Blade Runner, released in 1982, is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made and certainly an iconic 80s flick. Shortly after the film was released "The Blade Runner Sketchbook" - which compiled concept art for the film from Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Ridley Scott himself and others - was published as a companion piece, though it's print run wasn't remarkable and it disappeared from bookstore shelves pretty quickly.

Now, however, through the miracle of modern technology the entire book is available to view online; for free! Anyone who's a fan of this classic film will want to see this. The reproduction quality is generally excellent and the presentation first rate. If you love 80s films and Blade Runner in particular you owe it to yourself to take a look.

Here are a couple of samples from the online edition with a link after the pics to the full version.



View the entire online edition here.

On the heels of his success with "The Deer Hunter" director Michael Cimino was officially "hot". For his next feature he would take on the well-worn Western genre with a movie about Wyoming's Johnson County War of the 1890s. Cimino assembled an all-star cast which included Cristopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, Kris Kristofferson, John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Mickey Rourke and others and set off for the wilds of Montana's Glacier National Park to capture what he was sure would be indelible images that would set the spirit soaring and underpin his epic tale of greed, pride and frontier fortitude.

Almost immediately the production fell behind schedule due to Cimino's, uh, let's be kind and say "attention to detail". This included tearing down and rebuilding entire sets for reasons that were never entirely clear to the crew and doing as many as 50 takes for some scenes. Another result of Cimino's obsessive behavior was that the $7.5 million budget ballooned to $44 million dollars, making it easily the most expensive movie ever made up to that time. Though the studio tired of Cimino's antics and considered replacing him at various points they never did and Cimino ultimately wound up delivering a movie that was 5 hours 25 minutes in length. United Artists forced him to edit it down for release but his edited version still wound up a corpulent 3 hours 39 minutes long. What's a studio to do? They released it on November 19, 1980.

After a week of empty theaters and scathing reviews the film was pulled, re-edited then re-released. Still, no one came. While the movie did manage to conjure up some amazing imagery any good vibes created by them were undermined by story telling that had all the energy of an empty room. The film wound up grossing around $3 million dollars - which qualifies it as one of the biggest bombs in movie history - and pulled United Artists down with it.

In the bigger picture Heaven's Gate almost single-handedly killed the Western as a popular form of film entertainment. It would take many years before the likes of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" would breath some new life into the genre. Another result of Cimino's excesses was that studios would no longer be willing to simply sign the checks and get out of the way. In the aftermath of Heaven's Gate the director would almost always have a studio rep standing over his shoulder. The film would also receive an "unacceptable" rating from the American Humane Association (AHA) due to several reports that came from the set alleging animal abuse. Those reports would lead the Screen Actor's Guild to authorize the AHA to monitor the use of animals in all subsequent films. A practice that continues to this day.

As for Cimino himself Heaven's Gate closed behind him. Almost overnight he went from Hollywood hotshot to untouchable. He would ultimately direct four more feature films although all of them were box office flops with is last, 1996's "The Sunchaser" earning $21,508 at the box office.

"Heaven's Gate". A film still in search of an audience.

The Empire Strikes Back represents the absolute pinnacle of the Star Wars saga; before George Lucas decided to turn his franchise over to the marketing department, before his computer graphics fetish took hold, before he decided to move back into the directors chair and make a mockery of that profession and before he forgot how to write.

Directed by Lucas' old film school professor Irvin Kershner TESB is emotionally rounded, thematically rich, funny, compelling and imaginative. It doesn't pander to pre-teens as the disastrous "Return of the Jedi" would, doesn't have the kind of slapped-together-for-a-buck-three-eighty look that plagued parts of the original film and - perhaps as important as the fact that it was helmed by an actual film director - it's cast was first rate and had developed a kind of easy rapport with one another that gave the whole enterprise a sense of relaxed believability.

Picking up three years after the events of the first film TESB opens with the rebels in retreat and hiding out on the ice planet of Hoth. On a patrol mission Luke decides to check out an apparent meteorite strike and is attacked by a snow monster and dragged to its cave to await ingestion. When he fails to return to base his friends become alarmed and we're treated to some real character development. Leia and Han are interrupted during a touching and remarkably satisfying scene in which their true feelings for each other finally come to the fore. Han promptly takes control of events and heads out into the dark to find his friend. It's the kind of well modulated emotional sequence that is completely missing from later installments.

Han does of course find and rescue Luke and the story moves onward and outward from there as all the main characters escape the onslaught of the Empire that has tracked them down to Hoth on one of Darth Vader's hunches. Luke, though, is driven by a vision to go to the the Dagobah system where an apparition of Obi Wan told him he'll be instructed in the ways of the force by Yoda, the ultimate Jedi master. There among the fetid, claustrophobic, dimly lit swamps the story ascends into something approaching true myth as Luke is forced to examine his motivations and their possible consequences. It's also there that we're introduced to Yoda in the form of a puppet brought to life by the voice of Frank Oz and the wizardry of the puppeteers. Even after the story leaves Dagobah the emotional resonance remains and informs the remainder of the movie.

Luke returns to try and rescue his friends who've been double-crossed by Han's old buddy Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) and delivered to Vader lock, stock and barrel in return for Vader's promise to leave Calrissian's Cloud City alone. Vader of course has no intention of letting Cloud City retain something like autonomy and this inspires Lando (ever the opportunist) to switch sides again and aid Luke in his rescue attempt. That attempt, though mostly successful, fails to do much for Han who had been frozen in carbonite and turned over to Boba Fet before Luke arrived.

After Leia and company escape Luke stays behind to confront Vader and in their climactic battle over the gaping yaw of Cloud City's core Vader makes one of the most famous proclamations in movie history.

But it's not the plot details of The Empire Strikes Back that make it so compelling a film. It's the little things. The fact that Lucas and Kirshner don't allow the story to be overwhelmed by special effects. The believeability of the interactions between all the main characters, the willingness to allow the narrative to explore the dark side of the hero myth and Kirshner's patient character development. The quiet scenes carry every bit as much punch as any of the action scenes. For example the reaction of R2D2 and Yoda to Luke's decision to confront what awaits him in the forest on Dagobah. The scene early on where C3P0, R2, Leia and Chewbacca have to deal with the possibility that Han has just sealed his own fate by going out alone to look for Luke at nightfall on Hoth. Vader's stunned silence as Luke falls away from him.

These are all the telltale signs of a master film maker at work and one can only rue the fact that Kirshner was not in the director's chair for the third film. But by then Lucas had made his decision to use Star Wars as nothing more than a marketing platform for toys and video games and storytelling was no longer required.

Still, we have The Empire Strikes Back to enjoy. A great film that in its conceptual completeness, subtlety and emotional depth stands shoulder to shoulder with the best sci-fi movies ever made.

Vic Morrow was a Hollywood veteran of both the big and small screen. He was probably best known for starring in the hit 60s tv series "Combat". In 1982 he signed on to appear in a feature film version of the classic Rod Serling tv series "The Twilight Zone". The film would be comprised of four segments each with its own director. Morrow's segment title "Time Out" was to be directed by a rising newcomer named John Landis.

In the wee hours of July 23, 1982 while filming a scene which required Morrow to carry two children (in real life 7 year old Mcya Dihn Le and 6 year old Renee Shin-Yi Chen) across a shallow riverbed while a helicopter loomed over their heads and explosions were set off all around something went terribly wrong. According to the official report:

"The probable cause of the accident was the detonation of debris-laden high temperature special effects explosions too near a low flying helicopter leading to foreign object damage to one rotor blade and delamination due to heat to the other rotor blade, the separation of the helicopter's tail rotor assembly, and the uncontrolled descent of the helicopter."

Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopter's rotor blades as is crashed to the ground. The other child was crushed beneath it. The accident stunned Hollywood and brought to light the shady practices some producers and directors would use to get their movies made. The two children who died had no buisness being on any set at 2:30 in the morning never mind one where so many pyrotechnics were being utilized. Landis had smuggled them to the location and kept them hidden until it was time for their scene. He also was paying them under the table to avoid drawing any union or State of California attention to them.

Ultimately Landis and a score of others who were party to the accident were aquitted of manslaughter and child endangerment charges in 1987. In fact no one went to jail as a result of the accident in spite of the fact that the official report had made it pretty clear that someone had made some very serious errors in judgement which lead to the crash. The families of Morrow and the two children ultimately settled out of court for undisclosed amounts.

Vic Morrow (center) carries Mcya Dihn Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen seconds before fatal accident.

"The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover" Peter Greenaway's savage indictment of the Margaret Thatcher-led fascist takeover of Britain during the 80s is a wonder to behold. Dismissed by many as simply an exercise in excess it is, in fact, a fearlessly conceived, directed and acted declaration that "the emperor has no clothes".

To find a fitting visual style with which to tell his tale of a lost empire devouring itself Greenaway reaches back to 17th century Baroque painting. Why? Because in a work like Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" the director sees more than a masterly use of light and shadow, more than a compelling composition or innovative applications of paint, he sees the moment at which those with access to the levers of power in the Netherlands used that access to build for themselves unparalleled personal wealth while most of their compatriots struggled to put a few potatoes on the table. He sees the development of personal mythology intended to dazzle the downtrodden. He sees a formula for success for anyone with connections who's paying attention. (Even the movie's title evokes those nondescript list-titles first hung around the necks of still life paintings of the Baroque period.)

(left) Rembrandt's "The Night Watch" (right) Scene from "The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover"

Unfettered by fad Greenaway has no use for the staccato editing techniques popularized by MTV. He holds some shots so long that they can almost be considered paintings in and of themselves. But he doesn't do this simply to show off the bravura art direction he does this to force a largely unwilling public to see what's going on. The editor has always been the savior of the squeamish, the censor the tool of the power hungry but here Greenaway keeps them both at arms length. He doesn't patronize your oh-so fragile and sensitive nature by cutting away when things get "objectionable" instead he focuses in: "Of course it's bloody objectionable, that's why you HAVE to look!"

And if they look carefully what they'll see is an allegorical tale in which the Thief, (standing in for the iron lady and played with brutal authority by future Harry Potter alum Michael Gambon), imposes himself upon a largely complacent public represented in its various aspects by the Cook (standing in for the civil service), his Wife (played with courage and conviction by Helen Mirren who represents the ebbing sense of civility in public discourse) and her Lover, who fairly obviously represents for the ineffective liberal opposition who did their best Neville Chamberlain impersonations while the barbarians made off with the treasury.

It is the story of an England shorn of empire where the former ruling class decide to live out their imperial fantasies by conquering, displacing and subjugating their own: "If we can't have India we'll take the Docklands!" Greenaway looks at this "New World Order" and sees it for what it is: the old world order called feudalism. But what's worse is that he sees it being imposed upon society with the tacit deference of a cuckold public. Because of this no one is spared in "The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover". While the Thief is kept squarely in the center of the frame throughout the would-be opposition is nonetheless there to be seen at the edges, like the sycophants in "The Night Watch", on some level aware that their unwillingness to stand up for themselves will result in their marginalization yet hidebound by inertia nonetheless.

The film's conclusion implies something most historians know in their bones: that tyranny contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction and that if you push the people far enough their patience will reach an end and you'll wind up with a French revolution where the Marie Antoinettes of the world get theirs at the hands of the mob. I don't think even Greenaway would promote such a result though. I believe his movie was intended to embolden dormant voices of opposition to speak out before things got to that point. It is a plea for civic resistance, for the opposition to push back before its too late.

History, (especially the events of the last few years), unfortunately demonstrate that his pleas went largely ignored.

After exploding into the public consciousness playing the virtually indestructible cyborg assassin in James Cameron's breakout 1984 film "The Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger retreated to his comfort zone, playing the hero in such 80s yawners as "Red Sonja" and "Raw Deal". But just when it seemed safe to deposit him squarely into the 'one hit wonder' category along came 1987's "Predator".

It has to be noted that while all male-buddy action flicks have their share of gay undertones, Predator may be the most overtly gay action movie ever made (not that there's anything wrong with that). Still, if you can look past its bulging homoerotic musculature (if you want or need to look past it) and concentrate solely on the window dressing the film can be enjoyed as a taut, intense sci-fi thriller with an unlikely and truly menacing baddie who's cleverly introduced and gradually takes over the narrative, sending the film in an unexpected and gratifying direction.

If you blink you'll miss the alien setup at the start of the picture where we're given about 10 seconds of outer space shots as a craft of some sort enters earth's atmosphere. (It might be better if you do miss it as it serves only to undermine the suspense later on.) After that we're introduced to Ahnuld's character "Dutch" along with his crew of ultimate bad-asses and after the Gov and Carl Weathers finish admiring each others sweaty biceps we're told that Dutch and Co are being sent on a mission to the central American jungles to extract a diplomat who's been captured by rebels. Of course there is no diplomat and they're actually there to clean up the mess created by the failure of an earlier black ops team, but that's inconsequential because as Dutch's team attempt to extricate themselves from the unpleasantness around them they begin to realize that a bunch of peasants with guns are the least of their problems.

Because a movie with only hunky guys might seem a bit too gay a female character is introduced in the very agreeable (though not to our heroes of course) form of Elpidia Carrillo. She's the only one without a gun (literally, physically and symbolically) and is therefore of no interest to our alien either. Her role is to give young male viewers who might become a bit squeamish (or aroused) by seeing Sonny Landham's character "Billy" sucking on a milk-filled vine something to hang their heterosexual identities on and she fulfills that role admirably.

As they make their way "to the chopper" the boys are picked off one at a time by their phantom pursuer with each incident serving to also reveal a few more details about our bad guy. As the film moves squarely from "Rambo" into "Alien" territory the hackneyed dialogue and jokes about women's anatomy mercifully come to an end and what we're left with is a pretty well done cat and mouse in the jungle picture.

Since Predator's stage is a real jungle it doesn't suffer from being dated by its technological accoutrement. The special effects are limited to Stan Winston's rasta-cyborg and they stand up well, even when viewed today. The supporting cast all do their jobs of playing victims in waiting effectively and John Alpine's cinematography creates a sense of claustrophobic isolation and dread that separate it from your standard guy-flick.

At the end of the reel Predator is a fun, funny, well constructed sci-fi action flick that introduces us to one of the most compelling movie creatures of the past quarter century. Not bad for what could easily have been just another B-movie about sweaty guys admiring each others guns.

"The Road Warrior" (Mad Max 2 outside the US) is not a film that made it onto either my 10 best films of the 80s list or my alternate reality 10 best films of the 80s list, but it's a film worth talking about (and seeing) strictly for the sheer visceral intensity it generates.

The reason I didn't include The Road Warrior on either 10 best list is because the story is anything but original. Basically it lifts its story line from Clint Eastwood's devastating "High Plains Drifter" (1973) where an apparitional law enforcement figure emerges from the desert wasteland and comes more or less to the aid of a group of isolated average types beset by marauding baddies.

In High Plains Drifter Eastwood's character may or may not be the ghost of the town's Sheriff who was murdered by the baddies while the townsfolk looked on passively. In The Road Warrior Max is what's left of a former Highway Patrol officer whose wife and child were murdered by the same type of bad guys who now besiege the mom and pop refinery Max stumbles upon in his never ending search for gasoline. In both movies the antihero demonstrates little but contempt for the people he's protecting, has no time for a love interest, says nothing about who he is or where he's from and takes on a sidekick of sorts who yearns to be partners with the ultimate bad-ass. In the end both antiheroes disappear back into the desert after routing the baddies.

The difference between High Plains Drifter and The Road Warrior is that Eastwood's story was in large part a bare knuckles beat down of the idea that the taking of the American West was in any way heroic. In The Road Warrior the plot points from Eastwood's story are used simply as a devices to hang kick ass action scenes on and any larger issues (and many smaller ones) are simply left unattended. (For instance; where do you get drinking water in the post apocalypse wasteland? If food is so scarce that Max is reduced to eating dog food what's he washing it down with? "Dinky Dee" mineral water?) But I digress because as I said this is not a movie that asks questions or points fingers, it simply smashes thing up. Lots of things. In wonderful, pre-CGI ways.

The movie doesn't waste any time getting to the point as it opens with Max being pursued down a lonesome outback highway by several cars and a motorcycle operated by a bunch of guys in the latest Marquis de Sade formal wear. Steel, rubber and bodies get put through a blender of collisions until Max emerges from the chaos to sop up the gas leaking from a wreck onto the highway. This as it turns out will be one of the more low key chase scenes in a movie that keeps ramping up the mayhem until we get to the final chase with Max in a big rig pursued by 20 or so cars full of wasteland creeps intent on ruining his day.

The action scenes are crisp, non-stop affairs where real cars are smashed, crashed and otherwise pulverized at high speed while being shot from a variety of compelling angles. Several stunt men were injured during the filming which took place near the Australian town of Broken Hill. The editing is tight and seamless with no annoying Christopher Nolan-type dead spots to break up the tension, and the constant ear-splitting sound of engines red-lining and steel smashing into steel never lets you disengage from the chaos on screen.

Credit must be given to cinematographer Dean Semler for creating a real sense of time and place out of what is essentially a bunch of dirt and rocks and for the care he took in capturing the visceral thrills inherent in the innumerable high speed collisions. The result is a movie that makes you want to wear your seat belt. The cast also do an excellent job breathing life into roles where they're given next to nothing to say.

The opening 4 minutes of The Road Warrior...

As I've become more and more involved with blogging about the 80s I've realized how many great films came out of that decade that really deserve top 10 consideration, and so I've decided to create an alternate top 10 movies of the 80s list. There aren't any films on the original list that I want to remove, I just want to add 10 more without exceeding the parameters of a top 10 list. Think of this list as existing in an alternate reality; like the one JJ Abrams created for his reboot of Star Trek, sort of.

So here we go: the alternate reality top 10 movies of the 80s are...

1) The Killing Fields - After the reporters were chased out the real nightmare began

2) Batman - Changed the course of superhero movies forever

3) Full Metal Jacket - Kubrick's best late film

4) The Terminator - James Cameron re-invents sci-fi as an action genre

5) Dune - David Lynch dreams about Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic

6) Prizzi's Honor - Jack Nicholson at his cheeky best

7) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - A beautifully crafted ode to the dreamer

8) This is Spinal Tap - The mother of all modern mockumentaries

9) Dangerous Liaisons - Love as the blood sport of the idle rich

10) Predator - An unexpected gem that takes you places you didn't expect

"This is Spinal Tap" pretty much invented the modern mockumentary. Released in 1984 it did almost no business at the box office but once it made its way to the small screen it took on a life of its own and has since become recognized as a comedy classic.

Nigel (Christopher Guest), Derek (Harry Shearer) and David (Michael McKean) are a ragamuffin British power trio on the downside of a long music career. (They're a trio because their drummers all tend to die of mysterious circumstances soon after joining the band.) They started life as a folk group in the 60s before going through various marketing makeovers and finally emerging as hard rockers.

Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner, who also directs) is a documentary film maker who has decided to chronicle Spinal Tap's return to touring after a six year absence. Because they're no longer at the top of their game (or the charts) this tour is notable for the rock star accoutrement that isn't there. None of the band members wants to believe they're nobody now and many of the biggest laughs are generated by juxtaposing their desperate belief in their own rock stardom with manifestations of their irrelevance.

These guys are emblematic of what can happen to ordinary blokes in a celebrity obsessed world. Guys with little or no book learnin' can wind up stars if they're in the right place at the right time and that's one of the great egalitarian aspects of modern culture. Unfortunately a lot of people who get caught up in the whirlwind make the mistake of believing their own press and when the spotlight shifts to the next big thing are left flailing about in life unable to understand what happened. When you're riding the crest of the wave its tough to imagine that there will ever be a time when the wave has crashed ashore and left you high and dry. Such is the case with Spinal Tap.

But the film makers never use their movie as a platform from which to launch mean-spirited critiques of their subjects. It's not about tearing them down because they didn't do anything to be torn down for. They simply took advantage of what the world they were born into offered them, even if they maybe didn't quite understand what they were getting into. Its the system that nurtured them that takes the biggest digs in This is Spinal Tap. From the incompetent manager to the ineffective publicist to prop designers to roadies to record company executives This is Spinal Tap forces each to stand bound in front of the bands Marshall amps and turns the volume up to 11.

The rock star documentary itself comes under the same scrutiny. There's a hilarious bit where the band pay a visit to Elvis' gravesite for the mandatory "homage to those who blazed the trail" scene and are at a complete loss for what to do. They wind up forcing out a pitiful 3-part harmony version of "Heartbreak Hotel" before David finally gives into the futility of the moment and declares "Too much f**king perspective!"

He's absolutely right of course even if he doesn't know it and that's what makes the scene so hilarious. This is Spinal Tap takes on every rockumentary from "Don't Look Back" to "Truth or Dare" and leaves no stone unturned in rooting out the innate absurdity of it all. And isn't that the job of comedy? To gently shed light on those aspects of life that we'd rather not discuss because of what they say about us? Of course it is, and This is Spinal Tap does that job incredibly well. In the end, (after you stop laughing), you're left wondering more about yourself and why you ever bought into the PR surrounding this or that band then you are about the band members you helped make millionaires. That's no small accomplishment for a low budget comedy in any day and age.

Here's a few of my favorite Spinal Tap quotes.

David: "Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation."

Nigel: "I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of..."
Marty DiBergi: What do you call this?
Nigel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump".

Derek: "... people should be envying us, you know."
David: "I envy us."

"As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll."

Sean Young was one of the highest profile actresses in Hollywood in the 80s. Her credits included "Stripes", "Dune", "No Way Out" and Ridley Scott's masterpiece "Blade Runner" in which she played Rachel opposite Harrison Ford.

Unfortunately it wasn't long before she developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. In the late 80s she had her role in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" drastically cut back after clashing on set with Stone and though she managed to land the role of Vicky Vale in Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989) she had to withdraw from the film after she injured herself in an off-set accident. In 1990 she was fired from the role of Tess Trueheart in "Dick Tracy". Young claimed she was let go because she refused Warren Beatty's advances, though Beatty denies this. She was eventually replaced by Madonna who went on to accept Beatty's advances, a developement which added some weight to Young's claims. She made a very public (and unsuccessful) push to land the role of Catwoman in Burton's Batman sequel, "Batman Returns", and then had a small role in the Jim Carrey vehicle "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective" in 1994. After that she pretty much disappeared from the silver screen.

So what ever happened to Sean Young?

For nearly 15 years she found it hard to get meaningful work both because of her reputation and because much of her time was spent raising her two sons. In 2008 she was removed from the Director's Guild of America Awards show after showing up drunk and heckling Julian Schnabel (you go girl!). Finally in 2010 she landed what turned into a recurring role on TV's The Young and the Restless and that exposure has seemed to reignite her career, albeit to a limited degree. Next month she's due to be seen in the film "Gingerclown" opposite Tim Curry, Brad Dourif and Lance Henriksen, though it's unclear at this point if that film will see wide release.

Sean Young then and now. She looks pretty good for a 50 year old!

Totals are not adjusted for inflation, though they may reflect income from more than one release.

Title	Year	Worldwide Total
1) E.T.	1982	$792 million
2) The Empire Strikes Back	1980	$538 million
3) Return of the Jedi	1983	$475 million
4) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	1989	$474 million
5) Batman	1989	$411 million
6) Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981	$384 million
7) Back to the Future	1985	$381 million
8) Rain Man	1988	$354 million
9) Top Gun	1986	$353 million
10) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	1984	$333 million

Let's get this out of the way up front: Amadeus, Milos Foreman's screen adaptation of the Peter Schaffer play is not a biographical account of the life of Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart, arguably the greatest composer who ever lived and one of the towering figures in the pantheon of troubled geniuses.

What it is is a cautionary tale about the destructive power of envy and how that twisted emotional state skews a persons perceptions of both the envied and, just as importantly, the envious; here depicted by a highly fictionalized, aging, bitter, cynical self-loathing Antonio Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham in his Oscar winning performance).

Certainly some aspects of Mozart's actual character make it into this film: his fondness for scatological humor, his irreverence, his self confidence. But other equally important biographical details are left out because they don't serve the story that it being told here. For instance, Mozart was deeply devoted to his mother and his sister Nannerl who are never mentioned in the film. In fact he was with his mother on an extended stay in Paris when she died, leaving him emotionally crushed. He also traveled widely (for his day). He spent a great portion of his life in transit between the capitals of Europe (long, incredibly difficult journeys over roads that were barely more than root-filled quagmires) seeking commissions, playing for royalty, "getting the word out" in modern parlance. In the film you'd think he was a Vienna homeboy who never ventured beyond the tavern. He was the father of six children, four of whom died young but two of which survived into the mid-19th century. He was also, by most accounts, on the mend during the final year of his life. His income was up, he stopped accruing debts and even began paying down some of his previous loans and had a major success with The Magic Flute. The skewed time line in the movie makes it seem like his father died and a few months later he went into a permanent death spiral. (His father actually died four years before he did.)

But as I said few of the actual details of his life are important to the tale on view here because this is not a biopic. The real subject of the film is the Salieri character and his rabid embrace of one of the seven deadly sins (envy). Everything about the film's namesake is presented through the warped lens of his jealous delusions.

With all that said the story opens with an aging Salieri having just attempted suicide. He's confined to an insane asylum for his action and there is visited by a local priest who attempts to get him to confess his sins. The young lad doesn't know what he's in for as the brittle old coot unloads upon him his version of the Mozart story, the one he's always desperately wanted to believe himself. The one where he was a rival of Mozart and Mozart was little short of the devil incarnate. Fact is there was no rivalry, only in Salieri's head was he important enough to be considered a rival of Mozart.

But the aging prune has a captive audience and takes full advantage of it spinning a yarn for the ages. According to Salieri, Mozart was little more than a ungrateful pervert, molesting pretty young society things under tables during banquets. He was insultingly boastful and contemptuous, constantly drunk and possessed a demonic laugh that was one part hyena one part drunken trollop with touches of mocking insincerity thrown in for good measure. (It's crucial to note that when Mozart laughs what Salieri hears is god mocking him for his mediocrity).

The Salieri here is unrelenting in his final attempt to skew the Mozart narrative away from adoration to one of loathing. If he had lived in the 21st century he'd have been feeding these 'stories' to the Enquirer or News of the World, sitting back and reveling in the anti-Mozart backlash. But he lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries so his attempts to undo Mozart's reputation posthumously fell only on the overwhelmed ears of a parish priest.

He hints that he was responsible for Mozart's death but never says exactly how. He also suggests that he secretly commissioned the Requium Mozart was working on at the time of his death and spent the last night of Mozart's life in his bedroom with him acting as a kind of co-composer. (According to contemporary accounts Mozart died in the company of his wife and her sister. Salieri was no where near his deathbed.) About the only person in Mozart's life who gets anything like a sympathetic reading from Salieri is Mozart's father, Leopold. A stern disciplinarian and mediocre talent himself whose wishes Mozart often rebelled against, Salieri sees in him a kindred spirit and plays up to the listening priest the idea that Mozart was also a bad son.

Filmed in Foreman's native Prague Amadeus has an air of authenticity about it that is captivating in its own right. The cinematography by Miroslav Ondricek creates layers of texture that allow the viewer to sink into the world of 18th century middle Europe while the music is complementary and informative without becoming the picture; which was surely a danger given the quantity and quality of the material the film makers had to draw from.

Tom Hulce, cast as Salieri's version of Mozart, does a great job in a difficult role. The temptation had to be to play the character straight up, but that would have undercut the story. Instead he has to straddle realities and comes away with an admirable performance where the core of the character somehow manages to shine through the layers of contemptible and libelous attributions his narrator has slathered upon him.

F. Murray Abraham's Salieri is more pathetic than sympathetic. Sure it's tough to come face to face with someone in your chosen line of work who makes you look like a rube, but the level to which he's allowed himself to be consumed by his envy and the tireless lengths he's gone to (and indeed continues to go to even decades after Mozart's death) to snuff out the reputation of the master sets him beyond the border of understandable into the netherworld of despicable. By the end he's lost track not only of the facts surrounding the focus of his envy but of the facts surrounding himself and therein lies the real tragedy.

It might seem that the film makers were a bit hard on ol' Antonio, and truth be told they probably were, but again this is not a biopic, it is a cautionary tale and if the film makers had made Salieri have some change of heart in old age the story would have fallen apart.

So enjoy Amadeus for what it is; which is remarkable, resonant, beautifully crafted and deeply moving in parts. But please don't mistake it for history or biography.

Because I know that Chris is going to turn the review spotlight on The Road Warrior one of these days and because all the recent talk about mullets got me to thinking, I'm doing this "Where are they now?" segment on the immortal Emil Minty or, as we know him, The Feral Kid from The Road Warrior.

Emil won the part in TRW when he was just 8 years old, beating out a slew of other child star wannabes. The movie was shot in New South Wales near where he was born and though Emil had a lot of screen time in the film he never uttered a word of dialogue (I guess dem feral kids don't get a lot a book learnin'). His character went on to achieve something resembling cult status but Emil, as an actor, just sort of faded from view.

So what's he up to these days? Digging burrows all over the outback to hide his stash of Dinky Dee dog food in preparation for the pocaclypse? Doing battle with other angry commuters waiting in line for $4 a gallon gasoline? Practicing for the World Boomerang Championships? Sorry to disappoint you but its nothing so glamorously disturbing. Today 38 year old Emil is manager of a Sydney jewelry store and, rumor has it, has even learned to speak!

Emil Minty as The Feral Kid 1981 and in a recent photo

Dune seems to be one of the most inexplicable films ever made. Visionary, frustrating, inspiring, obtuse, thrilling and confusing are just some of the words that have been bandied about to describe David Lynch's cinematic version of Frank Herbert's tale. Lynch leads us down a rabbit hole into a future that might be the future or might be the past (since earth doesn't figure into the story in any capacity why would anyone assume its the year 10,191 relative to our planet?) or might be a dream, and certainly most of the film plays like a dream; narratively disjointed, nearly monochromatic in many places and blurry around the edges. Indeed, in spots it seems to be making itself up as it goes along as would a dream.

Some would (and have) said that these characteristics are a sign of a film maker who's lost touch with the material, maybe even the entire project. But this is David Lynch we're talking about here. If you hire David Lynch and expect to get George Lucas you haven't done your due diligence. Lynch wanted a world apart. Unrecognizable in some respects, nonsensical to a degree yet still 'real' enough to connect on a visceral, emotional level. He reaches back into art history's darkest, most evocative corners for inspiration; Hieronymus Bosch can be seen in the Freemen massing at the imperial gates late in the film, the floating grotesquerie that is the Baron Harkonnen has Francis Bacon oozing from his pustuals. The art direction in and of itself is worth the price of admission. The medieval-modern of the emperor's palace, the carved-from-solid-mahogany-and-covered-in-27-coats-of-laquer look of the Atreides home on Caladan; nothing is done half-way or overlooked for its symbolic potential. Case in point, the shoreline on Caladan is not some tranquil white sand paradise but a roiling, crashing, dimly lit tumult echoing the feelings of Paul and his family as they prepare to walk into the lions den of Arrakis. The Guild Navigator is the baby from Lynch's Eraserhead all grown up. The great hall where Paul declares "Long live the fighters!" is more than a little reminiscent of H.R. Giger's 'shafts' drawings of the 60s which were, interestingly, a record of one of his recurring nightmares. (Giger himself was hired on to help with earlier, unsuccessful attempts to bring the story to the screen and echoes of his hand are faintly felt at various points throughout the film.) Dune is also replete with many of Lynch's recurring themes: appearance vs reality, grinding, steam-belching machinery, mutation either genetic or man-made, the complex and powerful nature of sexuality. Even his semi-infatuation with the post wars years can be seen in the bulbous spacecraft that bring the members of House Harkonnen to Arrakis as well as the Guild Navigator's "tub"; both of which look like the mutant spawn of a 1950s Buick.

Why all this emphasis on the look of the film over the script/storyline? Because in Lynch's reading Paul's journey is not a political one so much as it is an emotional one. Because of this the emotional landscape Lynch creates with his imagery is crucial to telling the story as he sees it. More important, in fact, than fleshing out the back-stories of particular characters or wallowing in hours of exposition in an effort to clarify details of the myriad political intrigues. As a result Paul's life as depicted here is, like ours, nothing if not a series of vaguely connected occurrences that sometimes make sense and often don't and its how he deals with the stew of emotions engendered by these occurrences that will determine what position he rises or falls to within his own milieu. Were he not buttressed by vague yet powerful feelings of a fate largely beyond his control he'd crumble at the task before him. Instead he assembles himself like a grand jigsaw puzzle out of the disparate elements of his emotional life and only when he finally feels his external reality match up with his internal dialogue is he able to proclaim "Father! The sleeper has awakened!" and cast his fears aside. His apotheosis is not the result of outmaneuvering his opponent on the battlefield, but instead of creating an emotional harmony between his internal and external lives.

So focusing on where Lynch may have failed to literally illustrate Herbert's words is, to me, a waste of time. If literal is what you want rent the scifi channel's version from 2000. I take it as a given that Lynch has discarded much of the book's literal narrative in favor of emotional narrative and appreciate the lengths he's gone to to recreate with images Paul's emotional saga. Anyone uneasy with this aesthetic choice will probably be unhappy with the resultant film, feeling he's betrayed Herbert. But film is its own medium with its own possibilities and limitations and Lynch has made a career out of exploring its possibilities. Dune is no exception.

Dune is not a film that requires the viewer to suspend their disbelief. On the contrary Lynch insists that you believe that there are truths which transcend reality lurking in the subconscious of every man and that only a fool ignores them. When the final credits on his expansive, beautiful, unsettling epic began to roll I didn't feel as though I'd reached the end of a movie, I felt like I was waking up.

Moonstruck, Norman Jewison's wonderful, over-the-top yet always under control romantic comedy masterpiece was the toughest movie for me to leave off my top 10 movies of the 80s list. It came down to a coin toss between it and Out of Africa and Out of Africa won; but I'd have had no problems if things were reversed.

Moonstruck takes place in an idealized Brooklyn where the romantic lure of lower Manhattan is always looming across the river like an enormous theatrical background painting. A moon the size of Saturn hangs tantalizingly over the whole proceeding, driving the various inhabitants of this unlikely and gentle Sodom crazy with amore and making the older folks "look like (they're) 25 years old".

The story revolves around the romantic misadventures of the Castorini family: Rose, her husband Cosmo, his old-country father and Rose and Cosmo's 30-something daughter, the widow Loretta. Loretta is determined to marry again and marry right and to that end she's engaged to the oafish but dependable Jonny Cammareri, later she'll fall in love with his brother Ronny when Jonny is called away to Sicily to be at the bedside of his dying mother. Cosmo loves Rose but is having an extramarital affair with a younger woman. Rose loves Cosmo but is aware of his infidelity and for a few moments flirts with the idea of having an affair of her own with an aging college professor after she sees him get water thrown in his face by one of his female students he's trying to bed. Loretta knows her father is having an affair, her father knows she's being unfaithful to her fiance while he's away, grandpa believes Rose is being unfaithful even though she's not and Jonny just wants his life back after his hand was mangled in a bread slicer: "They say bread is life and I bake bread" so why does he want to kill himself? Not because he lost his hand, but because losing his hand caused his girlfriend to leave him for another man.

But the details of the various trysts are not as important as what they allow the characters to reveal about themselves and human nature in general. Jewison's film is eternally threatening to tip over into slapstick yet never actually does and the main reason for that is the glorious lines the actors have to recite throughout the film which are remarkable for their subtlety of tone, degree of insight and generosity of spirit. They are also, by turns and sometimes simultaneously, hilarious. Take Ronny's impassioned plea to a reluctant Loretta...

"Love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We're here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die."

Not exactly Hallmark card stuff, yet romantic in the truest sense of the word and undeniable to Loretta, who has known her share of heartache and attempted to compromise her way out of it to no avail. Facing a choice between the passionate if sometimes unpleasant truth of Ronny and the inauthentic (yet secure) purgatory of Jonny she caves to the truth.

The kids aren't the only ones who get choice lines either. When Rose is being prodded by the professor to indulge in some late-life candy store antics she responds, not cruelly, not sarcastically, but truthfully that she can't do it because "I know who I am." Fact is all of the characters in writer John Patrick Shanley's libretto know in their hearts exactly who they are and all are given a chance to prove it. When Cosmo the plumber gives an estimate to a couple to replace their bathroom pipes and they balk at the price he rises (semi) majestically from the floor with his full, experienced hands outstretched before him and sells the couple on the glories of copper piping and why its the only piping he'll ever use. You know in that moment that if the couple decided to save money and asked him to install bronze he'd walk out because bronze piping is not what he does.

Olympia Dukakis won an Oscar for her portrayal of Rose and deservedly so. Her Rose is alive; fearful of neither love nor death yet experienced enough to know that the ever looming specter of the latter makes the former, with all its myriad twists and turns, indispensable. Nicolas Cage has never had another role so suited to his particular talents. His Ronny is Sonny Corleone with a big heart and Cage plays him to outrageous perfection. Cher's Loretta (for which she too won an Oscar) is a living Mona Lisa who, like Leonardo's most famous work, engenders different responses from different suitors. Jonny sees an angel who'd make an appropriately demure life companion and puts her on a pedestal. Ronny looks into the depth of her eyes and sees a suffocating soul desperate to breath again. Vincent Gardenia gives Cosmo just the right blend of strength and vulnerability, wisdom and cluelessness to make him a sympathetic character, even in the light of his philandering. Also excellent are Julie Bovasso and Louis Guiss as Loretta's aunt and uncle who are given one of the great adult scenes in contemporary cinema and deliver it flawlessly.

The other uncredited characters here are the city of New York, pre-police state (rarely has the big apple being filmed more lovingly. In Moonstruck, New York is not an eat or be eaten cesspool of manipulative, greedy narcissists; its home), and the music; which sets just the right slightly off-kilter tone throughout without ever compromising events.

Moonstruck is perhaps the best romantic comedy of the past 25 years and if you haven't seen it yet, well, in the words of Loretta; "Snap out of it!"

I'm writing about this movie because its too awful to ignore. Part of the reason its too awful to ignore is that it hopes for it were so high. But in one of the great tragic cash-grabs of recent memory, George Miller went for the mainstream buck and in doing so, castrated his creation with a rusty steak knife and left it to die from infection in a sea of pig poop. His previous Mad Max effort, "The Road Warrior", took Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" and explored its contemporary possibilities. The result was a film that spoke to the fears engendered by the escalating nuclear showdown being played out at the time between the US and USSR and subtly (and not so subtly) showcased the shortcomings of both camps. Buttless chaps aside the film seemed as if it took place in a world that might actually happen. The wasteland was left to speak for itself and elements thrown into it to provide context for the action had an air of hodge-podge believability about them that didn't distract from the narrative.

Nothing about Thunderdome's post-apocalyptic world seems as if it would have even the slightest chance of ever coming to light. Everything is carefully and self-consciously assembled to look "post apocalyptic". There's not a dirty hair whose positioning hasn't been meticulously considered, not a ramshackle building that doesn't look like it passed Archie and Veronica's "ramshackle" test and not a brown-clad survivor of the nuclear war that doesn't look like he/she shops at "Nuclear Survivors R Us". Throw into the mix the unconvincing specter of the wasteland queen "Aunty Entity" (an unfortunate big role for the otherwise laudable Tina Turner), a 'tribe' of kids who have all the requisite post apocalyptic hi-tech-turned-low-tech gadgets and a rockem sockem car chase at the end that seems to exist simply because well, its a Mad Max movie, and you have one of the most overwrought, underwhelming and disappointing films of the entire decade. That it hit theaters only 2 years after Ridley Scott's sublime "Blade Runner" made 'post apocalyptic' comparisons inevitable; but there was no comparison. Scott understood to his core something Miller had touched on in The Road Warrior but seemed to have quickly forgotten: the real apocalypse of the (post) modern age is an apocalypse of the spirit and that even in a world populated by the dissolute everyone probably won't dress alike, talk alike, be overwhelmed by blood lust and adopt evil laughs.

BE WARNED: SPOILERS AHEAD

Built around the premise of Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley (from Ridley Scott's horror masterpiece "Alien") going back to face the primal alien beings on LV426 "Aliens" is a one of a kind film experience that transcends easy classification.

The film exists on at least a half dozen levels simultaneously: first rate action flick, Vietnam war parable, visionary sci-fi epic, old-school special effects bonanza, horror movie and redemptive tale while all the while churning toward its primary thesis about the transcendent power of family. But, like the Beatles, the movie is more than the sum of its parts as Cameron intertwines aspects of all those narrative types in complex and satisfying ways. Everything the director/writer places on the table at the beginning of the film turns out to be artifice which he then strips away scene by scene until we arrive at the heart of the matter. His genius here is to make the process of stripping away that artifice a thing to behold in and of itself. He paints his characters in broad strokes and doesn't get bogged down in moral relativism or irony (as in his breakout film "The Terminator" there is little doubt about who's bad and who's good) because that would only dilute what he's trying to say, and he doesn't pander to the audience by beating you over the head with his central thesis. If you miss "the point" the film can still be enjoyed for its myriad other attributes.

The film opens with Cameron paying homage to Scott: like the characters from the earlier film's "Nostromo" Ripley is gliding through the void in hypersleep. This is the sleep she entered after vanquishing the alien from her escape pod at the end of the previous film. Her tiny ship is recovered by a deep salvage crew who are disappointed that she's alive but deposit her at an earth orbiting space station to recover. While there she learns from company slime-ball Carter Burke that she had been drifting through space for 57 years. Later, she's hung out to dry at a corporate meeting for destroying the Nostromo and has her pilot's license yanked. She also learns that the company has had colonists living on LV426 for decades working to create a livable atmosphere for future settlers. When she asks a company honcho how many colonists there are Cameron tips his hand slightly by having the guy answer "I don't know, 40 maybe 50 families" to which Ripley softly replies "Families!"

Grounded and forced to do basically menial work after having her license revoked Ripley is haunted by nightmares of her alien foe and is as lost and adrift in her new home as she was on the escape pod. Soon though Burke arrives with Lieutenant Gorman to inform her that contact has been lost with the colony and to ask her to join them in going out there "as an adviser" to see whats happened. If she agrees the company will re-instate her as a pilot. She very reluctantly agrees.

Once the story moves back toward Ripley's personal hell the film kicks into another gear. Cameron is at the very top of his game here in every respect. Within a minute of the sleep chambers opening (as the Sulaco arrives in orbit around LV426) he has sketched in the basic outline of each new character. Like the artist that he is he then fleshes out those characters carefully and deliberately as the action moves to the surface where a little girl named "Newt" is discovered among the destruction. A bond quickly develops between this motherless waif and the childless Ripley.

The troop has a brief but traumatic encounter with the aliens in which Sargent Apone is killed and the team leader, the feckless Lieutenant Gorman, is incapacitated. In the aftermath of this debacle Burke attempts to assert company control over the operation but Ripley will have none of it. She reminds Burke that it's a military operation and that Corporal Hicks is next in the chain of command. The decision is made to evacuate and nuke the colony from orbit but an alien has infiltrated the waiting drop ship. As it's swooping in to pick them up the pilot is killed and the ship crashes nearly taking out Ripley and Co. in the process. As they retreat to mull their options the principle characters begin to assert themselves. Hicks, though obviously not interested in command, doesn't shrink from it either and soon he and Ripley form a working partnership of equals. Hicks' authority comes from his service rank and his cool demeanor. Ripley's authority is without rank or title. It's never spelled out or made official. It is also never in doubt. It is maternal authority; subtle yet unwavering, feminine yet rock solid. Weaver skips across the ice of this pond of contradictions with ease in stark contrast to the lumbering, dour, disastrous performance doled out by Linda Hamilton in a later and far less successful Cameron film, "Terminator II".

Through a series of ensuing set pieces Cameron gives us hope only to quickly add conditions. They can expect a rescue, but only after 17 days. They barricade themselves inside their command center to wait it out only to discover that their earlier battle resulted in ruptures in the atmosphere processor's cooling system and a nuclear explosion is imminent. There's another drop ship on the Sulaco so it's possible they may get off the planet after all, but wait, there's no uplink inside the command center to the orbiting Sulaco to call the drop ship with. The android Bishop volunteers to go outside to remotely pilot the second drop ship from the orbiting Sulaco, mindful of the probability that he'll come face to face with the enemy.

As the film careens toward its climax Burke's role in the events that led to the catastrophe the troop now find themselves enmeshed in is revealed but there's no time for frontier justice as the aliens press their advantage. One by one the remaining characters (including Burke) meet their doom though all (save Burke, the one person acting strictly out of greed) are given redemptive moments. The whiny Hudson goes out in a blaze of glory. Vasquez is wounded covering the rear of the retreating survivors and is apparently lost but the now recovered Gorman, who has accepted a reduced role, finds within himself the courage to go back after her. He finds her stricken in a ventilation duct. With multiple aliens converging on their position and escape impossible Gorman activates a grenade. Even Vasquez's last minute dig at him doesn't prevent him from doing the right thing and saving them from a fate truly worse than death.

Hicks pulls Ripley away from what he sees as a hopeless attempt to rescue Newt (who's been lost down another ventilation shaft) and gets her to safety. Bishop has managed to bring the second drop ship to the surface and is anxious to leave as the nuclear detonation is drawing close but Ripley orders him to stay, arms up, and leaves the now-injured Hicks to make sure Bishop doesn't pull a unplanned exit. Down she goes into the circles of hell after her adopted daughter. With little time left she finds her and Newt jumps into her arms crying "I knew you'd come". It is the assurance every child instinctively has that their mother will always be there for them.

Finally Ripley, Newt in her arms, comes face to face with her alien counterpart: the previously unseen queen jealously protecting her egg cache. Cameron pauses for a tense moment, as if teasing us about the possibilities here. Will Ripley be overwhelmed by a feeling of camaraderie and exit, leaving the alien mother unscathed? Not a chance. In Cameron's world, as in the real world, you must pick a side or accept being subjected to the whims of those who do, and that is not in Ripley's character. She torches the nest and heads back up with Newt. The queen dislodges herself from her egg-sack and pursues.

When Ripley reaches the rendezvous platform high in the disintegrating atmosphere processor Bishop has left with her only means of escape. The alien queen reaches their position. Out of ammo and with no where left to run Ripley does the only thing she can think to do. She holds on to her "daughter", tells her "Close your eyes baby" and waits to meet her fate. But Newt, cut from the same tough cloth as Ripley, disobeys her mother and spots Bishop attempting to land on the platform. He swings in close picking up debris along with Ripley and Newt and then hightails it out of there just in time to escape the atomic fireball.

Back on the Sulaco calm settles over the proceedings. The nominal family of Ripley, Hicks and Newt with their technological sidekick Bishop (who redeemed his kind quite nicely) share a quiet moment before, suddenly, Bishop is impaled by the stinger of the queen, who managed to hitch a ride on the drop ship when it came in for its close pass on the platform. Bishop is torn in half and tossed aside. Hicks is inside the drop ship under heavy sedation. Ripley tells Newt to hide and the whole movie comes down to mother vs mother with everything at stake. After a furious battle during which Ripley spouts the now oft-copied "Get away from her you bitch!" Ripley emerges triumphant. In the final scene the family head back out into the void, scarred but transcendent, to dream new dreams and face the future together.

The cast and their performances are all first-rate. Weaver brings immense integrity to her role and, surprisingly, comedian Paul Reiser is perfect as the greedy little toadie Carter Burke. Bill Paxton gives the performance that made his career possible and Jeanette Goldstein is spot on as Vasquez, the Latina warrior. James Horner's score is also a perfect accompaniment to the action and the flourish he created for the scene where the "family" are making their final escape ahead of the nuclear blast has been used by countless others since it's debut here. As Roger Ebert noted in his original review of the movie it's an exhausting experience. The final hour is perhaps the most intense hour of cinema ever created. But it's not pointless, gratuitous 'energy' that Cameron is after here. He knows that no amount of action will be enough to save a film if the viewer is not emotionally invested in the characters. And we are, thanks to Cameron's attention to detail. I've watched the film more times than I care to admit looking for weaknesses and can't find any. There's not a single wasted line of dialogue, not a single scene which doesn't contribute to the complex narrative structure. Michelangelo was fond of saying that he never carved anything; all he did was remove the surrounding material from a block of marble to reveal the statue that was already within and Cameron shapes his story the same way.

If Cameron has a weakness as a film maker its this: his inability to effectively edit his own work. This is a problem that first became apparent with the release of the Aliens "Director's cut" and one which has resurfaced in each of his subsequent films. For my money the Director’s Cut doesn’t add anything to the conversation and the added material only serves to bog the story down. So I'm giving credit in this review to the part played by the studio when they invoked their editorial prerogative. Their intervention resulted in the theatrical release of Aliens being what, in my opinion, it is: the best movie ever made.

Roland Joffe's 1984 film was one of those productions that come along every once in a while and are labeled "important" almost from the time they're greenlit. Few actually live up to that title but "The Killing Fields" is one. I've tried for a long time to put my finger on why it works and the best I can come up with is that it goes where no one (in Hollywood) had dared to go before: into the lives of the locals. It's as though "Lawrence of Arabia" didn't follow Lawrence back to Cairo after the fall of Aquaba but instead stayed behind to tell the tale of the Arabs as they struggled to find common cause and inspiration in a victory few of them actually cared about at the time. This is not a knock on Lawrence of Arabia by any stretch. It remains one of the great motion pictures ever made. It is simply to try and make the point that by staying behind after all the white guys left The Killing Fields strays into territory that makes it more than a simple night at the movies. The real story of the tragedy that was Cambodia in the 70s and 80s is not one of drunken journalist from the US and Europe escaping by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins. It's a tale of a revolution gone horribly wrong and the imposition of a modern day reign of terror that made the original French version seem like a walk in the park. This is not a story that can be told by looking through the eyes of Sidney Schanberg or any of the other journalists who were there for the fall but absent for the disintegration.

For the Cambodian people there would be no one coming over the hill to save them for years, (until Vietnam invaded and sent the Khmer rats scurrying back into the jungle). They were on their own against some of the worst humankind has to offer and in that disintegrated world Dith Pran (played brilliantly by Dr Haing S. Ngor), bereft of his western sponsors, is as powerless as any other Cambodian citizen to stop the hemorrhaging. He must forage for compassion, put out the lightest of feelers for spiritual connection and stay strong while those around him do their utmost to tear him down. The Khmer Rouge said they were starting over again with the year 0, and it only seems fitting. What other number would suffice to describe a world shorn of cultural touchstones and family ties, where history and education were dirty words, countless numbers were worked to death and heavily armed children were encouraged to pass snap judgements on people they didn't know. This was nihilism on an institutional level not seen since the Holocaust and Joffe bravely attempts to confront it by following Pran through a largely wordless hell.

It is a story that can only be told effectively through the use of the camera, where minute gestures or facial expressions can spell the difference between life and death, and Joffe seems to instinctively understand this. He doesn't pad out Pran's story with clumsy exposition. The dread is in the silence. Hearing is used only to ingest propaganda or to listen for predators. Speaking is prohibited. If you don't know how to observe your chances of survival are slim at best. So, like the people he's chronicling Joffe observes and we observe along with him and them and in the end we find that words come hard when trying to explain what happened and, more importantly, why and how. Only that it did and that if people hadn't kept their eyes open to the horror unfolding around them and remembered what they saw there's a chance no one on the outside would have ever known what really occurred.

Maybe that's the lesson of The Killing Fields: don't look away. Don't ever look away.

So many good lines, so little space on a top 10 list. But here goes anyway (in no particular order).


"I want more life, f**ker!" - Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
 
"These go to 11." - Christopher Guest, Spinal Tap

"I'll be back." - Ahnuld, The Terminator

"Greed is good." - Michael Douglas, Wall Street

"Get away from her you bitch!" - Sigourney Weaver, Aliens

"Say hello to my li'l friend!" - Al Pacino, Scarface

"I've finally found someone I can love - a good, clean love... without utensils." - Leslie Nielsen, The Naked Gun

"It's not the years, it's the mileage." - Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark

"I am a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not!" - Tom Hulce, Amadeus

"Game over man! Game over!" - Bill Paxton, Aliens

James Cameron was sick. He was lying in his hotel bed in Rome during the filming of Piranha II when he had a fever induced nightmare about a powerful humanoid robot skeleton emerging ominously from the detritus of an enormous explosion. He got up and sketched out what he'd imagined and went back to sleep. Later, after he'd been dropped from Piranha II and was back in California he wrote out the draft of a story based on his fever dream image and "The Terminator" was born. Raw, crisp and with a kinetic energy Cameron would perfect several years later with "Aliens" The Terminator starts with a bang and doesn't let up.

The machine overlords of the year 2029 are tired of fighting the pesky human resistance and come up with a plan to circumvent history. They send a human looking robotic killing machine (a terminator) back through time to kill the mother of the resistance leader; thereby preventing his birth and saving them a huge hassle. Arnold Schwarzenegger's terminator arrives in the Los Angeles of 1984 and quickly gets to work, murdering a couple of SoCal punks for their clothes (if you blink you'll miss a young Bill Paxton in this scene) and discovering via the phone book all the women in LA who share the name of his target: Sarah Conner. Shortly afterward Michael Biehn's Reese arrives via the same time displacement equipment the terminator used. His mission: to prevent the terminator from killing Sarah Conner. Given that, in Reese's own words, the terminator "can't be bargained with... can't be reasoned with... doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear (and) absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!" and is virtually indestructible on top of all that it's fair to say that Reese has his work cut out for him.

The Terminator cuts a swath of destruction across LA in his quest to find and kill his target with Reese and Sarah Conner barely a step ahead of him (Cameron's use of chase scenes as platforms for exposition makes it seem as though the film simply never takes a breath). Sarah's initial reluctance to believe anything Reese is telling her gets blown away when the terminator tracks her down to a police station, drives a car through the front doors (after Ahnuld utters what was to become his signature line; "I'll be back") and proceeds to spray wall to wall death and destruction upon the ineffective cops. After narrowly escaping Reese and Sarah find one night of peace together during which time John is conceived but they're soon tracked down again and the chase resumes. After fleeing back toward the city the terminator chases them down and there's the climactic encounter in a factory.

In my opinion the plot wasn't what made this work so successful as a motion picture, though it is a strong script. So what was? Well, to begin with the film looks cool. Cameron creates a Los Angeles that could be the precursor to the LA in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", but more fundamental to the films success is the blissful lack of post-modern irony. Reese is not an anti-hero, he's an old-fashioned hero ready to give his life for the greater good. Schwarznegger's terminator has absolutely no redeeming value or sympathy-evoking root causes for his behavior. He wasn't a good kid who's gone bad. He's death on two feet. He is the void. His job is to kill you, period. In a world increasingly overrun by moral relativity Cameron's simple good vs evil paradigm was refreshing and easy for average movie goers to get their head around. There were no inconvenient pangs of guilt clanging around in the subconscious mitigating your enjoyment of seeing the villian get his comeuppance.

Casting Schwarznegger against type was also a stroke of genius. Ahnuld's agent was against him taking the role, concerned it would ruin his public image, but Cameron knew better. He knew that Schwarznegger's steely tuetonic presence was perfect for the terminator and he was right. Given virtually no lines to screw up Ahnuld was able to make the role his own and his career took off like a rocket after this film. Michael Beihn, Lance Henricksen, Earl Boen and Paul Winfield deliver strong supporting performances with the only weak link in the entire production chain being the in over her head Linda Hamilton. The woman simply can't act. There isn't a moment in the entire film that I believe she is Sarah Conner. When compared to Sigourney Weaver's iconic performance in Cameron's 1986 masterpiece "Aliens" Hamilton's performance here is, frankly, embarrassing (as was her work in T2). That said, the special effects were also first rate for their day and stand as a testament to how well, even at this early point in his career, Cameron understood the craft of film making.

Put all those elements together: compelling concept, easy to understand good vs bad moral structure, career making performances, strong script, deft direction and good special effects and you have a movie worth spending a couple of hours with. The Terminator was not in and of itself a game changer, but it certainly helped push contemporary cinema of the time toward the 21st century.

The Terminator 1984 - trailer