September 07, 2007

Movie Review - Z Channel: A Magnificent Obession

Review by Joshua Massre

Most movies are released into theaters and play for about a month and then disappear for a few months before appearing on home video. What happened to these movies before the advent of VHS and DVD? Prior to 1976 (the year the VCR was publicly available) many movies would just fade out into obscurity. The blockbusters and major hits would be shown on HBO and Showtime. All of the other movies that were either too obscure or not mainstream enough would appear on a Los Angeles television station called Z Channel. This program was known throughout the filmmaking world and had a major effect on many of today's top filmmakers, including Quentin Tarintino and Alexander Payne.

The documentary Z Channel: a Magnificent Obsession tells the story of Z Channel's rule of the foothills of Los Angeles. The film focuses on Jerry Harvey, the eccentric head of programming. Harvey, whose whole frame of reference is based in his love of film, helped the television station grow to the most popular pay television station in Los Angeles, with even more subscribers than HBO and Showtime combined. Z Channel was known for its wide range of programming, which was the main reason that it remained ahead of the other two premium channels. On any given night, one could see an obscure Robert Altman or Richard Brooks film and The Empire Strikes Back.

The film follows a simple linear narrative and moves from the channel’s inception in the late 1970s to it’s downfall in the early 1990s. It highlights some of Z Channel's more prominent feature films. While there are no real surprises along the way, it is an interesting ride, which includes clips from almost 100 of the films that aired on the Z Channel and interviews with the major players of Hollywood and the network itself.

It popularized the "Director's Cut" version of films. The first director's cut of a film that was featured on the channel was Heaven's Gate. When the film was originally released it ran 2 hours and 28 minutes. It had been taken from its director, Michael Cimino, and reedited. His original version was a lengthy 5 hours and 25 minutes. When the movie was released it was hailed by critics as a total and utter failure. In the documentary, F.X. Feeney says, "When people look back at the hell's furor that greeted Heaven’s Gate upon its release they'll think that it's a science fiction story." The New York Times called it an "unqualified disaster." That was on the good end of the reviews. Jerry Harvey, head of programming for Z Channel, was friends with the director and saw the movie in its original uncut version and convinced the film's producers and Cimino to reconstruct his original vision. This 3 hour 38 minute version premiered on Z Channel a few months later and received just as much praise as the original had been panned.

A few years later Z Channel featured the full version of Once Upon a Time in America, which had been taken from director Sergei Leone and cut from its original 3 hours and 49 minutes to a meager 2 hours and 22 minutes. It had been cut by "the assistant editor of Police Academy 2... people who should never had been allowed in an editing room" according to star James Woods. When the shortened version of the film was released it was considered to be a mess and was universally panned by critics. Jerry Harvey again aired the original director’s cut of the film. It was shown back-to-back with the theatrical version of the film. The longer, director's cut was so well received that a critic who named the movie the worst movie of 1984 named it the best movie of the decade.

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession gets its real power from the breadth of film clips that it features, from Heaven's Gate to Le Magnifique. This film is worth viewing just for these clips, as it is a primer on what to watch. But it is also a tragic film, chronicling the life of a station. On April 9, 1988, Jerry Harvey killed his wife and then committed suicide. F.X. Feeny says that Z Channel died with Jerry. He may be right. Less than a year after his death, the channel went under and disappeared from the airwaves. Alexander Payne put it best when he said "You just never know when you're living in a golden age." Z Channel is a documentary that is both amazing in it's breadth and moving in its examination of one man's obsession.

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August 17, 2007

Movie Review - The Fountain

Review by Joshua Massre

The Fountain tells the story of a couple’s love for one another and spans over 1,000 years. Thomas, an animal research scientist, finds out his wife had cancer and sets out to find a cure for death. The three time periods interweave with one another seamlessly and blend together for an unexpected and unforgettable climax that will leave many people scratching their heads wondering what they just saw. This may seem like a simplistic description, but it is impossible to describe the intricacies of The Fountain, mostly because it is so full of intertwined plots that are so nonsensical unless they are meshed together the way that Darren Aronofsky manages.

Aronofsky had always been a little weird (his last movie, Requiem for a Dream, had a refrigerator talking to a Home Shopping Network addict) but this movie tops Requiem and Pi by a long way. His two previous films were small affairs grounded in reality and small in scale. They both had budgets of under $5,000,000, which is nothing in Hollywood.

The Fountain, however, had an almost $35,000,000 budget. It is amazing to witness how much can be done with this little of a budget (considering that the Transformers movie reportedly had a $200,000,000 budget and the special effects in this film look much better than Transformers does).

So how does the actual movie stack up? It has a killer cast including Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz as well as a visionary director and writer in Darren Aronofsky. The film is surprisingly short, only 98 minutes. Usually this is a bad sign, a signal that the studio is trying to cut all of the fat out of a movie and leave only the plot points and action scenes in the movie (case-in-point: the new Fantastic Four film, The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). In this case though, it is simply because the movie moves at a breakneck pace and does not let up until the last five minutes of the movie.

By the time the credits roll, many people will be sitting scratching their heads, wondering what they just saw, and dismiss the movie as nonsensical garbage. Others will be staring at the screen and wondering what they just saw, but knowing that it was brilliant. The first reaction is the one that seems to be the consensus, which is truly a shame, because the movie is very subtle and requires the viewer’s full attention the entire time, and not just during the major plot points.

Overall, this movie will polarize the audience. If you step back and think about it, you may be one of the few people who thought that this movie was a piece of art.

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August 10, 2007

Dune

Review by Joshua Massre

Usually a movie will have a logical plotline that is simple to follow, right? Every once in a while a movie will have a plot point that makes no sense when it occurs, but it is usually tied up by the end of the movie. It is even more peculiar when a movie makes no sense at all. Sometimes a movie will be heavily cut by a studio, be it because of budget, time or content status. It happens all the time. Most of the movies in theaters are at least slightly different than they were when first conceived.

There are plenty of examples of this over the years. One of the most prominent examples of this is with the movie Once Upon a Time in America. The film stars James Woods, in what he considers his best performance ever, and Robert DeNiro as Jewish gangsters. The film chronicles their rise from young hoods in the 1920s to powerful crime lords in the 1960s. Sergio Leone’s original cut of the movie ran over five hours in length but was cut down to three hours and forty-five minutes for the European release. When the movie was going to be released in America in 1984, the studio feared that audiences would be turned off by the film’s unusually long running time and non-linear narrative structure. So they brought in a new editor (whom had just finished working on Police Academy, a movie that would go on to win exactly zero Oscars that year) to reorganize the movie into a linear structure and shorten the movie’s running time to a little over two hours. The resulting movie was panned by critics and a financial disaster. One critic called it the worst movie of 1984, but later saw the European version (which was released on VHS and Laserdisc in the late 1980s and later on DVD in 2003) and named it one of the best films of the decade. On a personal note, Once Upon a Time in America is my favorite movie of all time. The score by Ennio Morricone is one of his best.

This brings us to another movie that the studio decided was not commercially viable and decided to change it around. This time, however, the changes would be made even before the cameras rolled. That movie was David Lynch’s Dune.

Dune tells the story of the House of Atreides, who controls the planet Arrackis, which is the only planet in the universe on which the spice Caladan exists. While Frank Herbert’s novel follows a logical, albeit complex, storyline, the movie version strays from the book quite significantly. Dune was a plagued production from the start. By the time David Lynch had been hired to direct the movie (after being denied the chance to direct Return of the Jedi for George Lucas because he was not a member of the Director’s Guild) it had been through numerous writers and directors and had been in development since 1971. Lynch started fresh and rewrote the script from scratch. Unfortunately, he was under contract to deliver a two hour movie. The plot of the novel is so complex and detailed that Lynch was forced to make significant changes to the novel’s plotline. Dune was to be a huge undertaking, involving many complicated special effects (remember that this was before the advent of CGI) and a long shooting schedule. But before that could begin, Lynch had to take Herbert’s novel and condense it into a two hour movie. To do so, he had to remove many of the novel’s subplots and details. As with most movies based on novels, especially ones with large cult followings like Dune, fans were eagerly waiting for the movie’s arrival. On December 14, 1984, Dune was released into theaters worldwide. The movie was hailed as a major event. The special effects were the first of its kind. No movie before Dune had ever contained so many special effects shots. But the reviews were mediocre. Many called the movie a betrayal of Frank Herbert’s vision. David Lynch was just as unpleased with the movie. His original cut had been about an hour longer than the theatrical version, but the studio had taken it out of his hands and cut it, just like Once Upon a Time in America had been taken from Sergio Leone. The movie was, ultimately, viewed as a mess. The movie’s plot made no sense to those who had not read the books and ended unexpectedly. Most of the plot and characters had to be changed so that Lynch’s two hour version would make at least a minimal amount of sense.

In the nearly twenty-five years since Dune was released, the harsh views of fans have softened. A whole new generation of fans has been introduced to the movie through numerous DVD releases and an HD DVD release. The first time I saw it, after finishing the movie, I sat for a few minutes and watched the credits roll by (something I rarely do) and thought about what I just saw. I wasn’t quite sure, but I knew it was something different. After a few days, it sunk in and I realized that Dune is a sci-fi classic. Could this be because I have always liked David Lynch’s unique directorial style? Possibly. I loved Elephant Man and Eraserhead. I think I loved the movie so much because while the movie makes no sense as a whole, the subplots and intricacies of the movie coalesce into something great. I highly recommend watching the movie. Not everybody will like it, in fact some people will hate it, but take it with a grain of salt. Trust in David Lynch’s skills and you might be one of the many cult followers of Dune.

Over the years, many attempts to improve the movie have been made. It should be noted that the only official version which David Lynch will allow his name to be on is the theatrical cut. Sometime in early 1989, when Dune was being prepared for its television premiere, it needed more content to fill its three hour time slot, so footage was taken from Lynch’s original cut of the movie and inserted into the movie. David Lynch asked that his name be taken off of this version because it uses several shots (mostly of background action) more than once. His name was removed from the credits and the infamous “Alan Smithee” and Judas Booth (depending on where the film was viewed) was credited as the director. The additional scenes do pad out the movie somewhat and help it to achieve a coherent plotline. If you are a stickler for plot and want everything to make sense by the end of the movie, I suggest that you watch the Sci-Fi Channel original mini-series. Produced in 2003, it is by no means great television, but its longer length allows it to follow the book more closely. I prefer the theatrical version simply because the “Restored Cut” is not as smooth as the original version of the film. Dune is highly recommended for the curious and those who are looking for a challenging but rewarding viewing experience.

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August 02, 2007

Children of Men, Babel, and Pan's Labyrinth

Review by Joshua Massre

At first glance, these three movies seem to not have much in common, but in fact they are all intertwined with one another. All three of the movies, which were released in 2006, were made by three Mexican filmmakers who have penetrated into the Hollywood Studio System and released major critically, if not financially successful films.

Children of Men

The first of the three films, Children of Men, was directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuaron and based on a novel by noted science fiction author, P.D. James. Cuaron, one of the most gifted directors in Hollywood today, crafts a story of the future in which women are infertile and the youngest person in the world is just 18 years old. The story revolves around a pregnant young woman and her attempts to keep safe from the Government and those who wish to do her harm. The world in which she lives is devoid of all hope. The film is set in 2027, yet it feels as if it could be today. This is one of the stronger points. Cuaron immerses us into this world, subtly blending futuristic elements into objects that feel as if they belong in today’s world (Hint: look carefully at the car dash in the chase scene). Yet the thing that immerses viewers the most into Cuaron’s world is not the visual aspect of the film, but the film’s star, Clive Owen. Owen delivers a powerhouse performance and it is a shame that he was not nominated for an Oscar. Julianne Moore and the supporting cast (including a fabulous Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Cane) also deliver strong performances. As the film progresses, the shots (the time between cuts) get longer and longer. The final climactic battle of the film (which lasts for almost twelve minutes) is done in one continuous shot and took three takes to get exactly right. The result is one of those rare moments in which everything comes together to make a powerful and compelling piece of cinema.

Pan's Labyrinth

The next film from Mexico may not be as high profile as the other two, but it was just as critically praised and was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Guillermo del Toro’s El Laberinto del Fauno (released as Pan’s Labyrinth in American theaters) is a dark and twisted fairy tale. It is set against the background of the fascist rule of Spain in 1944. Del Toro’s superb screenplay and direction are so imaginative and colorful that the screen is lit up even during scenes of nighttime. The main character, a young girl named Ofelia meets the mysterious Pan (the titular character), who tells her she is the princess of a lost kingdom and that she must go on three quests to be able to return home. While the roots of this film are in the fantasy genre and much of it takes place inside the mind, it is a powerful and realistic film. The acting in the movie is fantastic, as it is in all of Guillermo del Toro’s films. Doug Jones, a veteran of two of del Toro’s movies (Hellboy and The Devil’s Backbone) plays the dual roles of Pan and the Pale Man. The Pale Man is arguably one of the creepiest and most disturbing characters in modern cinema. The stand out of this movie, however, is the special effects. Many of the effects are practical ones, meaning that they were not done on the computer but on set. This makes a big difference, as the actors are interacting with the objects instead of just staring at the spot where they should be. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the most imaginative and fantastic films to come out of Hollywood in years, but it seems so grounded that you have no trouble believing that the characters are real. The ultimate effect of the film is so strong that a few days after viewing the film, you will still be thinking about it.

Babel

The final film to come from a Mexican director this year is Babel. This was the most high profile of the three films, yet it came from the least known of the three directors, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Babel is a story of how one event can change the course of so many people’s lives. After his wife is shot on a tour bus, Richard (Brad Pitt) must get her help as soon as possible or she will die. The only one problem, however, is that they are in the middle of the Moroccan desert. As they try to make their way to help, the story of three other families is told in intertwining segments. The most outstanding part of the film is its cinematography. The Director of Photography, Rodrigo Prieto, has worked with directors such as Spike Lee and Oliver Stone. Each of the different settings (the Moroccan desert, Mexico, Japan and California) was lit and shot in a different way. Each location also uses a different film stock, giving them all a different feeling and sense of emotion. Most of the actors and actresses in the film are unknown, but they all deliver knockout performances. Adriana Barraza was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Inarritu makes the film come together for a powerful and satisfying conclusion that will leave you wanting more.

It is interesting to note that Alfonso Cuaron is an executive producer on Pan’s Labyrinth and that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is serving as executive producer on Cuaron’s next project. Each of these films is linked by the shared heritage of their directors. It is odd that in a single year three such high profile films from foreign directors made their way to American screens. What is truly amazing is the power that each film packs into its short running time. Babel and Children of Men are now available on HD DVD and DVD. Pan’s Labyrinth is available on only on DVD and no plans have been announced to release it on HD DVD or Blu-Ray.

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May 31, 2007

SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT

Review by Joshua Massre

Twenty-five years after having his cinematic voice silenced, Richard Donner reconstructs his version of Superman II. The result is a darker, more dramatic film with a host of never-before seen content restored from the original film archives. Don’t expect a typical “director’s cut” with extra footage and outtakes. This is a wholly different film.

In 1978, when Superman: the Movie was produced, a second movie was shot concurrently. The director of the two movies was Richard Donner, who was fresh off of the smash hit, The Omen. The first movie went massively over budget, and to make the deadline, Superman II was put on hold so that Donner could focus on the first movie and finish it by the release date.

Tension between Donner and the producers, Ilya and Alexander Salkind, had been growing during the whole production and by the release of Superman: the Movie, the producers and Donner were not speaking at all.

Superman: the Movie was released to much fanfare and was a major box office hit. Naturally, the producers wanted to finish the second movie as quickly as possible to cash in on the success of the original. This time, however, Richard Donner was not at the helm. The Salkinds, disagreeing with Donner’s vision of the movie, decided to find another director.

Richard Lester, of The Three Musketeers, was chosen after an exhaustive search, and the second movie was completed under his direction. Gene Hackman, who played Lex Luthor in the original movie refused to shoot any more scenes because he was angry with the treatment of Donner. The script was rewritten to fit around the scenes that Donner and Hackman had already shot.

The film was finished and released just two years after Superman: the Movie and received considerably mixed reviews. While critics praised its comic elements and inventive story line, many critics panned the movie for the same reason.

The finished Superman II contained only 48% of Donner’s footage. The rest was shot, or reshot, by Lester. Since just over half of the film’s footage was shot by Lester, Richard Donner’s name was not listed in the credits. The film was stripped of all relation to the original director.

In late 2005, more than 25 years since Donner had been fired from Superman II, Warner Brothers approached him to reconstruct his version of the film. For the first time in history, Donner was allowed to have his vision light up the screen.

After nearly a year of work, and tens of hours of lost footage that was recovered during the process, the film was completed and screened to critics. It was hailed as an exhibition of how differently two directors handle the same material. Many saw it as a less comedic and more dramatic film, and praised this.

Donner’s new take sharply differs from Lester’s original right from the opening scene. In this version, it is Marlon Brando (who was cut from the original for monetary reasons) who sends Zod and his men to the "Phantom Zone." Gene Hackman’s presence also has been greatly increased. A number of Hackman’s scenes are extended and several new ones are added.

The storyline changes too, revealing greater tension between Lois and Clark. Consider the two cuts' treatment of how Lois discovers Clark is Superman. In the original version, Clark falls into a fire and comes out unscathed. Donner’s version however, has Lois firing a gun at Clark, and when he is not hurt, he admits that he is Superman. The most noticeable difference is in the ending. Instead of Clark kissing Lois and turning back time, Superman flies around the earth backwards and reverses time.

Superman II: the Richard Donner Cut was released on DVD, HD DVD and Blu-Ray disc in November 2006. While the DVD release is typical, with deleted scenes, and a making of documentary; the HD DVD and Blu-Ray release showcases the new technology perfectly. The two HD versions of the film offer interactive features, such as picture-in-picture commentary where you can actually see the director and editor while they speak about the film. They also offer pop-up menus during movie play that allow you to pick a special feature, watch it and then resume the movie where you left off. This is a film that will be loved by not just Superman fans, but everyone.

Superman II: the Richard Donner Cut available on DVD, HD DVD and Blu-Ray November 2006.

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