MICHAEL CRICHTON

Michael Crichton left us in 2008 at the way-too-young age of 66. He was perhaps the most cinematic writer of our time. Many of his exciting books were made into splendid movies. He also dreamed up, produced and wrote many of the episodes of the hugely popular TV show, ER.

The Andromeda Strain (1971) is about a team of scientists racing against time to thwart a virus from outer space. The book is a real nail-biter; the film a little less so, but still a worthwhile watch. The 2008 remake is definitely NOT a worthwhile watch. It is simply awful. 

The fascinating Westworld (1973) involves a future camp where people can participate in whatever fantasy they choose. Richard Benjamin picks the Old West, and has a ball until it looks like the robotic denizens, led by Yul Brynner, have malfunctioned. It became a huge HBO series hit in 2016, which lasted for six seasons.

George Segal’s brain is wired in a risky experiment to save his life and of course things go terribly wrong in Terminal Man (1974). Not to be confused with the 2004 movie with Tom Hanks trying to figure out how to help a poor man trapped in an airport terminal because of a coup in his home country. 

The Great Train Robbery (1979) is Michael Crichton’s take on the most famous robbery in British history. It looks fantastic (replicating the 1880's) as the stellar cast (Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland) plot how  to rob a moving train carrying gold. The incredibly complicated plan for the heist is cinematic gold. 

The idea of Jurassic Park (1993), the cloning of long-dead dinosaurs from recovered DNA, is just brilliant. The book is great, the film less so. The story is pretty well botched by the movie- but oh, those dinosaurs! What a thrill! And the special effects are about the whole show in The Lost World (1997) involving a second island filled with killer creatures from the past.

There are no special effects or scientific marvels in Rising Sun (1993). It is a good old murder mystery with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes trying to figure out who did in a visiting Japanese big shot, and how it happened. I did not see the amazing solution coming!

Also worth a look is the medical thriller Coma (1978), ably directed by Mr. Crichton from a Robin Cook novel. In a big city hospital, patients are being stolen for spare parts! Genevieve Bujold suspects the worst, and Richard Widmark knows it. 

All of the films in this column are available somewhere. All are for grown-ups.

                                                           WILLIAM FAULKNER

He won the Pulitzer and the Nobel. He worked in Hollywood as a screenwriter for over 20 years because he needed the money. Of his over 50 script contributions, most died without filming. But he did help on two tremendous classics: To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946). His writing was almost as dense as James Joyce’s and he was not the most accessible of authors.

Adapting his pithy novels and stories to the silver screen was not an easy task. Many tried. Many failed. But some succeeded and there are some very fine movies based on Faulkner’s work.

I will start with my personal favorite. The Reivers (1969) is perhaps the most accessible Faulkner film from probably his most accessible story. Ok, reivers are thieves. Steve McQueen stars as Boon Hoggenbeck, a likeable neer-do-well. He is absolutely smitten with a spanking new 1905 Winton Flyer, owned, unfortunately for Boon, by the powerful Boss McCaslin (Will Geer). Boon steals the care (for the second time) and lights out for Memphis with a kid, Lucius, and a stowaway, Ned. There are many adventures on the way, some harrowing, mostly hilarious. 

The Tarnished Angels (1957) is based on the Faulkner novel Pylon. Robert Stack portrays embittered pilot Roger Shumann who grinds out a meager living risking his life as a stunt flyer. Dorothy Malone plays his long-suffering wife Laverne, and Rock Hudson is on board as a reporter writing about them. The stunts are good. The acting not so much, but it is a good story with a less than Hollywoodish ending. 

Intruder In The Dust (1949) has a bunch of actors you’ve never heard of except for the always present Will Geer, who plays the sheriff. It’s a really good story about Lucas Beauchamp, a Black man unjustly accused of killling a white man. He may be saved by the town lawyer, an elderly lady and two teenage boys. Of course he is, this is Hollywood! Really good story, though. The Long Hot Summer (1968) is based on three Faulkner novellas about a drifter wandering into a small Mississippi town and infiltrating a local family. The lobby card says The People, Language and World of Faulkner. Yep. Future married couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are the sparks that flame this one up. Newman is Ben Quick, who happens into the small town and the lives of its principal family. 

Barn Burning (1980) has Tommy Lee Jones and not much else to recommend it, but it barely scrapes over the recommended fence. 

The Sound and the Fury (1959) stars Yul Brynner as a Southern stud, and that’s about all you need to know. The 2014 version is even worse.  As I Lay Dying (2013) is a barking dog. 

All of these movies are for grown-ups. 

                                             The Strange Case of F. Scott Fitzgerald

        He was the personification of the Jazz Age. He was married to the beautiful and talented Zelda. He turned out one big seller after another, and was greatly loved by his readers and his fellow writers. So what do I mean The Strange Case of Scott Fitzgerald? Well, I’ll tell you. After all, this is a movie column. And in all the great novels and stories he wrote, you will not find but maybe one movie worth watching!

        It’s not that Hollywood didn’t try. Lord knows, they spent barrels of money on his stories, trying to turn them into cinematic masterpieces. But it just didn’t seem to take. Scott liked Hollywood much more than the grumpy Hemingway. Scott gratefully took their money. Shoot, he even worked there as a screenwriter for all of five months in 1938. And he didn’t turn out one single thing that was ever made into a movie.  Then he either quit or was fired. Take your pick. He was known to take a drink. 

        The Great Gatsby was his signature novel. Jay Gatsby was pretty much Scott with more money, and Long Island was immortalized by this book. Hollywood panted after the rights. Movies were made of Gatsby in 1926, 1949, 1958, 1974, 2000 and 2013. Really. And every last one of these is just not very good! It’s a great story. So why can’t they make it into a good movie? I don’t know; I just know they didn’t. I can only tell you which one is the least bad of this group: The 1974 with Robert Redford as Gatsby is more true to the book, but the 2013 with Leonardo Dicaprio in the title role is more dazzling. Baz Luhrman directed that one and his fingerprints are all over it. Not in a good way.

        Tender Is The Night is so close to the actual life of the Fitzgeralds that it’s almost painful. Dick Diver is a psychologist who drinks too much and Nicole is his mentally disturbed wife. Her mental problems and his drinking lead to a divorce. Hollywood took a shot at this one in 1962. Jason Robards played Dick and Jennifer Jones played the doomed Nicole. It’s not awful. Can I recommend it? Nope.

        The Last Tycoon (1976) is, I’m sorry, a dog. Robert DiNiro, Jack Nicholson and Robert Mitchum can’t save it. The Beautiful and Damned was bad in the 1922 and no better in the 2009. This Side of Paradise (1999) is a woeful documentary.

        There are lots of biopics about the Fitzgeralds. Are any very good? Nope. The only ray of sunshine here is in Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris (2012) when screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is magically transported back to 1920 and he runs into the Fitzgeralds in the City Of Light.

        So, where is the one good movie I promised? It’s based on a Fitzgerald short story and it’s really good. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button stars Brad Pitt in the title role. He ages backward! He starts out as an elderly man and gradually ages all the way back. Cate Blanchett is Daisy, a female friend of Benjamin. She ages naturally. 

        All of the movies in this article may be available somewhere. All are for adults.

                                                                     2023 Sleepers

                                                                         Part 3    

Last year was a pretty good year for movies. This year probably will not be, considering the industry strikes still going on. There’s little in the pipe. So, anyway, here is my last helping of 2023 movies that were good but didn’t get much notice.

    Perhaps it’s a stretch to list an Academy Award nominee as a sleeper, but I would contend that Nyad is exactly that. It is the fictionalized but mostly accurate account of Dianne Nyad’s non-stop swim from Cuba to Miami. Why do this? Why not! Nobody has ever done it before. Annette Bening is the star, convincing as the swimmer battles age, fatigue, jelly fish, sharks, and weather. It’s a stunning performance about a woman who just wouldn’t give up.

Sharper starts in a quiet bookstore and winds its way through multiple twists and scams. Julianne Moore is the big name, as Madeline, either a victim or participant in a devious plan. Sandy (Brianna Middleton) seems innocent enough, but turns out to be a parolee with quite a rap sheet. Nobody is quite who they seem to be in this one, but if you stick with it all comes (sort of ) clear.

The legendary Erroll Morris has never made a bad documentary, and his films are always fascinating. Add The Pigeon Tunnel to that list. This doc is about the life and career of John le Carre, author of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and dozens more espionage thrillers. He created George Smiley, equivocal quasi-hero of the British spy system. The title comes from a rooftop pigeon coop in Monte Carlo, where pigeons are bred to fly though a long, dark tunnel only to be shot at for sport. A sly analogy to the espionage system.

Jules is an unusual animal, a sci-fi film with a moral and a heart. (Okay, yes, I remember ET.) Septuagenarian Milton (Ben Kingsley) has a flying saucer crash in his back yard, and a non-verbal alien emerges. Milton and his female friends call the new guy Jules, and the little guy tries to repair his space ship. He appears to have telepathic powers, rescuing Joyce (Jane Curtin) from a vicious attack by having the thug’s head explode. It turns out the only thing that can help Jules with his repair work is—dead cats! So his earthly friends set out to find enough to help him out. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Beth, a frustrated author trying to get her first novel published. She accidently overhears her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) tell a male friend that he doesn’t like the book but doesn’t want to discourage Beth. Beth is finally convinced to hire a more optimistic agent, and this works wonders for the book and her marriage. You Hurt My Feelings is funnier, and better, than this synopsis sounds.

        All of the movies in this article are out there somewhere. All are for adults.

                                                                         2023 Sleepers

                                                                         Part 2

Society of the Snow is, frankly, a little hard to take, but on the whole is worth it. In 1972 a Uruguayan rugby team charters a plane to fly them to a match in neighboring Chile. The plane crashes into a glacier in a remote part of the Andes. Many of the passengers are killed in the crash, the rest spend the next 72 days stranded. Quickly running out of the meager food supplies on board the plane remnants, some of the survivors decide they must do the unthinkable with the bodies of their comrades. Based on a true story, the photography is fantastic. The story is not for the faint of heart. 

Judy Blume is a controversial author banned by many a right wing group. But she is much loved by a large audience, especially young girls. Judy Blume Forever is a documentary that tells her story quite well. Her unabashed portrayal of things usually not talked about has won her a huge audience. Sexuality, menstruation and homosexuality are explained factually and without blinking.

Michael Fassbender is The Killer, a professional assassin. No, he’s not on one last mission. In fact, he’s in the middle of picking up the pieces from a failed assignment. Events take him to France, the US, the Dominican Republic, and back to the US. His methods are varied and generally quite effective. In one scene, he accommodates a target’s request to make her death appear accidental. For some reason, you tend to pull for this not-very-nice guy and his methods are ingenious.

She was the prime minister of Israel at the time of the Yom Kippur war. Who else would you get to play Golda beside Helen Mirren? Okay, maybe Streep, but Mirren is convincing as is the screenplay that leads us from intelligence reports that Israel will be attacked through a short, bloody war that eventually ends in a stalemate and peace negotiations. The battle strategy and action are quite good, and of course Mirren is superb as always.

Almost all of the names in Rustin will be more familiar than the title character. But Bayard Rustin was quite a guy back in the 60's. He is generally credited with organizing the 1963 March on Washington, an incredible piece of logistics. He was openly gay and as such pilloried by many other civil rights leaders, but he persevered and got the march done. Coleman Domingo is the little-known actor who scores in the title role. The guy playing Martin Luther King is a an exact copy in speech and looks. Also look for A. Phillip Randolph, Adam Clayton Powell, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. As biopics go, this one is good on the facts and well played.

All of the movies in this article are available, at least for a price. Some can be found on various steaming sites. All are for grown-ups only. 

                                                             2023 Sleepers

                                                         Part one

    It’s time for Mr. Movie’s annual rundown of the good movies from last year that didn’t get noticed much. 

The Covenant stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Sgt John Kinley, home from a tough tour in Afghanistan. His interpreter Ahmed goes to incredible lengths to save Kinley’s life after he is seriously injured miles from help. Kinley discovers his heroic interpreter and family have had to hide since his saving of Kinley has made him famous. The Taliban have put a price on their heads. Kinley decides he must return to Afghanistan and get Ahmed and his family safely out of the country. 

I am an unabashed fan of all things Yogi Berra, so I was bound to love It Ain’t Over. And I did! The title comes from one of Yogi’s famous saying: It ain’t over til it’s over. This is a semi-documentary look at Yogi’s career and life, paying tribute to his Hall Of Fame ability as a catcher, as well as his funny quotes. My favorite, among many: “Nobody goes there any more; it’s too crowded.”

I am also an all-in fan of the legendary Michael Jordan. Air is the true (mostly) story of how shoe companies turned up their collective noses at Jordan, refusing to use his name on their shoes. Sonny Vaccaro (Ben Affleck) convinces Nike to take a chance on Michael. About 3 billion dollars in earnings later, it would seem like a good idea. This movie is a fun trip about how this happened. 

Abby Fortson is the young newcomer who stars as Margaret in the faithful adaptation of Judy Blume’s coming of age novel, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. This is how Margaret begins her prayers. With a Jewish father and Christian mother, who leave Margaret’s religious instruction up to her, Margaret is religiously at sea. The movies charts Margaret’s path through puberty, as she learns about wearing a bra and getting her period. This is an absolute charmer!

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie is a no nonsense documentary about Fox’s battle with Parkinson’s disease. Disdaining the obvious tendency toward sentiment, director Davis Guggenheim charts a fine path toward understanding Fox’s life. Beginning with the TV sitcom Family Ties, Fox’s career took off like a rocket. His matter of fact depiction of how he continued to work but hiding his trembling left hand is both moving and amusing. The title is derived from the fact that after being diagnosed in 1991, Michael Fox is still around 33 years later. His surprise appearance at this year’s BAFTA awards engendered a heart-felt standing ovation. 

Well, since Amazon has all of these movies (except Still) for sale or rent,  I’m going to say they are available. Just not free. Streaming? Don’t know. By now there must be at least a dozen streaming sites. All but the first one are fine for all ages. 

                                                Mr. Movie’s Best of 2023

I have hesitated to do this article this year, simply because I have not seen four of the films nominated as Best by the Academy. The awards are March 10, which seems a little later than usual. 2023 was the year that Netflix stopped sending out DVDs, and that cut into my ability to watch everything. I’ll get to the other four eventually but won’t wedge them into this list. 

    Some readers say Mr. Movie is too mainstream; others that he is too quirky. Well, this list has something for everyone. One thing of note: there are two 10s this year and that’s unusual. Back in the early 2000's there sometimes were three 10s. Maybe Mr. Movie is even more of a curmudgeon now? Well, the two 10s are both Best Movie nominees and I guess joining the crowd praising Oppenheimer is very mainstream. I think it is a certifiable classic that will be around for a long time. 

But enough chit chat. Here are what I thought were the 15 best from last year.

1- Oppenheimer 10

2- The Holdovers 10

3- Covenant 9

4- It Ain’t Over 9

5- Air 8

6- Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret 8

7- Still 8

8- Society of the Snow 8

9- Judy Blume Forever 8

10- Maestro 8

11- Killers of the Flower Moon 8

12- The Killer 8

13- Golda 9

14- Nyad 8

15- Sharper 8

    So where is Barbie? Out of the running with a 7. Many of these will appear in future articles as 2023 sleepers. Stay tuned!