Some movies merit a second viewing to get a better sense of what’s going on. There aren’t a lot of films I’d lump into this category but Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg is one of them. When I saw it during its original theatrical release I thought it fell flat. I was expecting a sharp-as-a-blade deconstruction of the kind of guy who, in Baumbach’s own words, seems to perpetually get in his own way. Ben Stiller’s character, Roger Greenberg, is a hyper-critical, excruciatingly self-centered guy aimless and adrift in a Los Angeles completely familiar to anyone who lives here—a place that seems to always have the lonely haze of a Sunday afternoon. Greenberg is a quintessential 21st century miserablist. None of his problems should chart on a list of the biggest issues facing society but in his own way he epitomizes the neurotic, existential crisis surrounding a particular stratum of our white western culture of insane privilege. Greenberg is paralyzed by how his actions make him seem to the outside world. He is obsessed with what people say about him. He is so busy avoiding the things he doesn’t want to do that he ends up not really doing anything with his life. He takes out his anger on justifiable targets—Starbucks, rude drivers—but lacks the self-awareness to see where all this self-obsessive behavior has gotten him. If this sounds unpleasant I assure you it’s actually pretty hilarious but the subtlety of Stiller’s performance caught me off guard the first time.

More than just a documentary about boxing or a boxer or a fight, Leon Gast’s astoundingly epic documentary When We Were Kings captures a fascinating period of history and tells the story of how a cocky young fighter named Cassius Clay became the worldwide icon known as Muhammad Ali. The biggest event in boxing history—and maybe the biggest event of the decade—was when boxing promoter Don King got the latest champ, the hard-hitting monster George Foreman, to take on the supposedly washed up 33-year-old ex-champ Ali in Zaire in ’74, in the event known as “the rumble in the jungle.”
 
As If the fight wasn't hyped enough there was also a sorta Soul Woodstock surrounding it with music acts including James Brown, BB King, and The Spinners performing. The filmmakers use a treasure trove of original footage from the fight and, more importantly, footage of the months in Africa leading up to the event while also including present-day (1996) reactions from talking heads such as the late writers George Plimpton and Norman Mailer. They witnessed the bout in person and, looking back, were surprised by how wrong they were about the outcome they expected. As both a cultural and historical funky travelogue to a curious time, while also revealing Ali’s complicated and controversial back story, When We Were Kings is utterly engrossing and maybe the most monumental documentary for reminding us how much bigger the role, politically, sports can play in world events.
 
The recently formed, independent Zaire was led by a ruthless dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, about whom Mailer points out, “Dictators are mostly monumentally ugly and he was looking like a closet sadist.” Seko put up most of the millions for the fight (from his direly poor country’s pockets) in a effort to change the country’s image and make it a potential tourist attraction. Before the foreign press arrived they rounded up hundreds of known criminals and randomly killed a hundred of them to spread the word amongst criminals, making Zaire briefly one of the safest places in the world.
 
Ali’s story, of course, had an almost operatic character arc. He went from a brash, unlikely boxing superstar to a political figure, joining the Black Muslims, changing his name, and refusing to take part in the Vietnam War. At the time he frustrated white America by continually not playing the role of the dignified champ who kept his mouth shut, which they wanted him to play. Instead he proved to be his own man, the kind of black man America was not used to and scared of. But history proved him right and, by the mid-70s, he was being embraced as a true original, even as an ambassador to the world—a role he fully embraced.
 
An injury to Ali delayed the fight and Ali stayed in Zaire to train, endearing himself even more to the Africans as he went out of his way to relate to them. He found himself in awe of a society where dark-skinned people were the pilots, doctors, and presidents. Foreman, on the other hand, who has since become a lovable, fat TV pitchman, was then an overwhelmingly intimidating figure; he looked like a giant compared to the svelte Ali. No one, including Ali’s own people, figured Ali had much of a chance to be able to stand up to the powerful foe, with the exception of the Africans—the entire stadium cheered for Ali. Foreman's German shepherds reminded the Africans of police dogs; he didn’t understand why he wasn’t loved by his fellow black people but the power of Ali’s personality was too much to overcome.
 
The fight itself is a shocker: Ali the sleeping lion, famously used the “rope-a-dope” technique, letting Foreman spend all his energy beating Ali to a pulp before Ali then took over. As soon as the fight ended, like a cue from God, the monsoons hit and rain started to pour down. The next day Ali met with African groups and humbly implored them to stay African. He told them that some blacks in America may be richer but that they have lost the spirit that Africans have. And though the film ends with a horrible “When We Were Kings” theme song, there is a beautiful montage of Ali clips and photos. And then Plimpton tells a great story about some years later when Ali spoke to a Harvard graduating class and after asking them to use their education to help the world, he recited the shortest poem of all time. It went: “me – we.” It’s simple but it beautifully sums up both the legend and the soul of Ali; more than just the greatest character in American sports history, he’s a true cultural hero for all of us, the whole world. Ironically for a boxer who made a name beating people up, Ali has proved to be one of the great men of peace.
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For Czech director Milos Forman, in that brief 10 year period between his two masterpieces, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, he took on two monumental American mini-institutions as sources. Hair, his film version of the groovy stage musical about the Age of Aquarius, is mildly memorable, while Ragtime, his big adaptation of E.L Doctorow’s hugely popular and influential novel, was largely ignored in its day; but 20-something years later it holds up and now looks like one of the most overlooked historical dramas of the decade. Ragtime is a film about the small details and how little incidents can grow and change history and people’s lives. With a fascinating cast and some interesting, ahead-of-its-time politics, Ragtime is truly an original and entertaining movie.

At the height of their superstardom in 1978 it was time for the Kabuki make-up sporting rock band Kiss (Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley) to branch out into the movies. After all, it was the same year that The Bee Gees starred in the super dud, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Instead of going the way The Beatles did 14 years earlier when they hooked up with an acclaimed young director, Richard Lester, to helm their little masterpiece A Hard Day’s Night, Kiss wanted an easier cash-in, or so the story goes. So instead of doing an edgy film to keep up with their violent, hard rockin’ persona, they hooked up with TV cartoon producers Hanna-Barbera (The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, etc.) in the hopes of selling their products to a much younger audience and ended up with a disastrous TV-movie that the band has more or less disowned. Though not as campy as The Ramones in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School or as weird as The Monkees in Head or as boring as Neil Diamond in The Jazz Singer, it is a few levels better than The Village People opus, Can’t Stop the Music. Kiss Meets The Phantom of the Park is truly one of the great oddities in the mixing of rock stars and celluloid; it can be hard to find on DVD as it’s only available in different bootleggy editions (and surprisingly a European cut is on a Kiss anthology DVD), but as a pure piece of cultural fascination and laugh-out-loud absurdity it’s worth seeking out.

Bold as it is to say, if you’re a horror fan and you appreciate the style of teen comedies that were often made in the ‘80s, then I think Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home is pretty much the most romantic movie ever made. What follows is my evidence to support this statement.

Jon Cryer (Pretty in Pink’s Duckie, as most of you know him) plays 16-year-old Morgan Stewart, a sweet prankster currently serving time at his 10th prep school who just also happens to be a huge horror fanatic. The opening shot of the movie starts out on a close-up of his vintage theatrical one-sheet poster for Lucio Fulci’s Zombi and then pulls out and pans across his room to reveal a barrage of masks, a mechanic moving severed hand, and a slew of posters ranging from Dawn of the Dead to Tales of Terror to The Exorcist. He ends up meeting the girl of his dreams, Emily, (Viveka Davis) while waiting in line at a mall to get George A. Romero’s autograph. She insists on being called “Em,” “just like in Dial M for Murder, the only film Hitchcock ever did in 3D.” Their first date is to see a late night screening of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Hell, even Em’s parents are cool and give her crap over her choice of a date movie, "when William Castle’s Strait Jacket is playing at the Inner Circle!" (And clearly it’s the better choice.) She convinces Morgan to jump into the shower with her while wearing Halloween masks in a wonderful nod to Psycho, which of course always warms my black and bitter little heart. See? Most romantic movie ever, right? Oh wait; there is a story and a plot here, too!

"It's human to lie. Most of the time we can't even be honest with ourselves."

—The skeptical commoner's response to the conflicting testimonies sums up the plight of man in Akira Kurosawa's multilayered film.

A landmark in Asian cinema, 1950's Rashomon thrust director Akira Kurosawa into the spotlight of western audiences and cemented him as a celebrated filmmaker worldwide. Based on two short stories penned by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, In a Grove and Rashomon, the film tells the story (or stories) of a recent rape and murder that took place in the forest. Days after the crime, three bystanders sort through the details and recount the testimonies of the parties involved. Through a series of flashbacks of each witness’s account, the event in question is shown multiple times, each with significant difference in detail. But which is the true story?  

God Bless the “Czar of Noir,” Eddie Muller, for he has single-handedly rescued America’s noir heritage from the dustbin of history. Eddie is the founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit that raises money to preserve old noir films whose surviving negatives are on the verge of being lost forever all so that future generations can enjoy these seedy little tales of B-movie heaven.   One recent rescue was of Joseph Losey’s The Prowler, a sweaty, kinky thriller that also serves as a vituperative denunciation of capitalism and its effects on people. Van Heflin plays Webb Garwood, a pervy cop with a chip on his shoulder and a peeping tom fetish. He snoops around the outside of a stately home after dark while on his beat “perving on the woman” as James Ellroy suitably and salaciously puts it on one of the DVD’s extras. The woman is housewife Susan, a trapped trophy wife stuck pacing the halls of her mansion, in limbo while her husband works nights as a radio DJ. Her husband’s voice fills the house from the radio and gives off an ominous echo to Webb’s creepy spying as Susan never really seems to be alone.

Though “X-rated” means something different than it did in 1969, it’s still a badge of honor that Midnight Cowboy is the only film with that “for adults only” label to have won the Best Picture Oscar (Last Tango in Paris being the other great “X-rated” flick of the era). Midnight Cowboy is less shocking today; sexually, it’s not the graphic images that provide the punch it’s the intellectually complicated nature of the characters’ sexuality that still can move an audience. As a follow up to The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman proved he was more than a one-hit wonder and instead that he had a long and vital career ahead of him. It also deservedly made a star out of a little known pretty-boy actor named Jon Voight. And it also put British director John Schlesinger on the American A-list, a guy whose deep sensitivity and open homosexuality put him ahead of his time. The film’s theme song, “Everybody’s Talkin’” performed by Harry Nilsson, has become the iconic standard bearer for images of a lonely guy walking the streets of New York. Midnight Cowboy also is a fascinating peek at an era both for representation for how an artist works at a time when the movie studios were willing to take a chance on a grubby flick about a would-be male prostitute and his new BFF while also revealing a dark side to the Big Apple during what has sometimes been considered a golden age of self-expression.

One of the best examples of docu-realism in the Battle of Algiers-mode, Bloody Sunday, from director and writer Paul Greengrass, was originally made for Granada Television (a high quality UK outfit) but after an acclaimed screening at the Sundance Film Festival it got its theatrical run and instantly made Greeengrass a director in high demand. He went on to direct the final two Bourne flicks as well as another outstanding docu-drama, United 93. Bloody Sunday tensely recreates the events of the 1972 peace march in the Bogside of Derry, Northern Ireland that spiraled out of control as itchy trigger fingered British paratroopers opened fire on marchers killing 14 and then covering their own actions. The film tries to show the points of view of both sides, but no matter how even-handed the film intended to be, and even with the usual IRA types running around looking for a fight, it’s impossible to see it as anything less than a British massacre of the innocent.

If you ever sought to find a modern day horror film that both celebrated and homaged the great "slasher" era of the '80s, while simultaneously adding something new, fresh and unique to that particular sub-genre, then you need look no further than Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon.

In the world of the film, our modern day real life boogeymen don’t exist. There’s no Charles Manson or John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer. But the cinematic baddies that we’re all well versed in – Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers – all exist in the world of Behind The Mask. They are in fact folklore. Camp fire tales. Legends. The next great killer to join their ranks, whose name will evoke terror and fear to the small, little town of Glen Echo, will be Leslie Vernon. To document both his training and first onslaught, Vernon (Nathan Baesel) has invited a small crew of college filmmakers, fronted by aspiring journalist Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethels), to join him as he becomes the sure-to-be-legendary masked maniac. The results are both frightening and hilarious.

Like a stunned archaeologist I happened upon a relic from the past that may be a Holy Grail for shining light on an era and a people; it’s a little movie called Tuff Turf. Perhaps it can be used not to tell us about life in 1985 — I imagine that any relation to actual life is purely coincidental — no, it tells us more about the hack filmmakers of that period. Like so many films about young people in that period, the filmmakers are highly influenced by the worst qualities of music videos and seem intent on filling the movie with banal musical interludes. It’s a mix of Class of 1984 and Footloose (which obviously includes some Rebel without a Cause), mixing in live performances but without the skill of Streets of Fire. Yes, it’s supposed to be a gritty school gang vs. the new guy flick, but where flicks like Class of 1984 and even Bad Boys were legitimately disturbing, even with some heavy moments of violence Tuff Turf carries the influential stamp of Grease 2, or worse, ‘60s beach movies. There’s actually a shocking moment when the kids break out in a spontaneous, highly choreographed dance number (no, really); any state of edge in the film is an accident. Oh, and the editing and timing are completely stilted and awkward. However, these minor grievances aside, Tuff Turf is a bad film; as a matter of fact its severe mediocrity actually makes it all the more fascinating and entertaining. 

When the legacy of a film that you a feel deep affection for is messed with the knee-jerk reaction can be negative; every once in a while a remake can be respected (Dawn of the Dead) or a sequel can outdo the original (The Road Warrior, Aliens) but most sequels and remakes are strictly quick buck affairs. So there’s no point in getting snotty about Rise of the Planet of the Apes; it’s a big, fun, flawed but intelligent reimagining of the series. It’s the best Apes flick since the original film, Planet of the Apes in 1968, one of my all-time favorite movies. The legacy has already been contaminated; the quality of the four sequels (Beneath…, Escape from…, Conquest of…, and Battle for…) vary in quality. Both the live action and animated television series, based on the film, are amazingly boring. And Tim Burton’s ill-conceived remake was a dud. Frankly, fans of Pierre Boulle’s original book have the most to complain about as the ‘68 version’s screenwriters, Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, hit the bull’s-eye, but completely abandoned much of the novel’s concept. The rebooting of a stale series has done wonders in recent years for both Batman and James Bond; rebooting as opposed to remaking looks to be the new way to find new creative angles.
 
The first act of Rise is almost a boy-and-his-dog story, or a scientist-and-his-genetically-intelligent-chimp story. Will Rodman (James Franco), a brilliant geneticist, inspired by his Alzheimer-stricken father, Charles (John Lithgow), works to find a cure while working for one of those evil medical companies. When things go wrong, the apes are slaughtered, but Will brings home one of the ape’s newborn babies, whom he names Caesar (the first of many name references to the original films). He and his dad and then his zoologist girlfriend, Caroline (Freida Pinto), are happily raising their extremely intelligent young ape in picturesque San Francisco and other then the scientific mumbo-jumbo mixed in this could be an above average family flick. But then things go wrong; as Caesar grows into maturity he starts to wonder who he is, and after protecting Charles from a brute neighbor, he is sent off to a sort of stray ape kennel (doesn’t every city have one?). It’s an old, rusty animal shelter and here the flick really lights up and becomes a classic prison tale.
 
The sleazy and abusive monkey jail is run by Landon (a wasted Brian Cox) and his overacting creep son Dodge (of course in the original flick Dodge and Landon were the names of Charlton Heston’s astronaut cohorts). Here Caesar must survive the abuse of his new captors as well as his fellow apes who he has never been exposed to; his anguish in his new environment is truly heartbreaking. He ends up befriending an angry Gorilla and, like Caesar, a sign language-talking orangutan (named Maurice, after Maurice Evans who played the orangutan Dr Zaius in the original), while trying to adapt to his new life. Eventually he becomes the leader of the apes, teaching them collaboration, while planning their escape. In a rather far-fetched plot twist he escapes, goes home, and grabs some of that smart medicine and gasses his ape pals so they can be on closer intellectual ground. This leads to their breakout where they team up with zoo apes and rescued lab apes; they wreak havoc on the streets of San Fran and have a showdown with the cops over the Golden Gate Bridge, before retreating to the safety of California’s redwood trees in Muir Woods.
 
That first act of the movie has definite allusions to the original Apes: a sympathetic scientific couple trying to protect an intelligent creature in a world that considers him a beast. But interestingly once the movie hits the ape jail it jumps up three flicks to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, where the talking ape Caesar leads his fellow suppressed apes in a revolution against man (I mean, if you consider taking over a Century City mall revolutionary).
 
Besides the name references, there are repeated lines from the old series, “It’s a mad house,” “damn dirty apes,” and “no!”

"Get your ass down here fast. Our kingdom has come."

—Jason Staebler's enthusiastic message to his younger brother David characterizes the delusions of grandeur in Bob Rafelson's 1972 film.

The film opens on a tight, dimly lit shot of David Staebler's face (played by Jack Nicholson). With half of his face obscured in darkness, he breathes softly as he pushes his plastic frames up the bridge of his nose.

He begins a story from his youth. "I promised that I would tell you," he says quietly, "why I never eat fish."

David's story is stark, restrained, and mysterious with the shadows from his fingers dancing over his pensive face. As the story unfolds, it grows darker in nature and yet, the narrator remains somewhat cold. Even more compelling at this point is the fact that the audience is still unaware of David's location. A jail cell? A confession booth? Suddenly a light begins flashing in David's face, simultaneously interrupting him and the audience, bringing both viewer and subject into a common reality. 

If Annie Hall was Woody Allen’s ode to falling in love, 15 years later Husbands and Wives is an examination of falling out of love. Where the look and style of Annie Hall was clean and precise, Husbands and Wives is franticly shot handheld with herky-jerky editing and an almost improvised vibe to the performances. If Annie Hall marked the beginning of Allen’s great run of introspective masterpieces and near masterpieces, Husbands and Wives is the end of the streak. It’s his last really important Woody Allen film and definitely his last strong acting performance before he fell into a cliché of himself or brought in other actors to substitute, aping his own famous mannerisms. Husbands and Wives doesn’t have as many laughs as some of his earlier work but the insights into relationships can be utterly nerve striking. Made during his dramatic break up with his then wife Mia Farrow, it may be the last time Allen really had something he wanted to say or was worth hearing.

While Peter Weir and Fred Schepisi were putting Australian cinema on the map in the 1970s with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Devil’s Playground, an amazing underworld of exploitation cinema was also happening Down Under full of sex and violence, exuberantly captured by director Mark Hartley in his slam bang documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! Like his more recent ode to Filipino exploitation flicks, Machete Maidens Unleashed, Hartley has found the perfect formula for honoring the less honorable world cinema. Tracing Australia’s growth from sexploitation through stuntploitation and finally peaking with George Miller’s masterful Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (known in the U.S. as The Road Warrior). With a plethora of wall-to-wall clips and both informative and entertaining talking heads telling the story including Quentin Tarantino, George Lazenby, Brian Trenchard-Smith, John Waters, and Richard Franklin, this movie is an absolute blast.