Famous Movie Quotes #1

This is one of my all time favorites.

It reminds me of family get-togethers.

Movies You Haven't Seen

December is my least favorite month of the year. Oh, what am I saying? I hate it to bits. It's the month when you can't even buy a pint of milk without getting your brain liquified by the most saccharine holiday music. The streets are filled with people madly scrambling from shop to shop, mall to mall. The Season of Stress.

This is also the season of cold and flu, and apparently swine-flu related e-mail phishing scams. (Yeah, like I'm really going to believe that the CDC is sending me an e-mail to "register" my vaccination status.) This is the month where I'd like to go to hibernate under a rock. Paint me green and call me a Grinch - I don't care.

What one needs at this time of year is distraction. Unfortunately it's also the time when television programming spirals down into new depths of hell. Dante's Inferno has a ring dedicated to Christmas Specials. Fortunately for you, My Dear Reader, there is a solution: Movie rentals! And I have a list of films that have escaped the attention of most viewers.


When I first saw Lone Star (1996 dir. John Sayles) it completely bowled me over with the way its story unfolds, unrolls. It takes place in a small Texas border town, where the discovery of a skeleton along with a sheriff's badge sets things in motion. There are multiple plot lines, some based in the present, others stretching back a generation, but they all end up connecting at one point or other. It's storytelling at its best. The lead character, Sam Deeds, the current sheriff of the town, is played by the talented Chris Cooper, who mostly known as a character actor from such movies as American Beauty or Adaptation. Also worth noting the interesting visual device dealing with the frequent flashbacks.


Brick (2005 dir. Rian Johnson) is a classic film noir of the best Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett tradition - played out in current day Southern California suburbia by high schoolers. It is not played for laughs however. There is death, drama, double cross, dangerous dames, dangerous games; the whole nine yard of the hard boiled detective genre. Brick is the quintessential indie movie, made on a small budget, by a bunch of talented young people who love the movies. It's also a brilliant update of a tried and true genre.


The Painted Veil (2006 dir. John Curran) was a love project of actor Edward Norton who also plays the lead along with Naomi Watts. It is based on a novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham, and in my opinion an improvement over the novel. It's the story of bacteriologist Walter Fane who takes a government job in 1920's China, and takes his wife Kitty with him. It is very much a character driven story played out in front of the background of the politics of the colonialist era and the beautiful Chinese landscape. The script is first rate and the acting matches. Aside from Norton and Watts, Liev Schriber and Toby Jones turn out masterly performances.


Liev Schriber was the director of Everything is Illuminated (2005). The film is about a young Jewish man, Johnathan Foer - played by Elijah Wood - who travels to Ukraine to find a woman who is said to have saved his grandfather's life during WWII. At this point the viewer along with Jonathan experiences a farcical culture shock. His tour guide is Alex who becomes the narrator, and whose textbook English is the cause for the movie's title. Their driver is Alex' grandfather who in an absurdist turn believes himself to be blind. They are accompanied with Sammy Davies Jr. Jr., the "seeing eye bitch". The four of them take off to the country in a trabant looking for a town that's not on the map any more. The film is fine balance of humor, dreaminess, and poignancy.


The Interpreter (2005) was the last film directed by the great Sidney Pollack, who also plays a small role in it. By genre, this is a political thriller, but more importantly it is a film that rests on smart, very well written script, strong characters and great acting. Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman give taut, edgy performances. There is the UN, a possible assassination plot, murder, plenty of suspense, but to me some of the most riveting parts are the dialog. Carefully chosen words make my spine tingly. This is the movie that probably fits the least with the others, since it had a pretty decent run in the theaters - yet I managed to miss it completely at the time.


I saw Mystery Train (1989 dir. Jim Jarmusch) during my first year in the US, and I felt like Jarmusch read my soul. At that time I was free-floating, lost, and slightly bewildered - not unlike the characters of this film. There isn't much plot I can recall, just a quirky mélange of characters, including two teenage japanese tourists and the ghost of Elvis, who all converge in a run-down Memphis motel. Watching the movie at the time made me realize the part of the culture shock I was not expecting: Not the skyscrapers and the fancy things, but the banality of a crumbling urban landscape.


Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead (2009 dir. Jordan Galland) is not to be confused with the Tom Stoppard play and film - although they get a mention within the film. It is an indipendent film of the tongue in cheek variety; a delicious romp about aimless youth, Hamlet, and vampires. This film actually not out on DVD yet, but it has not yet had a wide theatrical release. I got to see it during the Hollywood Film Festival. If it comes to your neighborhood, don't miss it.


I have plugged Moon (2009 dir. Duncan Jones) before, but I will again. It is a small, but finely crafted science fiction film. It starts maybe just a touch slow, but then maintains suspense without any fancy special effects. The DVD will be out in January.


Siesta (1987 dir. Mary Lambert) is a film nobody has ever seen despite of the fact it's chock full of stars like Elen Barkin, Jody Foster, Isabella Rosselini, Martin Sheen, Gabriel Byrne. At the beginning of the story, Claire, an American, wakes up in a field behind a runway, wearing just a red dress, covered in blood, and no memories of how she got there. It sounds like a mystery-thriller, but it is that as much as Antonioni's Blow Up is: not at all. It's a hard to describe film, slightly surreal, haunting like its Miles Davis - Marcus Miller score. When I first watched this movie at the end I realized that I was watching a completely different story then I originally thought.

I'm going to throw in few foreign films, and that's a bit of cheating, since they rarely ever get wide distribution in the US, but it's my blog, I do what I want.


Until the End of the World (1991 dir. Wim Wenders, German) is an international road movie with science fiction undertones. Claire (Solveig Dommartin) bumps into Sam (William Hurt) and spends the first part of the movie chasing him around the globe, till they all end up in the Australian outback - at which point practically a new movie starts. Oh never mind the plot, it's a good ride, hop on. There is a 5 hour "director's cut", but unfortunately it's not available in the US.


Knotroll (2003 dir. Nimród Antal, Hungarian) is a sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, always suspenseful tale of Hungarian subway ticket inspectors. Yeah, you've read that right. There is a killer haunting the subways, there is conflict with a rival group of ticket inspectors, various passengers trying to get away with not buying tickets. It's a thriller with a rough East European finish, with touch of fairy tales, Freud, and Greek Mythology.


Tell No One (2006 dir. Guillaume Canet, French) is a straight mystery-thriller. It's about a doctor, Alex (François Cluzet) whose wife was murdered years before. He is putting his life back together when something happens (I'm not telling you what), and well, shit hits the fan - to use the technical turn. There are chases, murders, secrets being uncovered, and all the good stuff you'd expect from a film of this genre. The pacing is just right, the characters are engaging, and the suspense is non-stop. If you like a good thriller - and don't mind reading subtitles - this is the movie for you.

One of these days...

There are days that are... well, just irregular. I went to the movies yesterday to see Moon. As I took my seat, some self-important type was extolling his own virtues in the row behind me, but thankfully turned quiet before the trailers were over. The Scarecrow to the left of me couldn't sit still. Fatty, two seats to my right walked out 5 minutes into the movie, then back and started talking to his companion. He made no effort to whisper, nor was he bothered by the shushing sounds from behind. He finally shut up, but then his phone rang. Not only that, but he answered it! At which point I audibly remarked: "For goodness sake!" He hang up. Twenty minutes into the movie Young Punk - apparently friend of Fatty - walked in and sat down in the one empty seat to my right. He proceeded to unwrap a sandwich of some sort, douse it with some stinky dressing from a plastic cup. He munched, slurped his soda and laughed at the movie at all the wrong places. I felt like an extra in a bad sitcom, minus the laugh track (not counting Young Punk).


Fortunately I was sitting in row 3, with the walkway in front of me and could just stand up, and pick an unoccupied seat at the far end of the row, and finally enjoy the movie. Moon is a small, but thoughtfully crafted movie directed by Duncan Jones - formerly Zowie Bowie, son of David Bowie. The main character(s) in the movie is played by Sam Rockwell, and the voice of the computer, Gerty, is Kevin Spacey. It is a science fiction of sorts. At the beginning there are flavors of Silent Running and Solaris, but it ends up being a more conventional story, and I don't mean that in a bad way. There is a touch of mystery, suspense, drama. It's a fine film, I'm glad I went to see it despite all the bedlam.

Visions of the Future

Sometimes I need to let my inner nerd out for a romp. Recently I have been musing - in my head - about science fiction movie archetypes - visual and thematic. So I wrote it down. It's a little messy, but that's ok. Here it goes...

Cowboys and Indians, Starfleet and Romulans, Light and Dark, Logic and Emotion, Man and Nature

There are two distinct and contrasting visual styles of the future; one bright, technological, modern, optimistic, another dark, decaying, organic, ominous. Simply put: Bright and shiny vs dark and grimy. Blade Runner and Star Trek are probably the most iconic examples of each. Another, more crucial distinction between the two is where they take place: One in densely populated city, another in the vast frontiers of space. Frontier stories more likely to feature a group of heroes facing off with fearsome foes, while the in the city it is all about the lone hero searching for answers.


Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner stands as one of the cornerstones of modern science fiction movies. It has defined a visual and narrative style that has became a major part of the science fiction cinema language. However Blade Runner did not invent this language, but translated it directly from the Film Noir style of the the 40's and 50's. These films were shot in moody black and white, full of grit, grime, and moral ambiguity. These films themselves were influenced by the hardboiled detective novels of their time, works of Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler. Not only the most iconic ones were directly based on their novels, like The Postman Always Rings Twice (Cain), The Big Sleep (Chandler), but Chandler also worked as scrip writer for many of these now classic movies (Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train).

One very intriguing aspect of these films is that while most of them take place in perpetually sunny California, their visual style is defined by their darkness - most of the action happens in dark alleys, dive bars, seedy motel rooms. As if they were nature documentaries of the ground level of a thick urban jungle where the sunlight doesn't penetrate any more, and the denizens mostly come out at night.

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." (Raymond Chandler)

Double Indemnity and Blade Runner

The heroes of these stories are usually private eyes, who have problems with authority, they walk more or less on the right side of law, but have an antagonistic, distrustful relationship with the cops. Decard in Blade Runner is full embodiment of this character. He is as likely to be squaring off with a dubious dame as licking his wounds with a glass of scotch in hand as Philip Marlow is. He walks the streets of a Los Angeles that is wrapped in a perpetual night. Maybe the smog has gotten so bad that the sunlight can't penetrate it any more. It's also always raining, and even indoors there is water drizzling from above. This inexplicable wetness has come to represent danger in science fiction movies - a dark cave of our subconscious, with unimaginable horrors lurking in its moist recesses. A perfect example of it is the scene from Alien when we first encounter the fully grown creature: It's a large dark room, with chains hanging from the ceiling, and water dripping everywhere. What is all that excess moisture doing dripping inside a space ship is anyone's guess.

Wet interior from Blade Runner

The wet ship from the alien's point of view

The hero of the Noir style does not necessary have to be an actual detective, it's the element of mystery, a search for answers what's relevant. Dark City is a good example.

The private dick is close relation to the lone gunman of the westerns - another genre that scifi has heavily borrowed from. The most enduring theme that scifi appropriated from westerns is the idea of entering dangerous uncharted territories, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Many scifi films and shows are westerns in space. Joss Whedon very consciously referenced this theme in his sadly short lived tv series Firefly, and the following movie Serenity. Beyond classic westerns, Whedon's creations have roots in the less idealized, more sweat and dust covered, morally ambiguous world of spaghetti westerns. A not so deliberate, and far more optimistically Utopian iteration of the space western was the original Star Trek and its many follow-ups. Its heroes are the law, their ship is clean, brightly lit, full of crisp uniforms. It's also uplifting, optimistic, a world where law and order prevails. Firefly and Star Trek not only have different visual styles, but represent contrary point of views of basically the same societal structures. Both worlds are tightly controlled alliance/federation of planets, outwardly represented by a strong military, but in one the heroes are the military, in the other they are the outlaws, barely getting by at the edge of known space.

Space Cowboys of Firefly and the original Star Trek tv series

If Captain Kirk and crew are John Wayne and the cavalry marching into the wild vastness of space, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and crew are the cowboys and misfits. The "Indians," i.e. the "other" that they both have to fight and beat are however very similar. In Serenity it is the "reavers," a band of humans driven to extreme madness by a chemical compound. In the immensely enjoyable 2009 Star Trek movie it is a rogue band of Romulans, driven mad by grief and anger. Both are propelled by raw emotion, can't be reasoned with, inaccessible to logic, and bent on destruction. Simply put they are pure manifestations of the Id. The creature from Alien and Aliens can be put in the same category. While we don't really know much of its "emotions," its single-minded drive to breed and kill make it the same type of primal force.

The primal foes and their environments share the same visual language. It's all dark, jagged, wet, sinisterly organic. Not surprisingly, the Romulan ship, the Narada and the reaver armada all resemble deep sea monsters. The dark deepness of space and the ocean are very similar; they both fascinate and frighten at the same time. "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." (Leonard 'Bones' McCoy).

Narada on the left, reaver ship on the right and an angler fish in the middle.

Star Trek XI contains within it both the bright and the dark visual styles, but they are firmly devided between the two opposing forces of the narrative. In sharp contrast to the brightly lit, ordered corridors of the Enterprise, the Narada's interiors are dark, tangled. In one scene we can see pipes sneaking on the floor, in several baffling inches of water. The Enterprise is shiny plastic and chrome, with a crew in dressed in bright primary colors. The Narada is jaggy, corroding metal, subdued dark greenish grays and browns, it's tattooed crew dressed in worn leather. Similar tones, but even more organic are many interiors where the creatures of the Alien franchise dwell. By nature they take over spaces that are not their own, yet dark and cavernous, obscuring their angular shapes with their own creations. Water here is replaced with sticky goo.

The Narada

The Enterprise

Like Native Americans did in classic westerns, Romulans, acid-blooded aliens, even reavers, come to represent the primal force that you can fight or run from, but can't reason with. Ultimately, they are mother nature in many disguises. Our plucky heroes triumph over their much stronger foe, using cunning and bravado - brains and balls against brute force. And that's what conquering frontiers is all about. Despite of their ideological differences Serenity and Star Trek have this in common. Not Blade Runner however; Deckard hunts down and kills all the replicants, but there is no triumph. Perhaps because he is not on the frontier, but in the city jungle where there are no good guys and bad guys, just different rungs on the food chain.

The lines between the hunter and hunted blur

The Spice Must Flow

I was just about to call it a night, but then flipping channels I landed on Dune. The original one of course, with Kyle MacLachlan, those strangely operatic sets and costumes, and of course gloriously undressed Sting. The movie is so completely over the top in every aspect, costumes, set, acting, plot, to the most minute detail that it ascends to a whole another sphere. I have loved and been mesmerized by this sublimely baroque space nonsense since I first laid eyes on its first perplexing frame.

But then, as I was watching, I realized how this move could be taken as an allegory for the Middle East. The powers to be wrestle for the control of a far away desert planet (country) for a single reason: it's the source of a very valuable resource, the spice (oil). This resource moves the universe (world) and it must flow. The desert dwelling natives resent the foreign occupiers (liberators) and want to dispel them. The native freedom fighters (insurgents) attack the invaders and commit acts of heroism (terrorism). It is a pretty good match, except for the Hollywood ending: Lawrence (Paul) of Arrakis wins the war and makes it rain.