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.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

BLOGGER'S NOTE: “This post is part of the SPIELBERG BLOGATHON hosted by Outspoken & Freckled, It Rains… You Get Wet, and Once Upon A Screen taking place August 23-24. Please visit these host blogs for a full list of participating blogs.”

I have been fascinated by UFOs and the notion of life on other planets ever since I was a kid and saw Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). At the time, it made a huge impression on me as it did with many of my generation. Nowadays, most people dismiss stories about UFOs or alien abductions as tabloid fare. They laugh at the stories of people being snatched by "little green men," but over the years there have been some really interesting cases that have come to light. In the past 40 years, the idea of UFOs and alien sightings has been investigated by numerous psychologists and psychiatrists like Carl Jung. Some of the first recorded sightings can be traced back to the late 1940s and during the 1950s when the UFO craze really took off. After this initial phenomenon died down, reports began to drop off as more and more people scoffed at the idea that people may have been abducted. They say that there's no physical evidence that UFOs exist, but perhaps there is no publicly acknowledged physical evidence that UFOs exist. Spielberg’s film takes this idea and runs with it in an entertaining and engaging way that continues to fascinate me after all these years.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind begins in the Sonora Desert, Mexico during a blinding sandstorm. A group of scientists drive up in two vehicles. They are there because of a squadron of American World War II era fighter planes that have mysteriously resurfaced minus their pilots after disappearing during a training run in 1945. The scientist, led by a Frenchman named Lacombe (Francois Truffaut) question an old man who was there when the planes appeared and he claims that the sun came out at night and sang to him. I love the opening image of headlights just barely piercing the intense storm. Spielberg establishes a fantastic air of mystery during this sequence, which leads us right into the next scene.

At an air traffic control center in Indianapolis, a controller is in communication with pilots in two different planes that experience a brief run-in with a UFO. Nobody can explain it, but the pilots don’t want to report it as such. What I like about this sequence is that we get a few more teasing details about the alien craft from the pilots, but we don’t actually see anything, which only adds to the intrigue.

In Muncie, Indiana, a little boy named Barry (Cary Guffey) is awoken in the middle of the night by his toys suddenly activating. He’s not scared, but excited as if he’s met some new playmates. The sounds of crickets and the play of shadows across Barry’s room reminds me of summer nights as a child and really draws me in to this scene. The use of light inside and outside the house (including a brief glimpse at an incredible starry sky) is incredible.

These three atmospheric teasers are all part of the same mystery – that whatever made the planes reappear almost caused two commercial airliners to crash into each other and also activated all of a little boy’s toys. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography really shines in these early scenes, from the sandstorm in Mexico to the rural Muncie home to the beautiful night sky full of stars as electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) goes on a call. Spielberg creates a tangible sense of place that immediately draws you into the film.

Roy is the film’s protagonist and I like how Spielberg expertly sets up the family dynamic of the Neary’s, like how Roy chastises his kids for having zero interest in going to a screening of Walt Disney’s animated classic Pinocchio (1940). He lives in a noisy, chaotic household and kind of acts like a kid himself. Roy soon has his own close encounter that changes his life forever. While he’s out on a call, late one night, a UFO hovers over his vehicle and bathes him in a blinding light. On his C.B. radio, Roy hears of others seeing what he saw and heads off in pursuit. Spielberg continues to tease us as a large shadow flies ominously over the stretch of road that Roy is driving along. He literally crosses paths with Barry and his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon), narrowly avoiding running over the little boy with his truck. They witness several UFOs flying by in graceful formation at an incredible speed.

After his experience, Roy becomes obsessed with what he saw much to the chagrin of his family who don’t understand what he’s going through. Richard Dreyfuss does a fantastic job at conveying his character’s newfound mania. Roy is practically euphoric, but there is also a sense of child-like wonder and we are meant to share these sentiments. Spielberg takes us back and forth between the global and the personal, with Lacombe and his assistant Laughlin (Bob Balaban) going all over the world gathering evidence, and Roy’s own journey as he tries to make sense of an image of a large mountain in his head, which turns out to be Devils Tower in Wyoming.

Roy and Jillian’s journey to Devils Tower is an exciting adventure as they cover a lot of terrain, first by car and then by foot, facing constant opposition by the military. Throughout, Spielberg creates all kinds of tension as the two run across ominous signs that something isn’t right, like the livestock that lie dead by the side of the road. They risk getting caught several times and when they are captured, even manage to subsequently escape. This sequence also shows the United States’ government’s response to all of this activity. They create a fake threat to get people who live near Devils Tower to evacuate because Lacombe and his team believe that is where the aliens will establish contact. With the scandal of Watergate still fresh in people’s minds at the time, this elaborate ruse must’ve rung true with audiences who had a healthy distrust of their government. Spielberg really uses the environment around Devils Tower to great effect. You get a real sense of place and how imposing a structure it is for Roy and Jillian to traverse.

Fresh from his excellent supporting role in Jaws (1975), Richard Dreyfuss delivers a wonderfully layered performance as a man who doesn’t understand what’s happening to him. He knows what he saw and experienced, but is unable to get anyone to believe him, not even his family. Roy also has visions of a place he feels compelled to go to, but can’t articulate beyond constructing mountain-like images out of his mashed potatoes or mounds of dirt. It drives him and his family a little crazy and there’s a moving scene where Roy breaks down in front of his family during dinner that really makes you empathize with the poor guy. Eventually, his obsession is too much for his wife (Teri Garr) and kids and they leave him, afraid that his madness will consume them as well. It’s really quite incredible how much Roy alienates his family – something that, sadly, Spielberg has said he would never do now that he has a family of his own. It is heartbreaking to see how Roy’s mania affects his kids, causing them to act out, but Roy can’t help himself. Dreyfuss is so good at conveying this compulsion, this drive to make sense of what Roy experienced. Spielberg is unafraid to show the extremes of Roy’s behavior and how it affects his family.

Close Encounters’ impressive practical visual effects still hold up, like the animated cloud formation that occurs when the aliens appear and take Barry away or the colorful quartet of UFOs that Roy chases in his truck. These effects, in particular the show-stopping finale, are still awe-inspiring and have a tangible quality that has not dated at all. With the Barry abduction sequence, Spielberg demonstrates how you can convey so much by doing very little. With the use of lighting effects and some practical tricks, he creates an intense, nerve-wracking scene as the little boy is taken from his mother right from their house. We never actually see the aliens or the craft. This is all left up to our imagination. For most of the film we are only given glimpses of the UFOs as Spielberg gradually builds to the exciting climax where contact is achieved.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind’s influence can be seen either stylistically or thematically in other like-minded film such as The Abyss (1988), Contact (1997), Signs (2002), and, the most obvious homage, Super 8 (2011). For the ending of his film, Spielberg took a page out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by making the aliens benign and enigmatic. Instead of falling back on the tried and true clichés of alien invasion movies from the 1950s, Spielberg presents aliens that only wish to communicate with us. He created a film full of wonder and hope, culminating in the transcendent climax where we make contact with the aliens. It is an incredible display of good ol’ fashion practical effects that is truly something to behold.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made by someone who sincerely believed that there was intelligent alien life on other planets and that if it did exist would not want to wipe us out. This yearning for answers, for wanting to believe is embodied perfectly in Spielberg surrogate Roy Neary. Whether or not you believe in life on other planets, this film still tells an entertaining and engaging story – a global-spanning epic that still feels personal and intimate. This was the first film Spielberg had made that he felt truly passionate about it and this is evident in every frame, brimming with sincerity and idealism that flew in the face of a lot cynicism of the 1970s. As a result, Close Encounters was a touchstone film for me. Seeing it a young age affected me profoundly and still does to a certain degree. It also spoke to a young, impressionable generation, instilling in them a fascination and wonder for the possibilities of intelligent life on other planets.

K Street

K Street was a short-lived television show created by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney that aired on HBO for one season in 2003. Looking back at it now, the show has not aged well unless you're a news or politics junkie. Even among Soderbergh fans it is generally regarded as a failed experiment. However, it is a fascinating snapshot of a prolific filmmaker at the height of his mainstream popularity having just come off the one-two punch of the highly acclaimed Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). He used this newfound clout to push through a very unusual T.V. series that examined topical news stories, mixing fictional characters with actual politicians playing “themselves” to comment on American politics.

K Street stars real-life couple James Carville, an ex-Democratic strategist, and his wife Mary Matalin, a former George Bush staffer. They first gained serious mainstream attention when their unlikely romance was chronicled in D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' documentary The War Room (1993), a behind-the-scenes look at the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. On the show, they are partners in a start-up lobbying and consulting company called Bergstrom, Lowell. Their assistants are fictional characters played by Mary McCormack and John Slattery.

In the first episode, James and Mary butt heads over his decision to agree to help Governor Howard Dean prepare for an upcoming debate. It's James and his assistant Tommy Flannegan (John Slattery) against Mary and her assistant Maggie Morris (Mary McCormack) as they argue over the notion of bipartisanship. After Tommy and Maggie leave the room, James and Mary discuss Francisco Dupre (Roger Guenveur Smith), a mysterious figure that their shadowy owner, Bergstrom, says they must give a yet undefined job. We get glimpses of Dupre early on and he comes across as a quietly confident man who gets his shoes shined, gets a manicure, gets his haircut, and buys a new suit, all in preparation for meeting with James and Mary. Intertwined throughout the ten episodes are two storylines - the relationship between James and Mary and the murky motivations of Bergstrom.

Veteran character actor Roger Guenveur Smith portrays Dupre as a self-assured enigma who appears to say who he is without giving away much of anything and this leaves James and Mary understandably wary. At times, he's coyly evasive and at other times, warm and reassuring, but even then you wonder if it is an act. As always, John Slattery is good as James' right-hand man. The scene where he argues with Dupre over the difference between Ice-T and Ice Cube is amusing. Over time, we are given tidbits of insight into these characters, like Maggie's fascinating subplot that involves the messy fallout with a girlfriend, which weighs heavily on her mind.

K Street was as inside as it gets when it came to depicting American politics as executive producers Clooney and Soderbergh had incredible access to politicians on Capitol Hill featuring the likes of Orrin Hatch and Rick Santorum. Soderbergh adopts a restless, hand-held camera for a verite look that invokes Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969), which was a docudrama set amidst the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and also combined fiction and non-fictional material. Along with Robert Altman's Tanner '88, which placed a fictional candidate in the middle of the 1988 Democratic primary, both are arguably the most significant influences on K Street. Soderbergh adopts a fly-on-the-wall approach that makes you feel like eavesdropping on these folks. Soderbergh also utilizes his trademark filters throughout with cool, gun-metal blues and sickly, queasy yellows. This was achieved by shooting on digital video utilizing multiple cameras with no special lighting and direct sound.

James Carville and Republican image-maker Michael Deaver came up with the idea for the show, which the former envisioned being “about power: building power, applying power.” As luck would have it, producer Mark Sennet, who was friends with Deaver, called him up one day asking if he had any ideas for a Washington, D.C.-set show. He approached Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney who liked the idea enough that, along with Sennet, pitched it to HBO where it eventually aired. When Soderbergh and his two executive producers began discussing the possibility of doing the show, they watched Tanner '88. Soderbergh said, “All of us felt it was a terrific show and it was time to do something similar. But we wanted to take advantage of the new technology to shoot in run-and-gun fashion,” to create what they called, “real-time fiction.” The three men spent six months with lobbyists and consultants to study their daily routines and learn how they did things.

HBO, which had also backed Tanner '88, continued their habit for courting high profile talent, like Clooney and Soderbergh, and gave them the creative freedom to experiment. K Street had no scripts or written outlines and no one took a writing credit. All the dialogue was improvised, but all the locations and guest appearance were pre-arranged. On Monday mornings, Clooney and Soderbergh, along with their creative team and the actors, would meet and discuss the news that occurred over the weekend, read all the newspapers for the morning, and pick the topical news item that would be the focus for that week's episode. They would shoot for two-and-a-half days, edit for two days and then it would air on Sunday. Soderbergh directed, edited and acted as cinematographer for all ten episodes. Principal photography usually ended on Wednesday, sometimes Thursday, with the director editing right up to the Friday deadline.

K Street received mostly negative reviews from mainstream critics. The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley wrote, “Mr. Soderbergh's original idea was to fuse real people and up-to-the-minute political happenings into a drama about Washington. But in the first episode, at least, the director did the reverse: he built a superstructure of Washington retreads and threaded it with the thinnest filament of fictional intrigue.” In his review for the Washington Post, Tom Shales wrote, “K Street is highly unlikely to become a national sensation, but in big cities of the East it ought to be quite the conversation piece-for a little while anyway. In a sense, the show comes off like a marvelous party, but one to which many of us are bound to feel profoundly uninvited.” USA Today gave it one-and-a-half out four stars and Robert Bianco felt that it was a “pointlessly rambling inside look at Washington's spindocracy - a self-contained, self-satisfied group of political hangers-on who are fascinating to each other and of no interest to anyone else.” However, in her review for the Los Angeles Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “Brainy, beautifully shot, consistently funny and audacious in its disregard for narrative convention, this HBO show about the power elite in Washington was among the very best and most misunderstood cultural achievements of the year.”

One way to look at K Street is that the topical news storyline is merely window-dressing while the heart of the show is the dynamic between the gregarious James and his no-nonsense wife Mary. The most entertaining parts of the show are when they argue. For non-actors they are very charismatic and act naturally in front of the camera. The problem with K Street, and what dates it, is its ripped-from-the-headlines format so that you wonder who some of these people are that our protagonists interact with. Unless you are politically savvy there is the real possibility of feeling frustrated like you're missing something. The show doesn't spoon-feed its audience and assumes that they follow the daily news, which is probably why it didn't last long. 

That being said, in this day and age of Google and Wikipedia, it wouldn't be too hard to figure out who everyone is and their significance, but most people don't want to do that kind of legwork. At its best, K Street shows what a PR firm does - lobbying politicians, creating ad campaigns and running them through test groups, and so on. Clooney and Soderbergh should be commended for updating what Wexler and Altman did before them, but the immediacy of a lot of the subject matter dates the show, which ultimately prevents it from being something truly great instead of being merely a curious footnote in both of their respective careers.


SOURCES

Frey, Jennifer. “Hollywood Cues the Capitol.” Washington Post. September 13, 2003.

Galupo, Scott. “K Street: Potholes or Road to Fame?” Washington Times. September 12, 2003.

McCollum, Charlie. “K Street is Fresh Fictional Avenue for Real Issues.” San Jose Mercury News. September 11, 2003.

McConnell, Bill. “Hollywood Goes to Washington.” Broadcasting and Cable. September 8, 2003.

Mullins, Brody. “HBO Gets Ready to Take on K Street.” Roll Call. August 4, 2003.

Taubin, Amy. “K Street: Washington Inside-Out.” Film Comment.

Pacific Rim

It’s been five long years since Guillermo del Toro directed a film. It certainly hasn’t been from a lack of trying as he was all set to direct The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) before legal studio wrangling prompted him to depart the production. Then, he came close to realizing his dream project, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, but the studio balked at a big budget R-rated monster movie and that fell through. Frustrated, Del Toro jumped at the opportunity to direct Pacific Rim (2013), an epic science fiction film that he was already producing and co-writing with Travis Beacham (Clash of the Titans). The film fits rather nicely in Del Toro’s wheelhouse as it involves massive battles between giant monsters and human-operated robots.

Del Toro has always been fascinated by creatures, from the mutant insects in Mimic (1997) to the grotesque vampires in Blade II (2002) to the creature underworld in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). Pacific Rim allows him to pay tribute to the kaiju and mecha genres popularized in Japan that were spearheaded by Godzilla (1954). After the impersonal CGI workouts that characterized Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, the hope was that Del Toro could bring his own personal touch to the summer blockbuster.

A few years into the future and giant monsters known as Kaiju emerge from a portal located deep on the ocean floor and lay waste to cities all over the world. In response, many countries band together and create the Jaeger program, an army of enormous robots, or mecha, controlled by two human pilots, to combat these creatures. The pilots form a kind of Vulcan mind meld so that they are not just one with each other, but with the robot as well. This gives Del Toro the opportunity to hit it us up with one loving shot after another of these mecha, showing how they work in a way that tells us all we need to know in a few minutes.

The opening battle not only introduces us to how the mecha operate, but also to Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), a hotshot pilot and his equally brash older brother Yancy (Diego Klattenhoff). Of course, their cockiness proves to be their undoing and Yancy is killed in battle while Raleigh lives, wracked with guilt. With this opening battle, Del Toro does an excellent job of conveying the colossal scale of the robots and the monsters and what they can both do in a way that is never confusing.

He also personalizes the battle by showing how it affects the pilots. As the years pass and the war rages on, more Jaegers are destroyed and the program is to be phased out in a matter of months. The remaining ones are ordered to regroup in Hong Kong for a last stand. Raleigh has quit and becomes an anonymous welder working on a coastal defensive wall in Alaska when he is recruited back into the program by his former commanding officer Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba). The introduction of the surviving Jaegers is robot porn for mecha fans with lingering, awe-inspiring shots of the architecture of each one.

There’s an amusing subplot involving Dr. Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day), a quirky, maverick scientist, pursuing a wild experiment that allows him to mind meld with the brain from one of the creatures, but a live one is hard to come by so he seeks out black marketeer of living Kaiju organs, Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman) in the slums of Hong Kong. It’s a small role, but one that veteran Del Toro collaborator Ron Perlman makes the most of with his flashy attire and gruff attitude. The interplay between the grouchy cynicism of Hannibal and the frantic idealism of Dr. Geiszler is entertaining and provides some much needed levity. It is a lot of fun to see Ron Perlman and Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) banter back and forth, including a cool sequence where Hannibal’s crew travel through the insides of a defeated creature to find its secondary brain and stumble across something else.

Let’s face it; the characterization in Pacific Rim is pretty superficial with most of the pilots being interchangeable and their rivalry coming off as something right out of Top Gun (1986). At best, the dialogue is serviceable and many of the archetypal characters are rife with clichés as Raleigh is teamed-up with Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), a rookie with no practical experience, but has a thirst for revenge, much like he does. Del Toro makes some attempts at characterization with Raleigh and Mako coming to grips with their respective demons over the course of the film, which is, to be honest, simply filler between impressively staged battle sequences. Only Idris Elba and Ron Perlman manage to make a distinctive impression with their respective characters, the latter rising above his character’s archetype through sheer force of will and attitude. Just look at the choices Perlman makes with wardrobe, how he speaks and how he carries himself to see how an actor can make something out of a minor role. However, we’re not watching Pacific Rim for characters’ soul-searching. We’re here to see giant robots beat the crap out of huge monsters, which this film delivers in a very satisfying way.

Some criticize the monsters in Pacific Rim as looking rather alike (reminiscent of the monster from Cloverfield) and not very distinctive, which is rather odd considering what a fan of monsters Del Toro is and what unique creatures he’s delivered in the past. I get the feeling that he was more interested in showing the diversity of the Jaegers – all of which have their own distinctive look and abilities. He lingers on them many times while the Kaiju are seen fleetingly during the day or slightly-obscured at night or deep under murky water. This may have been due to the budget limitations for the creature visual effects or that he simply wanted to put more emphasis on the mecha and the people that pilot them.

For anyone who grew up watching or is a fan of Godzilla vs. [insert name of monster], Pacific Rim is pure, unadulterated cinematic catnip. It is pretty cool to see robots and monsters duke it out, like a moment where one of the Jaegers uses a large freighter ship like a baseball bat, or when the same robot uses a giant sword to slice a Kaiju in half (in what seems like a visual nod to Voltron!). Unlike the Transformers movies, Pacific Rim has a lot of heart. It’s not afraid to embrace clichés, like the stirring call to battle speech, the maverick pilot with something to prove, and the scientist with a wild theory that just might help beat the monsters, and serve them up with a straight face. Del Toro does this lovingly as only a fan of kaiju movies could.

You really get the feeling that there is something at stake in the story depicted in Pacific Rim, that this isn’t just another CGI workout – all noise and fury signifying nothing. While this film may not be as artistically satisfying as The Devil’s Backbone (2001) or Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), it is wonderful to see Del Toro back in the director’s chair delivering the goods with a rousing and entertaining popcorn movie that reminds us of the unbridled glee we felt as children being transported to cinematic worlds populated by visually arresting special effects and heroic figures fighting to save the world.