Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

Great soundtrack? Check. Robin Williams being absolutely wild with his comedic DJ routines? Check. A standard battle of wills between the old and the new? Check. When I sat down for this long-overdue revisit of Good Morning, Vietnam, a film I believe I probably last watched on VHS, I thought I knew what I was getting. Because I still remembered it, the "highlights" anyway. Or so I thought. There was quite a bit here that I'd forgotten, and I'm here to now remind other people about some of those things.

Based on the story of Adrian Cronauer, a radio DJ who spent some time trying to raise the morale of the troops in Vietnam, this was one of only two films written by Mitch Markowitz, although some of his TV work feels like a good practice run for this kind of thing. You could also argue that a lot of the film was made up by an unleashed Williams, who Cronauer claimed made him seem a hell of a lot more fun than he was in reality, but let's give due credit to Markowitz for crafting something with a great balance of comedy, drama, and enough room for a supporting cast to move around without being thrown offscreen by the tornado tearing through many scenes.

When he is given his new job, Cronauer soon finds himself butting heads with Lt. Steven Hauk (who tries to advise him on both comedy and the permitted playlist) and Sgt. Major Dickerson (J. T. Walsh), but he also has some immediate firm friends in the shape of Edward Garlick (Forest Whitaker) and Marty Lee Dreiwitz (Robert Wuhl). When he falls for a local woman named Trinh (Chintara Sukapatan), Cronauer ends up teaching an English class just to try getting closer to her, which leads to him befriending her brother, Tuan (Tom T. Tran, credited here as Tung Thanh Tran), which leads to him getting himself in even more trouble.

Director Barry Levinson knows how to make the most of what he has here, and everything I mentioned in the opening paragraph is a strength for the film. The plotting is quite formulaic, but in an enjoyable way, Williams is on great form, and that soundtrack holds up as one of the best. There's enough scene-setting to remind everyone that we're in Vietnam, but it helps that there are only really a few main locations used throughout the majority of the runtime (the DJ area/military offices, a bar, the English class). There's also enough Williams to ensure that everyone knows this is a Williams movie, but the supporting cast are given some superb moments to help them stand out.

Whitaker is a real delight for every moment that he's onscreen, and he's the one helping to bring out the best in our lead while also reminding him of what he's really doing it all for, and Kirby, as unthinkable as it may seem, almost steals the entire movie with a comedic performance that is all the better for it not being played comedically (his character isn't funny, not intentionally, but he's constantly laughable). Sukapatan is fine, Tran is really good, and it's always a pleasure to watch Walsh onscreen, especially when he's delivering the kind of barely-controlled anger that he has here. Wuhl is good, Noble Willingham is enjoyable in his few scenes as the sympathetic Gen. Taylor, Richard Edson has the benefit of being onscreen alongside Kirby, adding to the comedy, and there's an amusingly camp turn from Cu Ba Nguyen as businessman/bar owner Jimmy Wah. I would not have believed that this was his first film acting role if I hadn't just quickly scanned through his filmography online.

Admittedly a bit tame compared to other films set during the Vietnam War, this is a nice way to shine a light on the whole debacle from a different angle. Making arbitrary rules and regulations about comedy and music is indicative of how arbitrary some (many?) of the military edicts are, especially during a conflict as chaotic and misjudged as the one in Vietnam. 

You'll probably revisit this one day while wanting to enjoy some classic Williams schtick, but you may be as pleasantly surprised as I was by all of the main supporting cast members, especially Whitaker and Kirby.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

Sphere (1998)

Although not released at the same time as the big underwater thrillers that battled it out in the late 1980s (those main three titles being Leviathan, DeepStar Six, and The Abyss, of course), but Sphere is nicely in line with those films, and any other underwater thriller that tends to mix horror or sci-fi with our fascination/fear of the deep waters that cover so much of the surface of our planet.

There's an alien spacecraft found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which understandably requires some investigation. That leads to the standard assembling of a group of smart people who might be able to get to the bottom of things. There's a marine biologist (Beth Halperin, played by Sharon Stone), a psychologist (Norman Goodman, played by Dustin Hoffman), a mathematician (Samuel L. Jackson), an astrophysicist (Ted Fielding, played by Liev Schreiber), and a U.S. Navy Captain (Harold Barnes, played by Peter Coyote). Once at the main site, our assembled team discover a number of strange details, and then a large and impenetrable, perfect sphere. And things are about to get much stranger, putting the group in danger as sanity is worn down and people start to turn on one another.

Michael Crichton has written numerous best-sellers, and his name has been involved with a number of enjoyable blockbuster movies, but he hasn't always been adapted well to the big screen. Sphere is one of the better Crichton adaptations of the past few decades, although it suffers from the fact that the finale probably isn't as satisfying as viewers want it to be. Adapted by Kurt Wimmer, the final screenplay by Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio is a decent attempt to mix in some spectacle, thrills and tension, and some solid psychological horror (albeit mild horror). As with so many Crichton tales, there are a number of great ideas, and the script at least executes many of them very well.

Director Barry Levinson also does good work here, making the most of his all-star cast and the chance to provide a number of set-pieces that build and build on the way to the grand finale. The weakness seems to be in the source material, but only in the way that it doesn't feel designed to provide the most obvious type of third act resolution that so many of us are used to from these kinds of movies.

There's nobody here who feels out of place when it comes to the cast. The leads are just superb, all bringing certain qualities to their characters, which is obviously why they were picked. Stone is another strong female here, although one with a vulnerability that ends up being exploited. Hoffman is a bit arrogant with his intelligence, Jackson is more relaxed and open to seeing how things play out, and Schreiber is, well, just fun to have onscreen alongside the others. Coyote is as dependable as ever, and there's even a good little turn from Queen Latifah, playing one of the few other characters to have actual dialogue.

It may not quite do enough to warrant me making a pun like "the only thing you need to fear is Sphere itself", but this is a sorely-neglected blockbuster from the late '90s that tries to weave between entertainingly dumb and entertainingly smart.

8/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

April Fools: Silent Movie (1976)

One of my favourite shots in any film ever!

It does exactly what it says on the tin. Oh yes, Silent Movie is a silent movie, for the most part (only one person gets to speak, and it's a brilliant punchline), directed by Mel Brooks, who co-wrote the film with Ron Clark, Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson.

The plot is a brilliant slice of meta fun, as Brooks, accompanied by Marty Feldman and Dom DeLuise, convinces a studio to let him make a silent movie, and then sets out to convince a variety of big stars to appear in his silent movie. That's the excuse for one set-piece after another, from going to great lengths to talk to Burt Reynolds, to keeping things perfectly balanced in James Caan's trailer while trying to get him on board. As the film starts to look more and more appealing to those in the business, a rival studio sends out a secret weapon to scupper the whole thing, the lovely Bernadette Peters.

For film fans, this is almost as enjoyable now as it was nearly 40 years ago, when first released. The comedy, as you could probably guess, is pretty universal and timeless, and it's only some of the stars who may be slightly unfamiliar to modern audiences (even if I do dislike the thought of a world in which people don't recognise Anne Bancroft, Burt Reynolds, or Paul Newman).

Brooks and DeLuise are very funny, but Feldman is the highlight for me. The man can be funny even when not playing with material, and I thank Brooks for giving him two great movie roles (with this and Young Frankenstein). A bit of praise, however, must also be given to those stars already mentioned, as well as everyone else who joins in with the fun.

Although the movie is little more than a loosely connected series of sketches, the format allows for this without it ever feeling like a major negative. Many silent movies were broken down into a number of different acts, of course, and this feels just the same.

If you're a fan of Brooks then you should enjoy this. If you're a fan of comedy then you should enjoy this. In fact, most people should enjoy this.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Mel-Brooks-Collection-DVD/dp/B000AM6NCM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391351938&sr=8-1&keywords=mel+brooks

High Anxiety (1977)

It's another top class spoof from Mel Brooks, this time taking aim at the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, and while I enjoyed many individual moments (the riff on The Birds is juvenile but also damn funny) I didn't feel that the whole thing worked as well as it could, or should, have.

The biggest plot developments, and indeed the title itself, are derived from Vertigo - the film that, despite stiff competition, just edges ahead of the pack to remain Hitchcock's finest hour. Mel Brooks plays Richard H. Thorndyke, a man who is appointed as the new administrator for the Psychoneurotic Institute For The Very Very Nervous. There's something not quite right at the institute, something that Nurse Diesel (Cloris Leachman) and Dr. Charles Montague (Harvey Korman) seem to be covering up. Maybe it's to do with a patient named Arthur Brisbane (Albert Whitlock), a man kept there despite him being in fine physical and mental health according to his daughter, Victoria (Madeline Kahn).

Written by Brooks, as well as Ron Clark, Barry Levinson and Rudy De Luca, the film lacks the gag quotient of, say, Blazing Saddles while the references to the original movies aren't always as immediately recognisable as they are in Young Frankenstein. Having said that, there are plenty of details and little touches that will please fans of Hitchcock even if they aren't always played for laughs.

The performances are all pretty good, in line with the material, but the best moments come from the fantastic Cloris Leachman and the equally fantastic Harvey Korman. In fact, the very best moments feature both stars bouncing off one another and wringing the maximum amount of laughs from each line.

Okay, so comparing this movie to Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein is probably quite unfair because they are two of the best spoofs ever made so I should make it clear that High Anxiety certainly rewards attentive viewers and will undoubtedly be a film that I return to now and again for some guaranteed chuckles.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Mel-Brooks-Collection-DVD/dp/B000AM6NCM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348995965&sr=8-2

The Bay (2012)

It's a real shame that many people will see The Bay as just another in the never-ending stream of found footage movies being release nowadays. It IS a found footage film, in many ways, but the framing structure is that of someone presenting this material to the world. This isn't just raw, shaky-cam footage from start to finish. In fact, there's not that much shaky-cam thanks to webcam footage and dashboard cameras being the main source of the filmed evidence being shown, at last, to the world.

Kether Donohue plays Donna Thompson, the woman speaking directly to camera and setting the scene. A few years ago, on the 4th of July, a mysterious medical condition started to infect the population of a small Maryland town and ruin the celebrations. It turns out that there's something bad in the water, something that some people may have already known about but set out to keep a secret.

Marketed with the increasingly tiresome tagline "From The Producers Of Paranormal Activity And Insidious", the thing to note about The Bay is who it's directed by as opposed to who produced the thing. Barry Levinson is the man sitting in the big chair and it's fascinating to see how he deals with the constraints and problems inherent in the faked cinema verite style. Funnily enough, the end product reminded me most of Hugo by Martin Scorsese, thanks to the way an "old hand" has come along to direct a film in a particular style of the here and now and shown all of the youngsters how it can still be handled masterfully.

The movie doesn't run for that long, and a number of small moments are shown repeatedly to make the big points that the final edit of the material wants to push into the public consciousness, but it doesn't feel rushed either. Things are set up and develop with efficiency and skill. Donohue makes for a likeable lead while Kristen Connolly, Stephen Kunken, Will Rogers and Frank Deal are all excellent as some of the main people caught up in the events of the day for various reasons.

While it's not all that scary or atmospheric in the traditional horror sense, there is a lot here that scares because it all feels very plausible. I don't want to spoil things by providing too much detail but the origin and details of the outbreak will make you wriggle in discomfort and start to worry about how close to reality it could actually be.

A lot of credit for the effectiveness of the movie should also go to writer Michael Wallach. This is his first filmed script, as far as I'm aware, and he does a great job of delivering the required information, providing moments of real nastiness and also being unafraid of leading viewers towards a conclusion that is foretold from the outset.

Don't be put off by the fact that The Bay is a found footage movie. Don't be put off by the fact that it's from those ubiquitous producers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Instead, let the fact that it's a very good film helmed by a great director encourage you to give it a chance.

7/10

The Bay is available on Amazon Instant Video here - http://www.amazon.com/The-Bay/dp/B00A0G162U/ref=sr_1_9?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1352032372&sr=1-9&keywords=the+bay