Kong: Skull Island

Now, more than ever, Hollywood studios are all about movie franchises – not just one sequel after another, but several franchises existing in a larger one, often referred to as a cinematic universe. Studio executives gamble hundreds of millions of dollars on these individual franchises in the hopes that they’ll be commercially successful. Marvel Studios led the charge and has been doing it longer and more successful than anyone else while its rival, DC Entertainment, has had decidedly mixed results.

This hasn’t stopped every studio from trying with Warner Bros. wading into the fray with Godzilla (2014), the first franchise within the MonsterVerse. It was successful enough financially to embolden the studio to go ahead with their second franchise reboot – Kong: Skull Island (2017). Instead of setting it during the 1930s as Peter Jackson’s epic reimagining had done in 2005, the filmmakers decided to set it during the Vietnam War with all sorts of references to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). It’s a nifty idea but does it translate into a decent movie?

Unlike Godzilla, this movie wastes no time introducing the Big Guy in a fast-paced prologue set somewhere in the South Pacific during World War II. Is the purpose of this sequence to establish Kong’s presence in roughly the same geographic neighborhood as Godzilla thereby linking these franchises? The opening credits take us through three decades of history until we reach 1973 and the last days of the Vietnam War.

Bill Randa (John Goodman), a senior government official, and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), a young geologist, fast-talk their way into mounting an expedition to the mysterious Skull Island complete with a military escort. The soldiers were supposed to be going home but their superior officer, Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), a career military man, is more than happy to take on one more mission.

Since they are venturing into uncharted territory, Randa hires professional tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), a former British Special Air Service captain. Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) is an acclaimed photojournalist intrigued by the air of mystery that surrounds the island and finagles her way onto the expedition. Both Conrad and Weaver are outsiders and suspicious of the true nature of this mission, which creates an uneasy bond between them.

This movie makes some odd choices along the way, like the scene where the expedition flies a squadron of helicopters through a dense and difficult storm that surrounds the island but all the tension of this scene is drained by Packard droning on about the Icarus myth. Why? Samuel L. Jackson’s flat delivery is supposed to demonstrate his character’s unflappable nature, I suppose, but it also robs the scene of the white-knuckle intensity that everyone else is experiencing. The establishing shots of the lush island are breathtaking and then the filmmakers ruin the mood by blasting Black Sabbath over the soundtrack a la “Ride of the Valkyries” in Apocalypse Now.

Fortunately, this clumsy moment is disrupted by a Kong attack, captured in agonizing slow motion and then a fantastic shot of the giant ape in front of the setting sun with the helicopters coming at him. Not surprisingly, Kong makes short work of the helicopters in a thrillingly staged sequence as he ruthlessly dispatches these aggressive interlopers on his turf while Packard quietly fumes in anger as Jackson gets to do his best Captain Ahab impression, growling his way through his dialogue while doing his best Kubrickian death stare. You know he will make it his life’s mission to take the giant ape down in retribution for killing several of his men.

As determined as Packard is, Randa is even more obsessed with killing Kong for his own personal reasons that John Goodman chillingly reveals to Packard. Meanwhile, Conrad and Weaver just want to escape the island, alive if possible, but it won’t be easy as they encounter all sorts of creatures – some benign, some very deadly. The movie quickly divides its time between Packard and his men and Conrad and Weaver.

John C. Reilly’s scene-stealing turn as a World War II pilot that crash landed near the island and has been trapped their ever since acts as our grizzled tour guide to this exotic land and its inhabitants while also acting as Skull Island’s equivalent to Dennis Hopper’s gonzo photojournalist in Apocalypse Now. He provides much-welcome levity amidst the CGI workouts and cardboard character stereotypes while also injecting a humanistic energy and vitality that is largely absent from the rest of the movie. To that end, Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson aren’t given much to do except gape at amazement at the CGI wonders the filmmakers put in front of them, or grim-faced determination as they run away from another computer generated monster.

I see what the filmmakers are trying to do with Skull Island – fuse the hallucinogenic madness of Apocalypse Now with King Kong (1933), which is admittedly an intriguing idea. That being said, Skull Island comes across more as a great movie pitch that hasn’t been developed any further than that. Say what you will about Peter Jackson’s King Kong, but at least it was a personal statement and a love letter to the original film while Skull Island feels more like franchise building, but I do appreciate the 1970s Vietnam War era setting; it’s just a shame that the filmmakers don’t do more with it than endlessly reference Apocalypse Now and use it as an excuse to play classic rock over the soundtrack at various points. The movie has performed well at the box office so mission accomplished I suppose.

Speed Racer

In retrospect, the Wachowski brothers (at the time, Larry and Andy) peaked critically and commercially with The Matrix trilogy. The good will they endeared with the first film gradually dissipated until the full-on backlash came with the third installment from which they’ve never recovered. They continue to make ambitious, expensive sci-fi epics like Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015) to routinely negative reviews and lackluster box office returns.

It started with Speed Racer (2008), the Wachowskis’ attempt to reach a broader audience by making a family film based on the popular Japanese anime and manga of the same name. The film was high-profile flop, getting savaged by critics and failing to come close to recouping its pricey $120 million budget. In recent years, the film has begun to undergo something of a critical re-evaluation and I’ve always been struck by its strong visual sense and its touching ode to the familial bond as well as its thinly-veiled critique of the destructive effect of corporate greed on the purity of sports.

The young Speed Racer we first meet is a hyperactive dreamer that fantasizes about racing fast cars just like his older brother Rex (Scott Porter) whom he idolizes. He would rather spend all of his time at the racetrack hanging out with his brother than in school. Rex teaches his younger brother everything he knows, like how to use his instincts and his senses to race. It’s a wonderful scene that provides crucial insight into what motivates Speed to race – the love of the sport and of his brother who died tragically in a race.

The Wachowskis also use this scene to establish the film’s striking visual sense – a hyper-stylized, vibrant color scheme that hasn’t been seen to this degree since Warren Beatty’s bold take on Dick Tracy (1990). Speaking of Beatty’s opus, Cruncher Block (John Benfield) and his cartoonish goons (including one with the most glorious set of mutton chops I’ve ever seen) with their tommy guns seem like a nod to that film, albeit with a modern twist. Establishing the world of Speed Racer right from the get-go is an important decision because it let’s us know that this is a fantasy world with its own look, much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) or Sin City (2005). The Wachowskis also introduce their innovative take on car racing and car chases, employing the immersive, time-bending aesthetic of the fight sequences in The Matrix films to Speed Racer, dubbed, appropriately enough, “car-fu.”

The flashbacks not only establish the emotional bond between Speed and Rex over racing but shows the cut-throat tactics rival racing teams will employ when a bomb is delivered to Speed’s home, only to be quickly dealt with by his brother. It is ominous foreshadowing of the lengths rival teams will go to in order to stop Speed.

The dilemma Speed (Emile Hirsch) faces comes in the form of E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam), the smug, super rich owner of Royalton Industries, and who courts the young driver to race for his team, enticing him with a lavish lifestyle and unlimited resources. The Wachowskis make a point of contrasting Royalton’s calculated corporate culture with its obedient, uniformed employees, automated car factory and rigorously physically trained racers with the Racer team that still works out of Pops (John Goodman) garage where he and Sparky (Kick Gurry) spend weeks building a car with their own hands. They are supported by a small team of people that consist of Speed’s mom (Susan Sarandon), his little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt), and Speed’s girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci).

After rebuffing Royalton’s advances, Speed loses his next race, which leaves him disillusioned. It takes his mom to remind him what is important in life when she tells him, “When I watch you do some of the things you do I feel like I’m watching someone paint or make music. I go to the races to watch you make art and it’s beautiful and inspiring and everything art should be.” This passionate speech is the heart of the film and perfectly encapsulates its central theme. The rest of the film depicts Speed’s mission to expose Royalton’s corrupt practices with the help of the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox).

Emile Hirsch brings his trademark intensity to the role and it is interesting to see an actor who mostly plies his trade in challenging independent cinema bring that approach to a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. He manages to not get lost amidst all the eye-popping visual effects and has decent chemistry with Christina Ricci, whose big eyes and exuberant take on Trixie, resembles a live-action anime character.

John Goodman gets to engage in a couple of action sequences and, more importantly, a meaningful scene where Pops has a heart-to-heart talk with Speed. Veteran character actors like Goodman and Susan Sarandon tend to get lost in big budget blockbusters like this one – relegated to the margins in favor of CGI set pieces but the Wachowskis make sure that they are given moments to actually act and emote. Both of their moments occur at pivotal moments in the film where their characters give their son important advice about life.

Whole essays could be written about Speed Racer’s bold, visual aesthetic. For example, as Racer X’s attack on Cruncher Block’s mobile hang-out is chock-a-block with saturated reds and midnight blues that is pure visual catnip. The film’s style is its substance as the Wachowskis pay homage to the original anime while also making it uniquely their own and in doing so create a very personal movie within the studio system. One can see racing as a metaphor for filmmaking and the Wachowskis seeing themselves as Speed. Like, their principled protagonist, they do not want to lose their personal touch by being seduced with the lavish riches the studios can provide. Like Speed, they must remain true to themselves and the love for their art.

This is evident early on in a scene where Speed tells Royalton why he can’t be a part of his team by recounting a story of when he was young, staying up late one night with his father watching a vintage car race and how that rekindled his love for racing after his brother died. They got caught up in the race as if they were watching it for the first time – “But for Pops it isn’t just as a sport. It’s way more important than that. It’s like a religion.” One gets the feeling that is exactly how the Wachowskis feel about cinema. Naturally, Royalton mistakes Speed’s passion for naiveté and ridicules him, his glad-handing façade disappearing as he shows his true colors. He gives Speed a history lesson, claiming that competitive car racing is fueled by corporate greed and races like the iconic Grand Prix are fixed. He even goes so far as to threaten Speed, telling him that he won’t finish the next race and he’ll ruin Pop’s business.

The film’s innovative style extends to the flashback techniques the Wachowskis employ, complete with stylish scene transitions that succinctly provide crucial motivation for key drivers in an impending race. The eye-popping visuals are unleashed in the Casa Cristo 5000, a deadly off-road race that killed Rex. All bets are off in this race as many drivers employ a myriad of dirty tricks, like shooting green goop at a rival, blades coming out of hubcaps, a sledgehammer launched from underneath a car, and one vehicle that catapult launches a nest of angry bees onto a rival’s car. The action is fast and furious as the Wachowskis are not bound by the traditional rules of physics and this allows them to embody the dynamics of a live-action cartoon in a way that is audacious and inventive as well as pure visual eye candy. This race lays the groundwork for the final one, which comes across as trippy fusion of Rollerball (1975) and Tron (1982) as all the other racers try to take out Speed – it’s the honest racer against a rigged system.

In fact, Rex gives up everything in order to protect his family. He turns his back on them, becomes a dirty racer and ultimately sacrifices his life. The Wachowskis make a point of showing the impact it has on his family. Once Speed becomes a professional racer he constantly lives in the shadow of Rex, honoring his memory and his accomplishments by refusing to beat his records, even though he could. For Speed, it is more than beating records and winning races – it’s about making his parents proud and racing for the sheer love of the sport.

The original 1960s Speed Racer cartoon was the Wachowskis’ introduction to Japanese animation or anime and the impetus for making the film was that “they wanted to do something their nephews and nieces could watch,” said producer Joel Silver in an interview. He had been trying to make a film adaptation since the early 1990s with Vince Vaughn, at one point, campaigning to play Racer X and the various others, like Johnny Depp and music video director Hype Williams, circling the project. Silver acquired the rights in 1996 and hired eight different screenwriters to crack adapting the property but none of them satisfied the demanding producer. While working with the Wachowskis on V for Vendetta (2005), he asked them if they’d be interested in making it. They were hesitant at first but agreed if they could bring something unique to the material.

For the look of the film, production designer Owen Paterson wanted something “quite timeless, retro and midcentury, but set some time in the future,” creating “a parallel world, an exaggeration of color and action and images.” According to visual effects supervisor John Gaeta, they set out to “create something that’s much more fantastical than what we saw in The Matrix films.” They took the idea that in animation there is no matching perspective between the background and foreground and applied photographic techniques so that they had a live-action film built out of flat layers of photos.

To that end, locations scouts and photographers took approximately 10 million 360-degree, high-definition photographs of settings in Greece, Morocco, Italy, France, Germany, Death Valley, and sections of the California coast using ultrahigh-definition cameras. According to Gaeta, they applied an enhancement to these photos or, “sometimes a matte painting over the locations, ahead of the live-action photography. So then, in the movie, out of the window of a Moroccan palace you see the Italian Alps. We have these bizarre combinations that don’t necessarily make sense but they create these very stunning images.” They were then used in scenes utilizing green screen technology on the sets of Studio Babelsberg near Berlin.

Roughly 75-85% of the film was shot on green screens with the rest done on vibrantly painted sets to match the look of the world the Wachowskis were creating. While more than 100 cars were modeled and created digitally, two of them – Speed’s Mach 5 and Racer X’s Shooting Star – were given full-sized replicas with the actors sitting in replica cockpits that were mounted on a hydraulic gimbal platform linked to racing software programmed to pre-conceived sequences.

When Speed Racer was released the critical brickbats came out in force with The New York Times’ A.O. Scott leading the charge: “Mobsters, detectives, sportscasters and ruthless rival racers all parade across the screen, but none of them generate the sparks of humor, danger, energy or nobility that would ignite a sense of pop magic. Speed Racer goes nowhere, and you’d be amazed how long the trip can take.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “D” rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “This newest iteration is about a demon on wheels who’s chasin’ after someone for 135 minutes – which makes for an awful lot of wheel spinning.” The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane wrote, “You could call it entertainment, and use it to wow your children for a couple of hours. To me, it felt like Pop fascism, and I would keep them well away.” The rare positive review came from Time magazine’s Richard Corliss who wrote, “You can tell that everyone had liberated fun making the film; it feels like the group effort of Mensa kids let loose in the paint store.”

I’m ashamed to say that I was swayed by the negative reviews at the time and did not see Speed Racer on the big screen – something I regret deeply since. It was fellow blogger Dennis Cozzalio over at the Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog whose passionate defense of the film inspired me to check it out. He wrote, “Far from finding Speed Racer incoherent, I instead discovered it to be a whooshing marvel which challenged me to see a simple story with fresh, often incredulous eyes, one that doesn’t exploit easy nostalgia but instead takes an elastic approach to the familiar tropes of the cartoon, creating an experience of film merged with digital effects that folds back on itself in exhilarating new ways.”

Not surprisingly, Speed Racer proved to be too idiosyncratic for the masses but, by and large, the Wachowskis have managed to make the films they want to make despite repeated commercial and critical failures. Undoubtedly, the film is a complete failure, commercially speaking (it’s running time is too long for kids to sit through), but on artistic terms it is a triumph – a fascinating allegory for remaining true to one’s self as an artist. Speed Racer is a phantasmagoria of CGI imagery guaranteed to melt your eyeballs and a rare studio film unafraid to bite the corporate hand that fed it, all wrapped up in a brightly colored pop art bow.

SOURCES

Bowles, Scott. “First Look: Speed Racer’s Demon on Wheels.” USA Today. May 30, 2007.

Dunlop, Renee. “The Wachowski Brothers Bring Live Action Anime, Color and Movement to New Levels in Speed Racer.” CGSociety. May 16, 2008.

Hobart, Christy. “The Speed Racer Time Warp.” Los Angeles Times. May 8, 2008.

Kit, Borys. “Speed Hits Live-Action High Gear.” The Hollywood Reporter. November 1, 2006.

Lawrence, Will. “Speed Racer: Fast-Moving World of the Wachowski brothers.” The Telegraph. April 25, 2008.

McCarthy, Erin. “Speed Racer’s Breakthrough CGI Road Rally: Anatomy of a Scene.” Popular Mechanics. October 30, 2009.

“Wachowskis Are Good to Go Speed Racer.” Los Angeles Times. November 1, 2006.

Inside Llewyn Davis

“I’m not the one you want, babe

I’m not the one you need

You say you’re lookin’ for someone

Never weak but always strong

To protect you an’ defend you

Whether you are right or wrong

But it ain’t me, babe

No, no, no, it ain’t me, babe

It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe”

-   “It Ain’t Me, Babe” by Bob Dylan

Every time I watch Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), I’m reminded of the Bob Dylan song, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and how the lyrics pertain to the film’s titular character. Set in 1961, it is the Coen brothers’ bittersweet love letter to folk music. Even though the film takes place before Dylan’s career took off, his shadow looms large because we know, in hindsight, how much he will influence the New York City Greenwich Village scene and beyond. Instead of focusing on that, the Coens decide to chronicle a week’s worth of misadventures from Llewyn’s life and how he manages to self-sabotage every potential shot at success. Partly inspired by folk singer Dave Von Ronk, Llewyn is brilliantly portrayed by Oscar Isaac who depicts his character as equal parts gifted musician and misanthrope.

The film opens with Llewyn’s moving cover of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” in a small nightclub in the Village. Isaac is actually playing and singing live, delivering a soulful rendition of this song. It sets a definite tone and mood, complete with the stylized cinematography that resembles a slightly faded photograph. Llewyn’s life is a mess. His musical partner committed suicide and he’s attempting a solo career with little success. His debut record isn’t selling very well and his manager (Jerry Grayson) has no idea how to promote it or him, for that matter. Personally, he lives a transient lifestyle, crashing on the couches of various friends and ex-girlfriends, chief among them is Jean Berkey (Carey Mulligan).

It’s not that Llewyn doesn’t know what makes a hit record. He recognizes what songs people like as evident in the one that fellow folk singer Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) performs with Jean and her husband Jim (Justin Timberlake) that the audience spontaneously sings a-long to. Llewyn stubbornly picks songs to play that are powerful but not very catchy. When he does get a shot on cashing in on a potential hit record, he forgoes royalties for money up front because he is in desperate need of it. The scene depicting the recording of said song is hilarious as Isaac and Justin Timberlake work out the arrangement while Adam Driver, in a memorable cameo, warms up in the background with all sorts of odd sounds. Then, they record the song and you can tell that it is going to be a hit. Arriving in Chicago partway through the film, Llewyn seeks out legendary nightclub owner Bud Grossman (F.Murray Abraham) and plays him a song full of feeling and emotion but it’s not much of a toe-tapper or, as Bud tells him afterwards, “I don’t see a lot of money here.”

Along the way Llewyn acquires a traveling companion – a cat that he accidentally let out at a place he was staying. The musician loses the feline a couple of times but they always seem to find each other. Inside Llewyn Davis segues into a proper road movie when Llewyn shares a car ride to Chicago with an obnoxious jazz musician (Coen regular John Goodman) and nearly mute beat poet (Garrett Hedlund). We feel Llewyn’s pain as he spends hours enduring the jazzman’s insults and the driver’s monosyllabic responses (rivaling Peter Storemare’s equally silent type in Fargo). Their journey feels like an eternity until the poet tells a cryptic story and then recites one of his poems.

Oscar Isaac is a revelation in this film, digging deep to find a way to make an unlikeable character like Llewyn watchable. The actor uncovers Llewyn’s feelings in a heartfelt scene when he visits his father who is sick. He plays a song for him that he used to like. Early on, his sister (Jeanine Serralles) hints at a contentious relationship between father and son and through song the latter tries to reconnect with the former. The stern-faced patriarch says nothing but he seems to find some kind of peace from Llewyn’s performance. It is a touching moment until the Coens punctuate it with a bit of a cruel poop joke.

Llewyn’s music comes out of a great pain that is conveyed through the emotion in his singing and playing. Clearly, he has not gotten over his partner’s death and it colors his entire worldview. As a result, he doesn’t let anyone get too close lest he loses them, too. Isaac refuses to shy away from Llewyn’s less sympathetic aspects. When he’s on stage, however, he’s capable of such warmth and emotion as evident in the absolutely moving final musical number, a powerful rendition of “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song).”

Cast against type, Carey Mulligan portrays Jean as an acerbic woman that clearly resents Llewyn over the failure of their past relationship. She often spews venom at his direction, still bitter over how things went between them. Jean knows that she can’t depend on him and even though he still has feelings for her knows, deep down, that it will never work out between them because he’s emotionally unavailable. Mulligan does an excellent job playing Llewyn’s angry foil while also hinting at possible unresolved feelings towards him.

Around 2005 or 2006, Joel Coen thought of a possible scenario for a film: what if a folk singer was beaten up outside a Greenwich Village nightclub in 1961? It stayed with him for years and with his brother Ethan they decided to come up with a film that would explain this incident. The Coens liked the early 1960s era of folk music and were drawn to Dave Van Ronk’s posthumous memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street because it was a “document of its time,” and really gave “a sense of what it was like to be a working musician at that time,” said Ethan in an interview. They decided to option the book with the notion of using aspects of the musician’s life in their film. Van Ronk moved to Greenwich Village as a teenager and spent the next five decades there recording several albums that mixed blues, jazz and sea chanteys. He championed Bob Dylan early on as well as aspiring songwriters like Joni Mitchell.

Similarities to Van Ronk included having Llewyn sing three Van Ronk-associated songs, the faux cover of Llewyn’s solo album is a direct nod to Van Ronk’s 1963 LP Inside Dave Van Ronk. Both Llewyn and Van Ronk spent time in the merchant marines, went to Chicago to audition for the famous Gate of Horn club only to be rejected, and decided not to join a Peter, Paul and Mary-type folk group. That being said, those close to Van Ronk were quick to point out that, personality-wise, Llewyn doesn’t resemble him at all – people slept on his couch not the other way around and he was more philanthropic whereas Llewyn is misanthropic.

The Coens researched the time period by watching various documentaries, variety shows from the era, and read Dylan’s memoir where he talks about the New York music scene when he arrived. Early on, while writing the screenplay, the Coens wanted to reveal at the end that most of the film had been a flashback leading up to the beginning again and then they had to figure out what happened in-between. They also involved legendary music producer T. Bone Burnett, bouncing ideas off of him.

He not only assembled a powerhouse group of musicians to record the soundtrack (that included the likes of Marcus Mumford and the Punch Brothers) but also worked with the cast in recreating the music of the period. The Coens auditioned several famous musicians who were able to nail performing a song, “then we’d ask them to do a scene, and then you’d go, ‘Um, yeah, this isn’t going to work.’ You can get almost anybody who’s got a modicum of talent through a scene, or two, or three, but you can’t do that for an entire movie,” said Joel.

Casting director Ellen Chenoweth suggested Oscar Isaac because he was an actor who could play and sing. She showed the Coens an audition tape and they were impressed enough that they passed it on to Burnett who told them to cast the actor as Llewyn. Burnett was impressed with Isaac’s skills: “I haven’t worked with an actor who could play and sing this style of music this well. You can’t do it with bluster, you have to do it with the rawest honesty you can.” All the songs were done live, from start to finish, sometimes 30 takes of one song. Isaac didn’t mind as he loved the music and had been playing the songs 100 times a day in preparation.

In terms of the film’s look, the Coens used the album cover for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan as a reference point. They told cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel they wanted “a slushy New York,” he remembered, “We had to feel the winter and that dirty feeling when the snow starts to melt.” He and the Coens decided to shot on film stock because it “seemed appropriate for the period because of the grain structure of the film stock.” Principal photography took place in various locations in and around New York City over six weeks.

Much like the Coens’ A Serious Man (2009), Inside Llewyn Davis is about a protagonist at the mercy of an uncaring world but he’s also in control of certain aspects of his life, always making the wrong decision as if he is out punish himself by taking a harder route. An argument could be made that Llewyn doesn’t want to sell-out and he even accuses Jean of being a careerist at one point, but I think he’s simply punishing himself for being unable to prevent his partner from committing suicide.

“Go lightly from the ledge, babe

Go lightly on the ground

I’m not the one you want, babe

I will only let you down

You say you’re lookin’ for someone

Who will promise never to part

Someone to close his eyes for you

Someone to close his heart

Someone who will die for you an’ more

But it ain’t me, babe”

Despite all the poor decisions and setbacks, Llewyn soldiers on with a determination that is admirable or foolhardy. At the rate he’s going he will always be a struggling musician and mainstream success will elude him. As if to reinforce the point, the film ends with Llewyn leaving a nightclub he frequents just as a young Bob Dylan takes the stage and begins to play. He has grown tired of the daily grind of a struggling musician and the Coens refuse to romanticize it. Instead, they opt for their usual objective viewpoint that presents a world and the characters that inhabit it without judgment. As a result, they are sometimes mistakenly accused of not caring about their characters, which is not true. A lot of work went into constructing the world of Inside Llewyn Davis and the creation of a complex character as Llewyn. They are helped considerably by Davis’ wonderful performance. For every Bob Dylan that makes it big there are all kinds of Llewyn Davises that do not for various reasons. Their stories are just as interesting and worth telling as Llewyn’s.

SOURCES

B, Benjamin. “Folk Implosion.” American Cinematographer. January 2014.

Browne, David. “Meet the Folks Singer Who Inspired Inside Llewyn Davis.” Rolling Stone. December 2, 2013.

Cieply, Michael. “MacDougal Street Homesick Blues.” The New York Times. January 27, 2013.

Hiatt, Brian. “The Coen Brothers’ Classic Folk Tale: Behind Inside Llewyn Davis.” Rolling Stone. November 21, 2013.

Inside Llewyn Davis Production Notes. 2013.

Nicholson, Amy. “Interview: Oscar Isaac of Inside Llewyn Davis.” Village Voice. December 4, 2013.

Rohter, Larry. “For a Village Troubadour, a Late Encore.” The New York Times. December 5, 2013.

Ryzik, Melena. “30 Takes of One Song? No Sweat for Llewyn’s Star.” The New York Times. December 6, 2013.

Matinee

“Going to the movies is sort of like going to church for me. When the lights went down I would be as likely to stay for a double feature as I would be to just go home.” – Joe Dante

Much like Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994), Joe Dante’s film Matinee (1993) is not only a love letter to cinema, but also a celebration of watching movies – the collective experience of seeing a film in a darkened movie theater with others. However, Dante’s film is more than that. It is also a period piece that recalls the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought Russia and the United States to the brink of nuclear war. He filters this through a coming-of-age story as seen through the eyes of a boy who lives in close proximity to this volatile situation.

Dante is a life-long movie buff with many of his own films paying homage to 1950s science fiction and horror B-movies, but filtered through the prism of 1960s radicalism. In fact, he got his start working with these kinds of movies thanks to mogul Roger Corman and gradually worked his way up through system until he was directing studio fare like Gremlins (1984) and Innerspace (1987). Matinee is arguably Dante’s most personal film to date, a passion project that he cultivated for years until Universal gave him the money to realize it. The film was given a wide release, but much like Ed Wood, it underperformed at the box office, appealing mostly to fellow cineastes.

Set in Key West, Florida, Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton) and his brother Dennis (Jesse Soffer) are the new kids in town, army brats whose father moves from base to base and is stationed nearby because of the Russian missiles amassing near Cuba. Gene is a big horror B-movie fan that eagerly awaits the Saturday matinee preview screening of Lawrence Woolsey’s (John Goodman) latest offering, Mant! (“Half man! Half ant!” proclaims its posters), an affectionate fusion of The Fly (1958) and Them! (1954), which he has filmed in Atom-o-Vision and will be shown in Rumble-rama – homages to William Castle’s shameless showmanship tactics to get people to see his movies.

Gene befriends a local kid named Stan (Omri Katz) who has a crush on Sherry (Kellie Martin), a beautiful girl in their class. Amidst all of the anxiety over Cuba and the excitement for the arrival of Mant!, Gene also becomes interested in girls, finding himself attracted to Sandra (Lisa Jakub), a socially conscious troublemaker whose parents are peace-loving liberals. The child actors, in particular Simon Fenton and Lisa Jakub, are excellent. Gene and Sandra’s growing interest in one another is sweet and believably handled by Dante.

Dante is one of the best directors of kids as evident in films like Explorers (1985) and the television show Eerie, Indiana. Matinee features a predominantly young cast and he really gets wonderful performances out of them. For example, when we are first introduced to Gene and Dennis their rapport comes across as natural and we believe that they are siblings by their familiar short-hand, like how Gene knows just what to say to good-naturedly scare Dennis. That being said, Gene does care about Dennis, like the scene when he reassures his little brother that their father is safe and everything will be okay. It is a nice, nuanced moment between the boys that Dante directs with sensitivity as he gets us to empathize with these characters. He is able to do this because he identifies with the kids more than the adults as evident from a key line of dialogue that Woolsey says to Gene: “Why, you think grown-ups know what they’re doing? That’s a hustle, kid. Grown-ups are making it up as they go along just like you do.”

Dante expertly shows how kids interact with each other when adults aren’t paying attention, like how they try to impress each other with factoids or the ability to tell a good story or be funny. For example, Stan talks a good game, but gets all tongue-tied when he tries to talk to Sherry. These are smart kids, like how Gene pays close attention to President Kennedy’s speech on T.V. about the aggressive nature of the Russians. Clearly, he’s worried about how this will affect his father who has been deployed near Cuba. Dante is a rare filmmaker that doesn’t talk down to kids, but instead empathizes with them and remembers what it was like to be that young.

Matinee begins with the image of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion, which casts a shadow of fear that hangs over the rest of the film. This turns out to be part of a teaser trailer for Woolsey’s Mant! He is first seen in silhouette a la Alfred Hitchcock, but his pitch is pure Castle. Goodman’s Woolsey is an engaging fusion of entrepreneurial filmmakers like Hitchcock, Castle and Corman, harkening back to an era where ‘50s B-movie moguls invented fantastic sounding yet ultimately cheesy innovations like Thrill-o-rama in an effort lure people away from their T.V. sets and back into the movie theaters. Goodman plays him like a slick cinematic huckster who spends a lot of time dreaming up outrageous premises for movies that are just audacious enough to get impressionable kids to eagerly await their arrival at the local movie theater. The veteran actor does a nice job of showing that under Woolsey’s confident façade are very real doubts that his latest movie will be a bust, but it is this fear that motivates him. Goodman uses his big, warm smile to full effect as he tries to get anyone who will listen to go see Mant!

Dante regular Dick Miller and filmmaker John Sayles show up as “concerned citizens” that object to the “cheap, sick” thrills of Woolsey’s movies, which only intensifies the public’s interest in Mant! Miller and Sayles look like they’re having fun playing uptight conservative types who seem to be protesting a little too much. Their “confrontation” with Woolsey is a real treat to watch. Another Dante regular, Robert Picardo, plays the local movie theater’s nervous owner who frets over the installation of Woolsey’s Rumble-rama when he’s not worried about the possible Russian invasion. Cathy Moriarty has a plum role as Woolsey’s world-weary girlfriend and leading lady. Her dry, caustic asides in response to her boyfriend’s relentless campaigning are very amusing.

The origins for Matinee can be traced back as far as 1989 with a screenplay by Jerico Stone (My Stepmother is an Alien) that was more of a fantasy in the vein of Popcorn (1991) with the intention of making a haunted house movie, but Dante wanted to mix cinematic horror with real-life fears. However, no studio was interested in the project and so Joe Dante acquired a development deal with Warner Brothers. He had a couple of different writers work on the script. Ed Naha (Dolls) introduced a character that was a washed-up horror movie star – not a filmmaker – that came to the town to make a personal appearance. When Charles S. Haas (Gremlins 2: The New Batch) came on board, he and Dante decided to set the story during the Cuban Missile Crisis and changed the actor to the Lawrence Woolsey character. They also conducted a lot of research on Florida in the early 1960s in order to authentically recreate 1962.

Dante managed to find independent financing from European investors and arranged for Universal Pictures to distribute Matinee. However, the closer they got to principal photography, it became evident that the financiers didn’t have the money. Dante and producer Mike Finnell approached Universal production chief Tom Pollock, who had already invested a certain amount of money, and asked if the studio could finance the film’s $13 million budget. The executives agreed and treated it as a standard comedy even though Dante saw it more as an indie film.

The production shot on location over 10 weeks in Key West, the Universal Studios lot in Orlando, and Cocoa Beach, which still resembled Key West during the spring of 1992. For Mant!, the movie within the film, Dante wanted to make it as period accurate as possible, telling the effects people, “Don’t do deliberately cheesy effects. Do effects that are pretty much the way they would have been done at the time.” The filmmakers shot it on the cheap over five days.

Matinee received positive reviews from mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “There are a lot big laughs in Matinee, and not many moments when I didn’t have a wide smile on my face.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised, Mant!, the movie within a movie: “Collaborating with the screenwriter Charlie Haas, who wrote Mr. Dante’s sly, underappreciated Gremlins 2: The New Batch, he turns Mant into a perfect evocation of this era’s absurdly solemn, pseudo-scientific horror style. It’s a wonderfully nostalgic treat.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B+” rating and Owen Gleiberman called the film, “a witty and affectionate homage to the sci-fi trash of yesteryear,” and felt that Dante “appreciates both the tackiness and the awe.” The Los Angeles Time’s Peter Rainer wrote, “at its best it’s a ticklish nut-brain romp—a crazy quilt of grade-Z horror spoofs.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “Still, it’s Goodman who makes Matinee run with the alleged reliability of a Maytag. Half huckster, half hero. All heart!!! So gratifying only chuckles can describe him.” Finally, the Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “The glory of Dante’s comedy in this movie and others … is that it suggests poetic parallels without insisting on them.”

Dante expertly takes us back to a time when the world was on the brink of nuclear war with fantastic attention to period detail, including retro hairstyles, what people wore and even the way people spoke. Of course, there are spot-on references to movies of the day, like one the kids watch entitled, The Shook Up Shopping Cart, a sly nod to the goofy live-action Disney comedies with a man who is transformed into a shopping cart via a spell and stars an then-unknown Naomi Watts. It’s such a spot-on spoof that you half-expect Dean Jones to make an appearance.

For all of Woolsey’s bluster and the specter of nuclear war that looms large over the proceedings, there is a real humanistic streak that runs through Matinee. Dante clearly has affection for these characters in the way he gives them little moments that flesh these people out so that we care about what happens to them. For example, the heart-to-heart Woolsey has with Gene is one of the best scenes in the film as he explains his love for making monster movies and the appeal of going to the movies. The scene features some of Goodman’s best acting and is a wonderful tribute to the love of cinema. Matinee shows the power of the medium and its ability to transport an audience to other worlds and tell fantastical stories that allow people to forget their everyday lives and fears for a couple of hours.

SOURCES

Brew, Simon. “Joe Dante.” The Den of Geek. February 21, 2008.

Brownstein, Bill. “Matinee Recalls Horror Movie-Maker’s Gory Glory Days.” Montreal Gazette. January 29, 1993.

Erickson, Glenn. “Joe Dante.” DVD Talk. May 11, 2010.

Hinman, Catherine. “It’s A Wrap for Matinee.” Sun-Sentinel. June 18, 1992.

Kelley, Bill. “Matinee Director Joe Dante Loves the Hokey Nostalgia of B-Movie Thrillers.” Sun-Sentinel. February 14, 1993.

Kenber, Ben. “Joe Dante Takes Us Back to Matinee.” Yahoo! September 13, 2011.