Nashville

Year of Release:  1975
Director:  Robert Altman
Screenplay:  Joan Tewkesbury
Starring:  Ned Beatty, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin
Running Time:  160 minutes
Genre: Comedy-drama

This film follows the numerous intersecting stories of a large group of people in Nashville, Tennessee, over a five day period in the run-up to a rally for a populist outsider candidate running for President.  Most of the characters are involved to a greater or lesser extent in the worlds of music or politics.

This is a long, sprawling, epic comedy-drama with about twenty-four main characters, an hour of musical numbers and a multitude of interlocking storylines.  The film was written by Joan Tewkesbury based on her own experiences of visiting Nashville, although as was often the case with Altman, much of the dialogue and many subplots were improvised on set.  The large ensemble cast is impressive, particularly Ronee Blakely as an emotionally fragile singer, Geraldine Chaplin as a chatty BBC Radio reporter, Henry Gibson as a politically ambitious Grand Ole Opry star and Gwen Wells as an ambitious but talentless aspiring singer.  It also features an early appearance by Jeff Goldblum as the silent "Tricycle Man", and Shelley Duvall as an eccentric groupie.  It is a film that is very much a product of it's time.  On the surface it is about Nashville, but really it is about where America was at politically and culturally in 1975, and scarily enough is still quite relevant today.  It does require a lot of attention, and the length, loose structure and lack of a single overarching story may be off-putting to some viewers, but it is very rewarding, which is funny, dramatic and sometimes moving.  It also has a great soundtrack. 

Ronee Blakely, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson and Barbara Baxley welcome you to Nashville   
 

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Wes Craven
Screenplay:  Wes Craven
Starring:  Heather Langenkemp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund
Running Time:  90 minutes
Genre:  Horror

 A group of teenage friends in a small American town find themselves pursued in their dreams by a horrifically burned figure armed with a glove which has razor-sharp blades attached to the fingers.  If they are killed in their dreams, they die in reality too.  As the friends are killed off one by one, the survivors have to stay awake long enough to figure out a way to fight their dreams.

This film is one of the most influential horror films of the 1980s and possibly one of the most influential horror movies of all time, introducing the iconic movie villain Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund), and spawning six direct sequels, a TV series (Freddy's Nightmares (1988-1990)), a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise (Freddy vs. Jason (2003)) and a remake in 2010.  By and large the film sticks to the well-established slasher movie formula, but given a supernatural twist.  The death scenes are, by and large, imaginative and well-staged.  Another reason why the film works so well is the simple fact that everyone sleeps and dreams, and our dreams are always beyond our control, and it plays with the idea that is we are harmed in a dream we could be harmed in real-life as well (the idea that dying in a dream equals dying in real life is a very old one, and it used to be believed that this is why we wake up at the very last minute, a kind of psychological escape hatch so we don't snuff it in our sleep because we happened to have a midnight snack).  Writer-director Wes Craven was inspired by a series of disturbing real-lifer incidents from the 1970s where refugees from Southeast Asia refused to sleep after suffering terrifying nightmares, some of them subsequently died in their sleep.

The film creates a believably cluttered suburban setting, and is elevated by Craven's obvious affection for his teenage characters, who are played by a talented cast headed by Heather Langenkemp who gives a great performance mixing vulnerability and strength as the strong-minded Nancy, and a very young Johnny Depp as her boyfriend Glen.  Of course, the standout performance is Freddy Krueger who, coupled with his memorable appearance, gives Freddy a gleefully cruel wit, before the character became a pop culture joke.

This is one of the purely fun horror movies.  Full of shocks and scares and a few jokes, and nasty enough to raise a gasp, but not nasty enough to be too disturbing for non-horror fans.

Heather Langenkemp and Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street