Liam Neeson saved me from the pandemic

While living in uncertain times we yearn for heroes on the big screen and small screens.  In the past, actors such as Errol Flynn, Sean Connery, Jean Paul Belmondo, Charles Bronson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger have embodied the dependable men of action who audiences trust for their evening of vicarious thrills. Starting with his surprise hit Taken in 2008, Liam Neeson has emerged as this generation’s Clint Eastwood – a taciturn and impressive physical threat to criminal corruption wherever it festers. Even a worldwide pandemic has not deterred Neeson from his mission to entertain. Since October of 2020, he has had an impressive 5 pictures in release as of April 29, 2022. Here is a viewing guide to the man who saved me from the pandemic.

Honest Thief (2020)

A good start to Neeson’s cycle of Covid era films. Producer-writer-director Mark Williams (creator of the tv series Ozark) has fashioned a compelling moral tale about a successful non-violent bank robber who wishes to repay the stolen money and face the legal consequences so he can marry the woman he loves. Naturally, a ruthless pair of crooked cops get in the way of his plans, but Liam proves equally deadly when pushed to defend himself. A small-scale thriller that effectively balances its hard-boiled elements with the somewhat melodramatic set up.

The Marksman (2021)

Neeson has often flirted with Clint Eastwood style characters in the past, but this script feels like it was originally intended for Dirty Harry himself, not least because it is written and directed by longtime Eastwood associate Robert Lorenz (The Trouble with the Curve). Mark Williams also produced this story of an aging former US Marine Corps sniper who patrols the US-Mexican border reporting on illegal immigrants to US Border Patrol where his step-daughter works. When he kills a member of a drug cartel while protecting an orphaned Mexican boy he is saddled with the uneasy task of dodging vengeful criminals as he drives the boy to his only family in Chicago. Neeson is very believable as a lonely widower - and dead shot- with a gruff demeanor yet kind heart that the audience knows will win the boy’s trust. Coincidently, Clint Eastwood would direct and star in a very similar film Cry Macho, released only 8 months later.

The Ice Road (2021)

The most ambitious of Neeson’s recent action films and a frigid bookend to his Scandi-noir remake Cold Pursuit (2019). Here Liam is part of a team of ice truckers racing over a frozen lake to rescue trapped miners. A perfect example of old fashioned high octane filmmaking, using minimal CGI and shot by Clint Eastwood’s longtime cinematographer Tom Stern on authentically remote Lake Winnipeg locations. Writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh (Armageddon, The Punisher) knows which classic films to steal from (The Wages of Fear, Sorceror), while proving that charismatic middle-aged actors like Neeson and Laurence Fishburne can still sell the visceral suspense and emotional extremes of the premise. Buckle up for the best truck thriller since Breakdown (1997).

Blacklight (2022)

Liam Neeson’s first movie shot during the pandemic casts him as an FBI agent who uncovers a conspiracy while on the verge of retirement. A low concept but serviceable potboiler successfully reuniting Neeson with filmmaker Mark Williams and his Michael Collins (1996) co-star Aidian Quinn. Truly a test of Neeson’s watchability even in B-movie material, with enough action and intrigue to provide a slow night’s entertainment.

Memory (2022)

It was perhaps inevitable that Neeson would eventually work with action director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, the Mask of Zorro), and hopefully this upcoming thriller will fulfill the promise of their anticipated collaboration. A remake of the Belgian film The Memory of a Killer (2003) that tells the story of a freelance assassin targeted by his client when he refuses to complete his assignment. The hook is that the Neeson’s hitman character suffers from Alzheimer’s, so he can’t even trust his own memory as he fights to stay one step ahead of his enemies. I will be looking forward to this as my first Liam Neeson film at the cinema in over 2 years and even though he turns 70 in June, this is will hopefully not be the last of his beloved action heroes.

                     Elwy Yost : My Movie Mentor

https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/magic-shadows-elwy-yost-a-life-in-movies

Before Netflix and Turner Classic Movies, there was Elwy Yost, Canada’s most famous film buff. For 25 years at TVOntario, Elwy gave viewers an unparalleled access to classic Hollywood Cinema, brought to you uncut and in the comfort of your own home. Watching classic films on TV in the early 1970s was not always fun. Too many commercial breaks meant films were edited for broadcast, print quality was often lacking and you couldn’t always count on the correct title in the TV Guide being the same film that was eventually shown. Starting in 1974, the TVO show Saturday Night at the Movies (SNAM) with Elwy Yost changed all that by inaugurating a new era of film appreciation that continues to this day. Elwy was a film buff who knew the world of cinema needed proper presentation and scholarship to educate and entertain a growing generation of cinephiles. SNAM was unique in North American television programming. Audiences were provided with an engaging film history lesson every week in a commercial free themed movie double bill accompanied by introductions, commentary and interviews with the actors, filmmakers and craftspeople who made them. Elwy’s experience as a high school teacher, theatre actor, and on-air personality made him the perfect host. Unafraid to embrace his youthful enthusiasm for talking film, Elwy connected with viewers who were discovering the pure joy of movie genres such as Film Noir and Science Fiction/Fantasy. His legacy lives on to this day, with many people in the film industry and media education crediting him as a formative influence. My new TVO documentary Magic Shadows, Elwy Yost: A Life in Movies (available at TVO.org) is an affectionate tribute to this legendary TV presenter by detailing his childhood influences, how he became Canada’s most famous on air movie presenter, and the family whose love he cherished. 26 years ago I was thrilled to have Elwy contribute the foreword to a book that I wrote and self-published entitled You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet: A Guide to 500 Unsung Films on Video. He was a warm and generous man who taught me how the power of cinema influences our daily lives. I am proud to salute the life and work of Elwy Yost.

  Elegy for the Silver Screen

                                  

It has now been a year since we lost the dark sanctuary of the movie theatre. I am one those who crave the thrill of the BIG screen as the images and sound surround me with their overwhelming power. The unique social atmosphere of cinema-going over the years has been one of life’s great pleasures. The thrilling anticipation of the ticket booth, the smell of the popcorn, the dimly lit reverence of waiting in your seat for the trailers to begin. These are the rituals of a devoted movie lover. Rarely has the atmosphere of a working cinema been accurately captured on film.

The first great movie to do so was in 1957 with The Smallest Show on Earth. Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers (Born Free), star as a young couple who inherit a modest movie theatre and the unique characters who work there, including the always hilarious Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther) as the drunk projectionist. With its whimsical cast of British types, this charming comedy celebrates the transportive medium of film through the humour and humanity of the eccentric employees and their equally peculiar customers.

Starting in the 1950s in the U.S. and Canada, drive-in cinemas started to catch on with the public, particularly for families and teenagers. Currently, watching a movie isolated in your car has made a comeback due to the enforced closure of the multiplexes. In 1976 the film Drive-In perfectly recreated the heady and horny hijinks of being a teenager in Texas while watching a film from the backseat of you father’s automobile. The movie playing at this drive-in is a clever parody of the Airport, Towering Inferno and Jaws films but it’s the adolescent angst and sexual excitement of the drive-in theatre experience that was the legacy for generations of kids.

The 1980s was the flourishing era of the art house cinema, a uniquely urban theatre that programmed mostly foreign language films. Cinema Paradiso (1988) from Italy tells the poignant story of 8-year-old Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio), whose passion for movies, and friendship with his hometown cinema projectionist have a profound effect on his life and loves as he becomes an adult. Writer-Director Giuseppe Tornatore imbues this paean to movies with a breathtaking romanticism for the sacrament of film-going, where the local theatre doubles as the church, thus providing both religious and emotional nourishment to the town.

By the 1990s, cinema attendance was still on the rise largely due to the proliferation of action film stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Last Action Hero (1993), was an attempt to satirize this genre, creating a meta-fantasy where Arnold plays both himself and his on-screen alter ego Jack Slater. Beginning at a slightly rundown movie palace, we are introduced to teenage film fan Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) who is given a golden ticket by the elderly owner that miraculously hurls him right up onto the silver screen and into the films of Jack Slater. By physically entering the world of his hero, Danny fulfills his greatest desire to truly experience the magic of movies, including the hair-raising car chases, violent gunplay and daredevil stunts, that are loved by boys of his age. Opening in the summer opposite the seminal CGI special effects of Jurassic Park, The Last Action Hero was ironically a failure at the box office with the same 13-year-old boys represented by its young protagonist.

Digital projection became the industry standard by the early 2010s. Gradually, the event of film-going became less pleasurable, especially for older viewers unaccustomed to the barrage of car ads designed to distract impolite audiences as they chat or fiddle on their cell phones during the show. Many who no longer “go the movies” didn’t even miss them when they were forced to close last year. Being a hopeful cinephile, I expect that ardent fans who cherish the value of enjoying films in the darkness with strangers will soon return to cinemas with renewed optimism for their popularity and cultural importance.

 A Shane Black Christmas

Shane Black was once the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Today he is just another writer-director for hire, having recently failed to rejuvenate the Predator franchise. For his devotees, he is admired for writing the most action-packed films ever set during the Holiday Season. As a cinema-goer, Black always enjoyed the disquieting notion of a suspense film that used the cheerfulness of Christmas as its contrasting canvas.

Starting with Lethal Weapon (1987), Black created the template for his Christmas movie formula. Take one psychologically damaged protagonist, pair him/her with a reluctant racially/sexually contrasting sidekick, add in some loathsome money-grubbing villains, then sprinkle liberally with humour and fetishistic gunplay while Christmas songs like Jingle Bell Rock play on the soundtrack. With this, his first produced screenplay, Black claimed the dubious honour of helping to turn Mel Gibson into a mega-star but, more importantly, it was responsible for igniting the explosion of modern action films by grounding them with such relatable contemporary issues as race and suicidal depression.

He followed it with The Last Boy Scout (1991), starring a post Die Hard Bruce Willis as a boozy detective trying to solve some murders connected to sports betting. This was Black’s first attempt at a hard boiled P.I. plot and although it’s slickly entertaining, the script’s male chauvinism belies the writer’s adolescent tastes. 

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) is Black’s distaff take on the buddy action film and he couldn’t have had better casting than Geena Davis, as an amnesiac housewife/former spy opposite Sam Jackson’s lippy lowlife private eye. Featuring Black’s most well drawn female character, this is also his only authentically cold Christmas movie, with real snow courtesy of its many Ontario-filmed locations. 

Black finally got his first chance to direct one of his scripts with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), a hip homage to the pulp mysteries he loved as a kid. Robert Downey Jr. stars in a role he was playing in real-life at the time, as a Hollywood actor and addict whose louche lifestyle lands him in an inheritance plot of murder, money, and sexual abuse. This was Black’s comeback project after many years and it remains his most personal statement about the excesses of the film business and how it nearly destroyed his own life and career. 

Downey gave Black his second crack at writing and directing when he hired him to make Iron Man 3 (2013), a clever reworking of Black’s original character ideas for Lethal Weapon 2. Once again Black has Downey exploring the neurotic side of heroism as superhero Tony Stark grapples with near crippling PTSD. Paying his most mature tribute to the holidays yet, Black’s uses the Marvel mythology to make a compassionate statement on the family, by having children, female partners, and “brothers’’ all play a part in saving the world from corporate villainy. 

Aware that fans now anticipated his Christmas obsession, Black featured an epilogue scene in his latest detective yarn set in the 1970s, The Nice Guys (2016), as his two heroes enjoyed a chummy chat at a Christmas tree decorated bar. It was an amusing coda to another of Shane Black’s uniquely festive oeuvre.

REBEL REDFORD

DOWNHILL RACER (1969: Dir.  Michael Ritchie)

Having recently announced his retirement from acting, Robert Redford can look back with pride on a cinematic legacy that combined substantive artistic endeavour with quality entertainment. It was a long road to get there and it began in the late 1960s when the film Barefoot in the Park (1967) had finally secured his popular stardom after a string of noble failures including: Inside Daisy Clover (1965), The Chase (1966), and This Property is Condemned  (1966).  Capitalizing on this box office success, Redford began to develop his own ideas for film roles that would challenge the public's perception of him as a slice of blonde Californian beefcake. The first project that captured his imagination was a film to be directed by Roman Polanski based on Oakley Hall's novel The Downhill Racers. Despite his fanatical interest in the sport of skiing, Polanski left to direct Rosemary's Baby (1968) after he clashed creatively with Redford over the script. Undaunted, Redford personally took over the project as an unofficial producer, approaching numerous prominent film directors to no avail, until he offered the job to television director Michael Ritchie. A 6 foot 7 inch tall intellectual, Ritchie cut an imposing figure whose visual ideas for scenes were hard fought, even when in conflict with Redford, his sponsor and star. Both men envisioned the film to be made in an almost documentary style, a low budget approach that was required by Redford's parsimonious production partnership with Paramount Pictures chairman Charles Bludhorn. It was a daring stylistic experiment. Few Hollywood films at the time had taken a leap into Cinéma vérité but both Ritchie and Redford knew that a story critical of American exceptionalism needed to abandon all pretense of artifice. Reflecting the 1965 formation of a full-time United States ski team, Downhill Racer is a hard-hitting examination of an athlete who sees winning as the only option. In the title role of Dave Chappellet, Redford is a revelation playing an amateur athlete struggling to be noticed by his cold displeasing farmer father. Willfully shunning audience sympathy, Redford carefully reveals him to be both ruthless competitor and vainglorious pretty boy. Ever the canny businessman, Redford hedged his bets with a previous film project Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a huge box office hit which opened only a week before Downhill Racer. As written in William Goldman's sparkling script, Redford's Sundance Kid is a young hot shot starting to believe in his own legend, but unlike the serious and self-absorbed Chappellet, Sundance's breezy sardonic humour helps to undercut any arrogant macho posturing, resulting in a much more sympathetic anti-hero. Shortly after Downhill Racer, Redford would re-visit the world of competitive sport, this time as a womanizing motorcycle racer in Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), one of his few subsequent critical and commercial failures. Redford also successfully re-united with director Ritchie for The Candidate (1974), a trenchant satire of ideological politics in the post Nixon era. As he approached middle age Redford would make his other statement about sport and fame in America, The Natural (1984) directed by Barry Levinson. By this time the Reagan era had largely washed away the cynicism of the Seventies and Redford wholly embraced this new optimism with a mythologizing story about a near superhuman baseball hero. The Natural represented Redford as pure entertainer, a somewhat surprising contrast to Downhill Racer which had been Redford as social gadfly. In his most recent years in front of and behind the camera, he has continued to challenge notions of American political and moral authority with a series of films including: Lions for Lambs (2007), The Conspirator (2010), The Company You Keep (2012), and Truth (2015). If his promise to retire is fulfilled then he has left us a significant body of work. Films that make us ask questions to ourselves and others while at the same time conveying Robert Redford's belief in the power of humanity to learn from its mistakes, slowly making its way toward self-awareness. Blu-ray

MICHAEL CRICHTON'S #MeToo MOVIE

COMA (1978: Dir. Michael Crichton)

While HBO is currently mining the themes of free will and artificial intelligence in its TV series adaptation of Michael Crichton' s 1973 film Westworld (see also my previous blog: http://usherontheaisle.blogspot.com/2008/02/cinemas-soothsayer.html), I recently chose to re-visit Crichton's biggest hit as a film-maker and his only major directorial effort that did he did not originate. Coma, the 1977 best selling thriller by Dr. Robin Cook was purchased for film by producer Martin Ehrlichman because he thought it could do for hospitals, what Jaws  had done for beaches and deep water. To bring the novel to the screen he wisely chose Crichton, a former Harvard medical student who had written his own award-winning medical thrillers (A Case of Need, The Andromeda Strain) and was in the early stages of a parallel career directing for film and television. Crichton was uniquely qualified to both write and direct the project given his own medical experiences at Boston City Hospital, the inspiration for the hospital portrayed in the book. Like Cook, his friend and fellow author, he was also highly critical of the elitist staff and backroom politics he had witnessed there. This point of view is particularly amplified in both the novel and film by it's distinctly feminist heroine. French Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold was a perfect contemporary casting choice to play Dr. Susan Wheeler, a respected second year surgical resident at Boston Memorial Hospital, who uncovers a conspiracy to kill patients undergoing routine surgery. Bujold, despite her petite form, is an actress who exudes a strong independent nature in all of her roles. Here she expertly navigates the emotional minefield of a chauvinist hospital bureaucracy corrupted by greed and patriarchal power. Skeptics might think her character behaves recklessly, but the audience is with her all the way. Like those who saw the film during its original release, I found myself applauding Bujold's determined belief in her own intelligence as well as her admirably fearless physical courage during the film's numerous nail-biting suspense sequences. Solidly in support is a young Michael Douglas as her ambitious boyfriend and fellow doctor. Added marquee value is also provided by the venerable Richard Widmark, paternal and patronizing as the hospital's chief of surgery. Although Michael Crichton left medicine to become a writer, he continued his fascination with doctors, much later being the creator of the highly successful and critically acclaimed television series ER. Expertly photographed by ace cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Dog Day Afternoon) and subtly scored by film composer Jerry Goldsmith (Chinatown, The Omen), Coma, on its fortieth anniversary, can be seen as Crichton's initial statement on the difficulties that women face in the medical establishment, a problem that still faces a profession largely founded by men of overrated self-importance.  Blu-ray

FRANKENHEIMER FAVOURITES Part One

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964: Dir. John Frankenheimer)

There are few directors in Hollywood today who can compare with the generation that learned their craft in the pressure cooker of live dramatic television. Legendary names such as Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, Franklin Schaffner, and Sidney Lumet were all veterans of this unique school of directing where mistakes were made in public and spontaneous inspiration could make the difference between mediocrity or artistic success. Although primarily remembered as a breeding ground for great writers like Rod Serling and Paddy Chayevsky, directors who initially worked in this exciting live medium went on to become some of the great filmmakers of their era. John Frankenheimer was only a kid in his early twenties when he went to work as an assistant to Sidney Lumet, consequently graduating on to direct his own acclaimed productions for such award-winning series as Playhouse 90. Early acclaim lead to his feature film directorial debut The Young Stranger (1957), a failure Frankenheimer acknowledged due to his lack of big screen directorial experience. Disillusioned he returned to TV, but within a few years and after careful study of cinematic technique including the use of camera lenses and film editing, he easily made the leap into quality motion pictures. The intensely productive period that followed showcased his newly assured talent for movie storytelling. The Young Savages (1961), All Fall Down (1962), The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and most importantly The Manchurian Candidate (1962), demonstrated Frankenheimer's unique visual point-of-view, employing deep focus foreground close-ups to startling dramatic effect. His next project Seven Days in May was a novel brought to him by Edward Lewis, the producing partner of Kirk Douglas, with Kirk starring as a bellicose General plotting to overthrow the government of a controversial Democratic President. Frankenheimer suggested his old friend Rod Serling to adapt the book, with Douglas' Gunfight at the O.K. Corral co-star Burt Lancaster as the staff officer who uncovers the coup. Sensing an opportunity to play a role at odds with his public persona as a liberal progressive, Lancaster, who had just completed two previous projects with Frankenheimer, insisted on swapping roles with Douglas. Eager to reprise their previously successful partnership, Kirk gave into his friend's demands, but acting as Burt's less charismatic whistle-blowing adversary, was a decision he soon regretted after filming began. An added bonus came with the tacit support of Manchurian Candidate fan President John F. Kennedy, who gave Frankenheimer permission to film a political riot in front of the White House. Literate dialogue combined with a strong directorial eye culminated to produce a vividly topical thriller much in the same style as such other recent Washington exposés as: Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent (1962), Franklin Schaffner's The Best Man (1964) and Sidney Lumet's Fail Safe (1964). Providing stalwart support to the two leads are a peerless troupe of talent who bring verisimilitude to every scene, most memorably Martin Balsam, Edmond O'Brien, and in his acting debut, former producer John Houseman. Frankenheimer's greatest casting coup was that of the magisterial Frederick March as an embattled Commander-in-chief, representing the very embodiment of humanistic morality in the face of Lancaster's swaggering military martinet. Apart from a lethargic performance by an ailing Ava Gardner, Frankenheimer always maintained that Seven Days in May contained the best cast he ever had to work with, the only exception being his epic length 1973 adaptation of The Iceman Cometh, featuring March's valedictory performance.  A curious addendum to the filming came many months later when Frankenheimer was filming The Train in France also with Burt Lancaster. After after an unsuccessful preview screening of Seven Days in May with an ending where Lancaster's villain is killed in a car crash, Frankenheimer chose to re-shoot a new version with Burt's character surviving instead. Given the logistics of the situation, the Washington locations had to be doubled in Paris, a nearly impossible task but accomplished with a seamless result. Now with the film closing on a less sensational note, it went on to become one of his biggest popular successes, auspiciously inaugurating a most productive partnership with Edward Lewis that spawned some of the most undervalued films of John Frankenheimer's career. DVD & Blu-ray