How to go from pretty good to hilariously awful in one sequel...

Disaster films.

The very name conjures up big budget films with 2-3 big budget effects shots and an all star cast generally running around hamming it up. Formulaic to the extreme. And, since the heydey of the disaster film was the late 60s and early 70s (read, before Star Wars), special effects technology wasn’t very advanced, and by today’s standards, often not too special.

Given all that, it’s easy to forget that there were actually a few really good ones made. Case in point, Airport.



Airport may not have been the first, but it was one of the most important of the disaster films, spawning a whole lot of sequels. The problem is it’s easy to dismiss this film given how thoroughly it was skewered in the spoof Airplane! (a film which Entertainment Weekly ranked as the #1 comedy film of all time).

But Airport, actually is a pretty good little film when judged on it’s own merits. It isn’t a horribly improbably incident (like most disaster films), and is often likened to a version of Grand Hotel on a plane. Yes, it’s a soap opera, but an engaging one.

The stand out here is George Kennedy as ground crew chief mechanic. He’s the kind of blue collar hero today’s movies are sorely lacking – a guy who knows his job and can save the day from all the other people who don’t know theirs.

Probably the most amazing thing about Airport, is that it was made over 30 years before 9/11 (which now is most of a decade behind us), but the issues it deals with – terrorists, over crowded airways, overworked air traffic controllers, airports not expanding to meet demand – all these things are still just as problematic, indeed more problematic, today as they were in 1970.

Let’s get one thing straight, Airport may not be art, but it is a fun ride.

Airport 1975



The sequel to Airport is a different matter. Here we have a bigger budget film connected to the first only by Kennedy who is back as Petroni.

This movie is bad.

Really bad.

But it too is fun to watch in the ‘so bad it’s good’ sort of ways. Enjoyed with a six pack, this film might even be funnier than Airplane! the film that spoofs it. I mean just look at this cast: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, Gloria Swanson, Helen Reddy, Erik Estrada, Dana Anrews, Sid Caesar, Linda Blair – it’s like a best of Hollywood Squares crossed with a B-movie marathon! And (as a stretch), there’s Conrad Janis, Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller as 3 drunken old farts (in 1975! – were these guys ever young?). Definitely a good movie to have friends over and see who can hurl the best Rocky Horror style one liners at the screen.

Feel my pain.

Today's movie review comes by request of Joseph Kirschbaum of Cincinnati who writes, "I would love to hear your take on Casshern."



Casshern

Casshern was a 2004 adaptation of a 1993 direct-to-video anime, Casshan: Robot Hunter. It takes place in the future. But this future is a retro future where many things actually resemble past eras like in Brazil. Unlike Brazil, however, there’s no obvious reason for it, apart from perhaps choosing things that looked cool, and maybe because Steampunk is trendy. O.K., I could live with that… if it was the only thing there was no reason for, but…

In 2004, due to breakthroughs in technology, there were a few films that were long on effects and short on everything else - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Chronicles of Riddick both immediately spring to mind – and Casshern shares a lot of things in common with those films. In fact, the robot army scene is almost an exact replica of the robot army sequence in Sky Captain – although since both films came out the same year, it’s hard to say who ripped off whom.

The plot of Casshern is so convoluted as to defy synopsizing. It’s like the Matrix movies that way (see previous post about The Matrix). Also like the Matrix films, we have an unstoppable superhero protagonist – he’s even made up of “Neo” cells (perhaps a direct Matrix reference), and a villain who is a “Neo-Sapien” who vows to eliminate homo sapiens (ala Magneto in X-Men). The majority of the film involves these two super powered guys with hazy, unspecified godlike powers beating on each other Mighty Morphin Power Ranger style for most of the film, breaking off and resuming their battle at random times (oh yeah, another thing the film is guilty of – in the middle of a fight the fight will just end – no one wins loses or gets knocked out, they just start doing other stuff and forget about the fight).

Worse, again like the Matrix films, it thinks it’s philosophical, and much “deeper” than it really is, with characters spouting cheesy platitudes rather than engaging in any kind of meaningful dialogue. I generally give the dialogue of a foreign film a pass because I never know how much of it can be blamed on the translators, but there’s just too much of it in Casshern to let it slip by without mention. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

I’ve mentioned a lot of other films in this review, and I’m not done yet because Casshern also borrows heavily from Akira, and just about every other SF anime of the past 25 years.

But, cinematically speaking, perhaps the most apt comparison here is to The Crow: City of Angels – a film that is incredibly beautiful to look at, but makes no damn sense. It’s painfully obvious when watching that even if it were a perfect translation of the Japanese (which it probably isn’t) it still wouldn’t make any sense. Like a cut scene from a videogame taken out of context - a two hour long cut scene.

In fact, on that count it’s down there with some of the worst offenders of the genre, and deserves to share a cell with the likes The Crow: City of Angels and Highlander 2: The Quickening.

On the bright side, it is visually a treat (I was not surprised to learn that the first time director who is also the writer & cinematographer, much like with the aforementioned Highlander was primarily a music video director). But, as gorgeous as it is, I had a hard time sitting through the whole thing.

My recommendation - turn the volume down and the METAL up, and enjoy it for the 2 hour music video it is!

The 2000s in Review

Continuing our look back at the movies of the past decade.

Reboots - we'll be talking a lot about this trend.
Let's begin with a look at how to do reboots right - the most successful reboot of a series in the 2000s:



Batman Begins

I grew up on Detective Comics.

It's where DC gets its name.

The company invented the superhero - and has been making quality stories almost twice as long as their biggest competitor (Marvel Comics Group). Today they are owned by one of the world's largest conglomarates - Time Warner AOL - which also owns one of the oldest movie studios (Warner Bros.). Unfortunately, they have had a terrible track record of getting their superheroes faithfully adapted to the large and small screen.

Until now.

I love the work of Tim Burton - he was an interesting choice to helm the Batman project. He certainly put the Goth in Gotham. But his penchant for cartoony weirdness grew thin the second the master criminal was no longer The Joker.

Joel Schumacher grew up loving the 60s TV adaptation of the comic. Which, though campy fun perhaps, was not Batman, the dark knight detective. Using that as the basis for his run on the Batman franchise yielded... well, let's just paraphrase my physics teacher, "garbage in equals garbage out".

I don't mean that to be harsh - Mr. Schumacher is quite a film craftsman, it's just that his point of reference - like that of much of America's is skewed. When I was a kid, comics were dismissed as trivial children's fare, yet they were tackling things far more mature than the downright juvenile prime time TV hits that were adapted from them (Wonder Woman and The Hulk immediately spring to mind).

Mass audiences were totally ignorant of the very cornerstones of the Batman, grim avenger of the night, mythos. They could never imagine a Batman that picked up a gun, They had no idea who Joe Chill or Ras Al Ghul were. They couldn't tell you a thing about Arkham Asylum. But all of those things are cornerstones of the Batman background, and essential to understanding the character.

The creators of Batman Begins remember though. All of those elements come into play in this film. Is it perfect ? No. Does it take liberties with the source material? Yes, but not to the extent of any of the past efforts. Does it defy the laws of physics? At times, yes, but no moreso than comics generally do. You'll find no Batmobiles driving straight up the sides of buildings for example. Comic book physics are at lest preserved.

And that all adds up to the best Batman movie yet. One that is actually true to the spirit of the comics for the first time. And that, is something to be praised. And seen.

Two Forgotten Classics from 1972

Today we're taking a look at two forgotten gems from 1972. One with Robert Redford, and the other by Director John Huston.

The Hot Rock



I have to admit this film surprised me a little. Based on the title, and the fact that it stars Robert Redford (an actor not known for comedy roles), I was expecting a serious heist thriller. It was a heist film alright, but it was more of a comedic caper, albeit a deadpan one, than an edge-of your seat thriller. Redford, just out of prison, is recruited by a friend to put together a team (Ocean’s 11 style) to steal a diamond for a foreign government. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say things don’t go as planned. While this is by no means must-see stuff, it’s fun to watch. If you like the offbeat crime films of say the Coen Brothers, which rely as much on quirky characters and farcical situations more than outright jokes, The Hot Rock might be worth digging up.



Fat City

At the other pole we have the late era John Huston film Fat City. Fat City is a boxing film that takes place mostly in Stockton, California, and centers on aging boxer Tully (Stacey Keach) and up-and-comer Eddie (Jeff Bridges). The story is a down-and-out look at the American dream that plays like California's equivalent of Midnight Cowboy with fresh faced Bridges in place of Jon Voight, and Keach in place of Dustin Hoffman. Even the soundtrack sounds like Midnight Cowboy. Relentlessly downbeat, but rewarding.

New Orleans past is never past.

In the Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist is an adaptation of James Lee Burke’s 1993 novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. The story deals with Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux’s investigation of a murder when a body is discovered in a Louisiana swamp following a Gulf Coast storm. But the murder is only one mystery Robicheaux must solve, the other is why he keeps seeing and hearing from the apparitions of Confederate soldiers.

The film starts Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux, and is not an action oriented P.I. film but the kind of slowly unraveling mystery typical of other recent Jones films such as his previous effort, In the Valley of Elah.

The last time Robicheaux made it to the big screen was more than a dozen years ago, played by Alec Baldwin in the box office disaster Heaven’s Prisoners, which lost 4 times as much money as it made.

So, why revive this series now? I believe the film itself holds the key to that mystery. The film changes the tropical storm which is responsible for uncovering the long submerged body to Hurricane Katrina – which is logical given the location. But I suspect there is more to it than that. The film itself is kind of like metafiction, because there is a film taking place within this movie, a Civil War film (which supplies a possible explanation for the Confederate soldiers Robicheaux keeps seeing) but is also mentioned as bringing much needed income to the area - “we’re dropping close to 40 million dollars into Iberia Parish”, says one of the characters. This, I believe, is the smoking gun behind reviving this 16 year old novel.

The film stars the usual New Orleans boosters like Ned Beatty and John Goodman, even bluesman Buddy Guy in a small role. It has a lot of heart but lacks punch, coming across as a slapdash Big Easy for Katrina relief. Which isn’t such a bad thing; if you like the genre, it just might be worth your time.

An Early Herzog Work That Not Enough People Have Seen

Every Man for Himself & God Against All
AKA The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
AKA The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

Many people in the U.S. only know him for his more recent work like Grizzly Man, but
Werner Herzog has pretty much been doing character studies on odd, interesting and provocative people for over 25 years.

Herzog cast Bruno S., (a real life mystery man whose own life parallels the story) as foundling Kaspar Hauser, the young man without a past who showed up in a Nuremberg one day in the late 19th Century.

The film is stark in it’s portrayal of alienation, but with a life and humanity all it’s own. The look of the film is one distinctive to films of the 1970s a time when beautiful technical advancements in color film had been made over just a few years earlier – and Herzog takes full advantage of this to show the quaint, picturesque German landscape.

While I think it fall short of achieving the heights the best Herzog film have, many critics disagree with me, ranking it as his best, and on many top 10 lists. The film has been remarkably influential, influencing movies as diverse as Julien Donkey Boy, and Castle Freak.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

A look back at the two big sci-fi superhero action series of the past decade.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

I know I'm a minority on this, but I thought The Matrix was all FX. In fact that is all I can watch it for. The idea of harvesting humans for their body heat is just too ridiculous for words. There's an advanced society.

I also can't stand the way so many people take Fishburn's fortune cookie "wisdom" way too seriously...What was the only good line from Mystery Men?..."You must master your anger..." "Or what? Anger-will-be-my-Master?" That dog came out the same summer, but it was like they were making fun of the Matrix with that line.

But what gets me more than even the bad science and bad philosophy of what is supposed to be a "Philosophical Science Fiction" story, is how it is not even internally consistent. I will forgive a lot, IF you play by the rules YOU set up.

At one point in the film Neo is trying to escape a building. In order to block his escape, the baddies that control reality just throw up a brick wall.

What the Hell?

If they can do that, why not just seal him in by walls. Make a little Neo sardine tin. You wouldn't even have to suffocate him, just keep him imprisoned forever.

Don't get me wrong, I like it for the action and effects. I think it is head and shoulders above most of its ilk in that department. That is what I watch it for. That's why it is still a good movie. But to me its all martial arts and gunfire, if I look past that it annoys me.

It is possible to make an intelligent science fiction/action movie – I thought that X2, for example, had a lot to say about humanity. A friend of mine even saw some parallels to the Iraq War in the movie – now that is a human action movie with a story, to me. When it comes to The Matrix though, overall the story is very black and white. The bad people are bad, the good people are good.

X2, on the other hand, raises a lot of ethical issues. Right now, in the real world, there are governments that require particularly skilled martial artists to be registered the same way a gun is. Assuming people were born with potentially lethal powers, why shouldn't they be registered, or marked so that you could see them (not a concealed weapon). As a matter of fact, if they as a group threatened the world as a whole - regardless of their intent - if their bodies were actual weapons of mass destruction, why shouldn't people be interned or killed? If your people are being oppressed, what is wrong with fighting back by any means necessary?

When I was a kid in the 1970s, before Star Wars, SF movies were not taken seriously by mass audiences because the special effects were so cheesy. But to me, I always just used my imagination - the effects weren't what made the movie. It was the philosophical issues they brought up. I'll take a good SF story with bad effects over a bad story with good effects. For example, I think the original Planet of the Apes is superior to the remake. (And I refused to even see the remake of The Time Machine). I think most people are the other way around. They want the effects, not the story.

With X2, this movie has effects that are not nearly as cool as The Matrix - but that is counterbalanced by a stronger, character driven story. A good strong skeleton on which to hang the effects. This is probably because X2 is basically an adaptation of the excellent graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills.

The Matrix is fun to watch, I enjoy a lot of films that don't stand up to critical thinking, but they rarely stick with me even 5 minutes after the credits roll.

Redford, You're Getting Too Old For This...

Spy Game

I'm pulling this review from the archives - it was originally written in August of 2002.

On his last day with the CIA, an agent played by Robert Redford, becomes embroiled in an international incident involving a spy named Bishop (for some reason, always an unlucky name in movies) who he trained years ago.

Over the years, I do think Redford has shown himself to be a very poor (albeit lucky) spy. You'd think he'd lie in wait for the baddies, or at least learn to keep his important files in a safe deposit box or booby trap his office. I mean in 3 Days of the Condor they ransack his office, steal files, and kill his associates... In Sneakers they do it again... and now, in Spy Game - they do it again. At least in Spy Game they don't kill anyone when they ransack his office.

Of course there is a lot of fantasy in this take on the CIA... (we all know the CIA doesn't have all it's internal phones bugged, or know unimportant details about it's long time agents - like whether or not they're married and to whom! NAH, they wouldn't know about that stuff). As usual, anyone carrying an AK can't hit the broadside of a barn (or two guys in the open on top of a hill from a helicopter - or a car in the middle of a street from an overlooking building, etc.).

On the whole, the film is a pretty good thriller of the story-told-in-flashback style. Excusing the small stuff (Brad Pitt hasn't aged a day since Vietnam), the story is both a genre picture, and a commentary on the business of spying not dissimilar to the disenfranchised cold war Hitchcockian movies of the French New Wave, though Spy Game never really elevates much beyond the level of solid genre film.

While both Redford and Pitt turn in fine performances, the thrills never reach the heights of others of it's type (check out the 80s remake of The Big Clock called No Way Out for a more thrilling take on Washington intrigue). All in all, Spy Game is enjoyable but forgettable.

The Jungle Book 2.0 - The King is Dead, Long Live the King

The Lion King

15 years ago an era came to an end - we just didn't know it at the time.

Disney, for all practical purposes, invented the animated feature, and for decades pioneered the genre’s significant advances like special effects animation, and the multi-plane camera. The studio was riding high in the late 80s and early 90s with top-notch films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Toward the end of this new Golden Age of cell animation, Disney released one of their best – The Lion King. The film is a little less humorous than past efforts, but it’s law-of-the-jungle theme (and some of the characters) harkened back to The Jungle Book.

Like The Jungle Book, we have a child (this time a lion cub), and a tyrant ruler cat wants him dead. (Jeremy Irons’ portrayal of Scar in The Lion King even sounds like George Sanders’ portrayal of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book.) He’s hidden away in the jungle where he befriends some fun-loving, off-the-wall jungle animals that provide not only comic relief, but some of the best songs of the film, before a climactic battle ends the tyrant’s rule by fire. In fact, the parallels to The Jungle Book are so prevalent that one could call it a remake. But no matter, just like that film it’s highly enjoyable, and a highpoint for Disney. Unfortunately, just like that film, which marked the end of Disney’s first Golden Age, The Lion King was the last gasp of Disney’s second Golden Age. After this came a long steady, slow decline into mediocrity beginning with well-worn tales like Pocahontas, Hercules and Tarzan, ultimately leading to such forgettable fare such as Treasure Planet and Home on the Range. A hole from which the Mouse King might never have re-emerged were it not for the saving grace of Pixar.

Quarantine - Foreign Fimmaking Sanitized For Your Protection

Quarantine

Here we go again – another, pointless shot-for-shot remake. But as far as pointless shot-for-shot Hollywood remakes go, this has got to be one of the most pointless so far given the film it’s remaking, [REC], wasn’t even a year old when they rushed this one out.

Really the only difference I can see between this film and [REC] is that Quarantine is in English, and set in Los Angeles. Other than that, the films are so close that even in an American context, the film has been Spanish-ized (e.g. the Spanish style architecture of the apartment building setting, and even Latin-American characters like ‘Mrs. Espanoza’).

Aside from some of it’s edginess burnished off by slightly slicker Hollywood production values, it essentially has all the same weaknesses of [REC] (q.v.), but all the same strengths too. For example, by using the actual camcorder footage as the storytelling device, the film is able to use justifiable jump cuts to avoid covering transitions in time and place with walking and talking. This really helps ramp up the tension.

As usual with any good zombie film (really it’s a ghoul film, but that’s a discussion for another time), it's less about the zombie attack as it is about how the humans react to it.

Some things new to this version include having a vet actually in the building which allows for a better explanation of 'rabies', as well as the immediately dating bit of a rabbit ears TV. A couple minor points of interest to gore fans is a zombie dog in elevator scene and a zombie beat to death on camera – with the camera. But for every point in it’s favor (over the original) there’s one against it – for example, the TV host covering camera lens with hand and saying 'turn it off' – something that is just so out of character.

Overall, maybe it’s because I've seen it before, but Quarantine just doesn't seem as scary as [REC]. The zombie attacks aren't as sudden and surprising this time around, the lengths to which the government will go to cover things up isn’t as startlingly revealed here as in the original, and all the running up and down the stairs that worked in [REC], almost seems to border on British farce territory here.

If you’re a monolingual English speaker for whom subtitles will destroy any suspense, then by all means, see Quarantine. For everybody else – see [REC].

Rewind to [REC]

[REC]



With Zombieland and Paranormal Activity tearing up the box office, I thought it would be a good time to review a film that combines some of the best aspects of both; zombies and the faux documentary style.


[REC] (the symbol for ‘recording mode’ on a camcorder) a Spanish film released in 2007 has a two person documentary TV crew following a Barcelona Fire Department team on a “typical” night. The crew respond to a call in an apartment building, and get trapped inside amidst a zombie infestation.

The simple plot is one of the film’s greatest strengths. There really isn’t a lot of time wasted on subplots or melodrama. And while most of the techniques used in [REC] we’ve seen before; Blair Witch Project style hand held camera work, the ubiquitous green night vision we’ve seen in everything from The Silence of the Lambs to The Descent, not to mention heaven knows how many “ghost hunting” TV shows; but none of them together nearly as well as [REC].

Of course, just like The Ring/The Grudge, etc. there was the requisite watered down, big budget Hollywood version made, Quarantine, for the masses who refuse to see any foreign film, under any circumstances, ever. And, while the trend continues there will probably be more big budget Cloverfields and District 9s, but sometimes all it takes is a small crew who cut their teeth on documentary TV to make an focused faux documentary with the intensity of [REC].

Soviet Slapstick

Operation "Y"



O.K., before I review this DVD (it’s actually more than one “movie”), let me disclose a couple facts. First, apart from the unparalleled works of Eisenstein, I am not a huge fan of Russian Cinema. I find much of it ponderous, and overly bogged down in State approved propaganda.

Operation “Y” or Operatsiya Y i drugiye priklyucheniya Shurika (Operation Y and other Shurik’s Adventures) as it’s known in Russian, is the most popular Soviet Era comedy, possibly the most popular Russian comedy of all time. So, despite the double negative of Russian Slapstick, I had to give it a look.

It's hard to hate Shurik's adventures, but if you're not a slapstick fan, they're not really going to fully win you over either. Shurik is a young go-getter in the vein of Harold Lloyd’s ‘Glasses Guy’ (Shurik is also bespectacled) and his Adventures fall somewhere between Charlie Chaplin and Benny Hill both chronologically (since it was released in 1965) and stylistically. While the vignettes aren’t as charming as Chaplin, they are, mercifully, less annoying than Hill, and thankfully, the Soviet propaganda while undeniably present is set to a very low pitch. Not being a fan of the genre, I'll refrain from actually endorsing or cautioning about this film collection, but I will say, exhaust the Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd cannons (and perhaps the cartoons of Chuck Jones too) before moving on to these.

The Cinderella We've Wished For

Three Wishes for Cinderella

Cinderella takes aim with her mighty crossbow.

What? Don’t you remember that part of the story???

In the history of cinema, no story has been more popular than the fairy tale of Cinderella. It’s been made over and over again from the Disney animated film to Pretty Woman. And all of this despite the fact that Cinderella herself is pretty much one of the weakest protagonists in literature. I mean, face it, almost everything that happens in most Cinderella stories happens to her, not by her. Cinderella is a mere reactive template whose sole ambition is to marry a prince. And, even that is achieved mostly through the magic of a fairy godmother, and the crowning moment usually involves the prince searching out Cinderella, putting a slipper on her foot and choosing to marry her.

Not so with Tri orísky pro Popelku (Three wishes for Cinderella), a Czechoslovakian version of Cinderella, sometimes called Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella. This obscure (in the U.S. anyway) film is really worth searching out. To begin with, it’s a live action film with period sets and costumes and pretty decent effects given its age. But what’s most remarkable is that the Cinderella of this film doesn’t particularly want to marry a prince. She’s much happier riding horseback riding, hunting and generally impishly cavorting around the woods near her village. A much more interesting character than the usual flat, saccharine, put-upon wallflower-who-gets-a-makeover that we normally see in these stories.

Cars May Not Be Pixar's First Place Winner, But It Still Makes Good Time

Cars

Like most digital artists, I was a fan of Pixar before they made their first feature film. In fact, by the time I saw their first short film Luxo, jr. many of us already knew their name from the .pxr (pixar) file format.

After a string of top notch shorts, most of us were excited to see their first feature film; the first feature film created entirely on a computer. True to form, Toy Story did not disappoint. Even if you took away the ground breaking animation, the fact that it launched a whole new type of animated film – you’d still have a damn good story. Entertaining even if it had been done with stop-motion, cell, or any other type of animation.

But Pixar didn’t stop there – for the next decade and a half, they continued to produce top-notch films, both long and short. While few (except maybe Toy Story 2) were as good as Toy Story they were all still outstanding.

Which brings us to Cars. Released as Pixar’s 20^th anniversary film, Cars follows the story of a race car, Lightning McQueen, on his quest to win the prestigious ‘Piston Cup’. As usual, there is great animation, fun jokes, and neat cameos. But this time, Pixar failed to win the Academy Award for best animated feature – a category that was practically created for the studio following the repeated snubbing of films like A Bug’s Life, and the Toy Story films. This was only the second time since the award was created in the early 2000s that Pixar failed to win. And the loss to Warner Brothers (and previously to Dreamworks) was deserved, as this (and the previous Monsters, Inc.) were neither among Pixar’s best, nor the best in the field.

But, the fact that Cars is still an enjoyable, and even superior film judged in the context of all animated features ever made, or all films ever made for that matter, just goes to show how high Pixar has raised the bar for itself and everyone else.

Z: The 60s didn't just happen in America and Vietnam

Z

Much like The Manchurian Candidate, Z is a political conspiracy thriller that was both controversial from the time it was released and largely unavailable for a long time, resulting in its legend growing over time. Unlike The Manchurian Candidate, though, which is allegedly pure fiction, Z, while ostensibly a work of fiction, is generally believed to be a pretty accurate account of real events. Though there are no flags in the film, no names of nations, and even military insignia are relatively generic, it’s generally believed to be a thinly veiled expose of political repression in Greece in 1960s.

The plot deals with the assassination of a respected doctor and anti-war activist and the subsequent events both amongst the population and within the government. The film is unrelenting in its scathing indictment of the-powers-that-be. Even though it’s a thriller, its pretty heavy stuff, and it racked up Oscars for Best Editing and Best Foreign Film, and to this day it remains one of the few foreign films to ever be nominated in the Best Film category.

Again, much like The Manchurian Candidate, the legend has outgrown the film (see review of Manchurian Candidate, The). While it’s still a good story, it is definitely dated not in terms of content (history is history after all), but in terms of filmmaking technique. Many action sequences seem pretty lightweight given what has come since. Furthermore, modern audiences – especially monolingual English speakers – are likely to find it drags, and is overly talky, perhaps even preachy. While this might not be a problem for a film like All the President’s Men, or the aforementioned Manchurian Candidate, when faced with big chunks of subtitling, well, you can imagine the drawback.

Still, there is much to commend it. It didn’t win an Academy Award for editing for no reason. The way the film cuts together with the music score in the latter part of the film is something that was almost unprecedented in cinema up to that time.