Movieline Online

Character actors do most of the heavy lifting in Hollywood. A little more rough-around-the edges than the primped and pampered leads, their job is to provide detail without distraction. So it’s rare to find one elevated above their station like James Woods is in Salvador (1986), Oliver Stone’s pre- Platoon dramatic thriller set against a Reagan-era backdrop even more politically confusing than the situation in Vietnam. To be fair, Woods was on quite a roll in the ‘80s. Despite a face one would never call traditionally handsome (or maybe because of it), he was cast as the flawed protagonist in several critically acclaimed productions including Videodrome , Once Upon a Time in America and True Believer . Like a lot of character actors, Woods never seemed to be acting at all …he simply blended in like a pre-existing cinematic condition. But Salvador gave him the chance to lay it all on the table with a character unlikable enough to be the villain in almost any other movie. A pe...

Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War (1974) was not so much as novel as a “how-to” guide for aspiring mercenaries, detailing the complicated minutia of planning, staging and executing a corporate-financed coup d’état in the fictional African country of Zangaro; its characters roughly sketched stand-ins moving around the globe like chess pieces waiting to make their strategic moves. As compelling as that process can be on the page, a movie adaptation demanded a few changes, most notably in the lead character of Jamie Shannon, played by Christopher Walken, whose unique and magnetic presence gives weight to a role that’s still underwritten. Opening with an explosively dramatic escape from an African airfield, Shannon and his team make it back to civilization and part ways waiting for their next job. It comes in the form of a mysterious executive-type who hires them to replace a brutal dictator with a more amenable leader of their own choosing. Although the reasons aren’t made quite cl...

Catalog releases of studio classics have officially become a niche product. So where does that leave titles like The Killer Elite (1975), which, despite being directed by Sam Peckinpah, don’t qualify for the sort of classic status that would demand a hi-def release of any kind? It’s actually a perfect fit for Twilight Time’s limited edition business model, delivering 3000 copies into the hands of collector’s and then gifting them with a true rarity in the form Peckinpah’s Noon Wine , a 1966 TV production never before available on any home video format. The Killer Elite fits nicely amongst the covert conspiracy films that seemed to propagate in the post-Watergate era. But the complicated plot, which involves a CIA shadow company hired to protect defecting foreign diplomats while on American soil, is so much smoke and mirrors. The only narrative thread that matters is the one involving Mike Locken (James Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall), former agents and partners now pla...

For a bio-pic about the meteoric rise and tragic death of Ritchie Valens, it’s curious that La Bamba (1987) chooses to shift the focus to a different tragedy altogether. Lou Diamond Phillips makes for a charismatic – if a tad too squeaky clean – leading man. But it’s co-star Esai Morales who has the more compelling role as his brother Bob, a tortured, alcoholic trouble-maker who sinks even further into despair when Ritchie hits it big. Unlike its companion piece, The Buddy Holly Story (1978), La Bamba isn’t really about the music. Writer / director Luis Valdez emphasizes the broken families and harsh conditions that kept Latinos trapped in their basement barrios with little hope of moving up and out. It’s not subtle, but it gets its point across. Ritchie bears the burden of everyone’s dream for a better car, a better home and a better life. Everyone except Bob, that is, who resents his brother’s success and favored status in the family. Morales’ portrayal of the conflicted pr...

The sneaky truth about most ghost stories is they’re more concerned with the hauntees than the haunters . The supernatural seems to have more influence over those who are already a bit disturbed to begin with. Which describes the heroine of 1961’s The Innocents , based on Henry James classic The Turn of the Screw , to a tee. Miss Giddens is a sheltered pastor’s daughter who secures her first position as governess for a pair of precocious children, Flora and Miles, on an isolated country estate. From her very first day strange occurrences begin to peek through the idyllic façade: whispered voices, pale figures and odd behavior by her two young students. A bit of detective work reveals that the previous governess met an unfortunate end…right after her lover, the estate’s valet, did the same. And Miss Giddens begins to suspect that the children were not only under their evil influence when they were alive , but even more so now that they’re dead . The Innocents is a perfect ghos...

As the disaster movie phase of the ‘70s was winding down and the sci-fi craze was just heating up, someone finally came up with the peanut-butter and chocolate inspired idea of putting both together in the form of Meteor (1979), starring Sean Connery and a supporting cast of aging studio stars as they attempt to nuke an asteroid hurtling towards earth. It’s a good idea that was recycled (twice!) in 1998 when Armageddon and Deep Impact battled for box-office supremacy. Meteor delivers more political scuffles than worldwide destruction, though, in a film that seems to have had little budget left for special effects after writing all those zeroes on Connery’s check. But it might have been worth it. Connery’s permanently pissed-off expression is the most dramatic thing about the movie. As Paul Bradley, an ex-NASA scientist whose armed Hercules satellite and its Russian counterpart is mankind’s only hope, the former 007 manages to make the extinction-level threat seem convincing ev...

Italian horror director Michele Soavi is a third generation copy, the recipient of a symbolic torch passed from Mario Bava ( Black Sunday ) to Dario Argento ( Suspiria ) to himself. So it’s not necessarily his fault if the torch was getting a little dim by this point. Italian horror itself had run the giallo into the ground and been trumped by the profuse amount of copycat American slashers. Soavi, an actor who worked his way behind the camera, gleaned just enough from his mentors to make Stage Fright (1987) a cut above similar titles of the day…but not enough to top the films that inspired him. Set amongst a bickering troupe of stage actors rehearsing for an upcoming show, the murder of a crewmember changes the course of the production, with the dictatorial director locking the cast inside for an all-night rewrite session. Unfortunately, the killer is locked inside with them ; a psychotic actor with 16 deaths already on his resume who dons an oversized owl mask and starts makin...

It goes without saying that not every film is a classic. In fact, most are pretty routine. But even amidst a formulaic thriller or a teenage melodrama there are moments of cinematic inspiration than peek out of the mediocrity. The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) is a better than average studio picture made in an era when studios were struggling to find their place. Weighed down with romantic subplots and a manufactured sense of Hollywood cheer, it nevertheless captures one glorious moment that makes the entire film a worthwhile viewing experience. That tide turning moment comes about halfway through a picture that struggles to find its footing. Anthony Quinn stars as Bombolini, the resident drunk of a quiet Italian village on the brink of German occupation during the end of WW2. With a cellar full of more than a million bottles of wine, Santa Vittoria’s supply is sure to be stolen by the Germans unless a plan can be hatched at the last minute. But with Bombolini elected mayor ...