Soothing the Savage Beast

Music can have a palliative effect on humans. While it doesn’t address the actual pains or sickness a person is afflicted with, it can ease that pain or make the sickness recede so it’s manageable. Music lifts the soul so that we can overcome trials and tribulations. That aspect of music is on display in a small gem of a movie from Australia called The Sapphires.

Australia had its own shameful history of racial inequality that mirrored the United States, only their problem wasn’t with those brought there to be slaves, but rather with the people who inhabited Australia before the coming of white men – the Aborigines. The government in the 1950s classified the Aborigines not as people, but rather as flora and fauna. In effect, they were viewed as weeds to be eliminated. One of the most shameful activities the government indulged in was the kidnapping of children who could pass for white. They were taken from their families and educated in white ways.

 

The Sapphires is “based on a true story” – usually dangerous words, though at the end it shows the people on whom it was based, their later accomplishments, and an unusual connection between the film and the women portrayed.

In 1968, two Aboriginal sisters and a cousin, Gail (Deborah Mailman), Julie (Jessica Mauboy), and Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell), are living on a farming station in the Australian outback, though they dream of making music.  Julie is still a teenager, though she’s already had a child with one of the young men on the station.  Another boy there proposed to her, but ended up getting cold feet and breaking off the engagement.  They travel to the nearest town where there’s a talent contest taking place, and they’re clearly the best singers, but the contest is won by a pretty blond from town.

However, they meet Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd), a musician from Melbourne who recognizes their talent.  The girls usually sang country and western music, which amuses Lovelace.  “That’s fine, we all make mistakes,” he says.  “But here is what we learn from that mistake. Country and western music is about loss. Soul music is also about loss. But the difference is in country and western music, they’ve lost, they’ve given up and they are just all wining about it. In soul music they are struggling to get it back, they haven’t given up.”  Julie has found an advertisement for acts to entertain US servicemen in Vietnam, and on a dare from the girls, Dave arranges for an audition.

When they get to Melbourne, the girls look up their cousin Kay (Shari Sebbens).  When they were children, they always sang as a foursome, until the government came and took the fair-skinned Kay away.  Now she’s working in a hospital in Melbourne and is totally absorbed into the white culture.  (When she first appears, she’s hosting a Tupperware party for her friends.)  Kay decides to join the others again.  They have a lot of work to do.  Gail, the most outspoken of the group, has always sung lead, but Dave moves Julie into that role since she has the strongest voice.  Dave schools them in soul music, and their first endeavors are awkward, but slowly they learn how to perform.  When the audition takes place, they impress the Army representatives and are hired.  At first Vietnam is a dream for them, but eventually they are brutally brought to the reality that they’re in a war zone.

O’Dowd was a delight in Bridesmaids as the Canadian/American policeman Rhodes (he’s actually from Ireland originally).  Here he’s even better, carrying the film both as comic relief and romantic lead.  Jessica Mauboy was a runner-up on “Australian Idol” and has also appeared on the Australian versions of “The Voice” and “The X-Factor.”  Her singing is wonderful, but she also imbues Julie with a powerful feistiness, a woman who won’t be put down.  The person who steals the film, though, is Deborah Mailman.  As Dave points out, Gail is the mama bear who protects the others.  It’s a fierce performance that sticks in your memory.

The movie was filmed in both Australia and Vietnam, which adds to the authenticity.  The music featured is first-rate, and will set your toes a’tapping.  Made in 2012, Bob and Harvey Weinstein have imported it to the States, where it’s playing mostly in art houses.  If you get the chance to see it, it’s well worth your time.

 

Lighter Metal

Summer officially started last Thursday with the midnight release of Iron Man 3, the first blockbuster of the season.  The third movie in a series, particularly for superheroes, can be deadly – see Spider-Man 3 and X-men: The Last Stand (or better yet, don’t see them) – but it can also be a satisfying climax of the trilogy such as The Dark Knight Rises.  Happily, Iron Man 3 is an example of the latter.

A good measure of the credit goes to Shane Black, who moves into the director’s chair in place of Jon Favreau (who still appears as Happy).  Black also co-wrote the movie with Drew Pearce.  This was not a safe choice.  Twenty-five years ago Black wrote the original script for Lethal Weapon, which gave him a “characters created by” credit for the next three movies. He made a million-dollar payday with his next script, the self-indulgent and poorly received The Last Boy Scout.  His third script was the mega-flop Last Action Hero, and he followed that up with the forgettable The Long Kiss Goodnight.  (While it wasn’t his fault, the film took the “Krakatoa East of Java” Award when it put Canada on the New York side of Niagara Falls.)

In 2005, Black tried for a comeback with the twisty comedic mystery Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring a finally clean Robert Downey Jr., who was looking for some redemption of his own.  It’s a good movie, but it didn’t light up the box office.  Except for one short film done under a pseudonym, Black hadn’t written or directed anything in 8 years prior to Iron Man 3.  Apparently, he was saving up the good stuff.

The movie starts with a voice over as Tony Stark (Downey) relates how the story began to an unseen person (stay to the end of the credits, when a tag reveals who he’s talking to). On New Year’s Eve 1999, Stark attends a party in Switzerland where he has three fateful meetings.  This is the pre-Afghanistan, lecherous Stark who thinks everything is a joke.  The first meeting completes the circuit with the first movie as he meets his future cave companion Yinsen (Shaun Tomb).  He also meets the beautiful cellular botanist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and the physically-challenged scientist, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).  Stark cruelly blows off Killian to have a one-night stand with Hansen.  He’s gone when she awakens the next morning.

Fast forward to the present day.  Stark is not dealing well with the aftermath of the battle in New York City (chronicled in The Avengers) where he almost died.  He has a full-blown panic attack while out with Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle), and he can’t sleep.  His nocturnal hours are consumed with building a whole fleet of Iron Man suits.

A new threat arises in the form of an international terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) who’s conducting a series of terror bombings.  The now physically-perfect Killian has a meeting with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), whom he had known years earlier.  Killian and his assistant Savin (James Badge Dale) raise the suspicions of Happy, who follows Savin right into the middle of the newest Mandarin bombing.  Hansen reappears with a warning for Tony and Pepper about Killian, but the three of them are caught when the Mandarin stages an attack on Tony’s house.

Much of the appeal of the Iron Man series comes from Robert Downey Jr.’s acerbic and flawed Tony Stark. He can milk the comedy of the lines as he throws them away, yet he is also touchingly vulnerable, especially when it comes to Pepper Potts.  This time Paltrow gets more deeply involved in the physical action of the movie, and she handles it beautifully.

Guy Pearce is excellent as the suave, twisted Killian, who’s a worthy adversary for Iron Man.  Rebecca Hall builds on the work she did in The Town with the role of Hansen.  She has a face that pulls you in and holds your attention.  Black writes a much different version of The Mandarin from the character who battled Iron Man in the comics, and it’s a joy to watch Ben Kingsley act the role.

While the CGI effects are outstanding as always (the credits show it took a small army to create them), one scene later in the movie, done mostly with a professional skydiving team, shows there’s still a place for old school stunts.  Black shoots scenes so they keep the audience on the edge of their seats, yet will also throw in twists that keep them on their toes.  While it fully satisfies, there’s more of a sense of fun in this outing than in the previous movies.

Iron Man 3 posted the second strongest opening weekend ever, with nearly $175 million in domestic box office.  That’s also much stronger than the opening of both previous entries in the franchise.  While some of it is building momentum from the first two movies, it’s also a reward for the movie not playing it safe and giving us a retread of what’s been done before.  And that’s a reward for the audience.

The Courage To Change

Many times arts and sports have paved the way for change in this country.  Part of the reason Barack Obama could be elected president was the public had already seen Dennis Haysbert (“24”) and Morgan Freeman (Deep Impact) play that role on TV and in the movies.  One moment that changed the equality landscape for women was when Billie Jean King defeated the loudly chauvinist Bobby Riggs in tennis.  The fight for racial equality in the 1950s was brutal and violent, but the path had been if not smoothed at least tramped down a bit when Jackie Robinson slipped on his Brooklyn Dodger uniform with the number 42 and became the first black baseball player in the major leagues on April 15, 1947.  That historic change in the United States has now been beautifully captured in the movie 42.

In the fall of 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War.  Brooklyn Dodger owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) tells a couple of his executives that he’s decided to desegregate baseball.  When asked why, Rickey says that the money that blacks and whites use is all the same color – green.  (He’ll explain his motivation two more times in the course of the movie, with increasing honesty.)  To make his plan work, he needs a very special player.  They look through the roster of Negro League players, dismissing several (including Satchel Paige with the comment that he’s too old; Satchel would have the last laugh though).  Finally they come to Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), who was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs that year.

Robinson had been born in Georgia, though his mother moved the family to California when Jackie was still young.  He attended UCLA, where he was the first athlete to letter in football, track, basketball and baseball.  Financial concerns made him drop out of school, and instead he enlisted the Army, rising to the rank of second lieutenant.  His time in uniform was cut short when he faced a court martial because of incident of racial prejudice.  He eventually received an honorable discharge, and later joined the Monarchs.

Rickey brings Robinson to New York City where he explains his plan.  He says that he needs someone who won’t let the prejudice get to him because, regardless of the provocation, if the black player retaliated he’d be viewed as the one in the wrong.  It leads to this exchange which mirrors the historical record of the meeting: Jackie: You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?  Rickey: No, I want a player with the guts not to fight back.  Jackie: You give me a uniform, you give me a number on my back, I’ll give you the guts.

The contract with the Dodgers allows Robinson to propose to Rachel (Nichol Behaire), his long-time girlfriend.  They marry early in 1946, just before he reports to the training camp for the Dodgers minor league farm team in Montreal.  Unfortunately the camp is in Florida and the Robinsons are almost late for spring training because of prejudice they encounter in New Orleans, where Rachel, having been raised in California, encounters her first “Whites Only” bathroom.  Rickey arranges for black sports writer Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) to act as chauffeur, guide and mentor to Jackie.  The challenges on and off the field only increase as Jackie enters the big leagues the next year.

Chadwick Boseman had mostly worked in television on shows such as Brooklyn Heights, Castle, and Fringe, before getting the role of Jackie Robinson.  His performance is mesmerizing.  He captures Robinson as a real person, with fears and foibles but also courage and honor.  Nichol Behaire matches Boseman with both intensity and grace.  You feel what it must have been like for the real Robinsons, and you wonder how they persevered in the face of it all.

Just as Robinson broke barriers, so did Wendell Smith.  One excellent aspect of the movie is that he gets his due as well.  Holland is excellent in the role, and the scene where Wendell tells Rachel Robinson what Jackie means to him gives you goose bumps.  Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Rickey is a revelation.  After years in heroic leading man roles, 42 gives him a chance to shine as a character actor.  And shine he does.

The rest of the cast is just as stellar, including Christopher Meloni as Dodger manager Leo Durocher and Alan Tudyk as Phillies manager Ben Chapman.  Tudyk’s role calls on him to be a completely obnoxious example of racism.  He plays the role beautifully, which means he’s horrendous and hard to watch.  It’s especially strange to see him in such a role after his classic turn as the gentle pilot “Wash” Washburne, married to Gina Torres’ Zoe, on the series “Firefly.”

A pivotal role in the movie is Pee Wee Reese, played by Lucas Black.  Reese was the acknowledge star of the Dodgers, who had to face down his own prejudices when Jackie joined the club.  Director and screenwriter Brian Helgelund uses him in a sense to stand in for baseball on the whole and its coming to grips with the change brought about by Robinson.

One would not think of Helgelund first as the one to make this movie.  He came to prominence adapting L.A. Confidential, and later he did the scripts for movies such as Mystic River, Man on Fire and Green Zone.  He’d only directed a couple of movies, all that he also scripted, such as Payback and A Knight’s Tale.  (On Payback he’d fought with star Mel Gibson, who was producing the movie; Gibson ended up firing him and finishing the directing himself.)  Here, though, he shows a strong visual style and marshals the story so it’s both compelling and thrilling.  Especially good is the action on the field, since he captures the feel of the game, such as what it’s like to face a major league pitcher.

Special kudos to the visual effects department for recreating the era, including Ebbets Field, as well as to the costume department.  This is a finely detailed film, which adds to its evocation of the time.

This is not an easy film to watch, though, since it doesn’t shy away from presenting racism as it was then, deeply ingrained in the nation’s psyche.  A friend had wondered whether it would be appropriate to take children to see this movie.  My answer would be, this is a movie that every young person in this country should see, and older people as well.  Recently there have been incidents that show the racism of the 1940s still lies beneath the surface in this country.  But just as Jackie Robinson broke through prejudice at that time, 42 exposes how prejudice diminishes all who practice it, and the beauty that can be seen when prejudice is overcome.

Spared No Expense

Jurassic Park was a watershed moment for the movie industry since it was the first movie to have a majority of its special effects be computer-generated.  Now the movie that proved the power of that technology has been re-released in Digital 3-D, and it is as wonderful as it was 20 years ago when it was first released.

The movie began as a “by the way” moment.  In 1990, author Michael Crichton had met with producer/director Steven Spielberg about a project they were considering doing together, which later on became the hit TV show “E.R.”  Crichton mentioned in passing that Spielberg might be interested in the book he was currently writing.  Ever since “The Andromeda Strain” in 1969, Crichton had made a career out of taking current science and pushing it a little farther along, then crafting a thriller around that speculation.  Now he told Spielberg he was working on a story about cloning dinosaurs.

The book became a bestseller, but even before it was released the movie studios were fighting with each other to get the film rights.  James Cameron, Richard Donner (the Lethal Weapon series), and even Tim Burton were in the running to make the movie for different studios, but Universal Pictures, where Spielberg had his Amblin’ production company, won the rights.

At first Spielberg planned to use a combination of models crafted by the legendary Stan Winston as well as stop-motion animation by Paul Tippett (RoboCop).  Stop-motion was the venerable special effects method, used since silent pictures.  It was the technology special effects master Ray Harryhausen used to create his magic in movies such as The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad, It Came From Beneath The Sea, and 20 Million Miles To Earth.  Harryhausen’s final special effects extravaganza was the original Clash of the Titans in 1981.

A few years later digital effects came along, thanks to Industrial Light and Magic.  It was fitting that its first use was in a Spielberg production: 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes, where a knight in a stain glass window comes to life.  James Cameron used digital effects in The Abyss (1989) to create the water tentacle.  That technology was refined and used for the T-1000 liquid metal robot in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).  Still, at that time the common impression of digital effects was that it was what you saw at a video arcade.

Originally, digital effects were planned for one scene, where the T-Rex chases the stampeding Gallimimus (a name that actually means “chicken mimic”). Dennis Muren of ILM, who’d done the T-1000 effects, contacted Spielberg when they had a very rough version of the footage.  When the filmmaker and his production team saw test strip, they were completely blown away by it.  Spielberg decided to gamble on the new technology to replace the stop-motion footage.  Paul Tippett remained on the film as a choreographer of the dinosaurs’ movements, and his efforts helped give the individual dinosaurs personalities.  One other innovation was that this was the first movie to use DTS digital sound.

The screenplay for the film was done by Crichton, who done original screenplays such as Westworld as well as adapting novels like Coma for the screen.  Crichton had also directed both of those movies, among others.  To help Crichton, Spielberg chose screenwriter David Koepp.  Koepp had done the screenplay for Death Becomes Her, and he went on to write Mission: Impossible, War of the Worlds, Spider-man and Angels & Demons.

The casting of the movie is excellent, though Spielberg and casting directors Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshenson made choices that were unusual at the time.  Sir Richard Attenborough (John Hammond) had begun his career in front of the camera in movies such as Brighton Rock and The Great Escape, but had given that up to direct.  In 1983 he won both Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Gandhi, which he produced and directed.  He hadn’t appeared in front of the cameras since The Human Factor in 1979.  Laura Dern (Dr. Ellie Sattler) was an indy princess, appearing in off-beat movies like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart.  Sam Neil (Dr. Alan Grant) had started out in the Australian film industry with roles in films like My Brilliant Career.  He’d survived an early brush with Hollywood (Omen III: The Final Conflict) to do good supporting work in A Cry In The Dark, Dead Calm, and The Hunt for Red October, but he wasn’t someone you’d think of as an action hero.  His other major role in 1993 was as Holy Hunter’s demanding husband in The Piano.

Probably the most logical choice at the time was the idiosyncratic Jeff Goldblum as chaostician Ian Malcolm.  Bob Peck (game warden Robert Muldoon) had mostly worked in England on stage and television.  He did the lead role of Robert Craven in the six-part BBC series Edge of Darkness that was later adapted for the big screen with Mel Gibson in the Craven role.  Sadly, Peck died of cancer in 1999, at the age of 53.  After a decade of small supporting roles, Wayne Knight had graduated to larger roles in Dead Again and Basic Instinct, and he’d just started appearing as Jerry Seinfeld’s nemesis Newman.  With his performance as computer programmer Nedry, he solidified his position as one of the go-to supporting actors of this generation.

Like Knight, Samuel L. Jackson had paid his dues in small roles (with credits like “Gang Member #2” and “Black Guy”).  He’d also begun getting larger roles leading up to Jurassic, such as Jack Ryan’s friend Robby in Patriot Games, though he’d have to wait a year to jump to being a leading man in major pictures with his mesmerizing role as Jules in Pulp Fiction.  Joseph Mazzello, who played Hammond’s grandson Tim, had done a little work before, and had auditioned for a role in Spielberg’s Hook.  He lost that role, but Spielberg promised to get him into another movie, which turned out to be Jurassic Park.  Mazzello has continued acting, recently appearing in this season of “Justified” as a snake-handling preacher, and he’s also in G.I. Joe: Retaliation this summer.  Ariana Richards, as his sister Lex, was well-experienced in film, having done movies such as Prancer and Tremors.  Her audition consisted mainly of screaming.  When Spielberg later reviewed the audition tapes at home, Richards’ scream woke Spielberg’s wife Kate Capshaw from a nap and made her check on their children.

One piece of casting was actually done by Michael Crichton.  In the book, Hammond tells his guests that they hired award-winning actor Richard Kiley to do the narration for the ride.  So for the film version, Spielberg hired Kiley as the narrator.  This has happened one more time in movie history, with the Swedish film version of The Girl Who Played With Fire.  Stieg Larsson had used a real boxer as one of the characters in his novel, and the boxer then portrayed himself in the movie.

The exteriors of the park, including the helicopter approach, were filmed on the island of Kauai.  On the last day of filming reality mirrored fiction, though the reality was much more intense.  In the film a tropical storm hits Jurassic Park while Nedry has disengaged the security fences and headed to the boat.  In the production’s case, Kauai was hit by Hurricane Iniki, a record-setting storm for the Hawaiian Islands.

The production was finished in L.A., including the T-Rex’s attack on the jeeps.  For that sequence, a mix of digital effects and animatronics was used.  Stan Winston’s creature workshop created a T. Rex that was over thirty feet long and almost twenty feet high.  When the T.Rex crashed down on the Plexiglas roof of the jeep holding Tim and Lex, that was Winston’s creation.  Winston also created the sick Triceratops featured early in the film.

Amazingly, considering the north of $200 million budgets of blockbusters these days, Jurassic Park had a budget of under $70 million.  It was released under the old model of a limited number of theaters which then slowly expanded.  In comparison to the $100 million plus openings of major pictures these days, Jurassic Park had an opening weekend box office of $15 million, but that was on fewer screens – and it was playing to sold-out theaters with lines snaking around the block.  In the end, the movie had a worldwide gross within spitting distance of a billion dollars, and was the highest grossing movie until Titanic sailed into theaters four and a half years later.  The 3-D re-release brought in nearly $20 million in its first weekend.  It has a real shot at breaking through the billion dollar level.  The film was also a marketing success with the Jurassic Park logo adorning lunch boxes, backpacks, and all manner of items.  This marketing was gently lampooned in the film, with scenes of the souvenir shop at the headquarters of the park.

The conversion to 3-D actually enhances the film.  Spielberg’s visual narrative made use of 3-D angles, such as when Drs. Grant and Sattler along with Tim and Lex try to escape from the raptors in the ceiling of the main building, only to have the raptors leap at them.  Seeing a raptor flying directly toward the audience was bad enough in 2-D.  In 3-D it’s better than much of what you see in films these days that are shot specifically in the process.  Some of Stan Winston’s work now looks dated, such as the brontosaurus making friends with Grant and the kids (and sneezing on Lex).  But overall the movie is just as intense – and awe-inspiring – as it was when it first played twenty years ago.

These days all of the special effects would have been done digitally.  But it took Jurassic Park to truly open the world of digital film effects and forever change how films are made.   

Bigger, Better Boom

Every once in a while Hollywood repeats itself in the same year by putting out movies with similar plots.  In 1997, volcanos were hot (pun intended) with Dante’s Peak and Volcano.  Neither one was great, though Volcano did have one of the best tag lines ever: “The coast is toast.”  The next year it was giant asteroids with Armageddon and Deep Impact.  This year it’s terrorist attacks on the White House.  Later this summer White House Down starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx will be released.  The first movie out of the gate, though, is Olympus Has Fallen.

The movie begins with a Christmastime prelude.  President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is in residence at Camp David, along with his wife Margaret (Ashley Judd) and his son Connor (Finley Jacobson).  The Secret Service agent in charge of their protection, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), is a friend to the Ashers, especially Connor.  While driving to a fundraiser for the President’s upcoming reelection, an accident puts both the President and the First Lady in peril.  Banning reacts properly, saving the president, but is unable to protect the First Lady.

Fast forward eighteen months.  It’s the day after Independence Day and Asher, who has won reelection, is preparing to greet the President of South Korea.  Banning has been banished from the White House to a desk job at Treasury, assisting the head of the Secret Service, Lynn Jacobs (Angela Bassett).  Banning’s wife Leah (Radha Mitchell), who works as a doctor in a DC hospital emergency room, knows how much he’s haunted by that night and tries to be supportive.

Shortly after the South Korean president arrives, a Lockheed AC-130 violates the restricted DC airspace.  Two jets sent up to investigate are shot down by the plane’s Gatling guns.  It shoots up the White House and the streets surrounding it before it’s finally shot down.  Banning has run from his office during the strafing, getting civilians out of the line of fire.   During the assault the Secret Service has moved the president and cabinet members, along with the South Korean delegation, into the secure crisis room below the White House.  It briefly appears the attack is over, but then North Korean commandos disguised as tourists launch a ground attack.  Banning takes out some of the commandos and makes his way into the White House.  The commandos, though, have superior firepower including heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.  Before you can say “Yippee kay yeah, mother****,” they manage to neutralize all the Secret Service agents except for Banning.  At the same time, several members of the South Korean delegation reveal themselves to be North Korean agents and take control of the White House bunker.

Yes, it’s Die Hard at the White House, though with a much bigger bang.  First-time screenwriters Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt have actually come up with an assault scenario that holds water, and then they keep twists coming with the story.  Interestingly, the choice of North Koreans as the bad guys was made years ago, since the filmmakers didn’t want to have de rigueur Middle Eastern terrorists again.   While there’s obviously no connection, the current sabre-rattling by North Korea adds to the realism of the story. Director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Shooter) keeps the momentum of the movie racing forward, allowing the audience to suspend their disbelief as they get caught up in the story.  One caution – it will be clear from the short synopsis above that this is a very violent movie that may be too intense for some viewers, though the violence is necessary for the movie to be convincing.

This is a much better vehicle for Gerard Butler than the recent rom-com Playing For Keeps, and he brings the gusto he showed in 300 to the role.  (Butler also served as producer for the film.)  The movie features Morgan Freeman as the Speaker of the House who’s thrust into a 25^th Amendment situation with both the President and Vice-president trapped in the White House.  Freeman has played presidents before and has even played God a couple of times, so the role’s not much of a stretch. However, as always he’s eminently believable and watchable.

Rick Yune plays Kang, the leader of the attack.  Yune has played a North Korean bad guy before – the man with the diamond-encrusted face who went up against Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond in Die Another Day.  (While his heritage is Korean, Yune was born in Washington, DC.)  With his smooth voice and imposing physique, he’s a worthy opponent for Butler.

The cinematography by Conrad Hall (American Beauty, Fight Club) is a cut above what you normally get in an action flick.  Mention must be given to Production Designer Derek Hill, who has done most of his work on series television in the past (Hatfields and McCoys, Community, House).  The exteriors of the White House were actually filmed in Louisiana and look finely detailed and realistic.  The only knock is that the lawn in front of the White House is larger than the one in the film.

It’s not art, but Olympus Has Fallen is artfully done, and gives the audience the excitement needed in a thriller.  The bar has been set high for White House Down.

The 10 Best Mystery Movies of the 1970s

While the classic detective was pretty much absent from movie screens during the 1960’s, he made a major comeback in the 1970s.  “He” was the operative word; V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone had yet to break into the “boy’s only” world of detective novels, and movies have lagged behind on that score.  Here are my choices for the best mystery movies of the 1970s, in no particular order:

Chinatown (1974)

The hard-boiled 1930s private detective roared back into the movies in Roman Polanski’s stylish take on film noir.  Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) pokes his nose into a murder and almost gets it cut off, even as he falls for the victim’s widow (Faye Dunaway).  With a script by Robert Towne and haunting theme music by Jerry Goldsmith, the film was nominated for 11 Oscars, though only Towne won.

The Last Of Sheila (1973)

A year after losing his wife Sheila to a hit and run driver, Clinton Green (James Coburn) invites a group of friends (Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, Ian McShane, James Mason, Joan Hacket and Raquel Welch) onto his yacht for a scavenger hunt-style mystery game that soon turns deadly.  The script was written by the unlikely pair of Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim and was directed by Herbert Ross (The Goodbye Girl, Footloose, Steel Magnolias).

The Conversation (1974)

In between doing the first two Godfather pictures, Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed this classic.  Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who can bug any conversation and record it.  In the course of an assignment, he begins to suspect the couple he’s watching has been targeted for murder.  It’s an exercise in paranoia, but as the phrase says, “Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you.”

Dirty Harry (1971)

San Francisco Homicide Inspector Harry Callahan became a pop culture icon the first time he asked a punk if he felt lucky.  Don Siegel’s tight procedural movie, loosely based on the still-unsolved Zodiac killer case, has Harry not only trying to stop a killer but having to battle with the Mayor, the Police Chief, and the D.A. who want to rein him in.  All the exterior filming was done on location, with the exception of the bank robbery sequence.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Agatha Christie got the all-star treatment in Sidney Lumet’s version of this Hercule Poirot mystery.  A man is discovered murdered on the snowbound train of the title and Poirot is called upon to investigate.  Albert Finney was the best Poirot on film (though David Suchet owns the role on television), and the movie won Ingrid Bergman the last of her three Oscars.  It also launched a series of Christie adaptations in the 70’s and 80’s, but Murder on the Orient Express was the first and the best.

Frenzy (1972)

For the first time in decades, Alfred Hitchcock returned to England to film this movie, and he recovered some of his 1930’s mojo.  London is terrorized by a serial killer who strangles women with neckties.  Suspicion falls on Richard Blaney (Jon Finch) when his estranged wife becomes one of the victims.  As the noose closes around Blaney, Chief Inspector Oxford (Alec McGowan) begins to doubt they’re chasing the right man.  While it’s not in the same class as his movies in the 1950s (North By Northwest, Dial M for Murder, Vertigo), this film was the last flicker of brilliance from a director whose name has come to define mystery and suspense on film.

The Late Show (1977)

Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart) wrote and directed this private eye movie that teamed Art Carney and Lilly Tomlin.  Carney plays a semi-retired P.I. who, with the help of a quirky client (Tomlin), investigates the murder of his partner.  Benton manages to blend in comedy while keeping the tension and mystery high.  Tomlin was nominated for an Oscar for her role, and the film won an Edgar award as the best film mystery of the year.

The French Connection (1972)

William Friedkin’s gritty police procedural, based on an actual NYPD case, won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.  It also featured one of the best car chases on film, rivaling Bullitt.  Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider play cops who stumble onto a major heroin smuggler.  The cops who were actually involved in the case, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grasso, appeared in the movie and then made the move from New York to Hollywood.  Egan stayed on the acting side, playing cops in films and on TV series, while Grasso became a producer of TV movies and series, usually with a crime theme.

Night Moves (1975)

This is the third Gene Hackman movie on this list.  He reunites with his director from Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn, to play Harry Moseby, a former football player turned private detective who’s hired by an aging Hollywood actress to find her runaway granddaughter (Melanie Griffith in her first movie role).  Unusual for a movie, Harry is oblivious to a deeper mystery swirling around him until near the end of the film, and doesn’t realize the person who’s behind it all until a final, shattering reveal in almost the last shot.

Farewell My Lovely (1975)

It’s rare when the remake of a classic can match the original.  Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novel was filmed as Murder My Sweet in 1944, with Dick Powell as the iconic detective.  (This was two years before Humphrey Bogart played the role in The Big Sleep.)  The 1975 version had Robert Mitchum as Marlowe, following a missing person case into a web of lies, blackmail and murder.  The movie actually stays truer to the source by including the seamier parts of Chandler’s story that couldn’t make it past the Production Code in 1944.  Strangely enough, there is a third, earlier version of the story; the plot was used in the 1942 B picture The Falcon Takes Over starring George Sanders.

Doctoring Oz

In the classic story, “The Velveteen Rabbit,” the Skin Horse says to the Velveteen Rabbit, “Real isn’t how you are made; it’s something that happens to you.”  That’s also the lesson at the heart of Sam Raimi’s Oz The Great And Powerful.

Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a sideshow magician in a threadbare circus that’s playing near his hometown in turn-of-the-19^th-century Kansas.  Oz is a selfish, egotistical man and a smooth talker with the ladies, though he longs to be as great as Harry Houdini or Thomas Edison.  Still, he doesn’t mind shortchanging his assistant Frank (Zach Braff) on the ticket money his show generates.  A visit from his former sweetheart Annie (Michelle Williams) brings home to Oz how far he’s fallen from his dreams.  The visit is cut short when the circus strongman comes looking for Oz, who has put the moves on the strongman’s girlfriend.  Oz makes his getaway in a hot air balloon – right into the vortex of a tornado.

After a stomach-churning journey, Oz lands in the Land of Oz.  He meets a beautiful good witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis) who tells him of a prophecy of the former king of Oz, that a great wizard who bears the name Oz will come and claim the throne in the Emerald City.  While they travel to the city, Oz saves the life of a flying monkey named Finley (voice by Braff), who swears his undying loyalty to the magician.

At the Emerald City, Oz meets Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz).  She shows Oz the wonders of the city, including a room filled with gold, and promises it will all be his.  But first he must complete one task to prove himself worthy of the throne: he must kill the Wicked Witch.

Raimi, assisted by screenwriters Mitchell Kapner (The Whole Nine Yards) and David Lindsay-Abaire (Inkheart), has crafted a wonderful prequel that references The Wizard of Oz.  The MGM original is actually owned by Warner Brothers, so the Disney production couldn’t reproduce items from the original.  That’s why you’ll see nary a ruby slipper in the film.  Strangely enough, The Wizard of Oz was put into production because of the success of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch was based on the evil queen’s old lady disguise.  Raimi mirrors the beginning of the original film, shooting the opening in black and white and in the 1.37:1 ratio used in movies of the 1930s.  When the movie gets to Oz, not only does it change to rich Technicolor as it did in 1939, it also opens up to the widescreen aspect of 2.35:1.

Franco shows maturation as an actor in the role of Oz, giving a multi-leveled characterization.  His previous work with Raimi on the Spiderman films would have given him confidence with the direction.  Franco worked for weeks before filming began to master the sleight of hand needed to sell the magician tricks.

Weisz, Kunis, and Williams (as Glinda the Good Witch) each portray their roles with flair and authority, though of them Kunis has the most compelling role.  When the Wicked Witch comes on the scene, all green skin and black leather, the movie captures the feeling that has made The Wizard of Oz one of the most terrifying movies that little kids regularly see.  Raimi changed the Wicked Witch’s flying monkeys into flying baboons so they’re even more frightening.  (Very young children could find this movie too intense.)

The CGI used throughout the film is first rate, in particular with the character of China Girl (voiced by Joey King).  It captures the sheen and fine cracks of bone china, while the facial expressions are wonderfully rendered.  As always, the director’s brother Ted and Bruce Campbell appear in small roles, with Campbell’s chin appearing even larger than normal.

Danny Elfman’s score, especially the music box theme, adds a plaintive note to all the visuals and action.  While it’s possible to get lost in the effects, the story is strong and anchored in human emotions.

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) formulated three laws in an essay called “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination.”  The third one was: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Oz finds the magic within himself, and it makes the movie a magical delight for audiences.