Tucker: The Man and His Dream

 Year:  1988

Director:  Francis Ford Coppola

Screenplay:  Arnold Schulman and David Seidler

Starring:  Jeff Bridges, Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater, Dean Stockwell

Running Time:  110 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, drama, biography

The Man:  Preston Tucker (Bridges), ambitious engineer who made his fortune designing and building gun turrets for aircraft during World War II.

His Dream:  To manufacture the 'car of the future'.  His "Tucker Torpedo" features an engine mounted in the rear of the car, and revolutionary safety features, such as seatbelts.  

However, the manufacture of the car is plagued with issues, and as enthusiasm for the car mounts, Tucker runs afoul of the "Big Three" car manufacturers (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler) as well as accusations of fraud from the U. S Securities and Exchange Commission.

You might not think of Francis Ford Coppola, director of such films as The Godfather (1973) and Apocalypse Now (1979), as the person to direct a gentle, charming comedy-drama based on real-life failed automobile entrepreneur Preston Tucker.  Coppola had first conceived of the project in the 1970s, and originally envisioned Marlon Brando or Jack Nicholson in the title role, and later planned to make the film as a musical, although the plan collapsed.  With Coppola's friend, George Lucas, serving as executive producer the project eventually came to fruition in 1988, to good reviews but poor box office receipts.  Jeff Bridges brings all of his considerable charisma to bear as the charming, confident Preston Tucker, and Joan Allen is very good, in the slightly underwritten role as Tucker's loyal wife Joan, although she has a great scene where she confronts a boardroom full of patronising men.  Martin Landau was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as financier Abe Karatz, who helps Tucker raise funds for his dream, and Christian Slater has a small role as Tucker's teenage son.  Dean Stockwell has a memorable cameo as a creepy Howard Hughes.  The film looks great with a real feel for the 1940s style, and the action is punctuated by amusing 1940s style adverts for Tucker's car.  While this is not a great film by any means, and far from Coppola's best, it actually deserves to be a lot better remembered than it is, because it is a good film.  In the end, Tucker made 51 of his Tucker Torpedoes.  Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas each own two.

Jeff Bridges in Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Crash

Year of Release:  1996

Director:  David Cronenberg

Screenplay:  David Cronenberg, based on the novel Crash by J. G. Ballard

Starring:  James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette

Running Time:  100 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Film producer James G. Ballard (Spader) and his wife Catherine (Unger) lead very active but dull sex lives where they each indulge in numerous casual affairs which they recoup in detail to each other.  On his way back from the studio, James is involved in a violent car crash, in which the driver of the other car is killed.  The dead man's wife, Dr. Helen Remington (Hunter), was in the passenger seat and is badly hurt.  In the hospital, James encounters Helen and they begin an affair.  They encounter a strange man named Vaughn (Koteas) who leads them into a strange subculture of people who are sexually aroused by car crashes, and recreate famous crashes.

This is an adaptation of British author J. G. Ballard's cult 1973 novel Crash, and like. a lot of Cronenberg films deals with the complex relationship between humanity and technology.  The topic here is broken machinery and broken bodies and the connection between the two.  In an early scene we see Ballard in hospital, with his leg in a complex surgical splint, and we see a close up of his badly bruised, broken leg penetrated by the metal of the apparatus.  Rosanna Arquette plays a character who wears metal braces, designed almost like fetish wear.  Despite the frequent sex scenes it's a surprisingly dispassionate films, almost clinical, it often feels like a kind of strange scientific documentary, the characters are never judged but the film merely observed.  There is little to no chemistry between the actors, which is intentional.  They are all isolated, lonely people trying to find some kind of connection.  The imagery is cool, set largely around wintery Toronto motorways and anonymous high rise buildings, garages and parking lots.  Even the colours seem washed out, with greys, and pale blues predominating.  The film was hugely controversial even though, despite it's explicit content, it is in no way pornographic, more chilling than arousing.  The film won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for "Originality, Daring and Audacity".  In 1996 the notorious British tabloid press whipped itself up into a vehement campaign to get the film banned, although it was released uncut in the UK in June 1997.  In the USA the film was released in both an uncut NC-17 version and an R-rated version with ten minutes cut.

Needless to say, this won't be to everyone's taste, but if you're in the mood for something challenging and provocative, this is well worth a test drive. 

James Spader in Crash

   

Exotica

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Atom Egoyan

Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan

Starring:  Bruce Greenwood, Don McKellar, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This dark, multi-layered drama focuses on the staff and clients of a Toronto strip-club called Exotica:  Lonely accountant Francis (Greenwood) is obsessed with a young exotic dancer, Christina (Kirshner), which arouses the jealousy of the club's resident DJ, Eric (Koteas), who is also in love with Christina.  Meanwhile Francis becomes involved with pet-store owner Thomas (McKellar), who runs a smuggling operation based around trading rare animals.

Back in the mid to late 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema, and this was the film that really made him a star director.  As with many of his films, various initially apparently unrelated stories, set in the past and present, interweave and coalesce into a whole towards the end.  The film conjures up a distinct feel right from the opening shot, as the credits play over a long tracking shot of a variety of hothouse plants and flowers while Mychael Danna's memorable, sinuous, Indian-influenced score plays and the opening line: "You must ask yourself, what brought them to this point?"  The decor in the Exotica club is full of images of jungle plants.  The film was marketed initially in some places as an erotic thriller, which conjures up images of the kind of cheap movies that come on late-night cable with dull plots and a couple of soft-focus sex scenes, and Exotica  really isn't that at all.  Given the fact that it is set in a strip club obviously there is a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the background, and there is a powerfully sensuous atmosphere in the film, but it is not a sex movies, nor is it really a thriller, although there are thriller elements in it.  It's a well-constructed film, with some great performances, and a fantastic soundtrack (including the best use on film of the late, great Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows").  Not all the various storylines are resolved in the end, but it remains a haunting, powerful and deeply rewarding exploration of grief and desire.       

      Mia Kirshner and Don McKellar in Exotica

The Prophecy

Year: 1995
Director: Gregory Widen
Screenplay: Gregory Widen
Starring: Christopher Walken, Elias Koteas, Virginia Madsen, Eric Stoltz, Viggo Mortensen
Running Time: 98 minutes
Genre: Horror, thriller, supernatural, religion

Summary: Just before he is to be ordained as a priest, Thomas Dagget (Koteas) experiences a nightmarish vision and loses his faith. Years later he is a homicide detective and assigned to the bizarre case of a corpse seemingly born with no eyes, and a hermaphrodite, he also has an ancient hand-written Bible with an extra chapter in the Book of Revelations. Translating the chapter, Dagget learns of a second war in Heaven due to some angels who were jealous of God elevating humanity over them. Dagget discovers that the leader of the rebel angels, the archangel Gabriel (Walken), who has an extreme disgust for humans - he refers to as "talking monkeys" - has arrived in a small Arizona town in search of an evil soul to use as a devestating weapon.

Opinions: This movie, which was also released as God's Army, is a striking mix of action, horror and theology. It benefits enormously from a very strong cast full of familiar faces from independent films, with Christopher Walken being a particular standout as the charismatic and malevolent archangel. It also provides a lead role for Elias Koteas, a talented and prolific actor who tends to be quite underrated. The film is well-written with the complex storyline unfolding with enough twists and turns to sustain interest and keep the viewer guessing without being unecessarily convoluted. It also has a strong thread of dark humour. Packed with originality and invention, it is certainly the best religious themed horror movie of recent years. The film's main problems are mainly down to it's low-budget, the special effects are at best adequate, although the film is wisely sparing in it's use of special effects, and it lacks a distinctive visual style, although some image are very effective - most notably a brief glimpse of Hell. Although the film was not a huge success on it's original release, it's reputation has grown and it has become something of a cult hit, and to date has been followed by four sequels.



Christopher Walken in The Prophecy

Let Me In

Year: 2010
Director: Matt Reeves
Screenplay: Matt Reeves, based on the novel and screenplay Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono
Running Time: 116 minutes
Genre: Horror, drama

Summary: In March, 1983, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, twelve year old Owen (Smit-McPhee) lives with his religious, alcoholic mother (Buono), who largely ignores him, on a depressing housing estate. He is also frequenty bullied at school. One night he meets a new neighbour, Abby (Moretz), a seemingly ordinary twelve year old girl, who lives with an elderly man (Jenkins) assumed to be her father. A strong friendship soon blossoms between Owen and Abby until he learns that Abby is, in fact, a vampire, and her "father" is behind a brutal series of ritualistic killings in the local area which he has done to provide her with the blood she needs.

Opinions: The 2004 novel Let the Right One In by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist has previously been adapted as a critically acclaimed and successful Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredson, and now an English-language version has been made. It's hard not to feel cynical when a successful foreign language film is given an English-language remake, especially when it's only been a couple of years since the release of the Swedish film. In fact, Alfredson was, understandably, very angry at the news that his film was being remade on the grounds that he thought a film should only be remade if there was something wrong with the original and he didn't think that there was anything wrong ith his film, and he is perfectly correct that there is nothing wrong with the earlier film.
However, leaving that aside, Let Me In is a very good film in it's own right. For the most part it sticks very closely to the earlier film and fairly faithful to the original novel (both movie versions excise the novel's gruesome zombie sub-plot). The film has a good sense of time and place with striking visuals of the snow-bathed housing estate. Director Reeves, best known for the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, delivers some striking scenes, in particular a sequence where the camera is in the back seat of a crashing car. He also has some of the more traditional horror movie scares happening in the background of scenes, and although there are computer generated special effects used, they are mostly fairly subtle. The movie's main strengths are in superb performances from Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz in the lead roles who make their characters if anything even more engaging and sympathetic then their Swedish counterparts.
While sticking a little bit too close to the original to really become it's own thing, this is a fine, well-made movie that deserves a wider audience than traditional horror audiences and should appeal to fans of the original as well as newcomers.


Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz in Let Me In

The Fourth Kind

Year: 2009
Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi
Screenplay: Paul Brooks and Joe Carnahan
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Will Patton and Charlotte Milchard
Running Time: 98 minutes
Genre: Science-fiction, horror, alien, mockumentary

Summary: In October 2000, psychologist Dr. Abigail "Abbey" Tyler (Jovovich), whose husband was brutally murdered in mysterious circumstances right in front of her a couple of months previously an event which left her so traumatised that she has blocked out all memory of the actual killer, returns to her home city of Nome in Alaska with her two children determined to finish the work that her husband started.
Abbey starts conducting extensive therapy sessions with three Nome residents who all suffer from severe sleep disorders. Abbey is struck by the strong similarities between each case, in particular the presence of a white owl in each account. When she tries hypnosis on one of the patients, Tommy (Corey Johnson), he starts screaming, terrified of some presence which is trying to take him away.
As inexplicable and violent events seem to happen all around her, Abbey becomes convinced that she is dealing with genuine cases of alien abduction, and that she herself may also be a target.

Opinions: This film purports to be a drama-documentary telling the story of a real-life case, with the drama interspersed with interviews and genuine archive footage and tape recordings. In reality, it is an entirely fictional film and is not based on any actual cases. Also, in contrary to what is stated in the film, Nome is not some kind of alien abduction centre. Although Nome and other Alaskan towns have their fair share of disappearances, the FBI have stated that the specific disappearances that are discussed in the film are down to a combination of alcohol and freezing temperatures. Also the interviewees in the film are actors. This approach lead to a lot of controversy when the film was released due to the fact that the film is marketed and presented as being based on "actual case studies" studio produced fake on-line news reports and obituaries to make the film appear more genuine.
What about the film itself though? It features some good performances but otherwise doesn't really work. It's overloaded with flashy little flourishes, such as split screen, which just serve to take you out of the movie. Most of the shock scenes are telegraphed in advance by having the screen go blank and silent for a couple of seconds before something loud and sudden happens. There are a couple of effective jolts, but not many. The movie would have made a good 45 minute episode of The X-Files but feels stretched at 98 minutes. That is another thing about the movie, it actually feels quite dated now because the whole alien abduction thing has been so quiet in the last few years from it's hey-day in the mid to late 1990s. Incidentally, the title of the film is taken from an expansion of J. Allen Hyneck's "Close Encounters" classification of UFO sightings - a "close encounter of the fourth kind" referring to alien abduction.
Horror fans will probably be disappointed at the lack of real scares and those interested in alien abductions are not likely to find here that they have not seen before.



Milla Jovovich in The Fourth Kind