Movieline Online

THE FLICKS: It really isn’t possible to overstate the importance of Superman as a model for the modern blockbuster. It was packaged, sold and marketed as a high-concept event movie, the epitome of Hollywood’s effects-heavy summer movie season today. With one big name star with a big paycheck (Marlon Brando), the actual weight of the film rested in the hands of behind the camera talents like Mario Puzo and director Richard Donner. Christopher Reeve, for all the genuine charm he brought to the role, was almost irrelevant to the equation, as well This was “Superman,” dammit! And it seemed almost destined to succeed. Of course, it wasn’t. But the amazing thing is how effortless the production appears. Richard Donner, hot off the success of The Omen (and at the height of his career artistically) seems to intuitively grasp the American mythos behind the character, expressing this on film with a mix of wide-open naturalistic photography and classic Hollywood sets. He juggles cornball humor, c...

THE FLICK: For an entire generation who grew up on the atomic age magazine covers of Amazing Stories and Forbidden Planet was the ultimate realization of their collective dreams: a moving picture compendium of serious sci-fi images and ideas brought to vivid life by MGM in a way no other studio could. It made a pop culture icon out of Robby the Robot and all-but standardized the “look” of science fiction for decades to come until the photorealistic effects on display in Kubrick’s 2001. Far from an instant hit upon its release in 1956, the film earned more respect through the years not only for its monumental production design (the inside of the mysterious Krell’s underground facility is still impressive even in the modern era), but for the ambitious script which essentially transposes Shakespeare’s The Tempest into the outer space genre. Although it’s still steeped in that naïve 50’s sense of wonder, there’s a maturity at work in Forbidden Planet that paved the way for Star Trek and a ...