The FilmNerds Blog

Movie: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Spoiler Level: Moderate

The Setup: After a series of misadventures that led them across the Southwestern countryside near the end of the Civil War, the wily and devious Tuco and his mysterious partner/rival (known only as “Blondie”) finally stumble upon the thing they’ve been scratching, clawing and killing to find: a graveyard. They are here to find a chest full of gold buried in the grave marked “Arch Stanton” that promises to make them richer than they could ever imagine. While Blondie never breaks his cool upon finally discovering the graveyard, Tuco throws every other concern in the world (including a flying cannonball) and runs with reckless abandon through the graveyard searching for the treasure.

Why It’s Great: I’ve given a “moderate” spoiler warning above because the scene does signify a major plot development in the movie but this scene, as with nearly the entire film surrounding it, is mostly about style and emotion rather than plot. Tuco, who represents “The Ugly” part of human nature that includes wild, unbridled greed, simply cannot contain himself once he finds himself in the presence of the treasure he seeks. He throws aside his dignity, running around like a starving animal that’s just caught a whiff of something tasty.

While Eli Wallach’s grimy, energetic performance fits the moment perfectly, the scene’s greatness comes from someone who never appears on screen: composer Ennio Morricone. The legendary composer who revolutionized film music sets this scene to a divinely perfect piece of scoring called “The Ecstasy of Gold” that swells and builds until it nearly explodes with tension. For my money, this is the best piece of film scoring in history. It takes a scene about a dirty thief scrounging for gold and makes it the perfect encapsulation of the emotional frenzy that greed can create in the human soul. When it comes to raising goosebumps, this scene does the trick every time for me, no matter how many times I watch it. It speaks volumes without a single word of spoken dialogue.

The Movie: Glengarry Glen Ross

Spoiler Level: Moderate to High

(Profanity Level: Earmuffs – Not safe for work or tiny ears)

The Setup: Glengarry Glen Ross is director James Foley’s adaptation of the 1982 David Mamet play, about four real estate salesmen struggling to keep their jobs. After an edict from their disembodied bosses Mitch & Murray announces that all but two high performers will be fired, things get tense. That edict, by the way, is delivered by Blake (Alec Baldwin), in what many might consider to be the film’s essential scene. My pick is a bit different, but equally withering.

Early in the film, rock star “closer” Ricky Roma (Al Pacino) attempts to sell insecure James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce) on a shady real estate investment, finally snagging him after a lengthy monologue. During a series of interrogations surrounding the burglary of a stack of coveted “leads”, Lingk returns to the office to back out of the deal. With help from a ruse by Shelley Lavene (Jack Lemmon), a sad sack with no major prospects, Roma is able to falsely calm Lingk into thinking that the sale is moving; a safe bet, but not final. When cocky John Williamson (Kevin Spacey), the office manager, bluffs that the investment is already made, and that the check is cashed, it screws up the whole deal. Williamson’s attempt at being “one of the boys” blows up in his face, and consequently, he must face the wrath of Ricky Roma.

The provided clip comes in a little late, but it’s still amazing, and ends right on point, before the film shifts into its final revelation.

Why It’s Great: David Mamet is a master of simple emotional trajectories, always making his characters’ motivations clear and concise. James Foley seems to understand that intuitively in his direction of the adapted script, arguably Mamet’s most famous story. While Foley hasn’t ever really recaptured the dynamite he bottled in this film (his films since have included the Mark Wahlberg pictures Fear and The Corruptor), here he shows the restraint and craftsmanship of a true veteran.

The entire film is set in closed, sterile, man-made rooms, taking a cue from the stage play. What Foley conveys with cinematography, production design, and shot design is a sense of early 90′s office life that exudes the frustration and banality of bureaucratic control. Just look at the apparently elusive natural light that attempts to seep in through frosted windows and closed blinds, and the jagged walls of the room that seem to only exist to reveal more corners stuffed with filing cabinets and paperwork. This isn’t where these guys live… it’s a temple built by richer men with a warehouse mentality.

Regarding Foley’s coverage: as Roma’s plan starts to unravel, we get a good idea of what’s happening not only in the foreground, but the background, following Levene’s retreat. We stick with Roma’s POV, as he circles Williamson like a hungry lion. The shots become increasingly singular as Roma moves into his interrogation session.

Pacino could be accused of playing to his own cliche here, but his performance as Roma is perfectly apt. Meanwhile, Spacey just dies quietly in front of the camera, as the false bravado his character has established throughout the film deflates in at least one direct perspective shot.

An element that’s used brilliantly throughout the whole film is a nearby city train track, as the film presumably takes place in Mamet’s Chicago. A noisy passing train comes at a strategic time in this scene in particular, as the outside world – and a nearby investigating officer – interrupt Roma’s tirade to bring things back into perspective.

There’s a no-frills quality to this scene that relies heavily on performance and production design, and that’s why it’s great. Glengarry Glen Ross is a fantastic movie, one of my all-time favorites, one that treats informational revelations the way an action-thriller might treat explosions. It went a long way in influencing me as a writer and director, and – with all humility – while the traces might not be extremely evident, there is a lot of Glengarry Glen Ross in The Nocturnal Third.

“You wanna learn the first rule? You’d know it if you’d ever spent a day in your life. You never open your mouth, ’til you know what the shot is… you f*cking child.”

(In a bizarre side-story, I worked for James Foley’s brother, Jerry Foley, for a day in 2006. He was directing an Andy Kindler bit shooting at Huntsville’s US Space & Rocket Center for The David Letterman show, and I was on the camera crew. At the time, I didn’t think it’d be polite to rave about how awesome his brother’s 14-year old movie movie is.)

The Movie: Empire of the Sun

Spoiler Level: Moderate

The Setup: Many would agree that, along with Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg is one of the most famous filmmakers of all time. He’s made movies like “Jaws,” “E.T.” and “Schindler’s List” that quickly cemented their places in the pop culture lexicon. However, upon closer examination of Spielberg’s storied career, there exist a few entries on his filmography that, for some, might have slipped under the radar.

The most unfortunate example of this might be his 1987 drama “Empire of the Sun,” which only grossed $22 million at the domestic box office. The only Spielberg film preventing it from being the director’s all-time worst box-office performer is “The Sugarland Express,” which grossed only $7.5 million in 1974. You might call “Empire of the Sun” (along with “1941”) Spielberg’s only true box office flop. Despite it’s disappointing commercial performance, many Spielberg fans – myself included – consider “Empire” to be one of his finest works.

A very young Christian Bale stars as Jamie Graham, or “Jim,” an English boy separated from his parents in Shanghai, China at the outbreak of World War II. Jim, along with many more prisoners from the Allied nations, is sent to a Japanese internment camp where, in order to survive, he is forced to endure a sped-up transition from childhood to adulthood. One day, the prisoners finally regain their freedom when a group of Allied fighter planes – specifically P-51 Mustangs – swoop in and liberate the camp.

Why It’s Great: Ever since I first saw this film when I was 15, this scene has resonated with me so much that I consider it to be my favorite movie-scene of all time. Lots of people would categorize Spielberg as a cinematic master, and this sequence supports that notion. He masterfully combines acting, production design, sound, cinematography and music to produce a result that makes you forget that any of those artificial elements are even involved in the first place.

There’s a moment (at 1:30 in the provided clip) where Spielberg cuts to a slo-mo shot of a P-51 flying towards Jim. He applies a haunting music cue by John Williams that, for a moment, removes you from the dangerous chaos of the action surrounding Jim and places you inside his mind, allowing you to appreciate the beauty of what’s happening. Thanks to Spielberg’s handling of this scene, the viewer truly empathizes with how Jim feels. Jim’s subsequent burst of emotion always impacts me powerfully, even after repeated viewings. The scene reaches its peak when,at 2:27 in this clip, Jim yells “horsepower!” followed by a almost-primal scream.

Jim is then accosted by an adult who runs up to rescue him from danger, simultaneously removing him from this living-dream and bringing him back to reality. When Jim does indeed “come down” from this high, he says “I can’t remember what my parents look like,” thus emphasizing the immense toll this whole experience has had on him.

Every time I watch this scene, it’s nothing short of absolutely breathtaking. It makes an even stronger impact when viewed in the context of the entire movie, which is highly recommended – not just to Spielberg fans, but to fans of film in general.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

Looking down the list of the top 50 box office grossers in 1983, it’s clear that the early ’80s were the absolute heyday of the teen sex comedy genre. We haven’t seen many on our countdown so far (Valley Girl is the only film we’ve reviewed so far that fits the genre) and that’s because they were almost universally successful at the box office, no matter if the cast was star-studded or loaded with unknown newcomers. Making an R-rated film that is specifically aimed at people who technically aren’t allowed to see them (teenagers) has always been a profitable strategy at the movies and remains so today. While sneaking in was probably an option some kids explored, I imagine that simply walking up and buying a ticket to an R-rated movie, whether you’re 17 or not, probably wasn’t that difficult back in 1983.

Regardless of the particulars, it’s clear that making movies about teenagers having sex was a good formula in ’83. As with any genre, filmmakers approached this idea in different ways. Some went for the outright easy sell – gross-out humor, plenty of T&A and some plot involving the teenagers getting one over on the adults. We’ve got a few films that probably fit that description ahead of us on our countdown.

But some filmmakers saw the potential for legitimately interesting storytelling in the teen sex comedy genre and made a genuine effort to tell a story with some relate-able qualities, typically a coming of age story. It’s clear that with Class, director Lewis John Carlino (who helmed 1979 Oscar-nominee The Great Santini) was going for a combination of different tones and ideas, some comedic and some dramatic. Unfortunately, none of those elements ever mesh together and rather than compliment each other, they get in each other’s way.

Before I go any further I should issue a spoiler-free explanation of why the next paragraph will contain a spoiler alert. The screenplay for Class is setup in such a way that a certain revelation about the relationships between the characters appears to have been intended to be a shocking surprise. However, as Roger Ebert pointed out in his rather scathing review at the time, everything about the way the film was marketed both in 1983 and today via the description on the sleeve of my Netflix disc, is meant to state this revelation as the premise of the movie. Ebert criticized this tactic saying that knowing that information going into the film immediately colors everything about the plot in irreversible ways and thus seems to pull a lot of the tension out from under the film from the very beginning.

(SPOILER ALERT!) That revelation/premise is that one of our main characters falls in love with a woman who turns out to be the other main character’s mother. Everything from the trailer (posted below) to the poster (which you’ll also see on the left hand side of this post) give this plot point away, yet in the context of the film it is played as a huge surprise twist. Very little has been written about the film and its production so it’s unclear whether revealing this detail beforehand was approved by the director or not but Ebert’s absolutely right; it does color your thinking on every scene in the film, including the scene where our two leads meet.

Andrew McCarthy plays the sensitive, bookish Jonathan who arrives as a transfer student to a posh all-boys prep school. Class was the screen debut for McCarthy who would go on to become one of the biggest names of the ’80s (St. Elmo’s Fire, Pretty in Pink, Mannequin, Weekend at Bernie’s) and his star quality is evident even in his first performance. McCarthy manages to pull off sympathetically vulnerable while avoiding pathetic, whiny or helpless. It’s a rare feat for sensitive-type leading men.

Also making their screen debuts, albeit in much smaller roles, are John Cusack, Alan Ruck (a.k.a. Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), and Virginia Madsen. As with McCarthy, Carlino was lucky enough to find these incredibly likable young guys just as they were hitting their stride. Cusack shows every bit of the sarcastic confidence he displays throughout his career. There’s almost no differentiation in the quality of the performance he gives in Class from the performance he gives in Hot Tub Time Machine. It appears that early on, Cusack found something that worked for him and he’s stuck with it with remarkable consistency.

Another actor we get a glimpse of very early in his career is our second lead, Rob Lowe. Unlike the actors mentioned above, Lowe appears to still be looking for his niche as an actor and while he’s clearly got a great feel for his role, he’s just not quite the right fit for his role, the brash, overconfident, somewhat rebellious Skip. Lowe’s performance is still strong and we feel legitimately bad for him knowing what’s coming down the pike for the majority of the film.

The film works best when all these young actors are on screen together, enjoying themselves and playing off each other with remarkable ease. These light, comedic scenes work really well and are sadly too few and far between.

Instead, the movie drifts towards two more dramatic storylines, neither of which ever get resolved in a satisfactory way. On the one hand is our romantic storyline, involving McCarthy and Jacqueline Bissett, intended to be a younger-man-with-older-woman relationship but becomes unbelievable as Bisset’s character becomes so irrational that it’s hard to even buy McCarthy’s continued attraction to her.

The second storyline follows a state investigator looking into an SAT cheating scandal that jeopardizes Jonathan’s chances at making it to Harvard. While the resolution doesn’t really make any sense, at least this subplot gives us two things: a chance to spend some more time with the prep school guys and a really fun and creepily calm performance from Stuart Margolin as the SAT investigator.

The end of the movie is terribly preposterous and poorly handled but thanks to some strong performances and good dialogue between the two male leads, we actually do find ourselves caring about how Jonathan and Skip resolve their conflict. It’s a shame that such an energetic and effective young cast was largely squandered in a movie that puts them in the background far too often but the fun glimpse at all these young stars (including a brief cameo from Joan Cusack as well) is enough of a novelty for me as a 2010 viewer to make it an interesting watch.

Next Up: Yet another teen sex comedy, My Tutor featuring Crispin Glover.

Movie: The Circus (1928)

Spoiler Level: Low

The Setup: Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 comedy masterpiece The Circus often gets overshadowed by the auteur/star’s more famous works like Modern Times, City Lights and The Kid. True Chaplin-fans know, however, that The Circus possesses just as much heart and hilarity as any of Chaplin’s best films.

It follows the famous Little Tramp as he unwittingly stumbles onto a travelling circus. He’s soon hired as part of the troupe when the audience mistakenly thinks that his attempt to elude the police is actually part of the act. When the ringmaster realizes that the Tramp isn’t a natural comedian, he demotes him to a janitorial position. The Tramp soon falls for the Ringmaster’s abused daughter and must compete with a dashing beau for her affections.

This leads the Tramp to embark on a very risky attempt to impress her. He pays a stagehand five dollars to attach a nearly-undetectable harness to his trousers that will allow him to walk a tightrope without actually having to apply the skills required by the physically demanding activity.

At first, things go swimmingly, as the Tramp safely dances along the rope – the harness being the only thing separating him from certain death. Eventually, however, the harness malfunctions, leaving the Tramp stranded atop the tightrope, where he is soon attacked by a gang of mischievous monkeys who do their best to send him plummeting to the ground.

Why It’s Great: Whether you’re a Chaplin-fan or not, I recommend that – if you ever wanted to see the screen-legend at his absolute best – you should start here. The scene begins as a showcase for Chaplin’s gifts as a physical comedian. He shows great acrobatic prowess with the stunts he performs while wearing the harness.

What catapults the scene into the realm of greatness, however, is the instant in which he is attacked by the monkeys. Chaplin settles on a medium close-up and lets it rest there while the monkeys climb all over his face, bite him and put their tails in his mouth. I think that – upon being bitten on the nose and enjoying a mouthful of monkey-tail – a lot of actors would have demanded that the director stop rolling immediately until the animal wrangler could get some control over the monkeys. Chaplin, however, lets the chaos ensue, resulting in a scene that elicited – from me – more intense belly-laughter than I can remember experiencing anywhere else.

This scene supports the argument that film, like music, can exist as a universal language. There is no doubt that, upon seeing this scene, everybody – whatever their age, gender or ethnicity – will likely derive from it a sense of unadulterated joy. I can’t wait to watch this scene with my kids one day and witness them discovering the true power of laughter from one of its most reliable sources: the great Charlie Chaplin.

Note to Film Nerds readers: This  blog entry is particularly “inside baseball”. I simultaneously apologize to and thank the reader for allowing some indulgence. I promise I’ve got a more Film Nerd-ish entry in the works.

It seems like I start every blog entry with “boy, I haven’t written one of these in a while.”

In March, the company I worked for over the past 3 years as head video editor closed. I have a wife and a dog that demand food, but since one of those is healthily employed, and because I’m a member of the Dave Ramsey cult, we were never in danger of starving. However, the American spirit and my German breeding wouldn’t allow me to bum off of my wife and our savings account, and I had to be honest with myself and admit that the fear spread by the media about our nation’s economic situation had officially reached our little City of Tomorrow. So, I was looking a grim situation in the face, and I knew this was going to be an interesting couple of months.

We were going to have to boil things down to essentials for the second time in our young marriage, and I realized there were two ships to keep afloat – my relationship with my wife, and The Nocturnal Third.

When faced with adversity, it seems like two easy coping mechanisms are to punish those closest to you and to drop long-term goals for the sake of short-term solutions. To ensure quality time together, we organized a Summer Date Night Screening Series, the results of which I hope to post soon, and I joined in on her triathlon training (periodically). Add to that, I never entertained any job options that would jeopardize any forward movement on the film (working an oil rig in Alaska, taking out a loan and going to grad school, etc.)

Consequently, we enjoyed a lean summer full of fun and productivity, but the entire time I felt I was performing a high-wire act, as God seemingly provided the right amount of work right when we needed it to meet our budget. It was pretty amazing, and now I feel like I’ve been taught that ever-elusive virtue that this fiscally conservative dorkus has been missing for so long – flexibility. The killer schedule of A Genesis Found and the directorial experience of The Nocturnal Third went a long way in keeping me guessing, but now I feel like we could survive anything.

In the midst of “struggling” (let it not be said that I’m not aware of the real hardships many families are facing here and abroad), I had a few tools, beyond a great family, ever-evolving faith, and the aforementioned dog. I’ve finally picked back up the amazing Neal Gabler biography Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination. My mom got it for me for Christmas 3 years ago, and after reading a few pages in 2007, I quickly realized this was going to be less of a breezy read and more of a side project. At 880 pages, it functions as a comprehensive history of early Hollywood, the art of animation, and global pop culture. My renewed journey through the book is complemented by my mission to fill gaps and watch every animated Disney feature I’ve missed over the years. What strikes me about Disney and the principles he was able to establish is the idea of enacting almost subliminal social change through positivity and shared experiential joy. Intentional or not, a Mickey Mouse cartoon is constructed in such a way that it immediately triggers endorphin release. I’ve even been listening to tracks from the various Disney musicals in an almost therapeutic way. It’s hard to have a bad day if you’re jamming “Whistle While You Work”, or “Prince Ali”, or “When You Wish Upon A Star”.

I also spent much of the summer reading up on the Space Race, and revisiting films like The Right Stuff and Apollo 13. Again, NASA in the late 50′s exudes optimism and stubborn bravado.

This interest in progressive-thinking genius (or at least the image thereof) is definitely informing a burgeoning concept for my second feature-length screenplay, but it’s also reflected in The Nocturnal Third. In addition to learning resourcefulness in my personal life, the themes of utilitarianism in your surroundings that surface in N3rd are also becoming more and more clear and clean to me as I mold each scene in sound editing and in examining the film from a “marketing” perspective. Producer Lee and I were recently talking about how refreshing it is to have a story still speak to you in its various stages of development, despite being conceived of three years ago.

I’m currently enjoying the bizarre process of recording foley, basically acting out the aural consequences of decisions our actors made a year ago. It’s a slow-moving process, as it’s location-based, which is harder to schedule, and dependent on location operations and weather. In the meantime, I’m working on writing copy for marketing materials, prepping the glitzy web site, and chatting with the other artists working on the film.

Let’s not forget that there’s plenty to be done for the upcoming Southeastern Campus Tour of A Genesis Found… Follow director Lee Fanning’s blog (http://sonofarkie.blogspot.com/) to get the latest info on that, as well as some great insight from him.

So, that’s how I spent my summer. I’m now working part time at a job with one of the best companies on the planet, as well as working with some great freelance clients doing interesting work. It really does feel like school is back in session, as balance seems to have been restored. Above all, we have a release date set for The Nocturnal Third… April 2011. Myself and the other filmmakers working on the project are excited about the ever-approaching day when the world can see our movie.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to getting in Melody Time from Netflix… the last of the post-war anthology features in the Disney line-up. Watch out for my blogging activity to hopefully increase now that I can afford to make a bit more time for such “distractions”, including an entry into the “Great Scenes” Film Nerds series, a look at our Summer Date Night movies, and a comprehensive look at the ENTIRE Animated Disney canon (expect that 4th quarter 2014).

Also, if you’re not already, come follow @WonderMillFilms on Twitter. It’s a little less formal and more abstract than much of our dialogue on Facebook. www.twitter.com/wondermillfilms

Thanks for reading, guys, and for letting me indulge.

God Bless,

Ben Stark

Writer/Director, The Nocturnal Third

Movie: Boogie Nights

Spoiler Level: High (but who cares?)

The Setup: In Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic portrait of the adult film industry underbelly, his main character finally hits rock bottom. Just as he comes to this realization where the only next step would be redemption, it might be too late. Porn superstar fallen from grace Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) and his buddies Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) and Todd Parker hope to score some quick cash by selling a fake bag of cocaine (actually baking soda) to crackhead druglord Rahad Jackson (the brilliantly whacked-out Alfred Molina). Thinking they’d be in and out in a hurry, Rahad, clad in a silk robe and underwear, wants them to stick around and party with his muscle-bound, pistol-packing bodyguard and mute Asian buddy inexplicably setting off firecrackers as his Awesome Mix Tape provides the musical backdrop for a maniacal evening.

Why It’s Great: Movies rarely affect me to a point where I want to leave the room during a given scene or scenario. In Rahad’s living room, I felt just as trapped as our three would-be drug dealer/con artists Dirk, Reed and Todd. Their anxiety was my own with each POP! of a firecracker, several of which you confuse with gunshots, especially when Rahan, high on crack-cocaine, pulls out a revolver to play a little Russian roulette. Every single person has been to that guy’s house they never wanted to go to in the first place where things get as weird/dangerous as you think they will. All you’re thinking is, “Let’s get the f*ck out of here now.”

Once Dirk has that feeling, as Anderson and cinematographer Robert Elswit hold the camera still on Wahlberg’s stone-faced inflection (a high mark for him as an actor, and for the film as the central character finally has the epiphany that awakes him from the murky depths to which he’s hopelessly traveled), he nearly escapes just in time. But his buddy Todd (Jane, in his best performance, not coming close to equaling it since) wants to stick around and press Rahad for more cash in a bedroom safe. Todd pulls a pistol before Rahad rushes into another room and his bodyguard opens fire on the misplaced trio. Then all hell breaks loose.

In fact, going back to the beginning of the scene, once Rahad’s front door opens, you get a sense that you’re entering hell along with these three troubled characters. It’s the worst place you could possibly end up. And regardless of the moral implications of what these people do professionally, their intentions were once relatively pure until cocaine entered the mix and corrupted their bodies and minds.

Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” and Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” will all taken on new meanings, as Anderson gets as much of the unexpected potential these seemingly innocent pop songs (not unlike his predecessor Martin Scorsese).

I don’t like to throw around too much hyperbole, but I often consider this to be my favorite movie scene of all time. For me, while what preceded this certainly soars on its own and exhibited Anderson as a filmmaker to watch (one with a clear idea of his own film grammar), the deal gone bad at Rahad’s catapulted him to an elite level of talent and storytelling. I will never, ever tire of this movie, thanks primarily to this scene.

This week we’re beginning a new feature on the FilmNerds blog that we’re calling The Great Scenes. I was inspired in part by Roger Ebert’s ongoing feature The Great Movies in which Ebert re-examines a undisputed classic each week. In putting together my reviews for the Back to the Movies feature, I’ve been astounded to find that nearly every individual scene I’ve ever searched for on Youtube is there for the viewing. I thought it might be neat to take advantage of this modern marvel of our time and take you through what I believe to be the greatest individual scenes in movie history.

For the most part, the scenes I look at in this feature will be scenes that I feel work particularly well even outside the context of the films they come from. They are scenes that any viewer will be able to appreciate even if they don’t know anything else about the characters in the scene or where the scene falls in the overall plot line of the film. They will also, in most cases, be scenes that do not include spoilers or any details that might ruin the movie for you if you haven’t already seen it. When I feel that the scene does contain major plot details, I will always make a note of it in the post.

Movie: A Night at the Opera

Spoiler Level: None

The Setup: The rascally trio of Harpo, Chico and Groucho have stowed away on an ocean liner headed for America with a troupe of opera performers. While the socialites and producers schmooze below deck, the Marx Brothers party with the common folk on deck, reveling in the film’s biggest musical number “Cosi Cosa”. After the big production number comes to an end, the plot briefly comes to a stand-still and Chico and Harpo take over in a few minutes of pure, unapologetic light entertainment.

Why It’s Great: While Groucho typically gets the glory these days, Chico and Harpo were arguably just as popular in their day in part because of the incredible range of their talent. Both are excellent comedic actors in different ways but as you’ll see in this scene, both are also superb musicians. It’s the kind of thing that got people into theaters in the early days of cinema but the kind of superfluous, standalone moment that simply never make it past the cutting room these days. You don’t need to know who these characters are or where they are. All you need to do is sit back and enjoy two of the finest comedians and entertainers that we’ve ever had the great fortune of preserving on film. Click play and enjoy!

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We now reach perhaps the most critically-acclaimed film on our countdown so far, at least at the time of its release. The Right Stuff, Philip Kaufman’s adaptation of the Tom Wolfe book of the same name, follows the story of the Mercury Seven, the United States’ first group of astronauts. It also features a parallel storyline following Chuck Yeager, known to most of us today as the man who broke the sound barrier but shown in this film as a man who finds himself left behind in favor of more camera-ready heroes.

At the time of the film’s release, it was immediately hailed by critics as quickly as it was rejected by audiences. That’s not to say those who saw the film didn’t like it; it’s just that there weren’t many people who saw the film. A relatively expensive film with a budget of $27 million, The Right Stuff struggled to find its audience at the box office and finished with just $21.1 million in revenue (though it has made up the difference in home video revenue since then). There are a number of theories as to why the film didn’t perform well, the most far-fetched being that John Glenn‘s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination turned off the largely conservative movie-going public from the film. I think a much more likely explanation is that audiences were turned off by the idea of a film that might be seen as somewhat critical of the American space program.

The early ’80s were a time of great optimism and idealism in America, a shift in attitude from the paranoia and cynicism of the ’70s. NASA was seen then as an almost untouchable source of American pride with a near-perfect track record. Sure, there were isolated incidents here and there (including the Apollo 1 tragedy that killed Gus Grissom and two other astronauts) but the Challenger disaster was still three years away. People didn’t want to hear anything negative about the Americans who accomplished the greatest achievement in the history of mankind.

But that’s not an entirely fair description of the film. Yes, Kaufman does depict the first astronauts as macho, testosterone-driven cowboys who were basically little more than daredevils during the Mercury missions. But Kaufman’s point in the end seems to be that whether you’re driving the thing or not, strapping yourself inside a tin can on top of a bomb and firing it into space still takes courage, and a kind of courage that very few of us could ever have.

The superb cast that makes up those seven astronauts, their wives and the other people surrounding their lives in the space program is what truly drives the film forward. The dialogue they’re given is obvious, utilitarian and relatively trite but in the hands of most of these actors, it comes off as sincere never more so than when spoken by Ed Harris in the role of John Glenn. Harris plays Glenn as the public relations dream that NASA needed, an ‘awe shucks’ guy from the Midwest with a gleaming smile and a way with words. This scene depicting Glenn’s harrowing re-entry from orbit portrays a man who is clearly scared but knows that it’s his duty to remain optimistic in the face of danger.

But (at least in the film) Glenn’s public persona wasn’t just public relations. He is also a man who cares deeply for his wife Annie, who can barely speak even with her husband due to a speech impediment. Annie is played with a heartbreaking and sincere innocence by Mary Jo Deschanel, wife of the film’s cinematographer Caleb and mother of current-day indie princess Zooey, in one of the film’s most understated and under-appreciated performances.

None of the other wives are nearly as interesting as Annie Glenn (despite the fact that many of them receive significantly more screen time) but many of the other astronauts are equally fun and compelling to watch. Veteran tough-guy Scott Glenn (seen most recently as Donald Rumsfeld in W.) plays Alan Shepard as a blue-talking grizzled Navy pilot, the antithesis to Ed Harris’ John Glenn. When Shepard’s accomplishment as the first American in space is eclipsed by Glenn’s achievement as the first man to orbit the Earth, he shakes it off rather easily reassuring himself that he’ll get his due one day. I think most films would have played up his potential jealousy or emotional fragility but the fact is that someone with Shepard’s mental and emotional toughness probably wouldn’t fall victim to such petty feelings but instead use it as motivation to go onto greater things. In fact, that’s exactly what happened in real life. Shepard would later command the Apollo 14 mission and become the fifth person to walk on the moon

A young Dennis Quaid provides a little levity in the film as Gordon Cooper, a sort of little brother character among the astronauts. Quaid plays up Cooper’s light-hearted nature as the man who patiently waits his turn to become the last of the Mercury Seven to reach space. Quaid was just coming off a turn in Jaws 3-D (which, believe it or not, we’ll see much, much later on our countdown) but was just on the cusp of establishing himself as the household name he would later become. His extremely likable performance in The Right Stuff is largely recognized to be the role that brought him to prominence.

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with the performance that playright Sam Shepard gives as Chuck Yeager (for which he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination), the entire arc feels very unnecessary and superfluous to me. Certainly the intent of the filmmakers here is to show that the Mercury Seven represented a new kind of American hero and a shift in the way Americans both perceived and defined heroism. It’s an interesting point, but it’s a point that’s made very early in the film and only reiterated time and again with largely uneventful scenes of Yeager looking longingly at a television or waxing poetically to his wife. The fact that the final scenes of the film serve more to resolve Yeager’s storyline than that of the Mercury Seven makes the Yeager arc even more cumbersome to the film.

It’s my belief that when a film goes past the three-hour mark, there’s almost definitely something in it that’s unnecessary and unessential to telling the story. In the case of The Right Stuff, which runs a staggering 193 minutes, there are multiple unnecessary elements, some of which I could definitely do without (Yeager’s arc, numerous scenes of the wives chatting) and others that while unnecessary are legitimately entertaining (Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer as NASA underlings).

Long though it may be, The Right Stuff at its best is superb filmmaking, loaded with great moments and performances, a heroic and emotional score from Bill Conti and a fantastic blend of archive footage and special effects shots that make the rocket launches seem as thrilling as the day they took place. Does the film mock NASA or even America for our obsessive reverence for these men? Perhaps but at the same time it notes that while these men may not have been exactly what the American people believed them to be, they still actually accomplished their acts of heroism and the fact that they were flawed and human like the rest of us makes their actions perhaps even more astounding.

Next Up: The R-Rated teen comedy Class starring Rob Lowe and John Cusack.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We arrive at the final and probably best-known Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Cujo. While Cujo was only slightly more successful financially than The Dead Zone and Christine, I think it’s fair to say that it’s the most recognizable title of the three amongst the general population in 2010. It’s almost become a ubiquitous reference point in American popular culture. Mention Cujo and everyone, whether they’ve seen the film or not, knows that you’re talking about an evil dog.

Cujo did for dogs what Jaws did for sharks. It put an image in the minds of moviegoers that stuck with them, an idea which probably wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I confess that after watching Cujo, my next encounter with my uncle’s usually lovable golden retriever was just a tiny bit more nerve-racking than usual.

Having a lasting effect on the popular culture in a way that almost influences our basic fear responses over 25 years later has to be a sign of a successful horror film. But Cujo certainly wasn’t viewed that way at the time of its release. Roger Ebert was mercilessly critical of the film (he even mentions it derogatorily in his reviews for the other two 1983 King adaptations) and even the kindest major critics of the time called it mediocre and bland. Why then does the film hold such a strong place in the memories of viewers today and stand as an almost universally recognized horror classic?

I think the discrepancy comes from the film’s very unconventional approach to the horror genre. Like a conventional horror film of its time, say a typical slasher film like Halloween, the first half of the film is spent meticulously setting up the perfect scenario, leaving no holes that could distract the audience from simply experiencing the terrifying situation. King, who was perhaps more involved in this film’s production than any other adaptation of his work to date at the time, knew that in order for the audience to remain focused on what was happening later in the film, he would have to anticipate all the proposed solutions the audience would have to the heroine’s problem. Every possibility for salvation, right down to the mail man, is accounted for and neatly (though not unreasonably) taken care of.

But King’s hour-long setup does more than just tie up potential loose ends. It also creates a carefully crafted emotional subplot that gives our heroine’s plight later in the film an additional level of tension.

I won’t re-create the entire setup for you here but here’s a quick summary: Our main character is Donna, a suburban housewife who has revealed to her loving and devoted husband that she has been cheating on him with a local scumbag. The husband, despite his overwhelming love for their son, has decided that he needs a few days to work things out and heads out of town for an indefinite vacation.

Unfortunately for Donna, her car needs fixing so she decides to take it up to a local handyman just outside of town to see if he can fix it. The handyman and his family are unfortunately out of town and Donna’s car won’t start back up once she realizes this.

Now comes the film’s namesake: Cujo, the dog belonging to the handyman, has been bitten by a bat and has been infected with rabies. Cujo is a Saint Bernard, a formidable and intimidating dog, and is already covered in slime and blood from the first person who realized (too late) that he was rabid by the time Donna sees him.

I won’t reveals what happens beyond that but as you can see, our scenario finds Donna trapped in her broken down car with her small child with no hope of anyone turning up to help her for the next several days. Dee Wallace (The Howling, E.T.) is phenomenal as Donna, a fact that even the film’s harshest critics in 1983 were able to admit. The shift in her attitude as time goes by in the car is captivating to watch. We see everything in her face and reactions, from the sheer visceral terror she feels for her life and the life of her child to the guilt she feels about how her actions have in part created the situation she’s in.

Almost equally impressive is the heartbreaking performance by Danny Pintauro as Tad, Donna’s young son. Pintauro, who would later star in the long-running sitcom “Who’s The Boss?”, made his screen debut in Cujo and gives what is in my opinion one of the best performances ever by a child in a horror film. The film establishes early on that Tad has a fear of monsters in his closet that can only be soothed by the voice of his father saying one of those special little routine poems that all parents make up for their children. Donna, of course, doesn’t know the poem and is unable to soothe Tad’s terror when they are beset by what Tad believes to be a real monster. Pintauro’s screams and cries seem truly genuine and however director Lewis Teague was able to coax this out of him, it was incredibly effective. As a parent, watching a terrified child scream and not knowing how to calm him down has to be one of the most harrowing situations I can think of.

(SPOILER ALERT) According to a number of interviews and stories about the making of Cujo, King’s close involvement with the film stems in part from a desire to correct some mistakes he felt he made when writing the novel. King wrote Cujo at the peak of his alcoholism and while the plot and characters are among the most honest and believable of his career, the plot (particularly the ending) plays out in a way that is perhaps a bit too brutal for movie audiences. King has said that he regrets ending the novel the way he did and wanted to correct that error when writing the screenplay for Cujo. (END SPOILER)

Regardless of the film’s resolution, it’s the setup that makes Cujo effective and thus memorable as a horror film and to me this marks some of the best true horror writing of King’s career. Add to that an excellent pair of performances and some stunning (if occasionally overwrought) cinematography by Jan de Bont (who would eventually earn a reputation as one of the best action cinematographers of the 1980s) and you’ve got a horror film that holds up very well to scrutiny over a quarter of a century later.

Next Up: The quintessential space race classic The Right Stuff starring Ed Harris.