Gab to the Chief!

Werth: A very Presidential day to you, Wise.

Wise: A very Presidential day to you, Werth. It feels so good to have all this election mess behind us.

Werth: And if a Presidential election wasn't enough, Steven Speilberg is releasing his opus to Lincoln today.

Wise: An emancipator and vampire hunter. 

Werth: Presidential movies could almost be a genre unto themselves. One in particular that stuck with me was Oliver Stone's mother-of-all conspiracies flick, JFK (1991). Riding high from critical and box office successes like Platoon (1986), Wall Street (1987) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Stone decided to tackle the story of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison who in 1966, attempted to uncover the hidden details of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by trying local businessman Clay Shaw for his supposed involvement in the shooting.

What starts off like a documentary complete with Martin Sheen voice-over quickly becomes an involved murder-mystery with Kevin Costner as New Orleans' answer to Jessica Fletcher.

Wise: Does he ride a bike with a basket?

Werth: Soon the web of criminal lowlifes, gay hustlers, mafioso, Cuban militants, CIA, FBI and Pentagon Black Ops operatives ensnares Garrison and his crack team of investigators, revealing a confusing jumble of possible motives and participants in what was arguably one of the most significant events in modern American history.

Stone is fully invested in this tale that he's telling—and I am calling it a tale, because much of it is either unverifiable or has been disputed by various sources. On the one hand, this makes Stone look like a late-night public access television nutjob, but his cinematic exposé is so skillfully directed that it cannot be brushed-off so easily.

Stone cannily mixes documentary footage, traditional cinematic camerawork, and vérité-style recreations to give the appearance of visual truth to what he's saying. The flashbacks are dream-like—handheld camera and fast-cuts that make us feel as if we are remembering these fragments. It is a very smart technique that mixes the "truth" into what we are seeing, making us leave the theater with the feeling that we've discovered what really happened.

Wise: I'll bet it wasn't Colonel Mustard in the parlor with the third gunman. 

Werth: The film takes itself very seriously for over three hours. Costner's final "coup d'etat"-filled, patriotic appeal to the jury is painful—like a root canal performed by a civics teacher. But within this ode to paranoia and the essence of  America is a veritable who's-who of the best film actors from the Nineties.

The melange of Southern performances includes Sissy Spacek as Garrison's long-suffering wife; Joe Pesci as what is best described as a foul-mouthed grandmother with an ill-fitting wig and Joan Crawford scarebrows; Gary Oldman as marble-mouthed Lee Harvey Oswald; and

Best Supporting Actor nominee Tommy Lee Jones in a double-role as Shaw who is sanctimoniously butch while he is questioned, but an effete dandy in flashbacks where he paws Kevin Bacon and smokes a cigarette like Quentin Crisp.

Wise: Are you sure it was cigarettes that he was smoking?

Werth: JFK netted 8 Oscar noms including Best Picture and Best Director, but for Stone this marked the last time he has been seriously considered for either statuette. And if Stone has been haunted by this ill-fated president, so has Hollywood. 1992 saw the release of the Michelle Pfeiffer starrer Love Field about an unhappy Texas housewife who travels to the President's funeral,

Forrest Gump memorably (and digitally) met J.F.K. in 1994's Forrest Gump,  and Jonathan Demme has been reported to be involved in the screen adaptation of Stephen King's 11/22/63 about a man who travels back in time to try and stop the assassination.
 

Wise: Presidential assassinations must be irresistible to filmmakers because the crime unearths so much legal, political and personal drama.  In The Conspirator (2010), Robert Redford dramatizes the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) who was accused of being part of the plot to assassinate Lincoln.  Defending her is young lawyer and Union Army veteran Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) who only takes the case at the insistence of his mentor U.S. Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson delivering the requisite moonlight and magnolia as well as a certain noble porkiness)  

At first reluctant to take the case, Aiken is eventually convinced that a government plot is afoot to railroad Surratt to the gallows.  

Werth: Because every assassination movie requires a crusading lawyer.  

Wise: Despite a ragged beard and floppy bangs, McAvoy feels a bit anachronistic, particularly because of the obvious parallels the film makes to Abu Ghraib and and the prosecution of the current War on Terror.  The prisoners are shrouded by hoods, kept in dank cells, and denied a civilian trial.  

Kevin Kline plays sinister Secretary of War Edwin Stanton who manipulates events behind the scenes all in the name of providing stability in the face of national terror.  Director Robert Redford, who is almost as famous for his politics as for his storied film career, pays equal attention to both his historical and allegorical subjects, but has some trouble effectively weaving the two together. 



Werth: Speaking of weave, have you seem Redford's hair lately?

Wise: The best part of the film is Robin Wright's Surratt.  In addition to both looking and acting believably as a 19th Century woman, she also creates a stirring portrait of a mother who would rather face down an undeserved death than condemn her son to the noose.  

The rest of the cast is more or less successful: Evan Rachel Wood and Alexis Bledel have a few nice moments as Surratt's daughter and Aiken's fiancée, respectively, although Justin Long as one of Aiken's war buddies feels out of place despite his charms in other roles.  

Werth: It's hard to be a Mac Guy in the late 1800's.

Wise: Despite the title, the film never fully achieves the conspiracy-mindedness that can make this type of movie so satisfying.  Perhaps Redford tried to shoehorn too much nobility into the project and never allowed the secret dealings of either side to become truly unsettling.  Which is unfortunate because by neutering the plotters of their machinations, he robs the heroes of their virtue. 

Werth: Wise, I hope post-election exhaustion isn't going to rob me of your presence next week. 

Wise: I cannot tell a lie, nothing could ever keep me away from Film Gab.

 

Things that Go Gab in the Night

Wise: Happy Halloween, Werth!  

Werth: Boo to you too, Wise.  Any plans for the year's most haunted evening?

Wise: I thought I might curl up at home with a bowl of candy corn and a double feature of scary movies.  

Werth: Vincent Price in House of Wax and Bette Davis in The Nanny?  

Wise: Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth.  

Werth: Heigl is a special kind of terrifying, but when I think of movies that scare me, only one movie is a guaranteed nightmare-causer, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

Wise: I hope that has nothing to do with my unfortunate, one-time comment about Noxzema and your T-zone. 

Werth: Based on the Stephen King novel, The Shining stars Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, a writer who packs up his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) to be the caretaker of a closed-for-the-season hotel in the snowbound Colorado mountains. But the Torrance family is not alone in the Overlook Hotel, and soon the dark spirits that haunt the halls give a whole new meaning to cabin fever. 

The film is full of iconic horror images: REDRUM, Nicholson's face grinning through a hacked-open door, and those god-damned twins.

Wise: I assume you're not referring to the Olsens.

Werth: As with all of his films, Kubrick takes his time. The dread and fear of The Shining builds slowly with long tracking shots that follow Danny on his three-wheeler, holding us spellbound waiting for the horrors waiting around the next corner.

Kubrick uses the Overlook itself to put the audience on edge. The large ballrooms, hallways and rooms feel strangely claustrophobic, the emptiness of a normally bustling place causing an unease that leads to madness. And don't get me started on how uncomfortable the soundtrack makes me.

Wise: Let's not forget Jack O'Nicholson.

Werth: Let's not! Nicholson's angular eyebrows and wicked leer telegraph from the beginning that homicidal tendencies are not buried too deeply beneath his skin. While this makes his transformation less surprising, it is still, nonetheless, horrifying. Young Lloyd is ingenious, playing a kid's role that could be considered grounds for child abuse. 

But my favorite performance is from Duvall. Her bug-eyed awkwardness is perfect as she struggles to save herself and her son from the monster her husband has become—or perhaps always was. Behind the scenes footage shot by Kubrick's wife shows Kubrick assailing poor Duvall about her acting, turning her into a weeping, nerve-wracked mess. Whether Kubrick intended to shape Duvall's perforamnce or was just being an a-hole, in the end, Duvall, pardon the pun, shines.

Wise: Perhaps I'll postpone my Heigl-fest and delve into Francis Ford Coppola's foray into the blood-sucking undead, Bram Stoker's Dracula.  

Werth: Because Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula wouldn't fit on the marquees.

Wise: It was an attempt to bring the character closer to Stoker's original novel and away from the sinister elegance of Bela Lugosi's iconic version from the 1930's.  

Coppola begins the story in the 15th Century with a young and handsome Vlad Dracula (Gary Oldman) heading off to defend his castle and his bride from invading forces.  He defeats his enemies, although their treachery has convinced his young wife Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) that he has died in battle and she flings herself from the castle tower.

Werth: Tragically ending her budding medieval shoplifting career.

Wise: Heartbroken, the Count renounces his faith and swears allegiance to the darkness.  Skipping ahead 400 years, the film finds young lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) embarking on a business trip to Transylvania, but not before promising to marry his fiancée Mina (also Ryder) immediately upon his return.  

Imprisoning Harker with his three succubus brides, the Count journeys to London where he recognizes Mina as the image of his lost love and hatches a plan to seduce her into his undead existence.  


Werth: That's a lot of plot.   

Wise: And there's a lot more involving Hungarian nuns, a ruined Abby, gypsies, escaped wolves, a nickelodeon theater, grave robbing, stormy sea crossings, and stage coach chases.  

Werth: It's a grab bag of movie clichés.  

Wise: The movie itself is a mélange of styles and images: 19th Century paintings mixed with Byzantine design, classic Hollywood cinematography with 1960's cinema psychedelia, and capped off with a cast list that looks like credits on the best slacker film never made: Ryder, Reeves, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, plus Anthony Hopkins as grizzled vampire hunter Van Helsing.  

Werth: Reality Bites Before Sunrise.  

Wise: Something like that.  It's a weird mix of compelling and preposterous, but filled with definite chills and a few blood-spurting scares.  


Werth: Sounds like someone will be sleeping with a stake and a garlic necklace until Halloween is over.  

Wise: Heck, I'll even pop Katherine Heigl in Killers into the DVD player to keep the undead away until next week's Film Gab.  

Built Ford Tough

Werth: Hi there, Wise!

Wise:  Hello, Werth. Is that poorly wrapped gift you're holding for me?

Werth: No. I forgot Harrison Ford's birthday two weeks ago and now I'm wondering if it's too late to give him his present.

Wise: He might be a bit busy with the premiere of his new movie, Cowboys and Aliens.

Werth: Oh right! Ford and Daniel Craig play a couple of cowboys lookin' to rassle up some cussed invaders of the outer space variety.

Wise: Ford's career has been full of heroes who've had to deal with aliens in one form or another.

Werth: Wookies, Nazis and the Amish—he's dealt with them all—but one of my favorite roles is the one where he goes up against "skin jobs."

Wise: Sounds like something that happens at a frat house on Wednesday night. 

Werth: After creating his two most iconic characters in Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Ford wanted to break away from Han and Indy and do something with a little more gravitas. So when Steven Spielberg recommended him to Ridley Scott for the film version of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ford took the gig.

Wise: Androids and electric sheep sound less like gravitas and more like nerd farming.

Werth: At first glance, I'd agree, but Scott's Blade Runner (1982) really transcends the sci-fi genre. After blending horror and sci-fi so successfully in Alien (1979), Scott did something very interesting. With his production team he took the science fiction aspects of Dick's novel and infused them with the elements of film noir giving birth to what some call "tech noir." Rick Deckard is a blade runner—a quasi-cop who hunts down and terminates errant androids. 

But rather than sporting space suits and jet packs, Deckard is the quintessential hard-boiled private eye. He's not too talkative, wears a trench coat, smokes, drinks whiskey and has an eye for the ladies. But like P.I. heroes Bogey and Mitchum, his hard surface conceals a thoughtful soul, with a tarnished sense of right and wrong. As he hunts down these androids who look just like us, he begins to question just what makes us—or them—human?

Wise: I wonder that every time I watch America's Next Top Model. 

Werth: Art designer David L. Snyder, production designer Lawrence G. Paull, and set decorator Linda DeScenna seamlessly melded the L.A. of the future with its crime-ridden past. Ziggurat-like buildings pierce the bright gloom created by flaming gas jets high above the city, while below, wrecked art deco and classical architecture crumble beneath the gaze of towering Japanese video ads and monotonous blimp messages. 

Metal fan blades and ceiling fans whip through smoke-filled air as if the year was 1941 and not 2019. Costumes designed by Michael Kaplan and Charles Node are visions of shoulder pads, knee-length skirts and fur collars as if they were dressing Joan Crawford and not Sean Young. 

Young's red lips and upswept hair speak of another era while she walks down a crowded, rain-covered street populated by air-cars and videophones. Even the Vangelis soundtrack is a synthesizer re-working of noir instruments like the piano and sax. It's a masterwork of setting that blends the look and dark themes of these two genres together.

Wise: The atmosphere is so richly layered that it sometimes threatens to overshadow the actors.

Werth: Some critics at the time thought so. But Ford's tough guy with a sensitive side routine is effortless, Sean Young's beautiful and damaged Rachael portended an acting career that never materialized, Daryl Hannah's gymnastic performance as a "pleasure model" is a sadist's delight and 

Rutger Hauer is so creepy in his Aryan other-ness that it requires no leap of faith to imagine that he is a mad machine, killing people until he can find the answers he is seeking. With a dedicated cult following and renewed critical appreciation, Blade Runner's lackluster box office performance at the time probably had more to do with a misleading marketing campaign and its summer competition (a little movie called E.T.) than with the actual quality of the film.

Wise: Ford has had his share of blockbuster hits. What's interesting is that his star persona has always been something of a reluctant hero.  While his early roles leavened his courage with a witty sardonicism, his latter roles required him to play the quiet, noble man who gets pushed too far.  And no role typifies this change more than President James Marshall in Air Force One (1997).  

Werth: The Electoral College does radically change a man.  

Wise: While on a state visit to Russia, President Marshall abandons a prepared speech to denounce the war crimes of imprisoned General Ivan Radek.  This breech prompts a minor diplomatic crisis, and when the First Family boards Air Force One, a rogue group of Radek's loyalists led by Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman) hijack the plane and take the President, his family and the cabinet hostage.  

Werth: Are all the Russians named Ivan in this film? 

Wise: After a skirmish, President Marshall is hustled to an escape pod by the Secret Service, and the hijackers contact the White House where Vice President Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) skillfully manages the power grabs and protocol while Washington roils over the possibility that the President has been killed.  Of course, Marshall hasn't run off to safety, but instead has secreted himself on the plane while he steels himself to outfox and outfight his captors.  

Werth: After dealing with Calista Flockhart, it should be a breeze.  

Wise: Of course it is, but director Wolfgang Petersen stages the action with constantly escalating intensity, and while the final outcome is never in doubt, when victory does come, it feels both cathartic and hard-earned.  But it's definitely Harrison Ford's performance that transforms what could have been a run-of-the-mill action movie into something worth watching.  

Screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe provided all the typical thrills and double-crosses de rigueur to action films of this stripe, but Ford's charisma brings nobility and an almost imperceptible wink of humor to the project, preventing it from falling into an overblown fantasia of revenge.  

Werth: Too bad Petersen couldn't create any excitement in his remake of The Poseidon Adventure.  

Wise: He also directed Das Boot and The NeverEnding Story, so he must either be a genre genius—  

Werth: Or a madman.  Speaking of, do you think I would look crazy if I went to the Cowboys and Aliens premiere to give Harrison Ford his present?  

Wise: Why don't you just saddle up for next week's adventure at Film Gab?