leave or who knows. Meanwhile three “wisemen” – who are actually just astronomers who are picky about food and collect fancy hats – have also heard the prophecy and figured out which star to follow to find this king. Actually it’s 3 stars that are gonna look like they’re touching. They know what it is. They’re not dummies. I already said they’re wisemen.

I don’t know if Mary has heard about the prophecy per se, but she’s heard from no less an authority than a fucking angel that God is about to miraculously knock her up. It’s not like a guy with wings or John Travolta or anything but it’s a glowy guy that talks to her in a vision. Doesn’t seem that impressive but I think maybe if you actually experience it you can tell it’s legit, because she seems to trust it. She goes off without Joseph to stay with her cousin for a while and when she comes back everybody immediately notices the ol’ baby bump.

This is the fucked up part of the story that I never really thought about. Joseph looks at her with those angry Blue-from-SUCKER-PUNCH eyes and it’s like, holy shit, her story is so implausible. OF COURSE everybody thinks she went off and screwed some guy. I’m thinking it and I saw the damn angel with my own eyes. And this was a less enlightened age. I mean it’s technically the New Testament of course but it’s pre-Jesus so it’s almost like a post-script to the Old Testament in my opinion. They think this little girl is Joseph’s property and that he should throw her out like an empty printer cartridge. Actually, an empty printer cartridge might be able to be refilled, so the Mother of God’s status in this society is lower than an empty printer cartridge. Everybody, and I mean everybody, believes that the reasonable thing to do in this situation is angrily throw rocks at her until she dies.

Joseph even has a dream about it. He’s thinking it through. When he decides “No, I will not help an angry mob murder my wife and her unborn baby with rocks” they tell him “You have shown great mercy, Joseph.” That’s the kind of world they live in.

Luckily, Joseph gets one of those angel visions too. A skeptic might think it was a sympathy angel vision or a rationalizing angel vision, but we know how the story ends so we can buy it. Anyway he’s on board now, he’s okay being Papa Kent. But other people in Nazareth are dicks about it, they get all quiet and stop having fun when Mary and Joseph show up, they don’t want anything to do with them. This part of the story was later appropriated for secular Christmas celebrations in the form of not letting poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.

Meanwhile, the prophecy has something to do with Bethlehem, so Herod calls some kind of a census that requires people to go back to their hood of origin, which forces merciful Joseph to take his property Mary and head for Bethlehem. Wouldn’t you know it, she doesn’t look like it but she’s about to pop. So right when they get there he starts freaking out and trying to find a place to stay.

Actually the famous “no more room at the inn” aspect seemed a little short-changed to me in this movie. I thought they were supposed to be looking around all night trying to find a hotel and blowing it. In this version he spends about one minute knocking on doors before settling on a stable. I guess it’s just economic storytelling. But I wonder if they considered a montage? Get a hit song on the soundtrack.

Then she has the (SPOILER) baby (Jesus) and the wisemen and other visitors start showing up to pay their respects and give him baby shower type gifts like frankincense, etc. (this was before Elmo dolls).

I kind of felt sorry for the guy that let them use his stable. As far as I noticed they don’t show his reaction to all the people on his property but I bet he felt like that dude that rented his farm out for Woodstock. He didn’t charge them or anything, and he probly had to clean it all up himself to get his animals back in there. Actually there could be a whole separate movie about cleaning up the property I bet. I don’t know how animals feel about their joint smelling like frankincense and myrrh. I guess they’re probly not picky. And if they didn’t auction off the manger at least it was cool for pigs to eat slop out of where the savior to the humans was born. That’s a pretty big fuck you to the fucking humans, I bet.

I’m surprised they haven’t done a spin-off about the three wisemen. It could be some of that revisionist “actually, people forget but the 3 wisemen were the Indiana Jones of their time” type bullshit they do whenever they want to repackage an old literary character or historical figure. The wisemen would use astronomy to solve murder mysteries, and they would do martial arts and have some kind of early gun and other crazy inventions. And then they have to fight a vampire that’s gonna destroy the world with a doomsday device in a hot air balloon or something.

I don’t really like talking about religion anymore, I’ve come to think of it as a very personal thing. But even separated from any sort of faith or belief I think alot of the stories and ideas from different religions can be interesting or even beautiful just as stories. What I really dig about the Nativity story is the idea of this great “king” and “lord” who is so not-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth that his parents actually have to squat in some dude’s little animal shelter. It’s the most humble of origins. Probly smelled like donkey dung and pig piss, everybody’s got mud and hay and shit sticking to their feet and the tails of their robes, but it’s still beautiful, and kings have traveled from afar to check it out. They know where the happening parties are, the mainstream hasn’t caught up yet. Hopefully their exotic oils can cover up the smell.

And I never really thought about that the reason there was no room at the inn was because everybody and their non-virgin mother was coming back to Bethlehem because of this census thing. It’s like when there’s a convention in town, you better get your reservations early. Anyway the King was trying to stop this other king from coming to fruition but nothing was gonna stop him. Make her give birth in an outhouse, the trunk of a car, the hot dog machine at an AM PM, the plastic ball pit at Chuck E Cheese, it doesn’t matter. Jesus will be born anywhere. He’s not picky.

Not to be a Nativity nerd, but I got one complaint: the little drummer boy is not in this one. I don’t know, maybe he’s not considered canon but I think he is a good character, that would be a good nod to the fans by putting him in there.

This is a decent movie and I enjoyed watching it, but it’s nothing real revelatory (lukeandmatthewatory?). The filmatism is pretty straight forward and classical, though every once in a while there is some hand-held camera to modern things up, such as in the thrilling falling-off-a-donkey-in-the-water/snake-grabbing scene. It’s not much of a reinvention or recontextualization or ultimately lush version of the story. I think it was worth doing though just to have a better produced version of this to show in churches and on the Jesus channel at Christmas time.

Anyway, thanks everybody for reading my reviews, it means alot to me. I’m happy to have you all in my life as movie buds. I sincerely wish you all a merry Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, thing for Muslims, Buddhism, Hindu Spring Break, weekend, Life Day, Charlie Brown, or whatever you’re into.

We see all this through the eyes of Q (18-year-old Omar Epps in his first movie), basically a good kid and also a very talented DJ, just now getting some traction since he decided to enter a big DJ contest. His friends don’t even really support him in following that dream, but he does it anyway.

So you might think he should just say fuck those guys, but he has a loyalty to them and he feels the same frustrations they do, so in an act of stupidity he goes with them to do this robbery. Shoulda just stayed and hung out with Doctor Dre and Ed Lover at the contest, in my opinion. And Fab 5 Freddy was there too! Why would you just leave? There’s a great moment when Q is up behind the turntables in front of the crowd, in a post-triumph glow, and he looks out and sees his friends. They’re not even smiling for him because they’re there to pick him up for the robbery. That should’ve been the tip-off, though. These guys don’t even give a shit that you beat a bunch of legendary DJs your first time out. Fuck those guys.

Raheem (Khalil Kain) is complicated like Q is. He seems kind of like the big brother and the peacemaker. When Q and this other guy Bishop (played by 19-year-old Tupac Shakur in his first role other than the Digital Underground cameo in NOTHING BUT TROUBLE) keep sniping at each other it’s Raheem that tells them they have to “squash this” and forces them to talk it out. But he’s not exactly the conscience of the group either, because he really wants to do this robbery.

Bishop is the Mr. Blonde in their crew. He’s kind of a suspense-thriller encapsulation of Tupac’s later public persona: charismatic, funny, macho, crazy, dangerous. At first it seems like he’s just reckless and getting out of control, then you start to realize that no, he’s a straight up psychopath. The creepiest moment in the movie is when he goes to the family get-together after the funeral of the friend he shot to death. Q knows Bishop did it but the family doesn’t, so Bishop acts like a sweetheart, offering support and hugs to the mom and the sister while having a threatening staredown with Q over their shoulders.

Before that you can laugh at him a little bit. His loud enthusiasm for the Jimmy Cagney movie WHITE HEAT is pretty great. You’d expect him to be that into SCARFACE or something, but not an old film noir.

There are a few little things that mess with the otherwise gritty and down-to-earth feel of the movie. Samuel L. Jackson’s character seems to have a supernatural ability to know everything (there’s a joke about him already having heard on the streets that Q got into the DJ contest right as he walks out of the audition). There’s a really far-fetched scene where Raheem happens to walk into a restaurant and run into an old friend, who it turns out is about to rob the place and offers to let him join in. He politely declines and is able to just leave peacefully, only finding out later on the news that his friend got killed.

And there are some jokey little cameos, like EPMD are in the background of that restaurant  scene right after the kids shoplift a 12″ of their song “Rampage” featuring LL Cool J. Better yet there’s a scene where Jackson is talking to a buddy, and I didn’t realize it at first but the buddy is Oran “Juice” Jones. I knew he looked familiar, I think I must’ve seen him spying on me one time when I was walking in the rain with his girl. Anyway, you get it? His nickname is Juice. The movie is called JUICE. It’s hard to explain.

On the other hand I have to admit that one of the weird, less believable moments is one of my favorites. Q goes to a place where he’s heard he can get a gun. It’s not what you’d expect, it’s like a little diner club for older people, he doesn’t fit in it all. There’s a lady named Sweets (Jacqui Dickerson – maybe the director’s mom?) in charge, and she gives him the weapon because she recognizes him from when he was younger. “Tell your Mother Jacqui said hi,” she tells him.

I guess you don’t really hear about JUICE too much anymore. Probly even less so in Europe, since it was released there as ANGEL TOWN II, a sequel to an Oliver Gruner movie. But it turns out it holds up well, and it’s also interesting as an important piece in the puzzle of ’90s pop culture. It came out in January ‘92 – less than a year after NEW JACK CITY, BOYZ N THE HOOD and STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN, about a year and a half before MENACE II SOCIETY. Shakur wasn’t a superstar yet. He only had the mildly successful 2Pacalypse Now album under his belt, and was still just a spin-off from Digital Underground. I know some people in documentaries have said he got too into the role of Bishop and that’s what turned him from thoughtful political guy to “thug life” dude going around getting in arguments where everybody pulls guns out. I don’t know, but he’s really good in the movie. If you don’t understand his popularity from listening to his music, watching this movie might help. It’s not a “hey, I recognize this famous rapper” performance, it’s a “whoah, this guy should switch to acting” one.

The director is Ernest Dickerson, who started as a cinematographer on Spike Lee’s student film JOE’S BED-STUY BARBERSHOP: WE CUT HEADS. Then he did a couple movies like THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET and KRUSH GROOVE and 8 episodes of Tales From the Crypt before doing Lee’s first six movies, from SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT through MALCOLM X. With JUICE he switched over to director, but it later turned out he wasn’t gonna be the auteur type like Spike. If you ask me his first three were solid entertainment. JUICE was followed by SURVIVING THE GAME and TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT. Then some other stuff, then the Snoop Dogg horror vehicle BONES was kinda funny. Since ‘04 he’s been where all the journeymen directors go, TVland, directing shows including but not limited to Third Watch, Criminal Minds, CSI Miami, Heroes, 6 episodes of The Wire, Burn Notice, SGU Stargate Universe, Treme, The Walking Dead and Dexter. You know, Ernest Dickerson type shows.

But JUICE was good.

It’s a good time capsule too. They listen to their music on cassette tape. They shoplift from a record store – new releases on vinyl – that also rents movies on VHS. There’s an ABOVE THE LAW poster on the wall, and I mean the Steven Seagal movie, not the West Coast rap group. Q has a huge Malcolm X poster behind his turntables (the guy, not the movie) because young people didn’t have phones back then so they cared about stuff like that.

Queen Latifah plays the lady who runs the DJ contest, and this was when she was a current rapper. She still wore a big hat and everything.

Steel (Jermaine Hopkins) has an appreciation for older artists, though. In the record store scene he wants to steal the album Starbooty by Roy Ayers’ group Ubiquity, but nobody else is into it. I guess they’re kinda right, Starbooty is pretty disco. He coulda found something better.

The score is credited to Hank Shocklee and The Bomb Squad – that means the producers of Public Enemy’s early albums and Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, basically the greatest hip hop producers of all time if you ask me. The score is no It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, but it’s got some good beats for chase scenes and shit. Shocklee also helped out with some of the songs on the soundtrack. There are some good ones by Eric B and Rakim, Cypress Hill, EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, and that guy “Son of Bazerk” that the Bomb Squad produced that never caught on much.

Please enjoy the excellent theme song, “Juice (Know the Ledge)” by Eric B and Rakim.

And for tangentally-related extra credit here’s Ghostface Killah from his “More Fish” album, having the balls to do his own song over an entire instrumental from one of the greatest rappers of all time… and in my opinion actually pulling it off.

Further reading:
“Bringing the Noise to ‘Juice’: Sonic architect Hank Shocklee surveys the future radically and sees videos, merchandising tie-ins and even rap opera” from The L.A. Times, January 19, 1992.
“Juice fresh 20 years on” from The Guardian, September 29, 2011.

But there are no gangs of roving bandits or anything for these boys to deal with, so instead they just go to bars and try to meet girls. You should know that that’s what this is about, it’s an indie relationship drama. Woodrow meets Milly (Jessie Wiseman) when he competes against her in a cricket eating contest at a bar (you know how it is) and they end up on a date which turns into a spontaneous road trip to Texas to get meat loaf. Woodrow’s car Speedbiscuit has a tap in the dashboard that dispenses whisky – simultaneously his best and worst invention.

They drink constantly, say cute things, cuddle, he tries to be macho but gets punched in the face so hard it makes him puke, they laugh about it. When they come back to L.A. there are parties, conflicts, fights. He starts to turn into kind of an asshole. Every once in a while he goes out  with his overly forgiving best friend Aiden to test the blowtorch or shoot guns. When his life takes a dark turn Aiden tries to cheer him up by buying him a car and beginning to build it into there dream car, Medusa.

Like many men of this age group Woodrow and/or Glodell seem to think that growing a shaggy beard equals substance and an aura of mystery. So he grows a beard as the story goes on and he becomes more troubled. I think it’s supposed to make him look more badass when he turns angry and violent, but I don’t know about that. I’m just glad he’s not wearing one of those lady scarfs that men wear now, those look even worse with the beards. I heard an interview with Glodell and he seems like a real easygoing goofball, I suspect the broody hairy side in this movie is more of an act than the other part. He doesn’t seem to take himself as seriously as the character starts to.

The digital cinematography looks real nice. Apparently they jerry–rigged their own deal that used vintage camera parts along with the modern digital. The acting feels very natural (less so in a few of the later scenes where they flip out on each other – it probly just means the actors aren’t used to throwing hissy fits). The actors look like L.A. people, not Hollywood people. They seem real, and I like how my initial judgments of them didn’t really hold up. At first Aiden seemed like what they call ” a douche,” but he’s so loyal to Woodrow and so upbeat that you gotta like him. Also he gives Woodrow a (morally questionable) pep talk entirely based around the philosophy of Lord Humungus. His insistence on building the car is supposedly gonna prepare them for the apocalypse, but what it really does is prepare Woodrow for his own personal apocalypse. When things go south in his life and relationships he can always hop in Medusa and leave town.

These people are always drinking. Things don’t always stay happy and nice, but there’s never a “you drink too much” scene. It might just be that the filmatists don’t realize they drink too much, but I’ll take it as them being subtle and not rubbing your nose in it. You get it.

So I enjoyed this one. Any misgivings I had weren’t necessarily flaws in the movie, just more of a generation or cultural gap between me and the characters. I mean, how much time do I really want to spend with these dudes? And am I imagining it or do none of these characters ever once have to go to work or mention how they get their money to pay rent? They do that in alot of movies I guess but it sticks out more in something that looks and feels as naturalistic as this. It seems to have more of an obligation to be true to life.

“Bellflower” is the name of the street they live on. You see the street sign in one shot, and if I was supposed to understand why that is relevant in any way I sure didn’t take the hint. I honestly think they could’ve come up with a much better title, such as MEDUSA MY LOVE, DRIVE ME CRAZY, BEARDED JUSTICE, FIRECAR, RELATIONSHIP MASSACRE ON BELLFLOWER AVE., KILLCAR, KILLMOBILE, KILLDRIVER, DRIVEKILLER, THE BREAKUP 2: CARS or CARS 2: THE BREAKUP.

As far as independent relationship drama type shit this is a pretty good one, but I definitely hope Mr. Glodell chooses to use his unique talents for the betterment of mankind in the future, by which I mean making movies more about cars and fire than about heartache. I mean, he can do what he wants, but he’s a tinkerer, really building all these unique cars and weapons and cameras himself and to me that’s a hell of alot more interesting than what happens between him and his girlfriend. There are millions of people that can grow a beard and stare out a window, but not as many that could build Medusa and drive her around without blowing themselves up.

a) find religion or

b) get in touch with the earth or whatever.

The girl actually brings up the letter she got from her friend and how he lives in the woods and it’s awesome, which pisses off her boyfriend and they get in a big fight. The fight continues at a party and next thing you know she’s broken up with her boyfriend and heading to the friend’s Unabomber shack with her friend who newly-ex-boyfriend thinks is trying to get down her pants. They drive all night and stop in a small town and then stop at one of these small town general stores that you stop at in a movie before you go off into the woods and get yourself into trouble. The nice old guy that runs the store (Rudy Vallee, credited as “Special Guest Star” on the opening credits and “The Proprietor” on the end credits) sings them a song, tells them he’s a radio pioneer, gives them his favorite licorice from Culver City, begs them to not go into the woods and when they won’t listen tries to sell them a hunting knife for protection ($14.95). Definitely the best scene in the movie.

Okay, let’s stop here a moment and gather our thoughts. This is all pretty generic post FRIDAY THE 13TH slasher business. One thing that’s unusual is that The Proprietor plays the role of the crazy guy that warns the kids, like the drunk in the cemetery in TEXAS CHAIN SAW or Crazy Ralph in FRIDAY THE 13TH. But he’s not crazy or drunk, he’s just a nice old guy, so that’s a refreshing change. Another one is all that hippie dippie talk at the beginning. In most slasher movies the kids are going out to the woods to fuck around and have good time, drink beer and smoke weed, etc. Or at best they’re going there for a summer job, but will also try to fit in that other stuff. This is the only one I know of where they go up to the woods “looking for meaning.” It’s the part of the ’70s that still remembers the ’60s instead of the part that looks forward to the ’80s.

So there’s a couple good tweaks and we can see where the ol’ slasher formula is going: somebody’s gonna attack her in the woods, and there are a half dozen suspects:

1. the asshole ex-boyfriend
2. the old friend who lives in the woods, maybe he’s gone crazy from the isolation out there, or maybe he was crazy in the first place and that’s why he went out there and also why he lured her there with his letter. This theory seems especially plausible once we see him and realize he’s played by Robert Englund
3. this Bradley Cooper looking friend of hers, maybe the ex was right and he has ulterior motives and more
4. some other person that Rudy Vallee was trying to warn them about
5. Rudy Vallee, ’cause he went crazy after the age of radio ended
6. the bear that was snooping around their camp site

So this should be good, I’m up for this, this is the kind of thing I’m looking for. Kind of odd, though. There doesn’t seem to be much foreshadowing here, much tension being set up. For the first half of the movie there’s just lots of frolicking in the sun, hiking, skinnydipping, giggling. Which is normal for a slasher movie ’cause they have somebody get killed at the beginning so you know there’s a threat out there, and then there’s ominous music ironically undercutting the happy imagery. And some tension with the locals, who obviously don’t think they belong, and the kids trespass or offend them in some way. And if they don’t show a mysterious person spying on them from afar then they at least have shots from far away that seem like P.O.V. shots of somebody spying on them. A visual implication that they’re not alone.

But this movie has none of those things. Just kids having fun, and some pretty folk music. That’s weird, that’s not very FRIDAY THE 13TH.

You know what else is weird, this came out in 1975, that’s 5 years before FRIDAY THE 13TH, 3 years before HALLOWEEN, the next year after TEXAS CHAIN SAW. So come to think of it there wasn’t really a slasher movie formula existing at that time for this movie to be messing with.

Oh shit, why didn’t I see this before? There was something else odd about 2 seconds in, when the title came onscreen in a weird rectangle:

That’s ’cause it had to cover up the original title, which was SUNBURST. And SUNBURST doesn’t sound like a slasher movie because this isn’t a slasher movie. The cover looks like a great FRIDAY THE 13TH ripoff, but that must’ve been made much later to lure in suckers like me. If the actual movie was trying to rip anything off it was DELIVERANCE. Halfway through our couple are briefly menaced by two rednecks who run in and pin them down but chicken out before raping the girl. The next day the rednecks are arguing about whether or not to come back and try again when the one guy finds them and has a little scuffle with his small ax vs. the headband-wearing guy’s knife.

That’s about it. The girl cries for a long time. Robert Englund shows up and tries to comfort her by making tea out of some leaves he picked. He basically tells her to just get over it (but does not resort to “Come on lady, they didn’t even actually rape you, and your boyfriend here got way more of a beating and you don’t see him moping around.”)

Weirdly he lives out here in the middle of nowhere, miles away from any human life, these two rednecks seem to think they own the area because they talk about “poachers,” but he doesn’t know them and vice versa. He knows how they think though because when they run away he confidently states “They’re gone now. They won’t come back.”

I would not recommend this one to anybody. Whatever type of soul-searching philosophical romance it was supposed to be I don’t think it succeeds, and it’s even worse as a slasher movie. The one big thrill is when they wake up and a bear is there. I mean, nothing happens, but they filmed a real bear a few feet away from the real actors. That’s production value.

I’d like to think there’s some kind of subtext about race going on here, because Rudy Vallee talks about Amos ‘n Andy, and later the boy tells the girl “you look like you’re Al Jolson” when she gets berries on her face. I mean, it’s weird to have two separate references to blackface performers, isn’t it? But I don’t see any context where it could mean anything.

I didn’t notice that the girl’s friend was Anne Lockhart, who was also in YOUNG WARRIORS. One of the rednecks is played by James Keach, co-writer of the movie, brother of Stacy Keach and husband of Jane Seymour. Director James Polakof later directed BALBOA starring Tony Curtis. But not ROCKY BALBOA, he had nothing to do with that one.