#hooper it's high time you released the director's cut

[wits-writing]

In the Heights (Movie Review)

Back in a long forgotten time called “December 2019”, the first trailer dropped for Director Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quira Alegría Hudes’ 2008 multi-Tony Award winning Broadway musical In the Heights. Seeing the elaborate group dance numbers and creative shot choices, as well as hearing music from one of the most acclaimed songwriters in modern theater and I was hooked. Only took those two minutes and twenty-two seconds for this to become my most anticipated movie of 2020.

A surefire bet for Movie of the Summer!

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Then 2020 happened; movie theaters shut down and In the Heights got delayed a full year to June 2021.

Of the many notable film releases delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the one that tested my patience most because I’d been waiting so long to see a modern musical of this scale and style to be released in my lifetime.

Spent my time in quarantine familiarizing myself with the original Broadway cast recording and picturing how the movie would shape up in my head. Missing theaters of the stage and cinematic variety had me building the idea of finally seeing In the Heights on the big screen as some revelatory experience. However, that fed back into a worry that I was overhyping myself. Afterall, nothing could ever live up to the standards I set for this movie, right?

Now that In the Heights is out in theaters for those who feel safe and available to stream on HBO Max for those that don’t, I’ve been able to get my answer. I masked up and went out to a local movie theater to see what’s what. Then made sure to watch it again on streaming the next day so I could be absolutely certain of my verdict.

So I come before you all today to say in full honesty… I may have actually underhyped myself on this one…

Not only am I prepared to declare this the Movie of the Summer, In the Heights is officially my frontrunner for Favorite Movie of 2021 by a wide margin. Even accounting for several other movies I’m comparably hyped for later this year.

With Hudes adapting her own book of the musical for the screenplay, In the Heights tells the story of the titular New York City neighborhood, Washington Heights. Focused through the perspective of bodega owner Usnavi de la Vega (Anthony Ramos) looking back on a particularly hot summer that became a major turning point for he and his friends; Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), Nina (Leslie Grace), and Benny (Corey Hawkins), as well as the rest of the neighborhood. A time when they were all caught between chasing their dreams for the future and their relationships to each other, set to the backdrop of gentrification eating away at their community. The musical journey they all go through touching on themes of home, dreams, community, and what it means to lead a life worth living in a world that doesn’t care about them.

[Full Review Under the Cut]

Effective musicals number were at the top of the list of what this movie needed to get right. While certain other recent high profile musical films have misguidedly chased a “grounded” tone to appear more respectable on a surface level, In the Heights’ use of stylism makes it feel livelier than anything the Tom Hoopers of the world could imagine. Chu builds the reality of this movie through the emotions of the characters that burst out through each dreamlike song sequence. A reality that reflects on Usnavi’s statement in the framing device at the beginning of the movie, that this is a Washington Heights where “the streets are made of music.” The hyperreality of the song expressed not only in the characters’ singing and the impressive dance choreography courtesy of Christopher Scott, who also collaborated with Chu on his entries in the Step Up franchise, but flood into their surroundings. The neighborhood springing to life in ways that reflect the hearts of whoever’s singing at the moment. Each number bringing a new energy and emotionality that threaten to burst out from a frame that are barely contained by Alice Brooks’ cinematography.

The titular opening number, “In the Heights”, serves multiple purposes as the first thing we see in the main timeline of the story after opening in the framing device. Much of this has been carried over from the stage show directly, namely how it introduces the characters, the setting, the blend of musical styles used throughout, and Usnavi’s role as protagonist and narrator. The lyrics and spoken dialogue in the scene demonstrate how he has a handle on the patterns of his daily life running “just another dime a dozen mom ‘n pop stop and shop” and being able to meet his customers’ needs. He also has his eye set on returning to his home country, the Dominican Republic, for the first time since he was eight as a way to honor his late parents’ legacy and his own dream. Putting the weight of running the whole store and looking after his socially conscious cousin Sonny (Gregory Diaz IV) leaves him feeling like he’s “choking on the heat” as life passes him by. He’s haunted by the worry that his best days were with his family in DR before they immigrated to NYC. We also see an establishment of his romantic infatuation towards Vanessa that he’s consistently unable to act on.

But all of that is effective by consequence of the song already containing all those qualities in the stage show. In terms of how it establishes the movie’s style as a film, the simple fact of the framing device establishes the story we’re witness for the majority of the runtime as a story being told and free to be embellished. Which reflects on the heightened emotions and stylization of the musical numbers. It’s also not just about Usnavi’s routine, but the routine for Washington Heights as a whole with a montage of everyone in the neighborhood readying themselves for the day. We’re invited to see not just the main cast but everyone in the neighborhood as someone with a life, job, and dream worth caring about. It also ends on one of In the Heights’ most important recurring images, Usnavi looking out at the neighborhood from behind glass. Throughout we get this image as he’s on the inside looking out at a place and people that are undeniably part of him but feels suffocating to him while his mind is on an idealized past and potential future returning to the Dominican Republic.

While Usnavi’s our eyes, ears, and voice telling the story and Ramos is fantastic in the part, he’s not the movie’s heart. That honor goes to Olga Merediz as “Abuela” Claudia, the role she also originated on Broadway. The importance of having a sueñito, or “little dreams”, and the pain chasing them can cause is the thematic thread through everyone’s stories. Abuela serves as the de facto matriarch for all of Washington Heights in this story, specifically described by Usnavi as having “adopted the whole block and our sueñitos.” She lived a life defined by struggle, in particular highlighting the indignities her own mother faced when they immigrated. It’s an experience that forms the basis of her generosity and belief that members of their community need to “exert their dignity in small ways” to make sure a world that tries to ignore them can’t. Her love for those “little details” delightfully demonstrated at one point where she proudly declares the scratch that makes her favorite record repeat her favorite part of the song.

Claudia has taken every hardship put on her and turned it into love she gives to the people of her community. An attitude that gets poured out onto the screen through Merediz’s performance in the single best musical scene I’ve seen in any movie in a long time, “Pacienca y Fe.” A heartbreaking reflection on her immigrant experience and absolute tour de force for the entire movie. Everything the rest of the movie does well, choreography, dreamlike imagery and weaving in its thematic intent, goes beyond what I was expecting of a movie I was incredibly excited to see. Lyrics and placement in the story altered from the stage show in a way that takes an already tear-jerking number and pushing its intensity to the brink. It was as I could feel the tears start rolling down the inside of my facemask in the theater that I knew I couldn’t call In the Heights anything but my favorite movie of the year.

“Pacienca y Fe” wasn’t even the first or last time I cried during the runtime. I’ve spent a full half of this review on why just two songs are breathtaking examples of cinematic musical storytelling and they are both the rule rather than exceptions. I’ve barely scratched the surface of why I found In the Heights as transcendent as I did. There are paragraphs upon paragraphs to be written about Nina’s story alone, but this review would threaten to spin aimlessly out of control if I covered every detail worth talking about.

I’ll close by reiterating that this is the one to beat for the rest of 2021. Go see it in whatever form you want, just see it!

If you’re reading this the day it’s posted, I’m probably watching it again right now!

If you like what you’ve read here, please like/reblog or share elsewhere online, follow me on Twitter (@WC_WIT), and consider throwing some support my way at either Ko-Fi.com or Patreon.com at the extension “/witswriting” 

[grigori77]

Top 10 Horror Movies, like, EVER (reissued)

10.  THE MIST

In 2007, writer/director Frank Darabont once again proved he does his best work when adapting master of literary horror Stephen King (after The Green Mile and solid gold masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption), this time turning to pure horror with one of the author’s lesser-known early novellas.  The result is another tour-de-force cinematic blueprint, a taut, harrowing tale of humanity pushed far beyond the brink by unexplained supernatural events and the monstrous lengths normal people will go to to stay alive, as a small-town New England supermarket is cut off from the outside world by a mysterious, monster-filled mist.  The Expanse’s Thomas Jane proves a complex hero, beefy yet vulnerable as local artist David Drayton, leading a high-calibre cast of Stephen King-movie/TV regulars – Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile), Andre Braugher (Salem’s Lot), William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) and Frances Sternhagen (Misery) – and “newcomers” – Laurie Holden (who must have really impressed Darabont, since he subsequently cast her alongside DeMunn in The Walking Dead), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s Toby Jones (as one of the most unorthodox action heroes in cinematic history) and Miller’s Crossing’s Marcia Gay Harden, pretty much stealing the film as deeply unhinged Bible-basher Mrs Carmody, who goes from unsavoury town nut to fervent cult leader as the situation grows increasingly desperate.  Darabont once again proves what an exceptional screen storyteller he can be, effortlessly weaving an atmosphere of mounting dread and knife-edge tension, as well as delivering some nightmarish set-pieces featuring magnificent Lovecraft-inspired beasties designed by The Walking Dead’s creature effects master Greg Nicotero.  When cinematic horror was becoming increasingly saturated with “gorno” Saw-derivatives, this was a welcome return to old-fashioned monster movie thrills (Darabont himself was heavily inspired by the monochrome scary movies of his childhood, and longed to make the film in black-and-white – indeed, this is definitely worth watching at least once in the “director’s cut” B&W version he included on the special edition DVD release), and not only proved one of the best examples of King on screen to date, but also one of THE key horror movies of the “Noughties”. Not least thanks to that ending, one of the greatest sucker punch twists of all time – reputedly King was most envious of Darabont on seeing it for the first time, wishing he’d thought it up himself. Coming from the King of Horror, that’s high praise indeed.

9.  30 DAYS OF NIGHT

When Steve Niles, the undisputable master of post-modern horror comics, originally came up with the concept for his definitive work, it was intended for the big screen, but he ultimately wound up committing it to print because he just couldn’t get anyone to produce it.  Interesting, then, that the comic’s runaway success led to its optioning by Sam Raimi and his production company Ghost House Pictures, Niles adapting the first volume alongside Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, with Hard Candy director David Slade at the helm. Of course, the concept was always a killer – for one month every year, the sun never rises over the Alaskan town of Barrow, a fact that a coven of hungry vampires have decided to exploit in a midwinter free-for-all feeding frenzy.  Josh Hartnett manfully crumbles in what remains his best role as town sheriff Eben Olemaun, ably supported by Melissa George as his estranged fire-marshal wife Stella, Memento/Batman Begins’ Mark Boone Junior as hard-as-nails town loner Bo, Ben Foster (one of my very favourite actors) as a mysterious drifter with a dark agenda, and Danny Huston, who created one of the best ever screen vampires with nihilistic pack leader Marlow. It’s ironic that David Slade should have followed this with Twilight film Eclipse (although he was an inspired choice – after all, it’s the one that DOESN’T suck) – this is about as far removed from the toothless, blood-lite young adult series as you can get, an unrelenting, gore-drenched exercise in relentless carnage and ice-cold terror.  These vamps wouldn’t be caught (ahem) dead sparkling – they’re man-shaped mako sharks, all dead black eyes and jagged teeth, gleefully revelling in slaughter and playing sadistic games of cat and mouse with the isolated townsfolk.  This is definitely not a movie for the faint of heart, and it takes itself deadly seriously right through the unapologetically bleak ending, but it is nonetheless an endlessly rewarding thrill ride for the faithful, paying respect to all the great conventions of the genre while simultaneously ripping them to shreds.  Brutal, bloody and brilliant, this is BAR NONE the best vampire movie of the post-Interview age, and very nearly my all-time favourite EVER ...

8. POLTERGEIST

1982 saw the release of TWO of my all-time fave horror movies, and the lesser (but no less awesome) of the two is what I personally consider to be THE DEFINITIVE haunted house movie.  Tobe Hooper, director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, pretty much reinvented ghosts on the big screen with this thrilling tale of a small-town-American family, the Freelings, whose seemingly perfect home comes under the influence of a powerful supernatural force.  At first the effects are harmless – moving furniture and the like – until a night-time thunderstorm signals a terrifying escalation and younger daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is sucked through a portal into the spirit world.  Long before he was the dad in The Incredibles, Craig T. Nelson had already become a pretty definitive cuddly American screen father as Steven Freeling, while JoBeth Williams is a lioness defending her cubs as mother Diane; then-newcomer Heather O’Rourke, meanwhile, is a naturalistic revelation as Carol-Anne, her innocent delivery of “They’re here!” becoming a genuine geek phenomenon all on its own, but the film’s real runaway performance comes from Zelda Rubinstein as diminutive Southern belle psychic medium Tangina Barrons, whose every screen moment is a quirky joy.  As you’d expect, Hooper’s scares are flawlessly executed, the atmospheric tension ratcheted with consummate skill, even if the director’s characteristic gore is kept to a PG-13-friendly minimum ... then again, this was a summer offering from Back to the Future producers Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg himself, who was also the main screenwriter. Indeed, his influence is keenly felt throughout – the suburban world the Freelings inhabit is very much in keeping with Spielberg classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. – and there have been consistent rumours that he was all but the de-facto director on set.  The film (along with its sequels) has also gained a reputation for being cursed, with no less than FOUR cast members dying not long after (most notably Dominique Dunne, who played elder Freeling daughter Dana, who was murdered by her boyfriend just five months after the film’s release).  Whatever the truth behind these rumours, there’s no denying this is a cracking film – taut, atmospheric and consistently terrifying while also displaying a playful, quirky sense of humour and lots of heart, it remains one of the most rewarding and entertaining screen ghost stories around.

7.  BUBBA HO-TEP

Bruce Campbell is Elvis Presley!  He really is!  Although maybe he isn’t ... all right, TECHNICALLY he’s Sebastian Haff, a washed-up, long-retired Elvis impersonator languishing in a retirement home who claims he really IS the King (apparently he swapped places with the REAL Haff because he’d grown tired of fame).  Meanwhile one of his fellow residents is an old black man who claims he’s the real JFK, maintaining that President Lyndon Johnson had him dyed black and secreted in anonymity with a bag of sand sewn into the gap in his brain ... confused yet? Well hold on, cuz there’s more – the retirement home in question has been invaded by the malevolent spirit of a cursed soul-sucking mummy, and only these two fallen heroes can save the day ... yup, writer/director Don (Phantasm and John Dies At the End) Coscarelli’s initially criminally overlooked but deservedly seriously cult adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel is as typically oddball as the rest of his filmography.  It’s also his most moving and spiritual work to date – behind all the supernatural weirdness and quirky, offbeat humour this is a deeply-affecting meditation on the pains of growing old and losing your place in the world.  Bruce Campbell’s Elvis/Haff is a tragic hero, regretting his current lot and pining for former glories, but he still has the odd little twinkle of his former charm and bravado (particularly during his interactions with his nurse, played with spiky gutsiness by Ella Joyce), while screen legend Ossie Davis is stately and charismatic as “the former President Kennedy”, even when he sounds REALLY crazy.  Meanwhile the creature, “Bubba Ho-Tep” himself (Bob Ivy), is a fantastically weird creation, Coscarelli’s skilful use of atmospherics elevating him far above the “guy-in-a-suit” effects – he’s mean, cranky, and just as strong a character as his flesh-and-blood counterparts.  Coscarelli really let rip on this one – it’s chock-full of his characteristic leftfield comic-scariness (Elvis/Haff’s early encounter with one of the mummy’s scarab familiars is a particular zany gem), visually inventive and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but in the end plays out on such a heartfelt, genuinely powerful and moving denouement that you can’t help getting a lump in your throat, even while it is one of those movies that leaves you with a big dumb goofy grin on your face.  It’d be pretty sweet if Coscarelli and his mate Paul Giamatti ever get their long-gestating “prequel” Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires off the ground, but this is one that you can’t help loving all on its own.  See this if you’re a Coscarelli fan – it’s his best work to date – see this if you love quirky, unusual and original horror ... hell, see this if you love MOVIES. This is a true GEM, not to be missed.

6.  DOG SOLDIERS

My favourite werewolf movie is also easily one of the most offbeat – think The Howling meets Assault On Precinct 13 and you’re pretty close to the mark.  Before visionary British horror director Neil Marshall had his big break with masterpiece The Descent, he made an impressive cult splash with his feature debut, a fiendish comedy horror in which a six-man British Army unit on training manoeuvres in the wilds of Scotland stumbles upon a pack of hungry werewolves and are forced to take shelter in an isolated cottage.  With their ammo dwindling and their weapons largely ineffective against the monsters (not a silver bullet between them, of course), it doesn’t look likely that ANY of will survive the night ... setting the humour dial for JET BLACK, Marshall keeps the atmosphere tense and the substantial gore flying (I was amazed when I saw this in the cinema that it was only a 15 – even just ten years earlier stuff like this was GUARANTEED a solid 18 certificate), while the squaddies are a likeably foul-mouthed bunch with a winning, sometimes enjoyably geeky line in spiky banter (Marshall makes frequent references to everything from Star Trek and The Evil Dead to The Matrix and, in one of my favourite nods, Zulu).  Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd is brawny but enjoyably self-deprecating as nominal hero Cooper, Sean (son of Doctor Who Jon) Pertwee gives great earthy-shoutiness as Sgt. Wells, Darren Morfitt consistently steals the film as mouthy little bugger “Spoon” (short for Witherspoon), and Game Of Thrones star Liam Cunningham injects a strong dose of dark and dangerous as Captain Ryan, the special forces operative with a sinister plan, while Emma Cleasby is far from just a token female as zoologist Megan, who came to Scotland in search of the legend and seems to have found a whole lot more than she bargained for – she’s smart, tough and flat-out refuses to be a love interest, and definitely proved a good trial run for Marshall’s all-female cast in The Descent.  It’s impressively paced – after an initial character-driven set-up so we can get to know the lads (including a fun little scare-on-top-of-a-laugh moment), the action kicks in fast and rarely lets up for the rest of the film’s tightly-packed 105 minute running time.  The set pieces are thrilling and frequently fun (particularly Spoon’s ballsy little distraction technique), and the werewolves are impressively brought to life through physical animatronics created by Image FX (the Hellraiser effects team!) and a talented troupe of stilt-walking stunt performers – no cheesy CGI here!  Altogether it marked a blinding debut for a singular, visionary sci-fi/horror talent who’s still making his presence felt – Doomsday was a delightfully old-school slice of super violent sci-fi in the John Carpenter vein, while tight, gruesome little Roman-era suspense thriller Centurion proved that a historical epic doesn’t have to be 2+ hours long with a big budget to impress, and Marshall continues to garner real acclaim through his extensive TV work on the likes of Game of Thrones. That said, I can’t wait for him to return to the big screen, preferably with more dark, edgy, blood-soaked fun like this ...

5. TREMORS

I’ve always had something of a bias towards horror movies that are also comedies, or at least that have a strong sense of humour throughout, and when it comes to funny horror movies, this brilliant throwback to cheesy 1950s monster movies is KING, baby!  While it snuck in under the radar on its 1990 release, director Ron Underwood’s sleeper universally wowed critics, word of mouth helping it to become an impressive cult smash once it hit home video ... which meant I saw it at JUST the right time, the film quickly becoming a firm fixture in my favourites lists and a major milestone in my own geek development.  The premise is simplicity itself – giant underground worms with tentacles in their mouths terrorise an isolated desert community – but underneath the goofy concept is a surprisingly sophisticated movie that continues to influence filmmakers today.  Kevin Bacon was in a bit of a career slump at the time (Footloose had been SO LONG before), but this gave him both the shot in the arm he needed and one of his most memorable roles ever – odd-jobbing slacker Val McKee, who has to get off his arse and think big to beat the beasties; Fred Ward is the perfect foil as Val’s crotchety “business” partner Earl Basset, while Finn Carter is thoroughly lovable as scientist Rhonda LeBeck, a no-nonsense smart girl who can go toe-to-toe with the boys (and manages to lose her pants WITHOUT losing her credibility), but the film is consistently stolen by Family Ties star Michael Gross as tightly wound survivalist Burt Gummer – this might be Bacon’s movie, but Gross is the real star, deservedly becoming the driving force of the film’s various sequels AND the spinoff TV series.  The film opens with a killer of a funny line, starting as it means to go on – frequently hilarious and smart as a whip, consistently defying character and genre tropes and wrong-footing the viewer almost a decade before Joss Whedon started doing the same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all the while balancing the belly laughs with some genuinely scary set pieces.  The worms themselves (or “Graboids”, if you want to get specific) are spectacular creations, some of the most original movie monsters out there, and they still stand up well today, just like the rest of the film.  A cornerstone of the genre that wins over new fans with each generation, this is one of those films that deserves to be remembered for a very long time, and looks set to do just that. 

4.  EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN

Nobody does screen chaos like Sam Raimi, particularly when it comes to his horror offerings – still his first and purest love. His original debut feature The Evil Dead is rightly considered the DEFINITIVE indie horror, and to this day remains the standard blueprint for all young, aspiring directors starting out in the genre ... it’s also a work of pure, unadulterated MADNESS once it gets going.  Raimi upped the ante with this part-remake, part-sequel, the increased budget and proper studio resources meaning he could REALLY let his imagination run riot, and the results are a cavalcade of tongue-clean-THROUGH-cheek, jet black comedic insanity that STILL has yet to be equalled.  Bruce Campbell returns as unlikely “hero” Ash Williams, thoroughly out of his depth and failing miserably to hold it together as the ancient tome of evil itself, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (“Book of the Dead”), unleashes a horde of undead demons on the isolated forest cabin he’s brought his girlfriend to.  Wildly expanding on the supernatural back-story of his original, Raimi and co-writer Scott Spiegel also ramped up the humour, playing the horror on the blackest edge they can, albeit cut with a hefty dose of Tex Avery – Ash’s battle with his own possessed, eventually severed hand is like some demented skit out of The Three Stooges, while the absolute comedic highlight is the ridiculously over-the-top “laughing room” sequence, in which the seemingly inanimate objects in the cabin suddenly come to life and begin to taunt Ash; add in the great wealth of re-view-friendly visual in-jokes scattered throughout and this remains Raimi’s FUNNIEST film to date. Campbell clearly had a ball, throwing himself into the action with everything he had, and he’s ably supported by a meaty (ahem) cast that includes a very pre-Slither Dan Hicks as a seriously scuzzy redneck and Raimi’s own brother Ted, virtually unrecognisable as one of the maniacal Deadites (“I’ll swallow your soul!”).  The creature effects from the great Greg Nicotero still stand up spectacularly well today (they remain some of his very best work), from hideous gurning beasts to insane fountains of blood, while Raimi’s direction is pitch-perfect, playing the humour beautifully while still (sometimes simultaneously) building up a near-unbearable atmosphere of unholy dread, and the climax is ingenious, beautifully setting things up for the enjoyably madcap trilogy-closer Army of Darkness: the Medievil Dead.  Raimi has finally brought the trilogy the follow-up fans had been waiting decades for with the fantastically bonkers Ash Vs. the Evil Dead series, but this delirious masterpiece remains the franchise’s zenith.  Groovy ...

3.  JAWS

It may be the oldest film on this list (released in 1975, it’s THREE YEARS OLDER than I am!), but Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough feature has aged incredibly well.  Indeed, it almost single-handedly changed the face of big budget cinema, establishing the idea of tent-pole summer blockbusters and blanket-bombardment advertising campaigns (in particularly it was one of the first to make heavy use of television to drum up excitement and interest), ultimately taking over $400,000,000 on its original release (the equivalent of multi-billion big earners like Avatar today) and paving the way for Star Wars two years later.  Not to mention the film’s famous negative effect on beach-going for years after ... but under all that there’s a magnificent, masterfully-crafted film, still (rightly) considered one of the director’s best.  The plot may be ridiculously simple – New England beach-community Amity Island is terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark – but there’s a stealthily subversive story here, taking old genre conventions and twisting them in new, unexpected directions (which would, ironically, form a template for a great many later horror movies); while the first hour is a slow-burn thriller, the second is more like a light-hearted nautical action adventure with added scares. The French Connection’s Roy Scheider virtually CREATED the everyman-out-of-his-depth hero with his portrayal of Amity police chief Martin Brody, a former New York cop who’s terrified of the water, Richard Dreyfuss is lovable comedic gold as rich kid marine biologist Matt Hooper, Lorraine Gary did a lot with very little as Brody’s wife Ellen, and Robert Shaw effortlessly steals the film as shark hunter Quint, a ferocious, scenery-chewing force of nature in the mould of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab.  The film is immensely rich in great character moments, from Hooper’s rib-tickling arrival on the island and the dialogue-free moment Brody shares with his younger son Sean, to the undeniable high point of the film, where a humorous comparison of scars (which has itself become a popular homage-magnet in film and TV) leads to Quint chilling account of his wartime experience onboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis (the ship transporting the Hiroshima atomic bomb which was torpedoed in the Pacific, leading to over a thousand stranded sailors being eaten alive by sharks); indeed, this is one of Spielberg’s most well-written films, sitcom writer Carl (The Odd Couple) Gottlieb’s polish of author Peter Benchley’s adaptation of his own original novel still zipping and zinging today, although some of the best dialogue was derived from the actors’ own on-set improvisations (most famously Scheider’s now-legendary “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”).  It’s also one of his most well-directed, with near-hypnotic tricks in editing and bold, adventurous choices in atmosphere-building, often a result of the shoot’s infamous difficulties – the animatronic shark (affectionately named “Bruce” by the director, and “the Great White Turd” by the crew) created by Bob Mattley (the guy who did the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) was impressive when it worked, but this was so rarely that the director had to devise several means of creating maximum tension WITHOUT showing the shark, which ultimately ADDS to the effectiveness of those scenes, particularly the “barrel-chasing” in the second half.  None of these tricks, however, work better than the score from Spielberg’s most faithful collaborator, John Williams, based around a deceptively simple four-note melody that evolves into something spectacularly evocative, which has rightly become the film’s most iconic element.  Humorous, intriguing, intense and still thoroughly terrifying when it wants to be, this is, bar-none, the finest man-versus-nature horror EVER MADE, and surely always will be.

2.  NEAR DARK

I’m a fool for vampires (much like I’m a fool for redheads, but that’s a whole other conversation), so bloodsucker horror is one of my very favourite sub-genres.  I’m also a big fan of Kathryn Bigelow – two of her most recent features, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, both pinged VERY LOUDLY on my radar (the former is my favourite war movie of the current decade), while her collaboration with then husband James Cameron, Strange Days (he wrote, she directed), rates high on my list of criminally underrated screen gems.  So what do you think happened when she made a vampire movie?  The results SHOULD have become one of the most celebrated and legendary features in the genre ... except that it came out in October 1987, two months after the admittedly cool and fun but far more glossy and dumb The Lost Boys.  Needless to say in the wake of that, Bigelow’s film got kind of lost in the back chatter, nearly flopping at the box office and all but vanishing into obscurity ... until its subsequent release on video (quite rightly) earned it an impressive cult following.  Myself included, because this movie is RIGHT UP my dark and dangerous alley.  Collaborating with The Hitcher’s screenwriter Eric Red, Bigelow crafted a (largely) deadly serious modern day supernatural “western”, in which cocky farm-boy Caleb Colton (Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar) hits on cute drifter Mae (Jenny Wright, probably best known for her supporting turn in Young Guns 2), only to get WAY more than he bargained for when her kiss leaves him with a crippling hunger and one serious tanning problem.  Pasdar’s all-knowing youthful swagger disintegrates as he tumbles further down the vampiric rabbit hole, while Wright’s fragile beauty compliments her character’s deep, soulful melancholy – the pair make for a compelling, tragic romantic centre anchoring the horrors that unfold as Caleb begins to lose himself to his burgeoning nature; even so, the true dark and twisted soul of the film lies with Mae’s predatory nomad “family” – Lance Henriksen is the definitive “dark father” as nihilistic pack leader Jesse Hooker, while his Aliens co-star Jenette Goldstein is his perfect mate as punk rock femme fatale Diamondback, and Joshua John Miller excels as Homer, the bitter old man trapped in a child’s body ... meanwhile Bill Paxton consistently steals the film as mad dog Severen, chewing the scenery to splinters with gleeful, feral aplomb and stealing all the best lines.  It’s a potent, heady ride, taking itself pretty seriously throughout but deriving a subtle, inky black sense of gallows humour from the situation, and the set-pieces are intense and thrilling (particularly the shootout in a roadside motel at dawn, where shafts of sunlight become as lethal as bullets).  At times it’s also powerful, soulful and bleakly beautiful, Bigelow’s heavily stylised visuals brilliantly augmented by the spiky electronic score from Tangerine Dream. It also subverts the classic vampire conventions with great skill and originality, with nary a cross, coffin or even fang in sight.  Like 30 Days of Night, this is the perfect antidote for anyone suffering from Twilight-overload – the monster can be quite interesting when he’s the hero, but he’s just so much more fun when he’s the bad guy ...

1.  JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING

While I’m sure many will think I’m mad for preferring this over Carpenter’s other seminal horror classic Halloween, this one’s much more my speed, a perfect exercise in sustained tension, paranoia and white-knuckle terror. Critically mauled and under-performing on its release (it was labelled by many as a sort of “anti-E.T.: the Extraterrestrial”, which came out two weeks earlier ... and interestingly this opened the same day as Blade Runner!), it nonetheless became a massive cult hit now rightly considered one of the true DEFINITIVE horror movies.  Faithfully adapting John Campbell, Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? (certainly more so than Howard Hawks’ admittedly entertaining but ultimately very kitsch The Thing From Another World), it revolves around the all-male crew of U.S. research station 4, Outpost 31, in Antarctica, who come under threat from a body-snatching alien entity that can perfectly imitate its victims after investigating the mysterious destruction of a neighbouring Norwegian facility.  Carpenter regular Kurt Russell (Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China) is at his gruff best as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, the taciturn blue-collar Joe called upon to play “hero”, Keith David (Pitch Black, Carpenter’s They Live) angrily flexes his acting and physical muscles as hot-tempered researcher Childs, Donald Moffat crumbles as ineffectual station commander Garry, and screen legend Wilford Brimley effortlessly makes the exposition compelling as tightly-wound biologist Blair.  The freezing Antarctic atmosphere perfectly complements the razor-edged suspense, the idea that ANYONE could be the creature lending every scene a palpable sense of implied threat, while the science of the fiction is thankfully largely put on the back-burner in favour of the story and scares; meanwhile there’s a cheeky edge of jet black humour throughout, from the scuttling disembodied head to Garry’s explosive reaction to MacReady’s improvised humanity-test.  Rob (The Howling, Robocop, Fight Club) Bottin’s fantastically nightmarish creature effects are a magnificent achievement, still looking as good today as they did back in 1982, while master composer Ennio Morricone’s subtle, atmospheric score is a triumph of creepy, insidious subliminal effect.  For me, this film is the definition of fear – the idea that the threat could be literally ANYONE, that you could even become that yourself, be taken over completely, body and soul, is absolutely terrifying, and Carpenter executes this potential reality with surgical precision from the intriguing, icy start to the bleak, desolate ending.  Perfect.

[marredbyoverlength]

Year-End Awards 2019

2019 was very good for movies.  Or, rather, November and December of 2019 were very good for movies.  I could speculate about why that is (Awards season? Disney? Moloch?), but I don’t really know.  What I do know is that the Oscars are tomorrow, so I better get this post up today.

Honorable mentions in no particular order.  Strap in, chumps.

Best Lead Performance: Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Sometimes it feels like Adam Sandler is cheating, lowering our expectations with awful performances in even-more-awful films so that his dramatic turns look better by comparison.  But whether or not we grade him on a curve, this performance is the best of the year.  

Sandler’s character, Howard Ratner, is ridiculous.  In fact, much of the movie is ridiculous.  But Sandler makes this absurd person human, and in doing so, makes the whole movie work.  He commits hard to the role, and even though every scene is a little more unbelievable than the last, I never for a moment stopped believing in Howard.  Superb work.

Honorable Mentions: Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Ana de Armas, Knives Out; Kang-ho Song, Parasite; Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes.

Best Supporting Performance: The rest of the cast of Uncut Gems

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Uncut Gems is a movie that survives entirely on its acting.  The Safdie brothers themselves have said that the movie wouldn’t work without Kevin Garnett nailing the scene where he first holds the black opal.  I’d extend that credit to all the other supporting roles: Idina Menzel as Howard’s wife who no longer even bats an eye at the insanity he brings on himself, Marshall Greenberg (a non-actor) as the fellow jeweler who expresses genuine concern for Howard but still gives him unfavorable terms on a pawn deal, deranged Garment District legend Wayne Diamond as a character just named “High Roller”—every one of these people is essential to the success of the film.  When it comes down to it, Uncut Gems doesn’t make any sense.  It takes a suite of perfect performances to make it feel as real as it does.

Honorable Mentions: Timothée Chalamet, Little Women; Laura Dern, Little Women; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Takayuki Hamatsu, One Cut of the Dead; Daniel Craig, Knives Out; Al Pacino, The Irishman.

The Costner Award for Worst Actor: Rebel Wilson, Cats

When we meet Rebel Wilson (as her fursona “Jennyanydots,” a name I will never utter again), she is showing her butthole to the camera.  The character never gets more likable than that, because they let Rebel Wilson ad-lib numerous “comedic” lines to punch up the script. They’re awful.

Honorable Mention: James Corden, Cats.

 Nicest Surprise: Cold Pursuit

I watch the Liam Neeson stupid action flick with my brother Rob every year. Sometimes we get something legitimately great, like A Walk Among the Tombstones.  Other times we get a movie like The Commuter, which is dumb as rocks.  But this is the first time we got a comedy.  I went in expecting a second-rate Neeson-kills-people thriller, and instead got a solid black comedy.  Apparently it’s nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance, so maybe I should have known better.  But I didn’t, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Hiddenest Gem: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead is the best movie of the year that my friends haven’t seen, and it’s a tough movie to talk about because of how fun it is to watch knowing nothing about it.  So I’ll keep it short.  One Cut is a Japanese schlock horror movie with a fun twist that manages to be creepy at first, then funny, then heartwarming.  Two things elevate this above the usual fun-twist movie.  The first is that the surprise unfolds in little pieces over the entire second half of the movie, rather than hitting all at once. The second is that there’s real substance there: under the goofy exterior there’s a charming family story that’s worth coming back for.

 Most Insulting Moment: We Hate Sensory Deprivation, Angel Has Fallen

I haven’t seen the other films in the Blank Has Fallen franchise, nor did I need to do so to understand its third installment.  It’s exactly the kind of institution-worshipping great-men-of-history support-our-troops action bullshit you’d expect.  But after the credits, there’s a totally inexplicable scene where Gerard Butler and his dad Nick Nolte agree to get treatment for their (implied) PTSD.  Instead of leaving it as just a nice moment of healing, it cuts to a comedy scene where they go to a two-person sensory-deprivation tank and float around in the dark complaining about it.  The general gist of the scene is “sensory deprivation is dumb and gay.”  I’m not a sense-dep guy, but it’s used here as a stand-in for all the forms of “modernity” that reactionary filmmakers hate: you know, like mental health treatment, or trying new things, or expressing any sincere vulnerability even for a moment.  Why not just show them affectionately kissing guns and save some production cost?

Honorable Mentions:  The trailer for A Dog’s Way Home; The narration in Ad Astra.

 Winter’s Tale Memorial “What the Hell Am I Watching” Award: Cats

At long last, a film that unites the unholy trinity of ambition, incompetence, and derangement to form a true “What the Hell Am I Watching” award-winner.  The premise of Cats, in short, is that the cats of London meet every year to perform a ritual sacrifice of one of their number, believing that the chosen cat will, after their death, be reincarnated…as another London cat.  And they determine the sacrifice by holding a talent show.  And one of the cats is a warlock.  So we’re off to a good start.

I was fortunate enough to see the original version.  You see, the film is almost entirely CGI, so much so that viewing it feels like living inside a haunted kaleidoscope.  Even the actors, through “digital fur technology,” are turned into cats which are anthropomorphized to greater or lesser degrees. The warlock cat, for example, has cat abs.  But shortly after theatrical release, director Tom Hooper realized that the film contained major visual effects oversights, including failing to CGI several of the actors’ hands, meaning that Judi Dench and Ian McKellen appeared to have human arms on cat bodies.  These are only some of the crimes of the film Cats.  A full reading of the litany would take all day.

Honorable Mentions: A Dog’s Journey; Gemini Man.

Prettiest Movie: 1917

I’d be remiss not to talk about the cinematic achievement of 1917.  The all-in-one-take thing, or the appearance thereof, is kind of a used gimmick at this point.  (Birdman, after all, used it and won Best Picture.)  I went into 1917 expecting a cheap knockoff. Instead I was blown away.  Every detail was perfect, down to the mud stains on the extras’ overcoats, the stacking of sandbags in the real dug-out trenches, the bloating of the bodies clogging the waterways.  One especially memorable scene follows our hero (George MacKay) sprinting through a ruined city by night, intermittently lit by mortar fire, dodging gunfire all the way.  Maybe “pretty” isn’t the right word, but no film this year used the visual medium as well as 1917.

Honorable Mentions: Parasite, Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood.

Best Picture: Under the Silver Lake

Yes, I know it’s weird to give Best Picture to a movie that didn’t even get an honorable mention anywhere else.  But this is my blog, dammit, I stand by it.  Under the Silver Lake is a movie about capitalist-media-technology-complex-inspired brain poisoning.  It stayed on my mind for weeks after seeing it, and I eventually gave it a second watch. It held up.  

Criticisms of the film abound, like how male-gazey a lot of the portrayals of women are, but I think the parts that some reviewers identify as flaws are intentional and important features of the movie.  We see the film through the eyes of our main character (Andrew Garfield), who is a scumbag, but the film is very clearly not endorsing being a scumbag. It’s about the interplay of personal neuroses and moral failings with the broader perverse clown-reality we all occupy, and the inescapable tinge our perspectives bring to the world we see. The film is, after all, a sort of noir film, and our hero’s attitudes are reflective in some ways of the noir mindset: find the clues, unravel the plot, get the girl.  The incongruity between the stories and attitudes of our past and the demented reality of our future define the film.

I could go on about this for much longer, which is why I’m choosing Silver Lake as the best film of the year.  It’s not notable for its acting or cinematography (though both are solid), but in terms of content, nothing else this year encapsulated my internal and external world quite so well as this.

Honorable mentions: Parasite; 1917; Little Women; The Irishman; One Cut of the Dead; Marriage Story; Uncut Gems.

 That’s it, that’s the post.  I think I’m moving to Letterboxd next year.

[mairacute]

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WHAT IS EDGECOIN

Edgecoin is an Educational Stable Coin that gives an open installment framework to instructive foundations, where people can make schooling related installments, for example, for enlistment charges, convenience, books, and any remaining instructive spending’s, through a decentralized application.

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WHAT WAS THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE DISPATCH OF EDGECOIN?

Edgecoin was similarly acquainted with advantage the instructive establishments as well as to compensate the normal dedicated understudy in the space of diminishing his expense and furthermore giving routes through which these understudies can procure. This is made conceivable through the “Acquire while you learn” highlight that comes because of the programmed mining of Gradecoin, a fluctuating token.

The-benefits-of-blockchain-in-the-instructive area :

Throughout the most recent year and a half the world has definitely changed and we live in questionable occasions. More so than any other time the headway of innovation and advancement is giving answers for a superior and safer future. The remarkable information stockpiling and handling framework permits utilizing the blockchain in those spaces of the economy that require uncommon security, strength and straightforwardness. The exemplary blockchain utilization model was restricted to the monetary business in 90% of cases. This bodes well, however applying similar advantages to different areas can prompt brilliant outcomes. A promising course for the improvement of blockchain innovations is the instruction area. The report “Blockchain in Education” by the European Commission’s Joint Research Center gives an itemized breakdown of blockchain comparable to European instruction. Conversation of this issue at an undeniable level shows how genuinely innovation is taken by counterparts.

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We have in a real sense just started to expose what’s underneath, Blockchain innovation is well and genuinely becoming perceived as perhaps the main advancements within recent memory similarly as the web was approximately 20 years prior. It will on a very basic level change the world as far as we might be concerned.” — Luke Arliss and Armon Rabiee from EdgeCoin.

Edgecoin takes out this as well as giving a safer and safe approach to complete these exchanges continuously. Installments &transactions are closed in a flash, something that conventional banking and monetary organizations can’t accomplish as they are as yet vested and depend on utilizing obsolete frameworks that are quote essentially not reasonable for the cutting edge world wherein we live in today. Today the interest for such instruments is exceptionally high. The Covid pandemic and worldwide detachment have by and by helped individuals to remember the advantages and capability of computerized innovation, including the advantageous and well known blockchain. Sooner rather than later, the ascent of this innovation to the instructive area will just develop, and it is important to get ready ahead of time for such a progress.

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EDGECOIN PRICE & MARKET STATS

Name : Edgecoin

Abbreviation : EDGT

Type of Token : Stable Coin

EDGT Value : 1 USD

Supply : 10,000,000,000

EDGT FUND DISTRIBUTION

1 EDGT = 1 USD

10B Market Cap

150 Million Token Sale

10 Billion EDGE Token

EDGT TOKEN DISTRIBUTION

40% Token for User

10% Developers

20% Team/Advisors

30% Stakeholders

GRTC FUND DISTRIBUTION

1 GRTC = 0.20 USD

10B Market Cap

10 Billion GRADE Token

GRTC Token distribution

ROADMAP

Our Strategy and Project Plan

Q1 2017

Project idea.

Q2/Q3 2017

Project topic research.

Q4 2017

Start proof of concept development on private network.

Q1 2020

Whitepaper and Web App development.

Q2 2020

Smart contract and token creation on Stellar Network.

Q3/Q4 2020

Edgecoin was successfully launched.

Q2/Q3 2021

App release and Gradecoin drop (Sister coin of Edgecoin)

OUR TEAM

Meet The Founding Team Of Edgecoin

Luke Arliss

Edgecoin Founder & Director

Armon Rabiee

Edgecoin Co- Founder

Charles Douglas

Edgecoin Chief Solicitor & Compliance Officer

Christopher Johnston

Edgecoin COO & CEO/Founder Karma – Browser & Mobile Search

Girish Chandra

Edgecoin COO of Partnership

Mohammed Hussain

Edgecoin Financial Officer & Investor

Adrian Gut

Edgecoin Partner and Affiliate

Chris Hooper

Edgecoin Chief Compliance Officer

Carlie Harris

Edgecoin Head of Marketing

Shahbaz Husaim

Edgecoin Accountant & Investor

James Mather

Edgecoin Technology Compliance Officer

Stephen O’Sullivan

Gradecoin Innovator & Investor

PARTNERS & SUPPORTERS

We Collaborate Only With The Best

Edgecoin is an Educational Stable Coin that provides an open payment system for educational institution to be settled at the same speed as the Internet.

MORE INFORMATION :

Website : https://www.edgecoinpay.com/

Twitter : https://twitter.com/edgecoinpay

Telegram : https://t.me/Edgecoin_chat

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/edgecoinpay

Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ekVAo2GXdMPcM03Y6r78g

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/edgecoinpay/

AUTHOR

Bitcointalk Username: Mairacute

Telegram Username: @mairacute

Bitcointalk url: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3334914

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[flickdirect]

Of all the horror movies released in 1989 (Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Halloween 5, Friday the 13th Part 8), 976-EVIL was probably the most disappointing. The pedigree of the longtime horror icon, Robert Englund, could not be disputed; he played Freddy Kruger after all and as of 1989 he did it five times. He starred in the Tobe Hooper film, Eaten Alive, as the main character, Buck. Anyone that has seen this movie will know immediately that Buck loves to introduce himself, by name, to the ladies, and explain to them his favorite thing to do, which so happens to be a four-letter word which rhymes with his name. Mr. Englund went on to co-star in the original Sci-fi series, ‘V' as well as dozens of other movies and TV appearances. So when I found out that he was directing a new Horror film I was excited, unfortunately, 976-EVIL did not live up to the hype (or even the movie poster).

In case you have forgotten, or if you've never seen it before:

Director Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund dials up a gothic tale of high-tech horror in 976-EVIL. High school underdog Hoax Wilmoth (Stephen Geoffreys, Fright Night) fills up the idle hours in his seedy little hometown fending off the local leather-jacketed thugs, avoiding his overbearing mother (Sandy Dennis) and dreaming of a date with trailer park temptress Suzie (Lezlie Deane). But his quietly desperate life takes a terrifying turn when his cousin introduces him to an unusual new hobby - phoning in for his "Horrorscope". Hoax is hooked up with a compellingly hideous demonic force that slowly begins to overtake his entire life and now there's more than just a phone bill to pay for anyone who ever dared cross "the neighborhood nerd".

What starts out as a typical nerd out for revenge flick, ends up as a fairly tame and, unfortunately, boring movie. Don't get me wrong, there are a few, fun set pieces, I love the opening of the movie, the abrasive and eerie ringing phone and the massive exploding payphone booth is awesomely fun to watch. The set designs from the gang's clubhouse, wallpapered with horror movie posters to the wasteland that is the boy's bathroom, including spray-painted vulgarities, extolling the virtues of daily cunnilingus and even the Robert Englund "Easter egg" (you have to listen to the Audio commentary to find out, or at least keep reading). And last but not least, the scene where Hoax obediently follows the Devil's instructions and creates a pentagram of salt, surrounded by candles and begins to summon his Spidery minions to attack Suzie. It all seems trite and predictable. In fact, it hearkens back to the movie Evilspeak, where the nerd of that tale, utilized technology to summon demonic powers to exact his revenge, except it was done to greater effect. Stephen Geoffreys, coming off of the successes of Fright Night and Heaven Help Us, could not provide enough quirkiness or creep to give the role the punch that it needed to carry the film.

As for this release, Columbia Pictures Home Video offers up a clean transfer of the movie in 1080p High Definition/1.85:1, Audio English 5.1 DTS-HD. The film does, in fact, look decent and the colors are a robust change from the more washed out VHS cut (more on this in a minute) even though the film itself is rather dark and mostly subdued, here it does lend a great amount of detail to the environments, especially the actors faces and not to mention the details in the gangs hang out (I enjoy picking out the names of the movies displayed on the posters, Maniac, Critters to name just a few) as well as the blood and gore which all pop well, (Hoax enters the poker game with a pair of hearts) not to mention the look of Hoax at the end, when fully possessed by the demon, all come across as bright and crisp.

The soundtrack is nothing to write home about, but, as I mentioned earlier, I do enjoy the twisted sounds of the possessed phones. There's also some explosions, as well, and the environmental ambiance which does its best to create an immersive atmosphere, though it does lack pure definition, I think it's more a fault of the original budget and what they had to work with at the time, than anything to do with the transfer.

This release only boasts of two special features, and I actually enjoyed them both. The first is an all-new commentary with Robert Englund and his wife, Nancy. They spend a great deal of time providing some fun and insightful details regarding the filming, writing, and even the set designs. I recommend this especially for those die-hard buffs that love to get all the inside details, like the Graffiti in the bathroom, "R+N", denoting Robert and Nancy's budding romance (it was her Easter egg to him, which was cool) their enthusiasm for the film, the actors and especially all their hard work, gave me a better appreciation for what they intended this movie to be.

The other feature was the Alternate Home Video version (480i, ~4x3, English DD 2.0, 1:44:39) which brought me back to my Horror Home rental days and would give some of you younger horror fans a great idea of what most movies looked like on VHS. It also includes 12 minutes of additional, if lack-luster scenes, not seen in the theatrical cut.

All in all, 976-EVIL doesn't hold up as well as I would have liked. It brings up a time in the late 80's when 976 numbers (Premium Rate numbers) were all the rage, from Psychic reading to Party lines and the promise of anonymous and hot phone sex. There are a few scares, and some laughs but I would have liked more of each. I would say that 976-EVIL was really just phoning it in... Grade: C+

About Leonard Buccellato Leonard became obsessed with horror movies at the tender age of 7 when he first saw the movie Blacula (which quickly scared the Hell out of him). From there, all bets were off, from Grizzly and Jaws to The Thing and E.T, his love of movies took on a life of its own. His passion for movies is matched only by his love of writing and literature.

Read more reviews and content by Leonard Buccellato.

via FlickDirect Entertainment News and Film Reviews

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Clips: Shark Week: Remembering Bruce, the Mechanical Shark in 'Jaws' (The Atlantic, 2011.08.03)

There are only a few dozen shark attacks on humans every year. It has been widely reported that you are 30 times more likely to die from a lightning strike than you are from an attack. In 2003, Reuters ran a story claiming that more people are killed by vending machines each year than are killed by sharks. And yet, I would bet that just about anybody who has spent time at the beach has thought about the possibility of an attack. I know I certainly have. Before dipping so much as a toe into the ocean, I scan the horizon for a dark, approaching shadow from the deep. And I thank Steven Spielberg for that.

In 1975, Spielberg released the first of what would become a franchise. Jaws was a landmark horror-thriller, recognized by everyone from Empire magazine (fifth greatest film ever made) to the New York Times (one of the 1,000 best movies ever) to the American Film Institute (number 48 on the "100 Years... 100 Movies" list). It won three Academy Awards and was even nominated for Best Picture. (It lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.) Perhaps more importantly, the movie created the wide-release summer blockbuster, a tradition of providing big-budget thrills in ever major theater across America during the hottest months of the year that continues to this day. Jaws brought in more money than any other film and held that title until George Lucas released Star Wars two years later.

An instant classic, Jaws received rave reviews. Roger Ebert called it "a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings we get to know and care about." There's Roy Scheider as Brody, the police chief who we can all identify with, who doesn't like to swim, who is genuinely terrified of the water. There's Robert Shaw as Quint, "a caricature of the crusty old seafaring salt," at Ebert put it in that 1975 write-up. There's Hooper, the rich- kid-turned-oceanographer played by Richard Dreyfuss, just off a string of successes as the nice kid in American Graffiti and the title character in the Canadian hit The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. But the most important character -- and, in many ways, one of the most human -- is the shark itself.

Everyone knows the story by now: The shark is a great white that terrorizes a small resort town during the Fourth of July weekend, a weekend critical to the economy of this little village. In an effort to track down and kill the shark, these three men leave their families behind (where applicable) and set out on a rickety boat. It's leaky. It's too small. It's old. This boat, we know from the outset, just isn't cut out for shark hunting. At least not hunting sharks of the size we suspect this great white to be.

"There are no doubt supposed to be all sorts of levels of meanings in such an archetypal story," Ebert notes. But he doesn't bother writing about them or trying to figure them out. And neither does Spielberg. "This is an action film content to stay entirely within the perimeters of its story, and none of the characters has to wade through speeches expounding on the significance of it all." And what an action film it is. This isn't just about the dark shadow from the deep -- though it is that, too. Before the story comes to an end, many individuals both on and off the island have been killed in a series of terrifying scenes that allow you to get up close and personal with the shark.

The only reason this works -- the only reason that theatergoers in the 1970s left their seats terrified of these macropredatory beasts and that modern viewers can't turn off the lights when screening the film in their own living rooms -- is the craftsmanship and technology that went into creating the main characters: Jaws.

In early May of 1974, the rights had been acquired to Peter Benchley's book of the same name, the contracts had been signed by Spielberg and principal photography began on Martha's Vineyard. It could have failed. By all accounts, it probably should have failed. Spielberg, not yet 30, was largely untested as a director of big-budget productions and nothing was in place. "We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark," Richard Dreyfuss would tell James Lipton during a taping of Inside the Actor's Studio years later. But the cast would come together. And the shark was already in the works.

In the fall of 1973, art director Joe Alves designed the shark for Jaws. Three full-size pneumatically-powered units were constructed between November 1973 and April 1974 at Rolly Harper's Motion Picture & Equipment Rental in Sun Valley, California. They each measured about 25 feet long and weighed hundreds of pounds. One shark, known as a sea-sled, was a full bodied prop with its stomach carved out. The other two, known as platform sharks, were each one-sided. One platform shark moved from camera-left to -right with the side facing away from the camera completely exposed, the other moved in the opposite direction. Once completed, the three sharks were trucked to Martha's Vineyard. They arrived in July, two months after shooting had started.

The sharks were built by a legendary team overseen by mechanical effects supervisor Robert A. Mattey, who employed somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 effects technicians. Mattey had made a name for himself as the special effects director of 20000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mary Poppins, among many other films in the '60s and early '70s. His team included several individuals new to Hollywood, including Roy Argobast, who would later work again for Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Richie Helmer, who would work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture years later; and Michael Wood, who went on to oversee effects on Poltergeist.

Despite the expertise that went into the construction of the sharks, the three mechanical monsters caused many problems, ultimately delaying the shoot and contributing to the $9 million final bill. (Only $4 million had been budgeted for the entire project.) Martha's Vineyard was chosen for shooting because the ocean floor is never more than thirty-five feet below the surface around the island, but that fact provided little relief to the divers who were tasked with retrieving one of the sharks after it accidentally capsized and sank to the bottom. There are other reports that the sharks would sometimes slip off of the platform and get tangled in a bed of seaweed. At other times, the pneumatic hoses that controlled the sharks' movement took on salt water, the foam used as skin on the sharks became bloated, and parts even corroded.

It has been said, though, that the delays caused by the sharks actually helped the movie. Certain scenes, according to early scripts being worked with at the time (it was constantly refined and improved upon), called for more overt use of the models but, because they often weren't ready or weren't in a condition to appear on film, Spielberg would have to improvise, using barrels to represent the shark's location or shooting just the dorsal fin. This contributed to the suspense that one feels when watching the final film and forced the director to rely more on other parts of his production team. Perhaps that's how John Williams came up with the two notes -- an E and an F -- that would go on to become a classic piece of suspense music. Played by Tommy Johnson on the tuba, those two notes -- dun-dunh, dun-dunh -- have the "effect of grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable," Williams would later say, according to Lester Friedman's Citizen Spielberg.

After filming wrapped (it went more than 100 days over schedule and Spielberg thought that his career was finished; he had never heard of a movie being delayed that long), the three sharks were destroyed. But a fourth, a smaller, scaled-down model, was created in 1976 out of Fiberglas. The model was put on display at Universal Studios in Studio City, California, where it remained until 1990.

Decades after the 1975 release of Jaws, NPR reporter Cory Turner learned about the fourth shark. Though E! True Hollywood Story did a piece about the Fiberglas model, which had been moved to the Aadlen Bros. U-Pick Parts junkyard in Sun Valley, California, in 2002, it had largely been forgotten. Turner soon tracked down the model again for a June 2010 segment. "It's the real one," Roy Arbogast, a member of the special effects crew on Jaws, said, according to the Internet Movie Database. "It's just kinda nice to see it again after 25 or 30 years. It's amazing that it's still here."

Nicknamed Junkyard Bruce, the model shared a name with the first three sharks used in the film. It never takes a name in the film, but, during the shoot, the shark was known as Bruce. Spielberg named the monster after Bruce Ramer, his long-time lawyer. Ramer, a member of the firm Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, continues to represent Spielberg -- and DreamWorks, his production company -- in high-profile, complex deals for television and feature films. "They never paid me a royalty -- that's all I know," Ramer told the Harvard Law Bulletin.

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My Top Ten Favourite Horror Movies

10.  THE MIST – in 2007, writer/director Frank Darabont once again proved he does his best work when adapting master of literary horror Stephen King (after The Green Mile and solid gold masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption), this time turning to pure horror with one of the author’s lesser-known early novellas.  The result is another tour-de-force cinematic blueprint, a taut, harrowing tale of humanity pushed far beyond the brink by unexplained supernatural events and the monstrous lengths normal people will go to to stay alive, as a small-town New England supermarket is cut off from the outside world by a mysterious, monster-filled mist.  The Expanse’s Thomas Jane proves a complex hero, beefy yet vulnerable as local artist David Drayton, leading a high-calibre cast of Stephen King-movie/TV regulars – Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile), Andre Braugher (Salem’s Lot), William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) and Frances Sternhagen (Misery) – and “newcomers” – Laurie Holden (who must have really impressed Darabont, since he subsequently cast her alongside DeMunn in The Walking Dead), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s Toby Jones (as one of the most unorthodox action heroes in cinematic history) and Miller’s Crossing’s Marcia Gay Harden, pretty much stealing the film as deeply unhinged Bible-basher Mrs Carmody, who goes from unsavoury town nut to fervent cult leader as the situation grows increasingly desperate.  Darabont once again proves what an exceptional screen storyteller he can be, effortlessly weaving an atmosphere of mounting dread and knife-edge tension, as well as delivering some nightmarish set-pieces featuring magnificent Lovecraft-inspired beasties designed by The Walking Dead’s creature effects master Greg Nicotero.  When cinematic horror was becoming increasingly saturated with “gorno” Saw-derivatives, this was a welcome return to old-fashioned monster movie thrills (Darabont himself was heavily inspired by the monochrome scary movies of his childhood, and longed to make the film in black-and-white – indeed, this is definitely worth watching at least once in the “director’s cut” B&W version he included on the special edition DVD release), and not only proved one of the best examples of King on screen to date, but also one of THE key horror movies of the “Noughties”. Not least thanks to that ending, one of the greatest sucker punch twists of all time – reputedly King was most envious of Darabont on seeing it for the first time, wishing he’d thought it up himself. Coming from the King of Horror, that’s high praise indeed.

9.  30 DAYS OF NIGHT – when Steve Niles, the undisputable master of post-modern horror comics, originally came up with the concept for his definitive work, it was intended for the big screen, but he ultimately wound up committing it to print because he just couldn’t get anyone to produce it.  Interesting, then, that the comic’s runaway success led to its optioning by Sam Raimi and his production company Ghost House Pictures, Niles adapting the first volume alongside Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, with Hard Candy director David Slade at the helm.  Of course, the concept was always a killer – for one month every year, the sun never rises over the Alaskan town of Barrow, a fact that a coven of hungry vampires have decided to exploit in a midwinter free-for-all feeding frenzy.  Josh Hartnett manfully crumbles in what remains his best role as town sheriff Eben Olemaun, ably supported by Melissa George as his estranged fire-marshal wife Stella, Memento/Batman Begins’ Mark Boone Junior as hard-as-nails town loner Bo, Ben Foster (one of my very favourite actors) as a mysterious drifter with a dark agenda, and Danny Huston, who created one of the best ever screen vampires with nihilistic pack leader Marlow. It’s ironic that David Slade should have followed this with Twilight film Eclipse (although he was an inspired choice – after all, it’s the one that DOESN’T suck) – this is about as far removed from the toothless, blood-lite young adult series as you can get, an unrelenting, gore-drenched exercise in relentless carnage and ice-cold terror.  These vamps wouldn’t be caught (ahem) dead sparkling – they’re man-shaped mako sharks, all dead black eyes and jagged teeth, gleefully revelling in slaughter and playing sadistic games of cat and mouse with the isolated townsfolk.  This is definitely not a movie for the faint of heart, and it takes itself deadly seriously right through the unapologetically bleak ending, but it is nonetheless an endlessly rewarding thrill ride for the faithful, paying respect to all the great conventions of the genre while simultaneously ripping them to shreds.  Brutal, bloody and brilliant, this is BAR NONE the best vampire movie of the post-Interview age, and very nearly my all-time favourite EVER ...

8.  POLTERGEIST – 1982 saw the release of TWO of my all-time fave horror movies, and the lesser (but no less awesome) of the two is what I personally consider to be THE DEFINITIVE haunted house movie.  Tobe Hooper, director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, pretty much reinvented ghosts on the big screen with this thrilling tale of a small-town-American family, the Freelings, whose seemingly perfect home comes under the influence of a powerful supernatural force.  At first the effects are harmless – moving furniture and the like – until a night-time thunderstorm signals a terrifying escalation and younger daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is sucked through a portal into the spirit world.  Long before he was the dad in The Incredibles, Craig T. Nelson had already become a pretty definitive cuddly American screen father as Steven Freeling, while JoBeth Williams is a lioness defending her cubs as mother Diane; then-newcomer Heather O’Rourke, meanwhile, is a naturalistic revelation as Carol-Anne, her innocent delivery of “They’re here!” becoming a genuine geek phenomenon all on its own, but the film’s real runaway performance comes from Zelda Rubinstein as diminutive Southern belle psychic medium Tangina Barrons, whose every screen moment is a quirky joy.  As you’d expect, Hooper’s scares are flawlessly executed, the atmospheric tension ratcheted with consummate skill, even if the director’s characteristic gore is kept to a PG-13-friendly minimum ... then again, this was a summer offering from Back to the Future producers Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg himself, who was also the main screenwriter. Indeed, his influence is keenly felt throughout – the suburban world the Freelings inhabit is very much in keeping with Spielberg classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. – and there have been consistent rumours that he was all but the de-facto director on set.  The film (along with its sequels) has also gained a reputation for being cursed, with no less than FOUR cast members dying not long after (most notably Dominique Dunne, who played elder Freeling daughter Dana, who was murdered by her boyfriend just five months after the film’s release).  Whatever the truth behind these rumours, there’s no denying this is a cracking film – taut, atmospheric and consistently terrifying while also displaying a playful, quirky sense of humour and lots of heart, it remains one of the most rewarding and entertaining screen ghost stories around.

7.  BUBBA HO-TEP – Bruce Campbell is Elvis Presley!  He really is!  Although maybe he isn’t ... all right, TECHNICALLY he’s Sebastian Haff, a washed-up, long-retired Elvis impersonator languishing in a retirement home who claims he really IS the King (apparently he swapped places with the REAL Haff because he’d grown tired of fame).  Meanwhile one of his fellow residents is an old black man who claims he’s the real JFK, maintaining that President Lyndon Johnson had him dyed black and secreted in anonymity with a bag of sand sewn into the gap in his brain ... confused yet? Well hold on, cuz there’s more – the retirement home in question has been invaded by the malevolent spirit of a cursed soul-sucking mummy, and only these two fallen heroes can save the day ... yup, writer/director Don (Phantasm and John Dies At the End) Coscarelli’s initially criminally overlooked but deservedly seriously cult adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel is as typically oddball as the rest of his filmography.  It’s also his most moving and spiritual work to date – behind all the supernatural weirdness and quirky, offbeat humour this is a deeply-affecting meditation on the pains of growing old and losing your place in the world.  Bruce Campbell’s Elvis/Haff is a tragic hero, regretting his current lot and pining for former glories, but he still has the odd little twinkle of his former charm and bravado (particularly during his interactions with his nurse, played with spiky gutsiness by Ella Joyce), while screen legend Ossie Davis is stately and charismatic as “the former President Kennedy”, even when he sounds REALLY crazy.  Meanwhile the creature, “Bubba Ho-Tep” himself (Bob Ivy), is a fantastically weird creation, Coscarelli’s skilful use of atmospherics elevating him far above the “guy-in-a-suit” effects – he’s mean, cranky, and just as strong a character as his flesh-and-blood counterparts.  Coscarelli really let rip on this one – it’s chock-full of his characteristic leftfield comic-scariness (Elvis/Haff’s early encounter with one of the mummy’s scarab familiars is a particular zany gem), visually inventive and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but in the end plays out on such a heartfelt, genuinely powerful and moving denouement that you can’t help getting a lump in your throat, even while it is one of those movies that leaves you with a big dumb goofy grin on your face.  It’d be pretty sweet if Coscarelli and his mate Paul Giamatti ever get their long-gestating “prequel” Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires off the ground, but this is one that you can’t help loving all on its own.  See this if you’re a Coscarelli fan – it’s his best work to date – see this if you love quirky, unusual and original horror ... hell, see this if you love MOVIES. This is a true GEM, not to be missed.

6.  DOG SOLDIERS – my favourite werewolf movie is also easily one of the most offbeat – think The Howling meets Assault On Precinct 13 and you’re pretty close to the mark. Before visionary British horror director Neil Marshall had his big break with masterpiece The Descent, he made an impressive cult splash with his feature debut, a fiendish comedy horror in which a six-man British Army unit on training manoeuvres in the wilds of Scotland stumbles upon a pack of hungry werewolves and are forced to take shelter in an isolated cottage.  With their ammo dwindling and their weapons largely ineffective against the monsters (not a silver bullet between them, of course), it doesn’t look likely that ANY of will survive the night ... setting the humour dial for JET BLACK, Marshall keeps the atmosphere tense and the substantial gore flying (I was amazed when I saw this in the cinema that it was only a 15 – even just ten years earlier stuff like this was GUARANTEED a solid 18 certificate), while the squaddies are a likeably foul-mouthed bunch with a winning, sometimes enjoyably geeky line in spiky banter (Marshall makes frequent references to everything from Star Trek and The Evil Dead to The Matrix and, in one of my favourite nods, Zulu).  Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd is brawny but enjoyably self-deprecating as nominal hero Cooper, Sean (son of Doctor Who Jon) Pertwee gives great earthy-shoutiness as Sgt. Wells, Darren Morfitt consistently steals the film as mouthy little bugger “Spoon” (short for Witherspoon), and Game Of Thrones star Liam Cunningham injects a strong dose of dark and dangerous as Captain Ryan, the special forces operative with a sinister plan, while Emma Cleasby is far from just a token female as zoologist Megan, who came to Scotland in search of the legend and seems to have found a whole lot more than she bargained for – she’s smart, tough and flat-out refuses to be a love interest, and definitely proved a good trial run for Marshall’s all-female cast in The Descent.  It’s impressively paced – after an initial character-driven set-up so we can get to know the lads (including a fun little scare-on-top-of-a-laugh moment), the action kicks in fast and rarely lets up for the rest of the film’s tightly-packed 105 minute running time.  The set pieces are thrilling and frequently fun (particularly Spoon’s ballsy little distraction technique), and the werewolves are impressively brought to life through physical animatronics created by Image FX (the Hellraiser effects team!) and a talented troupe of stilt-walking stunt performers – no cheesy CGI here!  Altogether it marked a blinding debut for a singular, visionary sci-fi/horror talent who’s still making his presence felt – Doomsday was a delightfully old-school slice of super violent sci-fi in the John Carpenter vein, while tight, gruesome little Roman-era suspense thriller Centurion proved that a historical epic doesn’t have to be 2+ hours long with a big budget to impress, and Marshall continues to garner real acclaim through his extensive TV work on the likes of Game of Thrones. That said, I can’t wait for him to return to the big screen, preferably with more dark, edgy, blood-soaked fun like this ...

5.  TREMORS – I’ve always had something of a bias towards horror movies that are also comedies, or at least that have a strong sense of humour throughout, and when it comes to funny horror movies, this brilliant throwback to cheesy 1950s monster movies is KING, baby! While it snuck in under the radar on its 1990 release, director Ron Underwood’s sleeper universally wowed critics, word of mouth helping it to become an impressive cult smash once it hit home video ... which meant I saw it at JUST the right time, the film quickly becoming a firm fixture in my favourites lists and a major milestone in my own geek development.  The premise is simplicity itself – giant underground worms with tentacles in their mouths terrorise an isolated desert community – but underneath the goofy concept is a surprisingly sophisticated movie that continues to influence filmmakers today.  Kevin Bacon was in a bit of a career slump at the time (Footloose had been SO LONG before), but this gave him both the shot in the arm he needed and one of his most memorable roles ever – odd-jobbing slacker Val McKee, who has to get off his arse and think big to beat the beasties; Fred Ward is the perfect foil as Val’s crotchety “business” partner Earl Basset, while Finn Carter is thoroughly lovable as scientist Rhonda LeBeck, a no-nonsense smart girl who can go toe-to-toe with the boys (and manages to lose her pants WITHOUT losing her credibility), but the film is consistently stolen by Family Ties star Michael Gross as tightly wound survivalist Burt Gummer – this might be Bacon’s movie, but Gross is the real star, deservedly becoming the driving force of the film’s various sequels AND the spinoff TV series.  The film opens with a killer of a funny line, starting as it means to go on – frequently hilarious and smart as a whip, consistently defying character and genre tropes and wrong-footing the viewer almost a decade before Joss Whedon started doing the same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all the while balancing the belly laughs with some genuinely scary set pieces.  The worms themselves (or “Graboids”, if you want to get specific) are spectacular creations, some of the most original movie monsters out there, and they still stand up well today, just like the rest of the film.  A cornerstone of the genre that wins over new fans with each generation, this is one of those films that deserves to be remembered for a very long time, and looks set to do just that.

4.  EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN – nobody does screen chaos like Sam Raimi, particularly when it comes to his horror offerings – still his first and purest love.  His original debut feature The Evil Dead is rightly considered the DEFINITIVE indie horror, and to this day remains the standard blueprint for all young, aspiring directors starting out in the genre ... it’s also a work of pure, unadulterated MADNESS once it gets going. Raimi upped the ante with this part-remake, part-sequel, the increased budget and proper studio resources meaning he could REALLY let his imagination run riot, and the results are a cavalcade of tongue-clean-THROUGH-cheek, jet black comedic insanity that STILL has yet to be equalled.  Bruce Campbell returns as unlikely “hero” Ash Williams, thoroughly out of his depth and failing miserably to hold it together as the ancient tome of evil itself, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (“Book of the Dead”), unleashes a horde of undead demons on the isolated forest cabin he’s brought his girlfriend to.  Wildly expanding on the supernatural back-story of his original, Raimi and co-writer Scott Spiegel also ramped up the humour, playing the horror on the blackest edge they can, albeit cut with a hefty dose of Tex Avery – Ash’s battle with his own possessed, eventually severed hand is like some demented skit out of The Three Stooges, while the absolute comedic highlight is the ridiculously over-the-top “laughing room” sequence, in which the seemingly inanimate objects in the cabin suddenly come to life and begin to taunt Ash; add in the great wealth of re-view-friendly visual in-jokes scattered throughout and this remains Raimi’s FUNNIEST film to date.  Campbell clearly had a ball, throwing himself into the action with everything he had, and he’s ably supported by a meaty (ahem) cast that includes a very pre-Slither Dan Hicks as a seriously scuzzy redneck and Raimi’s own brother Ted, virtually unrecognisable as one of the maniacal Deadites (“I’ll swallow your soul!”).  The creature effects from the great Greg Nicotero still stand up spectacularly well today (they remain some of his very best work), from hideous gurning beasts to insane fountains of blood, while Raimi’s direction is pitch-perfect, playing the humour beautifully while still (sometimes simultaneously) building up a near-unbearable atmosphere of unholy dread, and the climax is ingenious, beautifully setting things up for the enjoyably madcap trilogy-closer Army of Darkness: the Medievil Dead. Raimi has finally brought the trilogy the follow-up fans had been waiting decades for with the fantastically bonkers Ash Vs. the Evil Dead series, but this delirious masterpiece remains the franchise’s zenith.  Groovy ...

3.  JAWS – it may be the oldest film on this list (released in 1975, it’s THREE YEARS OLDER than I am!), but Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough feature has aged incredibly well.  Indeed, it almost single-handedly changed the face of big budget cinema, establishing the idea of tent-pole summer blockbusters and blanket-bombardment advertising campaigns (in particularly it was one of the first to make heavy use of television to drum up excitement and interest), ultimately taking over $400,000,000 on its original release (the equivalent of multi-billion big earners like Avatar today) and paving the way for Star Wars two years later.  Not to mention the film’s famous negative effect on beach-going for years after ... but under all that there’s a magnificent, masterfully-crafted film, still (rightly) considered one of the director’s best.  The plot may be ridiculously simple – New England beach-community Amity Island is terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark – but there’s a stealthily subversive story here, taking old genre conventions and twisting them in new, unexpected directions (which would, ironically, form a template for a great many later horror movies); while the first hour is a slow-burn thriller, the second is more like a light-hearted nautical action adventure with added scares.  The French Connection’s Roy Scheider virtually CREATED the everyman-out-of-his-depth hero with his portrayal of Amity police chief Martin Brody, a former New York cop who’s terrified of the water, Richard Dreyfuss is lovable comedic gold as rich kid marine biologist Matt Hooper, Lorraine Gary did a lot with very little as Brody’s wife Ellen, and Robert Shaw effortlessly steals the film as shark hunter Quint, a ferocious, scenery-chewing force of nature in the mould of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab.  The film is immensely rich in great character moments, from Hooper’s rib-tickling arrival on the island and the dialogue-free moment Brody shares with his younger son Sean, to the undeniable high point of the film, where a humorous comparison of scars (which has itself become a popular homage-magnet in film and TV) leads to Quint chilling account of his wartime experience onboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis (the ship transporting the Hiroshima atomic bomb which was torpedoed in the Pacific, leading to over a thousand stranded sailors being eaten alive by sharks); indeed, this is one of Spielberg’s most well-written films, sitcom writer Carl (The Odd Couple) Gottlieb’s polish of author Peter Benchley’s adaptation of his own original novel still zipping and zinging today, although some of the best dialogue was derived from the actors’ own on-set improvisations (most famously Scheider’s now-legendary “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”).  It’s also one of his most well-directed, with near-hypnotic tricks in editing and bold, adventurous choices in atmosphere-building, often a result of the shoot’s infamous difficulties – the animatronic shark (affectionately named “Bruce” by the director, and “the Great White Turd” by the crew) created by Bob Mattley (the guy who did the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) was impressive when it worked, but this was so rarely that the director had to devise several means of creating maximum tension WITHOUT showing the shark, which ultimately ADDS to the effectiveness of those scenes, particularly the “barrel-chasing” in the second half.  None of these tricks, however, work better than the score from Spielberg’s most faithful collaborator, John Williams, based around a deceptively simple four-note melody that evolves into something spectacularly evocative, which has rightly become the film’s most iconic element.  Humorous, intriguing, intense and still thoroughly terrifying when it wants to be, this is, bar-none, the finest man-versus-nature horror EVER MADE, and surely always will be.

2.  NEAR DARK – I’m a fool for vampires (much like I’m a fool for redheads, but that’s a whole other conversation), so bloodsucker horror is one of my very favourite sub-genres.  I’m also a big fan of Kathryn Bigelow – two of her most recent features, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, both pinged VERY LOUDLY on my radar (the former is my favourite war movie of the current decade), while her collaboration with then husband James Cameron, Strange Days (he wrote, she directed), rates high on my list of criminally underrated screen gems.  So what do you think happened when she made a vampire movie?  The results SHOULD have become one of the most celebrated and legendary features in the genre ... except that it came out in October 1987, two months after the admittedly cool and fun but far more glossy and dumb The Lost Boys.  Needless to say in the wake of that, Bigelow’s film got kind of lost in the back chatter, nearly flopping at the box office and all but vanishing into obscurity ... until its subsequent release on video (quite rightly) earned it an impressive cult following.  Myself included, because this movie is RIGHT UP my dark and dangerous alley.  Collaborating with The Hitcher’s screenwriter Eric Red, Bigelow crafted a (largely) deadly serious modern day supernatural “western”, in which cocky farm-boy Caleb Colton (Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar) hits on cute drifter Mae (Jenny Wright, probably best known for her supporting turn in Young Guns 2), only to get WAY more than he bargained for when her kiss leaves him with a crippling hunger and one serious tanning problem.  Pasdar’s all-knowing youthful swagger disintegrates as he tumbles further down the vampiric rabbit hole, while Wright’s fragile beauty compliments her character’s deep, soulful melancholy – the pair make for a compelling, tragic romantic centre anchoring the horrors that unfold as Caleb begins to lose himself to his burgeoning nature; even so, the true dark and twisted soul of the film lies with Mae’s predatory nomad “family” – Lance Henriksen is the definitive “dark father” as nihilistic pack leader Jesse Hooker, while his Aliens co-star Jenette Goldstein is his perfect mate as punk rock femme fatale Diamondback, and Joshua John Miller excels as Homer, the bitter old man trapped in a child’s body ... meanwhile Bill Paxton consistently steals the film as mad dog Severen, chewing the scenery to splinters with gleeful, feral aplomb and stealing all the best lines. It’s a potent, heady ride, taking itself pretty seriously throughout but deriving a subtle, inky black sense of gallows humour from the situation, and the set-pieces are intense and thrilling (particularly the shootout in a roadside motel at dawn, where shafts of sunlight become as lethal as bullets).  At times it’s also powerful, soulful and bleakly beautiful, Bigelow’s heavily stylised visuals brilliantly augmented by the spiky electronic score from Tangerine Dream.  It also subverts the classic vampire conventions with great skill and originality, with nary a cross, coffin or even fang in sight.  Like 30 Days of Night, this is the perfect antidote for anyone suffering from Twilight-overload – the monster can be quite interesting when he’s the hero, but he’s just so much more fun when he’s the bad guy ...

1.  JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING – while I’m sure many will think I’m mad for preferring this over Carpenter’s other seminal horror classic Halloween, this one’s much more my speed, a perfect exercise in sustained tension, paranoia and white-knuckle terror.  Critically mauled and underperforming on its release (it was labelled by many as a sort of “anti-E.T.: the Extraterrestrial”, which came out two weeks earlier ... and interestingly this opened the same day as Blade Runner!), it nonetheless became a massive cult hit now rightly considered one of the true DEFINITIVE horror movies.  Faithfully adapting John Campbell, Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? (certainly more so than Howard Hawks’ admittedly entertaining but ultimately very kitsch The Thing From Another World), it revolves around the all-male crew of U.S. research station 4, Outpost 31, in Antarctica, who come under threat from a body-snatching alien entity that can perfectly imitate its victims after investigating the mysterious destruction of a neighbouring Norwegian facility. Carpenter regular Kurt Russell (Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China) is at his gruff best as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, the taciturn blue-collar Joe called upon to play “hero”, Keith David (Pitch Black, Carpenter’s They Live) angrily flexes his acting and physical muscles as hot-tempered researcher Childs, Donald Moffat crumbles as ineffectual station commander Garry, and screen legend Wilford Brimley effortlessly makes the exposition compelling as tightly-wound biologist Blair.  The freezing Antarctic atmosphere perfectly complements the razor-edged suspense, the idea that ANYONE could be the creature lending every scene a palpable sense of implied threat, while the science of the fiction is thankfully largely put on the back-burner in favour of the story and scares; meanwhile there’s a cheeky edge of jet black humour throughout, from the scuttling disembodied head to Garry’s explosive reaction to MacReady’s improvised humanity-test. Rob (The Howling, Robocop, Fight Club) Bottin’s fantastically nightmarish creature effects are a magnificent achievement, still looking as good today as they did back in 1982, while master composer Ennio Morricone’s subtle, atmospheric score is a triumph of creepy, insidious subliminal effect.  For me, this film is the definition of fear – the idea that the threat could be literally ANYONE, that you could even become that yourself, be taken over completely, body and soul, is absolutely terrifying, and Carpenter executes this potential reality with surgical precision from the intriguing, icy start to the bleak, desolate ending.  Perfect.