Q: “You were working in a special niche of your own in the late 1970s and early 1980s with Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders and Southern Comfort — lean, elegiac films which, I’m guessing, benefited from modest budgets and expectations, as well as low producer interference.”

A: “Yes, that niche no longer exists. The middle ground has largely fallen out of the studio system.”

Patrick McGilligan interviewing Walter Hill for Film International in September 1996

The Long Riders (1980)
Directed by Walter Hill
Written by Bill Bryden and Steven Phillip Smith and Stacy Keach & James Keach
Produced by Tim Zinneman
99 minutes

If crowd pleasers like Tombstone are pop music renditions of the Old West, The Long Riders is like vintage bluegrass. With the well earned authenticity of a musician jamming for the pure love of his craft, the first western directed by Walter Hill is a master class in how atmosphere, pacing and performance can elevate a B-movie programmer into something greater than a plot synopsis might indicate. In Missouri after the Civil War, hard put and desperate men looking to make a living under the heel of Reconstruction rob a bank. Led by the steely Jesse James (James Keach) and his brother Frank James (Stacy Keach), the gang includes the deadly Cole Younger (David Carradine), dapper Jim Younger (Keith Carradine) and dorky Bob Younger (Robert Carradine). Along for the job is Clell Miller (Randy Quaid) who’s as dependable as his brother Ed (Dennis Quaid) is unreliable.

The bandits return home to contemplate settling down. Jesse marries his sweetheart (Savannah Smith) while Jim courts a redhead (Amy Stryker) engaged to the no count Ed Miller. Cole Younger hesitates to make an honest woman out of Belle Shirley (Pamela Reed) and the vivacious whore settles in Texas, where she marries hotheaded Sam Starr (James Remar) and takes the name Belle Starr. The success of the James-Younger gang against trains of the Union Pacific Railroad puts them in the crosshairs of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, whose agents draw the wrath of the entire region when they gun down a 15-year-old Younger and firebomb the home of Jesse James’ mother (Fran Ryan). The gang meet their Waterloo in Northfield, Minnesota, forcing Jesse to recruit the oily Ford brothers Bob (Nicholas Guest) and Charlie (Christopher Guest). Their betrayal earns the Fords a spot in history alongside Jesse James.

Stacy Keach and his brother James Keach were cast as Wilbur and Orville Wright for a public television drama that aired in 1971. They kidded that after playing the Wright brothers, their next project together should focus on “the wrong brothers”. Taking their joke seriously, the Keaches arrived on outlaws Frank & Jesse James and spent nine years struggling to get The Long Riders into production, with playwright Bill Bryden, screenwriter Steven Phillip Smith and the Keaches writing scripts. The actor brothers had David, Keith & Robert Carradine set to join them as the Youngers, Randy & Dennis Quaid as the Millers and Beau & Jeff Bridges as the treacherous Fords. Cast in Hurricane, James Keach met producer Tim Zinneman, who saw a movie there and helped attach Walter Hill as director. Guitarist Ry Cooder would be entrusted by Hill to compose and arrange the music, beginning a collaboration that would span two decades.

In spite of its casting scheme, the real star of The Long Riders is Ry Cooder, who utilizes Civil War ballads and rapturous bluegrass to provide texture to the tough, contentious world of Jesse James. It’s a place where strangers become friends by sharing that they served under the Stars and Bars and conversely, playing “The Battle Cry of Freedom” can get a guitar player shot. The Long Riders makes little effort to document who James was and the film is so much better off for it. The loosely sewn narrative tested audiences at the time, yet the approach fits the material seamlessly: defeated but dangerous men drifting through the postwar South. Highlights include David Carradine and James Remar locked in an epic knife duel, while the scenes between Carradine and Pamela Reed crackle with wit and sexual energy. As action films go, this is one that genuinely loves women.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5,017 users: 70% for The Long Riders

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“I finally realized that the only way I was going to get my career jump-started was if I created my own project and then held onto it tenaciously, like an abalone, until somebody would put up the money for it. So I conceived a project that had the imagery I could create cost-effectively with my experience in visual effects. It had some of that imagery but not so much that the budget was proportionately large, because I knew no one would trust me with a large budget.” James Cameron interviewed by Robert J. Emery for The Directors: Take One

The Terminator (1984)
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron with Gale Ann Hurd
Produced by Gale Ann Hurd
107 minutes

By now, anyone with ears should have heard of The Terminator, a down and dirty science fiction action thriller about Adam and Eve on the run from a killer cyborg played by the future governor of California. A surprise box office hit that was championed by enough critics to qualify as a success on every level, few at the time may have realized how extraordinary it was that this movie ever got made, while those studying the DIY production techniques today might miss what a great movie it is. In Los Angeles of the year 2029, machines have risen from the nuclear apocalypse they triggered against mankind to wage what has turned into a losing war against the survivors. In a last desperate act, a cybernetic organism known as a Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is sent to Los Angeles of the year 1984.

Also traveling back in time naked as the day he was born is Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn). After the Terminator visits an unlucky gunsmith (Dick Miller), it begins assassinating every “Sarah Connor” in greater Los Angeles. The next Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) realizes she’s in danger and calls police from a nightclub. The steady Lt. Traxler (Paul Winfield) urges her to stay in public until LAPD can get to her, but the Terminator displays no regard for witnesses as it attacks. Reese rescues Sarah and explains that the Terminator has targeted the young waitress to eliminate her unborn son, who’s destined to lead mankind to victory against the machines. Once captured by police, Traxler, his partner (Lance Henriksen) and a psychologist (Earl Boen) offer Sarah a rational explanation for her ordeal. Their theory lasts as long as it takes for the Terminator to track Sarah to the police station.

While on the payroll of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, James Cameron was promoted out of the fx department with battlefield speed. When his first gig as director — Piranha II: The Spawning — ended badly for all interested parties, Cameron had to create a project for himself. Mixing low cost locations with a sci-fi element that favored special effects, Cameron backed into the idea of a robotic hitman sent through time, arrived on the title Terminator and wrote most of a screenplay. A former production manager at New World named Gale Ann Hurd helped polish the script, which Cameron sold to her for one dollar in a pact that he’d direct it. Hurd spent two years struggling to raise money for that, finally cajoling Hemdale Film Corporation to finance Terminator and Orion Pictures to distribute it. Shot with a single camera, the picture caught critics and the industry by shock when it opened #1 at the U.S. box office.

The Terminator is the ultimate B-movie. Like the relentless killing machine that became the best known role of the Austrian Oak’s career, Cameron locks in on his target audience and in terms of artistry and intensity, keeps coming. Over-delivering became standard operating procedure for Cameron but in a departure from his big budget action movies, the violence here is as uncompromising as it is audacious, with police officers and even women mowed down or blown apart by gunfire. What lifts The Terminator out of the grindhouse and into the Library of Congress (where it was preserved in 2008) is its foreboding of how dependent we’ve truly become on machines and where we’re headed if we surrender our humanity completely. Unfolding over a 24-hour time frame, the cast is well picked for the nonstop physicality of the story, while the electronic score by Brad Fiedel strikes a powerful doomsday vibe.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 685,301 users: 81% for The Terminator

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“The best thing about Red Dragon (Universal), the second adaptation of Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel, is that it reminds you how scary and seminal the first adaptation — Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986) — was. This new movie, directed by Brett Ratner, recycles the same narrative, many of the same lines, and even some of the same camera set-ups, but it stubbornly refuses to haunt … you could be watching a plodding, Hollywood-studio remake of some idiosyncratic foreign classic: The beats are the same, but the eerie vibe has been lost in translation.” David Edelstein reviews Red Dragon for Slate Magazine, October 2002

Manhunter (1986)
Directed by Michael Mann
Screenplay by Michael Mann, based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Produced by Richard Roth
121 minutes (theatrical version)/ 124 minutes (director’s cut)

For those who’ve feasted on almost every variation of the psycho killer genre — particularly through TV forensics shows, with their nice and tidy finishes in under an hour — this special category of crime thriller begins and ends with filmmaker Michael Mann’s fervent and nearly flawless adaptation of Thomas Harris’ 1981 bestseller Red Dragon. The tightly wound source material launched a franchise and still endures as the ultimate dance between predator and prey, yet the original film version has precision moves and timing all its own. FBI Special Agent Will Graham (William Petersen) is semi-retired and living in Marathon, Florida with his wife Molly (Kim Greist) and 11-year-old son Kevin (David Seaman) when his boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) visits the beach with a plea for help.

Graham’s dark talent lies in his ability to enter the mind of a killer and think as they think. To track down a sociopath who’s slain two families — earning the nickname “Tooth Fairy” for the post-mortem bite marks he’s left on the women — Graham reaches out to Dr. Hannibal Lektor (Brian Cox), a homicidal psychiatrist who Graham almost died bringing to justice. A note recovered in Lektor’s cell indicates the doctor is in communication with Tooth Fairy through coded ads placed in a tabloid. A gambit to lure Tooth Fairy to Graham using sleazy journalist Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) backfires when the killer makes a date with Freddy instead. Revealed to be a gargantuan, socially awkward lab tech named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), “Tooth Fairy” is drawn out of his shell by a blind co-worker (Joan Allen) who threatens to become Dollarhyde’s next victim.

Film rights to Red Dragon were snared by producer Dino De Laurentiis and after David Lynch tangled with the material — which he found too violent for his taste — Michael Mann was approached. The executive producer of TV’s new sensation Miami Vice, Mann had corresponded with convict Dennis Wayne Wallace for a penal script he’d since abandoned. Using an FBI agent to descend into the psychology of a criminal opened a door Mann had been looking for into that world. To play Will Graham, the director held out for William Petersen, who Mann had auditioned for the role that went to Jim Belushi in Thief. In a battle over the film’s title, Mann was overruled by De Laurentiis, who felt Red Dragon was too similar to his maligned cop thriller Year of the Dragon. Released in late summer with scant marketing support, Manhunter was dismissed by many critics. At the time, audiences ignored it as well.

What Michael Mann brings to the Hannibal Lechter game — a pastime revisited by Jonathan Demme, Ridley Scott, Brett Ratner and Peter Webber with diminishing attention — is a relentless pace and brooding chill that evokes Thomas Harris’ page turner, even if much of the author’s backstory is left in the dugout. Instead of focusing on the peccadilloes of the prey, Harris created a hunter whose skills set is far more compelling. Mann knows that guy well. The scenes between Will Graham and his family have an emotional purity, even with the starkest of dialogue, while close attention is paid to the psychologists, cryptologists and ballistics experts working together toward a common goal. Collaborating with casting director Bonnie Timmermann and composer Michel Rubini, Mann was restricted in budget and in time, but in spite of them, perhaps because of them, cranked out the definitive thriller of its class.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 48,623 users: 70% for Manhunter

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

“We sent Barry Bernardi, who was our location manager, who also served as our associate producer, on a sort of all-expense paid trip across the country looking for the worst city in America. He stopped off at various places and they were much too clean and unworkable. He eventually called us up from St. Louis. There had been a recent fire, which had destroyed about 20% of the downtown area. Block after block was burned-out rubble. In some places there was absolutely nothing, so that you could see three or four blocks away these brownstone buildings in the distance.” Debra Hill interviewed by Michael Beeler for Cinefantastique, September 1996

Escape From New York (1981)
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by John Carpenter and Nick Castle
Produced by Larry Franco, Debra Hill
99 minutes

Juggling dire predictions for the United States as the nation dragged itself out of the 1970s and the creative freneticism of filmmakers in complete rapture with their medium is Debra Hill‘s production of a John Carpenter film, Escape From New York. One of the most enduring B-movies ever made, this low budget cirque du soleil stretched its budget and its vision to the limits, delivering a show quite unlike any action picture, sci-fi movie or western had up to that point in time, or for that matter, since. In the near future of 1997, soaring crime has resulted in modifications to the city of that never sleeps: Manhattan is now the country’s one maximum security prison. Waterways and bridges are mined. Paramilitary units and a containment wall surround the island, where the only rule is that once you go in, you don’t come out.

When Air Force One is hijacked and the president (Donald Pleasance) is jettisoned en route to a summit, Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) opts for a one-man rescue by convict Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), nihilist with attitude who “volunteers” when he discovers tiny charges have been injected into his arteries. Given 24 hours to return the president, Plissken lands a glider atop the World Trade Center and with the clock ticking, navigates a Big Apple now the domain of deadly gangs and the worlds they’ve created. Plissken is rescued from cannibals by a cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) who reunites the gunslinger with his compadre Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), who occupies the Public Library solving problems for The Duke (Isaac Hayes), feared leader of the gang that runs New York and have taken the president.

Intrigued by the potential for NYC as an urban jungle after he sat through Death Wish in 1974, USC Film School grad John Carpenter wrote a strange, violent and apocalyptic script no studio wanted to touch titled Escape From New York. Six years later, Carpenter and his producer Debra Hill dusted it off to fulfill the second of a two-picture deal with Avco Embassy Pictures, bringing in a college buddy named Nick Castle to inject some irreverence into the nonstop action. Carpenter dreamed of Clint Eastwood playing Snake Plissken, while his financiers lobbied hard for Charles Bronson. Going against type, a child actor all grown up named Kurt Russell was cast, while the urban decay the filmmakers were desperately searching for was found in St. Louis, where a fire in 1977 had reduced 20% of downtown to ruins.

While the geopolitical landscape of Escape From New York remained purely speculative, Carpenter’s prophecy of rising gang activity and rioting actually came to pass, at least on the West Coast, where a deliriously overcooked 1996 sequel, Escape From L.A., was set. The joys of the original are the character actors who are as solid in front of the camera as the poor and hungry crew is behind them. In addition to Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Tom Atkins bring an understated nobility to their respective roles as gun moll and deputy warden. Carpenter composed a crackerjack musical score synthesized by Alan Howarth, while Dean Cundey utilized newly developed Panavision lenses to light exterior shots with remarkable depth. A classic western at its heart, the film’s “fuck you” attitude toward authority seems to embody the best punk rock music bombarding airwaves at the time.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 65,662 users: 72% for Escape From New York

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: N/A

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Detroit 9000 (1973)
Directed by Arthur Marks
Written by Orville H. Hampton
Produced by Arthur Marks
106 minutes

Despite using formulas from just about every cop thriller you’ve ever seen, Detroit 9000 has a refreshing taste that’s difficult to resist. The first black themed film shot in Motown, Detroit 9000 was financed and produced by General Film Corporation, a B-movie distributor co-founded by Arthur Marks, who’d segued from Perry Mason episodes in the ’60s to drive-in features in the ’70s. Marks would make three highly entertaining pictures dubbed “blaxploitation”  due to the racial complexion of their casts — Bucktown (1975), J.D.’s Revenge (1976) and Monkey Hustle (1976) — but Quentin Tarantino was so enamored by Detroit 9000 that he chose it for a theatrical and home video re-release in 1998 through his short lived retro distributor Rolling Thunder. Tarantino even devoted a track on the Jackie Brown CD soundtrack to a line of dialogue from the movie.

Ridiculously over the top — with a body count that keeps pace with the annual homicide figures for Detroit and cheeseball dialogue whenever men and women mix it up — Detroit 9000 has a pleasing familiarity more welcoming than worn out. A country cousin to Lethal Weapon, budget limitations reduce the pyrotechnics and give the audience room to chew over the racial complexities of a black cop struggling to identify with a white partner on a case where the racial profile of their suspects is political dynamite either way. The plot is both idiotic and irrelevant. What makes Detroit 9000 worth viewing are the performances, with Alex Rocco as an irascible Archie Bunker cop and a vivacious Vonetta McGee as the most wonderful archetype in the movies, the call girl with a conscience. Luchi De Jesus composed the pulse pounding music.

Trouble hits the Motor City when U.S. Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger) returns home to announce his candidacy for governor at the “Hail Our Heroes” ball for the black community. In a crackerjack robbery, four masked thieves make off with Hale’s war chest of $400,000 in jewelry and cash contributions. Detroit PD puts its best cop on the case: Lt. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco), who makes up for what he lacks in racial sensitivity with street savvy. Meanwhile, pro footballer turned homicide cop Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) investigates a dismembered body pulled out of the Detroit River. Running with a hunch that their cases are linked, Williams proposes they work together. Hesitant to the idea of a partner, Bassett is overruled by Captain Chalmers (Robert Phillips), an old friend Bassett accuses of taking his promotion.

Visiting his stressed out wife at Longview Sanitarium, Bassett is harangued for refusing to sacrifice his ethics to do a favor here or there for some cash. Unsure whether his enigmatic white partner is on the take or not, Williams works a tip that Congressman Hale’s right-hand man isn’t too thrilled about his pompous, self-serving boss running for governor and might have organized the robbery. Bassett has more luck with the manager of the brothel he frequents, who reveals that two out-of-town clients came in and aroused suspicion. Bassett & Williams suspect that the thieves must have had contact inside the cathouse and sure enough, professional lady of leisure Roby Harris (Vonetta McGee) warns her manager Ferdy (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) that the cops are on their trail. Shootouts, boat chases and double crosses ensue.

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Across 110th Street (1972)
Directed by Barry Shear
Screenplay by Luther Davis, based on the novel Across 110th by Wally Ferris
Produced by Ralph Serpe, Fouad Said
102 minutes

Short on pimps, prostitutes or private dicks, long on urban decay as New York caught a peek at itself in the mirror, Across 110th Street is one of the few legitimate A-movies to emerge from the “blaxploitation” genre. Hitting bookshelves in 1970, Across 110th was the first and last published novel by Wally Ferris, a career television cameraman who worked at WNEW in Manhattan for many years. United Artists acquired film rights and Film Guarantors — a motion picture completion bond company — made what would be a brief splash into production. Producer Fouad Said hired veteran playwright/ screenwriter Luther Davis to adapt a script and Barry Shear, whose only notable feature was the ’60s cult movie Wild In The Streets, to direct; Shear did have hundreds of hours of TV credits on his resume, from Hawaii Five-O to Julia to The Streets of San Francisco.

Anthony Quinn came on board as executive producer, but when the role of Frank Matelli was apparently turned down by John Wayne and Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, Quinn stepped in front of the camera. Across 110th Street barely qualifies as “blaxploitation”; the same production could have been staged a decade earlier (or later) and would be far better known as the morally complex, street smart film noir it actually is. The bleak but fast moving story examines how one robbery ripples across a community, from the cops struggling to keep the peace, to the perps looking to make a clean getaway, to the civilians trying to make it through the day. While Quinn doesn’t seem fully committed to his character of Archie Bunker cop, Yaphet Kotto and Paul Benjamin are electric. Bobby Womack wrote (with J.J. Johnson) and performed five smooth tunes.

Summer gets a whole lot hotter when three black men — epileptic ex-con Jim Harris (Paul Benjamin), dry cleaner Joe Logart (Ed Bernard) and driver Henry Jackson (Antonio Fargas) — rob a bank operated by the Italian mob in Harlem. The brazen heist ends with two blacks, two Italians and two New York City police officers dead and flips the neighborhood upside down. Don Gennarro (Frank Mascetta) dispatches his dilettante son-in-law Nick D’Salvio (Anthony Franciosa) to restore order by capturing the perpetrators and making an example of them. Meanwhile, Capt. Frank Matelli (Anthony Quinn), a veteran of enforcing his own style of law in Harlem, is disconcerted to learn that the investigation has been handed to Lt. William Pope (Yaphet Kotto), whose youth and ethnicity reflect the new NYPD.

Sent uptown to crack skulls, D’Salvio is greeted as little more than “a punk errand boy” by Doc Johnson (Richard Ward), the kingpin who runs Harlem on behalf of the Italians. Doc dispatches his fearsome right hand man Shevvy (Gilbert Lewis) to piece together information on the robbery, one $100 bill at a time. Shevvy approaches a dancer named Laurelene (Gloria Hendry) for help, unaware that her boyfriend Jim Harris is the man they’re after. Trying to stay one step ahead of the hoods, Matelli and Pope are slowed by contrasting methods in everything from how to question a suspect to how to do favors in Harlem. As the night drags on, the 55-year-old cop realizes that his era is over. Mobsters, police and thieves finally meet atop an abandoned tenement on Lenox Avenue & 142nd Street, where Harris is holed up and armed to the teeth.

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

The Mack (1973)
Directed by Michael Campus
Written by Robert J. Poole and Max Julien (uncredited)
Produced by Harvey Bernhard
110 minutes

Helping graft the message and style of hip hop, there’s room to argue that The Mack is flat out the best “blaxploitation” movie ever made. Robert J. Poole was a convict who — according to legend — wrote a 40-page treatment for a movie on prison toilet paper. Titled Black Is Beautiful, Poole ultimately got his material to producer Harvey Bernhard. Fascinated with the concept of a street Svengali, Bernhard hired a young (white) filmmaker named Michael Campus, who’d shot a few documentaries for ABC, to direct. To play the title role, Max Julien was approached. Julien had written the screenplay for Cleopatra Jones and given the go-ahead to fill in Poole’s blueprint, got on board. Traveling to Oakland, Campus and Julien sought the help of the Ward brothers, the four men who ran the bay city’s underworld. Frank Ward agreed to take the filmmakers into his world, provided they took Ward into theirs.

In addition to being granted a cameo, Frank Ward inspired the title character as Campus and Julien fleshed out the script. Murdered during its production, Ward had the film dedicated to him. Financed by the soon to be defunct Cinerama Releasing Corp., The Mack was shot on a substantially low budget, yet endures because nearly every frame seems infused with a pure love for movies. Julien and co-star Richard Pryor bring star level magnetism to this low down dirty B-movie, while the necessities of shooting on the fly gives the film the power of a documentary on 1970s Oakland. The Mack is still a shoot ‘em up at heart and does get repetitive, but it’s also politically hip to the conflict between capitalism and the greater good of the community. If that’s too much to ponder, Willie Hutch wrote and performed nine killer tunes, including “I Choose You,” “Theme of The Mack” and “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out”.

John “Goldie” Mickens (Max Julien) and his partner Slim (Richard Pryor) shoot it out with gunmen who’ve ambushed them in a junkyard. Unable to escape, Goldie is taunted by two cops (Dan Gordon, William Watson) who debate whether to finish the hustler off or not. Enduring almost five years in prison, Goldie returns to the streets of Oakland. He visits his mentor, The Blind Man (Paul Harris) who ruminates about pimping and the opportunity there for the taking if his protégé adopts the right mental angle. Goldie runs into an old girlfriend named Lulu (Carol Speed), an “outlaw” turning tricks; she implores Goldie to manage her. The ex-con next reunites with his brother Olinga (Roger Mosley), a political organizer dedicated to black empowerment and to running the pimps and pushers out of the community.

Announcing to his brother that he’s down with self-empowerment — while keeping the true nature of his business secret from his Mother (Juanita Moore) — Goldie dedicates himself to becoming “the meanest mack who ever lived.” He reteams with Slim and with Lulu’s help, Goldie’s “professional ladies of leisure” are drilled in the finer points of shoplifting and grand larceny. To control their minds, Goldie rents a planetarium and lays down his rules under the cosmos. Rising to such success that he wins Mack of the Year honors at the annual Players Ball, Goldie spurns an offer from his former employer Fatman (George Murdock) to return to work for him. The vile cops who busted Goldie five years ago resurface next, intent on taking him down. To get out of the game with his life intact, Goldie turns to his brother for help.

What do you say?

Logging in to Netflix Instant for a movie to watch is like being hungry and shown to a food replicator. It doesn’t solve my problem — it introduces one thousand new ones. Luckily, I can see which genres are rated higher in nutritional content, in this case, 4 or 4 ½ star ratings out of 5 stars. “Documentary” had a lot of those. So did “Anime & Animation”. In the month of November, I take another trip around the globe to sample recent animated feature films. Next stop: Tel Aviv, Israel.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Directed by Ari Folman
Written by Ari Folman
Produced by Ari Folman, Gerhard Meixner, Roman Paul, Serge Lalou, Yael Nahlieli
89 minutes

Cutting a harrowing combat documentary with bargain basement Flash animation, Waltz with Bashir transports us across a landscape unlike any other, blending the real with the surreal, atrocity with the vexing nature of memory. Having suppressed his own personal experiences of the Lebanon War, army reservist and screenwriter Ari Folman began the process of directing his first feature film by soliciting interviews with veterans over the Internet. These formed the basis of a script. The next step was videotaping both interviews and scripted segments on a soundstage in Tel Aviv. The Bridget Folman Film Gang — named after the filmmaker’s dog and consisting of eight animators, four illustrators, one After Effects artist and one editor — used the live action footage as a reference to draw storyboards, then animatics, which in turn took four years to animate.

Shown in bits and pieces to financiers, a budget of roughly $1.7 million was raised, namely from Franco-German public TV network Arte. Expecting a furor in his home country, Folman was surprised when Israel embraced Waltz with Bashir and helped it land an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Unlike something that feels programmed for film festivals or awards, Waltz with Bashir breaks out with striking originality. Dramatizing combat in a war zone that was 20 minutes from the homes of many of the soldiers fighting it would have made for a riveting enough movie, but Folman uses more than one brushstroke here. Dreamlike segments dovetail into the documentary aspects of the film beautifully. Of the 3,500 keyframes that comprise the picture, art director David Polonsky drew at least 75%.

Filmmaker Ari Folman meets his friend Boaz Rein-Buskila for a drink. Rein shares a dream in which the vengeful spirits of twenty-six dogs he shot on patrols during the Lebanon War of 1982 haunt him. Folman carries no memories of the war, despite his proximity to the massacres at Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila. His friend Ori Sivian suggests that memory is fluid and can be replaced with images that may or may not be real. To unlock his memories of the massacre, Folman seeks out veterans who might be able to shed some light on his activities during the war. Traveling to Holland, he visits a classmate named “Carmi Cna’an” whose memories include being pulled into the sea by a blue woman before deploying in the city of Sidon. Cna’an has no recollection of the refugee massacres.

Folman is hit with a flood of memories of the Lebanon War. Only 19, he spent the early days of the conflict transporting the bodies of wounded or killed soldiers. Veteran Ronny Dyag recounts his guilt surviving an enemy ambush on his tank by fleeing battle, but has no recollection of seeing Folman. Shmuel Frenkel — a sergeant given to covering himself in patchouli oil so his men wouldn’t lose him during night patrols — recalls Folman being by his side from training on, though Folman is unable to. Post-trauma expert Zahava Solomn explains that he may have dissociated his memories in order to cope with what he experienced in Lebanon. The more stories he hears about the massacre of Palestinian refugee camps by Israeli backed Christian militias, the closer he’s able to put himself to the genocide unleashed twenty five years ago.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 9,517 users: 89% for Waltz with Bashir

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 91 for Waltz with Bashir

What do you say?

In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring high tech conspiracies in L.A.

Blue Thunder (1983)
Directed by John Badham
Written by Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby and Dean Riesner (uncredited)
Produced by Gordon Carroll
109 minutes

There haven’t been many movies about the LAPD’s Air Support Division. That might be due to logistics, or maybe the best picture you could possibly make in that milieu has already been done: Blue Thunder. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was so incensed by the ghetto bird buzzing his L.A. abode that he was inspired to write a thriller — with USC Film School buddy Don Jakoby — about a Travis Bickle type going AWOL in a police helicopter above the City of Angels. Columbia Pictures loved the ballistic third act, the crazed lone nut in the first and second acts not so much, prompting rewrites in which the LAPD became good guys and government spooks were invented as bad guys. O’Bannon & Jakoby at the time lambasted the finished film, a box office hit that inspired two TV series in the ‘80s; Airwolf on CBS and the short lived Blue Thunder on ABC, one even cheesier than the other.

Blue Thunder is wound like a Swiss watch and designed with almost the same level of craftsmanship, briskly introducing us to Los Angeles, the rigmarole of the Air Support Division (dubbed “Astro Division” in the film to avoid hate mail flooding the LAPD) and issues of privacy on the approach to the year 1984. The action is set up gracefully and executed tenaciously, while a post-Watergate malaise gives the film an edge. John Alonzo’s lighting and Arthur Rubenstein’s electronic score were cutting edge for their time and hold up well, while the casting is superb. It’s easy to forget how strong a leading man Roy Scheider was, while the magnificent Warren Oates — in his final movie — chews up scenery like a buzzsaw. Director John Badham shot the film back-to-back with WarGames and was in a zone, fusing high concept, high tech, compelling characters and fun without crossing over into cartoon.

Maverick police helicopter pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) breaks in a new partner, the baby faced Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern) who’s transferred over for some supposed peace and quiet in the haze above Los Angeles. While the men spy on a yoga practitioner in Encino known to perform in the nude, a city commissioner is attacked outside her home in Brentwood and shot. Reprimanded for his flight patterns by the loquacious Captain Braddock (Warren Oates), Murphy contends that the attack on the city commissioner was no attempted rape but a stakeout. A Vietnam vet compressed with PTSD, Murphy makes up with his oddball girlfriend (Candy Clark) and returns to the crime scene, where a memo he retrieves from the commissioner’s lawn has the cryptic word THOR written on it.

Assigned a special detail, Murphy accompanies Braddock and two feds to the demonstration of a prototype helicopter designed for crowd control in the Los Angeles ’84 Summer Olympics. “Blue Thunder” is equipped with a 20mm gun turret, turbine boost, whisper mode and surveillance devices that see and hear through walls. The test pilot is Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), a nefarious operator Murphy knew in ‘Nam. In an attempt to rub out his competition, Cochrane sabotages Murphy’s chopper. Staying alive long enough to take Blue Thunder for a test spin, Murphy and Lymangood discover the feds have big plans for THOR (Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response), instigating social unrest in L.A. to justify military expenditures. Framed by Cochrane and the feds running the project, Murphy commandeers their toy and takes to the friendly skies.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 147 users: 65% for Blue Thunder

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes. Joe is not a professional curator and may not even show potential as an amateur one, but comments and recommendations for future double features are welcome below.

Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979)
Directed by Richard Lester
Written by Allan Burns, based on characters created by William Goldman
Produced by Gabriel Katzka, Steven Bach
115 minutes

The first prequel Hollywood ever cranked out is also the answer to the question of which one remains the best, Butch and Sundance: The Early Days. That may be faint praise in the company of titles like The Flintstones In Viva Rock Vegas, Exorcist: The Beginning or the Star Wars prequels, but if there absolutely positively had to be another Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, without Paul Newman or Robert Redford — whose characters were shot up by the Bolivian army in the climax of the original — then this belated follow-up is actually pretty good. A blithe screenplay constructed by Allan Burns (co-creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda), a solid cast and comic flourishes by director Richard Lester that deftly sidestep parody while providing plenty of grins all add up to a thoroughly enjoyable western adventure.

Part of the fun is the slight of hand that permits Tom Berenger and William Katt to pull off roles originated by Paul Newman and Robert Redford. That’s not saying they’re preferable to Newman and Redford (nobody is) or really recapture their on-screen chemistry (no one can) but Berenger and Katt hold their own and their casting keeps us in the movie rather than throwing us out of it. The Early Days recognizes what made William Goldman’s original script very good: surprises, action that tilts toward the irreverent and colorful banter zinging between the title characters. Collaborating with director of photography László Kovács and art director Jackson De Govia, Richard Lester spared no expense giving the film both visual panache and certain wit. None of it resembles the Old West and the film lacks the female presence Katharine Ross brought to original, but it all works fine.

One year into a prison sentence for horse theft, Robert A. Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy (Tom Berenger) is brought before the governor for a parole hearing. Vouched for by Sheriff Ray Bledsoe (Jeff Corey) — the crusty lawman who arrested him — Butch promises that if set free he will most certainly commit more crimes, but agrees not to in the state of Wyoming. Visiting a casino, Butch has his new pistol stolen by a lightning fast stick up artist named Harry Longabaugh (William Katt). To retrieve his gun, Butch joins the posse of noted lawman and tracker Joe Le Fors (Peter Weller) who gives up the hunt when his men show little inclination to pursue the kid into a rock fortification. Butch stays behind to parlay with Longabaugh, suggesting that his intellect and the kid’s reflexes would make a good team.

Returning to his old hideout, Butch is reunited with cattle rustler O.C. Hanks (Brian Dennehy) before being swept up in a raid by Sheriff Bledsoe. Convinced Butch set him up, O.C. threatens to kill him first chance he gets. Butch and the kid get their feet wet as bandits by knocking over high roller casinos and such. Butch bestows his young partner with the handle Sundance Kid, due to jail time the kid spent in Sundance, Wyoming and their adventures take them through snowbound Telluride and to the farmhouse in Circleville, Utah which Butch occasionally shares with his wife Mary (Jill Eikenberry) and two sons. Life as a citizen doesn’t sit well with Butch and with the help of two bumbling outlaws (John Schuck, Christopher Lloyd), Butch and Sundance attempt to rob a train carrying U.S. Cavalry troops and cash.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 2 users: 100% for Butch and Sundance: The Early Days

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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