The Screengrab : richard lester

He Died, but Then He Got Younger: The Prequel Perplex

Phil Nugent — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Ryan Gilbey suggests that, now that it's barely even fun anymore to complain about sequels and remakes, we should shift gears and reserve our disgust for the concept of prequels. By some accounts, the term "prequel" was coined by George Lucas to describe the young-Don-Vito sections of Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 The Godfather, Part II. However, the first time the term was widely used in the press to label a feature film which had no other discernible reason for being may well have been in 1979, when Tom Berenger and William Katt starred in Richard Lester's Butch and Sundance: The Early Years.

This was not the first time that somebody had built a new work around a speculative history of what happened to the characters in an earlier work before they reached the point in their history where they made the audience's acquaintance in the first place. Even before The Godfather, Part II, this approach actually had a tony literary pedigree. Jean Rhys's 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea (filmed by John Duigan in 1993) filled in the pre-history to Jane Eyre, and the 1971 movie The Nightcomers, with Marlon Brando, attempted to lay the groundwork for Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. But Butch and Sundance established the basis for regarding prequels as a singularly uninspired and parasitic form. Apparently it was made because some genius noticed that the tenth anniversary of the money-making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was approaching, and it seemed a shame to waste such a ripe excuse to try to cash in again. There was just one problem: the first movie ended, famously, with Butch and Sundance being turned into Swiss cheese by the Bolivian army. So a sequel was out of the question, but it might be possible to go backwards. And since there was this new actor in town whose major qualification for stardom seemed to be that he looked a lot like a young Robert Redford...

In the end, Butch and Sundance tanked, William Katt transitioned from starring in movies to appearing on TV each week in The Greatest American Hero and looking as if he was praying to take a bullet between line readings, and it looked as if prequels might turn out to be one of those momentary fancies of the movie industry, like disaster epics or Steven Seagal. A few more prequels did trickle out in later years, ranging from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Amityville II: The Possession. But the concept wasn't revived big time until, yes, George Lucas decided to jump-start his fantasy of actually making another Star Wars trilogy, beginning in 1999 with The Phantom Menace. Even now, though, prequels, which are much more commonly found in the ranks of the straight-to-video than among actual theatrical releases, tend to occur only when a franchise has been tapped to pitiful death (see Hannibal Rising) or when the producers are desperate for a gimmick that might help to compensate for the fact that the original stars want nothing to do with it (see Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd).

We might also want to define our terms a little. Gilbey, anticipating the day when movie prequels themselves become "respectable", cites Guillermo del Toro's forthcoming The Hobbit, as a prequel to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, but J. R. R. Tolkien wrote the book that del Toro is adapting before he wrote the Rings books; surely that matters more than the fact that the books have somehow managed to get themselves filmed in the wrong order. On the other hand, J. J. Abrams's Star Trek straddles the line between "reboot" and prequel: it means to reinvent the old franchise, but in the process of doing so, it introduces the audience to James T. Kirk and his merry band at an earlier stage of their development than Gene Roddenberry dared, or cared, to go. Ideally, this kind of thing might be done with a little humor, teasing the audience with the shared knowledge we have of what these characters are fated to become. At worst, it might give us the chance to see what it looks like when fan fiction is perpetrated with a $150 million budget.

Of the high-profile releases about to come barging through the door, Wolverine is closest to the dreaded prequel prototype. The signs are pretty much there, except in reverse: the X-Men franchise has been pronounced dead, or at least mothballed, but everybody's favorite moody mutant is indestructibly immortal, and Hugh Jackman is still at an age where he can pull off the role. So maybe the best way to try to squeeze a little more money out of the character, minus his familiar supporting cast, is to zap back to before most of them were born and fill in some of the bad boy's back story, which apparently goes back for fucking ever. Wolverine's director, Gavin Hood, who readily acknowledges that "Prequels are usually bad," adds that, since "most of the audience knows what's coming... the excitement should be not 'what?' but 'how?' It changes the emphasis. Usually a movie is about what will happen. Here it's 'How will what we know will happen, happen?'" That sounds about right. And it's true that even when you think you know exactly what's going to happen, the movies can still surprise you. For instance, I saw Gavin Hood's previous films, Tsotsi and Rendition, and now, people who may well have seen them too have hired him to direct a big-budget summer movie. Boy, am I surprised.

Taxing Time: A Screengrab Salute To Beat The Clock Cinema (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:30:00 GMT

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) & RAT RACE (2001)

I can’t say for sure whether I’ve ever watched It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World all the way from beginning to end in one uninterrupted sitting, but I’ve definitely seen every part of the movie numerous times: mostly during lazy Sundays as a kid, when Stanley Kramer’s three-hour, star-studded tale of random strangers racing for treasure played (thanks to endless commercial breaks) like an all-day Laff-Olympics, featuring generations of comedy all-stars ranging from Buster Keaton to Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by the 1963 edition of the Three Stooges (with Joe DeRita on drums). More than a few strands of Mad, Mad’s chaotic, uneven DNA wound up in the seminal fluids of the far less epic (and epochal) yet funnier than expected Rat Race, featuring another group of random celebrity strangers (including John Cleese, Rowan Atkinson, Seth Green, Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Whoopi Goldberg, Dave Thomas, Amy Smart, Breckin Meyer and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) involved in another episodic race against time for treasure...but this time, with original songs by the Baha Men! (AO)

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1985)

Walter Hill’s Brewster’s Millions was the seventh big-screen adaptation of George Barr McCutcheon’s 1902 novel and, thanks to the participation of headliner Richard Pryor and co-star John Candy, it remains the most well-known and popular. Taking its basic narrative cue from prior versions, Pryor plays a washed-up minor league pitcher who discovers that he’s the sole remaining heir of a long-lost kooky relative who, from beyond the grave, offers him a stunning deal: if he can spend $30 million in 30 days, he’ll inherit $300 million. It’s a too-good-to-be-true offer that, of course, proves more troublesome than it initially seems, as Pryor’s nobody finds it increasingly difficult to successfully relieve himself of so much money, a predicament from which Hill squeezes mild laughs as well as a predictable money’s-not-everything moral. Pryor’s dynamically profane humor is blunted by the proceedings’ safe PG conventionality, and the film is far less funny than Hill’s prior 48 Hours. Yet in Brewster’s Millions’ defense, its time-tested conceit still manages, over a century after its initial birth, to effectively ignite the imagination. (NS)

JUGGERNAUT (1974)

Richard Lester's there's-a-bomb-on-this-ship thriller brings class and wit to the disaster genre. The plot involves a demolitions wizard who secrets a collection of big-ass bombs on Skipper Omar Sharif's cruise ship, which are set to go off unless he's handed a wad of extortion money. While Lester scans the landscape for signs of the throwaway slapstick bits and eccentric, comic character moments that were his stock in trade, Richard Harris brings it on a rocket sled as the dashing, showboating cynic leading the team of bomb defusers who are flown in and dive down to join the ship in the middle of the ocean during a very photogenic storm. After his best mate is killed, Harris takes a break to get roaring drunk and deliver his Oscar-reel speech before getting back to work. You might think that getting roaring drunk when attempting to defuse a bunch of bombs is next on your to-do list would be be ill-advised, but if you do, what part of "Richard Harris" do you not understand? (PN)

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)

Dr. Strangelove is beginning to rival Psycho as one of the movies we can find a reason to cram on to pretty much any list, but we couldn’t very well compile the greatest races against time without including it. After all, the stakes couldn’t be higher: if President Muffley and his advisors don’t succeed, the endgame will be the utter annihilation of life on Earth. Stanley Kubrick uses the simplest possible device to remind us of how close the world is coming to Armageddon: the little electric bulbs on the “Big Board” blink ever closer to the interior of a map of Russia. And yet, while everyone in the room knows the importance of what’s going on, no one can seem to focus on the matter at hand: General Turgidson is more concerned with being hoodwinked by the commies, Ambassador DeSadesky wants fresh fish and Cuban cigars, and the President gets into arguments with the Russian premier over who’s more sorry about this turn of events. It’s brilliant because it’s so ridiculously plausible: the end of the world is nigh, and no one can be bothered to pay attention. (LP)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five & Six...before it's too late!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It’s Watchmen Week here at The Screengrab as the greater Geek-iverse (and the studio executives who love it) await the opening of Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated, much low-expectations-generating adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ beloved, game-changing graphic novel about a bunch of asshole “super” “heroes” fighting crime, mental illness and erectile dysfunction in a scary alternate reality where Richard Nixon never went away. (And by the way, does everyone out there already know Silk Spectre II: Electric Boogaloo is portrayed by the same actress who played Valerie Cherish’s little blonde protégé on The Comeback? I just found that out, like, yesterday and was momentarily confused because I thought all the Watchmen were supposed to be kinda middle-aged -- but then I checked the Internet Movie Database and, much to my surprise, Malin Akerman’s actually 31, which is somewhat middle-aged, I suppose)...

Anyway, our own Scott Von Doviak and Paul Clark have already weighed in with their reviews of Hollywood’s latest attempt to wring a little KA-CHING! out of the POW! ZAP! BAM! of the funny book aisle, a strategy that’s been serving the Suits pretty well in recent years. I could pontificate here on the way America’s fascination with caped crusaders panders to infantile, imperialist empowerment fantasies, crowding more intelligent, adult material from the multiplex...but not only would that be annoying, it would also be hypocritical, since (A) I like a good funny book movie as much the next geek, (B) another movie about masked superheroes battling supervillains is a helluva lot better than another movie about masked sadists chopping up teenagers and (C) I keep hoping they’ll someday finally make that Wonder Woman movie I’ve been waiting for since I was 12. Mmm...magic lasso...

In the meantime, though, please enjoy the following list from Nerve.com’s very own Legion of Doom as we salute truth, justice, the American way and THE BEST AND WORST COMIC BOOK MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

The Best:

IRON MAN (2008)

True, it’s only been a few weeks since I wrote about Jon Favreau’s rock ‘em sock ‘em revival of the venerable Marvel Comics rust magnet for my Best of 2008 list...but (unlike certain awards-distributing Academies I could mention), I wanted to make sure this excellent film was recognized among the best of the best!

V FOR VENDETTA (2006)

Don't tell Alan Moore, who has never seen it but took the trouble to bad-mouth it anyway, but this adaptation of his Thatcher-era anarchists' fable, directed by Wachowski brothers proxy James McTeigue, does better than pretty good by its source material. The most important changes the filmmakers made from the original text, notably the transformation of Eve's (Natalie Portman) blokey boyfriend into a sardonic gay TV host played by Stephen Fry, actually work well: Fry's performance gives the film some heart, and film is clearly better suited than the printed page when it comes to paying gratuitous tribute to Benny Hill. The movie even inspired David Denby to apoplexy by seeming to present a terrorist as a political hero. Annoying David Denby is always a public service.

HULK (2003)

Remember how last year’s Edward Norton re-boot of The Incredible Hulk was going to prove that the relatively disappointing box office take of the 2003 Hulk was all Ang Lee’s fault? That audiences would embrace a louder, faster, dumber Hulk movie in a way they never did Lee’s artsy-fartsy one? How’s that working out for ya? The 2008 edition racked up almost exactly the same box office total as the 2003, so maybe it’s just that nobody likes poor ol’ Hulk. Or maybe the 2003 version wasn’t so bad after all, which is what I’ve been saying all along. Yes, it has its flaws; Eric Bana doesn’t exactly light up the screen, the CGI star isn’t quite up to snuff in some scenes, and things do take a little longer to get percolating than was perhaps necessary. But Lee brings a lyrical, haunting tone to the picture that may seem at odds with the whole “HULK SMASH!” ethos, but actually taps into a vein of melancholy the character has always possessed. The innovative editing scheme, with its cascade of digital wipes and split screens, is a far more clever and entertaining cinematic analog to reading a comic than anything Zack Snyder does in Watchmen, and the CGI effects do mesmerize at times. Hell, I could have watched this Hulk bouncing his way across the desert for hours.

X-MEN 2 (2003)

Ushering in the modern age of Marvel superhero films, Bryan Singer’s X-Men helped prove that the sight of men in tights – or, in this case, men and women in leather body suits – didn’t have to doom a comic adaptation to cartoonishness. It was Singer’s 2003 sequel, however, that truly elevated the genre by cannily marrying romantic drama, vigorous action and social-intolerance subtexts (here reconfigured from the source material to address sexuality more than race). Aside from Halle Berry’s still-awful wig and Alan Cumming’s grating Nightcrawler, X2 is sharper, smarter and more exhilarating than its predecessor, remaining true to the spirit of its heroes, villains and Dark Phoenix-ish storyline, buoyed by Brian Cox’s superbly villainous William Stryker, and smartly placing as high a premium on character as on spectacle. Which isn’t, however, to say that the spectacle itself isn’t reason enough to check out Singer’s sequel, since an early Stryker-led attack on Professor Xavier’s school, as well as Wolverine’s climactic throwdown with Lady Deathstrike, more than ably deliver the super-skirmish goods.

BATMAN (1989)

A genuine pop culture behemoth in the summer of '89, Tim Burton's blockbuster comic book movie probably did more than any other to make comics adaptations an accepted Hollywood genre, if only for proving that the success of the first couple of Superman movies hadn't been a fluke. This is not one of those accomplishments that nobody can see a downside to, and despite its hellacious popularity, the movie has always had enough attackers to count as controversial, including those who think it's a clumsy piece of storytelling to comics geeks (including Kevin Smith) who think it blasphemed its source material in any number of ways. But Burton's graphic sense and gothic sense of humor always made it a striking, strikingly funny piece of work, and facts are facts: no actor has ever been more compelling or convincingly haunted in a superhero role than Michael Keaton. The passage of twenty years and umpteen sequels and reboots (including Burton and Keaton's deeply flawed but often lovely Batman Returns) has thrown its defects and pluses into sharp relief: it's hard to remember that, in 1989, when Christopher Nolan was all of nineteen years old, many critics were appalled because they thought this picture was too dark.

SUPERMAN II (1980)

The 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman was an outlier, and probably the earliest example of filmmakers at least trying to make a genuinely good superhero movie. But it wasn’t entirely successful, and one sticking point for a lot of fans was the performance as Lex Luthor by Gene Hackman. The role has as many passionate defenders as detractors, but many thought that it was overly campy and unserious, and a superhero movie is generally only as good as its villain. The 1980 sequel would change all that. Introducing three Kryptonian supervillains escaped from the Phantom Zone – the hulking Non, the ice-cold Ursa, and best of all, the fantastic Terence Stamp as the megalomaniacal General Zod – Superman II gave us villains for the ages, and culminated in one of the most exciting fight scenes we’d seen to date. But it still wasn’t a great movie, and longstanding rumor placed the blame on the firing, when production was nearly complete, of Superman director Richard Donner and his replacement with Richard Lester. Lester, while a talented director, didn’t much care about the job and had little affection for the material, and the results are right there on screen. A few years ago, however, the Richard Donner cut was released commercially, and it finally became clear how good Superman II could have been if its original director had been allowed to pursue his vision all along.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Trailer Review: The Brothers Bloom

Paul Clark — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Rian Johnson’s stylish high school noir Brick was one of the more divisive releases of 2006, its purplish patois winning as many detractors as fans. I count myself in the latter group, so naturally I’m excited to Johnson’s new film The Brothers Bloom, and this trailer makes me even more so. Based on the trailer, the film looks to be a Richard Lester-style globetrotting caper that Steven Soderbergh has never quite been able to get quite right in his Ocean’s franchise. But it’s the performers who have me really intrigued, with Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo as the titular con artist brothers, and Rachel Weisz playing charmingly goofy as their eccentric mark. It’s also nice to see Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi as something a long way removed from the victimhood of her previous American film, as the group’s “muscle.” I have yet to hear much about the film itself, but based on its pedigree and now this trailer, I’d place it among my most-anticipated movies of the fall.

Beyond Spike and Clint: More Filmmaker Feuds

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:30:00 GMT

It’s been a good month for filmmaker feud enthusiasts, with both the Clint Eastwood/Spike Lee dust-up and the Werner Herzog/Abel Ferrara war of words heating up simultaneously. The L.A. Times has taken the opportunity to put together their own rundown of “Directors gone wild,” reminding us of a few directorial battles of days gone by.

By an odd coincidence – or maybe kryptonite is somehow involved – two of the feuds revolve around the Man of Steel. You may recall the aborted Tim Burton version of Superman that was to star Nicolas Cage about a decade ago. Kevin Smith had penned a script for Superman Lives! (you can read it here), but Burton wanted no part of it. Later, when Burton remade Planet of the Apes, Smith accused him of ripping off the ending from one of his comic books. (Why the Clerks auteur would want to take credit for such a widely derided twist remains a mystery.) Burton disagreed, telling the New York Post, “Anyone who knows me knows I would never read a comic book. And I would especially never read anything created by Kevin Smith.” Smith has been known to sign bootleg copies of the Superman script “Fuck Tim Burton,” though he claims this is done tongue-in-cheek.

Then there’s the case of Superman II, directed by Richard Lester – unless it was directed by Richard Donner. Lester’s cut is the one most of us grew up on, but Donner – who was replaced midway through filming the sequel – recently released his own version on DVD. “Though the sequel was more highly regarded than the original Superman,” says the Times, “Lester’s follow-up Superman III was trashed, leading many fans to believe anything good in Superman II was because of Donner.”

The Times feature also includes Uwe Boll’s feuds with Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg, proving that feuds taking place entirely within the mind of Uwe Boll are eligible for the list.

Related:
Spike Strikes Back
Werner Herzog vs. Abel Ferrara: Round 2

Will Elder, 1921--2008

Phil Nugent — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Will Elder has died at the age of 87, after a battle with Parkinson's. A commercial artist and cartoonist, he spent much of his life all but joined at the hip to the great Harvey Kurtzman, who created Mad for EC Comics in 1952. Elder, who had been a classmate and collaborator of Kurtzman's from years before, became the defining artistic voice of Mad in its comic book period; he and Kurtzman had similar senses of humor, and when Elder illustrated Kurtzman's scripts eviscerating such cultural touchstones as Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, and Archie and Jughead. After Kurtzman left Mad in 1957, Elder followed him loyally through a string of short-lived humor magazines: Trump (a Garden of Eden for print humor of the period, and one that lasted all of two issues), Humbug (which is set to be republished in its entirety later this year by Fantagraphics), and Help! Though it was the most uneven of all these publications, it was for Help! that Kurtzman and Elder created the doomed all-American careerist boy Goodman Beaver, star of their masterpiece, "Goodman Goes Playboy," featuring characters from their earlier "Archie" parody. That story was kept out of circulation by years due to threat of legal action from the publishers of "Archie" comics, who were unamused to learn that their red-headed cash cow was throwing orgies in his vast hipster crash pad after selling his soul to the devil. Which is ironic, since everyone who participated in suppressing the story has, of course, gone to Hell for it.

After Help! went bust, Kurtzman (who died in 1993) and Elder mainly kept their hand in with irregular installments of the Playboy feature "Little Annie Fanny", which boasted eye-popping, gorgeous painted artwork by Elder. In his later years, Elder busied himself by jovially witnessing his belated transformation into a living legend, a process helped along by the publication (in two volumes) of all the "Little Annie Fanny" stories as well as the gratifyingly thick tribute volumes Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art and Chicken Fat. Although he never actually worked for the movies, to a great degree, movie comedy of the second half of the twentieth century is unimaginable without Elder's influence. His propensity for packing gags upon gags is there in the work of such directors as Richard Lester and the Louis Malle of Zazie dans le Metro, not to mention Airplane!, and the self-conscious analysis of pop culture that he and Kurtzman developed in their work planted the seeds for much of what sprouted in movies in the 1960s and 1970s, from the use of old gangster and private eyes movies as the basis for something new and self-critical in Bonnie & Clyde and The Long Goodbye to George Lucas reviving old Saturday matinee serials with a more or less straight face. Portzebie, and out.

Famous Last Words: Round 1, Week 11

Paul Clark — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"You're a swine." This line, the final payoff to a running joke between band manager Norm (Norman Rossington) and his antagonistic charge John Lennon (John Lennon), is often cited as the final piece of dialogue in Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night! Less frequently quoted is the film's actual final exchange, which comes from another antagonist duo, Paul McCartney and his clean ol' grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell), just before Paul drops granddad's pile of "signed photos" from the Beatles' helicopter. Either way, A Hard Day's Night remains the best of the Beatles' star vehicles, although Yellow Submarine is a classic in its own right and Help! and Let It Be both have their moments. I intended the quote as something of a stumper, but many of you weren't fooled. Congrats to those who got it.

Two weeks to go, and there's a tight race for the three prizes. Time to separate the gender-neutral adults from the similarly gender-neutral children:

“Seal this room for official investigation. And bring me my horse. I have much to do. Now!”

Submit your guesses to famouslastwords@nerve.com. For the rules of the game, click here. And remember, all submissions must be received no later than 11:59 PM Eastern next Wednesday. Good luck!

Apocalypse Now and Then: Ten Great End-of-the-World Movie Scenarios, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

THE QUIET EARTH (1985)

Suppose they gave an apocalypse and nobody came? That’s the question faced by the always-engaging Bruno Lawrence in Geoff Murphy’s delightful little sci-fi thriller, The Quiet Earth. Made in New Zealand before it was home to hobbits and every low-budget syndicated action show on television, the movie opens with scientist Lawrence awaking one day to find that, due to an experiment gone rather substantially awry, he is the last person left on Earth. By far the film’s greatest charms lie in the subsequent scenes, where Lawrence tries to balance his attempt to find out what happened (and if there is any way of correcting it) with his somewhat bemused attitude towards being the last living human being on the planet. This bemusement, unsurprisingly, slowly degenerates into neurosis and from there into near-madness as Lawrence transforms from the sort of quirkiness one expects from a guy who lives alone and doesn’t get out much into outright loneliness-inspired lunacy. (It is in these scenes that Lawrence has a brief but highly amusing conversation with Adolf Hitler.) When he finally discovers that there is at least one other living person on the planet — in a scene that can only be described as the post-apocalyptic genre’s biggest meet-cute — the movie shifts gears into a more conventional science fiction contrivance, but it’s kept alive by swell performances from Lawrence and the Maori actor Peter Smith, as well as some highly inventive and rapid-fire camerawork from director Murphy. The Quiet Earth is an interesting take on the whole genre, and it nicely blends its psychological approach with the typical what-would-you-do-if-you-were-the-last-man-on-earth gameplaying seen in such movies.

THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)

The end of the world as brought to you by giggly British weirdos. Directed by Richard Lester, it depicts what's left of England after World War III, which, we're told, lasted "three minutes and forty-seven seconds... including the peace treaty." The cast includes Ralph Richardson in the title role (after he mutates), Michael Hordern, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Marty Feldman, and Rita Tushingham, who trumps Shelley Plimpton by giving birth (to Christ knows what) after she's been pregnant for thirteen months. This is one of the most truly horrifying visions of the end of the world ever caught on film, because it's supposed to be a comedy but there isn't a laugh in it. It is the anti-Dr. Strangelove, demonstrating the desperate inability of talented people to make you laugh at its subject matter, and so making the subject matter seem terrifying to a degree that sober-faced when-they-drop-the-bomb movies such as On the Beach can only dream about.

THE BIRDS (1963)

This Hitchcock film has been the subject of considerable textual analysis and speculation as to its symbolic meaning, but I like to think that Sir Alfred made it just so that he boast that they'd let him. Imagine what the pitch must have sounded like: "So, Alfred, it's called The Birds, huh? What's it about?" "Check the title, Einstein. It's about the birds." "Birds, huh. The birds, though? Is it about any particular birds?" "Nope, it's about the birds. Pigeons, parakeets, ostriches, penguins, crows, buzzards, ducks, tufted titmice... " "I see. And what do the birds do exactly?" "Turn on us. Wage war on us. Peck our eyes out." "But... why do the birds do this?" "How the hell am I supposed to know? You think I speak toucan?" "Okay, fair point. How do we stop the birds in the end?" "We don't. They kick our ass. Make Rod Taylor their bitch." "Un-huh... so... um... " "Hang on, I'm sorry, I have to take this. Mildred, did you get ahold of the gentleman with the bulldozer yet? I really need to get those bags containing the money I made off Psycho out of the driveway, they're blocking the jet... " Hitchcock himself fought with the studio to prevent them from actually tacking the words "The End" onto the final shot of our feathered friends gathering to welcome the new day, sensing that it would count as overkill.

TIME OF THE WOLF (2003)

When Michael Haneke, the European director known as the master of everyday horror for his uncanny ability to wrench suspense out of the slightest disruptions to bourgeois culture, decided to make a post-apocalyptic film, it was dead certain that it wouldn’t be a typical mosh pit of explosions, zombies, and atonal stings on the soundtrack. And, indeed, Haneke succeeded in making one of the quietest, most subtle visions of the end of the world imaginable — but also one of the most disturbing, and probably the most depressing. Haneke gives us almost no clue as to what happened to bring about the end of civilization; all we know is that the authorities are gone, the power is out, the water is tainted and no help seems to be coming from anywhere. As with all of his films, we aren’t overwhelmed with gore or beaten over the head with abject terror: instead, we’re presented with the even more profound horror of constant uncertainty and abject helplessness. When Isabelle Huppert’s family arrives at their rural cabin in hopes of waiting out the nebulous catastrophe that’s taken place, they experience the one moment of hope in the entire film; Haneke, of course, strips them of it swiftly and heartlessly, and before you know it, Huppert and her children are utterly alone, with no more possessions than they can carry and no one to protect them against a world that has grown almost instantly feral. Soon enough, they are huddled in an abandoned train station where xenophobia and sexual assault are almost tangible stinks in the air and where they are completely at the mercy of the few people bothering to pass themselves off as authority figures. Through it all, very little in the way of violence or disruption actually takes place: what chills the soul is the omnipresent fear, the certain knowledge that just as it did in a fatal and inexplicable moment at their cabin, everything can go horribly wrong at any moment and there is no safe place, no safe time. A remarkably skillful, effectively understated, and powerfully upsetting drama that conjures an apocalypse that is terrifying because it is so small and petty.

WATERWORLD (1995) & THE POSTMAN (1997)

It is the mark of a true artist that he is never satisfied with his work. Take Kevin Costner, for example. Unhappy as a mere sex symbol, he transformed himself into an Oscar-winning director, but that, too, was not enough for this nobly ambitious man. He took the only logical next step: spending close to a third of a billion dollars making two ridiculous, overblown, awful post-apocalyptic epics that would almost single-handedly destroy his career. Now that’s dedication! First came the notorious Waterworld, an early global warming scare flick that became much more famous for its colossal cost overruns (and its feeble box office) than it did for its clunky story. In it, Costner plays Mariner, a gill-festooned mutant piss-drinker who comes into contact with a bunch of unmotivated pirates called the Smokers. The leader of the Smokers is portrayed by Dennis Hopper, in full-blown Hindenburg mode as always; pitted against the supremely wooden Costner, he is as overwrought and bombastic as the Mariner is stone-faced and boring. Between the two of them, you might just be able to build one decent performance, which would be one more than is featured in Waterworld. The movie, which cost $200 million and made back about thirty bucks, was such a disaster that Costner, never a man to rest on his laurels, decided that the best way to follow it up would be to basically make the same exact movie, except this time he would direct and star in it. Of course, The Postman cost a mere $80 million, not even enough for half a Waterworld, but it made up for it by being even worse. At least the former had decent sets and costumes, whereas The Postman was a jerry-rigged piece of junk that still cost a king’s ransom and yet ended up looking bad, sounding bad, and probably even smelling bad. In this post-apocalyptic world, civilization has collapsed and America has been taken over by the Promise Keepers. Costner, a bad movie actor who here portrays a bad Shakespearian actor, poses as a postal carrier from the reformed U.S. government in order to cadge free meals off of local yokels, but soon enough, he is dispensing real hope to the legions of downtrodden mopes who have to appear in this cruddy movie. The movie only once loses its putrid reek of vanity project, and that’s at the end, a jaw-dropping exercise in the inability to suspend disbelief: the Promise Keepers, despite their inhuman levels of military discipline, have a rule that anyone can be the boss if they defeat the current leader (played by a nose-holding Will Patton) in a punch-out. Naturally, the mighty Costner prevails, and then turns to the vast army of murderous brutes who have been marauding the countryside for a decade and says "There’s gonna be peace!" They all shrug noncommittally and wander off to become chartered accountants or something, and we’re treated to another replay of the scene where Kev makes a little girl cry by wrapping himself up in the American flag. In the annals of postal lore, this thing rates slightly below Patrick Henry Sherrill’s bloodthirsty Oklahoma rampage as a point of pride.

— Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Click here for Part 1.

The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History, Part 1

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

With a few notable exceptions, the elaborate main title sequence has gone the way of the drive-in double feature. In fact, many of today’s movies eschew opening credits altogether, opting to plunge the audience directly into the experience and saving the who-did-whats for last. There’s something to be said for that, but we feel a vital part of the moviegoing experience is being neglected, whether it’s the establishment of tone or mood, or just a playful visual riff on the film’s themes. Join us now for a journey of sight and sound we like to call The Twelve Greatest Opening Credits in Movie History.

PSYCHO (1960)

If you only know the name of one title designer- and chances are you do- the designer would almost certainly be Saul Bass. Before Bass came on the scene, the opening titles of films were mostly utilitarian, occasionally interesting to look at but primarily a way to honor the studio's obligations to the principal cast and crew. But this began to change after Bass was hired by Otto Preminger to design the opening credits to The Man With the Golden Arm, with his cutout-style animation working in tandem with Elmer Bernstein's score to create a title sequence that's arguably as good as the film that follows. Bass went on to work with Preminger numerous times, as well as filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Robert Aldrich, John Frankenheimer, Robert Wise, and later, Martin Scorsese. But for our money, Bass was never better than when designing titles for Alfred Hitchcock, which he did on three occasions. Any of these (the other two being Vertigo and North by Northwest) would be a worthy entry for this list, but we're going with their final collaboration, 1960's Psycho. For one thing, it's the most deceptively simple of Bass' classic output, with little more than white titles on a black background occasionally shoved aside by grey bars. A perfect rhythmic match to Bernard Herrmann's legendary score, Bass' titles are a classic case of "less is more"- a more complex animation might have given the game away, but Bass preserves the mystery of what is to come while still managing to set the tone for the film before we even see a frame shot by Hitchcock. And this was Bass' greatest breakthrough, to take what was once considered an overture to the feature film and turn it into an organic element of the movie itself.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964)

Few people involved in the making of A Hard Day's Night had particularly high expectations for its quality. The producers of the film intended it to be a cash-in on Beatlemania, which they then believed would be short-lived, and its potential took a backseat in their minds to that of a tie-in soundtrack album. However, from the legendary opening chord it was clear to audiences that A Hard Day's Night was much more than a quickie B-movie. Somehow, director Richard Lester had taken the budgetary limits that were placed on him by the money men and flipped them around to his aesthetic advantage. Except for the priceless comic dialogue, everything that makes the film great is in evidence during the opening credits. The black-and-white camera work, intended as a cost-cutting measure, gives the film a scruffy documentary feel, never more so than during the opening titles when the Beatles are mobbed and chased through the streets by actual fans. The sense of humor that permeates the film makes multiple appearances here, as when band manager Norm, for no good reason, struggles with a container of milk. But the most revolutionary element of these credits is the way Lester and editor John Jympson cut the sequence to the rhythm of the title tune, creating an early ancestor to the modern-day music video. As much as they (and the film itself, for that matter) have been imitated and parodied since its release, the original titles for A Hard Day's Night still elicit the same amount of infectious glee they did more than four decades ago.

GOLDFINGER (1964)

The Screengrab legal department has informed us that the inclusion of at least one James Bond title sequence is mandatory on a list such as this, and after careful consideration, we realized there was really only one choice. First of all, Shirley Bassey’s rendition of the title track is clearly the greatest of all 007 theme songs, despite what you Duran Duran fans think. Secondly, although Maurice Binder is justly praised for his many groovy Bond openings, it was graphic designer Robert Brownjohn who established the template of projecting images from the film onto the semi-nude bodies of lovely young ladies, an achievement we rank just below the discovery of the polio vaccine. In this case, of course, those semi-nude bodies are tinted gold, the crowning touch that pushes this one over the top.

DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Some observers, looking on Stanley Kubrick's body of work, have concluded that the man who made HAL 9000 a movie star must have been a misanthrope. But maybe it was just that he loved machines so much that he had little affection left over to bestow on human beings. Consider Dr. Strangelove, a film in which there is no trace of romance and little human warmth, and in which sex is a mysterious offscreen force that makes men in the war room snigger in anticipation of post-apocalyptic orgies and that compels the director to show us George C. Scott in open shirt and shorts. But then there is, at the very opening, that entrancing aerial ballet, with the military jets appearing to get it on, while music that suggests a romantic ballad is heard accompanying the credits. In its way, it may be the last real love scene that Kubrick ever shot. In his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, he tried to generate the same kind of heat with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman standing in for the airplanes, and the fact that he was not fully successful may prove that Scientologists are partly human after all. Or maybe it just proves that there are machines and then there are machines.

THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

Early in Sam Peckinpah's bloody Western masterpiece, there is a sequence, involving a shoot out between two factions (the outlaw gang of the title and the equally heedless, heartless "law men" on their trail) that lays waste to the town's main street, that (among other things) serves notice to the audience that this is not your father's cowboy movie. In order to minimize the number of paying customers who died of massive coronaries during the film's first fifteen minutes, it behooved Peckinpah and his collaborators to prepare viewers as best they could by making with the ominousness. This sequence--with the credits flashing onscreen as the images of the Bunch making their way into town keep freezing and turning to black and white, like cloud formations designed to signal that anyone who sees them had best build themselves an ark--do the trick nicely. No small degree of credit should go to Jerry Fielding, whose music sets a tone both lyrically elegaic and deeply scary. And the concluding freeze frame of William Holden declaiming the line, "If they move--kill 'em!" as that leading candidate for most beautiful four-word phrase in the English language, "Directed by Sam Peckinpah", appears alongside his head, is both a great in-joke and a heartening declaration of personal responsibility on the part of the artist.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978)

“You will believe a man can fly,” said the famous tagline of Hollywood’s first big-budget superhero movie. We didn’t, quite – the movie had innumerable problems, and while it set a precedent for movies based on comic books to be profitable and even worth watching, it should be remembered more for being the first than anything like the best. But if there was one moment when it reached perfection, it was its opening credit sequence. A testament to the power of simplicity, the credits beautifully conjured the eternal four-color appeal of comic books by giving us nothing more or less than a simple backdrop of stars (occasionally broken up by something – a nebula? A muscled arm? A fluttering cape?) and the cast and crew of the movie rushing past us in a glorious and understated conjuration of classic comic book cover design. Having already brought together the perfect visual elements, the filmmakers go us one better – and cement Superman’s status as having one of the great credit sequences of all time – by hiring John Towner Williams to produce what is arguably his finest main theme. Williams’ compositions are all too often obvious and overbearing, but here, the triumphant but never aggressive or clamorous tone of the Superman theme fit the mood perfectly. Williams, despite having one of the most storied careers of any film composer, never again managed to so quite so exactly capture the feel of a film in its main title; Hollywood legend has it that, upon hearing it for the first time, producer Alexander Salkind bellowed to him “You’ve saved my movie!”

- Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Read Part 2 of this feature

David Watkin, 1925-2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Cinematographer David Watkin has died of cancer at the age of 82, at his home in Brighton, England. Watkin developed his skills after joining the Southern Railway Film Unit as an assistant in 1948. He branched into work on TV commercials in the early 1960s, where he met the director Richard Lester. Lester hired him to shoot his 1965 film The Knack and subsequently worked with him on Help!, How I Won the War, The Bed Sitting Room and Cuba. In those movies Watkins demonstrated a mastery of a wide range of styles, ranging from the cinema-verite vaudeville of Lester's Beatles films to the Godardisms of How I Won the War, but their best work together may well have been in The Three Musketeers (1973) and its companion piece The Four Musketeers (shot at the same time as the first film but released separately a year later) and the 1976 Robin and Marian, with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the middle-aged Robin Hood and Maid Marian. In those movies, Watkin, famous for his mastery of soft light, somehow achieved a romantic period look while incorporating his director's love of slapstick and visual clutter.

Watkin, who wrote two books of autobiography, Why Is There Only One Word for Thesaurus, which came out in 1998, and Was Clara Schumann a Fag Hag?, which was published only recently. Watkin always strove to give the impression that he was just a guy who knew how to work a camera who made his living shooting movies and who had a whole other compartment of his life devoted to the things he really cared about. But if he saw himself as a mere technician, he was deeply committed to his craft, and was constantly experimenting and extending the reach of the technology he worked with. (He invented a system of lights that made it easier for cinematographers to get better, soft effects during night shoots. Watkin, who was aparently a bit of a camp, was known to friends and co-workers by the nickname "Wendy", and the lighting system he devised became known as "the Wendy Light.") Besides his work with Lester, Watkins's proudest professional moments included Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Chariots of Fire (1981), Yentl (1983), and Out of Africa (1985), for which he won an Academy Award. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Society of Cinematographers in 2004.

The Top Ten Movies With Alternate Cuts, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

MANHUNTER (1985, Michael Mann)

I've got four cuts of Manhunter on my shelf: the original theatrical version, a re-cut for broadcast on TCM, another cut allegedly for a preview, and then Mann's final definitive cut. Anything significantly different about these cuts? It's basically trimming down a few scenes and putting one or two back in, most of them documented on this excellent fan website. Mann has gone back to his movies before, re-cutting Last of the Mohicans (in the process removing a Clannad song that dated the flick), Ali, and even preparing a three-hour cut of Heat for a TV broadcast that never happened. Here, though, was an instance where a director's revisionist tinkering harmed the flick, removing dialogue from William Peterson that actually showed how much he empathised with the serial killer he was hunting. Though it might not be Mann's preferred cut, for me the original theatrical release is the definitive cut of the film so far.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY (2001-2003, Peter Jackson)

Peter Jackson had made it clear during pre-production of his adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy that an extended cut would be coming out, and so it did, and the fans lapped it up, thus putting even more cash into New Line's coffers. But were these cuts any good? It depends on what you're looking for. I always thought the theatrical releases were pretty rushed and the extended versions did have a more relaxed pace about them, but did Tolkien fans really want to see hobbits getting tall from Ent juice or a bit of extended battle butchery? Apparently so. I thought these were a mixed bag. (I mean, do you really want to see an extended ending for Return of the King? Wasn't it long enough anyway?) All credit for Jackson for giving consumers the options, but was it really that much of an improvement?

THE STAR WARS TRILOGY (1977-1982, George Lucas, Irvin Kersher, Richard Marquand)

Han fired first. Among all the extra tidbits that were included in the trilogy, the one that angers the fans most is George Lucas changing the infamous Han vs Greedo confrontation from this:

To this:

And its downhill from there. Yes the special editions made a bundle when re-released. Yes, most people probably have them on their DVD shelf, but if you just give audiences one option, that's what they have to go with. It was only last year that Lucas relented and finally released the original, unaltered films on DVD and even then, they were non-anamorphic transfers. Does the additional material add to the films? Nope.

THE NEW WORLD (2005, Terrence Malick)

Terrence Malick is notorious for taking a long time with the editing of his movies, so it wasn't a surprise to hear that his last film, The New World, wasn't going to make its original November 2005 release date. A month later though, a 150-min cut was screened for critics with hopes that it would qualify for a few Academy Awards. In 2006, the film went into general release with a shortened cut, which Malick considered his best version; a log of the changes can be found here. The only place to get a copy of the first cut is if you have a copy of the Academy screeners or you get the special edition Italian DVD. Never fear though, as according to producer Sarah Greene, Malick has started work on another cut of The New World. Though considerable work had been done on it, its still up in the air when it may come out, though I suspect this may be due to the director mulling over what HD format he should release it on. After this, one hopes he can get back to finally finishing his alternate cut of The Thin Red Line, which is rumored to be a completely new film altogether. But then, even a re-edited Malick film is better than no Malick.

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci)

The Last Emperor is one of those old-style epics that needs to be seen on the big screen. No amount of CGI could have the power to surprise and astonish like this scene:

It was the original 160-minute cut that picked up the Academy Awards, but Bertolucci preferred his director's cut and until recently, you could only get a decent copy of both cuts from the U.K. But when Criterion recently announced its special edition containing both cuts, it quietly noted that the cinematographer, Storraro again, once again applied his Univisium concept by re-formatting the film to now be shown at 2:1 aspect ratio. It's unimaginable to see a film like this in a compromised halfway-house aspect ratio, but in this case, fans of The Last Emperor at least have a choice.

RUNNERS UP:

REVENGE (1989, Tony Scott)

Most alternate cuts have stuff being put into the film, Tony Scott went one better by chucking stuff out of Revenge. He waited eighteen years to remove twenty-four minutes out of Tarantino's favourite flick. Do we get to see more Madeleine Stowe in her prime? Disappointingly, not really, but we do get a much tighter and meaner story of two men who are righteously pissed off with one another because of a bitch in heat.

LEGEND (1984, Ridley Scott)

There are about four cuts of this flick flying around the world. Do any of them improve Scott's flawed fairy tale? They try. Until the 2003 DVD release, U.S. viewers were only familiar with a Tangerine Dream-scored cut of the film. The film's devoted fan base resulted in the release of a director's cut that revealed that even with the director at full control, the film may have had little chance at the box office but now was held together by the late Jerry Goldsmith's more sumptious score. Tim Curry as Darkness steals the show from everyone.

ALIEN 3 (1993, David Fincher)

David Fincher's debut nearly killed off the director's career, and until the release of the special edition, the only other version of the film was a leaked three-hour bootleg. The new cut is a revelation, even though it was done without Fincher's collaboration. A completely new version that makes you re-assess an otherwise neglected and flawed contribution to the Alien franchise. And if you disagree with that, I got two words to say to you: Alien: Resurrection.

TERMINATOR 2 (1992, James Cameron)

Cameron first got alternate cut success with the release of Aliens: Special Edition. T2 got a bunch more footage thrown in, most of it of the type that filmmakers refer to as "character development". To his credit, Cameron's DVD producers were the first ones who used "branching" DVD software, where extended footage would be seamlessly intergrated within the original cut.

SUPERMAN 2 (1992, Richard Lester, Richard Donner)

An alternate ending to Superman 2.:

Watching Donner's cut of Superman II is painful. The additional Marlon Brando footage really adds to the film, as do his conceptions of the scenes, but unfortunately, Richard Donner was kicked off the film after only two-thirds of it had been completed. The rest of it was re-shot by Richard Lester. Donner's insistence on using as little of Lester's footage as possible creates a curious discontinuity, but it's the repeat ending that really lets it down. If Donner had been allowed to finish the sequel, he may have come up with something that didn't rehash the first film, but in this case the Lester film is more complete.

— Faisal A. Qureshi

Click here for Part 1.

The Ten Best Deleted Scenes of All Time, Part 2

Peter Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

THE CHIP REMOVAL SCENE, TERMINATOR 2

The premise of Terminator 2 is that Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, a cyborg who spent the whole first film trying to assassinate future revolutionary Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), has now been reprogrammed to protect her family. In other words, he's the same soulless killing machine, but on a humane mission instead of a lethal one. So how does he acquire emotions, attachments and embarrassing slang words over the course of the film? That mystery is explained in this deleted scene, in which Sarah removes an inhibitor chip from the Terminator's head. (Fun fact: given the limits of special effects in 1991, the mirror effect was achieved by having Linda Hamilton perform surgery on a dummy head, while Hamilton's twin sister — seriously — stood on the other side of the mirror with actual Arnold.) The scene also includes a confrontation between Connor and her son which fundamentally changes the dynamic of their relationship, allowing him to take over as leader. (In the director's commentary, Cameron says he "agonized" over cutting this scene.)

"THIS BULGING RIVER", WAITING FOR GUFFMAN

We'd kill to spend a day sifting through Christopher Guest's cutting room floor. Guest films hours and hours of documentary-style footage for his improvised comedies, only a fraction of which end up in the final film. The DVD versions of This is Spinal Tap (which he co-wrote but didn't direct), Best in Show and A Mighty Wind are loaded with hilarious (and sometimes shockingly dark) deleted scenes. But our favorite is this giddy extended climax from Waiting for Guffman. Guffman follows a small-town community theater troupe as they cast, rehearse and perform an original musical, all the while increasingly convinced that they're heading to Broadway. This deleted musical number is an ingenious musical theater parody — with production values that are comparable to actual Broadway.

THE HOTEL CONFESSION SCENE, SUPERMAN II

Director Richard Donner had filmed more than half of Superman II when the producers removed him from the project, replacing him with Richard Lester. The theatrical version of the film is a hybrid of Lester and Donner scenes, and for years after its release, rumors swirled that a better film — the Donner cut — was buried in the Warner Brothers vaults. When the Donner cut finally came to DVD in 2006, it was a mixed blessing: on one hand, it's very clearly an unfinished film. On the other hand, it contains some marked improvements over the theatrical release. This scene, in which Lois cleverly forces Clark to reveal his identity as Superman, is one of those improvements. It packs far more of a dramatic wallop than the "oops-i-dropped-my-glasses-in-the-fire" reveal from the Lester version. Perhaps the ultimate deleted scene, this one was never actually filmed; it was edited together from Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder's separate screen tests.

DAVID DUNN AND THE PRIEST, UNBREAKABLE

Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan's hushed, atmospheric follow-up to The Sixth Sense, tells the story of David Dunn (Bruce Willis), a stressed-out family man who survives a horrific train crash. When David realizes that he was the only survivor — and no one can offer him an adequate explanation — he begins to explore the possibility that he may be something other than an ordinary human being. It's a clever premise, and Unbreakable is an underrated film, but there are some serious gaps in logic — i.e., how has David passed his fortieth birthday without ever realizing he's invulnerable? This deleted scene offers some much-needed insight. It also toys nicely with the stock character of the cinematic priest; we expect him to talk about fate and God's plan, which he does, but not in the way you're thinking.

THE PUMPKIN CARVING SCENE, DONNIE DARKO

The Donnie Darko DVD contains miles of deleted footage, much of which made it into Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut — and most of which, frankly, makes the film overly complicated and heavy-handed. The original theatrical release has a pervasive sense of mystery, and the film's unanswered questions are part of its appeal. That said, every new scene between Donnie and his family deepens the impact of the film's time-twisting climax. This one is our favorite. It's an ordinary moment between Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his sister Elizabeth (real-life sibling Maggie Gyllenhaal), that reveals the affection in their relationship yet hints of ominous things to come.

— Gwynne Watkins