I Am Legend (2007), The Omega Man (1971), The Last Man on Earth (1964)

How about three movies for the price of one? Why not? After all, they are all the same movie. The plot goes something like this: Earth is ravaged by a terrible plague that kills most of the planet's inhabitants. Those it doesn't kill, it turns into flesh-eating zombies who fear the sunlight. Only one man is immune to the plague - a doctor who struggles to find a cure for those who are already zombified. He lives in a fortified house to keep the zombies from eating him before he can come up with a cure for this dreadful disease. Eventually, he meets a young woman who appears to be immune also. They get real friendly, on account of the fact that neither of them has seen another human for a long time. Just as the doctor is completing his research, the zombies attack. He's killed in the attack, but not before he gives the serum that will cure humanity to the young woman and she escapes to the only known colony of uninfected humans. That's the story in a nutshell, but it's was good enough to persuade the powers that be in Hollywood to make it not once, but three times (well, four really, but the forth one is so bad that it's not worth mentioning here).

Vincent Price played the roll of Dr. Robert Morgan in Ubaldo Ragona's The Last Man on Earth, filmed in and around Eur, Rome. This version of the film is tame, almost laughably so, by today's standards, as the slow-moving zombies bump into the good doctor's house chanting his name. Not much scare there. Yet, the scene where Dr. Morgan tosses the dead bodies into the city dump and lights them on fire was considered so disturbing in 1967 that it was cut from the American release of the film. Boris Sagal's 1971 film The Omega Man stars Charlton Heston as Dr. Robert Neville, the lone survivor charging around LA, blasting zombies, while he searches for a cure in his fortified townhouse. This version is really the classic of the three, and a movie that cannot be much improved upon, except maybe for some better zombie makeup. And in 2007, Francis Lawrence gave us I Am Legend, starring Will Smith as Dr. Robert Neville, who spends his day cruising the streets of New York City with his dog Sam, looking for mutants and his nights in his fortified townhouse looking for a cure. Here the zombies have gone completely animal on us. They no longer think, they simply act aggressively, except perhaps for the leader who holds a slight grudge against Dr. Neville. But even he's only marginally smarter than the rest of the snarling, slobbering brood.

So why three versions of the same story? Cuz the folks in Hollywood don't have a lot of imagination, so they just keep rehashing the same stories again and again. All three movies are adaptations of Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. The Last Man on Earth is, however, not that great, and begged for a remake. It was a low budget film, shot in Italy, with bad make-up on grainy black and white film. Let's face it, brain-eating zombies didn't look all that menacing in movies back in the 1950s and 60s. They usually just put a lot of white pancake on the actors' faces, added a whole bunch of eyeliner, mussed up their hair and put them in shabby clothes. The Omega Man is the best of the lot. Its zombies are really just folks who've been turned into light-sensitive albinos by the plague, and they have it out for old Chuck cuz he's the one they think is responsible for it. These zombies are smart, they're organized, they have weapons, and they have a plan. Also, by 1971, Hollywood had become a little more aware of America's ethnic makeup, and the survivors - zombie and otherwise - were both black and white. This film was pretty radical for its time in that Lisa (Rosalind Cash), the uninfected woman who Heston's character gets jiggy with, is black. By 2007, Hollywood is definitely integrated, at least in the SciFi realm. In I Am Legend, Dr. Neville is played by a black man and Anna (Alice Braga) - the uninfected woman he finds - is played by an Hispanic, making it a much better representation of New York society. Special effects have also gotten more sophisticated (notice I didn't say better). The zombie hoards that Will Smith must contend with are computer animated monsters that move at lightning speed and possess near-superhuman strength. Sucks to fight zombies in the 21st Century, dude.

The Last Man in the World is rated G and is filmed in black and white.

The Omega Man is rated PG and is filmed in color.

I Am Legend is rated PG13 and is filmed in color.

One can only assume that the next version will be rated R and will be filmed in 3D. Oh the horror!

Ninotchka (1939)

France, prior to World War II. Three Russian bureaucrats - Iranoff (Sig Ruman), Buljanoff (Felix Bressart) and Kopalski (Alexander Granach) - arrive in Paris. Their mission? To raise money for the Soviet Union by selling jewelry confiscated during the revolution. Only one problem. The original owner of the jewels - the Countess Swana (Ina Claire) - is in Paris also. And she's not happy about the Soviet Union selling what used to be hers. She sends her friend Leon (Melvyn Douglass) to stop them. So he does. With a law suit. While they wait for the legal process to run its course, Leon introduces Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski to Parisian food, Parisian women and Parisian joi de vie. They're more than happy to wait on the Parisian legal system. But their boss, the cold and calculating Razinin (Bela Lugosi) is not so happy to wait. He sends Ninotchka (Greta Garbo), his best operative, to hurry the situation along. And here's where the movie really gets going. Ninotchka meets Leon by chance on the street. He becomes infatuated with her at once. "A Russian!" he says. "I love Russians." He follows her to the top of the Eiffel tower. There he suggests they return to his apartment. They make love - 1930s style - they talk, they embrace, the camera fades, you fill in the blanks. Then she discovers that he's the one who brought the law suit against the selling of the jewels. She quickly leaves. But Leon is not discouraged. He continues to pursue her. One day, he follows her to a little restaurant, where he attempts to amuse her. She's remains as stone faced as ever. Without any warning, his chair tips over and he crashes to the floor. Then the unthinkable happens - Garbo laughs.

Kids today might think this is no big deal. But in 1939? This was something to talk about. Garbo didn't laugh. She might smile. She might giggle - slightly. But she didn't laugh. Garbo was something that we simply do not have today. She was a screen presence. She was something ethereal, a person who didn't exist in the real world where mortals dwelt. She lived only on the silver screen in the darkened theater. She had a quality about her that is hard to define. It had always been there. She was already a legend when she made her fist talking movie, Anna Christie, in 1930. She remained a legend - and a mystery - until her death in 1990. She had many lovers, but never married. She was beloved by millions. When she died, France gave her a state funeral. On screen, she was matchless. She could show a panoply of emotions with the arch of one eye brow. Ninotchka was her first, and only, comedy. It was also her penultimate film. She was brilliant and funny, playing the foil for Melvyn Douglas, who was as humorous in his suave way as ever. Few actors have the ability to make you laugh just by standing there in a tuxedo. Douglas could. His face was so expressive that he could set an audience roaring with the twitch of his mouth. Of course, today we just don't get it. I guess we're too sophisticated. Now we have to have bathroom humor shoved into our faces in order to laugh. But 1939 was a simpler time.

Ninotchka was one of director Ernst Lubitcsh's three favorite movies. It's easy to see why. The film has a warmth to it, a kind of joy in it that doesn't appear often in movies. Every actor in the film is perfectly cast in their parts. The sets are gorgeous, the dialogue quick and witty, the screenplay brilliantly funny. Leon eventually wins the heart of Ninotchka. Then the jewels are sold, and Nonitchka, Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski are sent back to Moscow. Leon's plan to get Ninotchka back is both clever and hilarious. Hollywood was very good at turning out "screwball comedies" back in the 1930s and 40s. Somewhere along the way, they lost their touch. We are less fortunate today for that loss. But we still have the classics to fall back on. Ninotchka is one of the best.

Ninotchka is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white.

The Uninvited (1944)

Lewis Allen's The Uninvited is one of the best little horror stories ever filmed, and a movie that you'll be lucky if you ever get to see. Like Under the Tuscan Sun, it involves an old deserted estate, and the dream someone has of fixing it up and starting a new life in the country far from the strife of the city. There the similarity ends, however. Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) discover Windwood Manor, a beautiful old mansion sitting empty on the sea coast. This brother and sister duo decide to purchase the home immediately and make it their own. Only one problem. The house isn't quite as deserted as they thought it was. Two women died there in less than fortunate circumstances. One is Mary Meredith, cold-hearted wife of the artist Llewellyn Meredith. The other is his model, Carmel Casada. As Roderick and Pamela try to unravel the mystery of these two ghosts - the former cold and threatening, the latter sad and weeping - Roderick falls in love with Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), the daughter of Llewellyn. Stella is also the granddaughter of the man who sold them the house, Commander Beech (Donald Crisp). He forbids Stella from seeing Roderick or going near Windwood Manor, much to the dismay of the young lovers. When Stella does finally show up there, she's at first filled with intense happiness as she smells the fragrance of mimosa. Later, she's scared out of her wits by the cold, angry spirit. Determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, Roderick, Pamela, and Dr. Scott (Allan Napier) go to see Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), who was a dear friend of Meredith's. Eventually, the trio solves the mystery and exorcises all of the spirits from Windwood Manor for good. Roderick and Stella will be married, as will Dr. Scott and Pamella.

The Uninvited is a wonderful old spine tingler, a tale of an angry presence that threatens the life of a sweet young woman and a beneficent presence that seeks to check the other. It's a story of love and revenge, of hatred and control, of repressed emotions and lesbianism. Yes, you read that correctly. Like Rebecca, there's a strongly hinted relationship between the cold Mary Meredith and the creepy Miss Holloway. Of course, such things could never be said outright back in the forties, so they had to be implied. This film implies quite a lot, enough to say that something more was going on between these two twisted women. I say "twisted," because that is the only was that homosexuality and lesbianism could be shown back in 1944. If a character's gender preference was called into question, they were by default evil. It's just the way it was. Like all of the really good suspense stories of the forties, it's shot in a deliciously moody style, with lots of deep shadows, even during the daylight hours. Windwood Manor is a creepy old pile of bricks, with its long, winding staircase and the reflections from the ocean cast onto the walls and ceiling, much like in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. There are some wonderfully funny scenes when Roderick takes Stella sailing and promptly gets sick, and when Roderick and Pamela visit the sanitarium of Miss Holloway. Like Cruella deVille, "if she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will." Finally, there's the ghost itself. Mary Meredith's disembodied presence was rendered with a wonderful special effect that revealed only enough of her spirit to scare you, but not enough of it to let you "see the strings." I've seen this movie a dozen times, and I still get shivers up and down my spine when that ghost appears on screen. That's how well it was done.

The Uninvited is rated G and is available in creepy black and white. It's only available in this country on VHS. This wonderful thriller has never been released on DVD in the United States. Why? I dunno. You'll have to ask Paramount about that one.

Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)

Under the Tuscan Sun is a film about redemption, the story of one woman's attempt to craft a new life out of the shattered remains of an old one. Frances (Diane Lane) has it all. Great writing career. Nice house. Adoring husband. Wait a sec. Scratch that last one. Husband's not quite so adoring. He's seeing another woman. He wants a divorce. He wants the nice house too, and he gets it. Frances' life begins spiralling downward, until her lesbian friend Pati (Sandra Oh) gives her an all expense paid tour of Italy. It's a gay and lesbian tour. Lucky Frances. She goes anyway, just to get away from her depressing apartment. While there, she sees an aged villa, soaking in the Tuscan sun, with FOR SALE sign out front. Something about the villa strikes her. Maybe it's the way the sunlight seems so golden there. Maybe it's the olive trees. Who knows? Anyway, she orders the bus to stop, gets off, and buys the villa. Thus begins her new life in Italy. She starts renovating the crumbling villa with the aid of a local builder, Nino (Massimo Sarchielli), and three Polish immigrants: Zbignew (Sasa Vulicevic), Jersey (Valentine Pelka), and Pawel (Pawel Szajda). While the construction progresses, Frances searches for love. First she explores the notion with her realtor, Martini (Vincente Riotta), but he's in love with his wife. Then she has a wild fling with Marcello (Raoul Bova), something of a playboy and a ladies man. That doesn't work out too well either. While this is going on, Pati shows up on her doorstep eight months pregnant and deserted by her partner. Frances also plays matchmaker for the young Pawel and Nino's daughter, Chiara (Giulia Steigerwalt). All along she gets advice on loving and living from Katherine (Lindsey Duncan), a former actress and protegee of Fellini. Eventually, the house is finished, Pati's baby is born, Pawel and Chiara get married, and Frances has become a part of the village, deeply involved with the lives of the people she's come to call her friends. In the end, she too will find love, but only when she stops looking for it. When she waits for it to find her. It always does, doesn't it?

Audrey Wells' Under the Tuscan Sun, is a gorgeous, romantic movie that's just plain fun to watch. The scenery is breathtaking and the cinematography takes full advantage of it. Each and every scene is played out against the stunning backdrop of the Tuscan countryside and the coast of Amalfi. Watching this movie will make you dream of Italy, the hot sun beating down on the golden hills, the dark cypresses standing like sentinels over the villas and villages, the ancient churches, the collision of old world and post modern. It's all here as a cyclorama to the touching story of one lonely woman searching for meaning in her life. And then there's the food. Under the Tuscan Sun loves Italian cuisine the way that Chocolat loved, well, chocolate. And the acting is superb. The film is filled with wonderful characters, from the jittery Jersy to the kind-hearted Martini to the vivacious Katherine, with her joie de vie and her stream of lovers. Oh! But this is a delicious film, and one that slipped by most viewers at multiplexes. Under the Tuscan Sun is a quiet movie about slowing down and engaging with the people and the world around you. You cannot help but be happy as you watch life and love unfold before your eyes under the Tuscan sun. I'm betting you'll wanna be there too.

Under the Tuscan Sun is rated PG-13 and is filmed in glorious color to bring to life the Italian countryside.

Frankenstein (1931)

James Whale's 1931 masterpiece Frankenstein is another of those great, old movies, like Dracula, which has become so deeply ingrained into our society that I doubt there isn't a single person in this country who does not recognize the the film's iconic images. The star of Frankenstein's - Boris Karloff with his flat-top head and the bolts protruding from his neck - is easily one of the most recognizable figures in all of American popular culture. And yet, like Bela Lugosi's iconic film, very few people in this country have ever actually seen the original film version of this timeless story. In this regard, the 1931 Frankenstein is much like Herman Melville's Moby Dick - everybody knows what's it's about, but almost no one has actually read it (yes, in fact, I have). And that's really too bad too, because it's such a good movie. And it's the start of so much. The icon that a thousand other images were built on. It's not only a masterpiece; it's the master. The model. The mold for all that followed it, from the Hammer films of the sixties, to Andy Warhol's travesty, to Frankenberry. They all owe their existence to this film. Not to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly's novel of the same name. She never explains how the monster is made, and her monster is a very well-spoken creature, even though he learned to speak by listening to peasants. No, the images of the brooding, grunting, monster, the bolts of electricity coursing into the monster, bringing it to life, the ancient castles and tiny villages that resemble nothing in the real world, old or new, all of this comes to us directly from the mind of James Whale.

It all starts in a graveyard. The image of death brooding over the scene. Mourners filing away from the graveside. Two men appear. They rush to the fresh grave and start digging furiously. Next you see them cutting down the corpse of a criminal who was hanged on the highroad. You know who they are. Don't need me to fill you in on that one. It's Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and...no, not Igor...Fritz (Dwight Frye). Yeah, I know, Fritz kind of loses something in the translation doesn't it. Anyway, they get the body all sewed together, then Fritz is sent after a brain. Remember that wonderful scene in Young Frankenstein when Igor goes and steals the wrong brain? Mel Brooks copied that scene almost frame for frame from Whale's movie. Fritz gets the wrong brain. Dr. Frankenstein puts it into his creation. The rest, as they say, is movie history. The electrical storm comes. The lightning flashes. The machines are started up. Electricity flashes through the old watchtower. The monster lives. But he's not controllable. He's a mad man. He kills Fritz. Granted, Fritz had it coming to him. Tormented the poor creature constantly. Still, they'll have to destroy him. Victor's old teacher, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), will do the deed. But the monster's no dummy. He knows what's up. As Waldman prepares to destroy the monster, the monster kills him. Then he escapes. Who wouldn't. He kills a little girl by accident. Seems she didn't float as well as the flowers did. What a tragedy. The angry villagers go after the monster. Pitchforks and torches. We all know the scene. Victor finds him, and they struggle. The monster drags Victor into an old windmill, where they continue to fight. In the end, the monster throws Victor from the top of the windmill. The townspeople burn down the windmill and the monster is destroyed. At least until the sequel.

Frankenstein was filmed in black and white, obviously, on these wonderful sets that evoke the German expressionism of a decade earlier. Notice the wonderful watchtower with its angled stairway, its leaning walls, its crooked windows. The monster makeup by Jack P. Pierce has become so iconic that when you say the word Frankenstein, most people immediately picture Pierce's flat-topped, yellow skinned creation. The electrical equipment was designed by Ken Strickfaden, who doubled for Karloff while the electricity was playing about the monster's body. Yeah, they used a live person, not a dummy. This machinery is so tightly linked to the Frankenstein image that Mel Brooks used all of the same equipment - not reproductions but the very same pieces - in his spoof of Whale's film. Many of the shots and camera angles used in the film were cutting edge for their time, and later they became standard stuff. One of Whale's favorite camera techniques was to flow the action through walls, so he built his set so the camera could easily track the actors as they passed from one room to another. Sounds old-fashioned now. Then, it was state of the art stuff. Put all of this together, and you have one of the greatest movies that has ever come out of Hollywood. There have been lots of remakes and homages. Now of them can beat the original. Watch it yourself and find out.

Frankenstein is rated G, and is available in luscious black and white.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

The Hindenburg III glides silently above the streets of Manhattan. I kid you not. It docks at the Empire State Building. A nervous passenger has a package sent on ahead of him. Then the passenger vanishes, and a name is scratched off a list. Meanwhile, over at the Tribune, ace reporter Polly Perkins (Gwynneth Paltrow) gets a cryptic message to meet someone at Radio City Music Hall. She goes and meets an aged scientist who's terrified for his life. He will say only one name - Totenkoff. Before Polly can find out any more, New York is attacked by a horde of giant, flying robots. An immediate call goes out to Sky Captain, aka Joe Sullivan (Jude Law), who flies to the rescue in his own P-40 Flying Tiger. After dispatching several of the behemoths, he flies off to his secret base, where Polly is waiting for him. Seems they once had the thing going on that ended badly. As they are hashing out old times, the base is attacked by bat-shaped aircraft that flap their wings. Joe and Polly fly after them, shoot down several and finally escape by diving into the ocean in Joe's plane which promptly turns into a submarine. By the time they get back to Joe's base, the place has been destroyed and Joe's loyal side kick, Dex (Giovanni Ribisi), has been kidnapped. Polly and Joe, following clues left by Dex, fly to Nepal where they find Shangri La, then head out over the ocean in search of Totenkoff's secret base. When they get there, they find that Totenkoff (the very late Laurence Olivier) has been a very naughty boy indeed, and now the entire world is in danger. Folks, I repeat, I am not making this stuff up. Somebody else already did that for us. And they put it all into a movie called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Written and directed by Kerry Conran, Sky Captain is a loving homage to all of the movie serials of the 1930s and 40s - like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and The Undersea Kingdom - complete with mad scientists, robotic villains, secret bases, rocket ships and ray guns. The film was shot almost entirely against a blue screen background - only the actors were real, and the scenery and props were all added later digitally. This allowed Conran to create the New York that he wanted to, set in 1939, yet in some strange alternate universe, where the Nazis never came into power and where supersonic aircraft and ray guns were invented. It is a happy, mythical reality that begs us to forget the realities of history as we knew it and come along to a better place. The sub-title the World of Tomorrow is taken from the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, as do the Trylon and Persiphere that they find deep in the Himalayas. In Conran's hands, the World of Tomorrow envisioned in 1939 actually existed and much of the world of then never materialized. Would that it had been the case. The sepia tone of the film lends it an air of nostalgia, and the dim lighting and deep shadows bring to mind the lighting techniques of film noir. Unfortunately, it also lends the film a cartoon-like quality that takes away from its magical realism. Probably the film's most memorable performance is by the late Laurence Olivier. Conran took archival footage of Olivier and digitally manipulated it to speak the words he had in his script. In some sense, we truly are in the world of tomorrow if we can get dead actors to keep right on performing years after their demise.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is not going to be to everyone's liking. It's just too fantastical for some people, who apparently have a difficult time suspending their disbelief long enough to enjoy a good adventure yarn. The acting is a bit formal and stiff, much as it was in those old 30s and 40s serials, but after a while you really don't notice too much. Probably the most difficult part of the film to buy is Joe's airplane, which has the ability to fly at near supersonic speeds over unimaginable distances and, as an added bonus, turn itself into a submarine when needed. My favorite World-of-Tomorrow gadget - if you will - was the giant, hovering aircraft carrier. I've seen something similar in old Mechanix Illustrated magazines from that period. They dreamed of it then. Conran's dreaming of it still. We can too, thanks to his movie.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is rated PG-13, and it is available in sepia-toned color.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Nighttime. The California coast. A classy, Deco-style beach house. A man in a tuxedo Stands in front of a mirror, holding a cigarette. Shots ring out. He drops dead. A gun is thrown down beside him. A car speeds away into the fog. So begins Michael Curtiz's classic film Mildred Pierce. Based on the novel by James M. Caine, the film tells the story of a divorced woman who is willing to do just about anything to provide her worthless daughter with a comfortable lifestyle. Mildred (Joan Crawford) is a divorced mother of two daughters - sweet tomboy Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe) and her twisted older sister Veda (Ann Blythe). Veda wants every good thing that money can buy, without actually having to work for it herself of course. Veda is shocked when Mildred takes a job as a waitress and bakes pies and cakes at home for extra income, but not too shocked to spend the money. With the help of an old friend and realtor, Wally Fay (Jack Carson), Mildred opens her own chain of restaurants, which makes her quite wealthy. When she gets romantically involved with Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), a down-at-the-heels socialite, Veda is thrilled. Monte will give her access to the upper crust of society. You can probably see where all of this is heading. Veda tries it on with Monte, and Mildred catches them in flagrante dilecto. Mildred has a gun and the gun goes off, as guns do, and Monte falls down dead. Seems he's allergic to lead. Ah, but who made the gun go bang? That's the question. The police want to know. You probably do too, but I'm not telling.

Mildred Pierce is a wonderfully crafted piece of film noir, full of deep shadows and rainy streets. Numerous times the actors are completely blacked out, appearing as nothing more than silhouettes against a slightly lighter backdrop. Even the daytime scenes seem dense with shadows. The darkness limits our field of vision, forming the boundaries of the possible world, blocking off potential escape routes, and creating claustrophobic mood that heightens the tension and the desperation of the characters. Notice how the light and airy beach house becomes a labyrinth of shadows when the night rolls in. See how Curtiz barely lights the office of Inspector Peterson (Moroni Olsen). The scene where Mildred is waiting to be interviewed by the Inspector is one of my favorites. She sits in the echoing room in the middle of the night, the only sounds the ticking of the clock, the tapping of a typewriter, and the occasional rustle of a newspaper. Mildred's tension builds. So does ours. The buzzing of the intercom causes her to jump. I nearly jumped with it. I see now that HBO has done a remake of Mildred Piecrce starring Kate Winslett. I'm sure Winslett will be good, but she'll never be Crawford. And while the color ciematography is appropriately dark and moody, it cannot match the original with its velvety blacks and its all too numerous shades of gray.

Mildred Pierce is one of my all time favorite movies. It ranks right up there with Casablanca (also directed by Curtiz) and Citizen Kane. It's a early moral tale about how much overcompensating by parents who feel guilty about a broken home can damage children for life. At one point in the film Veda tells Mildred, "You made me what I am." She's right - partly. Mildred's obsession with having her daughters succeed didn't turn Veda into a heartless, social-climbing, money-grubbing monster. Kay, had she lived, wouldn't have turned out that way. Mildred only opened the door to that world. Veda ran through it with her eyes wide open.

Mildred Pierce is rated G and is available in moody black and white.

Captains Courageous (1937)

Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is a monster. Ten years old. Rich. Spoiled. Used to getting exactly what he demands. Lording his wealth over the rest of the kids in his class. A real pain in the keester. No one likes this kid (Didn't we all know a creep like this?). On an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic with his father, Harvey falls overboard. Of course, no one on the liner even misses the little brat. Fortunately for Harvey, he's fished out of the sea by Manuel (Spencer Tracy). Manuel - who is fishing from a small dory - works on a Gloucester schooner that's heading out to the fishing grounds for the season. When Manuel gets Harvey back to the schooner, Harvey tries to bribe Captain Disco Troop (Lionel Barrymore) to turn around and take him back to shore. But the captain refuses. His greater obligation is to his crew who's livelihood depends on the fish they catch this season. So, like it or not, Harvey is stuck on the schooner for the next six months. And since there are no passengers on a working fishing boat, Harvey has to work. For the first time in his life. He's not a happy camper. Harvey soon discovers that all of the shenanigans that he got away with back home and at school don't work work out here in the world of hard, no-nonsense working men. It's a tough lesson. It's a tough school. One wrong move out here, and you won't be going home. But Harvey's a tough kid, and Manuel is a patient teacher. In time, Harvey learns how to work with people rather than using them all the time. He sweats with the rest of the crew, bleeds with them, grieves with them. By the time the schooner gets back to Gloucester and Harvey's waiting father, he's a different person. He's one of the crew.

Filmed in 1937, Victor Flemming's Captains Courageous is another of those literary adaptations that utterly destroys the original story, but in this case it's all right. Since only about one in 10,000 Americans has ever read the original novel, it really doesn't matter. And it's such a good movie, that it stands solidly on its own feet. The cast is incredible: Spencer Tracy with curly hair, Lionel Barrymore in the last role before arthritis knocked him off his feet, Freddie Bartholomew in the only role in which he was ever allowed to play someone of less than impeccable character, Mickey Rooney as Captain Troop's good natured son, John Carradine as the surly Long Jack, and Melvyn Douglas as Freddie's tycoon father. This was the cream of Hollywood in its day. And this is a man's film all the way through. As someone else once said, it's the story of "wooden ships and the iron men that sailed them." All of the action centers around men and the boys who are becoming men with a suddenness that would shock us today, and they're all doing "manly" work under extremely harsh conditions. There's no mollycoddling of children in this story, nobody's worried that the boys are playing with sharp knives and big hooks, no one seems to care that these boys' lives are in danger almost every minute of the day. There's work to be done, and all hands to it.

You may read this and think to yourself that it sounds barbaric, disgusting and gross. But this isn't about our time. It's a movie about an earlier time. A harder time. A time when men struggled against the elements to wrest a living out of nature, a time when women worked the house and waited for the men to come home from the sea, and a time when children stopped being children when they were still only children. Captains Courageous pays tribute to all of the Gloucester fisherman who didn't come home from the sea, while telling a wonderful story about one boy's reformation in the harsh world of hard work and harder men. It's worth watching just because it's a really great story. It's worth watching because it has a really great message.

Captains Courageous is rated G and is available in glorious black and white.

Hatari (1962)

I think I was five years old when I first saw Howard Hawks' Hatari!. It was seared into my brain. Can't help it. That's what happens when you view things during your "formative years." They become a part of the pattern of your life, part of the lens through which you see the entire world for the rest of your life. There's a fancy epistemological term for that, but I can't recall what it is right now, and you probably don't care anyway. But it's tough to be a fan of this movie, because it's so un-PC today. After all, you got a bunch of white men charging around Africa capturing animals and shipping them back to zoos in Europe and America. That rankles a lot of peoples' knickers. I can't tell you how many scathing reviews I've read of Hatari!, one of which used the words "disgusting" and "gross" so many times that I simply stopped counting after a while. And you know what? They were right. It is disgusting to see these people capturing these animals, almost - but not quite - as disgusting as if they'd been shooting them. And then there are those 1950's attitudes toward women, who were all meant to be brainless little housewives. And of course, there is the overriding spectre of colonialization. What are all these white folks doing there anyway? They own the place, that's what. Why do they own it? Because they took it away form it's previous owners. How did they do that? They had bigger guns, duh!

But none of this makes me hate this movie. I still love it. It still retains the same fascination it held for me as a small boy. Because, once you get through all of the that stuff I just mentioned above (not an easy task, I realize) Hatari! is a funny, romantic adventure film. The plot is rather loose. Sean Mercer (John Wayne) and an international group of adventurers spend their days running around the African bush capturing wild animals and selling them to zoos and circuses in Europe and America. At the start of the film, the Indian (Bruce Cabot - the man who rescued Fay Wray from King Kong) is gored by a rhino. At the hospital, a young man named Chips (Gerard Blaine) gives the Indian a blood transfusion and is later hired to replace the Indian while he recovers. Then a female photographer, Anna Maria "Dallas" d'Allasandro (Elsa Martinelli), shows up to photograph the animal captures for the zoo that's buying them. What follows is lots of high-speed chases across the Savannah, evenings spent socializing around the campfire or back at the ranch house, a couple of romances, three baby elephants and a rocket. More than that I won't say; you'll just have to see for yourself.

Hatari! was shot largely on location in: Arusha National Park in what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania); on Ngongongare Farm, a hunting ranch owned by Hardy Kruger who plays Kurt Muller in the film; and in Nairobi, Kenya. Hawks didn't have a completed script when he began shooting, and it shows. There's not much of a coherent story line. There's the photographer whose there to document the captures; there's the push to collect all of the animals on their shopping list; there's the fear of catching rhinos; and there are a couple of love stories. But all of it just seems loosely joined together. Still it all fits given the setting, which is breathtaking to say the least. One interesting side note is that all of the scenes of the group chasing and capturing the animals were filmed using the real actors. No animal handlers were substitute. When the rhino escaped from them, it was real, and the actors had to recapture the rhino. Hawks felt it would be more realistic that way. Another piece of trivia is that all of the capture scenes had to be dubbed over, because John Wayne kept swearing. I'll just bet he did. All of this goes together, though, to make one fun movie. If you can drop your early 21st century proprieties for a while, you might find that you actually enjoy it.

Hatari! is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor.

Romance on the Range (1942)

Roy Rogers. That's right. You read it correctly. Roy Rogers. The King of the Cowboys. When I was a little kid in the early sixties, we would go to the theater on base every Saturday morning and watch Roy Rogers movies. We loved them. Back then, before the world came crashing in, we all wanted to grow up to be cowboys. Some of us still do. But as Paula Cole points out, the cowboys are all gone now. Roy Rogers is dead. Trigger is stuffed and in a museum. The Lone Ranger hung up his mask. And cowboy movies are a dying - if not already dead - species. But once they were Hollywood's bread and butter, and folks like Rogers were the master bakers.

Romance on the Range is standard Roy Rogers fare. The plot is almost identical to the plot of every other Roy Rogers movie. There are bad guys who are terrorizing the local farmers. Squeaky clean homeboy Roy Rogers shows up on the scene and immediately takes up the challenge to save the locals from the desperadoes. The bad guys are tricky, ruthless varmints, but Rogers is smarter than all of them. And he's good - ya can tell cuz he always wears the white hat. And in a Roy Rogers movie, good always triumphs over evil. And there's always a girl, young, pretty, who falls for Roy. She'll play hard to get at first, but Roy's down home goodness and charm will always win her over in the end. Oh, and of course there's singing. Lots of singing. In fact, I wondered at times how Roy and his trusty pals managed to get any work at all done on their ranch, given how much singing they were doing.

In Romance on the Range, the bad guys are stealing fur from traps and selling it. The dirty, rotten scoundrels! The traps are owned by the ranch that Roy and his pals - Gabby Hayes and the Sons of the Pioneers - work on. The ranch is owned by a young woman - Sally (Sally Payne) - who lives in New York City. Sally notices that the number of furs being sold has dropped suddenly and decides to go out in disguise to find out what's happening. She and Roy fall in love, but of course she plays hard to get. One night - oh, yeah, all night scenes are filmed in broad daylight and the film is darkened during development - the bad guys kill one of Roy's friends who happens to stumble across them. In time, and after many mishap - including Roy's arrest for rustling pelts - the bad guys are defeated and the ranch is saved.

Think all of this sounds really stupid? Well, it probably is, but who cares? Look, Romance on the Range is not a great movie. It's not even a really good movie. It was filmed on the same Western backlot and desert locales as just about every other Roy Rogers movie (I said to my wife, "Look! Those are the same rocks Roy climbed in Sons of the Pioneers). The dialog sounds like it was written by a twelve-year-old kid. And there are holes in the plot that are big enough to drive a covered wagon through. But none of that matters. Set all of that aside. These movies are fun. So put down your preconceptions and your notions about what a movie has to be. As Elton John once sang:

Roy Rogers is riding tonight
Returning to our silver screens
Comic book characters never grow old
Evergreen heroes whose stories were told
Oh, the great sequined cowboy who sings of the plains
Of roundups and rustlers and home on the range
Turn on the TV, shut out the lights
Roy Rogers is riding tonight.

Feeling stressed? Feeling down? Let yourself drift back to a more naive time when every little boy dreamed of being a cowboy and every little girl wanted to be Dale Evens. You may even find out that there's a little bit of cowboy still left in you.

Romance on the Range is rated G (of course) and is filmed in black and white.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

Worlds in collision? There's plenty of talk about that these days. Asteroids slamming into the Earth and destroying all life on the planet? Seen it on the Discovery Channel. But back in 1951? Not so much. Rudolph Mate's When Worlds Collide shoves it in the face of post-war America. Based on the 1933 novel by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer, the film posits the question of what we would do in the event that a planet were hurtling through space toward our beloved Earth. Well, in this case, there are actually two planets, the first of which misses the Earth and politely takes up orbit about our sun, providing hapless humanity with a place to escape to. So let's build giant space arks and jump onto the new world before the second planet strikes poor, old, doomed Earth. At least that's what Doctors Hendron (Larry Keating), Frye (Stephen Chase), Bronson (Hayden Rorke) and Ottinger (Sandro Giglio) want to do. But where to get the cash? Enter billionaire Sydney Stanton (John Hoyt), who will put up all the needed money, so long as he gets a seat on the rocket. Well okay, let's get this show on the road.

They buy an old military base and start collecting the best and the brightest minds in the country. And animals. And seeds for planting. And books and movies and music and so on and so forth. Soon the rocket is under construction - oh yeah, it's got fins - as the two rogue planets hurl themselves closer and closer every day. Into this mix lands Dave Randall (Richard Derr) a happy-go-lucky air courier who brought the proof of Earth's imminent destruction to our plucky scientists and stuck around to see what Dr. Hendron's daughter, Joyce (Barbara Rush) was doing later on. What she's doing is marrying her fiance', Dr. Tony Drake (Peter Hanson). The obligatory love triangle ensues. As the two men vie for Joyce's affections, they struggle to get the giant ship ready in time. Of course there is one teensy-weensy problem with the ark. It will only hold 300 people. These will be chosen by lottery from among the hand-picked workers who are building the rocket. As for the rest of the earth? Well, I guess they should have built their own rocket.

Interesting side note here: 300 people aren't enough to create a viable culture - you need 1,000 unrelated individuals to ensure that you don't end up with a totally inbred population in about 200 years. Another interesting side note: there are no minorities among the hand-picked best and brightest - no blacks, no Hispanics, no Asians - just good ol' college educated, white folks. Can you say racism? How about eugenics? But let's not get bogged down in these niggling details. There's work to do. Earth's about to be pulverized! So our pasty white folks gather their animals and their seeds and their WASP culture, load themselves into the space ship and take off at the last possible moment, heading off to the unknown world. Will it be habitable? But of course. It wouldn't dare not be.

You may be thinking by this point that I hate this film. Actually, it's one of my favorite movies. I love the image of the giant space ship being constructed under the ever-growing orb of the approaching planet. And the special effects of the devastation on Earth as the first planet passes by are iconic. The scenes of the flooded New York City were heavily mimicked in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow. Of course, the really crappy special effect of the two planets colliding is a let down. Even back in 1951, they could have done better than this. The film was produced by George Pal, who would also create such SciFi classics as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, Destination Moon, and Doc Savage. Well, maybe the last one wasn't such a classic. But this movie is, in spite of the fact that it is hopelessly rooted in its white male vision of society, a vision in which people of color simply don't exist. That's too bad too, and it's a problem I hope they rectify in the remake currently in production.

When Worlds Collide is rated G, and is filmed in widescreen Technicolor.

A Soldier's Story (1984)

Louisiana. 1942. Pearl Harbor has been attacked. American is at war. And on a lonely stretch of country road, a black man has been murdered. Shot. Problem is - he's a sergeant at the local Army post. This one won't get swept under the rug. The Army wants it investigated. They send down a new young lawyer, Captain Davenport (Howard E. Rollins, Jr.) from the JAG. He's black too. No one's ever met a black officer before. As you can imagine, this ruffles a few feathers, especially in Louisiana during the Jim Crow days. Trouble starts immediately. Captain Davenport isn't housed with the other officers. Instead, he's billeted in a deserted barracks on the other side of the base. The first of many insults. But Davenport keeps his cool. He needs to. He has a job to do...well, two jobs really. The first is to find out who murdered Sergeant Waters (Adolph Caeser), and the second is to be an example to everyone, proof that black people can be officers and gentlemen. Rollins is both. Most people think that Waters was killed by one of the local white people, but Davenport has other ideas. He doesn't question the townsfolk; he questions Waters' own men instead. As the film progresses, a portrait of Waters emerges and it ain't a pretty one. Waters was a bitter man, and man driven mad by prejudice and discrimination, a smart man constantly told that he wasn't good enough to go any higher, an Army sergeant constantly referred to as "boy." Slowly his resentment grew over the years, but that resentment wasn't directed at the white people who discriminated against him. Rather, Waters directs it towards his own race, especially towards those blacks that he feels make his race look bad, those who act subservient, those who step-n-fetch, those who lack the degree of gravitas which he feels he possesses. And so, he drives his men. And he torments those he feels aren't doing good enough, torments Private Smalls (David Harris) until he takes his own life. This makes another soldier, Private First Class Peterson (Denzel Washington), very angry. Angry enough to kill.

Based on the Pullitzer Prize winning play by Charles Fuller, Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story is one of the best movies about racism and its effects that I have ever seen. It portrays racism within the same race, something that results when one race is perpetually discriminated against by another. Blacks began thinking that if they could just be more "white," then whites would stop discriminating against them. This philosophy led some blacks who attempted to "assimilate" to start looking down on those who didn't. They saw them as weak and inferior. Saw them as holding back the race. Nonsense too, since the only ones holding blacks back were whites. But such is the power of racism. It twists the world into a new reality that in turn twists minds into something altogether new as well. And Sergeant Waters was one twisted man indeed, as he relates how he and his comrades once slit the throat of another black soldier who they felt had shamed their race. Waters felt that Private Smalls shamed his race too. Private Peterson feels that Waters isn't good enough to be black. Captain Davenport wonders who gave these two the right to decide who is and isn't good enough to be black. Smalls and Waters will be laid to rest in the Louisiana soil, but the effects of racism, the effects of slavery, will take a lot longer to lay to rest. But A Soldier's Story seems to hint that it will happen...some day, when the fighting is all over.

A Soldier's Story is rated PG.

The City of Lost Children (1995)

One (Ron Perlman) is a Russian whale hunter. Well, used to be. He can't do it anymore. Now he performs as a circus strong man. Breaks chains. That sort of thing. Denree (Joseph Luien) is his adopted little brother. All he does is eat. One night, someone stabs their manager. As they watch over their wounded friend, a group of strange men, each with one mechanical eye, attack them and steal Denree. One sets out in search of him through the twisting streets and alleyways of Marc Callo's and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's The City of Lost Children. Along the way, One meets Miette (Judith Vittet), a young orphan girl who agrees to help One finds his little brother. But their quest is not an easy one. There is danger everywhere. They are chased by the governess of the orphanage where Miette used to live, the evil Siamese twins, la Pieuvre (Genvieve Brunet and Odile Mallet) who use their wards to steal for them. They employ Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) who uses a trained flea and a secret serum to drive people into homicidal rages. The flea triggers one of the most wonderful chain-of-event sequences that I have ever seen in any movie. It's right out of a Warner Brothers cartoon. Anyway, One and Miette discover that Danree has been kidnapped by a secret group called the Cyclopes, blind men who have mechanical eyes installed in their heads. They kidnap children for the mysterious Krank (Daniel Amilfork), who can no longer dream, and so he exists on the dreams of children. One and Miette invade Krank's lair on an abandoned oil rig, rescue Danree and all of the other children, and leave as the rig is demolished by Krank's half-crazed father.

Okay, I'm gonna warn you right now. The City of Lost Children is not to everyone's taste. It's a quirky film whose plot mirrors the labyrinthine streets of the city in which it is set. But I love this movie. It's a visual feast, full of color, shadows, and textures. The sets are unbelievable. They're almost like a cartoon of reality, yet they're real sets, not computer animated fabrications, like in Sky Captain. Every scene is packed with crumbling brick and weathered wood, rain-slick cobble stones, rusted steel. It begs to be touched. You feel this movie more than watch it. You watch it more than listen to it. You listen because you cannot help yourself. The haunting musical score pulls you into this 1930s French port city, and you go along following the clues that will lead One and Miette back to Danree. I also love the relationship that forms between One and Miette, as he grows to care for this little girl who's on the cusp of adolescence. He carries her around when her shoes wear out, massages her feet when they get sore, warms her up when she gets cold. Don't go thinking bad thoughts now. It's all innocent. One may be over six feet tall and strong as an ox, but mentally he's a child himself. Miette takes care of him, just as much as he takes care of her. In the end, you know that One, Miette and Denree will be a happy family.

The City of Lost Children is rated R, and this gives me a great opportunity to rant and rave about the rating system in this country. There is absolutely no reason to give this film an R rating. There is no sex, and the only profanity used in the film is a word that every child over the age of ten has heard many times over. Yes, there is violence and some disturbing imagery, but it's far less than appeared in the PG-13 rated Lord of the Rings movies. My personal opinion is that the R rating was punitive, meant to reduce the number of teenagers who might otherwise have seen and enjoyed this exquisite French movie. Why this should be, I do not know. I only know that the R rating is completely undeserved.

Metropolis (1927)

You've all seen the images before. The city of the future, its monumental buildings that soar hundreds of stories into the air. Elevated highways along which people and cars move effortlessly. Clean people living in a clean world free from care and strife. Flying cars. Robots. And the dark secret under their feet. Every utopia has its ugly center hidden within its fluffy shell. Hoards of downtrodden workers, tired, hopeless, living in squalor, working the great machines that keep the city running. The Labor upon whose backs Capital lives. This is the city they thought we would be living in today. This is the future that never was. This is Fritz Lang's masterpiece, Metropolis.

Metropolis has existed on the periphery of my life since I was ten years old. That was the year that I discovered science fiction. That was the year that my uncle gave me a Jules Verne novel to read. That was the year I first saw such classics as The First Men in the Moon, Master of the Universe, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and many others. That was the year that my cousins introduced me to the SciFi and Horror fan mags. On their pages I first saw the iconic images from Metropolis, images that were seared into my consciousness. They became metaphors against which I judged the world about me. It is because of those images that I became a fan of science fiction. I wanted to see that movie. I was obsessed with seeing it. But these were the bad old days, prior to DVD, to VHS. The only way to see a film like Metropolis was to wait and hope that it would air on the Friday Night Creature Feature - after all, robots are creatures too. If you lived in a large enough city, you might be lucky enough to have it shown at an alternative movie house. Neither happened for me. I was in my mid-thirties before I was finally able to view it. I was transfixed from the moment it started until the last credit rolled. It's not often in life that the reality measures up to the expectation. Metropolis did just that.

What's the point of me summarizing the plot. You know it already. The cold and distant head of the government, seated in his lofty office high above the city, concerned only with efficiency; his naive and idealist son; the beautiful young woman who's intent on saving her people and who the son will undoubtedly fall in love with; the evil mad scientist who is bent on destroying every one's good time; the oppressed workers, too downtrodden to even raise their heads as they trudge to work on the great machines. And the robot. How can I leave out the robot, iconic image of an iconic film? She - yes, it's a girl robot - is the grandmother of C3PO and the centerpiece of the movie, almost its star. See her rise slowly from her throne and approach the distant head of the government. Watch in amazement as her metal body, wrapped in rings of electric power, is covered with flesh and transformed into a wicked likeness of the beautiful young woman. See how she uses her new body to destroy everyone in the great city.

Metropolis is the grandaddy of all science fiction movies. Have you seen Blade Runner? The Fifth Element? Dark City? The City of Lost Children? Star Wars? They all owe their existence to this movie, because they all copied it. In fact, it's fairly safe to say that ALL movies made since the release of Metropolis about futuristic cities derive their imagery from this film.


Sadly, Metropolis is also the most butchered movie in the history of cinema. First released in Germany at 210 minutes, it was hacked down on its American release to 114. That's 96 minutes of film gone. 144,000 frames of film. That's not editing. That's slaughter! The movie has not been seen in its entirety since then. In 2002, the Murnau Foundation released a restored version of the film with a 123 minute run-time, and title cards describing what the restorers thought was occurring in the missing sections. Then, in 2008 a nearly complete version of the film was discovered in an archive in Argentina. Unfortunately, the film was badly deteriorated. And it was 16mm. Still, restorers were able to create a new version, released in 2010 with a 145 minute run-time. Barring some miraculous discovery, this is probably the most complete version of Metropolis we will ever get to see.

Metropolis is rated G. Although the film has been lovingly restored, the quality of the film varies due to the level of deterioration of various segments.

I've Loved You So Long (2008)

Many movies deal with finding, arresting, trying and imprisoning murderers. Few movies deal with what happens to them when they get out of prison. Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long does just that. It picks up where the other movies leave off, when the offender is released. Kristen Scott Thomas portrays Juliette, a woman who has been in prison for the last fifteen years. Now she's being released. Her younger sister Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) picks her up at the prison and drives Juliette back to her house. Juliette doesn't seem overjoyed at the prospect, but she has no where else to go. Lea is nervous and vainly tries to make small talk. It's awkward. Lea lives with her husband, Luc (Serge Hazanavicius), her two adopted Vietnamese daughters, and Luc's father, Pappy Paul (Jean-Claude Arnaud). Luc is uneasy about having Juliette in their house. Pappy Paul doesn't speak anymore, but he seems to understand what's going on around him.

Juliette has committed an unpardonable crime. Even though she's served her time in prison, her sentence isn't over. Everybody knows what she did, and few are willing to forget it, or let her forget either. The only one who really seems to understand is her parole officer. The rest are a mixed bag. Some try to understand, but don't. Some don't even try. Lea wants to understand, but Juliette is loathe to explain. She had very good reasons for doing what she did, but they're hard to reveal. They talk around her crime, never quite about it. Slowly, cautiously, Juliette unfolds. It's not easy. Fifteen years in prison have taught her to keep her guard up. Now everyone expects her to drop it. But how do you break a fifteen-year-old habit? Eventually the truth will come out, but it's painful, arduous, like an extended labor that gives birth a new life. In this case, the new life is Juliette's. Yet she carries with her the memory of the life she took. That burden will always be with her. But in the end, we're left feeling that she'll be all right carrying it. Especially since she's letting Lea help her.

I've Loved You So Long is a touching, heartbreaking movie. Like many French films, it doesn't follow the conventions of American cinema. This is a gentle film about the consequences of a violent act on the lives of the people involved. Just when you are expecting the loud scene that would occur in a stateside production, the film goes off down a quieter path. When the secrets are all revealed, there is forgiveness, which can sometimes be harder to deal with than blame. As the haunted Juliette suddenly thrown back into the world of the living, Kristen Scott-Thomas seems almost brittle. You think she will shatter at any moment. Don't worry though. She won't.

I've Loved You So Long is rated PG-13 and is available either in French with English sub-titles or dubbed into English.