Wences

The spectacular, ten-minute car chase sequence filmed with hand-held cameras over streets and hills of San Francisco between police lieutenant Bullitt's (Steve McQueen) '68 Ford Mustang GT and the hit men's '68 Dodge Charger, in this classic car-chase/cop film by director Peter Yates.

The poignant love story between two married bi-sexual Wyoming cowboys Ennis Del Mar (Best Actor-nominated Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Best Supporting Actor-nominated Jake Gyllenhaal), including their first meeting as an innocently exuberant skinny-dip into a pond; their initial confusion about their attraction over a campfire, Jack's awkward declaration of his true love for Ennis ("Tell you what. The truth is... sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it"); Ennis' chilling story about the cruel murder of a suspected gay cowboy; their eventually strained marriages -- Ennis to fragile, waifish Alma (Best Supporting Actress-nominated Michelle Williams) and Jack to tomboyish rodeo queen Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway); Jack's final frustrated ultimatum speech to Jack ("Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together! F--kin' real good life! Had us a place of our own. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain!......I wish I knew how to quit you!"); much later in the film during their reunion four years later, the two hug each other tightly -- Ennis, nervously looking around, then forcefully grabs Jack and pushes him into a secluded spot by stairs where they kiss hungrily - while Ennis' wife Alma accidentally spies on their embracing passion from above and turns away; and the emotional, tear-jerking finale decades later in which Ennis finds two old shirts (belonging to him and the now-deceased Jack) hanging together in the back of a closet, and Ennis' tearful: "Jack, I swear...", in Best Director-winning Ang Lee's landmark love story and favored 2005 Best Picture nominee.

The opening scene of the British soldiers' arrogant march into the sweltering jungle prison camp to the whistling tune of the "Colonel Bogey March," the battle to a standoff of the two stubborn wills of indomitable British Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and Japanese Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the late night supper scene in which camp commandant Saito invites Nicholson into his quarters and offers a compromise, the triumphant scene of Nicholson's release and his unsteady walk on his own rubbery legs - winning his freedom from the hot torture oven as a mass rush of troops congratulates him; and the suspenseful finale including Nicholson's discovery of dynamite wires, the unbearable tension as the Japanese troop train is heard approaching the bridge and the commandos prepare to blow up the bridge, Nicholson's attempt to save his bridge and the utterance of his moral dilemma ("What have I done?"), his falling on the dynamite plunger and the climactic destruction of the railroad bridge and train, in David Lean's Best Picture-winning war epic.

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the memorable, epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama, was the first of director David Lean's major multi-million dollar, wide-screen super-spectaculars (his later epics included Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965)).

The screenplay was based upon French author Pierre Boulle's 1954 novel of the same name. [Boulle was better known for his screenplay for Planet of the Apes (1963).] Although he received sole screenplay credit, other deliberately uncredited, blacklisted co-scripting authors (exiled Carl Foreman - who scripted High Noon (1952) - and Michael Wilson) had collaborated with him, but were denied elibigility. They were post-humously credited years later, in late 1984, in a special Academy ceremony. [When the film was restored, the names of Wilson and Foreman were added to the credits.]

[The film's story was loosely based on a true World War II incident, and the real-life character of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. One of a number of Allied POW's, the senior British officer Toosey was in charge of his men from late 1942 through May 1943 when they were ordered to build two Kwai River bridges in Burma (first a temporary one made of wood completed in February 1943 and a permanent one of steel/concrete completed a few months later), to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon. In reality, the actual bridge for the Burma Railway - depicted in the film - spanned the Mae Khlung River, not the Kwai River. It took 8 months to build (rather than two months). The two bridges were actually used until they were destroyed two years after their construction by Allied bombings - in late June, 1945. The memoirs of the 'real' Colonel Nicholson were compiled into a 1991 book by Peter Davies entitled The Man Behind the Bridge: Colonel Toosey and the River Kwai. Today, the steel/concrete bridge has been rebuilt and is used by passenger trains - the river was renamed Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') to accommodate tourists searching for the bridge from the film.]

The film was the number one box-office success of the year (the highest grossing film) and it won critical acclaim as well - eight Academy Award nominations and seven Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Alec Guinness), Best Director, Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Pierre Boulle), Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Film Editing. Only Sessue Hayakawa, a former silent screen star and one of the first important Asian stars, who was nominated for his Best Supporting Actor role as the hot-tempered Japanese colonel, lost. The film created an additional stir when it debuted on ABC television on September 25, 1966. The date was dubbed "Black Sunday" due to the loss of business at movie theatres on account of its popular airing.

Shot on location in the steamy, colorful, dense tropical jungles of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the story's theme is the futility and insanity of war, and the irony of British pride, viewed through the psychological, confrontational struggle of imperialistic wills between a proud and rigid British and Japanese Colonel. The two protagonists are symbols of different, opposing cultures, but actually they share much in common - egotistical pride, dedication, a belief in saving "face," and stubborn, inflexible obedience to their class, military codes and rules. With an all-male lead cast, themes of heroism, pride, military tradition, hierarchy, and power are masterfully interwoven into a plot that is ambiguous enough to allow for various viewpoints and perspectives.

The inventive opening scene ("Somewhere in the 20th Century") envisioning the stylized world of an alternative future with ductworks, anti-terrorists falsely accusing the Buttle family due to a dead beetle causing a print-out to read Buttle instead of Tuttle (Robert De Niro), technological-automation gone wacky and oppressive bureaucratic muddling in the Ministry of Information, a fantasizing, middle-management worker in the dull bureaucracy Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) with recurring dreams of soaring with metal mechanical wings toward a mysterious girl-savior Jill Layton (Kim Greist) in the clouds and in an alley - battling baby-faced mutants and a giant Samurai Warrior comprised of bureaucratic paraphernalia; the grotesque plastic surgery of Sam's narcissistic socialite mother Ida (Katherine Helmond); the scene of the terrorist bombing of a high-class restaurant as patrons continue to consume their meals; and Sam's arrest and his strapped confinement in a torture chair within a domed building in the downbeat conclusion (with his fantasizing that he was being rescued by commandos led by Tuttle), in Terry Gilliam's futuristic fantasy.

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Brazil (1985) is from director/co-screenwriter Terry Gilliam - a combination science-fiction, despairing black comedy and fantasy that combines elements of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), George Orwell's novel 1984 (and director Michael Radford's 1984 (1984) that opened at about the same time), Kafka's The Trial, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (and Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971)), and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982).

Throughout this superb film that satirizes modern technological society, one can glimpse numerous government propaganda signs, billboards, posters and writings that preach conformity and Big Brother wariness - all references to Orwell's 1984. [The signs are credited to co-scriptwriter Charles McKeown.] Police are represented as storm troopers (Nazi-like), and the names of two major officials have stereotypical German names: Kurtzmann and Helpmann.

The influential film's enigmatic title refers to the popular Latin song from the late 1930s by Arry Barroso, often used as an escapist theme in the orchestral soundtrack (by Michael Kamen). Other titles were considered for the film: The Ministry of Torture, 1984 1/2 (homage to Fellini's 8 1/2), and How I Learned to Live with the System - So Far. The normal workers in society are docile, powerless, and obedient - to avoid calling attention to themselves and ending up eradicated (literally and figuratively) from the files in the Ministry of Information's flawed computer system.

This popular and compelling film with a large cult following is one of the most visually imaginative, breath-taking, eccentric films ever created, with incredible sets, dazzling inventiveness and production design (by Norman Garwood). The film is so visually dense that it takes several viewings to fully comprehend (i.e., the billboard slogans, the user-unfriendly technical gadgets, the unforgettable images, etc.). The most memorable and outrageous components in the absurdist film include the ugly, violent, nightmarish urban environment, and the miles of inept plumbing, piping and ductwork that continually proliferate and threaten to malfunction. The title is based on the Ary Barroso/S.K. Russell song of the same name, with the lyrics: "Brazil / Where hearts were entertaining June / We stood beneath an amber moon / And softly murmured 'someday soon' / We kissed and clung together / Then, tomorrow was another day / The morning found me miles away / With still a million things to say".

The morose and complex plot, set in a decaying, terrorist-threatened Londonesque metropolis (with a Fascist government), revolves around a meek, unambitious, and humble urban worker/computer expert named Sam Lowry (Pryce) in the red tape-plagued, bureaucratic Ministry of Information. As a lone hero, he combats the real technological threat of The Machine Age to his life by his fantasies of defiance as a winged savior during his nightly dreams. To escape reality and his grinding down by oppressive, official forces (both in the real world and in his imaginative dreams, in the form of evil creatures), he dreamily wings his way into the sky - with lofty but doomed flights - away from technology toward a blonde fantasy-dream girl (Greist). The film's chain of events is set in motion by a clerical error, which condemns an innocent man, and causes Sam to meet his dream girl - a suspected terrorist. His apparent salvation from the nightmarish, chaotic, paper-choked, poorly-functioning society comes in the form of a guerrilla heating-engineer and terrorist enemy of the state Harry Tuttle (De Niro), whose renegade behavior is opposed by the state's own Central Services representative (Hoskins) and Sam's friend-turned-sinister MOI official Jack Lint (Palin). But in the end, the lowly and self-deluded worker is persecuted and tortured to death while again imagining escape to an illusory idyllic paradise that is free of societal restrictions.

However, it may be argued that the existence of 'terrorists' in the film (i.e., Jill Layton, Buttle/Tuttle, and Sam are all accused of being terrorists) and various 'terrorist' acts (i.e., the restaurant and shop bombing, the blown up car) are deliberately made ambiguous - it is very probable that the central threat of terrorism is the government's way to silence deviation, provoke fear, cover up its multiple errors, and provide a scapegoat enemy. Viewers must interpret this central theme of the film for themselves - and recognize the fact that ironically -- there may be no terrorists at all.

Former animator Gilliam (an American), famous for his work in the TV comedy Monty Python's Flying Circus and in his two previous films Time Bandits (1981) and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), wrote the screenplay for the bleak, futuristic film with playwright Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) and Charles McKeown. Its two Academy Award nominations were for Best Screenplay and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration - both unrewarded with Oscars. The film, a merging of fantasy and reality, was considered part of a "dreamer" trilogy, of sorts, an Age of Reason trilogy reflecting the different ages of man's reason (and of Gilliam himself) in which reason is the opposite of fantasy and dreaming:

Gilliam's First Trilogy Stages of Life Time Bandits (1981) The dreamer as a child Brazil (1985) The dreamer as a young or middle-aged man The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) The dreamer as an older man, who through his story-telling, attains immortality

The film was already in distribution in Europe by 20th Century Fox, but because of the film's length, complexity, and slightly overdone second half, MCA-Universal Pictures (and studio head Sidney Sheinberg), the domestic distributor, forced Gilliam to cut about twelve minutes from the 144 minute European theatrical version before its general US release in 1986. Severe editing cuts proposed by the studio, that emphasized the film's romantic themes and provided a happy ending (dubbed the Sheinberg "Love Conquers All" 94 minute version), threatened to change the message and tone of the entire film. With limited studio support, Gilliam was finally able to open his own 131 minute cut of Brazil in late 1985 (the American release version), after the LA Film Critics Association awarded the longer version with Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay awards. [This saga of Gilliam's David vs. Goliath struggle with the movie studio was documented in Jack Mathews' book The Battle of Brazil.]

The film fared poorly and disappointingly at the box-office. However, in intervening years, especially after the release of the original, full-length Director's Cut (142 minutes long, combining footage from both the American and European theatrical release versions), it has been critically-acclaimed as a social satire on the dehumanizing, claustrophobic effects of technology and government, and regarded as one of the greatest cult classics ever made.

The scene of divorced, strict and overbearing father Jason 'Furious' Styles (Laurence Fishburne) lecturing his son Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) about how any punk kid can have sex: ("Any fool with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his children"), and the climactic scene in which Darin 'Doughboy' Baker (rap star Ice Cube) takes his half-brother Ricky's (Morris Chestnut) dead body home to their mother (Tyra Ferrell), in Oscar-nominated John Singleton's drama about hoods growing up in South Central LA.

The quintessential image of sexy, dripping wet, well-endowed Greek sponge diver Phaedra (Sophia Loren in her American film debut) in a diving sequence - emerging from the water, in director Jean Negulesco's adventure drama.

The evocative opening of the characters of Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy looking for cloud shapes in the sky, and Charlie's resigned response to Linus' extravagant visions: "Well, I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie... but I changed my mind"; Charlie's repeated failures trying to fly a kite, win a baseball game, and kick a football teed up by Lucy (and Lucy's demonstration of his faults afterwards on a slide projector), and Charlie's final victory at his school spelling bee (after singing the spelling song "I Before E (Except After C)" with Linus and Snoopy playing a jaw harp; Snoopy's two fantasies of an ace pilot fighting the Red Baron with his doghouse transformed into a Sopwith Camel, and as a hard-nosed hockey player; Charlie's embarrassing failure to win the National Spelling Bee by mis-spelling "beagle" (Snoopy's breed), and the powerfully poignant ending sequence that follows, beginning with Linus' exquisite speech to a morose, bedridden, and depressed Charlie Brown after so many failures: "...I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool out of yourself and everything. (pauses before leaving) But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?...The world didn't come to an end"; and the scene of a thoughtful Charlie walking through town watching life go on as before, and his futile attempt to kick the football out of Lucy's hands for the umpteenth time while thinking that she was unaware of his presence, and her warm greeting as he laid on the ground: "Welcome home, Charlie Brown!" - with Rod McKuen's soulful "A Boy Named Charlie Brown": ("He's just a kid next door, perhaps a little more / A boy named Charlie Brown"), in the first film starring the Peanuts characters.

The recreated look of the late-70s LA porn industry, beginning with the virtuoso long, opening tracking shot into and throughout the interior of a Reseda, California Hot Traxx nightclub; the dignified presence of LA porn filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), high-school dropout Rollergirl (Heather Graham) who removes everything but her roller skates for sex; the filming of bus-boy turned porn star Dirk Diggler's (Mark Wahlberg) first sex scene with porn queen Amber Waves (Julianne Moore); and the nerve-wracking, violent cocaine sale/rip-off scene in the house of silver bath-robed, raving drug tycoon Rahad Jackson (Alfred Molina) with his young Asian servant boy Cosmo setting off firecrackers in the background - all accompanied by Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" and Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl" on the soundtrack; and the final shot of Diggler's endowed (prosthetic) 13 inch "special thing" as he recites in his mirror: "You're a star, you're a big shining star," in Paul Thomas Anderson's period film.

Bank-robbing Clyde Barrow's (Warren Beatty) first seduction of Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) by showing off his gun and bouncing a wooden matchstick (shot upright as a phallic symbol) between his teeth, numerous sped-up (a la Keystone Cops slapstick) bank robberies to the sound of banjo music, the scene of refuge in a movie theatre while viewing We're In The Money, the scene in which the gang takes pictures of itself, the realistic death scene in a field of Clyde's mortally-wounded brother Buck (Gene Hackman) with Blanche's (Estelle Parsons) hysterical screaming, Bonnie's poem - "The Story of Bonnie and Clyde"; and the quick montage-succession of events during the roadside ambush sequence and the final violent, slow-motion, two-minute "ballet of blood" as both gangsters' bodies spasm in a dance when pummeled with an unprecedented number of bullets, in Arthur Penn's controversial, ground-breaking film.

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is one of the sixties' most talked-about, volatile, controversial crime/gangster films combining comedy, terror, love, and ferocious violence. It was produced by Warner Bros. - the studio responsible for the gangster films of the 1930s, and it seems appropriate that this innovative, revisionist film redefined and romanticized the crime/gangster genre and the depiction of screen violence forever.

Its producer, 28 year-old Warren Beatty, was also its title-role star Clyde Barrow, and his co-star Bonnie Parker, newcomer Faye Dunaway, became a major screen actress as a result of her breakthrough in this influential film. Likewise, unknown Gene Hackman was recognized as a solid actor and went on to star in many substantial roles (his next major role was in The French Connection (1971)).

The story of Clyde's rise and self-destructive fall as an anti-authoritarian criminal gangster is clearly depicted. Both tragic outlaw figures exemplify 'innocents on the run' who cling to each other and try to function as a family. The film, with many opposing moods and shifts in tone (from serious to comical), is a cross between a gangster film, tragic-romantic traditions, a road film and buddy film, and screwball comedy. It exemplified many of the characteristics of experimental film-making from the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) movement. [Originally, the film was intended to be directed by Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, who opted out and made Fahrenheit 451 (1966) instead.] The film's major poster about the infamous couple romanticized violence and proclaimed: "They're young...they're in love...and they kill people."

[Earlier films that recounted similar adventures of infamous, doomed lovers-on-the-run who are free and accountable to no one include Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937) with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney, Joseph H. Lewis' cult classic Gun Crazy (1949) with John Dall and Peggy Cummins, Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (1949) (remade by Robert Altman with its original title Thieves Like Us (1974) from Edward Anderson's source novel and starring Shelley Duvall and Keith Carradine), and The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) with Dorothy Provine and Jack Hogan. Later outlaw-couple films include B-movie Killers Three (1968) with Diane Varsi and Robert Walker, Jr., Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise (1991), Kalifornia (1993), and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994).]

The landmark film by post-WWII director Arthur Penn (who had previously directed The Miracle Worker (1962), The Train (1964) (uncredited and replaced by John Frankenheimer), and Mickey One (1965) - also with Beatty) was ultimately a popular and commercial success, but it was first widely denounced by film reviewers for glamorizing the two killers and only had mediocre box-office results. In the autumn of 1967, it opened and closed quite quickly - enough time for it to be indignantly criticized for its shocking violence, graphic bullet-ridden finale and for its blending of humorous farce with brutal killings. Then, after a period of reassessment, there were glowing reviews, critical acclaim, a Newsweek cover story, and the film's re-release - and it was nominated for ten Academy Awards.

The film's screenplay by first-timers David Newman and Robert Benton (both editors at Esquire who had never written a screenplay) - a composite image of many early 20th century outlaws, was loosely based on the historical accounts of two 1930s Depression-era, social misfit bandits who terrorized the Midwest.

In the film, the two young and good-looking gangsters become counter-cultural, romantic fugitives and likable folk heroes with semi-mythic celebrity status, recalling Robin Hood and the outlaws of the West. However, the sordid and bleak reality behind the self-made publicity that the latter-day doomed couple generates (through poetry and photos) is also revealed. The Dust-Bowl period is effectively evoked, although the loose adaptation is also an inaccurate and fictionalized retelling of history. When they first met, the real Bonnie (19 years old) and Clyde (21 years old) weren't glamorous characters, and their romantic involvement was questionable. She was already the wife of an imprisoned murderer, and he was a petty thief and vagrant with numerous misdemeanors.

[The 'white trash' couple (described in the local newspaper as "the Southwest's most notorious bandit and his gun moll") first met in Texas in the early 1930s. Their brief, bloody crime spree (involving kidnapping and murders) ended on May 23, 1934 alongside state Highway 154 near Arcadia, Louisiana (the town nearest to the ambush site in north-central Louisiana), when the desperados were ambushed and killed by four Texas lawmen (led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer), accompanied by Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan and his deputy Prentiss Oakley. Their bullet-ridden vehicle was hit with 187 shots. In actuality, the 25 year-old Barrow and 23-year old Parker were armed and ready for the ambush when they were killed. Currently, Louisiana's largest outdoor flea market (held one weekend a month) originated in 1990 in Arcadia as Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days.]

Cartoon-style slapstick comedy [a tribute to Mack Sennett's silent films and Keystone Kops car chases and getaways] and banjo music (e.g. Foggy Mountain Breakdown from Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, helped to introduce country music to mainstream films) and ballads accompany many of the film's scenes. The film's overall impact was heightened by its open examination of the gallant Clyde's sexuality-impotence and the link to his gun-toting violence. [To fulfill heartthrob Warren Beatty's image as a sex-symbol, he is finally able to consummate his love for Bonnie by film's end.]

Penn's masterpiece won two Oscars for Best Supporting Actress (Estelle Parsons in an over-the-top performance) and Best Cinematography (Burnett Guffey) for its great evocation of period detail, with eight other nods for Best Picture and Best Actor (producer/actor Warren Beatty), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), Best Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), Best Supporting Actor (Michael J. Pollard), Best Director (Arthur Penn), Best Story and Screenplay (Newman and Benton), and Best Costume Design (Theadora Van Runkle, who later worked on The Godfather, Part II (1974)). (Although Robert Towne, who later wrote Chinatown (1974), worked on the final form of the screenplay and served as a special consultant, he took no screen credit.)

In the late 1960s, the film's sympathetic, revolutionary characters and its social criticism appealed to anti-authority American youth who were part of the counter-cultural movement protesting the Vietnam War, the corrupt social order, and the U.S. government's role. [The same could be said for Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967), another popular film released in the same year.] The restless couple's robberies of banks, viewed somewhat sympathetically by the rural dispossessed, occurred at a time when the institutions were 'robbing' and ruining indebted, Dust Bowl farmers. The robberies of the glamorous, thrill-seeking young couple - mostly innocent and minor at the beginning of their crime spree, unfortunately escalate into more violent and murderous escapades.

The influence of the film extended to commercial merchandise in the form of hairstyles, authentic period music of the 30s, and gangster retro-clothing (such as double-breasted suits, berets, fedoras, and the maxi-skirt). The film also permanently changed the form and substance of popular films - for better or worse.

Lobby cards for the film described its main elements:

Clyde was the leader. Bonnie wrote poetry.

C.W. was a Myrna Loy fan who had a bluebird tattooed on his chest. Buck told corny jokes and carried a Kodak. Blanche was a preacher's daughter who kept her fingers in her ears during the gunfights. They played checkers and photographed each other incessantly. On Sunday nights they listened to Eddie Cantor on the radio. All in all, they killed 18 people.

They were the strangest damned gang you ever heard of.

Another lobby poster described their first auspicious meeting:

They met in 1930. She was stark naked, yelling at him out the window while he tried to steal her mother's car. In a matter of minutes they robbed a store, fired a few shots, and then stole somebody else's car. At that point, they had not yet been introduced.

The tempting, sizzling femme fatale Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) with her famous line toward simple-minded Florida attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) - "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man", the erotic, steamy sex scene in which Ned breaks down the glass patio door with a chair to make love to an eager-looking Matty inside the house, the sound effects of wind chimes, the fight-to-the-death with Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna) during a botched murder in the hall of his opulent home; Matty's final assuring words to Ned: "Whatever happens, you must believe that I love you" which prove to be empty in the surprise ending when Ned sees Matty's picture in a yearbook (received while serving time in the Florida State Penitentiary), but her name is "Mary Ann Simpson" (with the nickname "The Vamp" and her ambition: "To be rich and live in an exotic land") - with a final view of her reclining on a beach chair in the tropics, in Lawrence Kasdan's film-noirish crime drama modeled after The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

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Body Heat (1981) is a dramatic, modern day film noir, set in the hot atmosphere of Miranda Beach, Florida.

The alluring, crafty, and sultry femme fatale "Matty Walker" (Kathleen Turner, who spoofed her own role in The Man With Two Brains (1983)) seduces corruptible, dim-witted, naive, and incompetent attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt), to convince him to kill her husband Edmund (Richard Crenna). She is interested in Ned because he isn't very intelligent:

You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.

She uses everything as an instrument of seduction, including incredibly sweaty and sexy love-making and lewd suggestive dialogue, to manipulate his emotions so that he will help plot the murder: "Do it!" "I need you so badly." "I want you right now more than I ever have!" "I'd kill myself if I thought this thing would destroy us." He complains: "I'm red; I'm sore." "You shouldn't wear that body!"

After the murder, Ned learns from cop Oscar Grace (J. A. Preston) that Matty is a suspect and that he should stay away from her:

She's trouble, Ned. Real big-time major-league trouble.

The plot twist at the conclusion is a knockout surprise. "Matty" is killed in an explosion (identified by dental records) and Ned is imprisoned for the murder.

He looks in Matty's high school yearbook and finds that she is, in reality, Mary Ann Simpson, and her ambition was: "To be rich and live in an exotic land," a wish that is fulfilled in the last image of "Matty" lying on a beach somewhere in an exotic land.

Hard luck and out-of-work LA actor Jake Scully's (Craig Wasson) voyeuristic watching through a high-powered telescope a beautiful, rich Gloria Revelle (Barbara Shelton) (?) as she performed a self-pleasuring dance; the infamous phone cord strangulation/power drill murder of Gloria by her disguised husband Sam (Gregg Henry); Melanie Griffith's breakthrough role as porn queen Holly Body, and the famous use of British pop band Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" for the porn shoot; Jake's ironic line to her in the porn: "I like to watch" in Brian De Palma's homage to both of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958)

With the tagline "Consider the Possibilities" and its story of encounter groups, permissive sex, countercultural temptation and emotional openness among affluent adults - two couples: Bob and Carol Sanders (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) and their best friends Ted and Alice Henderson (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon), who have their marital vows of fidelity challenged during a weekend swinging trip to Las Vegas; the scene of Dyan Cannon urging: "Orgy, have an orgy" after being asked what she wanted to do; the film was noted for its publicity - a view of the couples in bed together discussing either group sex or seeing Tony Bennett; also the film's end with the Burt Bacharach song "What the World Needs Now (Is Love, Sweet Love)," in Paul Mazursky's satirical film about changing sexual mores in the late 60s.

A bizarre, erotically-charged and nightmarish film of the dark-side of life, with its masterful opening scene of images of small-town, white-picket fence Americana concluding with a zoom-close-up into the grass finding insects fighting to the death; the discovery of a severed ear carelessly discarded in undergrowth; the scene of Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) singing "Blue Velvet" in a nightclub, the victim/voyeur/abuse scenes as clean-cut Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) watches from Dorothy's closet and is then seduced by her at knifepoint; the evil and depraved drug-pusher psycho Frank (Dennis Hopper) with an oxygen inhaler while terrorizing and raping Dorothy as he play-acts being both her Daddy and Baby; Sandy's (Laura Dern) description of her dream of the robins returning to Lumberton, the Heineken/Pabst Blue Ribbon line of dialogue, crazed Ben's (Dean Stockwell) remarkably surreal scene when he lip-syncs - karaoke-style - Roy Orbison's pop tune "In Dreams," the truly terrifying scene of Frank's brutalization of Jeffrey by distorting the metaphor of the lyrics of the song "Love Letters Straight From Your Heart", the appearance of a naked and battered Dorothy on the Beaumont's front lawn and into Sandy's house and her odd declaration ("He put his disease in me"), and many more bizarre images and scenes, in director David Lynch's definitive film.

The tremendous number of noisy and wasteful multi-car crashes, pile-ups, carnage, destroyed buildings and malls, the many cameo appearances (Twiggy, Carrie Fisher, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, Steven Spielberg, Frank Oz - of the Muppets), and Elwood Blues' (Dan Aykroyd) famous line of revelation to Jake Blues (John Belushi) to justify their brotherly activities: "They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God", in director John Landis' rock-filled comedy.

The scene of near-sighted Governor Le Petomane's (Mel Brooks) nuzzling into bosomy secretary Miss Stein's (Robyn Hilton) cleavage while being advised by villainous Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman); also the scene of the new Sheriff Black Bart's (Cleavon Little) warning to the townsfolk as he reaches down for his acceptance speech - to their gaspings: "Excuse me while I whip this out"; and the infamous gas-passing, bean-eating scene around the campfire by flatulent cowboys; the scene in which Mongo (Alex Karras) enters Rock Ridge riding an ox, then later punches out a horse with a bare, single-fisted punch; and Madeline Kahn's exquisite parody of Marlene Dietrich's "Frenchy" and her memorable phrase: "It's twue, it's twue" after unzipping sheriff Black Bart's (Cleavon Little) fly and examining his endowment in the dark; and the scene in which Hedley is recruiting men to assault the town - in which the Waco Kid (Gene Wilder) holds up Bart as bait for two Ku Klux Klan members so that they can steal their white robes - with Bart's mock-dumb (racially-stereotyped) taunt: "Hey! Where are the white women at?" - and more - in Mel Brooks' western spoof.

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The iconoclastic, not-politically-correct Blazing Saddles (1974) is one of Mel Brooks' funniest, most successful and most popular films. It is an unsubtle spoof or parody of all the cliches from the time-honored genre of westerns, similar to the comic attitude of numerous Marx Brothers films. Brooks' third feature film tagline blurb advertised: "Blazing Saddles...or never give a saga an even break!" Notice in the film's poster, the gold coin is inscribed: "HI, I'M MEL. TRUST ME."

The crude, racist and sexist film with toilet humor and foul language includes the main elements of any western - a dance-hall girl, a gunslinger, a sheriff, a town full of pure folk, and more, but it twists them around. So they become a black sheriff, a racist town, a sex-obsessed Governor, and so forth. In addition, there are other anachronistic elements - Hedley Lamarr (a misnaming of actress Hedy Lamarr), hints of the seductive character Frenchy (played by Marlene Dietrich) in Destry Rides Again (1939), a medieval executioner, a Cole Porter song, redneck bigotry of all flavors, and a 'film-within-a-film' concept, exemplified by Lamarr exclaiming: "Drive me off this picture."

Director Mel Brooks makes three cameos in the film: as the sleazy governor, as a Yiddish-speaking, Jewish-Sioux Indian chief, and as a WWI aviator in the badman lineup. Brooks also wrote the songs and lyrics for three songs in the film: "I'm Tired," "The French Mistake," and "The Ballad of Rock Ridge." Gene Wilder's future wife Gilda Radner appears as a townswoman in the church scene, and Count Basie (as Himself) appears as the band-leader in the desert. [The entire outdoor set was from the film Westworld (1973).]

This was Brooks' second major film - his debut film was The Producers (1968). Gig Young was originally cast in the role as The Waco Kid, and Dan Dailey was once considered. The role of the sheriff was originally designed for Richard Pryor (one of the film's screenwriters), but he was considered too controversial at the time. The offensive, deliberately in-bad-taste film that made fun of racism was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Film Editing, Best Song (music by John Morris with lyrics by Mel Brooks), and Best Supporting Actress (Madeline Kahn) - without any wins. Its most memorable scene, now considered tame when compared to Dumb and Dumber (1994), was the bean-eating scene around the campfire.

The scene of the close-up, teary confessional of amateur film student Heather (Heather Donahue) in the glare of a flashlight in the Maryland woods ("I just want to apologize...We're going to die out here. I'm so scared..."), and the final ambiguous shot in which Mike (Michael Williams) is seen standing motionless facing a wall in a corner (was he drugged, semi-conscious, or propped up dead, in order to distract the next victim?); the film's final ambiguous POV shot is accompanied by the sounds of "thwack", "thump", and "crash" as Heather's camcorder hits the ground (after she is attacked and killed?); the camera is broken, but continues filming -- before the end credits appear, in this made-to-look-like camcorder video/documentary film by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez.

The imaginative, fiery apocalyptic view of Los Angeles ("Neo-Tokyo") in the dystopic 21st century with hover cars, gigantic skyscrapers, electronic holographic advertisement-billboards on floating crafts, etc. - reflected in a single human eye in the film's opening; the film's first glimpse in the rainy drizzle of the blade runner-hero Deckard (Harrison Ford) reading a newspaper against a store display window, the scene in which Deckard informs unknowing replicant Rachael (Sean Young) that she isn't human, their love scene against venetian blinds, the chase through the busy streets after replicant snake lady Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) wearing a transparent raincoat - and her slow-motion death amidst shattering glass and blood, the brutal killing of Tyrell (Joe Turkel) who was responsible for the creation of the replicants, Pris' (Daryl Hannah) hiding among dolls and then her attempt to crush Deckard's head between her thighs, and the final vivid and brutal chase scene between Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Deckard - through Sebastian's apartment and onto the rooftop, Deckard's rescue from the edge of the building followed by replicant Roy's climactic, mournful and poignant soliloquy ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die....") as he expires in the rain and a white dove flies upward - supplemented by Deckard's narration: "Maybe in those last moments, he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life"; and the discovery of a very small, silver, tinfoil origami-folded unicorn and its significance ("It's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does?") at the conclusion, in director Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic.

The incredible Civil War battle scenes resembling historic Matthew Brady photographs with Benjamin "The Little Colonel" Cameron's (Henry B. Walthall) assault and the stuffing of a Confederate flag down the barrel of a Union cannon, the techniques of closing down the iris of the camera and cameos, the touching and poignant scene of Benjamin Cameron's return to his ruined Southern home, the recreated, skillfully-executed Lincoln assassination scene, the tense sequence of 'Little Sister' Flora (Mae Marsh) being chased by 'renegade negro' Gus (Walter Long) into the woods and jumping to her death, and the image of zealous and heroic Ku Klux Klan on horseback terrorizing blacks and riding to the rescue, in this landmark blockbuster epic film from director D.W. Griffith.

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A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy:

The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865-1900 The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan The Traitor

Its release set up a major censorship battle over its vicious, extremist depiction of African Americans, although Griffith naively claimed that he wasn't racist at the time. Unbelievably, the film is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership - and in fact, the organization experienced a revival and membership peak in the decade immediately following its initial release. And the film stirred new controversy when it was voted into the National Film Registry in 1993, and when it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (at # 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.

Film scholars agree, however, that it is the single most important and key film of all time in American movie history - it contains many new cinematic innovations and refinements, technical effects and artistic advancements, including a color sequence at the end. It had a formative influence on future films and has had a recognized impact on film history and the development of film as art. In addition, at almost three hours in length, it was the longest film to date. However, it still provokes conflicting views about its message.

Director Griffith's original budget of $40,000 (expanded to $60,000) quickly ballooned, so Griffith appealed to businessmen and other investors to help finance the film - that eventually cost $110,000! The propagandistic film was one of the biggest box-office money-makers in the history of film, partly due to its exorbitant charge of $2 per ticket - unheard of at the time. This 'first' true blockbuster made $18 million by the start of the talkies. [It was the most profitable film for over two decades, until Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).]

The subject matter of the film caused immediate criticism by the newly-created National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its racist and "vicious" portrayal of blacks, its proclamation of miscegenation, its pro-Klan stance, and its endorsement of slavery. As a result, two scenes were cut (a love scene between Reconstructionist Senator and his mulatto mistress, and a fight scene). But the film continued to be renounced as "the meanest vilification of the Negro race." Riots broke out in major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, eight states in total). Subsequent lawsuits and picketing tailed the film for years when it was re-released (in 1924, 1931, and 1938).

The resulting controversy only helped to fuel the film's box-office appeal, and it became a major hit. Even President Woodrow Wilson during a private screening at the White House is reported to have enthusiastically exclaimed: "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all terribly true." To his credit, Griffith later (by 1921) released a shortened, re-edited version of the film without references to the KKK.

In its explicitly caricaturist presentation of the KKK as heroes and Southern blacks as villains and violent rapists and threats to the social order, it appealed to white Americans who subscribed to the mythic, romantic view (similar to Sir Walter Scott historical romances) of the Old Plantation South. Many viewers were thrilled by the love affair between Northern and Southern characters and the climactic rescue scene. The film also thematically explored two great American issues: inter-racial sex and marriage, and the empowerment of blacks. Ironically, although the film was advertised as authentic and accurate, the film's major black roles in the film -- including the Senator's mulatto mistress, the mulatto politican brought to power in the South, and faithful freed slaves -- were stereotypically played and filled by white actors - in blackface. [The real blacks in the film only played in minor roles.]

Its climactic finale, the suppression of the black threat to white society by the glorious Ku Klux Klan, helped to assuage some of America's sexual fears about the rise of defiant, strong (and sexual) black men and the repeal of laws forbidding intermarriage. To answer his critics, director Griffith made a sequel, the magnificent four story epic about human intolerance titled Intolerance (1916). A group of independent black filmmakers released director Emmett J. Scott's The Birth of a Race in 1919, filmed as a response to Griffith's masterwork, with a more positive image of African-Americans, but it was largely ignored. Prolific black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux's first film, the feature-length The Homesteader (1919), and Within Our Gates (1919) more effectively countered the message of Griffith's film.

Its pioneering technical work, often the work of Griffith's under-rated cameraman Billy Bitzer, includes many techniques that are now standard features of films, but first used in this film. Griffith brought all of his experience and techniques to this film from his earliest short films at Biograph, including the following:

the use of ornate title cards special use of subtitles graphically verbalizing imagery its own original musical score written for an orchestra the introduction of night photography (using magnesium flares) the use of outdoor natural landscapes as backgrounds the definitive usage of the still-shot elaborate costuming to achieve historical authenticity and accuracy many scenes innovatively filmed from many different and multiple angles the technique of the camera "iris" effect (expanding or contracting circular masks to either reveal and open up a scene, or close down and conceal a part of an image) the use of parallel action and editing in a sequence (Gus' attempted rape of Flora, and the KKK rescues of Elsie from Lynch and of Ben's sister Margaret) extensive use of color tinting for dramatic or psychological effect in sequences moving, traveling or "panning" camera tracking shots the effective use of total-screen close-ups to reveal intimate expressions beautifully crafted, intimate family exchanges the use of vignettes seen in "balloons" or "iris-shots" in one portion of a darkened screen the use of fade-outs and cameo-profiles (a medium closeup in front of a blurry background) the use of lap dissolves to blend or switch from one image to another high-angle shots and the abundant use of panoramic long shots the dramatization of history in a moving story - an example of an early spectacle or epic film with historical costuming and many historical references (e.g., Mathew Brady's Civil War photographs) impressive, splendidly-staged battle scenes with hundreds of extras (made to appear as thousands) extensive cross-cutting between two scenes to create a montage-effect and generate excitement and suspense (e.g., the scene of the gathering of the Klan) expert story-telling, with the cumulative building of the film to a dramatic climax

The film looks remarkably genuine and authentic, almost of documentary quality (like Brady's Civil War photographs), vividly reconstructing a momentous time period in history - and it was made only 50 years after the end of the Civil War. Its story includes the events leading up to the nation's split; the Civil War era; the period from the end of the Civil War to Lincoln's assassination; the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era detailing the struggle over the control of Congress during Andrew Johnson's presidency and actions of the Radical Republicans to enfranchise the freed slaves, and the rise of the KKK.

The scene in which bearded hippie, pot-smoking, slacker slob Jeffrey 'The Dude' Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), wearing shorts and a T-shirt, complains and demands compensation from his wheel-chair bound philanthropist millionaire namesake Jeffrey 'The Big' Lebowski (David Huddleston) for two debt-collector hoods that peed on his favorite carpet ("that rug really tied the room together"); the Dude's introduction of himself: "I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing"); the scene of living erotic art (with Julianne Moore as eccentric, super-stoic feminist artist Maude Lebowski, an estranged daughter), and the Dude's fantasy musical dream sequence called Gutterballs after being slipped a mickey by sleaze king mobster Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara) - filled with images including the Viking Queen, Saddam Hussein, and bowling; also the bowling alley scene in which competitive Latino bowler Jesus Quintana (John Turturro) threatens: "Nobody f--ks with the Jesus...", and the other scary scene at a bowling alley in which uptight nutcase war veteran Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) tells bowler Smokey (Jimmie Dale Gilmore) that he has committed a minor infraction of bowling league rules by fouling over the line - accompanied by gun-wielding threats: "You're entering a world of pain" and "Mark it zero", in this quirky Coen Brothers stoner comedy - a Philip Marlowe-style LA neo-noir.

The memorable credits sequence including Jerome Moross' sweeping thematic score; the confrontational sequences over access rights to water at Big Muddy between patriarchal enemies/landowners Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford) and Rufus Hannassey (Oscar-winning Burl Ives); the marathon night-time fist-fight without witnesses (sometimes filmed in long-shot) between non-violent, transplanted Eastern ex-sea captain James McKay (Gregory Peck) and Terrill's foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) ending with McKay's question: "What did we prove? Huh?"; and the gentlemen's duel between McKay and Hannassey's own no-good, cowardly son Buck (Chuck Connors) - ending with Buck's death by his own father ("I told you I'd do it"); and the final stalking in Blanco Canyon between Terrill and Hannassey - ending with both men dead and lying on top of each other (filmed from a high-angle long shot), in William Wyler's widescreen Western epic.