Get Shorty

Year of Release:  1995
Director:  Barry Sonnenfeld
Screenplay:  Scott Frank, based on the novel Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
Starring:  John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo, Danny DeVito,
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, thriller

Chili Palmer (Travolta), a Miami loan shark, heads to Los Angeles to collect a debt for the Mob.  Stopping off in Las Vegas, Chili picks up a second job to collect a gambling debt from B-movie producer Harry Zimm (Hackman), and meets cynical "scream queen" actress Karen Flores (Russo).  A rabid movie fan, Chili decides to try his hand at film production.  However, the Miami Mob want the money that Chili was sent to collect, and a gang of ruthless drug dealers are after a large amount of money that Zimm owes them.

This light comedy-thriller was the first film that John Travolta made after he made his Hollywood comeback with Pulp Fiction (1994), and Quentin Tarantino's influence is all over this film with the stylish, cool (if at best morally ambiguous) characters, and profane, fast-talking dialogue, laden with movie references, and occasional flashes of violence.  In fact Tarantino would make his own Elmore Leonard adaptation with Jackie Brown (1998).  This is one of those movies were everyone involved seems to be having a great time, and Travolta coasts along with effortless charisma, and he is supported by a great cast, which also includes Danny DeVito as a major Hollywood star (the "Shorty" of the title), who Palmer and Zimm want for the movie they are putting together.
This is a hugely enjoyable film with a satisfying plot and clever, funny script which manages to poke fun at and celebrate Hollywood gangster movies,
A sequel, Be Cool, was released in 2005 and the original novel was adapted as a TV series.

John Travolta and Rene Russo in Get Shorty

   

Blow Out

Year of Release:  1981
Director:  Brian De Palma
Screenplay:  Brian De Palma
Starring:  John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry (Travolta) is hard at work on the post production of a low-budget slasher film.  Visiting a park late at night to record sound effects, Jack witnesses, and records, a car crashing off the road and into a creek.  While he is able to save the passenger, Sally (Allen), the male driver is killed.  It turns out that the driver was a hugely popular presidential candidate.  As he analyses his recording, Jack becomes convinced that it was no accident, but murder.  When Jack tries to convince the authorities of his suspicions, he soon realises that he and Sally are now targets of a very dangerous conspiracy.

This film reunites director Brian De Palma with John Travolta and Nancy Allen who all previously worked together on Carrie (1976).  It's certainly fair to say that, along with Carrie, this is one of De Palma's finest films.  As a director Brian De Palma has a very good eye, but tends to let style get in the way of substance.  He reaches into his bag of tricks here with split-screen, long elaborate tracking shots and slow motion. The story is interesting and involving, with a strain of dark humour, and a startlingly downbeat conclusion.  It features several of De Palma's recurring themes, notably guilt, voyeurism, sexually motivated violence and film references.  However, this has a political dimension that was timely in the early 1980s and is still pertinent today.  The action scenes are skillfully choreographed and the whole thing is genuinely exciting.  John Travolta has seldom been better here, and Nancy Allen, while underused, is affecting.  John Lithgow and Dennis Franz make the most of supporting roles as sleazy creeps, with Lithgow being particularly effective and chilling.
   

John Travolta in Blow Out

Carrie

Year: 1976
Director: Brian De Palma
Screenplay: Lawrence D. Cohen, based on the novel Carrie by Stephen King
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, Betty Buckley, P.J. Soles, Piper Laurie
Running Time: 98 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural, high school, coming-of-age

Summary: Carrie White (Spacek) is a shy, unpopular and frequently bullied sixteen year old girl, who is frequently abused by her fanatically religious mother, Margaret (Laurie). The girls at Carrie's school frequently torment her. One day after a gym class, Carrie has her first period while she is in the showers. Not knowing what is happening and genuinely believing that she is bleeding to death, Carrie panics and her classmates respond by pelting her with tampons and sanitary napkins while chanting: "Plug it up!"
This traumatic experience awakens in Carrie a previously latent power of telekinesis (the ability to move or cause changes in objects by the force of the mind). This power steadily grows in strength. Meanwhile, popular girl Sue Snell (Irving), feeling guilty about her part in tormenting Carrie, convinces her popular football hero boyfrend, Tommy Ross (Katt) to ask Carrie to the Senior Prom. Initially suspicious that it is a prank, Carrie eventually agrees.
Meanwhile, one of Carrie's principal tormentors, Chris Hargensen (Allen) and her hoodlum boyfriend, Billy Nolan (Travolta), plan a sadistic trick to completely humiliate Carrie at the Prom. However, now Carrie has the ability to finally exact her own revenge.

Summary: Carrie was the first novel by Stephen King to be published, and it was also the first of many to be adapted as a film. It is a powerful and disturbing piece of work, which will doubtless strike a chord in anyone who has ever been bullied or felt like an outsider. In the lead role Sissy Spacek gives a superb and sympathetic performance. The film's huge success didn't just kickstart Stephen King's career, it also made director Brian De Palma's name as a Hollywood director, and uses a lot of his trademark visual tricks such as split-screen, soft-focus, slow-motion, speeded up images, sequences shot in reverse and a mobile camera. It also helped to make John Travolta a star.
The film is made all the more effective by the blending of humour and high-school drama with the horror elements, which makes the story even more effective and disturbing. Despite obviously showing it's age, the film has dated well and remains both shocking and funny, sometimes even at the same time. Interestingly enough the film completely belongs to the female characters who make up almost all of the principal cast, both of the main male characters are completely manipulated by the women. Also, despite the violence of Carrie's revenge, she remains a sympathetic character, who just wants to fit in in the violent and cruel snakepit that is the average high-school.
The film was followed by a belated sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), which received almost unanimously negative reviews and was a box office failure. The novel was also adapted as a Broadway musical in 1988, which was a legendary flop and closed after sixteen previews and five performances. In 2002 the novel was adapted as a television mini-series starring Angela Bettis in the title role which received mixed reviews.



Mother knows best: Piper Laurie comforts Sissy Spacek in Carrie.