The Screengrab : nick schager

Th-Th-That's All Folks: THE SCREENGRAB CURTAIN CALL!

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:00:00 GMT

So, th-th-that's all folks. Enjoy the last precious remaining hours of the Screengrab while you can, and be sure to look for us here at Nerve.com, in the archives at www.thescreengrab.com, at our new blog the Screengrab In Exile, and also...

Andrew Osborne:
Look for me at The Ol' Bait Shop, The Ol' Blog Shop, New England Screenwriters, and if The Meat City Beatniks ever comes to a theater near you, be sure to buy a ticket!

Scott Von Doviak:
Check out Scott's blog, his tweets, his book Hick Flicks and the continuation of his journey into Unwatchable madness!

Leonard Pierce:
Look for Leonard at A schediastic hootenany and the Onion A.V. Club!

Phil Nugent:
The Phil Nugent experience rolls on at The Phil Nugent Experience!

Hayden Childs:
Read Hayden at From Here To Obscurity, and check out his book, Shoot Out The Lights!

Paul Clark:
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to write for the Screengrab for the last two years or so. In the future, I’ll be devoting more of my energy to my blog Silly Hats Only, where I’ll be carrying on a few of my favorite Screengrab traditions- including the reincarnated Famous Last Words, starting in June- and exploring some new ideas as well, I hope. I’ll also continue to be involved in The Muriel Awards, and you can follow me on Twitter under the username “opalfilms”. Be seeing you.

Nick Schager:
Nick can be found at Lessons of Darkness, Slant magazine, IFC News, Cinematical, and on Twitter.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg:
For more Sarah go to: http://www.sarahclynesundberg.com/

Vadim Rizov:
Vadim lives on at The House Next Door.

Lauren Wissot:
Lauren's work can be found at Beyond The Green Door.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten & Eleven

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time (Part Eleven)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:30:00 GMT

The Worst:

A.I. (2001)

One of my day jobs is teaching various screenwriting courses, and I always use A.I. as a prime example of how NOT to end a movie. Of course, Steven Spielberg pretty much deserves his own wing in the terrible ending hall of fame: Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan, Munich, Schindler’s List and the tacky, tacked-on “Special Edition” ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which pretty much robbed the original ending of all its original mystery and wonder by not freakin’ knowing when to leave well enough alone. Of course, this unnatural, Brundlefly amalgam of the director’s flashy Hollywood huckster instincts and the Kubrickian darkness of the project’s original father (who died while the project was still mired in development hell) is pretty hapless throughout its running time, but it does manage a nice, poetic moment when David (Haley Joel Osment), a robot programmed to yearn for love from a mother who despises him, winds up trapped beneath the ocean, staring at a statue of the Blue Fairy, wishing endlessly for something he can never have. Hmm, I thought watching the movie for the first time, not a bad little dramatization of the human condition there, Spielberg...for don’t we all wish for things we’re programmed to want but can never achieve? Yet Spielberg, being the kind of guy who DOES get everything he wants, apparently has no use for the bittersweet frustrations of the great unwashed. Nope, Spielberg’s all about happy endings...and, apparently, mommy issues, because the movie doesn’t stop there: instead, it goes on and on and interminably on, getting sillier (and creepier) with each passing moment, as millennia pass and magical future robots allow little David to finally get what he always wanted...alone time in bed with a mother who LOVES him and ONLY him, dammit! C.G.I. + T.M.I. = ick. (AO)

CONTACT (1997)

Seriously, Robert Zemeckis and Carl Sagan? After all the mind-numbing science-vs.-faith arguments between Jody Foster’s astronomer and Matthew McConaughey’s minster, all you deliver is a silly-looking CG beach landscape – snow white sand! glowing blue water! – and the revelation that the much-discussed alien/God is Foster’s dearly departed daddy? It’s a figurative punch in the stomach from a film that’s already spent two hours slapping us in the face with faux-profound jibber-jabber and wannabe-2001 “trippy” sequences. (NS)

SCHOOL DAZE (1988)

So far, so good: by the time he reached the end of his second feature, School Daze, Spike Lee had opened up to new filmmaking techniques as well as expanding his political and emotional canvas to much wider and deeper topics than he’d attempted in She’s Gotta Have It. As the final moments of the two-hour film approached, Lee had introduced elements as far-ranging and controversial as class and race issues in the black community, date rape, divestiture, careerism and gentrification, and revolution vs. assimilation. It would be difficult to tie all those threads together, but Lee had matured so much as a filmmaker, viewers were confident he could pull it off. So what happens? Lawrence Fishburne lumbers all over campus, hollering “WAKE UP!” to audience and actors alike, all of whom seem surprised that he’s gone off script. Viewers wanted to wake up, all right – to a world in which Lee hadn’t pissed away all the goodwill of the rest of the movie on this obnoxious, go-nowhere student film ending. (LP)

JUICE (1992)

Whatever alien virus possessed Spike Lee to give School Daze such a flimsy cop-out of an ending, he apparently passed it on to his cinematographer. Four years later, when the talented but inconsistent Ernest Dickerson made his debut as a feature film director, it was with Juice, his own take on the gangsta epic that was then sweeping Hollywood; for most of its running time, it was a particularly compelling example of the genre, buoyed by solid performances in the lead roles by Omar Epps and Tupac Shakur. Then, in the movie’s climactic moments, bam! Spike Lee Disease strikes again: in a turn of events that is, to put it mildly, highly unlikely, Epps’ character tosses aside his piece and then pursues and disarms Shakur, who obligingly falls off of a building. A random partygoer tells Epps that now, he’s got the “juice”, which explains and/or resolves exactly nothing when it comes to everything that has gone before. All that talent on display, and not a script doctor in sight. (LP)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

It’s not exactly Stanley Kubrick’s fault that the ending of A Clockwork Orange falls short. At the time he did his infamous adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel, the actual end of the book, the 21st chapter, was not available in American versions. (Kubrick lived in England, but he’d first read an American edition of the novel.) So when the script was written, he had no idea that the chapter even existed. It features an older if not wiser Alex growing bored with his utra-violent lifestyle and contemplating going straight, getting a job, and raising his own family – a contemplation which, turning the book’s themes of moral panic on their ears, includes the vital possibility that his children might seem as nightmarish to him as he seems to be to his parents’ generation. Without this insight, Burgess considered the American version of the book to be deeply flawed; and without its subversive self-criticism, the movie Kubrick made of it seems morally and philosophically confused. Still, he’s not entirely blameless; when filming started, he got hold of an English edition with the complete 21st chapter, and decided not to change the script one bit. (LP)

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8th DIMENSION (1984)

Okay, the ending of this neo-pulp cult classic isn’t great. It’s one of those big cast mashups that were ubiquitous in the 1980s, with the whole cast walking purposefully together while music blared on the soundtrack and the camera jumped around showing the audience what it looked like when people walked from one place to another from different angles. But that isn’t what makes it one of the most disappointing endings of all time. It’s the very last thing we see before the movie fades to black: a title card promising that Buckaroo Banzai and His Hong Kong Cavaliers will be back, in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League. Twenty-five years later, it’s a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Today, deals are inked to make multi-picture franchises long before they know whether the first movie will be a hit or a dud; even as we speak, a sequel to the nearly universally panned (and not nearly as popular as it was anticipated to be) Transformers movie is gearing up to hit theaters. So why, every time we watch this widely beloved cult hit, must we be reminded of a sequel that’s never going to come? (LP)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

EASY RIDER (1969)

I remember this one time a friend of mine was running behind on an elementary school creative writing assignment, scribbling the last lines of his composition just before the teacher collected our papers, and so his otherwise well-written tale of Old West adventure ended with a coyote suddenly popping up and devouring his cowboy protagonist. The abrupt, nihilistic climax of Easy Rider has a similar slap-dash quality (and why Peter Fonda’s Captain America would follow the gun-toting rednecks who just shot Dennis Hopper’s Billy the Kid rather than, say, driving away from them must have something to do with them funny cigarettes he was always smoking). On the other hand, gun-toting rednecks aren’t exactly known for their tolerance or decision-making skills, so a couple of yahoos taking potshots at hippies doesn’t exactly challenge my willing suspension of disbelief, even today. And considering the apocalyptic culture wars of the 1960s (which claimed RFK towards the end of the film’s production phase) and the outlaw mythos deep in the story’s marrow, some kind of fatal downer was probably inevitable. But Easy Rider’s characters don’t even get the dignity of a last stand. “We blew it,” Fonda’s biker states in a prescient epitaph for the end of hippie optimism and the rise of Nixonian neo-conservatism, just before Captain America gets killed by his own gas tank and his life savings goes up in smoke while he and his buddy die like dogs on the side of a road to nowhere. (AO)

8 ½ (1963)

Fellini’s semi-autobiographical fantasia inspires and infuriates in equal measure, the film’s whimsical imaginativeness somewhat offset by its indulgent self-satisfaction. Nonetheless, even if some of Fellini’s phantasmagoric flights of fancy rub me the wrong way, the ending is a stunner, a carnival-esque This Is Your Life procession of a director’s (Marcello Mastroianni) past and present acquaintances that resonates as an evocative representation of the myriad lives we touch, and are touched by, throughout our fleeting years. (NS)

THE LEOPARD (1963)

Luchino Visconti's epic masterpiece, set in Sicily in the 1960s, is a rich evocation of a whole society on the verge of disappearing, with the changes that Garibaldi's revolution were about to effect seen through the eyes of a middle-aged aristocrat, the Prince, played by Burt Lancaster. The film's long last section -- which gave the Coppola of the Godfather films and the Cimino of The Deer Hunter a high bar to aim at -- is the Prince's world at its apotheosis; the final moments give you a rare sense of a man feeling the summation of his life up to that point and sadly accepting the feeling of his potency slipping away. (PN)

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

For most of its running time, this Cold War conspiracy fantasy dances on the line between thriller and satirical comedy, which makes it all the more unnerving when the clock ticks down and the picture suddenly becomes very serious in tone. It's as if the filmmakers' amusement at the ridiculousness of the McCarthyite witch hunters who inspired their story was gradually swamped by their disgust at what they'd done to their country. Sinatra's final speech, lamenting the fact that no one will ever know about the true heroism of Raymond Shaw, is one of the most hearfelt moments of his film career, and the sobering end point that the movie deserves. (PN)

KISS ME DEADLY (1955)

Restored ending:

Chopped ending:

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is a nasty piece of work on the page, a misogynistic thug with a fascist mentality who lives in a world of strawmen who are always proving him right. When adapting Spillane's novel Kiss Me Deadly, screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides played up Hammer's sadism and narcissism, showing him to be a bully rather than the tough-guy hero Spillane obviously saw. The movie Kiss Me Deadly adds a great McGuffin, too, in the form of a suitcase full of some sort of glowing atomic energy that quickly becomes a nuclear blast when explosed to the air. In the original ending of Kiss Me Deadly, when the femme fatale unleashes the bomb, Hammer and his assistant Velda escape into the surf while the house explodes. At some point soon after its release, however, someone cut up the ending so that it appears that the house explodes before Hammer and Velda escape. This version won many admirers for its raw pessimism. But it wasn't the intended ending, and the restored version, in which Hammer is shot and has to be supported in his escape by his assistant who he's treated like crap throughout the flick, actually seems more narratively satisfying. (HC)

THE THIRD MAN (1949)

Despite its sincere hero, its elaborate plot, and its European trappings, The Third Man is a film noir through and through, and though Joseph Cotten plays the hero as a man on the good side of the law, he’s no less doomed. It’s also one of the most devastating film portraits of unrequited love. Even though he makes it through the film alive, unlike his memorable friend (and later foe), the roguish Harry Lime, like any good noir anti-hero, he’s sunk by his desperate desire for something that will forever elude him. In this case, it’s the love of Alida Valli’s Anna, who can’t shake her passion for Harry even after she finds out that he was a murderous criminal who didn’t love her the way she loved him. Cotten foolishly attempts to apply reason to matters of the heart, and simply can’t understand why Anna would be so devoted to a cruel man who treated her – and everyone else – so shabbily, instead of a good man who really loves her (like, of course, himself). Anyone who’s seen the end of the movie, where Cotten’s Holly Martins waits patiently for Anna outside of Lime’s funeral only to have her walk past him without even a perfunctory glance, has a hard time thinking that the twice-dead Harry is the one who got the better end of the deal. Director Carol Reed and producer David Selznick – who had argued about everything else during the production – agreed on the ending, against the wishes of author Graham Greene, who wanted a more upbeat finish. Greene was a great writer, but Reed and Selznick were right; no happy ending could have bested this heartbreaking scene. (LP)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs, Leonard Pierce

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:00:00 GMT

FAME (1980)

To me, nothing says “ending” like an all-singing, all-dancing grand finale...and while there are dozens of great movie musicals that climax with memorable showstoppers -- from Hairspray’s “You Can’t Stop The Beat” and Hair’s “Let The Sun Shine In” to the painterly tableau of the Founding Fathers signing the Declaration of Independence at the end of 1776 -- I’ve always had a special place in my heart for “I Sing The Body Electric,” which features most of the major characters from the original 1980 version of Fame (as opposed to all the moist, crappy knock-offs that followed). The number gives me chills every time I hear or see it performed, capturing as it does that terrifying, exhilarating moment of maximum potential when young graduates teeter on the verge of their leap of faith into adulthood. (Plus, it’s nice to see Coco with her shirt back on, none the worse for wear after the icky photo shoot of a few scenes earlier.) (AO)

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981)

Dennis Potter's stylized Depression musical stars Steve Martin as Arthur, a sheet music salesman who thinks he has to believe in the happy songs he peddles to survive the throbbing nightmare is his real life. His ever-escalating flight from reality ultimately leads him to the gallows. The movie ends with his last fantasy, in which he escapes to dance in a production number with the heroine (Bernadette Peters), the only logic behind it being the conviction that no one could suffer so much in life unless it was a set-up for the happy ending to come. It's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" as staged by Hermes Pan. (PN)

MEMENTO (2000)

Christopher Nolan’s calling-card head-scratcher begins with its ending and then works backwards to its start, which one assumes is the traumatic event that bestowed Guy Pearce’s tattooed vigilante with short-term memory loss and propelled him down his vengeful path. What we get instead is something more confounding, a mordant and melancholy conclusion that compels us to consider the relationship between memory and identity and, just as pressingly, forces us to once again reconsider everything about the story we thought to be true. (NS)

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005)

Rob Zombie’s neo-exploitation redneck horror show overflows with disturbing grindhouse violence, highlighted by a motel room kidnapping-torture sequence that’s just plain mean. Yet at the mid-way point of The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie turns the tables on his cop vs. psychos scenario, positing William Forsythe’s lawman as the true sadistic lunatic and the Firefly clan as empathetic antiheroes, a transparent bait-and-switch provocation that culminates in a slow-motion blaze-of-glory finale (set to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” no less) that brazenly thumbs its nose at propriety. (NS)

THE UNFORESEEN (2007)

The most unforeseen conclusion to Laura Dunn's documentary about land development and water rights in and around Austin, TX (which is where I happen to live) came when I wound up sympathizing with the heavy. Even though this guy has defied environmentalists and the civic will, he too has ended up on the sharp and pointy side of his political beliefs, and it feels less like just desserts than even more tragedy. (HC)

THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008)

I can't tell you the great thing about the ending of The Order Of Myths, because there's always that chance that you haven't seen it, and it would be shameful to spoil the reveal at the end. Let's just say that most of the film proceeds without a narrative voice, allowing the subjects to tell their own story without comment. And yet filmmaker Margaret Brown is always a couple of steps closer to the story she's telling than she lets on at any point up until the end. Her reveal transforms your understanding of the previous 75-odd minutes, a trick that is clever enough in fiction films but downright revelatory in a documentary. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE GRADUATE (1967)

As I noted in our list of the Top Ten Best Movies Of All Time, The Graduate is pretty close to perfect, right down to its classic finale. All by itself, the climactic rush to the altar made our list of great “race-against-time” scenes, and the sequence where Dustin Hoffman’s character pounds the church window and wields a crucifix against the older generation to rescue his lady love from bland suburban mediocrity still feels cathartic today. But the final moments truly seal the deal in one of the greatest ambiguous fade-outs of all time as Katharine Ross’ Elaine stares at the man she’s chosen, suddenly wondering what exactly comes after “happily ever after,” while Hoffman’s Ben stares straight ahead, the lost expression of the opening scenes returning to his face as he clearly wonders, “Now what?” Considering Charles Webb, the author of the source material, spent the next several decades in cash-strapped obscurity, tending a clinically-depressed lady with painted-on eyebrows named Fred while trying to get a Graduate sequel off the ground, maybe Ben and Elaine had reason to worry. (AO)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The ending to Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece continues, forty years after its release, to baffle and intrigue, its post-light-show sights – a white room; Keir Dullea’s astronaut seeing himself, as an elderly man at a table and dying in bed; the monolith’s sudden reappearance – forming a tantalizing riddle. In its final, mesmerizing image of the star-child, 2001 does what no subsequent Kubrick film did, presenting a hopeful vision of the future, one in which man is finally free (at least until the forthcoming dystopia of A Clockwork Orange) of his base animalism. (NS)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Let me first make it clear that I’m very much aware that the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange was originally published with a final chapter that never saw the light of day in the United States until Rolling Stone featured it in a 1987 issue. That’s when I first read it, and at that point I’d already seen the movie approximately 783 times. (Stanley Kubrick claimed he’d never seen the missing chapter before making his film, but he had – he just didn’t like it.) Burgess’ ending finds the cured Alex out for another night on the town with his new droogies. But he’s not really up for it – he’s getting too old for this shit, and entertaining thoughts of domestic bliss. I never felt like I needed to know this about him. “I was cured all right” strikes the right note for me – it doesn’t preclude the possibility of Burgess’ outcome, after all, but if we’re going to give this guy his free will back…well, we better be prepared for anything. It’s hard to imagine that final chapter fitting in cinematically with the world we’ve been immersed in for over two hours, and as Kubrick later demonstrated when working with Stephen King, he was never one to let the author’s intentions get in the way of his own worldview. (SVD)

STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog has never been interested in sticking to convention, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the strange and wonderful Stroszek. Beginning with a fairly formulaic setup -- a trio of misfits journey to America in search of a new life -- Herzog then proceeds to spin out his story in the most unexpected of ways. After hard times hit, the film courts cliché as the title character (played by Bruno S.) and his elderly pal Clemens Scheitz decide to hold up their bank, but when the bank is closed they rob the neighboring barber shop instead to the tune of a whopping $35 and use it to go shopping before Scheitz gets arrested. From there, it gets even odder. It’s the images that Herzog finds to conclude his tale that make this a classic, as we witness the sight of the stolen tow truck, now set ablaze, driving in circles around the parking lot with nobody at the wheel. So bizarre is the spectacle that it’s easy to miss Bruno climbing onto the ski lift with his shotgun, followed by the sound of the shotgun firing. Then, of course, there’s that dancing chicken, one of the most famous images in Herzog’s entire oeuvre. According to Herzog, the entire crew hated the damn chicken, but it so fascinated him that he felt the need to journey 600 miles from his principal filming location in order to shoot the final scene in the rest stop where the chicken danced. What does it all mean? Herzog, to his credit, leaves it to us to decide. (PC)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

No Country For Old Men denies audiences the grand gesture and the blood. Strange to say about a film that features a killer who is less a man than a force of nature, but it's true. When Llewelyn first comes upon the scene of the drug shootout, the violence is over. When the bullets finally find Llewelyn, it happens offscreen. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stumbles into a potential conflict with Chigurh, the killer has melted away. Carla Jean even dies offscreen. It's a bloody movie, sure, but it studiously avoids giving audiences the easy conclusions that they may want. This is especially true at the end of the movie. Sheriff Bell has retired, giving his wife the peace of mind she wants, and he describes a couple of dreams he had to her. Both feature Bell's father, who he told us in the introduction was sheriff before him. In the first, he's lost money that his father gave him. In the second, his father silently passes him, carrying a fire, and Bell knows he will make a fire to protect and warm him. That's one of the beautiful things about this movie: even as it denies audiences their basest impulses, it gives them something unexpected. Here, the language is one of author Cormac McCarthy's major concerns, the existential quest for a moral code in a fallen world. The Coen brothers like to subvert expectations, and it's fair to say that this jolt of philosophy wasn't at all what audiences were expecting. But it was a far greater gift. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Screengrab Review: "Drag Me to Hell"

Nick Schager — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Sam Raimi gets back to basics with Drag Me to Hell, serving up the type of comic-horror mayhem that defined his career-making Evil Dead trilogy, and which is here infused with a shrewd, gleeful strain of current-events topicality. Though equipped with the PG-13 rating that inevitably makes horror fans wary, Raimi’s film pulls few punches in the nastiness department, its action coated in spurting bodily fluids emanating from nasty orifices, and dressed up with plenty of rotten skin, fetid corpses, and demonic insanity to satisfy genre purists. It’s not the quantity of ickiness that makes Drag Me to Hell a madcap, go-for-broke entertainment, however, but the energy Raimi brings to his material, the director orchestrating his over-the-top gruesomeness with such joy that it proves infectious, each subsequent jolt-scare (replete with accompanying turned-to-eleven sound effect) and gross-out maneuver perfectly pitched to be both frightening and hilarious. That balance is considerably tricky to achieve, and unlike in his leaden, overstuffed Spider-Man 3, Raimi effortlessly pulls it off, with his swift pacing, whip-smart edits, and hyper-goofy cinematographic zooms, pans and twirls transforming the proceedings into a delirious haunted house carnival ride.

Without a second wasted, Drag Me to Hell establishes both its premise and its social commentary. Christine (Alison Lohman, alternately sweet, flustered and frightened) is a considerate loan officer at a California bank where she hopes to be promoted to assistant manager, a position that her boss (David Paymer) says requires a person who can “make the tough decisions.” When Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), an elderly gypsy woman with scraggly fingernails, sharp teeth and one milky white eye, shows up asking for an extension on her mortgage payment, Christine reluctantly makes her boss proud by denying the request. This rejection quickly leads to public humiliation for Mrs. Ganush, who in turn attacks Christine in a dark parking lot, a gonzo car-set skirmish involving staplers, cinder blocks and one hilariously disgusting mouth-chin bite that concludes with the gypsy hag uttering ominous incantations. The next day, Christine has the promotion wrapped up (much to her co-worker competitor’s chagrin), but she’s soon beset by strange voices and visions, leading her – despite the protestations of loyal psychology professor boyfriend Clay (Justin Long) – to seek out the advice of a psychic (Dileep Rao), who breaks the bad news: she’s cursed, and in three days time, will take a one-way trip to the netherworld courtesy of a malevolent goat-demon.

The ensuing madness is of a feverish sort, with Raimi assuredly barreling from one creepy-amusing scenario to the next, whether it be animal-lover Christine’s attempts to ward off her unholy pursuer with a live-feline sacrifice (right after we spy a poster of a hanging kitty with the tagline “Baby, Hang On!”), a dinner-gone-awry with Clay’s rich, snooty parents, or Christine’s face serving as the recurring target for projectile vomiting. Raimi draws his characters in sharp, confident lines – notably with regards to his heroine’s past weight-related issues – while unwaveringly maintaining the focus on horror thrills. Drag Me to Hell has a swiftness that keeps anxiety and anticipation high. And by pivoting the story around mortgage loans, fiscal solvency, and the greed and selfishness that drives the financial industry, he jolts the film with a measure of hot-button relevance that complicates sympathy for his protagonist, who’s at once a nice, generous girl damned by a misguided decision, as well as a stand-in for the profit-over-all-else cretins who helped nearly tank the global economy. Raimi may take the easy way out with his conclusion, preferring a traditional gotcha finale to a more twisted, greed-run-amok available alternative, but as far as smart, scintillating genre efforts go, his Hades-bound trip is well-worth taking.

Screengrab Review: "Up"

Nick Schager — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

3D lends Up’s imagery an entrancing vibrancy, providing even more visual depth to Pixar’s literally and figuratively deepest offering yet, a masterful tale of longing, regret, dreams and happiness wrapped up in a colorful, rollicking adventure-yarn package. Channeling Werner Herzog (specifically, The White Diamond) as well as his own prior, superlative Monsters, Inc., director Pete Docter’s film has a lightness befitting its central object – a house floating from urban development hell to South America via a bounty of brightly hued balloons – and a profundity at once subtle and piercing. Docter captures the exhilaration of exploration, the wonder of cinema and the thrill of young love in an immaculately realized opening, as young Carl Fredricksen, decked out in an aerial cap and goggles, stares in awe at newsreel footage of his adventurer hero Charles Muntz, and then during an imaginative stroll discovers a kindred spirit – and lifelong partner – in Ellie, whom the subsequent decades-spanning silent-film montage reveals as his beloved wife. It’s a wordless sequence that rivals any put to film this year (or in last year’s WALL-E), conveying an aesthetic nimbleness and richness of mature feeling – of the joy and pain of adulthood, specifically regarding the way life can unpredictably rebuff, and force us to reconfigure, our aspirations for the future – that’s simultaneously elating and heartbreaking.

It’s difficult to overstate Up’s magnificent blend of humor and pathos, a combination sewn tight by wide-ranging compassion – for the sorrow of loss, the excitement of traversing the unknown, the pleasure of camaraderie, and the freedom that comes from seizing the present rather than being tied down by the past. That last lesson is one learned by 78-year-old widower Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) only at the end of his saga, in which – after losing Ellie and about to lose his home to predatory real estate developers – he takes flight in his house to South America’s fictional Paradise Falls, where Muntz (Christopher Plummer) once famously travelled and where he and Ellie (as communicated by her mantelpiece painting) had always dreamed of residing. His journey, however, is not the solitary one he’d envisioned, as he’s unexpectedly joined by portly Wilderness Scout Russell (Jordan Nagai), a kid whose lust for the natural world and its myriad creatures and mysteries slowly strikes a chord with Carl. And once in Paradise Falls, the duo find further companions in the form of Dug (Bob Peterson), a pooch who can speak (and in different languages, to boot) thanks to a wondrous collar created by the now hermit-like Muntz, as well as a rare, fleet, ostrich-like bird that Muntz desperately wishes to catch.

Carl and his makeshift unit’s exploits include a series of increasingly loony chases topped off by an actual aerial dogfight, all orchestrated with a jaunty fluidity in tune with the sumptuous candy-colored visuals. Whereas centerpiece sequences provide the material with its requisite invigorating kick, panoramas of the house hovering above the clouds exude an almost spiritual grace, expressing the attainability of dreams with a deftness matched by the film’s later conception of the floating house, being dragged by crotchety Carl and enthusiastic Russell across the Paradise Falls ridgeline, as a manifestation of the burdensome past Carl must learn to release. That, to do so, Carl must first confront Muntz, the childhood idol-gone-mad who now seeks to destroy him, only further enriches this portrait of the essential and onerous weight of history, people’s continual process of self-definition (and –reinvention), and the vital necessity of family. Humorously and empathetically considerate of Carl’s bonds with Russell and Dug, unafraid to look tragedy in the face, and yet also brave enough to celebrate the hopeful promise that lurks around each new, unexplored corner, Up exudes a wit and wisdom that elevates it to the animated adventure apex.

Precursors: Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Nick Schager — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Pete Docter will likely be showered with praise come Friday, when his newest film Up – my review appears later this morning – arrives in theaters. Yet the director also deserves kudos for his feature debut, Monsters, Inc., which despite being a financial and critical success upon its release in 2001, seems to have become something of a forgotten member of the illustrious Pixar club. It’s an undeserved fate, given the pitch-perfect blend of sweetness and wise-cracking comedy delivered by this tale of two monsters, shaggy blue Sully (voiced by John Goodman) and one-eyed Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), whose lives harvesting human children’s screams for Monster’s Inc. – screams being the energy source that powers all of Monstropolis – are thrown for a loop when a young girl, affectionately dubbed “Boo” and thought by Mike and Sully to be, like all kids, toxic, crosses over into their world. Envisioning monsters as a humorous species who frighten tykes for a living is cute. Yet what sets Monsters, Inc. apart is the execution of its set-up, with Docter (working from a script co-written by Finding Nemo and WALL-E helmer Andrew Stanton) generating squish-free pathos by keeping the focus on his leads’ interpersonal dynamics – a rapport enlivened by Crystal’s expert vocal performance, and superb Abbot-and-Costello-ish chemistry with Goodman – while also spiking his material with the sharp, rat-a-tat-tat, anything-goes wit of a stand-up routine.

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Arnold Schwarzenegger in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991)

Why do people keep ruining James Cameron’s perfectly good endings? First, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley goes through hell to save poor little Newt in Aliens, only to have friggin’ David Fincher whack them both in Alien3 (because, of course, it’s much cooler to kill off beloved, memorable characters than, say, to create interesting new ones). Then, in T2, Cameron finished off the story he began in the original Terminator with a scene of noble, sacrificial self-immolation by the villain-turned-hero/father figure Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 (a.k.a. Arnold Schwarzenegger) that clearly implies the threat of a future evil robot dystopia has been averted...and a decade later, we’re right back where we started with Terminator 3, Terminator Salvation and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. As it turns out, Arnie didn’t have to lower himself into that vat of molten lead after all (a scene I could only illustrate with the clip above, since every other version and parody on YouTube has embedding mysteriously disabled, possibly by Skynet). But the scene nevertheless makes my list of great deaths (even though cyborgs can't technically die) because, even more than the hyper-stylized imagery of 300 or Sin City, the fiery shot of the doomed cyborg descending towards oblivion captures the operatic melodrama at the heart of the modern comic book ethos as well as any Mexican standoff in the days when epic grand finales were Sergio Leone’s stock-in-trade. (AO)

Random Thief in AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998)

There are death scenes, there are gruesome death scenes, there are over-the-top nasty and ridiculous death scenes, and then there’s the unforgettable murder perpetrated by Edward Norton’s white supremacist in Tony Kaye’s American History X. In the ghastly attack, Norton’s skinhead confronts three African-American gentlemen trying to break into his car by shooting at them, killing one and injuring another. While spitting racial epithets, he forces the wounded man to place his open mouth on the street curb, and then stomps on the back of the man’s head, thereby fatally splitting his jaw (and face). Twelve years after first seeing the film, the mere thought of the moment still makes me cringe. (NS)

Jean-Paul Belmondo in BREATHLESS (1960) & PIERROT LE FOU (1965)

If you ever sit down to a compile a list of memorable death scenes from the movies -- an activity that I recommend, by the way -- you may find that they divide neatly into two categories, the quiet and reflective (typified at one end of the scale by the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and the wild and flashy (summed up at the other end by James Cagney in, well, anything). In the films that bookend their period of collaboration, Jean-Luc Godard and his star Belmondo hit both extremes. In their breakthrough hit, Breathless, Belmondo, lying in the street with a bullet in his hide, came to terms with his happily misspent existence and enjoyed telling off his girlfriend one last time. Five years later, in Pierrot le Fou, the older and wiser man bids farewell to this cruel world (and to Godard's universe) by breaking out the boom sticks. (PN)

Godard's love of the purity of cinematic worlds is at its apex here. Pierrot Le Fou is a lusciously colored, beautifully shot film about how films -- along with other pop culture trappings -- steal logic from seemingly intelligent people. His characters vacillate between complex and ridiculous. Emotions are heightened without warning, the highbrow ideas of the film are treated to the most lowbrow signifiers, and suddenly Anna Karina is bursting into lovely song. When Belmondo, as Ferdinand/Pierrot, decides to off himself in the most dadaist way, he suddenly seems to realize that the absurdity that holds him in thrall is about to kill him. Ah, but it's too late. Such is the life of the modern man, I suppose: hypnotized by stories and images until the mere fact of living one's life is the same as starring in a fascinating and bizarre movie. The drama will kill you. (HC)

Janet Leigh in PSYCHO (1960)

Arguably cinema’s most famous death, Janet Leigh’s shower scene in Psycho remains a classic for a variety of reasons: the unexpectedness of the incident; the chutzpah Hitchcock exhibits in killing off his heroine midway through the story; the terrifying notion of being attacked unexpectedly and while defenseless; and the editing of the scene itself, a master class in audio-visual synchronicity that manages to convey a monumental amount of violence and bloodshed while never once showing the murderer’s knife making contact with Leigh’s skin. Plain and simple, it’s the death scene by which all others must be judged. (NS)

King Kong in KING KONG (1933)

For pure iconography, few cinematic sights hold a candle to that of King Kong battling aircrafts while clinging to the Empire State Building. Yet while the gargantuan ape’s subsequent fatal plummet to the NYC streets below is, ostensibly, a “happy” ending, what’s remarkable about the climax is how melancholy it plays. Carl Denham may believe “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast,” but the truth is that he – and we, as consumers who crave the type of entertainment sold by hucksters like Denham – are truly responsible for the fallen beast’s death, a truth that lingers long after the final fade to black. (NS)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Bruce Willis in THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)

The big parlor game after The Sixth Sense hit theaters was asking your friends, “Did you guess the ending?” (As opposed to, say, The Village, where pretty much everyone guessed the dopey twist.) Some people claim they caught wise to Shyamalan’s scheme the second Donnie Wahlberg’s buff, naked psychopath shot Bruce Willis’ mumbly psychiatrist in the gut, but I’m not one of them...and as an online screenwriting teacher (at UCLA Extension...summer courses forming now!), I regularly praise the sleight-of-hand brio of the scene above. We see Willis’ character shot dead right in front of our eyes, then in the next scene it’s two years later and he’s sitting on a park bench, seemingly alive. It’s a neat trick, and for the majority of us who didn’t stop and go, “Hey, wait a minute...” it led to a clever, head-slapping reveal that Shyamalan achieved fair and square without cheating (hello, ridiculous Mission Impossible "Jon Voight" mask) or bending the willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point (so...they set up a fake 19th century society with monsters but without antibiotics? Does anyone ever actually read Shyamalan’s scripts before they go into production?). (AO)

Johnny Depp in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

Johnny Depp may not have been a star yet, but his exit from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was instantly memorable thanks to its unholy-torrents-of-blood payoff. Reconfiguring the classic boogeyman-under-the-bed scenario into a boogeyman-inside-the-bed nightmare, Depp’s last scene finds him (and his TV) being pulled into a mattress by the gloved hand of Freddy Krueger. Out of the hole created by this supernatural incident comes a horrific eruption of blood made all the more chilling by its reverse-gravitational movement, the red geyser coating the ceiling without besmirching anything else in the room. It’s one of the finest moments in the Craven canon. (NS)

Leonard Nimoy in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)

Yes, I’m well aware that The Wrath of Khan was followed by an entire Star Trek movie dedicated to putting Spock together again…and more than 25 years later, he’s still alive and giving advice to his younger self. So what? Leonard Nimoy knew what he was doing when he didn’t come back to give Spock a final sendoff in Star Trek: Generations; he’d already done it to perfection here. Taking the reigns of the Trek franchise, Nicholas Meyer crafted a genuine emotional epiphany from a pop artifact and set the series on a steady course for decades to come. If I can’t ride a nuclear bomb to my death (see below), at least let me be shot out of a spaceship while Scotty plays the bagpipes. (SVD)

Warren Beatty in MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971) & Jack Nicholson in THE SHINING (1980)

Beatty and Nicholson have been linked in the public mind for pretty much their entire careers. They’re longtime neighbors on Mulholland Drive, they’ve co-starred in The Fortune and Reds, and throughout the '70s and '80s, they shared a similar rep as Hollywood bad boys and incurable ladies’ men. They also tend to die at the end of their movies, so it’s probably not too surprising that, at some point, they would each find themselves frozen in snow as the final credits roll. As our own Hayden Childs put it last week in our countdown of Best Movies Ever, McCabe’s “final stand, his big gun battle, is as unimportant to the town of Presbyterian Church as Icarus plunging into the sea in Pieter Brueghal's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” In The Shining, Nicholson dies as a howling monster, a wounded minotaur loose in the maze, but whereas McCabe may be instantly forgotten, Jack Torrance has always been and will always be the caretaker. (SVD)

Slim Pickens in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Can you think of a better way to go out? Slim Pickens had more than one great death scene, but whooping it up while riding the nuclear bomb that sets off the end of the world as we know it…there’s a man who knows how to make an exit. (SVD)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Final Farewells: The Best & Worst Death Scenes In Cinema (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

A lot of my friends have been going through break-ups and divorces lately, which means they’ve probably also been hearing that old familiar friends/family/Facebook folk wisdom about how the end of a relationship is like a death, which must be properly mourned.

And, given that we're down to our next-to-last Thursday list before getting dumped for some younger, sexier blogs by Nerve, your pals here at the Screengrab, having moved beyond denial, anger and bargaining, figured we oughta tackle grief -- well, grief and “holy shit, did you see that guy’s head explode? How frickin' cool was that?” -- with THE SCREENGRAB’S FAVORITE DEATH SCENES OF ALL TIME, including...

The Guy With The Exploding Head, SCANNERS (1981)

Holy shit! How frickin' cool was that? I remember first seeing the aforementioned Exploding Head Guy during one of the montage sequences of the 1984 theatrical clip show Terror in the Aisles (a horror film comprised entirely of classic moments from other horror films, kind of like the Scary Movie franchise without the dick jokes). Later, I saw David Cronenberg’s Scanners in its entirety, although the only thing I really remember about it now is the scene above, where renegade telepath Darryl Revok (B-Movie Hall of Fame villain extraordinaire Michael Ironside) totally blows that bald dude’s skull apart -- with his mind! -- in one of the most memorable death scenes in cinematic history...second only, I suppose, to John Hurt’s demise in Alien (below) for its shock value imagery. In a way, then, it’s sad to realize that, in the wake of Saving Private Ryan and the recent wave of torture porn cinema, the image of a bloody cranium bursting like a ripe watermelon is now considered tame enough to show as a sight gag on The Daily Show. (AO)

John Hurt in ALIEN (1979)

Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) goes to investigate an abandoned spaceship. He finds a chamber full of eggs. One of the eggs hatches, releasing a creature that latches onto his face, knocking him unconscious. His fellow crew members take him back to their ship, where they watch over him until the creature lets go and he awakens, seemingly okay. Then, during a meal, Kane gets violently ill, and a screeching, phallic monster bursts out of his chest cavity...in the process terrifying a generation, immediately elevating Alien above the majority of its contemporary peers, and providing one of the most horrific birth-rape images in the annals of cinema. (NS)

John Cassavettes in THE FURY (1978)

Some men just make you want to get to the point, big-time. Cassavettes is of course legendary as the man who, some say, created the independent American film movement -- but he earned his rent as an actor in other people's movies, and as an actor, he made his strongest impact in man-you-love-to-hate roles. The one that everyone probably remembers best is Guy, the hungry New York actor who pimped his wife out to Satan, a gesture that his character here -- Childress, a top-secret government operative with a dead arm and deader eyes -- would sniff at as the move of a rank amateur. Childress lays waste to most of the cast of Brian De Palma's visually lush horror thriller, only to meet his match in a telekinetic teenager who must share her director's movie-geek interests and black sense of humor, since what she has planned for him is actually a choice parody of the ending of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. (PN)

Robert Shaw in JAWS (1975) & Samuel L. Jackson in DEEP BLUE SEA (1999)

Hitchcock used to talk about the difference between suspense and surprise in terms of a bomb under the kitchen table. If it suddenly goes off in the midst of a breakfast conversation, you have a moment of surprise. But if you keep cutting to the bomb ticking away while your characters sip their coffee and chomp their bacon…well, now you have suspense. Hitchcock’s thesis can also be applied to movies in which characters are eaten by sharks. (Hitch didn’t mention farce, although that’s a third option.) In Jaws, we have Quint, the old man of the sea, a man seemingly destined to be eaten by sharks ever since he escaped that fate after the sinking of the USS Indianapolis at the end of World War II. He goes kicking and screaming, sliding down the deck, reaching for a hand that can pull him to safety…suspense! In Deep Blue Sea, we have Samuel L. Jackson giving one of those action movie “rouse the troops” speeches. Just at the moment we’re sure he’s going to lead his team to victory over the shark menace…surprise! (SVD)

JAMES CAGNEY IN WHITE HEAT (1949)

From the first time you get a look at Jimmy Cagney’s unhinged, short-tempered gangster Cody Jarrett, you know he’s not going to end well. Cody is ruthless, bloodthirsty and marginally sane, and like Hamlet, he likes his mother…a lot. When Ma Jarrett (who’s just as crooked and crazy as her boy Cody) finally catches a bullet in the back, he goes completely off the rails and turns from a colorful, hot-headed gangster to one of the most murderous psychotics in the history of crime dramas. Finally betrayed by an undercover cop posing as a trusted member of his gang, Cody’s end comes when he desperately scrambles up the side of a gas storage tank. Fighting it out through a hail of bullets and a cloud of tear gas, he spits death at the cops below, refusing to go out without a fight, but the end seems near when the police snitch catches him with a couple of sniper shots. Even then, he’s got a bloody-minded determination to go out on his own terms: he recklessly fires his pistol into the gas tank, and just before it goes up in a huge, fiery explosion, he screams a defiant echo of the toast he used to raise to his late mother: “Top of the world!” (LP)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Nine

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Review: "Terminator Salvation"

Nick Schager — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Terminator Salvation goes Dark Knight-gloomy to reignite James Cameron’s technophobic sci-fi series, jumping forward to post-Judgment Day 2018 to pick up with rebel “prophet” John Conner (Christian Bale) and the human resistance as they wage war against malevolent sentient Skynet and its army of killer robots. The world is now ash-gray and reverberates with cacophonous explosions and squealing metal, a grim, gritty Road Warrior desert dystopia populated only by Terminators and vagabond humans who huddle around barrel fires listening to the radio broadcasts of Connor, a humorless hero embodied by Bale with such monotonous intensity that one fears the greatest threat to his well-being is a self-produced aneurism. Bale’s vehemence suitably meshes with the apocalyptic landscape in which director McG has situated him. Yet working from a script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris that places a far greater premium on land, sea and air skirmishes than on meaningful drama, the actor proves no more compelling than the machines against which his protagonist struggles. If only this were a 2001-style commentary on mankind’s devolution. Terminator Salvation, alas, strives for bleak gravity with misguided fervor, dispatching the very traces of warm, generous humanity that, in Cameron’s first two chapters, served as counterbalancing reminders of the necessity for staving off forthcoming mecha-Armageddon.

Given the dreariness of his tale's military resistance, however, McG makes the exact opposite case, positing a human race barely worth saving. At odds with his resistance leadership – namely Michael Ironside, here drained of nails-tough charisma – Conner is determined to use a special transmission signal to shut down Skynet’s HQ, as well as find Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the teenager who will someday travel back in time to impregnate his mother and become his father. Conner ceases to exist if Reese dies, a scenario familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of the series. And here, it’s frequently intercut with the saga of Marcus Wright (bland battering ram Sam Worthington), whom we first see on death row in 2003 donating his organs to Helena Bonham Carter’s bald, dying Cyberdyne scientist, and later find emerging from the 2018 primordial muck reborn as…what? One guess is all it takes to deduce the surprise lying in wait. The predictability of this revelation, though, isn’t the bummer it might have been thanks to the more pressing disinterest elicited by the overall story, which is comprised of underlined-meaningful dialogue (“Everybody deserves a second chance”), peripheral hotties with beautiful hair (Moon Bloodgood as the badass female, a preggers Bryce Dallas Howard as the maternal one), and action that’s orchestrated with harsh vigor but – one thrilling semi-truck chase notwithstanding – only mild imagination.

McG nods to his predecessors in ways both strained (managing to shoehorn in, with some difficulty, “I’ll be back”) and amusing (a snippet from Guns N’ Roses’ “You Could Be Mine”), but even less than Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3, his franchise entry barely bothers adding something new to the mix, adhering to a strict run-and-gun template at the expense of innovation. That might be pardonable if the film proffered even an ounce of humor, which has always been a secondary but vital series component, whether it was Edward Furlong ordering Ahnold’s emotionless surrogate father figure not to kill in T2, or Kristanna Loken’s red-leather-dominatrix get-up in T3. Terminator Salvation, however, mistakes soberness for seriousness, its gloomy character drama coming off as merely action-figure poses, and its deafening combat, drained of any larger narrative import, registering mainly as impressive CG demo reel material. Where feeling is needed, McG offers only cold steel, such that when Wright finally rebels against his makers with a corny bit of slow-motion window-breaking, and Schwarzenegger shortly thereafter makes a cameo – via face-grafting computer-generated trickery – the sought-after emotional payoff never materializes. In its place, there’s only crashing, crushing indifference.

Precursors: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Nick Schager — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

In what is unquestionably the most obvious choice for this week’s recommendation, anyone with even a passing interest in Terminator Salvation - the McG-helmed fourth installment in the venerable sci-fi franchise (which I'll be reviewing later this week) - must first acquaint himself or herself with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron’s more-is-more sequel to his 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster. Having defeated the cyborg killing machine sent from the future to kill her unborn son, who is destined to become the leader of a resistance in a war with machines, Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton, buff beyond reason) now resides in a loony bin because of her prophesy ravings, while hero-to-be John (Edward Furlong) is a trouble-making kid living with foster parents and hanging out with Diff’rent Strokes’ Sam. Their lives are again thrown into disarray by the appearance of Schwarzenegger’s terminator, though he’s now the good guy, programmed to protect them from a shape-shifting liquid-metal robot known as the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). Groundbreaking FX that still (mostly) hold up, an epic scale, and a number of kick-ass action set pieces make T2 the ne plus ultra of ‘80s-‘90s action, proving to be both the pinnacle of old-school slam-bang filmmaking as well as the harbinger of our current era’s CGI-infested spectacle cinema.

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Nick Schager's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1) DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)
2) THE SHINING (1980)

With all due respect to Stephen King, who famously disliked this adaptation of his novel, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is horror cinema nirvana, an unsettling vision of paternal and spousal madness crafted with the director’s trademark icy precision. Jack Nicholson’s performance is deservedly iconic, yet it’s the disquietingly unnatural atmosphere – generated by, among other things, those little twin ghouls, the nude grandma specter in the bathtub, Looney Tunes cartoons, and subtle allusions to Native American history – that truly turns this haunted hotel tale into a nerve-jangling classic.

3) MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
4) ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
5) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)
6) LE SAMOURAI (1967)
7) STALKER (1979)
8) AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972)

The production of Aguirre: The Wrath of God was so troubled that, as rumor has it, director Werner Herzog either threatened to shoot star Klaus Kinski, or plotted to have his indigenous cast members do the dirty deed once shooting was completed. Such insanity may be fantasy, but it’s in keeping with the spirit of Herzog’s mesmerizing 1972 feature about the titular Spanish conquistador, whose adventurous exploration of the wild unknown in search of greatness makes him a fitting surrogate for the mad genius director.

9) POINT BLANK (1967)
10) CRISS CROSS (1949)

Robert Siodmak is better remembered for 1946’s The Killers, a superb noir in its own right. Yet it’s this relatively unsung gem that stands as the director’s finest work in the genre, a beautifully constructed, sensual and tense thriller – about Burt Lancaster’s lovesick loner returning home to L.A. and becoming embroiled in a love triangle with his ex, Yvonne De Carlo, and her new gangster beau Dan Duryea – that expertly delivers all those things noir is famous for: love, obsession, betrayal, and a fatalism so potent that it leaves a lasting mark.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Nick Schager

Screengrab Presents: THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As faithful readers already know by now, the End Is Near for this blog...but before we all get Raptured up outta this bitch, your soon-to-be-less-employed-than-usual pals here at the Screengrab figured we’d settle the age-old question of ultimate movie quality once and for all with our own definitive and irrefutable rulings on the subject.

Last week, we determined the Top Ten Worst Atrocities in the History of Cinema...and now, after months of intensive research, legal wrangling, animal testing, sleepless nights and enough partisan debate to make the Coleman-Franken dispute seem like a mere coin-toss, we hereby present our individual and collective picks for THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

(And...okay, so we cheated a little, kicking things off with an insoluble three-way tie for the #10 spot, starting with...)

10. DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)

Terrence Malick’s sophomore effort about a love triangle that develops in the 1920 Texas panhandle is a work of pure cinema in which everything about its story, its characters, and its larger concerns is conveyed through overwhelmingly evocative imagery. From piercing cutaways to the natural world, to Linda Manz’s strange, haunting narration, to peerlessly beautiful twilight hour cinematography and Ennio Morricone’s wrenching score, it’s a film whose mournful poeticism casts a lingering spell, and which stands – in this critic’s humble opinion – as the finest feature ever committed to celluloid. (NS)

10. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)

Earlier this year, I sat down and watched Buñuel’s masterpiece Belle de Jour for what must have been the fortieth or so time, and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this story is all a fantasy in the mind of the main character’s husband. If you’ve seen the movie, think about it -- the story is about the virginal Severine (Catherine Deneuve), who plays the elegant wife for husband Jean (Jean Sorel), while harboring (and eventually giving in to) fantasies of debasing herself as a prostitute. Observe the way Jean is always on the sidelines of the story, until the final reel, when he gets dragged into the middle of it. And look at his knowing smirk in the final scene. Now, I have no idea if this reading was something Buñuel intended. But no matter -- Belle de Jour is the kind of movie that invites readings like this one, however strange and far-fetched they might be. Also, it’s got Deneuve at the apex of her icy-hot sex appeal, Michel Piccoli at his most insinuating, plus it actually gets funnier with each subsequent viewing. From an objective point of view, Belle de Jour may not be the best movie ever made, but nuts to that -- it’s my favorite, and that’s good enough for me. (PC)

10. STAR WARS (1977)

During my tenure here at the Screengrab, I’ve rhapsodized endlessly and embarrassingly about my love for the original Star Wars, and now, as Grand Moff Tarkin would say, it will be the last time. But why is it one of the best movies ever? Because, personally, no other film has ever transported me as far and completely from the grip of dull reality into the escapist realms of cinematic possibility. Because, in a general sense, it distilled decades (even centuries) of recycled pop culture into something nobody had ever quite seen before. And while many blame George Lucas (and his buddy Steven Spielberg) for spawning the sort of CGI-infused, ADD-inducing summer blockbusters that led to the Michael Bayification of Hollywood, it should be remembered that Lucas’ original space opera was powered as much by crackerjack storytelling, likeable characters and a sincere joie de vivre as it was by special effects...a lesson clearly absorbed by the best of the new generation of blockbuster auteurs like Jon “Iron Man” Favreau and J.J. “Star Trek” Abrams. (And, finally, one last Star Wars fun fact, for old time’s sake: while double-checking the Internet Movie Database to see if I got the above Tarkin quote right, I unexpectedly discovered that the deformed guy who gives Luke Skywalker a hard time in the Mos Eisley cantina (“He doesn’t like you...I don’t like you either”) is apparently a doctor -- Dr. Cornelius Evazan, to be exact -- though I’m guessing the doctorate was more of an honorary degree, possibly bestowed by Arizona State University). (AO)

9. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

"A simple story about bad men in changing times" is how Sam Peckinpah summed it up. But it's so much more than that. Pauline Kael said it was "a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya's" and also that "pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle." Westerns had always been mythic stories, morality tales about good and bad without the guiding force of law to keep matters civilized. The Wild Bunch brought a sense of grim reality to the story without losing the mythic quality. Gunfighters weren't good guys living by a code and bad guys living for themselves. Gunfighters didn't color-code into white and black hats. All of them - crooks, thieves, and highwaymen - were amoral, self-serving murderers. If they had a code of honor, it was a situational code, painting themselves in the best light. In the opening scene, the Wild Bunch weren't above using innocent civilians as a smokescreen when making their escape, nor were the railroad's hired guns above shooting through the civilians to get the Bunch. Peckinpah wanted his audience to feel the blood and iron, and he hoped that people would find themselves excited by the bloodlust and marvel at their own excitement and what it says about people. However, he stuck to a relativistic morality throughout the movie: the Bunch were merciless killers, but the railroad's hired guns were scummy desert rats unworthy of the Bunch. The Bunch robbed trains and put guns into the hands of the Mexican warlord Mapache, but their robbery was silent, clever, and cool, and they despised Mapache's base brutality. Considering the alternatives, they were the white hats, and moreover, they sort of knew it. All the arguments between the Bunch's leader Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his lieutenant Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) were about what it meant to be honorable, what it meant to take a stand against the greater evil. Time is weighing their arguments down. The 20th century is upon them, and they're barely out of the 18th. They're getting older, slower, and there's no retirement plan for gunfighters. Pike talks about making one last score and then backing off, but Dutch brings him back to reality: "Back off to what?" That's a great question, and there is no answer for it. (HC)

8. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Even fifty years ago, it seems Hollywood's best days were already behind it. Los Angeles is a city that has been haunted by its past for nearly the entire length of its existence, and Sunset Boulevard is still its quintessential ghost story. Half a century later, Billy Wilder's masterpiece remains the eeriest and most caustic evocation of the Golden Age's twilight ever captured on celluloid. Wilder is often dismissed as a "writer's director" (or worse). It's true that his visual style is a fairly elemental one, but if Wilder's images don't possess the verve of a Kubrick or an Orson Welles, they do exert a cumulative power: William Holden’s cynical screenwriter shot from underneath as he floats lifelessly in the pool, flashbulbs popping behind him; the same pool seen empty and disintegrating from his garage apartment window, and the decaying tennis court beyond it; faded star Norma Desmond rising into the dust illuminated by a projector casting shadows of her former self on the wall; her legendary approach to the camera at the end, as she proclaims herself ready for her close-up. The air of rot and dissolution is almost unbearable. It's difficult to imagine now how shattering Sunset Boulevard must have been back in 1950. Tinseltown has been skewered many times since, in movies as different as Robert Altman's brilliant The Player and Joe Eszterhas's wretched Burn Hollywood Burn. Yet in all this time, no film-about-film has ever approached the dark, glittering genius of Wilder's vision. Even as the movie industry grows more and more appalling, Sunset Boulevard just gets better and better. (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Review: "Jerichow"

Nick Schager — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

The most recognizable member of the “New Berlin School,” Christian Petzold has, with his prior Yella and now with Jerichow, reconfigured classic American films into commentaries on modern capitalist Germany. Whereas the transparent Yella borrowed from 1962’s Carnival of Souls to condemn the means by which his native country’s free-market enterprise has engendered moral rot, the director’s latest recasts James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice as a portrait of the fallout wrought by Germany’s new economic order. Going pulpy suits Petzold far more comfortably than did his previous effort’s foray into metaphysical mystery, as his measured, icy cinematographic style and diegetic soundscape (most frequently populated with the sounds of chirping birds) brings omnipresent unease to the proceedings. Marked by a mood of chilling foreboding, his story concerns a quiet, dishonorably discharged vet named Thomas (a disquietingly unreadable Benno Fürmann) who returns home from Afghanistan to the titular northeastern German town to tend to his mother’s funeral, is promptly cold-cocked by associates eager to collect on outstanding debts, and shortly thereafter finds his penniless circumstances improved by a chance encounter with a drunk driver named Ali (Jilmi Sözer) whom he generously helps home one afternoon.

A Turkish immigrant, Ali manages a number of regional snack bars, and when his license is revoked for DUI, he hires Thomas to chauffeur him on his daily rounds. Just as Thomas lied about his cash flow to his creditors, so too do Ali’s employees regularly attempt to skim the pot. Monetary treachery is seemingly the name of everyone’s game, including Ali’s wife Laura (Yella’s Nina Hoss, exuding stifled misery and desperate need), who, it’s soon revealed, is an ex-con that married Ali because he could help pay off her enormous, unspecified debts – making their marriage, in effect, a purchase – and who has been carrying out her own surreptitious cookie jar-pilfering scam under her gruff hubby’s nose. When Thomas first meets Laura, their interaction amounts to merely a financial transaction. And though the two soon develop more amorous feelings for each other – this despite the fact that Thomas knows about Ali’s jealousy, having accompanied him on a spousal spying mission – their romance is rooted in economic concerns. Jerichow posits fiscal considerations as the dictating force behind all behavior and emotion, epitomized by Laura’s lament to Thomas, whom she loves but cannot run away with lest she again get saddled with the pecuniary responsibilities Ali has alleviated, that “You can’t love, if you don’t have money.”

Petzold has his noir-ish scenario play out primarily in the bright daytime sun, his countryside and beach settings – an ocean-overlooking cliff plays a prominent role in Thomas and Laura’s eventual plot – depicted as harsh, unforgiving, alienating locales where motivations and actions can never be concealed. As Thomas and Laura embark upon their surreptitious affair, the director plays with our expectations, patiently depicting his protagonists’ secretive courtship (highlighted by a beautiful sequence in which Thomas sneaks a nocturnal embrace with Laura while Ali stumbles about in the nearby dark) as a means of stoking anticipation for their predetermined decision to take drastic measures to be together. The mounting suspense never quite reaches a blistering boil, but by protracting his set-up, Petzold nonetheless achieves and maintains an effective level of intrigue. Assuredly paced and designed so that each key moment pivots around the issue of money, Jerichow ultimately arrives at a dénouement that may not surprise. Yet in its gorgeous final tableau of reckless, greed-fostered destruction, the film addresses the modern German condition with a potent noir strain of despondent fatalism.

Screengrab Review: "The Brothers Bloom"

Nick Schager — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson’s follow-up to his kiddie-noir Brick, prances about with a virtual “WWWAD?” – What Would Wes Anderson Do? – emblazoned on its every frame. Taking his debut’s affectations to their ultimate extreme, Johnson’s film is a con man saga in which every symmetrical composition, whip pan, folksy song, hand-written title card, and bubbly, droll caricature seems meticulously modeled after those found in Anderson’s oeuvre, a connection furthered by the focus here on close but at-odds siblings. The duo in question are Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and his younger bro Bloom (Adrien Brody), a couple of grifters who, as an intro sequence elucidates, moved about from one foster home to another as kids, their transience the result of their preference for causing mischief such as an early ruse in which they swindled local classmates with a yarn about secret caves, hidden treasure, and fantastical creatures. Decked out in matching black suits and bowler hats that reflect their precociousness, they’re an adorable pair who grow into wannabe David Mamet protagonists, with Stephen the cocky author of their convoluted schemes, and Bloom the morose antihero who yearns for a life unscripted by his brother.

Their adventure revolves around Stephen’s plan to con a wealthy shut-in eccentric named Penelope (Rachel Weisz), the type of kook who habitually crashes her canary-yellow Ferrari and then orders a new one, and whom Stephen has chosen as a mark in order to provide Bloom with a shot at true love. Or has he? Working from his own script, Johnson immediately establishes by-now hackneyed circumstances in which nothing is as it seems, and thus nothing can be trusted, a situation meant to keep viewers on their toes but instead reduces the proceedings to a shallow, uninvolving whirligig. The Brothers Bloom wants to fool us narratively as well as trick us into caring about Bloom’s budding relationship with Penelope. Yet it fails to realize that it’s nigh impossible to invest oneself in the plight of characters who only register as fast-talking, quirkily dressed cartoons with weird hobbies, with Penelope’s raft of random, self-taught leisurely pursuits – she plays a range of musical instruments, does gymnastics, juggles chainsaws, and break-dances and DJs – conveyed via such a blatantly Anderson-esque montage that the Rushmore director could just about file a lawsuit on grounds of plagiarism.

According to Bloom, Stephen concocts cons “like dead Russians write novels,” a bit of braggadocio that isn’t confirmed by an ensuing tale that primarily amounts to a formulaic series of rug-pulling scenarios. Yet more than the particulars of the central con, which comes to include the participation of Robbie Coltrane as a buffoonish Danish accomplice and Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi as a mute animé-ish sidekick, The Brothers Bloom falters in its conception, since by forcing us to view every moment with a skeptical eye, it frustrates any opportunity to emotionally care about the madcap shenanigans engulfing the screen. Asked to embody superficially strange ciphers defined by idiosyncrasies, the cast predictably plays down to their material, the charming Weisz and soulful Brody’s performances reduced by the twee atmosphere into merely broad gestures and exaggerated expressions. From their costume-y clothes to their inflated mannerisms and dialogue, everyone involved acts like a child playing dress-up. And while Kikuchi’s too-cool-for-school mime is the story’s most gratingly cute character, it’s Johnson’s equally self-satisfied stewardship that ultimately shoulders the lion’s share of the blame. “I want an unwritten life,” may be Bloom’s recurring plea, but it’s one Johnson thoroughly rejects, his film infinitely pleased with its derivative, fanciful writerly convolutions.

Precursors: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Nick Schager — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom arrives in select theaters this weekend before opening wide later in the month, and it so egregiously apes Wes Anderson's trademark aesthetic that one would be better off simply revisiting the film in which the director’s style fully crystallized, The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson’s J.D. Salinger-esque saga concerns the efforts of the titular clan’s estranged patriarch, Royal (Gene Hackman), to reconcile with his wife (Anjelica Huston) and three child-prodigy-turned-adult-misfit children (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson) by telling them he’s terminally ill. He’s not, but his ruse gets him back in the door, thus instigating a reunion that's both funny and poignant, thanks in part to a cast (which also includes Danny Glover, co-writer Owen Wilson, and Bill Murray) whose performances are uniformly droll and sorrowful, but primarily due to Anderson’s expert stewardship. Through his beautifully symmetrical compositions, use of slow-motion and pop songs, and intricately detailed set design, Anderson creates a winningly idiosyncratic, hermetically sealed world in which to situate his audience. Just as impressive, however, is his ability to make his aggressively quirky characters not only agents of humor but also pathos, the film – unlike Anderson’s more uneven subsequent efforts – offering up a near-ideal balance of silliness and sentimentality.

Screengrab Review: "Outrage"

Nick Schager — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

There’s a second-hand quality to Outrage that stems, in large part, from director Kirby Dick’s decision to not place himself front and center as he did in his prior non-fiction exposé, This Film Is Not Yet Rated. In examining – and outing – closeted gay politicians who support anti-same-sex legislation, Dick relies primarily on the investigative work of others, whether it be Blogactive’s Michael Rogers, who was reportedly instrumental in bringing to light the story of Senator Larry Craig’s failed public bathroom stall pick-up, or satellite radio talk-show host Michelangelo Signorelli, who years prior publicized deceased Malcolm Forbes’ carefully concealed homosexuality. By letting others do the heavy lifting, the filmmaker comes off as more than a little reticent, a quality in tune with the overall tone of his latest – which repeatedly justifies its modus operandi of outing closeted pols by cogently arguing that hypocrisy can’t be tolerated in public officials – and one that prevents it from generating the type of horrified, righteous indignation implied by its title.

Outrage focuses on a handful of high-profile cases to reinforce its central argument that there’s a vast conspiracy afoot to legally persecute the country’s millions of gay men and women. Any such grand scheme is never dragged into the light of day by Dick, however, as his documentary makes a strong case not for a collusive plot orchestrated by shadowy forces, but for a more predictable pattern of behavior followed by individuals interested in attaining positions of power at any cost. Whether it be Jim McGreevey, who speaks openly about his outing, or Florida governor/2012 presidential hopeful/long-time bachelor Charlie Crist, who for years has been dogged by rumors about his sexuality, the explanation remains largely similar: desperate to not alienate any portion of the voting population, aspiring Capital Hill bigwigs hide their sexual identity behind hetero facades, and then, once elected, embrace an anti-gay platform as a means of reinforcing their own ruse (and, also, censuring the very thing they dislike about themselves). The hypocrisy is, unsurprisingly, quite galling, and though Dick’s statistics could use a bit more clarification (his anti-gay voting record percentages remain vaguely defined), the thrust of his argument is forceful.

Which is why, alas, Outrage is so frustrating. Rather than pursuing someone like Crist himself, Dick mainly relies on talking heads and third-party news footage and interviews to make his case, which drains the film of immediacy and leaves one craving more concrete confirmation of the accusations being leveled. Just as problematic are the doc’s diversions, most notably one in which Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is outed by a speaker who claims that the newsman once hit on him, an aside that’s meant to reinforce the idea that many in and around politics are concealing their sexual preferences in order to climb the professional ladder, but mostly seems like tabloid gossiping only speciously related to the primary point about political two-facedness. Even more than such inconsequential diversions, however, Outrage suffers from a lack of surprise or complexity, its revelations already well-known – unless some have yet to hear that former New York City mayor Ed Koch liked men – and its contentions so straightforward and clearly expressed that, after twenty minutes, the film has conclusively made its case, and thus proceeds to merely spin its wheels.

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Nick Schager's Top Ten Worst Movies Ever

1) THEY'RE JUST MY FRIENDS (2006)
2) HOUSE OF THE DEAD (2003)
3) PAY IT FORWARD (2000)

So sickly sweet is the premise of Pay it Forward – little altruistic boy (Haley Joel Osment) devises a domino-effect plan in which people repay favors by doing good deeds for others – it’s likely to give you diabetes. And so brazenly manipulative is Mimi Leder’s award-baiting drama, which also concerns Kevin Spacey’s badly burned social studies teacher finding love with Osment’s alcoholic mommy Helen Hunt, that it may as well feature “Award Clip” subtitles under its many mawkish scenes. Did I mention that, after Osment has compassionately started to change the world, the kid gets shot dead? Shameless doesn’t begin to describe the multitude of tear-jerking ploys employed by this sentimental weepy.

4) BABY GENIUSES (1999)
5) BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)
6) SUPER CAPERS (2009)

All the references in the world can’t save Super Capers from being the nadir of cinematic homages, a tongue-in-cheek riff on ‘80s superhero and sci-fi films which believes that merely alluding to classic predecessors is enough to keep fanboys entertained. Sloppy and inane, it nightmarishly epitomizes the downside to technology affording wannabe filmmakers the means to realize their big-screen dreams.

7) BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)
8) MIXED NUTS (1994)
9) THE EXORCIST II (1977)
10) TROLL 2 (1990)

The forthcoming documentary Best Worst Movie will surely win Troll 2 some new fans, if only because it’ll clue filmgoers into the mind-boggling scene in which young protagonist Joshua prevents his family from eating evil food by urinating all over the kitchen table. Yet no matter how unintentionally funny it may be, there’s no getting around the sheer dreadfulness of this pseudo-sequel, which in every respect lives up to – if not actually surpasses – its disreputable reputation.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributor: Nick Schager

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

5. INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

Atlanta, July 4th weekend, 1996. I was in town to visit friends, celebrate the holiday, and check in on the progress of the centennial Olympic games. Finding myself downtown early one afternoon with nothing much to do, I ducked into a movie theater, which was showing the mega-hyped blockbuster Independence Day. I wasn’t expecting much; the cast was crammed with big-budget line-readers, and Roland Emmerich was already, by virtue of Universal Soldier, one of the worst directors in Hollywood. But I was just looking to kill a couple of hours until the bars opened; how bad, I reasoned, could it be? The answer turned out to be not only “incredibly bad”, but “one of the worst of all time”. Independence Day would have been bad enough even if it was nothing but what it appeared to be – an utterly witless sci-fi action movie that substituted explosions for plot, motivation, characterization, and anything else worth watching – but it added some of the most egregious stereotyping seen in films this side of the 1930s. In addition to the name actors – including Will Smith as a wisecracking fighter pilot, Bill Pullman as a Fightin’ President, Jeff Goldblum as a nerdy computer scientist, Judd Hirsch as a Jewish father straight out of a Julius Streicher publication, Randy Quaid as the crazy town drunk no one will believe, Margaret Colin as a ball-busting corporate hard-ass, Vivica Fox as a whore with a heart of gold, and Harvey Fierstein as a mincing queen – even the bit parts were insulting caricatures. After the alien motherships are brought down, we’re treated to such rare sights as bone-through-the-nose, booga-booga-shouting African tribesmen and gibbering, ululating Arabs who can’t be understood – at least, until a civilized British officer steps in to translate. (LP)

4. BATMAN & ROBIN (1997)

No matter how many awards he may win, or magazine covers he adorns, or starlets he beds, or good causes he spearheads, no one will ever let George Clooney forget he once wore the Bat-suit with the nipples. And that’s as it should be. It’s astounding to think Arnold Schwarzenegger was able to overcome the scandalous footage of himself in full Mr. Freeze drag, willingly uttering lines like “Da ice man cometh!” and still be elected governor of California. And while it’s nice that Joel Schumacher was finally able to achieve his lifelong dream of directing the Ice Capades, maybe someone should have pulled him aside and explained that this was actually supposed to be a Batman movie. Scientists have been unable to pinpoint with any exactitude the lowest moment of the Bat-franchise. Was it Robin surfing through the air, howling “Cowabunga!” or the close-up of Clooney’s bat-buttocks as he fastens his utility belt or Schwarzenegger leading his minions in a chorus of “He’s Mr. Snow-Miser”? To answer the question definitively would entail sitting through the entire movie again, and so far no one has been willing to take on the challenge. (SVD)

3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH (2000)

There are quite a few lessons to be learned from Battlefield Earth. L. Ron Hubbard wasn’t much of a fictional storyteller. The sight of John Travolta decked out in alien dreadlocks is not pleasant. And most important of all for aspiring directors, tilting the camera at a 45-degree angle for every other shot of a two-hour film is the quickest and most conclusive way to tip audiences off to your directorial ineptitude. (NS)

2. SHOWGIRLS (1995)

I posted the following about a year ago in our list "Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors," but I'd say it pretty much sums up why Showgirls ranked so high on our Top Ten list of all-time rankest films:

“Do you know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!” And that hilarious quip from strip club “comedienne” Henrietta “Mama” Bazoom pretty much sums up the philosophy towards women in this abortion of a cult classic by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven. Sure, I get it...this campy, overwrought drag show bitch-fest about amoral sex worker Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) is so bad it’s good! And we can all just laugh through the parts where Gina Ravera’s Molly (the only vaguely redeemable or recognizably human character in the movie, and a black woman to boot) gets brutally raped by a loathsome white rock star. (I love it when they act out that part in the drag queen version of the show at my favorite hipster bar!) Garish, ridiculous and aggressively stupid, Showgirls is hard for me to enjoy ironically, since it so clearly embraces and truly believes in its own fetid realpolitik Hollywood philosophy that love is a lie, “art” is whatever makes money, winning is everything, men are scumbags, women are worthless (especially if they’re not hot, naked and young), the world is a shithole, if you’re not clawing your way to the top every single minute (and/or don’t know how to properly pronounce the most expensive status symbol brand names) you’re a fool and a loser and deserve what you get. Yeccch. Showgirls ain't just misogynistic: it pretty much hates everyone. And the feeling is mutual. (AO)

And now, the Screengrab's #1 Worst Movie Of All Time...

1. BABY GENIUSES (1999)

Let's see...cynical, lowest-common-denominator high-concept plot that's pretty much summed up in the title? Check! Hacky script featuring way-past-their-expiration date pop culture catch phrases? Check! Depressing lead performance by an actress who deserves better but can't find any decent roles in Hollywood because she doesn't have the off-the-chart talent of, um, Kate Hudson? Check! All that, plus creepy baby fetish CGI and the directorial flourish of the auteur behind Porky's II: The Next Day and you've got the perfect movie to fit in a double feature with Ow! My Balls! The Motion Picture in the future Idiocracy multiplex that waits for us all. (AO)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Andrew Osborne

The Screengrab's Top Ten Worst...Movies...Ever!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Under normal circumstances, with Mother’s Day just around the corner, I’d probably be introducing a list of the Top Ten Best and Worst Movie Mothers of all time (hello, Stella Dallas, Edna Turnblad, Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Bates and, uh, Mothra)!

But, sadly, these are not normal circumstances, and as your doomed pals here at the Screengrab kick off the first of our Final Four Lists of All Time, we figured we’d better get down to brass tacks with some big-time definitive statements.

And so, this week, we’ve all joined our esteemed colleague Scott Von Doviak down in the deepest depths of the cinematic junk heap to compile our own list of Cinematic Unwatchables. And judging from our picks, it seems Tolstoy was correct when he said, “Happy audiences are all alike; every miserable audience is miserable in its own way.”

In other words, our picks were all over the map, but thanks to the cutting edge calculating powers of the state-of-the-art Screengrabulator 5000, we hereby present our ultimate, irrefutable list of THE TOP TEN WORST MOVIES EVER MADE!!!!!!

10. BREAKING THE WAVES (1996)

I don't know if Lars Von Trier thinks there's something "real" buried in the contrivances and gimmicks and grabs to the crotch that he calls movies, and I don't want to know. I do know that they can do real damage when he persuades talented people who are susceptible to really bad ideas to take part in them. Unlike the auteur, his leading lady, Emily Watson, has since done enough good work to redeem herself for whatever the hell it is she thinks she was doing in this, but at the time, her performance seemed to call less for an award than an intervention, if not an exorcism. (PN)

9. THEY’RE JUST MY FRIENDS (2006)

Bad movies come in all shapes and sizes, but few approach the sheer, wholesale incompetence and awfulness of They’re Just My Friends, an autobiographical indie co-written by and starring World Super Cruiserweight boxing champ “Punchin’” Pat Nwamu that, in terms of aesthetics, narrative, and performance, redefines the very notion of a cinematic failure. It’s a master class in how not to make a movie, made all the more distasteful by the fact that, after two excruciating hours, it abruptly, randomly ends with a cliffhanger that portends a sequel. (NS)

8. WIRED (1989)

John Belushi was a funny, talented guy and a lot of people loved him and enjoyed his work, but Bob Woodward mostly accentuated the negative as he chronicled every drug the late comedian ever ingested in his 1984 exposé Wired, prompting Belushi’s brother Jim to call the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist a cocksucker a few years later in the SNL oral history Live From New York, adding that “Woodward did a really nice job of making John look like a Bluto junkie. I don’t think Woodward’s capable of understanding what love is, or compassion, or relationships,” while Dan Ackroyd noted that Woodward “painted a portrait of John that was really inaccurate.” So I can only imagine what they must have thought of Larry Peerce’s godawful adaptation of Woodward’s book, which begins with Michael Chiklis (whose career somehow survived one of the most catastrophic debuts of all time) emerging from a body bag as Belushi, post-overdose...a concept so jaw-droppingly tasteless it belongs in the Cinema Wing of the Bad Idea Hall of Fame on a shelf with The Day The Clown Cried. And then, remarkably, the maudlin, humorless fiasco gets even worse, as Chicklis’ Belushi revisits scenes from his life, like a faux-SNL skit even more endlessly, painfully unfunny than anything Charles Rocket ever cooked up, and a Second City improv class weirdly depicted as some harrowing cross between primal scream therapy and a Khmer Rouge boot camp. Like HBO’s weirdly overpraised 2004 hack job The Life and Times of Peter Sellers, Wired seems to actively despise its own main character...but not nearly as much as I fucking despise Wired. (AO)

7. FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)

The stench of aging-Boomer anxiety rises thickly from this gross hunk of whimsy. Why did national menace Kevin Costner fall out with his dad? For all Field of Dreams tells you, dad might have been a war criminal and a serial killer and a fan of Black Oak Arkansas, but of course the movie doesn't want to get into any specifics that might interfere with the effectiveness of its guilt trip warning that you must mind your elders so they'll always be there to play catch with you. (Of course, Costner, like a lot of people in the audience, just happens to start regretting how he treated his daddy once he's become a daddy himself. This is self-critical regret as a form of narcissism.) The smarmy smugness taints all that it touches: baseball, Burt Lancaster, James Earl Jones. Check out the scene where Shoeless Joe Jackson (a miscast Ray Liotta) drops Ty Cobb's name just so he can have a laugh about how much he hates the Georgia Peach for a taste of how Costner became, for a while, the movie's poster boy for politically correct claptrap. (PN)

6. CANNONBALL RUN II (1984)

I hate to even mention this one so soon after the death of Dom DeLuise, but not even Captain Chaos could salvage a fiasco of such awe-inspiring ineptitude. The first Cannonball Run was no award-winner either – even longtime Burt Reynolds pal Johnny Carson described it as “an industrial-strength laxative” – but it doesn’t come close to the pure, unadulterated shamelessness of the sequel. Once again featuring enough Burt buddies, big name cameos and Grade Z celebrities to sink The Love Boat, Cannonball Run II takes the coast-to-coast genre into daring new territory by eliminating the race altogether. A few seconds worth of squiggly Ralph Bakshi animation stands in for the actual racing, leaving plenty of time for Jamie Farr to mug in a burnoose, Shirley Maclaine to frolic around in a nun’s habit, and Frank Sinatra to phone in a sleepy cameo, looking like he couldn’t be bothered to cross the street to appear in the same frame as Reynolds and the gang. Who could blame him? (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek" - Nick's Take

Nick Schager — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Hardcore Trekkers can debate whether J.J. Abrams has committed heresy with his franchise-restarter Star Trek. For those not deeply invested in Gene Roddenberry’s humanist sci-fi series, however, this summer spectacular will prove a largely thrilling surprise, its blend of humor, romance and action so kinetically orchestrated that calling out its shortcomings feels like excessive carping. By constructing a story around planet-devouring black holes that function as time-travel portals, Abrams not only affords himself a premise fit for grand intergalactic conflicts but also a handy explanation for why Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban) and their fellow Starfleet peace-keepers only sort of resemble themselves. It’s an alternate reality Star Trek, and all the better for it, serving up the type of breakneck thrills and operatic excitement that’s been absent from this sci-fi universe since 1982’s Wrath of Khan. A distinctly modern blockbuster that comes on like gangbusters and rarely lets up, it re-confirms that Abrams – after energizing Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible saga in 2006 – is a director tailor-made for event pics, his sleek, lens-flared cinematographic style and vigorously to-the-point pacing well-suited for the demands of mega-budgeted tentpole extravaganzas.

In this reconfigured Star Trek, whose mythos occasionally recalls Star Wars, Kirk’s dad dies saving his starship’s inhabitants and, specifically, his wife and newborn baby, and Kirk himself grows up to be a devil-may-care bad boy squandering his potential in cornfielded Iowa. Convinced by paternalistic Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to follow his father’s footsteps by joining the Starfleet Academy, he immediately finds himself in conflict with Spock, a rather disagreeable know-it-all struggling to reconcile his dual heritage as a logical Vulcan and (thanks to human mom Winona Ryder) an emotional Earthling. Much of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s script centers on Kirk and Spock’s combative relationship, though along the way it also deftly provides introductions to the rest of the iconic Enterprise crew, including amusingly grouchy McCoy, mini-skirted sexpot Uhura (Zoe Saldana), tough Sulu (John Cho), goofy Chekhov (Anton Yelchin), and witty Scotty (Simon Pegg). As befitting an origin story, Abrams lavishes most of the attention on establishing his characters’ various relationships, a guiding directive that he admirably pulls off, with the writer/director sneaking in trademark catchphrases and allusions to signature moments in Star Trek history while allowing his new cast to make the revered characters their own.

Pine channels William Shatner’s ladies-man egomania with a playfulness that makes light of the legendary Kirk’s machismo, Urban’s McCoy grumbles with a gusto that would make DeForest Kelly proud, and Quinto gives Spock a smarty-pants attitude that differentiates him from that of Leonard Nimoy’s original Vulcan, who [spoiler alert] eventually figures prominently in the narrative proper. That plot involves Romulan madman Nero (Eric Bana) traveling back in time to exact revenge on Spock and the Federation for his home world’s demise, a scheme to destroy Earth that inevitably feels shoehorned into a film whose primary concern is setting up interpersonal dynamics that can be further developed in sequels. Thanks to the tacked-on nature of Kirk’s battle with Nero, as well as a few too-curt editorial choices that don’t maximize the scenario for thrills, Star Trek falters slightly during its climax. Yet it’s a minor speed bump on an otherwise brisk ride, one that avoids indulging in the franchise’s characteristic social/political allegory in favor of straightforward, uncomplicated sci-fi melodrama and mayhem. Light on its feet, free from the self-seriousness of its predecessors, and shrewd enough to keep one wanting more by not overstaying its welcome, Abrams’ breathless reboot achieves the improbable, forcefully reviving a series that many, including myself, believed had deservedly been left for dead.

Scott's Take

Screengrab Review: "Rudo y Cursi"

Nick Schager — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:00:00 GMT

A flagrantly contrived piece of Hollywood-style hokum masquerading as serious drama, Rudo y Cursi gets the producing careers of the “three amigos” – Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñarritu and Guillermo del Toro, working under the banner “Cha Cha Cha” – off to a very inauspicious start. Written and directed by Cuarón’s younger brother Carlos, who co-wrote Y Tu Mamá También and who reunites that hit’s two headliners, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, for his behind-the-camera debut, the film attempts to mask its story’s creakiness with local flavor, exhibiting a comfortable, intimate familiarity with both its rural Mexico and Mexico City settings. Anyone who’s seen a cautionary tale about the dangers of fame and fortune, however, will likely groan their way through this saga about two banana-harvesting brothers, Luna’s hard-headed Beto, nicknamed “Rudo” (i.e. “tough), and Bernal’s wannabe singer Tato, aka “Cursi ” (i.e. “corny”), who both discover the pleasures and perils of having their superstardom dreams come true after they fortuitously meet, and then are signed to athletic contracts by, soccer agent Batuta (Guillermo Francella).

Cuarón’s relaxed, unhurried direction creates a convivial atmosphere, even if his conspicuous avoidance of showing actual game footage (instead, only depicting on-field incidents during stoppages in play) seems curious given the material’s passionate interest in the sport. And boy oh boy, is it ever interested, as evidenced by the clog-your-ears-incessant narration by Batuta, which is so rife with soccer metaphors (sample: “Loving a woman and a ball is the same”) that one comes to think Cuarón must be subtly mocking the entire notion of narration. Alas, he’s not, since when Batuta isn’t comparing his beloved pastime to life, he’s simply offering up overcooked stand-alone platitudes (“Pity, nowadays games are mistaken for wars and wars for games”) in an effort to spell out every single obvious point Rudo y Cursi has already, or is about to, make. Batuto’s verbal diarrhea epitomizes tell-don’t-show storytelling and Cuarón never lets up, piling on endless third-person blather in an apparent effort to give his storybook parable some profundity. Instead, however, it merely serves as insult to injury, rubbing in our faces the fact that, for all its attention to crafting a realistic sense of time and place, the film is the type of formulaic careful-what-you-wish-for jibber-jabber that domestic cinema has been churning out, to generally awful results, for decades.

Bernal and Luna’s collaborative history lends a modicum of weight to their depiction of squabbling, yet devoted, brothers. Still, although they attempt to downplay their characters’ schematic relationship, Cuarón’s script puts them through such hackneyed paces that any glimmers of authenticity found in their performances are overwhelmed by the narrative’s excessively melodramatic developments. Cursi becomes a soccer superstar but squanders his potential by pursuing a misguided music career and shacking up with a stunning gold-digger TV celeb. Rudo chases a soccer-goalie record but puts his life in jeopardy by gambling himself into deep debt. The two, having first embarked on their pro athlete paths thanks to a single penalty kick in which Rudo’s instructions to Cursi were misinterpreted, eventually wend their way to another monumental penalty kick at film’s conclusion, their personal and professional futures once again hinging on their ability to effectively communicate. They’re plot developments straight out of an Afterschool Special, yet treated by Cuarón with an undeserved level of self-satisfied import, the director oblivious to the fact that just as his protagonists don’t quite know “right” from “left,” his film doesn’t know novelty from banal clichés.

Screengrab Review: "Adoration"

Nick Schager — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

A sense of deep loss and confusion hovers over Adoration, Atom Egoyan’s follow-up to his disappointing mainstream-courting Where the Truth Lies, which finds the director employing the gliding cinematography, sparse, mournful music, and splintered chronology of his earlier successes. Like The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan’s latest pivots around a fatal car accident that directly affects both a community at large as well as, specifically, one family. Having lost his American mom (Rachel Blanchard) and Lebanese dad (Noam Jenkins) years earlier in a smash-up that his now-deceased bigoted grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) claimed was intentionally caused by his father, high-schooler Simon (Devon Bostick) lives in the custody of uncle Tom (Scott Speedman), a tow truck operator struggling to make ends meet and cope with the ingrained intolerance bestowed upon him by his father. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when, assigned by his French teacher Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) to translate a news item about a pregnant woman whose fiancé secretly stowed explosives in her bag before boarding a plane for Israel, Simon instead passes off as true a version of the story in which he claims to be the couple’s child. Predictably, once Simon’s dramatic experiment hits the Internet, controversy and emotional chaos ensue.

Blending together past and present, reality and fiction, and straightforwardly shot material with cell phone and laptop-filtered imagery, Adoration attempts a ruminative meditation on a variety of issues, including cultural compatibility, the morality of terrorism, the nature of grief and victimhood, and the means by which identity is shaped by imagination and passed-down beliefs. An ambitious task, to be sure, and one that Egoyan isn’t fully capable of lucidly accomplishing, too prone is his script to expository declarations – mostly during Simon reading his counterfeit family story in front of class – and character behavior and plot revelations that seem at once puzzling and contrived. Sabine’s support for Simon’s ruse extends to her testing his uncle Tom’s tolerance for other cultures by posing as a cloaked Muslim neighbor, while Simon spends an inordinate amount of time engaging in, and listening to, online arguments about his (phony) terrorist parents made by classmates, their parents, and survivors of the actual near-disaster. They’re two of the many threads that Egoyan weaves into his multimedia tapestry, his film’s aesthetic delicacy and restraint (aided by Mychael Danna’s hauntingly melancholic string score) frequently at odds with his script’s overt attempts to provoke and edify.

If Egoyan’s elliptical narrative flirts with pretentiousness, the director nonetheless encases his action in an affecting mood of regret and longing, with Simon’s fictional tale coming to function as his means of working out pain and sorrow over his own mom and dad’s deaths. Likewise, Simon’s stunt instigates others to confront their pasts, and though the story eventually arrives at a surprise about Sabine’s true motivations that comes off as lamely artificial, Adoration finds grave poignancy in Tom’s concurrent attempts to come to grips with his father-fostered misery. That’s primarily thanks to Speedman, who – best known for his role on teen soap opera Felicity, and after impressive work in last year’s The Strangers – turns out to be the film’s true revelation. The guilt-ridden heartache spied in the corners of his hard eyes and the resentful sadness one can feel propelling his curt, angry outbursts, are both articulated with a subtlety and earnestness that cuts through Egoyan’s puzzle-box plot machinations to deliver jolts of authentic anguish, rage, and remorse.

Precursors: Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Nick Schager — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Those interested in fully readying themselves for this Friday’s Star Trek would be wise to bypass the franchise’s myriad small- and big-screen iterations and instead take a second look at Mission: Impossible III, the first and most recent franchise to get a vigorous kick in the behind from J.J. Abrams. Unfairly dismissed during its summer 2006 release because of star Tom Cruise’s couch-hopping antics and crazy comments about psychology and anti-depressants, the third Mission: Impossible remains the series’ most accessible and breathlessly exciting, characteristics mainly attributable to its director, who took on the project without any prior experience helming a tentpole extravaganza, and yet provided the no-nonsense adrenalized excitement absent from Brian De Palma’s intricate first and John Woo’s embarrassingly flamboyant second installments. Abrams borrows liberally from his TV series Alias as well as countless other sources for his story about IMF agent Ethan Hunt’s efforts to hunt down a Maguffin from a master criminal (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who’s kidnapped his new wife (Michelle Monaghan). And to be sure, not all of the narrative works, most notably with regards to its efforts to humanize the more-or-less superhuman Hunt. Still, Hoffman’s villain is excellent, and Abrams’ action-and-espionage centerpiece sequences have a visceral, invigorating electricity that one hopes Star Trek – which I’ll be reviewing here at The Screengrab later this week – also possesses.

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:30:00 GMT

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Endings and (especially) middles are hard, but there’s something liberating about the instant rush and hit-the-ground momentum of beginnings, which is why so many great (and even not-so-great) directors are often inspired to make big, bold “HERE I AM!” statements in the first few minutes of films that frequently can’t compete with their own opening sequences. But Spike Lee, after two previous good-but-not-great at-bats with She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, finally knocked one out of the park with Do The Right Thing, which exploded onto movie screens with the sex-and-violence one-two punch of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Rosie Perez’s fly-girl attack during the opening credits, then jolted audiences again with an alarm clock and the fast-talking “WAKE UP!” morning rap of Samuel L. Jackson’s dee-jay Mister Señor Love Daddy, who keeps the pace and sets the scene, letting us know in no uncertain terms that it’s HOT and about to get hotter as Lee takes us on a tour of his beloved Bed-Stuy neighborhood, introducing us in quick succession to most of the major players in a world as instantly distinctive as John Ford’s Monument Valley...or even Woody Allen’s Manhattan. (AO)

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Rarely has a film’s initial moments set the forthcoming tone as immediately and evocatively as those of Apocalypse Now with its protracted shot of the Vietnamese jungle. From silence comes the sound of helicopter blades, then the airborne choppers themselves, and then the sparse electric guitar notes of The Doors’ “The End.” When Jim Morrison’s voice croons “This is the end” and bursts of napalm decimate the lush forest, the film fully enters into the realm of the hallucinatory, with Francis Ford Coppola’s pan through the smoke and fire soon integrating the superimposed image of Martin Sheen’s upside-down face, his head on a pillow facing a ceiling fan. Dream and reality coalesce in a woozy, hazy blend of longing, fear and self-inflicted violence (symbolized by a gun lying beside Sheen on the bed) that result, per the Lizard King, in “a wilderness of pain. And all the children are insane.” Table-setters don’t get much more exquisite than this. (NS)

BARBARELLA (1968)

This is more of an excuse for showing Jane Fonda naked than anything else, but the same could be said of the entire movie. An astronaut clad in a rather community theatre-looking metallic space suit floats weightlessly above a yellow shag carpet. Elevator muzak plays in the background and piece by piece, the suit comes off, revealing the astronaut to be a comely blonde, naked beneath the suit. Soon we have Barbarella floating around with her ass in the air to the tones of 1960s muzak. Cute and sexy for sure, but also disturbingly fetus-like. (SCS)

LA DOLCE VITA (1960)

La Dolce Vita has its fair share of famous scenes. The opening in which Jesus dangles from a helicopter flying low over Rome beats Anita Ekberg in the fountain by a mile. Fellini knows that any good opening needs to be odd and enjoyable besides hinting at what's to come. Here we have religion, sexy rich women, poor street boys, modern technology and ruins. And Paparazzo taking photos of it all while Marcello Mastroianni's character quietly eggs him on. (SCS)

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

Much is made of the final scene, where the movie's hero/anti-hero, the racist Ethan Edwards, cannot enter the embrace of the household, and the door slowly shuts on him. The opening scene is a mirror of the end, with Ethan's sister-in-law Martha opening the door and walking from the cool shade of the house into the harsh light of Monument Valley, relocated from Utah to Texas for the purposes of the film. Ethan is riding his horse in through the desert, still a ways off although closer than anything else in the huge landscape. The camera's journey from the dark interior to the brilliant and tremendous exterior emphasizes just how small the ranch is. Ethan's visit is his first in many years, and although the film doesn't say a word about it, it is clear that while his sleazy exploits are one reason he has stayed away for so long, his love for Martha is the primary cause. The whole of the plot revolves around that unspoken love. If you look for it, you can see it from the first moment Martha's face becomes visible, all of the concern and ambiguity that she cannot speak. Unspoken truths are at the heart of The Searchers, and in the gulf between what is said and what is meant is the real history of this country. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Sarah Clyne Sundberg, Hayden Childs

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:00:00 GMT

CLIFFHANGER (1993)

Let’s be clear...Cliffhanger is not a good film. Sylvester Stallone is...well, he’s Sylvester Stallone, and John Lithgow only works as a villain when he’s playing a snotty elitist or Dr. Lizardo and not somebody who’s actually meant to scare me. But the primal suspense of the opening sequence above haunts me far more than any number of scenes from much, much better films. Here’s the set-up: Stallone plays Gabe, some kind of extreme mountain ranger who (along with helicopter ace Janine Turner) attempt what should be the routine rescue of their colleague Hal (Michael Rooker) and his cute-as-a-bug girlfriend, Sarah (Michelle Joyner), who’ve managed to get trapped while hiking in the Rocky Mountains -- but then things go horribly awry, and suddenly Gabe and Sarah are stuck hanging from a thin line between two peaks over a vertigo-inducing abyss...and then the line starts to give way...and then Sarah slips and winds up dangling from Gabe’s meaty fingers...and it’s all very suspenseful and routinely pulse-pounding until -- holy shit! -- sweet, innocent Sarah actually falls to her death, screaming all the way...the kind of unexpected gut-punch one rarely encounters in the typical theme-park safety net of most summer thrill rides. The incident is so demoralizing, in fact, that it hangs like a pall over the characters and audience for the rest of the film's running time, adding untenable weight to a ludicrous Die Hard knock-off that can’t support it -- but director Renny Harlin deserves at least some credit for creating such a terrifying, memorable stand-alone reminder of the visceral power of cinema. (AO)

WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000)

It’s fairly common in the films of Bela Tarr to find scenes that take place in barrooms. But there’s no scene in Tarr’s filmography -- or anyone else’s, for that matter -- that’s quite like the opening of his 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies. At the end of another long night, the barkeep kicks out all of his customers, but not before Valuska (Lars Rudolph) demonstrates to the others the way a solar eclipse works by using three of the drunks to portray the sun, the Earth, and the moon. At first, it’s a hilarious bit of imagery, with the sun waving his arms, the Earth lurching around the sun, and the moon circling the Earth at a dizzying pace. However, before long Valuska has a surprise in store for the others, as he stops the moon between the sun and the Earth and proceeds to describe in haunting language what happens when the sun’s rays have been blocked out -- the strange behavior of the animals, the moment of dread felt by the people who witness it, and so on. Of course, Valuska explains, the moment is over as soon as it began, but it’s this moment, and the thoughts of apocalypse it inspires, that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Soon enough, a real brush with the reckoning arrives in town (in the form of a traveling circus and its mysterious whale), causing all hope to disappear, however briefly, from the townspeople. And so, what begins as a strange and hypnotic opening comes to encapsulate the entire film -- practically the definition of a great and important opening scene. (PC)

DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)

Zack Snyder’s loose remake of George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie classic gets progressively less interesting as it goes along, though there’s almost no way his film could have maintained the level of blistering, manic terror delivered by its opening sequence. After finishing her shift at the local hospital, Sarah Polley’s nurse returns to her suburban home and loving husband. Their peaceful domesticity is shattered the following morning, however, when the neighbor’s little girl appears at their bedroom door looking decidedly fleet and hungry. A ferocious attack ensues, followed by Polly’s husband transforming into a crazed cannibal, sparking further mayhem that propels her outside and – as a gorgeously wrought panoramic shot reveals – into mass chaos, her street overrun by zombies and their fleeing, panicking would-be victims. Hopping into her car, she zigzags through the madness, Snyder’s camera situated directly behind her car (or attached to its hood) to heighten the crazed immediacy of the action, which culminates in a thudding car crash that proves an ideal segue into Snyder’s Johnny Cash-scored credit sequence and subsequent mall-set zombiepocalypse saga. (NS)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

It's the nature of the world that everything you think you understand should be challenged. That no matter how long you live and what sort of times you have seen, the world will always seem stranger and more frightening as you age. You expect wisdom with your years, but time tends to make you complacent instead. No Country For Old Men is a little too insubstantial to qualify for Cormac McCarthy's top shelf, but that doesn't mean that it's devoid of his signature insight into darkness and weakness. The movie hews tightly to the book, but movies are more immersive than books, and it's harder to take a step back from a seemingly wise narrator to ask whether one is actually hearing wisdom or whether it is complacency. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells us from the beginning that he can't understand the way that crime has changed, that he can't be a part of the world because it would put his soul at hazard, the sweep of the movie leads some or even most of the audience to believe that they are supposed to agree with him. And given a choice between Sheriff Bell and the amoral killing machine Anton Chigurh, well, Bell would be the safer choice for your sympathy. Bell is wrong, though, which will be brought to his attention late in the movie. But now we're at the beginning, just Sheriff Bell talking about how time has passed him while the camera lingers over those gorgeous shots of West Texas, so serene they look like still images until the wind blows. And then we're in the police station watching a man calmly murder another, leaving scuff marks on the floor as random and beautiful as the desert grass we just saw. And we're reminded that the desert, like the world around it, is always as full of danger as it is of beauty. That's nothing new. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)

David Lynch has never been what you’d call a mainstream director -- his last feature film, if I recall correctly, began with him videotaping old Polish factories -- but despite his reputation as an artsy iconoclast, he’s also got a streak of razzle-dazzle showmanship and the ability to hook an audience like nobody’s business when he puts his transcendental mind to it. Perhaps owing to the relatively commercial nature of the film’s origin as a pilot for ABC (infamously ordered and then canceled by network muttonheads for being too “Lynchian”), Mulholland Drive kicks off with a psychedelic jitterbug scene that gets the adrenalin pumping like any good overture, then moves into an opening sequence freighted with intrigue, atmosphere and dramatic possibility like a master class in cinematic storytelling: a beautiful woman in a limousine at night...a man with a gun about to kill her...a doomed car full of hedonistic teenagers screaming towards them, and then...CRASH! The man with the gun is killed, the beautiful woman staggers off into the Los Angeles night, her memory obliterated...and I’m ready and willing to follow Lynch wherever he wants to go. (AO)

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)

As Magnolia and There Will Be Blood ably demonstrate, PT Anderson knows how to open a film. And in terms of audacious electricity, Anderson’s finest inaugural stanza can be found in his 1997 breakthrough Boogie Nights. A 3-minute single shot, it begins with the film’s title on a flashing movie marquee before the camera tilts left and then right (like an amusement park rollercoaster), then tracks a driving car to the entrance of a hopping nightclub, and then enters the club alongside Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore and Luis Guzman, eventually moving around and onto the dance floor, to the surrounding tables and finally behind rollerskating Heather Graham. A bit of egotistical showmanship? Without question. Yet more than merely a superficial calling-card gesture, Anderson’s brash opening aesthetic stunt efficiently introduces many of the story’s key characters, as well as conveying the euphoric glitz and glamour of a California scene dominated by wannabes flirting with their celebrity dreams. (NS)

MANHATTAN (1979)

Most of the time, when a director proclaims that his setting is “practically another character”, it’s a bunch of hooey, an oft-repeated cliché spouted off by hacks who want to be congratulated for shooting on location. But for Woody Allen, it was different. For years, Allen’s films came to be synonymous with a way of life -- cultured, neurotic, more than a little wary, resolutely cosmopolitan -- that could only come from being steeped in the cultural mecca of the Western hemisphere. Film after Allen film paid homage to the city he loved, but none more so than the one named after his borough of choice. Yet true to form, even at the beginning of Manhattan, Allen grapples with his conflicting feelings on the city -- is it the world’s greatest city, or a symbol of everything that’s wrong with society? The fact that Allen can switch instantaneously from one viewpoint to the other suggests that in his mind, they’re merely two sides of the same coin. As Allen himself says in the film, the New York he knows exists in black and white and is accompanied by Gershwin, much like the film itself, which would imply that the town he loves belongs more to the past than to the present. Looking back at the film thirty years later, these directorial choices give the film a quality that’s both nostalgic and timeless, implying that even now, even with the World Trade Center and the House That Ruth Built gone (and Allen working mostly overseas), these are still part of the city, if only in our collective memory. (PC)

8 1/2 (1963) & WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)

The dream sequence is an opportunity for a film to break out of the logic of its narrative and bare a character's fears for the audience -- unlike real dreams, which run a gamut of emotion, dream sequences in films tend to focus on anxiety. By breaking away from the internal logic of the film, the dream sequence can take a breath and develop an established character, and for this reason, very few films start with dream sequences. Fellini's 8 1/2 does, however, and Bergman's Wild Strawberries launches into one not long after the start. In the dream in 8 1/2, Fellini-substitute Anselmi dreams of being trapped in a traffic jam, all of the other drivers and passengers staring blindly at him (other than the old man pawing a starlet). He fights his way out of his car and flies away. Then he's flying over a beach, with a doppelganger holding a rope attached to his leg. An accountant rides up on a horse, cape flying behind him like the Knight at the beginning of Bergman's The Seventh Seal. His doppelganger insists that he come down, and he plummets into the ocean, waking up in terror. Pretty clear what that's about, right? Anselmi is first trapped in traffic, the great metaphor for go-nowhere-fast modern times, and when he escapes, he is dragged back down by his own ambitions and promises to moneymen. Anselmi starts the movie in a dream, spends much of it wallowing in memory, and finally ends the movie with dream-logic. His beginning dream is about his fear of being trapped, reeled in by his own accountants and his own professional persona, unable to fly and falling. In Wild Strawberries, Professor Borg dreams of faceless clocks and faceless people, time falling away while his own death stumbles before him. Although it's dream-logic, the meaning is written clearly and most of the action of the movie, in which Borg tries to fix the mess he's made of his life, follows. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Great Beginnings: Screengrab's Favorite Opening Scenes Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the Obama presidency, which means I’m cautiously starting to believe that Bush is maybe really, actually gone and won’t suddenly pop up again for one last attack like Freddy Krueger at the end of Nightmare On Elm Street.

Cheney and Rove and the rest of the neo-conservative gang are still with us, of course, and the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world certainly didn’t need the full 100 days to determine they were right all along about Obama’s anarchist-fascist-abstract-impressionist agenda.

Most of the rest of America (and the world), meanwhile, thinks the new administration is actually off to a pretty good start -- and while great beginnings don’t always lead to happy endings, they at least give us some...what’s that word again? Oh yeah, HOPE...

...much like the opening sequences in the following movies, which hooked us right from the get-go and made us completely forget about sneaking out of the theater to see what was playing on the next screen over and/or changing channels.

Of course, your pals here at the Screengrab fully appreciate the irony of running this list in light of recent events here in our little corner of the cyber-verse...but, considering that every ending brings with it the possibility of a new beginning, what better time, really, to salute OUR FAVORITE OPENING SCENES OF ALL TIME!!!!!

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958)

The mother of all tracking shots opens with a bomb being set -- telling us right away that it will explode in three minutes -- and hidden in the trunk of a ludicrously long and garish vehicle. Then begins the long dance through the streets of Tijuana. The camera pulling ahead of the car, but the car always catching up or passing, always staying in frame. The sound (on the reconstructed version, at least) is disorienting, as passing through the streets of a busy nightlife district can be, with different noises blaring for attention. As soon as they appear, the camera is focused on Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston, paced by the car with the bomb, crossing the numerous obstacles in their path. As they arrive at the border crossing, the film reveals that they are just married, and he is a Mexican policeman (yes, yes, ha ha) known for taking down a drug ring. He laughs it off and, just as the car passes them, moves in to kiss his wife. BOOM! In the next couple of minutes, we'll meet Hank Quinlan, as much a power-mad racist as The Searchers' Ethan Edwards, but far more monstrous and strangely vulnerable. But the rest of the movie belongs to him. Here, at the beginning, the movie belongs to that single unbroken shot that defied the millions of things that could go wrong and introduced most of the major themes, all without breaking a sweat. Astonishing, even now. (HC)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

Three killers are waiting for a train. One of them, his craggy, weather-beaten face a dead ringer for the desert landscape that surrounds them, is distracted by an annoying fly. Water drips onto the hat of another, until enough has accumulated for him to tip the hat to his lips and take a cool drink. The buzzing of the fly and the dripping of the water and the creaky whine of a windmill are the only sounds we hear, until that whine fades into the whistle of the approaching train. Their intended victim has arrived. He plays a harmonica and looks like Charles Bronson. Extreme close-ups give way to the widest of widescreen vistas, the whole of the wild west in one deep focus shot of impending violence. This is how you build suspense, Sergio Leone style. (SVD)

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Even exposition can be thrilling when the Coen Brothers are operating at the peak of their powers. Accompanied by the spirited whistling and banjo-plucking of Carter Burwell, Nicolas Cage’s sleepy drawl narrates the tale of an unusual courtship. Recidivist H.I. McDunnough is such a regular at the mug shot station, he becomes smitten with the photographer, a spunky officer named Ed. (Short for Edwina.) Hilarious bite-size vignettes of small-time crime (“I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House”), prison life (“When there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand”), parole hearings (“These doors gonna swing wide”) and pitching woo (“I’m walkin’ in here on my knees, Ed”) sketch the unfolding romance, which gives way to trailer park life, the daily grind and the yearning for a critter as the banjo plunges joyfully into Beethoven’s Ninth. Endlessly quotable, relentlessly rewatchable, kinetic as a Bugs Bunny cartoon, this opening sets the stage for one of the zippiest romps in the Coen catalogue. (SVD)

THE PLAYER (1992)

Robert Altman’s cutting Hollywood critique self-consciously strives for Wellesian grandeur in its impressive 8-minute single take opening shot, which makes its homage upfront by having a character overtly reference the Touch of Evil sequence (as well as Bernardo Bertolucci’s sustained tracking shot in The Sheltering Sky) upon which it’s based. Altman uses this bravura scene to firmly establish his major studio milieu and the various, cretinous industry clowns who populate it, mocking the agents, pitch-men and execs who manufacture the country’s celluloid dreams. The shot’s inquisitive, labyrinthine movements subtly suggest the probing survey to come. And Altman’s opening proves a hilariously caustic encapsulation of his story’s modus operandi – to scathingly ridicule the Hollywood machine via the type of dazzling, daring filmmaking that, as evidenced by comments made by the scene’s various dunderheaded players, has little place in a studio system where market-focused creativity-by-committee is the rule. (NS)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager