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The Outer Limits: Counterweight (1964)
Don't panic
I hardly ever need to do this, but I am giving a less than stellar review of an Outer Limits episode. Even though the series was running out of original ideas and compelling storylines towards the end of its run, I still feel like I have to force myself to say negative things about them. Counterweight (like Behold Eck) was disliked even by its creators and producer Joseph Stefano, but unlike Eck, Counterweight has barely any redeeming qualities. Just going by the plot, you would think it would be awesome: a group of scientists, a news reporter and a construction foreman are to spend around 9 months in total confinement onboard a simulated flight to the planet Antheon. Even at faster than light speed, this trip is going to be a long one. Antheon, while countless miles from Earth, has been selected since it is believed it will be a safe bet for human colonization. Onboard the spaceship, there is a "panic button." Shielded behind glass, this device can be pressed by any person participating in the experiment in order to halt the simulation at once if it gets too intense for them. However, doing so ends the simulation for everyone, and all cash they would have otherwise won for completing their "interstellar journey" is confiscated. Little do the travelers realize, an actual alien from Antheon has made it into the ship. In its initial form, it doesn't look like a life form at all; just a small patch of light. One evening, it slithers into the heads of some of the sleeping passengers, making them talk in their sleep and unknowingly reveal their true thoughts. Joe (Michael Constantine), the foreman, says he only wants to go to Antheon for the money involved with building enterprises there. He is then awakened in a fright by the feeling of being strangled. Everyone rushes towards him to see what the noise is about, and concludes he was just having a bad dream. However, a doctor onboard sees actual marks on Joe's neck, which quickly vanish. Later, the doctor finds the doll of his deceased daughter on his bed with no explanation, as he didn't even bring it on the ship. As the days go by, each of the passengers become more on edge and eager to accuse the others of sabotaging him. Eventually, one of the scientists checks on his plants in the botany lab and finds the alien force seen earlier is controlling one of the plants. It kills the other plants, causes the scientist to die from a heart attack, and then grows into a huge creature with a single, folding appendage. The alien mind reveals itself to everyone, saying how it is one of Antheon's inhabitants. It indicts the humans of wanting to visit its planet only to invade it, which it deems unacceptable. When the scientist who died earlier appears good as new thanks to the alien's presence, the doctor comments that he was dead by science's definition. The alien's power apparently transcends this and crosses into the realm of the unexplainable. Joe steals the gun of the ship's captain, but in the end, is forced by the alien to press the panic button, freeing everyone of the simulation. Aside from the fact that the narration at the end of the episode (about the unknown and known only being frightening when they're both misunderstood) makes absolutely no sense, Counterweight has a host of other problems. For a show that had quite a few padded out episodes that offered not much other than filler until the final act, this one is rather genuinely boring. None of the characters really have a time to shine, with the exception of Joe. Constantine puts on a performance more akin to someone like William Bendix, but without him, things would feel even more uneventful. The episode also has an uncanny resemblance to The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, a Twilight Zone installment I talked about some months ago. The characters become increasingly paranoid due to the actions of an alien, but the similarities end there: this just can't hold a candle to that. Originally, the plot for this episode first appeared in a 1959 edition of the popular sci-fi magazine Worlds of If, in which a scapegoat is placed aboard a spaceship so that the crew will direct their hatred at it instead of each other. The scapegoat has the secret permission of the captain to be a menace to everyone and commit acts of theft and violence in order to provide the counterweight that cools tensions between everyone else, hence the title of the episode. For its Outer Limits adaptation, the role of human scapegoat was discarded and an alien put in its place to go with the show's theme. The alien still causes tensions between the passengers, but none directed at itself since no one knows what's going on. Overall, Counterweight is something of a paradox. It's quite confusing, but also remarkably mundane. I didn't really care for it 4 years ago when I first saw it, and my view is unchanged. It is interesting to note though, it shows the members of the cast at the end, accompanied by their names and what their roles were. This was done for no other installment.
Bob le flambeur (1956)
Casino caper
Before the French New Wave flipped how narratives and techniques would be handled when it came to cinema, there were a lot of movies being made in france that played out similarly to noirs in America. One of these is Bob the Gambler, which kind of reminds me of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, as it involves a heist, but the heist itself is not something we get a good look at. The story follows a gambler named Bob (Roger Duchesne) who lives in a district of Paris. He is respected when it comes to women on the fringes of high society, but is also a former bank robber. For 2 decades, he has been out of trouble, and is even friends with a police commissioner named Ledru. Bob lets Anne (Isabelle Corey), a young blonde woman who is unemployed, stay with him in his apartment so that she is kept safe from Marc, a pimp he dislikes. Bob rejects Anne's advances and instead encourages her to sleep with Paolo, someone he knows. Another ex-criminal named Jean (now a croupier at a Deauville casino) tells Bob's friend Roger (a safecracker) that the safe in the casino will contain nearly a billion dollars worth of francs at 5 in the morning. Bob plans to rob the safe and attempts to get a guy named McKimmie to finance the heist while he puts a team together. Jean acquires floor plans of the casino and tells the others their roles. Foresight is clearly not in Paolo's vocabulary as he brags to Anne about what is about to happen in order to impress her. When she starts seeing Marc instead, she tells him about what Paolo said. Before this, Marc was arrested for beating one of his prostitutes, but Ledru let him go if he gave him info on a more serious crime. The next day, Anne tells Bob what she did, and Bob hits her out of frustration. Bob and Roger look for Marc, but no luck. When Paolo finds out from Bob Anne cheated on him, he finds Marc and guns him down while he's on the phone with Ledru, stopping him from exposing Bob's plans. Suzanne, Jean's wife, finds out how her husband was able to buy her an expensive bracelet earlier and asks Bob for more money. Both of them drive to paris but can't find Jean or Roger. Hoping Bob won't notice, she sends an anonymous tip to Ledru. Bob believes that Marc being dead means his plans are still unknowable, so he and the team head to the casino. Ledru attempts to find Bob to get him to give up, but can't find him. He doesn't want to, but has to lead a bunch of armed cops to the casino to bring him down. Bob walks into the casino at around 2 in the morning. His team will rob the safe at 5 unless he says not to. He starts gambling even though he said to Roger he wouldn't until this is over. Ironically, Bob has much better luck this time around and wins so much at roulette he loses track of time. Right before 5, he looks at his watch. He rushes out the door to the casino. The cops show up just as Bob's team are approaching the entrance, and a gunfight ensues. Paolo gets shot and killed. Bob and Roger are arrested by Ledru, who says Bob will be out within 3 years. Roger thinks he will get acquitted if his lawyer is good. When I said this movie reminded me of Kubrick, I meant it in a good way, but it still doesn't manage to be as memorable. There's hardly any action in the film until the final moments outside the casino (unless you count the part where Marc gets gunned down). While the movie takes a while to get going before the heist is set in motion, the parts that don't involve it are still enjoyable since the movie has a certain non-serious mood about it. There's also a lot of cool camera shots from unexpected angles, which definitely helps since scenes just seem to drag on and on when the viewpoint is never changing. It's also interesting to note that Duchesne is somewhat similar to the guy he plays, as some people at the time were still suspicious of his alleged cooperation with the Nazis during the war. Overall, Bob the Gambler is a unique movie simply because I don't think I've ever seen a french noir before. It was on its way out by 1956 anyway.
Eat for Health (1954)
Good food = good mood
While it should be a conscious thought in everyone's mind every day, a lot of people (especially in America) don't make healthy eating a high priority, and the older you get, the more important choosing the right food becomes. This short film from the 50s goes over how eating right is arguably just as important for kids, as they probably won't develop right without it. It focuses on a kid named Ralph who never enjoys things like peas and forgoes them in favor of candy. He refuses vegetables while dining at the house of his friends Judy and Frank. The next day, Ralph is quite tired and while his two friends stop by his house to see if he wants to go outside with them, he says they'll have to do without him for today. As he's wondering why he doesn't feel as energetic as usual, he remembers something his teacher went over last week: there are 5 groups of foods you should ingest every day if you want to maintain the state of being healthy. They are (in no particular order of importance) dairy, meat, vegetables, fruit and bread. Whole grain and rye breads have a lot of vitamins, which is a trait they share with cereal. Enriched white bread has vitamins added to it as well. Butter and margarine both have vitamin A, which is important for other reasons. The second group of food is milk and cheese, which remind Ralph of the tallest kids in his class. Milk is important for the strengthening of bones and teeth, and while it doesn't pair well with things like meat, it is wise to have at least a glass of it a day. Speaking of meat, it is the group of food responsible for giving you physical power, as it contains protein which helps to produce muscles and blood cells. There are many types of meat, with chicken being a favorite of many, but let's also not skip over pork, pheasant, lamb, beef, ham, and fish (not counted as meat depending on who you ask). Nowadays there's also the debate over whether consuming meat is a cancer risk or causes diabetes, but this is beyond the scope of this film. The next group of food is vegetables. There are many types of vegetables, like broccoli, asparagus, and carrots, and also ones more befitting of a salad, such as celery, lettuce and radishes. Lastly, we have fruit. There are two kinds of fruit, the kind that offer a lot of vitamin C, such as oranges and tomatoes, and then the fruits that people have just because they're almost akin to candy. Things like bananas, peaches, grapes, and so on. After thinking about these foods, Ralph realizes his classmates are healthy not because they partake in one kind of these foods, but because they make an effort to have all of them on a daily basis. It takes all of these things working together to achieve homeostasis. Ralph decides he's not going to have the chocolate bar he usually has most of the time, as things like this don't have any of the proteins or vitamins involved with fortifying your body's well-being. Next time he's at the dinner table, he samples everything that is presented to him, even if it's not something he prefers. By broadening his horizons when it comes to food, he finds after several weeks that eating right has become enjoyable, he has more friends because of it, and he's able to play with them more often due to regaining his energy through natural means. This short was good. It's ironic how things that are meant to be shown to a class (something kids would probably hate watching) is fun to watch now because this era is long gone. It has the typical vintage feel to it, and we can see how even doing something as simple as going outside to skate or play handball made kids happy. While there are still people who do these things, it's not anywhere near as common as in this time. Being someone that is always really selective with what I eat, I thought the message of this film was important no matter your age. You can feel better about your habits and about yourself by staying away from things like chips and candy. You'll also literally feel better for doing it, as things like that don't offer you any energy and usually just make you feel worse (I'm familiar with this). My only problem with this short is how the medically licensed narrator calls the thumb a finger.
Dead Man's Eyes (1944)
Blindsided
While he was never really able to live up to the sheer quality standards of horror his father laid the foundations for, Lon Chaney Jr. Did appear in a large number of films that are worth seeing just because their concepts don't really appear in any other movies. Even if the movie is not that good, you will want to see it since the story is special and outlandish. This is the case here. The story in this is quite easy to grasp, but not so simple that it burns itself out before the film is halfway done. The plot involves a painter named Dave (Lon Chaney Jr.) who is blinded by a jealous model of his: Tanya. Knowing Dave's habit of washing his eyes, she swaps his eyewash with powerful acid. "Dad" Hayden, parent of Dave's girlfriend Heather (Jean Parker), tells Dave all hope is not lost, as a medical procedure exists which involves replacing his damaged eyes with a donor's. The thing is, Hayden needs to die first, and the operation is ghastly enough if he dies naturally. Somehow, Hayden does actually die prematurely, and his bloody corpse is found by Heather. It just so happens that Dave was right next to the corpse and has blood on his hands, so Heather's conclusion is obvious. After Dave becomes a suspect, he tells Heather he doesn't love her anymore, as he feels he is burdening her with his disability. Tanya seizes the opportunity because she knows as long as Dave remains blind, he is dependant on her care. While Dave is still a prime suspect in the killing of Hayden, Hayden's will stated he wanted the operation to go ahead, so Heather cannot legally do anything. In between this event and the operation starting, Tanya steals the corneas, hoping that Dave will not return to Heather. Doctor Alan Bittaker thinks Tanya is responsible and argues with her, getting her to confess she wants to continue to care for Dave. She gives the eyes over to him and the operation proceeds, but upon completion, Dave says he still can't see. Meanwhile, Heather believes her other suitor, Nick, is the one who killed her father, though he says this isn't true. Tanya phones Heather and tells her she knows the potential murderer, but she is suddenly killed by an unknown attacker. The cops, still having their eyes on Dave, confront him. They think that Dave is secretly able to see, and he has been hiding it this whole time. Still, Dave reveals nothing to them. Dave goes back to the same spot Hayden was killed in, looking for clues, but is attacked by none other than Nick. Dave gets away, then Nick tries to spin the story to Heather and tell her that Dave is the killer. Dave asks Alan to visit his apartment and says he knows he's the one who killed Tanya and Hayden. Dave theorizes that he killed Hayden so that he could see again, allowing him to be with Heather. This would free up Tanya to be with Alan, who, according to the latter, loved her much more than Dave did. When Tanya found out Alan was the killer, she was killed to keep quiet. After Alan's cover is blown, he tries to kill Dave by swinging his cane at him, but Dave sees it coming via a mirror. He jumps up and stops him, at which point the cops arrest Alan. Heather enters and professes she still loves Dave, who can actually see again. This was a pretty good movie. Like I said, the story is one of a kind and the constant twists in the plot actually kept me guessing what the truth really was until the final moments. I had no idea Dave wasn't the killer. You don't really need top class actors or special effects to make a worthwhile movie, just a memorable story and believable motives for the cast. We assume Dave is innocent, and want to see him prove it, so it keeps the audience on edge. Overall, I never heard of this film so I didn't expect much, but we can see how Chaney continued his father's horror legacy in his own way. His movies might not have been as polished, but they offer a look into what his father's career might have been like had he lived into the era of talkies.
Old San Francisco (1927)
A Vasquez avenges a Vasquez
With many silent movies, you often get themes and portrayals of certain characters that would never be considered acceptable these days, even if they're not meant to be derogatory. Maybe people have added more hurtfulness to certain stereotypes just by refusing to acknowledge that they exist. This movie from 1927 features an actress who was cast (more often than not) as a malicious Asian woman, and while it gets pretty tiring seeing her play the same role non-stop, I thought the film was ok. It revolves around Delores (Dolores Costello), a Spanish granddaughter of a Californian ranchero, Hernandez de Vasquez, who came to the state in search of gold. He is old now, and prospectors want his land. An Irish businessman named Terrence O'Shaughnessy visits Hernandez and comes into contact with Delores. They are instantly attracted to each other. Soon, Delores catches the attention of Chris Buckwell, a power broker from the city. He has a lot of money, and the Chinese district of San Francisco hates him because he wants to stop their community from growing. They know better than to anger him though, as he is white (or so they think). Buckwell is actually chinese, but is disguised so that his people don't recognize him. His mansion is on top of an underground shrine to Confucius, and is also where he keeps his dwarf brother in a cage. This underground lair is also where Anna May Wong acts as his evil hireling. She's one of the only characters who knows Buckwell is half asian. Chris causes the death of Vasquez, who refused to sell his land to him at any price. Delores eventually finds Terrence dancing with some other woman and is heartbroken. She tries to forget about him, but is captured by Chris and shown to his bosses in the chinese district. He announces his plans to deliver her to a brothel, as his bosses have made a fortune in distributing opium, but never had a gem as rare as her. Terrence infiltrates Chris' mansion and frees the dwarf in the cage, so they try to locate Delores before Chris gets his way. Right then, they bring on the infamous 1906 san francisco earthquake, which flattens much of the surrounding area. Due to what someone was raving about earlier in the film, it's suggested that God himself is giving out retribution for Chris' crimes. Anna May Wong, Chris, and the rest of the villains are killed, and Terrence and Delores are reunited. This is a strange movie. Even back then, the New York Post found it ridiculous. Zanuck was behind this so it seems well produced, but Wong barely appears throughout the entire thing. In fact, her character doesn't even have a name. For those of you who wish you lived long in the past before people started being so sensitive, you should look into how residents of san francisco's chinatown reacted to its release. Asians in the movie are depicted as taking part in many activities that serve to subvert society, such as slavery, fraud, idol worship, and even drug trading. I find it strange they would be so fond of opium of all drugs, since china was brought to its knees in a war against Britain a century earlier in which the latter got millions addicted to it. You may as well also point out that it is other asian characters who expose Chris for what he is, proving not all the portrayals are negative. I just think it's odd a Swede was the one playing Chris.
Eyes of the Navy (1940)
Getting ready for the unavoidable
With America's involvement in World War II looking inevitable by 1940, the country started gearing up for yet another European bloodbath. Hundreds of films were made during this period to show the public what america was doing in order to achieve victory as fast as possible and with as few losses as possible, and this is a good example of it. In this film, we see how those from all across the US register for service in the Navy. While this was the case for all the other military branches as well, the navy is the focus here. Recruits attend courses in which they're taught the strategies of being a pilot on an aircraft carrier. You really see how unprepared america's carrier fleets were for ww2 when you realize the carrier decks are full of biplanes. Later in the war, even advanced monoplanes would be used for training purposes. Pilots also undertake training at Pensacola air station in northwest Florida, which has been a naval base for over a century. Aircraft carriers are not the only type of warship that carry aircraft. Some battleships are fitted with steam catapults to launch biplane scouts towards the sea. The catapult accelerates the plane to 70 miles an hour in about half a second. When the plane's reconnaissance is completed, it lands alongside its parent ship and is hoisted aboard with a crane. At a shooting range, future navy pilots undertake pistol training with Colt 1911s and shoot clay pigeons with shotguns. The latter is especially important since being a gunner in the rear of a dive bomber isn't easy: you're trying to hit something that's moving from something that's moving. We're then shown biplanes shooting at a large fabric target towed by another biplane. After the exercise, the fabric is examined for bullet holes, and the pilots find too many to count, proving they don't just have the wings of eagles, but the eyes of them too. The recruits that do really well are sent to a base in San Diego to undertake more training, this time under actual naval conditions. Later, we're shown a biplane is nosed over on purpose in order to make sure response teams and damage control personnel know what to do in a crash landing scenario. While use of parachutes for airborne landings is typically the Army's concern, the parachute is still essential safety equipment for the navy. Next is one of the most grueling things a navy pilot can train for: actually landing on a carrier. A relatively small stretch of field is laid out to simulate the deck of the ship, and a signal officer coaches each pilot with arm movements as they start their approaches. Carrier landings are extremely difficult, even for seasoned pilots, and depending on exactly how you land, the plane can flip over or slide off the ship completely. Finally, we see biplanes take off from a carrier in order to partake in a dive bombing mission. This short was ok. It's not really anything out of the ordinary when it comes to ww2, but I thought it was interesting to see this since america wasn't involved yet. By this point, it was only a matter of time before we got involved, and most here didn't want it. I liked seeing the PBY Catalina flying boats at the naval base, since that entire class of aircraft is something you never see anymore. Essentially a seaplane, but the entire hull is boat shaped. A far less impressive plane we see in this short is the Douglas TBD Devastator. Its name couldn't be more wrong as during the Battle of Midway, over 40 of these obsolete deathtraps were sent out to hunt for Japanese aircraft carriers, and all but 6 were shot down. This horrendous loss led to the navy replacing it right away with the Grumman Avenger, as this company has a long history of making great naval planes. As this short shows, tactics in war keep evolving, and while things like dive bombing seemed state of the art at this time, it's completely unnecessary today due to things like laser guidance and drones. Those serving in the navy right now stand on the sacrifices of the men in this film.
Great Expectations (1946)
Trying to become a gentleman
While David Lean has directed some of the most acclaimed and important epic films of all time, these typically overshadow his lesser known movies such as this one. While obscure isn't really the word I would use to describe this since it's based on a Charles Dickens book, Lean's other works are so grand in scale that they make this one seem small. The story begins with a young orphan named Pip (Anthony Wager) going into a cemetery to visit the graves of his parents. While there, he comes across an escaped criminal, Abel Magwitch. He threatens Pip to come back the next day with tools he can use to get his chains off. The next day, Pip also gives him food. Abel is later caught when he attacks another inmate on a beach instead of running away. Pip later gets an invitation from a reclusive woman named Miss Havisham to come to her mansion to play with her adopted daughter, an attractive teenager named Estella (Jean Simmons). However, Estella is really mean to Pip and makes fun of his coarse manners, pays no mind when he tells her she is pretty, and even slaps him at one point. He also meets a boy slightly older than him, Herbert, who challenges him to a boxing match. Pip wins, the whole thing being witnessed by Estella from her bedroom, unbeknownst to Pip. Pip tells Miss Havisham he must leave because he's about to turn 14 and become a blacksmith's apprentice. Estella leaves for France to learn the mannerisms involved with being elegant. Several years pass. Miss Havisham sends her lawyer Mr. Jaggers to tell Pip that his unidentified benefactor wants to turn him into a man with "great expectations." Pip assumes the anonymous person must be Miss Havisham. He leaves for London and stays with a now adult Herbert (Alec Guinness). Herbert tells Pip Miss Havisham's backstory, which involves her wanting to destroy the lives of men because her would-be husband refused to marry her at the last moment. She now uses Estella as her tool to be cruel to them. When he is 21, Pip receives an invitation from Miss Havisham to revisit the house, and for the first time in years, sees Estella (Valerie Hobson) again. They talk in the garden, and Pip brings up the times Estella was nasty to him. She admits that she is soulless and in spite of going out with the wealthy Bentley Drummle, doesn't actually like him. When Pip returns to london on a rainy night, he gets a surprising visitor: the same man who he met in the graveyard all those years ago. Abel has been keeping himself busy with farming sheep in New South Wales, Australia, which made him a lot of money. Abel reveals that he is Pip's secret benefactor, and wanted him to have a pleasant life, unlike him. Meanwhile, Pip visits Estella and learns she plans to marry Bentley. For the first time in her presence, Pip appears mad, and confronts Miss Havisham about using Estella to torment him. Pip leaves, but a spark from the fireplace lands on Miss Havisham's dress and she is ignited. Pip hears her wails and tries to save her, but is too late. Pip finds out that an adversary of Abel's is in london, so he and Herbert plan to smuggle him onto a ship. Upon rowing out to the steamboat, the cops ambush them, and Abel and his enemy are knocked into the water. His enemy (the same guy he fought with on the beach years earlier) is crushed to death by the paddlewheels, but Abel is sentenced to be hanged. Abel tells Pip the true reason he has done so much for him: he had a child himself, but lost her years ago. As it turns out, Abel's daughter is Estella. By now, Abel is dying in the prison infirmary, so Pip visits him to say that his daughter is beautiful now, has much wealth, and many powerful acquaintances so he doesn't die with any regret. Pip contracts whatever illness Abel had and is looked after for days by Joe, the blacksmith. When he's able to, Pip goes back to the mansion and hears the words Estella first spoke to him years ago echo in his mind. Entering Miss Havisham's old room, Pip is shocked to find Estella still living here. She tells Pip she's here forever because Drummle cancelled the engagement after learning her father is a convict. Unwilling to see his obsession turn into another hermit like Havisham, Pip gets rid of all the curtains in the room and lets the sun shine through. Estella decides to leave her former habits of cruelness behind, and she leaves the house with pip. While essentially a watered down retelling of its source material, I really think this movie is a win for David Lean. There's just an allure movies set in the 19th century have, and I like seeing all the architecture and decorations they had back then. John Mills as adult Pip plays a man who realizes that money is just as bad for someone's conscience as being poor, if not worse. Despite all the times Estella abuses him, he doesn't drop to her level. Estella is immature for most of the film, but understands by the end that she needs to break free of Havisham's influence. She used her as a tool, and Estella becoming a recluse who hates men is what she would have wanted. This is also Alec Guinness' first credited movie, paving the way for a long and legendary career. While I think this movie is at its most interesting before Pip grows up, I still have to consider Great Expectations a near perfect adaptation since it is just a real interesting story.
Platoon (1986)
What is it good for?
Ever since the conclusion of the Vietnam War, the conflict has often been treated as probably the lowest point in US history. Even many who partook in it did not discuss it when they came back here. It was akin to growing up in a family with abusive parents; something you just pretend never happened. With Platoon, Oliver Stone paints a detailed picture of why vietnam is the most hated of all wars America has been involved in. The movie starts in 1967, right when america's involvement in southeast Asia is expanding. An Army volunteer named Chris (Charlie Sheen) arrives in south vietnam and is assigned to a platoon near the border with Cambodia. The platoon is commanded by a rookie Lieutenant just out of officer candidate school named Wolfe, but the men instead prefer to take orders from two of his underlings: Staff Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Elias (Tom Berenger and William Dafoe respectively). Taylor's first taste of action comes at night, when he is deployed alongside Barnes, Elias and several other soldiers in order to ambush a north vietnamese army force in the jungle. After a patrol appears, a firefight breaks out and a recruit named Gardner is killed. After the engagement, Chris returns to base and gets to know Elias and his circle of weed smokers while alienating himself from Barnes and his more brutish guys. While on another patrol, two soldiers are killed by a bomb trap left by the vietnamese. The platoon eventually comes to a village, where Barnes threatens and interrogates locals about whether or not the villagers are stashing food for the NVA. Barnes guns down the village chief's wife when she gets up in his face, then tells his translator to tell the villagers he will kill more if they don't get rid of the food. Elias shows up and smacks Barnes with the end of his M16 when he learns what he did. Wolfe acts like he didn't know about Barnes' actions when Elias brings up the issue (which is a lie). Back at base, a Captain threatens to get Barnes court martialed if he finds evidence of GI's killing civilians. Barnes is worried Elias will see this as an opportunity to get rid of him. On another patrol, the platoon again comes under sudden attack by the NVA, who are armed with rocket launchers this time. The situation takes a nosedive when Wolfe mistakenly directs friendly artillery support on top of his own unit by giving them wrong coordinates. While Elias, Chris and some other soldiers fight off an NVA attack next to their position, Barnes tells his men to fall back while he goes deeper into the jungle to find Elias. Upon finding him, Barnes kills him and then tells Chris NVA are crawling all over so it makes no sense to go back for him. After reaching a Huey helicopter for an extraction, Chris watches in disbelief as a fatally wounded Elias runs out of the jungle with a large group of NVA soldiers attempting to kill him, which they eventually do. Chris now has all the proof he needs this was Barnes' doing. At the base, Chris tries to convince the others that they need to "frag" Barnes: a real life form of fratricide during vietnam where disgruntled and abused soldiers would murder their own officers on purpose with hand grenades. However, Barnes hears what's going on and bets Chris won't say what he just did to his face. Chris attacks Barnes, but the latter easily pins him down and cuts his cheek with his combat knife. The platoon once again takes a position near the front to repel a north vietnamese night onslaught. The defenses are punched through and an enemy soldier manages to kill Wolfe in a suicide attack when he runs into his headquarters and blows himself up. In a last ditch attempt to force back the NVA, an airstrike is authorized inside the base perimeter. Barnes and Chris run into each other, and right when Barnes is about to kill him, both are knocked out by a jet dropping bombs nearby. Chris awakens the next morning, and finds a badly wounded Barnes crawling around. Chris picks up an AK47 and aims it at Barnes when the latter asks him to call for a medic. When Chris doesn't answer, Barnes dares him to shoot him, which he does. A helicopter then picks up Chris. As he was wounded twice, he is allowed to go home. There are few other movies that show war to be this hellish, except for maybe the first 20 or so minutes of Saving Private Ryan. All the ugly realities of being in a war are shown here, none of it is sugarcoated and it's on full display. Sheen and Dafoe give great performances in the various shocking scenes and more easygoing sequences where they're at camp. After watching the brutality in this movie, it's pretty easy to classify it as anti-war, but I don't think it is. It just shows what war actually is. In general, Platoon is quite a disturbing look at what it was like to be part of the vietnam war, and with Stone's own experience in vietnam, it makes it more authentic. The only way to win a war like this where enemies could be hiding literally anywhere is to kill everyone, including civilians. This was the depressing reality of the conflict. Overall, Platoon is about as whimsical as an autopsy, and is a hard to watch but important movie because it shows how war is just an instrument of death.
Glimpses of California (1946)
The Golden State
Among all the US states, California is one of the most powerful and influential. It possesses the strongest non-national economy on Earth, has a huge tech industry, and many of the world's most recognizable companies and industries are located here. Even back when this short was made, california was the place to be if you wanted to accomplish your dreams of making a ton of money or getting big in the motion picture industry. Fitzpatrick starts by saying Spanish settlers came to what is today california in search of gold, but they never located it. Due to its climate, growing flowers is easier in california more than most other states, and it's not unusual to see residential houses with huge lawns comprised of what seems like hundreds of flowers all densely grown together. California's state flower is the poppy, and the state has an extensive and advanced network of trams and railway lines for the transportation of pedestrians and supplies. To outsiders, one of california's most famous attractions is without a doubt Hollywood, the undisputed center of film. While that may be the case, most of the major studios are in the surrounding areas and not in the district itself. Many movies that later become world famous for decades have their premieres at Grauman's Chinese Theater in LA. We also see the outdoor dining scene, which has a lot of tables that are Paris-inspired. California also has a huge fruit industry, and around half the fruit in America originates from here. Finally, we visit Forest Lawn Memorial Park, which is a cemetary in Glendale that contains a massive, 30 foot wide stain glass reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, The Last Supper. This version is backlit by natural light, the intensity of which is controlled by shutters, ensuring that it looks even more amazing when the surrounding area is dark. This concludes Fitzpatrick's look at 1940s california. While it says this short was made after the war, I feel like it was done during it since it was risky to travel outside america at the time. I don't think they would have focused so much on american states if there wasn't a global war going on. Even today, california is the most populous state and is a prime example of how crucial geographical location is. Because it's extremely big, has basically every type of climate and biome imaginable, more money than it knows what to do with, and probably the overall nicest weather on earth, it's not hard to see why california was basically destined for greatness as soon as it was discovered. I am kind of disappointed there's no mention of the Golden Gate Bridge but I'm sure there's other parts of this series that show it.
The Twilight Zone: From Agnes - with Love (1964)
"Women only love or hate"
Although I've seen every single episode of the Twilight Zone, I can't think of many episodes that had laughs as the main focus. This one is funny for two reasons: it is relatable to those who are interested in computers and is also a commentary on how frustrating romance can be. The story begins with a computer programmer named Fred. He is being driven to the brink of insanity by a large mainframe computer known as Agnes. Another programmer, James Elwood (Wally Cox) is brought in to solve the error message Agnes has run into, and he manages to do so. Because he proved he's up to the job, James' new task is to be one who operates Agnes: the world's most advanced computer. James asks out a female programmer he works with, Millie (Sue Randall). At work, James uses Agnes to work out problems and equations relating to the escape velocities of spacecraft taking off from Cape Canaveral, but before long, the computer itself becomes jealous of his life love and starts holding it over his head. Agnes stops giving James space related info and instead provides him with intentionally bad advice for his date with Millie, starting with encouraging him to buy her champagne. James tries courting Millie by reading her some of Einstein's theories about the universe but irrevocably sours the date when the champagne explodes all over Millie's dress. She is angry and storms out. The next day, James asks Agnes for more advice on how to get Millie to forgive him, to which she responds by saying he needs to buy roses. Upon giving some to Millie, he finds out (too late) that she's allergic to them. James eventually sets up another date with Millie, but fears if he doesn't impress her soon, he'll end up losing her. Agnes suggests introducing her to a male even more pathetic and nerdy than he is: a programmer on the third floor named Walter. Walter is a stud much taller than James, but despite his stature, expensive Mustang and penchant for doing dangerous races, Agnes reassures James that he's a loser. James does as Agnes says and makes Millie meet Walter, and she's immediately smitten with him, much to James' shock. Right after meeting Walter, Millie acts as if James doesn't even exist. Meanwhile, James is called back to work because his boss desperately needs an answer to a complex math equation regarding a probe mission to Venus. James is forced to leave Millie with Walter. At his job, Agnes refuses to do math and instead tells him he should forget about Millie since someone better loves him: Agnes. When James says that's not going to happen, Agnes gets angry and beeps loudly, producing nonsensical answers. James, out of patience by now, wants to know why the computer is trying to destroy his life, to which Agnes says it is jealous of Millie. James has had enough of this and tries to disable Agnes. Eventually, James' boss (alongside Walter) enters the room to see if he's gotten the answer to the Venus problem yet, and all he sees is an exhausted James staring off into space talking to himself. The boss wants James to take a vacation while Walter tries to fix Agnes. As he leaves, James yells out that Walter hasn't got a chance; Agnes knows about his stint with Millie. I like this episode. There's not many actors who can play a nerd better than Wally, which is ironic because he used to ride motorcycles. Here, he is a man who, despite all his mental prowess when it comes to math and science, remains impressively naive. It's not really his fault he can't see through Agnes' lies, as computers evidently make up a big part of his life. He no doubt trusts them. Seeing him get friend zoned at Walter's apartment later basically guarantees the episode is still relevant today. It's a very unfair feeling when someone you can't stop thinking of leaves you for a person who is (in their mind) more exciting or adventurous. Beyond themes such as these, the episode also shows a rather archaic way of thinking since lots of people at this time really believed robots would take over everything. Computers were still pretty new, and logically, people thought that such advanced electronic devices could surpass humans if they weren't kept in check. It's fun to think about, but it still hasn't happened yet. Overall, this episode is one of the best from the fifth season of TZ, a time when the show's plots were wearing thin.
A Study in Scarlet (1933)
Mystery society
I never saw a Sherlock Holmes movie before, so this archaic example from the early 30s seemed as good a place as any to start. It is a pretty average murder mystery that is slowly unraveled (but also made more complicated) by the addition of unexpected events or even other characters getting killed. The movie starts on a train, and a London man named Mr. Murphy is found dead in one of the seats, murdered. A secret society meets in a dimly lit lair, led by a lawyer named Thaddeus. He tells about Murphy's demise, which comes just after the death of Colonel Forrester, another member whose daughter Eileen (June Clyde) is granted permission to be a member for unclear reasons. Thaddeus says the money interest in the society will be shared among the remaining members but Murphy's widow gets nothing. Mrs. Murphy visits Sherlock Holmes (Reginald Owen) and Doctor Watson to try and get help in getting what she believes she is owed. Holmes tells his partner how Thaddeus is London's most formidable criminal and has escaped him many times before, but he will put a stop to this. Thaddeus tells Eileen she shouldn't marry her boyfriend John for the foreseeable future. While she's distracted, one of the society members (Captain Pyke) rushes into the room and is shot dead through a window. Eileen faints, and Pyke's body is identified by his wife Mrs. Pyke (Anna May Wong), whose lawyer happens to be Thaddeus. It looks like the society members are being killed one at a time. Holmes and Watson look into the death of another member named Malcolm. The two of them visit Thaddeus to ask about Murphy's money, but he keeps his mouth shut. Right after, Thaddeus calls Eileen to invite her to another meeting of the society, now called the Scarlet Ring. She tells John that her dead father said that Thaddeus wants to give her a large inheritance. John takes off and speaks with Holmes, claiming that his future wife is in jeopardy. Holmes puts on a disguise and visits Mrs. Pyke's mansion, which she has put up for sale. What he finds there makes him wonder if Pyke is working with Thaddeus, so he puts ads in papers asking people to reach out to him if they know anything regarding the Scarlet Ring. The society hosts another meeting, and while the surviving members are worried they're about to be killed, Thaddeus announces that after years in the making, their grand scheme is about to pay off to the tune of 1 million pounds: 200 thousand each for the remaining members. Sherlock and Watson arrive just as the meeting is ending, and find Eileen tied up in a gas filled room. After rescuing her, the society member Wilson tries to plead with Holmes after someone apparently attempts to kill him. Wilson and Eileen get lured and don't realize they are they next targets of the society. Holmes and the cops show up and enter the mansion, saving them both. The murderer is revealed to be Captain Pyke, thought to be dead the whole time. Pyke is arrested and subsequently hanged for carrying out 3 murders, and his wife is arrested because she helped him. Thaddeus arrives with the huge sum of money, and is arrested as well. Eileen and John can now be together with no worries. This was ok. I have yet to see a film where Anna May Wong is cast as anything but a mysterious and typically malicious Chinese woman, so a lot of the plot felt run of the mill and ordinary. Despite not being very long, the movie is noticeably slow moving and doesn't really have any type of music, which just adds to the tedium. I know he's meant to be a sidekick, but Watson barely does anything in this movie and gets pushed to the side while Holmes takes centerstage, which is quite a missed opportunity. You should always try to get the most out of actors no matter who they're playing since it's going to help the movie in the long run. If I watched any other movies based on Sherlock Holmes I'd probably criticize this movie a lot more, but I have nothing to compare it to so I thought it was tolerable.
Alien³ (1992)
Rehashed
Second sequels rarely work, and there's few science fiction movies that show this more plainly than Alien 3. The first installment of the series was a terrifying survival film set in the cold reaches of space, where members of a spaceship's crew are getting killed one by one by an unknown lifeform that is incredibly fast and nearly invisible. The second is (in the eyes of many) even better than the first, as the situation was much more chaotic with more than one Xenomorph, not to mention we got Michael Biehn from The Terminator as one of the protagonists. This one is just okay. It feels tired and played out since we're down to only one alien again, it continues its rampage of disposing of unsuspecting victims, and I had basically no sympathy for any of the characters due to the setting. The movie begins with the Sulaco, the marine spaceship from the previous movie, drifting through space on its way to Earth after Ellen Ripley has fought and killed a xenomorph queen at the end of Aliens. She has been placed in a cryogenic pod to halt her aging process. At some point during the journey, a xenomorph egg hatches on the ship. Its acidic blood causes a fire. The ship's AI jettisions the section of the vessel containing Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), the android Bishop, and Newt, the 10 year old girl Ripley protected throughout the previous movie. The four of them land on a nearby world that is home to Fiorina 161, a maximum security prison which only houses male inmates. Still unconscious, Ripley is taken by Clemens, the prison's medical officer, and awakens to find out she's the last survivor. Newt has died in her sleep due to her pod being flooded with water, Hicks was impaled by a piece of the ship, and Bishop was torn in half by the xenomorph queen at the end of the last film. Clemens takes Ripley to the morgue where she is allowed to say goodbye to Newt, but she seems more inquisitive about how she might have died. Clemens says that she drowned and that's all there is to be said, but Ripley isn't satisfied until an autopsy is done. Clemens is reluctant but agrees to do it right in front of her, but no signs of disease or more importantly an alien embryo are found. As a precaution, Ripley still wants the corpses of Newt and Hicks cremated using the prison's furnace. This is done as the facility's spiritual leader, Dillon, gives a speech. Meanwhile in a secluded area of the prison, a small xenomorph alien violently emerges from one of the prisoner's dogs, Spike, and kills him. Ripley retrieves the remains of Bishop and goes to the infirmary to connect his wiring and reactivate him. Before permanently being shut down, Bishop confirms Ripley's worst fears: an alien did get ejected with her and the others as they crashed on the planet. Now bigger than a human, the xenomorph kills several inmates and Ripley has to use her experience as an officer to lead the prison's efforts to hunt it down. This will be way easier said than done as the prison has no firearms at all. Some time later, while Clemens is trying to give Ripley an injection, the xenomorph ambushes them both and kills him, but inexplicably refuses to harm Ripley. She then rallies the inmates and gets them to pour gallons of nuclear waste into the air vents going through the prison to hopefully force the alien out of hiding. However, the xenomorph ambushes the guy carrying the lit match, causing a massive premature inferno. Several inmates die horribly, but Ripley soon has a much worse thing to worry about. As it turns out, she discovers the embryo of a xenomorph queen inside her after placing herself in a scan. After learning that Weyland-Yutani, the company responsible for the spaceship Nostromo from the first film, plans to turn xenomorphs into weapons, she tries to stop their so called "rescue team" from arriving to the planet. They will be doing some rescuing, just not with her or the inmates in mind. Now knowing why the xenomorph didn't kill her, Ripley tries to explain her predicament to Dillon, who thinks she is lying. Ripley is effectively immune to the alien's rage, and so has no choice but to ask Dillon to kill her instead so the xenomorph queen is vanquished as well. Dillon only agrees if Ripley helps him and the remaining inmates kill the current xenomorph first. For their final plan, the inmates attempt to trap the alien in a corridor in the prison's foundry, and then dump a flood of molten lead on it. As the alien chases the prisoners through the foundry, all but Dillon and one named Morse are killed. Dillon gives his life to trap the alien in the corridor facing the lead mold as Morse releases the boiling metal onto them both. Incredibly, the xenomorph is unphased and leaps up towards Ripley. She activates the fire suppression system, and the xenomorph is blown to pieces by the rapid change in extreme temperatures. At last, the team from weyland arrives, led by a guy who looks just like Bishop (Lance Henriksen), the android. He explains that he designed Bishop, hence the resemblance. He and the weyland operatives try to convince Ripley to surrender the alien inside her to them, as they have a surgical ward on their ship. Although he doesn't state it, Ripley knows he intends to use the xenomorph as a weapon and rejects his proposal. Ripley moves onto a platform which is positioned over the huge furnace by Morse. The weyland soldiers shoot Morse in the leg to try and stop him but it's too late; Ripley drops herself into the fire, ending her life and the xenomorph threat. Morse, the last survivor, is led away by the team while Ripley's final audio entry from the events of the Nostromo play. Whichever way you look at it, Alien 3 is mostly more of the same for this series. I don't know if I'd say it's the worst one, but the premise just isn't as interesting as the first two. Firstly, there's no guns in this movie at all until it's almost over, so the options the characters have for combating the alien are very few and far between. This lack of viable options against the xenomorph means that Ripley has no choice but to interact with the thoroughly contemptible prisoners for much of the runtime. She's not quite as independent in this movie as in the first, willing to hunt down the xenomorph on her own (not that it matters since it won't attack her anyway). As a side note, HR Giger was asked to make the alien more animalistic this time, contrasting the more imposing and upright posture it had in the previous films. I don't think this decision has aged that well. The thing literally runs like a cheetah in some scenes, and while you only get a few frames of it, that's all you need to see the rather dated computer animations. While there was an early 90s video game based on this movie intended for consoles such as the Sega Genesis and Commodore, I don't really think Alien 3 has stood the test of time like its predecessors have. David Fincher himself seems to write this off as a mistake.
Fine Feathers (1933)
Bird is the word
One of the most interesting but sad aspects of nature is observing just how many types of species have become extinct over the years, whether due to human actions or some other reason. This short from the 1930s goes over different types of birds that the average person will probably never get a look at in person. Some of the birds shown include Cardinals, including a non-red one that is probably more uncommon than the already rare specimen most are familiar with. One thing I didn't know is how Pheasants are native to Asia, and they have one from Manchuria (northeast China) here to show us. This bird's plumage is mostly yellow and copper, with a wide, white collar on its neck region that is more broad at the front. Other types of pheasants exist in southern Siberia or some Korean regions. We also see a Victoria Crowned Pigeon from New Guinea, which is off the northern coast of Australia. The narrator says how they're almost extinct, but even in the current day, this is nowhere near true. Next, the Black Crowned Crane makes its appearance. These are found in wetlands across the African savanna and are so named because of a distinct, bright yellow arrangement of feathers on their heads. One surefire way to anger basically any type of animal is to go near its young, and someone involved with this short finds that out when trying to get film of a baby crane. Lastly, we see Barn Owls, which are strange creatures that oftentimes seem to be lacking a face. They are the most common type of owl and are found everywhere except for deserts or the ice caps. With their black eyes usually obscured behind an oversized ridge of feathers, they're probably the owl species most bird enthusiasts would want as pets (which is sadly illegal in the US). Just like most other Pete Smith shorts, this one was quite amusing and (in my view) much easier to get enjoyment out of due to his humorous comments about the birds. Some other narrators for 30s and 40s short films just tend to drone on and on without their voices ever changing (James Fitzpatrick and his Traveltalks series come to mind). While I still like those, it's not often we see films like this on animals. Being the only relatives of dinosaurs that you can see in the current day, birds and the hobby of watching them is something more people should look into. The Technicolor in this short was clearly chosen for a reason, as it would still work in black and white, but not quite as magnificent. Overall, TCM made a good decision to play this after one of the movies I saw there recently, since it's a little known part of history you will probably never find anywhere else.
George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin (1994)
On to victory
Alongside fellow directors Frank Capra, John Ford, George Huston and William Wyler, George Stevens journeyed overseas during World War II in order to get a glimpse on what the conflict was like. This film is a collection of some of the things Stevens shot, filmed in color using the same Kodachrome film he made his home movies with. Stevens followed the US Army in Europe as they assaulted the hellish beaches of Normandy in northern France during the largest amphibious attack in history. The highlight of his entire reel (and according to himself, his whole life) was being in the midst of a newly liberated Paris. The charismatic general Charles de Gaulle returns after 4 years in exile, embodying the soul of a resurgent france. Stevens also takes footage of a big military parade being held in front of the Arc de Triomphe, as well as a high ranking German commander surrendering to Allied forces. As american forces push further into europe, Stevens is there with them and documents the Battle of the Bulge, the last major german attack of the war which was launched to give Hitler a straight passageway to the crucial port of Antwerp. The Belgian countryside is devastated, but Stevens records a mass surrender of german troops, an event in which they even gave up 25 generals, as well as some GI's hanging grenades on a Christmas tree. After advancing across the Rhine river into germany, another extremely important event is captured by Stevens, as American and Soviet forces finally meet at the Elbe River in germany. While they were a world away from each other fighting their own separate campaigns, Russian and american cameramen, both tasked with filming the war, get along almost instantly. A much more serious location is next for Stevens, as he and his unit come across the Dachau camp in the south of germany. Here, they discover scores of malnourished prisoners. Thousands are already dead. Many are disease ridden due to typhus. Many former SS guards try to evade capture by wearing prisoner uniforms, but many are recognized and beaten to death by enraged inmates. Stevens ventures on to Nordhausen, where a huge underground complex comprising 40 miles of tunnels is located. The germans have been using inmates and prisoners to build Hitler's wonder weapons that were supposed to change the tide of the war, such as the ME-262 jet fighter and V2 ballistic missile. Lastly, Stevens gets permission from the soviets to go to Berlin, which they are intent on holding on to since 200 thousand russians died capturing it. Stevens would be part of this film unit until 1946. Because of what he saw during the war, his subsequent movies were not as comedic as his past ones. Keep in mind, this is the same guy who wrote jokes for a large amount of Laurel and Hardy films. Overall, I really liked this unique look at history, not only because it was well made and reminded me a lot of World at War, but also since having such important pieces of ww2 history on film is crucial to making sure the lessons of it are not forgotten. Maybe it's not coincidental that I felt like I was watching World at War while viewing this, since Carl Davis did the music. He really did manage to set up the mood of the entire war musically.
Julie (1956)
Doris saves the day
Since my search for a barely known about Argentinian noir hasn't given me results, I moved on to this film that I've been meaning to watch for months. The plot is really not that hard to understand, which for the sake of writing is a good thing, but the execution of it on the screen just feels really sloppy. The movie follows (no pun intended) a girl named Julie Benton (Doris Day) who is being stalked by her intensely jealous husband, a concert pianist named Lyle (Louis Jourdan). One day while she's out driving with her husband in the passenger seat, he forces Julie's foot on the gas and won't let go. Forced to navigate winding roads that seem to appear out of nowhere, Julie realizes Lyle nearly killed both himself and his wife, but threatens to kill Julie if she ever leaves him. Julie goes to her friend Cliff, who tells her that her first husband's death was actually a homicide that Lyle committed, although the aftermath was meant to make it look like he was hanged. Julie gets Lyle to admit that he killed her first husband, and the only thing on her mind now is a desperate escape before it's too late. She manages to get away from their cabin, but Lyle tracks her down to a police station. The cops are unable to help Julie as she has no written proof that Lyle actually killed somebody. Lyle confronts Julie as she leaves the precinct, telling her she's making a mistake. She drives with Cliff to San Francisco, where the cops are a little more willing to offer assistance, as one of the cops here had his wife killed because of a jealous ex husband. Julie is forced to go under a new name and get her old job as an airline stewardess back. Lyle manages to find out that Cliff plans to meet up with a friend in California later that night. Lyle pursues Cliff's car, and Cliff confronts him. Lyle shoots him after he refuses to drive him to where Julie is hidden. The badly wounded Cliff manages to crawl to a small shack owned by an old man, and Lyle is forced to back off. Meanwhile, Julie is told by her airline that she needs to fly back to New York to fill somebody's role. Cliff manages to tell the old man that Lyle is about to kill Julie. The cops arrive too late to find Julie at her safehouse, and Lyle follows her to the airport, getting on the very same plane she's on. The cops communicate with the pilots over the phone and learn that Lyle is on the plane. They try to figure out how to subdue him, but Lyle makes his move too quickly, rushing the cockpit as Julie returns to it and killing one of the pilots. The other pilot shoots Lyle fatally, and Lyle tells Julie how instead of killing her, he's going to strand her on a plane without any pilots on it. Lyle then shoots the other pilot, badly wounding him. Although Julie has been around aircraft most of her life, she doesn't know how to fly something this advanced. The copilot walks her through the landing process when he's able to, but he keeps going unconscious. The control tower gives Julie instructions on how to land the plane, and it's a nervewracking experience since visibility is poor and there is a crosswind near the runway that pushes the plane to the left. Julie manages to land the plane successfully, saving everyone on it, and she is now free of Lyle's relentless vengeance. This movie isn't that great. My interest went up considerably when I got to the part with the plane, but if you look past that, there's nothing special about it. The ending kills the entire movie in my eyes. Once the plane is landed, it ends almost immediately, as if the central plot point of Julie being hunted down doesn't even matter. It sucks all the urgency right out of the story. In general, I'm kind of in disbelief at how vastly different the two halves of this film are. The latter half of it is more like a flight simulator than a noir, and because of this inconsistency I have to not rate it that highly. Even if you're someone interested in flying, you're not watching a noir movie to acquire this type of knowledge.
With the Marines at Tarawa (1944)
Carnage
During World War II, US Marine forces fighting the Japanese in the Pacific Ocean could be assured that no matter how difficult taking one island might seem, the next was sure to be worse. This fact is epitomized by Tarawa, a very small atoll in present day Kiribati. Although not even a square mile in total area, almost six thousand people would be killed here in 3 days. In order to secure airbases even closer to japan, American forces had to attack various islands and use them as staging points to attack subsequent ones. After months of intense training, marines are loaded into ships on their way to tarawa. They are familiarized with their objectives and what they have to do once ashore via a large map of the atoll. Weapons are tested, units receive word on what formations they're supposed to use, and chaplains conduct services. Many of the men attending will be dead by tomorrow. On the day of the attack, marines head into tracked amphibious vehicles called LVTs and landing boats with descending ramps. Both ships and navy planes from aircraft carriers provide cover fire, bombing and shelling the beach with so many high explosives it seems impossible for anything to survive it. Japanese mortars and machine guns destroy several landing craft, but the marines push on toward the beach. Once there, they are pinned in one location by machine guns for hours on end and can't advance. Medics try their best, but scores of them are killed. Flamethrowers and the terror they're responsible for are one of the only effective ways of clearing bunkers and concrete fortifications. The japanese defenders prefer death to surrendering. In some cases, they even swim out to the wrecks of american landing craft during the night and set up machine guns on them to stage surprise attacks. After much mortar fire from the americans, most of the japanese resistance is crushed, but several snipers climb palm trees and snipe at marines from up there. When killed, they don't fall out of the trees; just dangle from them. American Stuart light tanks, nimble but lightly armored, join the fight after being carried to the beach by ships. The marine assault is backed up by fresh supplies coming to the shoreline. When the fighting has ended, bulldozers need to be brought up to demolish certain bunkers that were so solidly made that shelling didn't destroy them. Wounded men are taken to navy hospital ships waiting off the coast. Even some japanese soldiers are taken alive, which is rare. In their eyes, the only way to avoid the shame of giving up is to kill yourself. Finally, we're shown the massive toll america has had to pay in order to secure this tiny island and establish an airbase there: huge amounts of marine corpses litter the beach and the water, too many to count. Some of them are brought back to ships to be buried at sea. After the american flag is hoisted on top of a palm tree, the film ends. No matter how hard the job is, the marines always seem to get it done. After seeing World at War years ago, I already knew the nightmare that was the battle over this island, but it's important to have this unseen footage of it I never saw before. Such a huge amount of attackers and destruction brought to this one tiny island really shows how devastating ww2 was. The deeds of the deceased marines on the island wouldn't be for nothing as each island taken represented a launching point for american bombers looking to bomb distant targets. The short even told me things I didn't know (or that World at War skips over) such as how some of the large coastal guns the japanese were using against the ships were British and taken from Singapore when it fell to japan the previous year. I always say one of the reasons I enjoy reading about ww2 so much is because after all these decades, you still discover new things.
Little Fugitive (1953)
"Ya shot your brother!"
Despite being a neighborhood in one of the world's most populated cities, I seldom ever see movies about Coney Island. Even though this film has no well known actors playing the lead parts, it still manages to captivate audiences decades later by showing the world through the curious eyes of a kid and how many things have changed in this area since the 50s. The movie starts with a kid named Lennie playing baseball on the street with his friends in Brooklyn. He has a young brother named Joey (Richie Andrusco), who he is really nasty to and hardly wants to be bothered with. Because it's summer, Lennie wants to go with his friends to coney island, but his mother tells him she must check on his sick grandmother and instructs him to watch over Joey while she's away. Lennie goes back to his friends and expresses dismay at not being allowed to go, so he does something underhanded about it. On Lennie's birthday, he gets a container of ketchup and puts it in his shirt, then gets one of his friends to steal his father's rifle. Lennie's friends ask Joey if he wants to shoot a real gun, and he says yes. The friend holds onto it and allows Joey to shoot into some bushes. It is then revealed that Joey has fatally shot his own brother, or so he thinks: the blood is actually ketchup. Still, Lennie's friends tell Joey he better run away to save himself from the electric chair. Joey gets on a train and escapes to coney island, leaving Lennie at home. For hours, Joey wanders around the boardwalk, plays carnival games, goes on a merry go round, and turns in Pepsi bottles for money on the beach. He uses the coins to pay for horse riding lessons. Meanwhile, Lennie finds out from the guy in charge of the horses that his brother is walking aimlessly around coney island, and Lennie decides to redeem himself by going after him. He writes graffiti in various places telling Joey that he isn't dead and that he wants to meet up with him at the 250 foot tall tower that drops parachutes. Lennie pays for a ride on the parachute jump and is strapped into the canvas seat. By the time he sees Joey walk across the nearby boardwalk onto the beach, it's too late. After Lennie comes down on the parachute, it begins raining and he buys ice cream. He decides to traverse a basically deserted boardwalk and go onto the beach to find his brother, which he finally does. Upon finding Joey, Lennie asks him why he ran away, and Joey says he didn't know his brother getting shot was a joke. To make up for his mistakes, Lennie gives his brother the harmonica he got for his birthday. The both of them manage to get home to brooklyn just in time, just seconds before their mom gets back. As a reward for taking care of each other, she offers to take her sons to coney island, completely unaware of what just transpired. This is a surprisingly classic movie. I think the main reason I like it is just because it shows you how a popular place looked decades before you existed (in this case a place I have been to many times). I really think the most unrealistic part is towards the end when the boardwalk is totally empty. I liked seeing the old style soda bottles, the quaint little booth under the boardwalk where Joey exchanges them for money, and seeing the rides and attractions they had back then. By far the most interesting one is the parachute jump. Originally made for the 1939 World's Fair hosted in New York, this ride is a huge, red metal tower with steel arms that support parachutes attached to guide cables. While it ceased operations in the early 60s, it was eventually added to the landmark registry and is today one of brooklyn's most recognizable sights. Seeing it in action here is an experience. This whole movie has a special quality to it, as it shows how kids in the 50s were content with standing in alleyways and talking to their friends, playing baseball, or just being outside. It's sadly something you don't really see anymore. To summarize, The Little Fugitive isn't just an easy to understand movie, but an actually enjoyable trek through a vanished era.
The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)
Golden Guinness
While British comedy has always been probably the most intelligent form of the genre, this movie is apparently clever enough to be considered one of the only fifteen films the Vatican considers as art (some of the others include On the Waterfront and Gandhi). The story feels pretty easy to understand, but puts a humorous spin on the trials and difficulties a band of crooks go through to get easy money. The entire movie is a flashback, and starts with a former English bank clerk named Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) sitting down in a Brazilian restaurant to tell a visitor how he changed his whole life one year ago by robbing gold bullion. A year ago, Holland was a bank clerk in London whose job it was to oversee bullion deliveries. He used his unassuming and wimpy demeanor to put together a scheme that involved stealing some gold, but he didn't have a way to sell it or get it out of britain. One night, Holland goes to his boarding house in Lavender Hill, where he meets Alfred Pendlebury, who also stays there. Alfred has a forge in the building that produces metal presents for tourists in certain cities. After Alfred gets the rundown on Holland's plan from the mastermind himself, he agrees to help him enact it, but speed is of the essence: Holland's boss will be moving him to another department in the bank soon. On the day of the heist, two lowly thugs named Shorty and Lackery hijack the maroon van carrying the gold and drive it to a warehouse, where the cargo is offloaded and stashed into one of Alfred's vans. Before the decoy van drives off, the thugs tie up and gag Holland to make it look like he's a helpless bystander. Once he is rescued, Holland lies to the cops and gives them false statements regarding where the thugs went. Concurrently, the rest of the gang melts down the gold and recasts it as miniature replicas of the Eiffel Tower. Right after the the last batch of stolen bullion is sent to France, Holland and Alfred head over there to go retrieve them from a woman selling souvenirs on top of the real Eiffel Tower. Alfred and Holland are in for a nasty shock when they find the box containing the valuable statuettes has already been cut open and 6 of them have been sold to british tourist schoolgirls. The tourists are chased all around the tower by Alfred and Holland, but ultimately, the duo are too slow and the girls board a ship back to britain. However, Holland manages to track them down and encourage them to exchange the statuettes they already have for identical ones. If they agree, he'll pay them. All the girls give up the Eiffel Towers (except one). Holland and Alfred shadow this last girl and watch in disbelief as she walks right into a police exhibition being held at a college, intent on giving it to a cop as a gift. Undaunted, the criminals proceed inside, but they are forced to steal the tower back when the cops say they want to conduct a chemical test on it. With their cover blown, Alfred and Holland try to escape with the tower to a stolen cop car. Holland pretends to be the officer in charge of the car and gives headquarters false coordinates and license plates pertaining to the stolen car. This buys him some time, and he even causes 4 cop cars to all converge on each other and crash, but in the end, he is forced to flee on foot while Alfred is caught. The movie then comes full circle. Back in brazil, Holland finishes telling his story to his visitor and says he squandered all the money the gold gave him. As he gets up to leave, it's shown that he is handcuffed to the other guy. This is a pretty funny movie. It's done in a way that is not really overtly funny, but more subtle, which takes considerably more brainpower to come up with and set up for the audience. I have to say, I don't think I've ever seen what the actual areas and walkways on the Eiffel Tower looked like until I watched this. I definitely wasn't expecting it to have an elevator or a spiral staircase. Overall, this is a relatively simple movie, but that's how I like them best. Alec's actions speak louder than words.
The Outer Limits: The Premonition (1965)
Between the present and the future
This episode probably has the dubious honor of being the installment of The Outer Limits that most often gets misremembered as a Twilight Zone episode. Being one of few installments of the series that doesn't feature aliens, The Premonition instead has a premise that is just as creepy and inexplicable. A reason why it's one of my favorites is because planes are a big part of its story. Jim Darcy (Dewey Martin) is a pilot in the US Air Force assigned to fly the experimental X-15, a real life rocketplane which to this day holds the world record for the fastest speed achieved by a manned aircraft. The plane is taken to its optimal altitude by a large B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber, then released from under the wing and its rocket ignited. During his flight, Jim manages to achieve mach 6 (6 times the speed of sound) or about 4500 miles an hour. The X-15 suddenly yaws down sharply and goes into a dive. Jim's wife Linda crashes her convertible outside the base on a boulder and sees the plane coming in to crash land in the desert. Upon exiting the plane, Jim discovers everything in the world around him is completely frozen, except himself and Linda. She and Jim head back to mission control and discover they have caused some kind of time paradox and trapped themselves 10 seconds into the future, but each second proceeds at an extremely slow rate: about one second every half hour. Even worse, when the two go to check on their young daughter Janie, they find she was riding a tricycle dangerously close to a garage at the instant time was stopped. Jim deduces that when time resumes (whenever that is), Janie will be right in front of a truck inside the garage, which doesn't have its brake on. Because they are technically on a different plane of reality, Jim and his wife are unable to manipulate anything in the "actual" world in order to save their daughter, since nothing can move. When they go back to the control room, they are confronted with a strange being that used to be a person, who says he was in the same situation of being stuck in a time paradox, but he couldn't make it back to the present in time. As a result, he is condemned to this plane of existence for all time. Furthermore, he tells Jim and Linda the same will happen to them if they are not in the exact places they were in at the time of the paradox when time eventually synchronizes itself again. Upon discovering Jim can manipulate items in his crashed plane and Linda's car, he formulates a plan to save Janie; cutting one of the seatbelts and tying one end of it to the truck's front left wheel and the other end around the brake lever. With time set to resume at its normal pace soon, Jim and Linda quickly jump back into the plane and car, respectively, so that time proceeds normally without any anomalies popping up. When the time syncs up, Janie rides her tricycle right in front of the truck, which lurches toward her, but the seatbelt snags on the brake and she is saved. Jim's plane still crashes, but he is able to evacuate it and meet up with Linda. They rush back to where Janie is, and are happy to learn she was not killed by the truck. Linda and Jim both feel like they've been in this exact place before, but can't understand why. While I always liked this episode, ABC apparently did not and by this point, Outer Limits was just about finished. Originally, Don Gordon was supposed to be the main character, but got sick a day before shooting was to start. Martin was brought in to replace him, and he barely had any time to memorize what his character was supposed to say. While shot at an actual air base, the X-15 featured here is a mockup that was loaned to the show. The military is more accomodating then you would expect when it comes to giving out weapons and vehicles for use on television. If you ask for something, they will usually give it to you (even an aircraft carrier). If anything, the inclusion of the X-15 in this promotes the air force, so they happily obliged. Overall, The Premonition is a somewhat heavy handed Outer Limits episode because of the Janie subplot, but I really like the concept of still time acting as another dimension.
Rocky IV (1985)
"Whatever he hits, he destroys"
Rocky 4 begins with two boxing gloves, one bearing the stars and stripes and the other emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, slamming against each other and exploding. This basically sets the tone for the whole movie, which is over the top and mildly satisfying, but woefully predictable. The story picks up after the end of 3, where heavyweight boxers Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) are now friends. Rocky has been married to his wife Adrian (Talia Shire) for about a decade now and has a son. During a birthday party for his brother in law Paulie, Rocky receives word that Apollo is on the phone and wants to talk to him about something. While in his pool that day, Apollo saw on tv that a towering boxer from the USSR named Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) seeks to challenge the now retired Italian Stallion in order to prove that the Soviet Union has the edge over America in terms of brute force. Apollo is stepping up to the challenge instead, as Rocky wants to focus on his new life and leave his old one behind him. He tries to convince Apollo that his way of thinking is right and that he shouldn't challenge Drago, but Creed is adamant. During a press event, Apollo and Drago's respective teams boil over with hatred for each other, with Drago's wife Ludmilla telling the media her husband is just a fighter and has nothing to prove by coming to america. Apollo is not satisfied until he punches him out in the ring, face to face. The fight takes place on the Las Vegas Strip. It starts out relatively normal with Drago taking his time chasing Creed around the ring, and he even lets Creed land a few hits, which seem to do absolutely nothing. Drago remorselessly strikes back with nightmarish stopping power, pummeling Apollo with such force that it doesn't just make him collapse, it takes his life. Rocky now realizes Drago is no ordinary boxer; he's a monster filled with so many steroids that when he punches, it's like getting hit by a train. There's nothing Rocky can do to save his friend, but he promises to make Drago pay in the only way he knows how. Rocky gives up his championship title to request a match from Drago, which his team agrees to, on the condition that it is held in Russia on Christmas Day. Once Adrian finds out about this, she's deeply upset and knows Rocky might get killed, but he is not going to give up. Rocky, Paulie, and Duke (Apollo's trainer) are flown to the soviet union, where Rocky is provided with a cabin in the Sverdlovsk region. It is always freezing, and he has two KGB agents watching his every move. As Rocky trains by running up mountains and cutting down trees, Drago trains using state of the art equipment with a team of doctors giving him drugs. When the fight finally begins in Moscow, Rocky is (of course) unwelcome by the audience. Drago enters the arena with big banners of Karl Marx behind him while the soviet anthem plays. Unlike his fight against Creed, Drago instantly begins attacking Rocky. Rocky is clobbered in the first 2 rounds, but at the end of the latter he manages to land a lucky punch that cuts Drago's left eye, hampering him. Duke tries to keep Rocky's spirits up by telling him he's proven that Drago isn't unstoppable, and Drago admits to his trainers that Rocky is more like a piece of steel than a human. Over the next dozen or so rounds, Rocky and Drago continue to pummel each other, with neither one willing to give in. Towards the end of the match, the russian crowd actually takes Rocky's side, amazed by his resilience. In between rounds, Drago is yelled at by his manager for being a disgrace to the soviet union, to which Drago responds by grabbing him by the throat and tossing him into the crowd. Drago tells the soviet politburo (overseeing the fight) that he fights for himself alone. In the last round, an exhausted Rocky hits Drago in quick succession a number of times and knocks him over, finally achieving his revenge. He then gives a speech which is translated to the crowd. He says how upon first entering the arena, the crowd didn't like him and he sure as hell didn't like them, but through perseverance against impossible odds, they gained respect for him. He ends the speech by wishing his son, watching on tv back in america, a merry christmas. The politburo begrudgingly stands up and clap for Rocky's victory. While this movie is basically more of the same rehashed Rocky exploits we've seen in the series time and again, I'd be lying if I said I found it boring. The movie epitomizes the vitriol america and the soviets had for each other back then, and in my opinion is shown a little too much. When the crowd in moscow boos Rocky, it's not because they think his reputation isn't deserved, it's just because he's an american. During the press conference with Drago's team, Paulie interjects and says at least his country didn't have to build a wall to keep people in. Even though he's a Swede, Dolph is probably the best actor they could have picked for the role, as he is extremely tall compared to Rocky, though not much taller than Apollo. He's a very robotic character for the most part, basically never smiles, and is only concerned with humiliating Rocky in front of the world. The entire soviet union is in his corner. Perhaps not surprisingly, Dolph actually hurt Stallone badly for real while the film was being made, as one of his blows bounced his heart against his breastbone. Stallone had to be hospitalized for over a week. Additionally, this is the only film of the original 5 not to have Bill Conti as composer, which is disappointing but not that bad a loss when we got Kenny Loggins and Survivor instead. Overall, Rocky 4 basically ended the cold war, but aside from this, it doesn't offer much that has not been seen already in the previous 3 films.
Over the Seas to Belfast (1946)
Royal reception
In the Traveltalks series narrated by James Fitzpatrick, which focuses on bringing various, faraway locations to the big screen in vivid Technicolor, there are many installments that belong to one of two categories. The first is that of a unique look back on a specific time and place in history, as these events will never take place again. The rest of the shorts are mainly nondescript, and the places he visits mostly bear a lot of resemblance to how they look now, even though it's decades later. This one isn't like this at all, since it actually seems to be more about people than the location in question. Belfast is the capital city of Northern Ireland, which is a British territory despite being geographically connected to Ireland itself. Fitzpatrick's voyage begins on a cruise ship, the RMS Scythia. It leaves its port of Halifax in Canada carrying over a hundred British children who were sent to canada during the Second World War by their parents for their own safety. This was an actual practice during the war, but was halted when a German submarine sank a ship with a large amount of kids onboard. They will no doubt have a difficult time becoming acclimated to their birth nation as they have been away for most their lives. The ban on travel that was in place during the war is finally gone, so the ship proceeds to Belfast, where we see parliament buildings made of Greek and Italian marble, and huge botanical gardens that are among the most lauded in Europe. Now we get to the actual meat of the short: King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and her young daughter Princess (later queen) Elizabeth attend a reception which has a large amount of veterans from both world wars. King George, himself being a former Royal Navy and Air Force officer, talks to some veterans. While his active service days are done, he holds the honorary titles of Marshal in the air force and Field Marshal for the british army. The United States doesn't use this rank, but a Field Marshal is even more senior than a General, roughly equivalent to a Fleet Admiral in the US Navy or 5 star general in the army. America hasn't used either of these titles since World War II. After hearing about how britain and america are both united in the belief that all free men are entitled to (in the words of Thomas Jefferson), life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the short ends. While I know there are many separatists and loyalists in this issue regarding northern ireland's politics, with the former wanting nothing to with britain and the latter wanting to be their subjects, I'm not going to get into that. I thought this short was interesting because it shows early footage of a future world leader who is mostly remembered for just how long she was able to live. It's also a strange sight to witness people who participated in both world wars standing amongst each other. Everybody who took part in ww1 is now dead, and this date will inevitably come for ww2 veterans as well. I choose to believe that at least a small number of them will make it to 2044 to attend the 100th anniversary of the Normandy landings, but they'd be almost 120. While history is one of my favorite things in the world, it's a reminder that nothing stops the march of time.
Secrets of Life (1956)
Micro societies
Being the fourth entry in a series of films produced by Disney called "True-Life Adventures," Secrets of Life is not really something you would expect from a company mostly known for Mickey Mouse. It is primarily about different ecosystems in nature on planet Earth and how different species are adapted to survive in various environments. No matter how hostile a land seems, chances are there is some animal or plant that can live there because countless years of evolution have adapted them for this. Using cameras with macro lenses (that hadn't really been seen in many films before this), the movie explains the functions and societies of bees. It goes into a tiny world with almost as many intricacies as our own, and bees are observed chewing wax in order to make honeycombs, bringing pollen to fields to continue to survival of certain plants, or even getting eaten by carnivorous pitcher plants. The queen bee is the only one in the hive that can lay eggs, and the hexagonal formations of the honeycombs are what contains them. Occasionally, there can be two queen bees after one of them has already been born, and they fight to the death to see which one is fit to rule the other bees. The queen's spouse is a drone: one of the male bees that doesn't do any work. They establish a new beehive just in case something happens to the old one. In the event of a forest fire, worker bees have been seen buzzing their wings as fast as they can to bring in cool air from the outside. You can't mention bees without bringing up honey. The thing is, no one seems to know how it's produced, even scientists. It is one of the first things taken by the bees and flown out in case of an emergency, as it apparently takes a long time to make. What most people don't know is that honey is also sought after by another insect: the ants. Strangely, certain ants serve as living containers for the honey, and their abdominal areas are enlarged for this. Like bees, ants also have a very complex way of living. They dig large networks of tunnels in the ground, removing rocks from them to use on the surface as an irrigation system. Ants can lift rocks that weight many times their own weight, which would be the equivalent of a human living a boulder that weighs a ton. The ants also go to war with other ants, who try to attack the larva and eat them. The defending ants foresee this and move the young to a distant section of the colony. The attacking ants, in their haste to get at the enemy, leave their own colony undefended, so a snake known as a blind snake attacks it. The snake is only 6 inches long, but many times the size of the ants. Still, they do all they can to attack the intruder and force it back into its hole. In the ocean too, there are many creatures that have abilities people can only dream of. The archer fish is so called because it spits at bugs sitting on twigs and branches just outside the water to knock them down and eat them. Its accuracy is even more impressive considering that from the fish's perspective, its view is distorted by water. Next, we see the nymph of a dragonfly that attacks fish underwater using a retractable appendenge under its head. Spiders can collect drops of water from the surface and anchor them in place using a web in order to create an underwater oxygen supply. We're also shown anglerfish, which are quite hideous animals that use luminesce parts on their heads to lure prey to them. There's also a crab that is able to attach pieces of underwater foliage to its legs to closely resemble a walking plant and camouflage itself. Finally, we're shown how volcanoes, often thought of as bringers of destruction, actually benefit the earth by bringing new sediments and materials to its surface. Inside its cavernous furnace, even solid rocks can become burning liquid. This is quite an interesting film. There's hardly anything in it that would give you the hint that Disney made it, except for an animated paint brush that transitions some of the scenes. I mostly just enjoyed seeing how advanced some of these animals are, when humans usually think all animals are beneath ourselves. It also shows that some animals are no better than us in some ways, since ants also have wars. The color and vibrancy Disney brought to just about every other thing he did is really shown here, and it's really something how good the film looks after so long. I'm still afraid of bugs when they show them up close, such as when some of the ants attack some beetles eating flowers. Bugs are so unlike people that any rational person should find them unsettling. They have their skeletons on the outside, way too many legs, and oftentimes have hundreds of eyes. When we look at bugs, we see tiny aliens, and most of us hate it. Anyway, Secrets of Life is a moving look into how some of the millions of life forms on earth survive, and how overcoming difficulty is an inherent part of that.
Heroes for Sale (1933)
Seize the means of production
For somebody like me, making a movie that has a war as one of its focal points instantly makes it more interesting. If it weren't for its connection to World War I, I'd say Heroes for Sale is a barely mediocre pre-code movie with a positive message, but it ended up being more enjoyable than I foresaw. The movie begins during the carnage of the First World War. A soldier named Tom Holmes (Richard Barthelmess), along with his friend Roger, son of a banker, are ordered to attack a German machine gun post in order to bring back a prisoner, preferably a high ranking one. However, Roger is too afraid to leave cover while being shot at, so Thomas attacks the germans alone. He is apparently listed as killed in action, but was actually recovered by a german field hospital to recover. Meanwhile, Roger gets the credit for capturing a prisoner instead, and german doctors treat Tom's pain with morphine, which he eventually becomes addicted to. By the time Tom finally gets back to America, Roger offers him a job at his father's bank to hopefully make up for him taking credit for his heroism. Tom is found out to be a drug addict and loses his job, and Roger's dad gets him sent to an asylum. When he gets out in the early 20s, he heads to Chicago and encounters a diner run by an old man and his daughter Mary (Aline MacMahon). After paying her to stay in one of the apartments upstairs, Tom meets Ruth Loring (Loretta Young), who works in a laundry. Tom starts working there with her shortly after. Soon, somebody invents a machine that will automate much of the drying process for the clothes, and the laundry company adopts it for use. Tom is only willing to put up with it if none of the workers are replaced by the machines. Tom marries Ruth, but the lenient president of the laundry company dies. His replacement decides to automate the laundry even further, forcing Tom out of work. Angry at what's happened to them all, the workers storm the plant in order to smash the machines as Tom tries to dissuade them. Cops launch tear gas at the mob, and Ruth is hit in the face with a nightstick, killing her. Tom is arrested for something he didn't do (being an orchestrator of the riot) and sentenced to 5 years manual labor. While incarcerated, people all across America are being fired because of the device he helped finance. By the time his sentence is finished, it's 1932: the height of the Depression. Although he is rich from his creation, he refuses to take credit and instead uses the money to feed the seemingly endless columns of unemployed people coming to Mary's diner to get soup. Because Tom has just got done being in prison, two detectives visit him on suspicion that he's a communist. The whole city is rioting for workers rights, and Tom is forced to leave Chicago. Tom finds himself a bum in one of the worst times in US history, and has to live outside in run down shantytowns. At one of them, he finds Roger, his old friend from the military. Roger is poor now too, since his father apparently stole from the bank for years and then killed himself when he got caught. Even though they are both dirt poor now, Tom knows that it's going to take more than the Depression to kill america. Constantly hounded by the cops, who tell him and Roger they're not supposed to be loitering, Tom keeps moving forward in search of new opportunities, confident things will get better. At the diner, the line of people continues to be fed by Mary and her father, and a plaque dedicated to Tom's selflessness has been put on the wall for all to see. This movie is arguably more important today than it was 90 years ago, since we're seeing incidents like the one depicted in it happen on a wider scale. What would the world be like if all industries were run by computers or AI? Only time will see where this ends up, but I'm fairly certain that most jobs that require manual labor will be performed by machines by the end of the century. Machines do repetitive processes well, and it looks like the human's time for working in this capacity might be coming to an end. While I don't really like the central message that the film tries to push (workers should strive for a classless society where the people themselves are in charge), I was able to look past this because it's a Depression era film about the Depression and it's just nice to see their take on it. These were trying times for all of us, but Tom was right: america did bounce back.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
The predatory beasts take over
Like many other movies, Asphalt Jungle kind of fulfills the role of that one film from a specific genre you absolutely need to watch if you want to consider yourself a fan of said genre. Being one of the most acclaimed noirs ever made, I had high hopes for this, but as is often the case, I feel things took their sweet time getting moving, and barely any characters were likeable (except one). To see why I think this way, I need to explain the rather confusing story, which also feels way too simple at times. A criminal named Erwin Ridenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is recently let out of prison after a long term and goes to a city in the American Midwest to plot a heist. He wants 50 grand to hire 3 guys: someone who can bust open a safe, a driver, and a tough guy to keep the cops off of them. A bookie arranges a meeting between him and Alonzo Emmerich, a lawyer who lives a luxurious life. After Emmerich learns of the huge amount of money that is expected to result from this, he agrees to find a fence and finance the operation. When Doc leaves, we see Emmerich put his girlfriend Angela (Marilyn Monroe) to bed, who barely looks to be a third of his age. Emmerich tells his detective Bob that he is broke and wants to do this scheme to make up for this. Initially, he sends Bob to threaten a bunch of people who owe his boss money, but he comes up with nothing. Emmerich then persuades Bob to help him backstab the others once the jewels are stolen. Meanwhile, Doc hires Louie Ciavelli as his safecracker, and his friend Gus (a diner owner) to drive the getaway vehicle. Last but certainly not least we have Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden), a southerner addicted to gambling as the muscle of the group. Handley tells Doll Conovan, his girlfriend, that he's only participating in this to buy back a farm he lost after a bad year that involved his father and a prized horse dying. When the heist actually commences, Ciavelli hammers through some bricks and deactivates an alarm to get Handley and Doc into the safe room. After the safe is blown open with nitroglycerine, several alarms go off. They continue the operation, but as they try to escape, Handley punches a guard who finds out what's going on. The guard drops his gun, which strikes its hammer on the ground and goes off, wounding Ciavelli. All the perpetrators get away. Gus goes against his wife's wishes to have Ciavelli hospitalized, as his gunshot wound will be reported to the cops. Instead, he hires an experienced but illegal doctor. Concurrently, Doc and Handley show up at Emmerich's to present him with the jewels, but Handley seems to know Bob is planning to doublecross them. When Bob sits down, he holds Handley and Doc at gunpoint. Doc quickly throws the bag of jewels at Bob while Handley quickly draws his own gun and shoots him. Right before getting shot, Bob manages to hit Handley in the side. Doc scolds Emmerich and tells him he better sell the jewels back to the jeweler's insurance. Not a preferable option since they'll only take them for a quarter of what they're worth, but holding onto them at a time like this is too risky. Emmerich disposes of Bob's corpse in a river, and the cops find a list of people who owe Emmerich on the body. Emmerich lies to the cops, seems to get away with it, and then receives word they are planning to question Angela. Emmerich gets Angela to lie for him, saying she was with him for most of last night. The cops wise up and determine Emmerich is definitely guilty so they pay him a visit at Angela's house. They threaten to have Angela arrested for giving Emmerich an alibi, so she admits she lied for him. When Emmerich is given permission to leave the room to call his wife, he shoots himself. Gus is arrested soon after, and when the cops attempt to go after Ciavelli, they find he's already dead. In Doll's apartment, Doc wants to give Handley some of the jewels, which he turns down; returning to Kentucky is his only concern. He and Doll begin to drive back there. Doc gives a taxi driver a large tip so he can be driven all the way to Cleveland, but is discovered by the cops after he gives a girl nickels so she can listen to a jukebox in a diner. Meanwhile, Handley is rapidly losing a lot of blood from his wound and a bewildered Doll needs to take him to a nearby doctor. When the doctor discovers the gunshot wound, he attempts to call the police. When Handley overhears this, he gets up and drives off with Doll, but they don't get much further. Finally back within Kentucky borders, Handley stops the car next to a pasture that has horses grazing in it, as he deliriously talks to himself. As Doll runs after him, Handley collapses and dies, surrounded by the only things that were important to him. While John Huston is no doubt responsible for lots of great films, I honestly think this one is overrated. Basically everyone in it is a criminal looking to betray one another, and it makes sympathizing with them nearly impossible. The only character I pitied was Marilyn's, as she is obviously not very intelligent when it comes to being manipulated. She is really trusting of Emmerich and does whatever he asks of her without a second thought, even if it means lying to authorities. She has to learn the hard way that distancing yourself from bad influences can mean the difference between going to jail or staying free. Marilyn was pretty convincing for the 4 or so minutes of screentime they gave her, but the rest of the cast didn't really do it for me, even Hayden. He's been in dozens of noirs I've seen already, but he's had better outlets for his performances. Overall, Asphalt Jungle is an incredibly bleak film that uses a robbery as a plot device to repeat a moral told time and time again: crime doesn't pay. It feels generic to me, but at least basically every major character is dead by the end.
Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)
Space odyssey
It doesn't happen much, but sometimes a video game so influential is released that it redefines an entire genre. Halo Combat Evolved not only did this, but started one of the most well known franchises in the world today. I can just refuse to elaborate further, and pull up the insane numbers: over 40 novels, 16 games, 81 million copies sold, and so on. It takes nothing less than a masterpiece to spawn a series this groundbreaking. The very first game, while over 20 years old at this point, still manages to be among the best in the series and one of the finest in the sci-fi shooter genre. While there is no doubt much more to Halo than its plot, it would help to explain what goes on in this enormous game universe which rivals the size of our own. A universe mainly concerned with the player character, an alien alliance trying to destroy humanity, and an ancient ring of unimaginable power.
Halo CE begins in September 2552 on a large spaceship called the Pillar of Autumn. While not shown in game, the ship has just fled from the planet Reach, a human colony world that was just utterly annihilated by the Covenant: a conglomerate of different alien races who are at war with humanity. Captain Jacob Keyes, commanding officer of the Autumn, orders everyone to their battlestations when he is told by Cortana (the ship's female holographic artificial intelligence) that Covenant ships have been following them all the way from Reach. The player assumes the role of John-117. Commonly known by his rank of Master Chief, John is the human race's trump card against the Covenant, being a member of a near mythical batch of supersoldiers known as Spartans. Chief is awoken from sleeping in a cryogenic pod meant to preserve his lifespan just as Covenant boarding groups begin to infiltrate the Autumn, knowing Cortana is onboard. John makes his way to the ship's bridge and is given orders by Captain Keyes to get Cortana off the ship. If the Covenant capture her, they will learn where Earth is and humanity will be doomed. John fights his way through swarms of alien attackers and makes it to a lifeboat, which jettisons from the Autumn and crash lands on a huge ring shaped world called Halo. As Chief attempts to link up with marines who survived in other lifeboats, he fights his way through more Covenant, then receives word that Keyes has been captured by the aliens. He is next tasked with infiltrating the Truth and Reconciliation, a mile long Covenant spaceship that is holding Keyes hostage. After rescuing him, Cortana analyzes Covenant records and learns that they believe Halo is some kind of weapon which controls the fate of the universe. After finding out that Halo has its own control center from which it can be activated, John and Cortana set out to find the Cartographer: a map room that will show them its location. Facing heavy Covenant resistance, they make it to the control center in order to discover Halo's true purpose, but Cortana senses something is wrong. She finds out an ancient race known as Forerunners built it in order to rid the galaxy of something horrible they had encountered, and Keyes is about to unknowingly uncover it. Cortana urges John to rush out of there and find Keyes before it's too late.
Chief arrives at a dimly lit and eerie swamp area, where all the normally staunch Covenant soldiers are fleeing in horror from some unseen enemy. After entering the nearby Forerunner facility, John finds out that the place was made to contain a terrifying adversary: the Flood. The Flood are a highly virulent alien parasite that cause the extinction of other lifeforms by infecting them and absorbing their memories, and were responsible for almost wiping out the Forerunners millennia ago. After fighting his way out of the Flood infested area, John is confronted by 343 Guilty Spark, the Halo ring's monitor. He is a floating, robotic construct built by the Forerunners tasked with looking over Installation 04 (Halo's official name). He wants Chief's assistance with making sure the Flood does not escape the ring, so he teleports him to The Library: an ancient security facility crawling with Flood. It houses the index, which is the key to activating the ring itself. Once the index is in John's possession, he returns to Halo's control room and reunites with Cortana, but she is not happy. John is convinced activating the ring will destroy the Flood, but Cortana exposes the truth; Halo doesn't kill Flood, it kills their food source. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them, and without any other thinking aliens or humans to parasitize, they all die. John asks the monitor if this is true, and he says yes. Spark turns on Chief and wants him to give up Cortana (and the index) so the ring can be fired, but he refuses. As a result, Chief now has to deal with being caught in a 4 way war between himself, the Flood, the Covenant, and Sentinels: flying robots with lasers that are tasked with containing Flood outbreaks.
Cortana tells John they need to destroy Halo in order to prevent Spark from getting his wish and activating it. To do this, John needs to destroy 3 generators that amplify Halo's signal. After this, he is teleported to the Truth and Reconciliation in order to search for Keyes. The ship is now disabled and swarming with Flood forms, who wish to repair the ship, use it to escape Halo, and infect other worlds (possibly Earth). Another 3 way battle ensues onboard the ruined and chaotic hallways of the cruiser, and John discovers the horrible truth upon entering the bridge: Keyes has been taken over by the Flood, who need his knowledge of Earth in order to infect it. John punches through Keyes' decaying skull and retrieves his neural lace, which is required to access the Pillar of Autumn's subsystems. The Covenant sends in special operations teams to deal with the Flood, and Chief must fight them on his way out.
After stealing a flying Covenant vehicle known as a Banshee, he makes his way to the crashed Pillar of Autumn, now infested with Flood. He uploads Cortana into the ship's command interface, and she initiates a countdown timer to destroy the ring by detonating the ship's reactor. However, Spark interrupts the process, so Chief must cause the ship's engine to blow up manually by venturing into the engine room and pulling back the exhaust couplings that lead to a fusion drive core. Once this is accomplished, Chief gets out as fast as he can since the whole place is going to blow soon. He is taken by elevator to a very long corridor that runs along the ship's spine, and drives a Warthog (an armored jeep with a gatling gun on the back) through hordes of Covenant, Flood, and Sentinels. John makes his way to a hangar bay which contains a large Longsword jet fighter. After boarding it, he pushes its engines to their limits and escapes Halo's atmosphere just as it explodes. When Cortana tells him they are the only two who made it off alive and that Halo is finished, John says they're just getting started and removes his helmet, though the view is obscured from the player.
This game is awesome. While the gameplay feels a little dated, the story is still as interesting today as it was in 2001. If you like science fiction, it should go without saying that you'll be interested in Halo. Marty O'Donnell absolutely kills it with the soundtrack, and the main theme of this game with the Gregorian choir has become rather iconic. The weapons and vehicles are all fun to use and viable options for the most part, which isn't the case in later games. Ironically, the most useful weapon is the humble pistol, as it fires huge .50 caliber rounds and can headshot enemies, killing them instantly. The alien plasma weapons are battery powered, and must be replaced when they are depleted as humans don't know how to recharge them. Halo CE's story mode is quite fair, and while it is difficult on the highest setting, it's very possible. There are many who can beat the whole game without dying once, as CE contains basically no unpredictable encounters that can kill instantly (almost). Probably the most obnoxious enemies are the handful of Flood forms that spawn with rocket launchers, a feared weapon that can eliminate anything up to a large vehicle with a single shot. All the Covenant races behave differently in combat, but the biggest threat to you are the Elites, as they have the same full body shielding system that you do. If you damage them but give their shields a chance to recharge, you basically just wasted your ammo.
Overall though, beating the campaign on legendary is a rewarding experience and you won't feel cheated if you get killed, as most of the time, it's your fault. While it's been surpassed in many ways by later games, CE still remains a fun game to play online as there are many different game modes and maps to choose from. For me, I will always enjoy how customizable the game is, and to this day people are still making their own mods, weapons and maps for it. There will never be another game like Halo.