It is impossible to separate this film from its writer as it has Mamet’s blueprint dialogue style all over it. As either director or writer he has been responsible for countless gems including The Untouchables, Heist, Ronin, Wag the Dog, The Verdict and House of Games. His style is clipped and edgy – crafted to make points without drama or heavy use of subtext. Mamet’s characters say what they mean and mean what they say – their dialogue is clear unambiguous and direct. This is particularly useful and consistent with the predominantly masculine worlds of crime, sales, poker, and politics. This makes a Mamet film a Mamet film no-matter who directs it.

Glengarry Glen Ross

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However, the telephone calls made to the leads in kiosks everyone and anyone will recognise who has been on the receiving end of a cold call from someone wanting to sell you something with the usual ‘one time offer’ pitch. A meeting is called for the men to come into the office for 7.30am in the morning the following day from the time the film begins (it covers 24hrs – or less). All the problems with the leads are to be resolved then: the motivation speech they receive is deadening.

Blake (Baldwin) is from down town the Head Office of Mitch and Murray – the real estate owners. The language is harsher than Wall Street sound bites.

He calls over to Levine ‘put down the coffee – coffee’s for closers only.’ The way of the next evening is pointed out to them in realistic straight shooting terms. They are all fired and have 1 week to recapture their jobs. No new leads. New leads will be given to closers only. Any bitching and moaning from the ranks is dealt with:

Blake: ‘Leads are weak???? – no, YOU are weak.

ABC – Always Be Closing

AIDA Attention, Interest, Decision, Action

Anyone who has worked in a corporate world and has had to take in a ton of shorthand business speak delivered in acronym will understand this totally. There’s more: George (Arkin) and Dave (Harris) complain….

Blake – to George ‘Good father?? Fuck you – go home and play with the kids.

‘Do you know what it takes to sell real estate?’ It takes balls of steal.’

He holds the new leads in pink wrapped in a ribbon to torment the sales force with.

‘These are the new leads – these are the Glengarry leads.’ ‘But you don’t get them because giving them to you is just throwing them away.’ ‘They’re for closers.’

Boiler Room, the movie about Chop Shop young sales men with Vin Deisel has the same kind of dynamic unforgiving language but not the same kind of resonance to the characters. Directly after this motivation inspired ball breaking, Levine has to take a call from the hospital where his daughter resides. She needs her father both financially and emotionally. He has to tell the person on the end of the phone that he won’t be there to see her that evening.

And all the time it rains and rains and rains. The external shots of that evening look like an Edward Hopper painting – the streets full of loneliness and isolation with neon streaking across wet puddled pavement. The overhanging jazz score imbues the environment with moody atmospherics.

The men have different responses to what their challenges are: Levine is desperate, George and Dave (Arkin and Harris), are bitchy and frustrated, whereas Roma (Pacino) has always been the sophisticated urban carnivore: he isn’t at the breakfast meeting – he is the top closer. Roma doesn’t use the leads but attacks his prey in a social environment and wraps his pitch in a milieu of social observation and modern philosophy. His prey in this instance is James Lingk (Jonathon Price) drinking with Roma in a bar. He’s being closed without realising it. A lamb to the slaughter.

Levine tries to bring the cold Williamson in on a deal and tries to pitch to a couple on the phone – and to the man in person, to no avail.

George/Dave discuss at length the prospect of going it alone – or breaking into the office for the leads and trash the joint to show the masters who is boss.

The following morning the office has been robbed the police are there. Pacino is still trying to conduct life as normal especially when James comes in and asks for the three day post deal waver at the behest of his wife. The interchange of dialogue between all of the men at this point is dynamic, revealing and interesting. There are considerable power shifts with each conversation. All are trying to keep the sales environment going with a police presence in the office – with a very nervous James wanting to cancel his cheque.

Williamson intervenes and ruins the deal culminating in Levine revealing himself by trying to give Williamson some old timer advice. Watching Lemmon’s acting here is watching a man at the top of his game: he goes form being gung ho – to pleading within 2/3 minutes. He is told by Williamson that the deal he made that day is invalid as the people are instable.

Williamson: ‘The people are insane – they just like talking to sales men.’

It has a bigger effect than the prospect of prison for him. The devastation in Levine is palpable: Jack Lemmon is stupendously good as the desperate old timer down on his luck still clinging on to the vestiges of his manhood acquired from past glories. By the close of the film he is a tattered wreck, a loser. He knows he’s done. But there again, to an extent all of them are. Roma rightly states:

‘We are the members of a dying breed: that’s why we should stick together.’

Gail Spencer

So what was the best? Its hard, this year I have had a hard time picking a top ten out of so much goodness so instead I have a top fifteen. Its my list I can do what I like. Even though I have a top fifteen I still managed to miss stuff at the flicks like UP and Gamer which both seemed like my type of movie, but that’s why god invented home entertainment.

Best Film Nobody Saw: The Box

Richard Kelly’s third film as a director was a return to form with a brilliant premise, but nobody cared. Where this leaves his career is unknown. The Box is no classic but its a genuinely creepy, atmospheric and suspenseful ride. The decision to shoot on digital film and set the story in the 1970’s also makes it feel like you are watching a genuine slice of weird life from the period. Much like David Fincher did with Zodiac, this makes it feel authentic. The Box also benefits from great performances from James Marsden (quite an underrated performer really), Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella as the villain. To top it all off its got one of the best scores in years by Arcade Fire members; Win Butler and Owen Pallett. Hopefully this will become a big rental on DVD next year so Kelly can get another one of his weird visions on screen. See Also: Drag Me To Hell, Observe and Report.

Best Straight to DVD title: Trick R Treat

The decisions of some major studio’s continues to baffle me. I hope some marketing men were fired for the shoddy treatment of Michael Dougherty’s directorial debut. What is easier to sell than Halloween? Ah that’s right another entry in the tired Saw franchise, I forgot. Trick R’ treat is one of the most fun horror films to come along in a while and with a minimum of gratuitous gore. Perhaps its just a film for a forgotten time, a time of simpler tastes and needs from your entertainment. This just does not excuse the direct to retail debut for this movie. Surely a two week run at the Prince Charles wasn’t too hard to arrange? See Also: Sex and Death 101 and JCVD.

Film that was far better than everyone gave it credit for: X-men origins – Wolverine

Something happened before this film came out, I actually felt bad for 20th Century Fox. The film debuted online about a month before release and got slated by everyone who saw it. Fox did their best to make up for it by saying it was an unfinished copy. When the official reviews came about they were not much kinder. I decided to skip it in the cinema. I caught up with it in October one rainy Saturday afternoon and you know what? I really enjoyed it. Its not an excellent movie and sure it has problems but it was far better than X3 and entertaining . Plus it was really good to see Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine as he did in the first movie before the sequels mellowed him out somewhat. See Also: Zombieland

Best Film ruined by a poor final act: Funny People

Judd Apatow’s latest movie had everything going for it. A great premise, career best performances by Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen and great support from Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman. Then around 30 minutes from the end of what has been bittersweet perfection, Apatow decides to bottle it and makes the whole thing a lame rom-com. That just pissed me off. What came before was so good, so honest and so heartfelt that he has probably directed himself out of his best work and Oscar glory. If the film had continued the brilliance of the first hour and a half then this would probably be in my top five of the year. See Also: Law Abiding Citizen.

Most Visually Stunning Movie: Avatar

Make no mistake, Avatar is a stunning experience in 3D. Its a major leap forward for the technology and the closest we have all come so far to visiting another planet. The only problem I have is its plot. The film was conceived sometime in the early nineties and clearly had not changed much since the initial draft. It feels as though we have seen this story several times before. Having said that its the only movie this year which I would go back and watch again purely for the visual experience. See Also: Where The Wild Things Are, Watchmen.

Best Film that feels like its from another decade: Outlander

Vikings vs. Aliens, simple yet genius. Outlander got a pretty limited cinema release when it came out early in 2009 but its the kind of film that would have made some serious bank had it come out in 1991 maybe. Its really, really good fun. Violent and suspenseful in all the right places and has a great monster too. See Also: My Bloody Valentine 3-D

Film I really need to see again so that I get it: Adventureland

On one hand, Adventureland is a brilliant film and made lots of people’s top ten of 2009 lists. On another hand it was advertised like the new Superbad and lots of people walked out scratching their heads. Greg Mottola’s personal film was a beautiful coming of age story that anyone who has had a summer job can appreciate. If I hadn’t of believed the advertising then this could have been in my top ten of the year. As it is its a great film I need to see again and will no doubt grow on me as the years go on.

The Top Fifteen Films of 2009

Yes I have a top fifteen okay? There were so many great films that needed recognition this year so why not have a top fifteen. That way it allows some of the other great titles their chance in the spotlight. So without further ado here are the best fifteen pieces of visual entertainment I witnessed in 2009.

15. Let The Right One In

Truth be told I think this movie is a tiny bit overrated. It has made number one on a lot of critics best of the year lists. I can see why. Its a beautifully told film of a child coming of age as well as first love and friendship all wrapped up in a horrific vampire tale. Its the kind of thing that isn’t handled too well by people who make films based on soppy vampire novels written by talentless spinsters. So we have to look to Europe to get a quality vampire tale. The frozen wilderness presented in Let the Right One In really adds to the overall atmosphere of this piece with the cold juxtaposing nicely with the warmth of Eli and Oskar’s relationship. Director Thomas Alfredson demonstrates a trick learned from the best horror directors, less is more, so when the horrific scenes really kick in they have that much more impact.

Classic Scene: Its hard to beat the scene in the swimming pool near the end when Oskar’s bullies get their bloody comeuppance.

14. Drag Me To Hell

Sam Raimi’s old school horror film could also be the best film that nobody went to see. Released near the beginning of summer silly season Drag Me to Hell was a box office flop loved by a few thirty something horror that went completely over the head of most teenagers who haven’t seen the Evil Dead movies. Raimi’s film has very little blood in it, what it does have though is suspense and the ability to make you jump right out of your seat as the scares really aren’t telegraphed like most modern horror films. I have watched this three times now and each time I jump right out of my seat at certain moments. Its also the first horror film in over a decade that has invaded my nightmares and what higher compliment for a horror is there than that? I recently read the theory online that Drag Me To Hell is all a delusion suffered by the main character as she battles with her anorexia. Now I need to watch it again!

Classic Scene: Alison and Mrs. Ganush engage in horrifying/hilarious fisticuffs in a parking garage.

13. The Hangover

Todd Phillips has long been one of the best comedy directors currently behind a camera. With The Hangover he proved that and then some. The film made some serious bank for a comedy and played strongly right through the summer. The trick was that The Hangover was actually very very funny without relying on fart jokes and crude humor and also kind of dark. Quite a lot of the time during the film it seems as though the missing groom may actually be dead. So many classic quotable lines as well and the film has made a bona fide star out of previously unknown Zach Galifianakis.

Classic Scene: Retracing their steps, the boys watch a video of when they broke into Mike Tyson’s house, or the impromptu sing song on a piano.

12. Coraline

Has there ever been a scarier kids film than Henry Selick’s Coraline? I didn’t catch it in the cinema but I imagine loads of kids were running screaming for the exits, and it was in 3D as well!! Based on the Neil Gaiman’s children’s book, Coraline is beautifully animated and just plain weird creepy. Its truly a superior piece of kids entertainment the likes of which are all too rare amongst things like G-Force and Hannah Montana. Proof positive that if you don’t treat kids like idiots then you can make a classic.

Classic Scene: In Coraline’s other world, her friend Wybee shows up not only with buttons for eyes but he has also had his mouth sewn up into a smile. Shiver’s down the spine and it gets creepier from there.

11. Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is as bizarre and melancholy as you would expect, its also beautiful and haunting. Two strange things happened on the day I watched this film. One; I learned that a screenplay I am in the middle of writing is quite possibly cursed and two; a UFO showed up in the sky outside out flat around an hour into the movie. These were perfect things to happen though to put me in the mood for Kaufman’s meditation on love, life and fulfilling your dreams. Also further proof along with the movie Doubt, that Phillip Seymour-Hoffman is one of the best actors working today.

Classic Scene: Caden Cotard wanders out of his creation into a devastated New York, his masterpiece has been finished…

10. (500) Days Of Summer

In another strange case of life imitating art, when I saw this it was exactly what I needed to see at the time. This was a brilliant Cameron Crowe esque indie rom-com told from the perspective of a guy in love with a girl who doesn’t feel the same way. Any male over 25 can relate to this and that was what was so great about the film. It takes all those familiar feelings of initial excitement and the joy of falling in love and then goes through the eventual crashing reality of heartbreak and how you get over it. It was in a word; inspiring. Its something even the female audience can understand and made this the best romantic comedy for quite some time. Best soundtrack of the year too.

Classic Scene: After spending a night with Summer, Tom leaves her apartment and performs an impromptu musical number.

9. The Good, The Bad, The Weird

I walked out of this movie with a huge grin on my face. Kim Jee-Woon’s Korean western is great fun. It has great characters and top notch action scenes. Remember how you felt when you first watched John Woo’s Hard Boiled? That’s similar to watching this movie for the first time. Although most of what is here has been done before, it feels very fresh thanks to the strong characterization and the clever camera work. For once I would agree with the quote on the box “Everything that the latest Indiana Jones flick should have been” as it generally does feel like a film Spielberg would have made in his prime.

Classic Scene: The race across the desert on horses to the treasure whilst being shelled by the military is hard to top as one of the action scenes of the year.

8. Public Enemies

The word ‘overlooked’ is bandied around a lot on these pages but I think its a fair assessment of Michael Mann’s latest movie. The decision to film on digital what is essentially a period crime drama is initially jarring but once you settle into it it feels like nothing you have ever seen before. The initial buzz was suggesting this was Heat set in the 20’s which may have mismanaged expectations. Public Enemies is much more like the story of a doomed romantic. John Dillinger’s relationship with Billy Frechette is the heart and soul of this film and is played to perfection by Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard. The prison escape and shootouts are undeniably exciting and Mann remains the master of the modern loud gun battle. Its the sense of inevitable doom that stays with you though. Its never spoken of but watch how Depp acts past that scene where Billy is captured by the feds or the look on Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) face once they eventually get their man. A film that is going to be re-appraised in the years to come.

Classic Scene: The shootout in the woods at night, loud and brutal and visually brilliant.

7. Star Trek

JJ Abrams did something remarkable here, he took a franchise that had grown stale with years of impenetrable timelines and stories and made it into something that even your girlfriend would like. The rebirth of these iconic characters is remarkable. Abrams makes Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura etc into living characters with personalities performed far better than anyone thought they would be. He also loads his film with action, no computer viruses infect the ship and there are no holodeck’s malfunctioning the stakes are far higher with an enemy committing the genocide of an entire species. If they can keep this momentum up for subsequent movies we could be looking at something very special indeed. Something that finally lives up to the dream that Gene Roddenberry had and fills us with wonder and awe.

Classic Scene: The skydive from space on to the platform of Nero’s death drill was the most exciting sequence of the summer.

6. Observe and Report

Writer/Director Jody Hill makes dark comedies about men with fragile and combustible ego’s. We saw it with The Foot Fist Way and also with the series Eastbound and Down. His work always walks a fine line between hilarious and just bad taste. Observe and Report walked that line more delicately than any of his previous work and for some it was too much. For me it was right on the money. Seth Rogen is brilliant as bi-polar mall security guard Ronnie Barnhardt and he is ably supported by Michael Pena and Ray Liotta. You find yourself frequently laughing at Ronnie’s behavior and then wincing when it leads to an act of bone crunching violence. When he gets his hard won victory at the end you smile but you also wonder if it was real or all part of off-his-meds Ronnie’s delusions. This is why I liked this film so much, its refusal to play by the rules of studio financed comedy. I for one cannot wait to see what Hill comes up with next.

Classic Scene: Ronnie takes on a team of cops using a torch, set to the rock riffs of Queen.

5. Watchmen

Making a movie out of the best loved graphic novel of all time was never going to be easy. It took over twenty years to get to the screen and went through countless writers and directors who just couldn’t get it right. Zack Snyder decided that an almost identical copy of the story panel for panel would be the best way to go and the result is glorious. Yeah he changes the ending and also adds a few slow-mo action scenes but I think this worked for the movie. On initial viewing the film was stunning and a joy to behold. Subsequent viewings have shown that due to the devotion to the original text the pacing sags somewhat around the time Rorschach is incarcerated. I haven’t seen the directors cut yet but the theatrical version is still a monumental achievement that will be loved for years to come as one of the best comic based films ever.

Classic Scene: The beginning credits detailing the rise and fall of the superhero is incredible.

4. The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow is a director who does not make enough movies. Since Strange Days she has made the under seen The Weight of Water and K-19: The Widowmaker. The Hurt Locker is her third film in 15 years and her best since Point Break. Its also very similar to that film in that it deals with alpha male psychology and borderline suicidal characters who are hooked on thrills. The character in question Sgt Will James, a bomb disposal technician in Iraq is played by Jeremy Renner in the most brilliant breakthrough performance of the year along with an actor in my number one film. Very reminiscent of the first time we meet Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon its no wonder Renner was considered for the next Mad Max film. Apart from a brilliant character study you also get tense as hell action scenes revolving around the defusing of bombs and the violence that can erupt on the streets of Bagdad at any minute. This is all mostly captured using handheld cameras. Paul Greengrass Green Zone has a lot to live up to as this is the best movie yet made about the conflict in the middle east.

Classic Scene: The tense standoff with a sniper in the desert.

3. District 9

Perhaps the most beloved film among internet geeks for quite some time, District 9 is reminiscent of classic films like The Fly, The Thing and Aliens but most of all Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. Neil Blomkamp peppers his movie with a heavy does of satire and allegory amongst the hardware and violence. Remember how Verhoeven does that? That said Blomkamps movie feels fresh and unique due to its South African setting. He also manages to put some great characters amongst the carnage with Sharlto Copley as hapless Wikus Van Der Merwe being a standout but also giving the aliens soulful eyes that make you feel for their plight. District 9 was a genuine surprise coming out at the end of a pretty poor summer and kept escalating and getting cooler and cooler as the movie went on. By the time Wikus tools up in the alien exosuit you are wondering what could possibly happen next to top it all off and then Blomkamp gives you a moving final shot that makes you go awwwww. Another director who I can’t wait to see come up with something else.

Classic Scene: Wikus taking out a den of Nigerian thugs with the alien weapons, two words; exploding head.

2. Where The Wild Things Are

I was an emotional wreck after watching this movie. Spike Jonze has managed to capture something unique with this movie. You know how David Lynch makes films that feel like dreams captured on camera? Jonze does the same thing here except its not dreams, its how it feels to be a child. None of the narrative of Where The Wild Things Are makes sense except to that youngster inside you who remembers how it feels to be free of the cares that plague your parents and just wants to run, jump and throw lumps of mud or snow at your friends. To top this off he also makes the best use of puppets combined with subtle CGI to make the various characters of the wild things really work. Its a miracle that this movie ever got made in the studio system and we should all be thankful that daring and inventive work like this is still possible on a large budget. Less a film for kids than a film about being a kid, this is something truly unique and original and will become a classic as the years go by.

Classic Scene: The wild rumpus begins.

1. Inglourious Basterds

My number one film of the year also happens to be my favorite film that Quentin Tarantino has ever made. When we were promised a Tarantino film set during World War Two all those years ago and that it would be a men on a mission movie, I don’t think any of us really expected what this film turned out to be. Me I was expecting something like Saving Private Ryan except with brilliant dialogue. Inglourious Basterds turned out to be quieter than that movie but also somehow more exciting. The trick is that Tarantino somewhere down the line learned to make his long dialogue driven scenes really suspenseful and tense. Every single scene in this movie is long but never indulgent, its all building towards some kind of reveal or act of bloody violence that drives the narrative forward. When you have this mastery of tension building on display and then combine it with some excellently written characters who are developed brilliantly then you are talking modern classic. Brad Pitt hasn’t been this good since the nineties for my money, he has seemed to sleep walk through almost every role apart from his small part in Burn After Reading. Eli Roth turned out to be a pretty good actor in his iconic role with baseball bat in hand. Michael Fassbender is awesome as the British agent in the films best scene with the best final speech ever. Diane Kruger is an actress who needs to get more work and Melanie Laurent is a real find. The major breakthrough of course is Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa, a role that is a hissable bad guy role but becomes something more in his hands, he makes the most evil character in the movie somehow human. If you ever read Empire magazine then you will know the last page is always devoted to a classic scene. Any scene in Inglourious Basterds could grace that page.

Classic Scene: Hard to pick from so many but the scene in the bar which leads to the short, sudden burst of violence has to be it. You could cut the tension with a knife.

Also please don’t forget to vote for the most underrated movies of the last ten years in the poll, you can comment elsewhere on these pages or email to thelostmovies@hotmail.co.uk. Thanks!

There is nothing whatsoever cute about The Thing – it is however a work of art. What makes it so is the fact that the director saw fit to stick to his vision of keeping to the original short story ‘Who Goes There?’ by John W Campbell, and not just issue a retread of the 1952 classic of the same name that so scarred and inspired John as a four year old child.

The Thing [Blu-ray]

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The movie works on another level as a tense and taught psychological thriller throwing paranoia and lack of trust into an environment ripe for escalating tensions.

The Thing starts with a helicopter chasing a husky, randomly shooting at the hound at a US Natural Science station in Antarctica populated by 12 isolated men. The dog escapes being killed. The helicopter and its firing occupant do not survive and the dog goes on to inhabit the base carrying an alien virus which enables the host to mutate, morph into, and imitate any living creature.

MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Dr. Copper (Richard Dysart) go to the Norwegian outpost where the helicopter and dog came from to see what has started this off. They find an odd mutant which looks like a human being mid-metamorphosis. They bring it back and an autopsy is performed. The dog however, is in the pound on base being looked after by Clarke (Richard Masur), but the dog starts to mutate.

‘I don’t know what the hell is in there – but it’s weird and pissed off.’

Another explanation of what they all have on they hands comes from the doctor...

‘What we’re talking about here is a life form that imitates others, absorbs them, digests them……’

The use of flame throwers from this point on features a lot in this movie as do tension and accusations. The action in terms of who gets infected and when comes thick and fast and the journey to the end is relentlessly taught.

Incidentally, the dog effects were masterminded by Stan Winston who had never used puppetry before working on The Thing.

The movie was shot in below 20 temperatures in Port Stewart – the most Northerly part of British Columbia. The set itself had to be built during the summer with filming extremely difficult in the worst of conditions much later in the winter. The result though – the spartanly populated camp, with no neighbours in the middle of no-where adds to the Cabin Feveresque feel of the film. John Lloyd – the production designer did the necessary research to know how people live in these sorts of situations and Carpenter thought it would be better if the film consisted of purely men – no women. It is the better for it. The dynamics play better.

Bennings (Peter Maloney) is first. The rest is a straightforward process of elimination.

They are up against it – like the crew in Aliens – against a malevolent being out to conquer via parasitical means. An interesting subplot is the behaviour of Blair (A. Wilford Brimley), a studied and quiet man who has gone to the computer to look at the odds of survival. A very basic computer simulation informs Blair of the numbers and facts: there is a great chance that one – at least of them is infected and that there is a further chance of the world being infected at 75%. This sends Blair off the wall and he is incarcerated for the main body of the action. He has kept notes though, that the rest of them refer to in his absence.

There is a decision made to find out who amongst them may be infected by doing a blood test of the dwindling survivors. But someone has got to the blood stores – so a DIY measure is done with the now suspected MacReady putting a blow torched wire to samples in Petra dishes.

This is the best section of the film as there are still quite a few of them still left but the paranoia is at its height. Three of the survivors are tied to chairs whist this test is carried out: one of them is infected and starts to morph whilst the other two are trapped horrified.

As one by one they go – there becomes an emphasis on damage limitation instead of survival. The focus is now on Blair – who in spite of being locked up for insanity is the most suspected. It takes MacReady to know and realise that none of them will, could or should get out alive and that the post should really be blown up to save humanity. The ending is bleak with just two men left looking at each other watching and waiting to see what happens next.

There was an alternative ending put together and shot by Carpenter which had MacReady as the lone survivor being picked up and taken to mainland to have his blood tested for it to be proved safe. This was put to focus audiences, but their response didn’t really matter. In the final analysis, he believed that the ending as it was, met more succinctly with the short story he consistently wished to be true to. As it is we are left with the fear than one of the survivors could be infected and that we could or should be next. This fits with the film’s purpose as metaphor for modern paranoia: be it aliens or disease or our neighbour – we should be on our guard.

Gail Spencer

Prime Cut

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Think of Lee Marvin and the first image that pops into your head might be of him hunting down his prey in Point Blank (John Boorman 1967), or leading a group of criminals on a suicide mission in The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich 1967) or maybe even scalding Gloria Grahame’s face with coffee in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953). Chances are it won’t be the big man getting chased across a wheat field by a redneck driving a huge red combine harvester. Unless that is you’ve seen Michael Ritchie’s bizarre thriller Prime Cut, starring Marvin as a Chicago mob enforcer out to collect an outstanding debt from small town racketeer Mary-Ann (Gene Hackman).

Ritchie won acclaim for his first movie Downhill Racer (1969) starring Robert Redford as an ambitious young skier. Gene Hackman also featured in a supporting role and Ritchie uses him again to great effect in Prime Cut as an eccentric cattle baron with lucrative sidelines peddling dope and prostitution. Mary Ann is supposed to be making payments to the mob but has been reneging on the agreement. Nick Devlin (Marvin) is approached by an old associate to get the money. Nick is initially reluctant, until he is introduced to a packet of sausages, the remains of the last man they sent to Kansas after Mary Ann.

As Nick and his accomplices leave Chicago they pass a cinema with the names of two films on the marquee. They are the western The Revengers (Daniel Mann) and the horror movie Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (John D. Hancock). Both of these films are about outsiders facing up to hostile adversaries in the countryside and Prime Cut has a similar theme. The city boys arrive in Kansas in their sharp suits and their chauffer driven car and find Mary-Ann has no intention of paying them.

Nick and Mary-Ann have clashed before. The name Clarabelle keeps being bandied about. It says a lot about Prime Cut and writer Robert Dillon’s warped sense of humour that it would not have surprised me one bit if Clarabelle had turned out to be a cow. She is thankfully a woman (Angel Thompson) though and married to Mary-Ann. Back in the day Clarabelle and Nick had a thing going, but now she lives a life of luxury on a yacht. Mary-Ann’s brother Weenie (Gregory Walcott) is dumber than his sibling, but just as dangerous.

Lee Marvin shows a charming side to his tough guy persona; he is unfailingly polite to the mother of one of his henchmen who insists he says hello to her. Nick might be a gangster, but he is more like an old-fashioned knight in shining armour, especially in his treatment of Poppy (Sissy Spacek) whom he rescues from a cattle-style auction on Mary-Ann’s farm. Oddly enough when Mary-Ann parades her in front of him, Nick hears her say “help me,” even though she never seems to open her mouth.

Ritchie orchestrates several great set-pieces including a turkey shoot at a country fair with the Chicago boys as the turkeys. There were plenty of other films around at the time hinting at the unease present in Vietnam-era America, but none of them did so quite like this. Prime Cut foregoes grittiness for black comedy and Gene Polito’s cinematography captures the beauty of the countryside in such a way that the violence seems even more absurd in such an idyllic setting.

Lalo Schifrin’s jazz score complements the action sequences, but in its quieter moments comforts the audience as if it were a mother telling her child everything is going to be okay. Prime Cut has a touch of the fairytale about it, especially in its denouement. This unusual approach may be responsible for the mixed reviews it received on its release and the film’s continuing neglect today.

Kevin Sturton

Chinese Ghost Story (Collector's Remastered Edition) trilogy boxset

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The story is an instantly recognizable one, and well deserving of its classical yet generic title: in medieval China, a clumsy tax collector named Ning Tsai Chen (Leslie Cheung) stops in a village and has to stay the night. He decides to board at the mysterious Lan Ro temple, a place so forbidden that bustling crowds suddenly fall silent at the mention of its name. The movie has fun with this particular convention by having the crowd fall silent, then start talking, then fall silent again every time Ning turns around to look at them.

At the temple, Ning meets a mysterious Taoist swordfighter named Yen Chi Xia (Wu Ma) and, more importantly, an alluring woman named Ye Xiao Quin (Joey Wong). Ning falls for Ye almost instantly, but soon learns that there are complications, for she is really a ghost, enslaved to an evil tree spirit named Lao Lao (Lau Siu-Ming). Normally, Ye seduces men for the spirit so that it can feed on their life force, but she takes pity on Ning, putting her own soul at risk. When Lao Lao forces Ye to marry another evil spirit, the terrifying Lord Black, it is up to Ning and the spirited Yen to save her. Many scenes follow featuring outlandish special effects that I can barely describe, let alone critique, such as an onslaught of flying heads and a battle with a giant tongue.

Time has not been especially kind to this film. Though many of the set pieces are effectively eerie, some (such as a scene with stop motion zombies creeping through the temple rafters) are unconvincing and flat, as the zombies move like choppy, mush-faced Gumby villains. The editing can be jarring and the film stock generally looks grainy. Worse than all this, however, are the horribly translated subtitles, although this did lend a charm to the film, and might even enhance the entertainment value for some. (“I hide up because I hate to go with those face and mean person,” Yen emotionally intones at one point).

Despite these setbacks, there are original visuals and charming performances, which are enough reason to see the film. The camera is mostly frenetic, but when it slows down, especially at the beginning, we get a strong and appropriate sense of place, of shadowy forest groves and muddy village paths. The settings in general are all nicely done and key into fairy-tale ideas quite well, with the barren and misty underworld a particular highlight.

The film features a great deal of broad comedy, more than you might expect. Practically every major character engages in some sort of slapstick routine, whether it’s Wong attempting to hide Cheung in her bath, overzealous soldiers chasing townspeople, Cheung frantically running from wolves in the forest, or Ma doing a kind of medieval Chinese rap routine as he practices with his swords. Luckily, the film doesn’t lose its footing, and the plot is never lost even with the film’s many distractions. About the only things the movie takes seriously are the tragic aspects of the romance, emphasized by the wistful theme song, and the evil of Lao Lao and Lord Black.

Returning to my original point, there are people who will not be able to get into any of this, and they probably know who they are. This movie wants nothing more than to be grand entertainment, and it largely succeeds. For anyone else willing to sit through the cheesiness, this is a peculiar and interesting slice of Chinese film history, and a significant one, as it has inspired many similar films since.

Review by Andy Hughes

The list will consist of the ten most underrated/undervalued and underseen movies of the last ten years. Are you the sort of person who thinks The Mist is the best horror movie of the last ten years? Do you think that Hot Rod is a lost comic masterpiece? Think that Terrence Malick's The New World was robbed at the Oscars in 2006? If so I want to hear about it.

All I ask is that the films you pick be released in the last ten years and that you give me at least five titles. In January I will compile all the lists and work out the ten which people mentioned most and publish the list on the site.

Here are some titles to get you thinking:

Trick R Treat

The Fountain

Unleashed

Shaolin Soccer

Stander

Dear Wendy

Thumbsucker

The New World

Code 46

Casshern

Matchstick Men

Ginger Snaps

Blow

Bully

The Virgin Suicides

Me And You And Everyone We Know

Sky High

The Mothman Prophecies

Tigerland

Igby Goes Down

I'm sure there are many more that you can think of. You can either post your list as a comment below or email it to thelostmovies@hotmail.co.uk or submit it to the myspace page www.myspace.com/thelostmovies

I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Chris

Blast of Silence - Criterion Collection

Overall Rating:

Retail Price: $29.95

Amazon Price: $26.99

Blast of Silence is an extraordinary low-budget film set in New York about a hitman returning home after many years, only for his childhood memories to awaken in him a need to end his solitary existence. Universal bought the distribution rights, although they clearly expected little return and opened Blast of Silence in a few cinemas before the film slipped into obscurity.

Beginning in darkness with the birth of ‘Baby-Boy’ Frankie Bono, the opening sequence of Blast of Silence briefly describes his troubled childhood courtesy of Lionel Stander’s narrator. If you’re over 30 years of age then Stander’s voice will be familiar from his work on Hart to Hart in which he played Max, the gravelly voiced friend of the Harts who would announce in the opening titles before every episode “when they got together, it was moirder.”

While star-director Allen Baron also wrote the screenplay, it was blacklisted screenwriter Waldo Salt who provided the words for the gloriously misanthropic voice-over. Stander’s delivery manages to evoke Frankie’s sub-conscious, while also sounding as if there is a poisonous guardian angel watching over him.

Frankie arrives at New York Central Station as carol singers sing ‘silent night.’ It’s a couple of days before Christmas; a time of the year the narrator says gives Frankie “the creeps.” Frankie hates everything, except solitude. Or so he thinks. Christmas brings back memories of other times spent here as a child waiting for something magical to happen.

Frankie is in town to take out a gangster who has been encroaching on his boss’s territory. While out drinking Frankie meets Pete, a childhood friend from the orphanage he grew up in, and his sister Laurie (Molly McCarthy). Despite the narrator warning him “Watch it! Danger signal,” Frankie allows himself to engage in social pleasantries even attending a party so he can be closer to Laurie.

Frankie has until New Years Eve to kill his man, or his bosses will send somebody after him. He needs to be a professional and concentrate on the job at hand, but for the first time in his life Frankie does not want to be alone and he is beginning to feel a yearning he hasn’t felt since childhood. The notion of a professional killer letting his guard down and opening himself up to the world has become something of a cliché over time, but back in the 60’s this was fresh and new.

Allen Baron went on to work mostly on television directing episodes of shows like The Night Stalker and Cagney and Lacey, until he stopped altogether in the 80’s. Blast of Silence has a growing cult reputation and an excellent Criterion DVD release available. It is a classic little B-movie, shot quickly on a limited budget, which like the best genre films rises above its station and reaches toward the poetic. In its own perverse way, Blast of Silence is also one of the great Christmas movies.

Kevin Sturton

The Signal [Blu-ray]

Overall Rating:

Retail Price: $24.98

Amazon Price: $19.99

Too much television is supposed to be bad for you, although whoever said that probably died years ago and never saw an episode of Dexter or Deadwood. In The Signal watching television for even the briefest of moments literally damages the viewer turning them crazy with paranoia. People begin to believe everybody else is out to murder them and should be dealt with first. They also become prone to delusions and seeing things that aren’t really happening.

The Signal is divided into three parts, each with a different director; David Bruckner directs Transmission 1, Jacob Gentry Transmission 2, and Dan Bush Transmission 3. Each part tells a different aspect of the story while moving it forward at the same time.

Transmission I Crazy in Love

It’s New Year’s Eve and Mya (Anessa Ramsey) is heading home from an assignation with her lover Ben (Justin Chadwell). In the car park she encounters a man begging for help and bleeding from a stomach wound. Wary at first, Mya offer him assistance, until another man appears carrying a knife, forcing her to flee. As she enters her building she hears arguing coming from some of the rooms. Mya’s husband Lewis (AJ Bowen) is suspicious and asks her where she’s been, who she’s been with and what she did with them. Mya makes up a story about going for a drink with a workmate.

Lewis has a couple of friends around to watch the ball game, but there is no transmission, only a garbled series of images. One of his friends Jerry is play swinging a baseball bat in the living room. Lewis stares into the TV then turns on his friend demanding he put the bat down. Lewis takes the bat off him and accuses Jerry of almost killing his wife. Jerry tries to walk away, but Lewis bashes his head in with the bat.

These opening sequences are tense and minimalistic, turning everyday items into objects of terror. Mya flees her apartment barefoot, but slides about on the blood-strewn wooden floor. A man is walking through the corridors casually killing people with a pair of garden shears as if he was pruning his roses. Mya manages to hide in a friend’s apartment. The following morning she puts her headphones and listens to Ola Podrida’s cover of Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’ while walking past the corpses strewn around the corridor.

Transmission II – Jealousy Monster

While the first part of The Signal plays it straight, Transmission II turns into a black comedy, albeit one with a gory climax. Anna (Cheri Christian) sits at the dinner table talking to her husband about cancelling their New Year’s Eve party. Nothing unusual there you might think if it weren’t for the fact that Ken is clearly dead. Next-door neighbour Clark (Scott Poythress) drops by because he needs to borrow some black bags to dispose of a few things, like a decapitated head. Clark notices Ken’s fatal condition and tries to get Anna to understand he’s gone. A flashback shows how Anna and Ken were a sickeningly adorable couple, all lovey-dovey until he stared into the television then started to strangle his wife. Anna shoved the pump she was using to blow up party balloons into his neck, though she still refuses to believe she killed him and is carrying on as if things were normal.

The increasingly deranged Lewis turns up looking for Mya, who abandoned her car outside Anna’s building. Lewis is convinced Clark and Anna know more about the whereabouts of Mya than they are letting on. What follows is like a twisted, evil sitcom as Lewis, Anna and Clark meet the one guy in the world who would show up to a New Years Eve party during an apocalypse. Jim Parsons (Chadrian McKnight) is so stupid he is completely unaware the world is falling apart. Jim is at least considerate enough to have brought a bottle of booze to the hootenanny and is hoping he can get laid. Ideally Jim is hoping to improve on one of his previous party experiences, “I made out with the dog.”

Transmission III – Escape from Terminus

The final part switches back to all out horror as Ben and Clark race through an increasingly desolate urban landscape to find Mya, while being pursued by Lewis. AJ Bowen’s performance is genuinely intimidating hinting that Lewis was always capable of this kind of rage, even before the signal unleashes it. Dan Bush directs Transmission III using very little dialogue and keeps the action moving right up until the ambiguous ending. Wordless flashbacks appear briefly to haunting effect showing moments from Ben and Mya’s relationship, from their first meeting to happier times before the world went to hell.

The Signal created a fair amount of buzz when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. A straight-to-DVD release in the UK, it is deserving of a wider audience and should please fans of the post-apocalyptic genre or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002).

Kevin Sturton

As a piece of work, there’s what Popatopolis is and what it does. As a documentary, it follows the painstaking process of Jim getting together a group of actresses and a crew to make a film in three days ‘The Witches of Breastwick.’ It also works as a character study as interplayed with hilarious action is interviews with the interested parties including sweet and tender views of the man himself from those that know him well, including his Mum. There are impressions given of Jim – the man, his methods and work from an eclectic cast including the legendary B-movie director Roger Corman. Jim has been in the business of making low budget features for a long time under various pseudonyms and has garnered respect – even if his methods are demanding and unorthodox. He did after all make Chopping Mall when he was only 21 – at the same time Raimi was making The Evil Dead – at more or less the same age.

Popatpopolis doesn’t draw this comparison, but Wynorski, like Corman decided to stick to the low budget feature as opposed to going into mainstream cinema.

The three day shoot with next to no money means that there is no wardrobe, make up – or semblance of proper co-ordination. A self confessed movie geek (his kitchen cupboards are full of movies), Jim provides none of the usual creature comforts. The make up and towels are brought in by the female cast themselves. ‘The Witches of Breastwick’ is a soft porn film and there are creative differences. One actress wants to keep a pair of pants on during a simulated sex scene and wants to know in her defence if Jim has never “pulled them to one side to get nasty.” “No” Wynorski blankly replies. The same actress wants to keep a pair of glasses on protesting on continuity grounds – who also later is made to go over the same line time and time again. Though evidently tired she goes on until it is delivered protesting at not having the time to go through what is needed like it was in the old days of low budget movie-making.

This is the clever part about this film – it follows a new demand made on those concerned whilst revoking the charm of what was. The scenes where the ‘witches’ gather around a fired cauldron, for the rest of the crew to rustle paper to simulate fire when the fire goes out harks back to the methods of Beaudine and Wood – well loved B-movie directors whose output is charming and innocent. But the methods here are purposely imposed by a Hollywood, as one actress rightly points out doesn’t make B-movies anymore, only A or C movies.

What Popatopolis does is hold a mirror to Hollywood’s nastier modern self: in an opening sequence, Jim is waiting for an actress to turn up for an interview. She eventually drives in late to see him, without much of an apology – or a resume, which Wynorski takes as a typical gesture. “Here’s a lesson for all you stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid chicks in Hollywood…and there’s plenty of you.” The vacuous nonchalance of the woman concerned deserves the sentiment.

But ‘Witches’ is nonetheless successful having been bought by a respectable amount of broadcasters and has proved as a training ground for one of the crew who has gone on to assistant direct in multi-million features. This is what Hollywood was good at in its production of such films, giving newcomers the opportunity to cut their fledgling teeth. B-movie features were never made with enormous budgets but were not meant to be painful to endure in their making. It is considerably more fun watching the making of ‘The Witches of Breastwick’ than it must have been to make it.

A lone criticism of Popatopolis is the lack of any direct questions posed by Clay Westervelt to Jim himself. It would have made the movie slightly more complete had we known Wynorski’s opinion as well as others involved. It is apparent that Jim likes making films with hot women in them (“let’s pop some tops”), but it is doubtful he really enjoyed the ructions that making a rushed effort creates. This does not detract however from the serious points underpinning the film.

Popatopolis is a good film and a very enjoyable watch providing a cultural commentary on the lot of the modern film maker. Two weeks after this was shown at Raindance, David Putnam, responsible for Chariots of Fire told an interviewer at The London Film Festival that he would not bother making an ‘intelligent’ film as Chariots was, as now he did not believe that he would get the green light on the mid-range budget. What we are left with then are movies made with massive budgets or camcorders. Popatopolis although dealing with a very different subject matter, subtlety evokes the shame of it.

Find out more at www.popatopolis.com

Forbidden Zone

Overall Rating:

Retail Price: $19.95

Amazon Price: $17.99

Well, in the 80's there was at least one filmic cheesefest that overlooked poodle dresses and doo wop in favor of skewering older targets. Yes, it's Forbidden Zone, the movie that does for Max Fleischer cartoons, racist caricature and swing music what Rocky Horror does for sci-fi flicks, gender caricature and rock 'n' roll. Only it does it so much better. Why? Because Forbidden Zone is a genuine underground original that took real dedication to make, and because it doesn't really feel like anything else, not even other pieces of similarly-minded camp. It may be unfocused and immature but it contains so many memorable images and sequences that I'd say it's pretty much required viewing for anyone interested in the offbeat.

What plot there is centers around the bizarre and (mostly) stereotypically Jewish Hercules family: Ma is a shrill victim of abuse, Pa is a cranky, Yiddish-accented tarmaker and Gramps is a savage and senile former wrestler. The "kids" (clearly played by older actors) are the foulmouthed boy scout Flash (Phil Gordon) and his “older” sister Susan (the wonderful Marie Pascale Elfman), also known as Frenchy due to her flamboyant (and totally authentic) accent. The children are warned away from the mysterious door in the basement that leads to the sixth dimension, but Frenchy is so "curiuse" that she disobeys and wanders through.

And what a world she finds. Created entirely on studio sets, it is a pop-art subterranean wonderland decorated with oversized Fleischer-esque cartoons and images of dice, ruled by constantly horny King Fausto (Herve Villechaise, Tatoo of Fantasy Island), jealous Queen Doris (Susan Tyrell, up for an Oscar nomination shortly before this) and their daughter, the comely, whip-cracking Princess (Gisele Lindley). Frenchy is soon taken prisoner, and it falls to her family to rescue her from the vicious Queen.

It's sort of hard to describe this film in words (massive understatement), because so much of it is pure visual and aural style. The novelty songs, the intentionally horrendous costumes, the anachronistic and badly mimed blaxploitation gunfight: all of it needs to be seen to be understood. And when you do, you'll either immediately reject it (a perfectly legitimate response) or be drawn to it, entranced.

There is a lot of deliberately offensive content here: blackface, Jewish stereotypes, Arabic stereotypes, gratuitous nudity, incessant dry humping, a gorilla getting it’s brain smashed in with a club. But it’s all important for the film to work, because a) it establishes the movie as a world completely without boundaries, and b) it springs from the often blatant attitudes of the films it parodies. In fact, Forbidden Zonecomes maddeningly close to real satire, but stops short, perhaps wisely. One gets the feeling it could have made important statements about American culture if it weren’t so interested in being silly.
Despite its faults, I think it's a great sort-of-lost treasure. The cast is all funny and each has moments to shine. Matthew Bright, in psychotic dual roles, gets to play a warped masochistic transexual and a nerdy, much-abused chicken-boy. Susan Tyrell is particularly memorable, shouting tearing up the scenery so much that she doesn't even react when her breasts fall out of her dress. Marie Pascale-Elfman is adorable and hilarious. And Danny Elfman steals the show and gleefully devours it in a spectacular number set to "Minnie the Moocher" (based off of the cabaret shows of his band/troupe, "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo", later just "Oingo Boingo". In fact, the entire film began as an attempt to translate these shows to film.) His cameo alone is enough reason to see the movie.

Since it's release, the film became something of a cult hit, the only sort of fate it could really have. Director Richard Elfman has been gently using this to its full advantage, sponsoring a stage version, parading up and down California with a drum to advertise it and even re-releasing the film in color, apparently the way he originally meant it to be seen. Although Forbidden Zone benefits enormously from its soft-focus black and white, the colorized version seems to keep the same period feel, if only because so many films from that era underwent a similar process.
As I said earlier, there really isn't much middle ground with a movie like this. I'd like to think that even the people who hate it can appreciate its unique aesthetic and infectious energy.

But the biggest reason to see it? Well, according to IMDB, Forbidden Zone 2: The Forbidden Galaxy is set for a 2010 release date, and you wouldn't want to be left out. Or maybe you would.

Review by Andy Hughes