Marathon Man starts out as a political thriller, but turns into a high intensity heist film starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, and William Devane. Hoffman plays grad student Babe Levy who, after being haunted by the suicide of his fathers suicide years before, falls into a former Nazi doctors (Olivier) quest to claim the diamonds that were used as payment for release from a concentration camp years before.Even though the story isn't as tight as it could have been and Scheider is way underused, Marathon Man is a Hitchcockian thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat as we follow Hoffman's pacifist character through situations he's not prepared to deal with.One of the ironic things about the film is that it has a pseudo Hitchcock plot and it stars the lead in his first American film (Olivier in Rebecca) and one of the leads in his final film (Devanne in Family Plot).
Before Meet the Fockers De Niro and Hoffman came together in the political comedy Wag the Dog. De Niro plays a spin doctor for an incumbent President seeking re-election who is facing a sex scandal. He enlists the help of a Hollywood producer (Hoffman) and his clan to produce a war to deflect the public eye from the indiscretion. Yes, the film is a comedy but what's really scary is that you can really see how this could be happening right now. Do you really trust the government enough to believe that these two guys don't have real life counterparts on the payroll.You'll laugh at the absurdity, but it will still seem possible. This is a more mature Dave or The American President. There isn't really a happy ending in sight. The goal is for everyone to keep their job. A good movie for election year viewing.
Return of the Living Dead is a parody of the George Romero Living Dead films that instead of a depressing, feeling of dread throughout the picture, we get an almost comic book style film with wit.In Return the film Night of the Living Dead is actually a fictionalized account of what happened at a V.A. hospital during a chemical spill. Two medical warehouse employees (James Karen and Thom Matthews) stumble on some barrels containing zombies that have been accidentally delivered to the warehouse. When the seal breaks on the canister we are treated to the terror that can only come with the living dead rising from the grave. What's great about this film is that where a Romero zombie film is deadly serious, Return doesn't take itself seriously at all. The characters are way over the top, especially the teenagers who are so stereotyped within themselves you'll wonder why they're hanging out together in the first place. Clu Gulager plays the stereotypical boss trying to cover his ass when the tanks are compromised and Don Calfa sealed his cult status by playing the mortician Ernie who carries around a German pistol and smokes a pipe. These are the kind of over the top characters that I'm talking about. Return of the Living Dead is a parody of a genre that long needed one. I'm not calling Return a masterpiece. It's far from it. But what it represents is a film that not only scares you, but makes you laugh and this formula has been reused time and again (Freddy Krueger's comedic switch, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) but Return is the perfect example of that. Over the top actors and over the top acting with great effects and directorial style make this film a cut above in a genre that has been glutted with pure garbage.
This is where the stoner film began.Up in Smoke has a basic plot. Two guys are trying to score weed for 90 minutes. What they inadvertently score on the way is an upholstery warehouse van made of marijuana. Let the fun begin.There's not much you can say about Up in Smoke. It's not Olivier style acting but it is a hilarious movie full of those wonderful quotables that only goog movies have. A must for cult viewing.I knew that the legendary Strother Martin was in this, I forgot that Tom Skerritt was, and didn't even know that Harry Dean Stanton had his role as the deputy trying to sell Chong pills was cut from the film.
Simon Pegg plays the title character in Shaun of the Dead, a hilarious take on the zombie genre that George A. Romero created. This spoof isn't related to the current crop of spoof films that flood the market during the summer- this one is actually funny. Shaun is almost out of his 20's, works in a dead end job, and just broke up with his girlfriend. After sulking overnight he encounters with his flat mate a Night of the Living Dead-esque scenario and makes plans to save his mom and ex-girlfriend from the undead beats and hole up in his favorite pub. Of course his plans gets totally messed up along the way.Fans of Romero will appreciate the film, but even if you haven't seen a Dead movie you'll find the film hilarious while offering a few scares for the sadists in the audiences. Plus the cultural references aren't limited to Romero. Be on the look out for them.Shaun of the Dead is a great horror flick without being an S&M roller coaster for 90 minutes. It makes you laugh and it means to.
Pierce Brosnan takes over the mantle of 007 in a very strong Bond adventure. After the control module for a Russian space weapon called Goldeneye is stolen it's up to Bond to find out who has control of system leading him to a Russian computer programmer and a long, lost double o agent.Brosnan had been groomed for this role for about a decade before he even got a check from Eon. Everyone knew he would eventually play Bond and he didn't disppoint in this film. Goldeneye does harken back to an earlier kind of 007 movie. The rugged darkness is still there, but it hides in the shadows as some of the age old Bondisms from Moore and Connery make a return. Goldeneye features a great villain in Sean Bean, who could have been a 007 candidate and a story that is more over the top than the Dalton years. World domination is back. Goldeneye is a return to form for the Bond franchise with a good story and some fast paced action.
You can't start a review of 2010 without referring to Kubrick's masterpiece 2001. What Kubrick created with that film was create an opera with the stars, polishing the story by Arthur Clarke and giving us a film that's a feast for the senses and in typically Kubrick fashion leaves us with more questions than answers when the closing credits roll.What 2010 does is try to explain what happened to Discovery in the nine years since HAL seemed to go mad and Dave Bowman disappeared. The world is on the brink of destruction between the United States and the Soviet Union (you have to remember this is 1984), but there is one moment of cooperation between the two countries when there is interest to investigate the monolith and the Discovery by the Soviets. The Soviets can get there faster, but the U.S. knows the systems better. The standard Rocky IV "us vs. them" mentality begins as the crew featuring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Helen Mirren revive HAL and try to discover what happened near Jupiter nine years before.The first thing you need to do when watching this film is to distance yourself from Kubrick's vision in 2001. You will be disappointed and feel negative from the opening credits. Look at this film as a sequel to Clarke's story (which Clarke wrote, along with several sequels). The film explains things while leaving others still under a veil of mystery. I've always been an opponent to explaining every aspect of a film with its sequel, but with 2010 it seems less like a crutch than with other films that have done this (I'm looking at you Halloween II). 2010 is a solid sci-fi tale with some breathtaking effects (even though the dreaded black boxes appear in some shots). It's only crime is that it was a follow up to 2001 and, to be perfectly honest, there is no follow up to that film.
Marathon Man starts out as a political thriller, but turns into a high intensity heist film starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, Roy Scheider, and William Devane. Hoffman plays grad student Babe Levy who, after being haunted by the suicide of his fathers suicide years before, falls into a former Nazi doctors (Olivier) quest to claim the diamonds that were used as payment for release from a concentration camp years before.
