M*A*S*H (1970)

Turkish title:
“At the Front Entertainment”

Directed by: Robert Altman

Written by: Ring Lardner, Jr.

Starring: Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skeritt, Sally Kellerman
Running Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes
Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: The only real clip I’ve seen of this film is the shower prank scene, the one where a naked and wet Sally Kellerman runs out of the shower and screams. I have no context for the scene, but that’s the one scene that sticks out in my mind. And, being a child of the ’80s, I of course, am familiar with all the characters. It’ll be kind of weird to watch Donald Sutherland in the role of Hawkeye, but I’m sure my mind will gloss over it in time.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: The TV series was more than enough to get my Korean war-centric sitcom fix as a child.
Bit-O-Trivia: Robert Altman’s son wrote the featured song in this movie entitled Suicide is Painless, which made him a millionaire within a year, and became the theme song to the television series later on.

1 hour, 56 minutes later…: First off, I want to comment on the helicopters in the opening montage. Is that how they used to transport soldiers in need of medical attention? On the outside of the helicopters? Weren’t they afraid of gusts of wind, or slippage if the copter were to pitch too severely? I wonder how many people were lost in wars by just falling off the side of a helicopter. If you’re bored, there’s something to google at home, folks!

Okay. This is a movie review, so I guess I should review the movie. I’m going to start off by saying that it’s kinda impossible to review the movie without comparing the film with the series, since the series was a major part of my childhood, so I’m just going to do that. It was very interesting to see what elements of the film crossed over in the series:

• The whole tone of the movie centering around the hijinks of Hawkeye, Trapper John, and Duke Forrest. The juxtaposition between the humor taking place outside of the OR and the gravity of things inside is probably the thing I remember most of the series, so it was nice to see the film had that same tone.
• The relationship between Hotlips and Frank Burns. I had never known how Margaret O’Houlihan got her nickname, so it was definitely an eyeopener for me. And a great question for Dirty Trivial Pursuit! Although, I was surprised that the Frank Burns character was much more villainous in the film than in the television show. In the television show, Frank Burns was just a character to be pitied, but in the movie, you really hated him. And the coup de grâce was seeing him driven off in a straightjacket by the military police.
• The announcements made over the loud speaker. I thought the bumbling PA announcer was the perfect touch, especially the one where he had a hard time pronouncing the medical terminology. I almost experienced a “femoral puh—, uh, puh— um…” myself watching that scene.

The one thing that bugged me about the movie was Hotlips’ arc. They drove her love interest to insanity, and then they disgraced her in the shower, and yet at the end of the movie, you see her cheering on the football team? She is portrayed to be a bit of an airhead, but even then, I’d think she’d ask for a transfer or something. But Sally Kellerman’s performance was pretty good. She played enraged humiliation perfectly, and totally deserved the Oscar nomination.

Side note: when Tom Skeritt first appeared on screen my initial reaction was, “Jack Nicholson was in M*A*S*H?” And then once the camera could get a close-up, I was like, “Oh. Right. The dude from Picket Fences.”

Final Thoughts: I really enjoyed watching this movie, just to see how they developed the television program from it. Even though it was like watching the alternate universe version of the show, the almost two-and-a-half-hour runtime flew by. 5 out of 6 slices of pizza.

The Exorcist (1973)

Turkish title:
Satan

Director: William Friedkin

Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Max von Sydow

Running Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: Pre-conceived notions about The Exorcist? I am scared shitless to sit down and watch it because I heard so many fantastical things about how creepy it is. It’s so creepy in fact that the physical film itself was thought to be possessed by a demon. Have you seen the IMDb trivia page to this? Friedkin put his actors through hell. Poor Ellen Burstyn suffered a back injury when they yanked her harness really hard during one of the scenes. And Mercedes McCambridge had to do all sorts of crazy things to perform the part of Pazuzu. She swallowed raw eggs and smoked like one of those machines that smoke 20 cigarettes all at once. But the awful part is that she wasn’t in the final credits. Friedkin was kind of a jerk. Not gonna lie. Back on track: I’m really excited to see how this holds up after 41 years. Part of me hopes it does, and part of me doesn’t so I am not actually scared shitless. These are new pants.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: It’s The Exorcist. 

Bit-O-Trivia from the IMDb page: “This is Warner Brothers’ highest grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation.”

2 hours, 2 minutes later…: A couple things before we get into the meat and potatoes of the movie. 1) I really wish they had developed the plot more. It seemed like there were key scenes missing. Like, okay. One minute Regan is a normal 12-year-old girl, then she goes up to bed, and KAPOW! She’s possessed and urinating on the carpet. I mean, come on! Can you build up the suspense just a little bit more? 2) I would really liked to have seen a scene where Burke flies through the window. We get nothing of that. The character of Burke is dead all of a sudden, Ellen Burstyn has an overreaction, and we’re left sitting there thinking, “Who the hell is Burke?” 3) The way the whole exorcism is dealt with. Father Karras keeps saying, “It’s going to take an awful lot of evidence to get an exorcism approved,” and then he gets all this evidence, and he tells Chris that he really doesn’t have a lot of evidence. Cut to he’s meeting the monsignor, cut to the monk delivery service in the woods, cut to they’re doing the exorcism. What? Why mention the difficulty of getting approved when you’re not going to spend a lot of time on it in the film? Maybe all these scenes I’m mentioning were cut and they’re on the DVD. All I can say is that it made for a very choppy film.

The one thing I came away with from this movie was thank the universe I was not alive during the early 70s. Were all those medical procedures authentic? The arteriogram shit that was going on there? Dude. And whatever that other thing was? Double dude. And my hats off to Linda Blair. What she had to go through to make the film was incredible. 75% of her screen time was her tied to a bed in the middle of a refrigerated bedroom set, 25% was her having to go through that freaky-deaky medical stuff, and the remaining 15% was of her being a regular kid.

There were some comedic parts thrown in there, too. Like when Chris MacNeil asks her nanny at the end of the film, “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with us?” Are you freaking kidding me? Your daughter just went through an exorcism during the course of which 2 priests died (**Spoiler!!**), shit was flying around her room, and freaky stuff happened 24/7. No. She doesn’t want to remain in your employ, you freak of a woman, you.

Final Thoughts: The movie wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be, but I can say with certainty that if I had been a moviegoer in 1973, I’d be scared of split-pea soup for the rest of my life. The sound design was magnificent, and for the time in which it was made, it’s a very impressive bit of cinema. But unfortunately it doesn’t hold up very well. 4 out of 6 slices of pizza.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Swedish title:
“The Poseidon
Catastrophe”

Directed by: Allen Neame

Written by: Paul Gallico, Stirling Silliphant, Wendell Mayes

Starring: Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine

Running Time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

Rating: PG

Pre-Conceived Notions: I am expecting something along the lines of Titanic, but instead of the boat sinking 30 minutes before the end, it starts sinking 30 minutes into the movie. Some people survive; some people don’t, and in the end everyone learns a valuable lesson: Shelley Winters curses every boat she steps foot on. True story.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I have a fear of drowning?

From the IMDb trivia page: [The movie was] shot in sequence, taking advantage of the fact that the principals became dirtier and more tattered and suffered injuries—some real and some artificial—as they progressed.

1 hour, 57 minutes later…: I am completely exhausted. Utterly and completely exhausted. From the time they say, “Happy New Year!” at the beginning, it’s about 1 hour and 45 minutes of the Seven Layers of Hell. And to think that the actors themselves did most of the stunts. I really hope they got paid a whole hell of a lot of money to be put through that kind of physical stress, because, wow. 

Let’s get right into the meat and potatoes of this whole thing: There were characters you loved, namely Gene Hackman’s character, the Reverend, who would never give up no matter what happened to them. Mrs. Rosen, played by Shelley Winters, was a really sweet woman who tried to keep positive throughout the whole ordeal. 

And then there were those characters who you wanted to smack. Mr. Rogo, played very intensely by Ernest Borgnine, who didn’t know when to shut up and was more of a hinderance than a help, and then there was the that singer girl who was the most useless person ever. Every time they’d have to go through an obstacle, she’d crumple up and be useless. I kept shouting at the screen, “Dump her! She’s dead weight! She’s slowing you down!” I’m curious to think what my neighbors were thinking. 

Final Thoughts: A whole pizza. 6 out of 6 slices. I’d love to know if they did a documentary of the filming of this. I mean, there fires raging in the background, gallons of water flooding everywhere, and then all of those tunnels and ladders and stuff they had to climb. Please. Go out and rent this movie. Not only is it feature one of John Williams earliest scores, but you’ll get the experience of being in the ship with them trying to be rescued yourself. 

Big Fish (2003)

Lithuanian title:
My Fish Life

Director: Tim Burton
Written by: John August

Starring: Ewan MacGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Pre-Conceived Notions: From the trailer, I get whimsey. And Danny DeVito with weird hair. And then more whimsey. From what I gather from my friends, it’s a pretty spectacular film. Like, people cry and stuff. I’m not sure if it’s a sob, or one of those cries where your diaphragm spasms and you’re all snotty and shit, but I have a box of Puffs Plus handy just in case, because even OnStar commercials have made me cry in the past, so…

Why I Haven’t Seen This Film: I have no good answer for this, so I’m going to say that up until recently I had an irrational fear of movies that mention sea creatures in their titles, and “fish” is a huge umbrella for sea creatures in general. So, I spent tons of money and got therapy and now I’m cured and can cry into my Puffs Plus with abandon*.

2 hours, 5 minutes later…: This is the movie where the guy who does the priceless MasterCard commercials is sick and tired of his father, Daddy Warbucks, telling the same old fantastical stories about when he used to look like the younger Obi-Wan Kenobi. But I’m not sure why, I mean, I love people who can tell a really good story, no matter how embellished they are. But this movie dealt with a lot more than just tall tales and mind-bending adventure. It really looks at how much our identities are link with the people who came before us. We are how our parents met, and what experiences they had before we had us. We are as much them as we will be to our own children. For several millennia now, our identities are kind of like cotton, i.e. the fabric of our lives.

Like all other Tim Burton movies, this one is loaded to the brim with rich imagery and larger-than-life storytelling. Helena Bonham Carter, a.k.a. Mrs. Burton plays 3 characters that kind of hints at being one character? But maybe I won’t spoil that part for you. It was a little weird. But it is interesting, because she is the only person to have played both the older version and the younger version of herself amongst characters who had both younger and older versions of themselves, apart from her as a little girl. So she’s the connection between the past and the future.

One of my favorite parts of the movie was seeing 7'4" Matthew McGrory tower over 5' Danny DeVito. It was like a Burtonesque replay of a blenderized version of Gulliver’s Travels. One of my least favorite parts of the movie was seeing Danny DeVito’s naked behind. As I was eating lunch. So, if you haven’t seen this movie, don’t watch it while you’re eating lunch.

Final Thoughts: 5 out of 6 slices of pizza. This movie is like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland with hints of Forrest Gump, and is a perfect way to escape the reality of life for a while. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I didn’t cry. THey tried to pull at my heartstrings at the end there, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

*I'm getting no remuneration for mentioning Puffs Plus twi— uh, three times, in this post.

Capote (2005)

Italian title:
“Truman Capote -
In Cold Blood”

Directed by: Bennett Miller

Written by: Dan Futterman, Gerald Clarke

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Catherine Keener

Running Time: 1 hour, 54 minutes

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: In all honesty, Truman Capote was a little before my time. I’ve only seen one interview with him, (the one he did with David Frost in the ’60s), and that’s all I have to go on as far as the authenticity Philip Seymour Hoffman brings to the role. I like a good biopic, so I’m looking forward to watching this.
Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I gravitate towards comedies. This doesn’t look very funny to me, although I have been wrong about these things before.

1 hour 54 minutes later…: If you’re too young, like I am, to really have a good picture of what Truman Capote acted like and sounded like, just watch this clip, and tell me Philip Seymour Hoffman didn’t knock this one out of the park. It is very rare that an actor is so good he can embody any character he sets out to play. Johnny Depp is one of those people, and as I mentioned earlier, Helena Bonham Carter is one of those people, and you would be crazy not to put Hoffman on that list as well. 

This was a very compelling story. You’ve got this prisoner on death row, Perry, who sees Capote as his only way out of getting executed, and you’ve got Capote himself who has such a driving urge to tell the story that he’s willing to use these two people and keep them alive for as long as possible and then abandon them when he gets all he needs. But he didn’t bank on falling in love with Perry. What this movie does best is highlight was a master manipulator Truman Capote was with his masterful lies and his cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor. I may have to go out and find a copy of In Cold Blood and read it, just to get a grasp on what kind of book he was writing. 

Before I close out this review, I’d like to spend a few words saying that we truly lost someone with ridiculous amounts of talent who wasn’t your typical movie star. He exemplified the now-cliché that there’s no such thing as a small part, just a small actor. Every single part he did, he grabbed it by the balls, and acted the crap out of it. He was always memorable no matter how supporting his role was. It really too bad that drugs has claimed yet another gifted human being. 

Final Thoughts: 5 out of 6 slices of pizza. Top-notch acting, and the movie was unabashedly unapologetic about what it showed us. Rest in peace, Mr. Hoffman. Your work is done here.

The Piano (1993)

Australian working title:
“The Black Keys”

Directed & Written by: Jane Campion

Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill

Running Time: 2 hours

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: This is the movie for which Anna Paquin set a record for the youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. All that really comes to mind about this film is that they carry a piano across an ocean? Maybe? And Holly Hunter’s mute, which makes sense, because her southern accent wouldn’t jive in the time period or location where this movie is set. I think Holly Hunter is great, but has she ever played anyone who spoke that wasn’t southern?

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: The title is really boring. The Piano. Doesn’t really say, “Go out and see this film!”, does it? No, it does not.

2 hours later…: He chopped her finger off! Her only solace and means of expression was that piano and he chopped her finger clean off! That was pretty much the only excitement that whole entire movie.  Except during the theatre scene when one of the natives thought all those women were actually beheaded and stormed the stage. That was pretty funny. The rest was a yawnfest. Seriously. It moved really slowly. 

But there are a couple things I’d like to say about Holly Hunter. To do a role without speaking a word is not an easy achievement. You really have to rely on so many other things to get your intentions across. But I guess that kind of part is an actor’s dream because there are no lines to memorize. Also, she did all of that piano playing herself! She had to have been a classically trained pianist beforehand. I mean, woah. She blew me away. I loved that they included it in the credits, too. Her Wikipedia article doesn’t say anything about being a trained pianist. I guess when you don’t have very many lines to learn, you learn the piano. 

What was with the nudity? I guess it was there to add realism, but I could have done without seeing Keitel’s Little Soldier. Although, it wasn’t as traumatizing as that scene where Sam Neill chopped her finger off. In front of her child! Dude! Seriously? There are plenty of fish in the sea. And now you have absolutely no chance with her because chopping someone’s finger off is probably the opposite of romantic. Call me crazy, but there ya go.

Final Thoughts: 3.5 out 6 slices of pizza. The cinematography was great. The acting was good, although I’m not sure why Anna Paquin actually won the Oscar for this. But the story just crept along. And the landscape with all that mud and stuff was kind of depressing. 

Memento (2000)

Turkish title:
“Teleprompter”

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Written by: Christopher & Jonathan Nolan

Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Ann Moss, Joe Pantoliano

Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: Memento is one of those movies that has been around forever, and that I keep hearing a lot about. I’m actually really excited about watching it because it deals with chronological order, and messes time up and makes you think really hard about stuff. Those are the kinds of movies that I watch. I just posted that I was going to see this movie on Facebook, and one of my friends called it a “cinematographic lobotomy.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. I guess I’m going to find out really soon.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: At the time those really upbeat Mentos commercials were on the TV all the time, and Memento and ‘Mentos’ sound too much alike, so I didn’t go see it. Yeah. That’s exactly what happened. If you don’t believe me, I will submit to a polygraph. Don’t think I won’t do it, ’cause I will. 

1 hour, 53 minutes later…: Wow! That was like watching a Harold Pinter play. For those of you not in the know, Harold Pinter wrote a play where the scenes are backwards, so the surprise ending is actually the surprise beginning. Pretty cool, huh? Seinfeld did this as an hommage to Pinter in the episode where Elaine goes to India to get married? I think that was the plot? Anyway. I love it when people turn convention on its head like that. 

I have a confession to make. I’m a reader. I read Wikipedia articles and blogs about movies and stuff in order to quench my thirst for knowledge. I read in an article that the black and white scenes are in chronological order, and the color scenes are in reverse chronological order. That one simple thing really helped me follow the plot of the movie. In fact, it was such a no-brainer, I’m surprised people don’t pick up on that the first time they watch it. This whole technique is ingenious, because how do you write a movie from the point of view of a person with no short-term memory? You tell it backwards, of course! 

The only gripe I have about the plausibility of the plot is that when you have a short-term memory disorder, you kinda don’t remember you have a short-term memory disorder. There are real-life cases where people have memories as short as 7 seconds. It’s like they are trapped inside their heads, because they don’t have any recollection of the past, and they can’t look to the future, because they are locked in the present. Take a look at this video, and you’ll see what I mean.

Final Thoughts: 5.5 slices out of 6. The story telling was top-notch, and I’m kind of exhausted from trying to keep the plot in my head from all the scenes that happened before, but really happened after. Your brain is not designed for backwards things. I absolutely loved this movie. So why did I take a half a slice away? Well, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHAKE A POLAROID PICTURE! I don’t care what that song says. The good folks at Polaroid point out that shaking a picture in order to develop it faster destroys the picture quality. Someone really should have told Leonard that.