The Screengrab : the bad news bears

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

PINK FLAMINGOS (1972)

Okay, first of all...how cool is it that John Waters was the officiant at David “The Wire” Simon’s wedding? But, of course, a certain brotherhood between the seemingly unlikely pair makes perfect sense, given their shared warts-and-all love of Charm City, a.k.a. Bodymore, Murderland. And before he became pop culture’s deviant bon vivant uncle, Waters also shared the hustler rebel aesthetic of Simon characters like Omar and Bubbles, conceiving Divine’s infamous shit-eating grin at the end of Pink Flamingos as more of a calculated publicity stunt than an attempt to pervert the fabric of decent society. As the director says in his book, Shock Value, “I knew I only had $10,000 to work with, so I figured I had to give the audiences something no other studio could dare give them even with multimillion-dollar budgets. Something to leave them gagging in the aisles. Something they could never forget.” Mission accomplished. (AO)

NASHVILLE (1975)

Robert Altman’s clearest claim to having made the Great American Movie has an ending that pulls off the neat trick of seeming both surprising and inevitable. It’s another of those movies that absolutely earns its ending, with the exhausting and exhilarating feeling that we have followed its many fascinating characters to the logical extreme of their stories; and when they all gather for a political rally in honor of the unseen candidate Hal Philip Walker, it seems inexorable, in light of what we’ve seen before, that there will be an attempt on his life. But the gunshot, when it finally comes, finds an unexpected target – and, what’s even more unexpected, the movie doesn’t end there. Instead, it throws out a new wrinkle, as the little-known striver Barbara Harris, in one of the show biz tropes that is rarely handled so masterfully, steps up to calm the crowd and forge her own legend singing “It Don’t Worry Me” as the fallen Ronee Blakey is carried away. The song turns into a transcendent chant for all of America as Altman’s camera, which has captured absolutely everything, goes the only place it has left to go: up, out, and away. (LP)

THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

What was it about 1976 that made losing acceptable at the movies? Was it a Vietnam hangover? The famous malaise Jimmy Carter spoke of? There must be some significance to the fact that the two most successful sports-themed movies of the year – Rocky and The Bad News Bears – ended with the heroes on the losing side. As losing goes, however, the Bears do it right. A thrilling rally in the bottom of the ninth that falls just short. A round of beers in the dugout. And of course, Tanner’s immortal response to the fake rah-rah good sportsmanship of the privileged: “Hey, Yankees! You can take your apology and your trophy and shove it straight up your ass!” Words to live by. (SVD)

DROWNING BY NUMBERS (1988)

For someone so relentlessly postmodern, director Peter Greenaway has often proven himself a master of what Barthes called the “proairetic sequence” – the movement of the narrative through signifiers related to plot and action. Although Drowning By Numbers is as beautifully designed as any of his less narrative structural work, Greenaway creates an almost tangible, physical need to see the plot (involving the murder by drowning of three men at the hands of their identically-named lovers) all the way through to its conclusion. He does this through a trick that’s elegant in its simplicity: almost every scene features a number, starting with 1 and increasing by one in every scene, going all the way up to 100. Greenaway cleverly snares you into an addiction for spotting the next number before you’re really even aware what he’s doing, and by the end of the movie, the number 100 shows up as the typically brilliant Michael Nyman score reaches its frantic crescendo and the story reaches its grim but inescapable conclusion. (LP)

BEFORE SUNSET (2004)

I covered this for a previous list of romantic moments, so pardon me for repeating myself: It's a safe bet that few people who watched backpacking Gen X-ers Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) spend a memorable night together in Vienna in 1995's Before Sunrise ever expected to see a sequel, much less wait nine years for one. When that follow-up finally did arrive in 2004, it could hardly have been confused with a traditional movie romance. As befitting a Richard Linklater film, their belated reunion in Paris is all talk — talk about missed connections, the impermanence of youth and the mysteries of love. Jesse has a flight to catch, so we're always aware of the ticking clock — that is, until the sublime final moments, when the urgency melts away to the appropriate tones of Nina Simone singing "Just in Time." Delpy does a shuffling little dance. Hawke sinks into the couch with a silly grin on his face. And we all learn that the most romantic words of all are not "I love you" — they're "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane." (SVD)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak

Thurs... er, Friday Poll for April 24, 2009

Paul Clark — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Because of the shutting down of Buzzdash, the site we normally used to host our Thursday Polls, we were unable to post the results of the poll that ran in this space two weeks ago. But if we had, we could have told you that our most recent poll commemorated the start of the Major League Baseball season, and depending on who you root for, you’re either feeling the excitement of a potentially awesome year or a certain degree of disappointment in seeing your favorite team consistently losing once the games actually count (of course, the Indians usually start slow, right? RIGHT???). But no matter how your real-life baseball team is faring right now, you can always count on a good baseball movie. And based on last week’s poll, the top-ranked baseball movie of Screengrab readers was the ever-popular Bull Durham. Bringing in a strong 55% of the vote, Ron Shelton’s celebration of the minor league circuit was also named the greatest baseball movie of all time by Baseball America. However, our runner-up, John Sayles’ Eight Men Out (36%), only placed fourth on the Baseball America list, whereas their second-place selection, Field of Dreams, was #3 among our readers with 9%. As for the rest of their top five, neither Bang the Drum Slowly nor Pride of the Yankees garnered a single vote in our poll. Perhaps if we could’ve included such favorites as The Bad News Bears (#6 on Baseball America’s list), it might’ve been more of a ballgame.

Earlier this week, the Screengrab powers that be posted their lists of summer’s most promising hits and most disastrous-looking flops. Now, it’s your turn. First, which of the following will rule the summer?

Get This - Survey Results - GlowDay.com

And on the flip side of the coin, what will be the floppiest flop?

Get This - Survey Results - GlowDay.com

As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

April Fools: The 35 Funniest Movie Characters Of All Time (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

PARKER POSEY AS DARLA IN DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)

The first time I ever saw Parker Posey on screen, a camera was swooping down on her ‘70s mean girl, Darla, as the dominatrix in bellbottoms screamed, “All right, you little freshman bit-ches!” in the midst of a bizarre Texas hazing ritual in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused...and for me, it was love at first sight, both for the character and the actress portraying her. Darla was the epitome of the smart, formidable high school queen bee nerds like me pretended to hate but secretly wished we were cool (or hot) enough to hang with...the sort of girl that fuels class reunion fantasies of all varieties. And Posey zaps every precious second of the character’s too-brief screen time with megawatt voltage, whether helping Matthew McConaughey’s Wooderson keep L-I-V-I-N by grabbing a meaty handful of his aging stoner ass or advising some hapless underclassman to “wipe that face off your head, bitch!” Despite later good roles in the likes of Party Girl, Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming and the Christopher Guest oeuvre, Posey was never quite this incandescent again...not unlike the real-life Darlas of the world, who eventually graduate and somehow never recapture that brilliant spark of absolute adolescent power. (AO)

SEAN PENN AS JEFF SPICOLI IN FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (1982)

There have been a lot of stoner comedy routines in movies, but nobody has ever acted being toasted with the Method intensity of Penn as Spicoli, while making it funny. Penn is the kind of actor who aims to convince you he's morphed into whoever he's playing, but as Spicoli, who's "been stoned since the third grade", he doesn't just transform himself physically and spiritually, he declares his emancipation from gravity. Sweetly pledging that all he needs in life are tasty waves and a cool buzz, he blurs the line between being out of it and being in a state of grace. (PN)

WALTER MATTHAU AS COACH BUTTERMAKER IN THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

Few things are funnier in the movies (though not real life) than adults being mean to children. And, with the possible exception of Billy Bob Thornton’s bad Santa, no adult character has ever gotten more mileage out of behaving unsuitably around kids than Walter Matthau’s Coach Morris Buttermaker in Michael Ritchie’s The Bad News Bears. An ex-minor league ballplayer who takes a job as the coach of a lousy little league squad, Buttermaker is the exact opposite of a role model, showing up to work hungover, endlessly smoking and drinking beer in front of his young charges, and putting them down with droll callousness. Of course, Buttermaker and the Bears’ story is an ultimately redemptive one, a narrative arc which presumably goes some way toward excusing the coach’s early, improper conduct. But people learning and growing isn’t why Ritchie’s film endures as a comedy classic; the sight of the peerlessly cranky Matthau passed out next to the pitching mound, empty beer cans lying nearby, is. (NS)

REX HARRISON AS SIR ALFRED DE CARTER IN UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948)

Who doesn't love a movie where the fool is the pompous highbrow? As pointed out in the excellent commentary in the attached clip (the only clip of this movie on youtube, sadly), Preston Sturges directs this one fairly close to the heart. Rex Harrison plays Sir Alfred de Carter (the "de" in the middle is an exquisite joke all on its own), a conductor who suspects his younger wife of infidelity. The movie proceeds with a fantastic comic plot: De Carter conducts three orchestral pieces, and in each imagines a different way of murdering his wife. In the final part of the movie, he heads home to put his nefarious plans into action, which is where the movie tips into some first-rate slapstick. That's what you call black comedy! Harrison plays an excellent upper-crust twit, being believably competent in his privileged artistic role but an inept bungler at the fairly simple crime of murder. There's hilariously great screwball dialogue throughout and a kneeslapper of an overwritten slice of purple cheese to cap off the movie. Skip the remake and go straight to the source for the good stuff. (HC)

MICHAEL SIMON AS BOUDU IN BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (1932)

Boudu is the holiest of holy fools, a vagrant who is unexpectedly drawn into a comfortable middle-class existence where he destroys every social rule he faces. It is a testament to the skill of Michel Simon, who played Boudu, that he remains a comic, and mostly sympathetic, force of nature even as his behavior ranges from merely obnoxious to outright felonious. Jean Renoir was a master of ripping asunder the veil of the French class system with the deftest of touches. Consider the scene above, in which Boudu eats sardines with his bare hands. The French public apparently rioted at this. And at the scene where he wiped shoe polish all over a fine bedroom. But the scene where he seduces/rapes his benefactor's wife? That left them unfazed. The movie ends with Boudu finding a way to yet again subvert his benefactor's attempts to give him the Eliza Doolittle treatment in a way that suggests that he never needed to be saved from drowning in the first place. Don't subject yourself to the awful remake Down And Out In Beverly Hills; stick to the original for the real comic masterpiece. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager, Hayden Childs

Summer of ’78: “The Bad News Bears Go to Japan”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!

The Bad News Bears Go to Japan

Release Date: June 30, 1978

Cast: Tony Curtis, Jackie Earle Haley, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Dick Button, Regis Philbin

The Buzz: Bad News Bears! Japan! Whaddaya need, a roadmap?

Keywords: Baseball, Sequel, Japan

The Plot: The Bad News Bears go to Japan. That’s about it, but I’ll try to be a little more specific. The Bears little league team – or at least the members of the team that returned for the concluding film of this essential trilogy – see a news report indicating that the United States will not be sending a team to Tokyo to compete with the Japanese little league champions. The Bears decide they’re the team for the job, and go on TV to tell Regis why they should represent our national pastime in the Land of the Rising Sun. Degenerate gambler Tony Curtis sees the program and decides the Bears are his meal ticket; he’ll take them to Japan in exchange for the lion’s share of the profits from a potential network telecast. Once the team reaches Tokyo, the Bears disappear for large chunks of the movie, which is heavily padded with travelogue material: a karate exhibition, a wrestling match, a game show talent competition. Curtis’s gambling partners fly in three ringers for the big game in order to ensure a U.S. victory, and a brawl breaks out shortly after the match-up at the Tokyo Dome gets underway. The network broadcast falls apart, but the two teams later meet up in an old-fashioned sandlot showdown.

The Test of Time: As I proceed with this series, it’s becoming clear that I spent the summer of ’78 reading a lot of novelizations. I’ve already mentioned Damien: Omen II and Jaws 2, but I also had the Fotonovel of Heaven Can Wait and I definitely had all three Bad News Bears novelizations. Although the original Bears was one of the seminal movies of my childhood, I don’t think I ever saw the sequels on the big screen. I’m sure I wanted to see the first sequel at least, but I had limited options at that age. If it wasn’t playing at the Navy base or in the tiny two-screen theater at the mall in Ellsworth, Maine, I didn’t have much choice. In retrospect I’m glad I didn’t see The Bad News Bears Go to Japan at the time, because I had better things to do in 1978, and now I apparently don’t. The one thing I’ll say on the movie’s behalf is that it didn’t dip nearly as deeply into the waters of cultural insensitivity as I was expecting. That’s not to say it’s a nuanced look at Japan circa the late ’70s, but it’s not as offensive as it could have been. It is, however, horrible. It’s so bad that most of the original cast declined to participate. I’m not just talking about Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal here – I mean like the kids who played Tanner and Lupus. Can you imagine how badly Tony Curtis’s career must have been going if he agreed to star in a movie that the kid who played Lupus turned down? The few Bears who do return have pretty much outgrown their cuteness, particularly pudgy catcher Englebert, now roughly the size of Haystacks Calhoun. The Bears aren’t given much to do aside from Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley), the onetime bad boy who has now been Fonzied into a sensitive punk and who gets a perfunctory romance with a Japanese girl. I’m glad Haley had that little comeback a couple years ago, because it would be sad if this was the last thing he’d ever done.

Fashion Highlights: Kelly Leak still has the look with his shiny disco shirts and bell-bottom jeans, but Curtis is tragic in a wide-collared leisure suit with gold chains. Let us not even speak of his flared baseball uniform pants.

2008 Equivalent: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, just because it’s an unrequested and unnecessary threequel that will undoubtedly suck.

Previously on Summer of '78: Heaven Can Wait

The Screengrab Top Ten: The Baseball Movie All-Stars, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper), THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942)

Some of the most memorable depictions of famous baseball players in movies have undercut the boy's-book images of childlike saints in cleats by showing the darker and more neurotic sides of driven professional athletes, but everyone with an informed opinion on the matter seems to agree that Lou Gehrig really was what a great ball player was supposed to be: hard-working, clean-living, decent, and somehow not even boring because of it, maybe because in the context of the Murderers' Row of the Babe Ruth-era Yankees, his boy scout qualities kind of gave him curiosity value. Like most celebrity biopics of the old studio era, especially ones made about athletes, this movie substitutes corn for depth or factual accuracy, and it has its snoozy side. But Gary Cooper's delivery of Gehrig's legendary farewell speech puts it at the top of the pile for male weepies.

Elmer Kane (Joe E. Brown), ELMER THE GREAT (1933)

"Imagine a cross-roads apple-knocker like that high-hatting the Chicago Cubs!, sneers the great talent scout Bull McWade, having traveled all they way (by horse-drawn sleigh apparently) to the little town of Gentryville, Indiaina, in order to welcome minor league wunderkind Elmer Kane into the majors. But, enigmatically, the swaggering, cossetted man-child will have nothing to do him, hiding in his room until the man leaves, and it is safe for him to descend for another of his endless ritualized breakfasts (towards the end of the gargantuan meal, asked by his housekeeper if he wants a slice of apple pie, he says, "Well, bring it on in and I'll flirt with it!"), where he reveals nothing either to his unbelieving brother (the great Sterling Holloway) other than boasting that his not joining the team will mean the Cubs will have no chance to win the "World Serious" that year, or dispensing xenophobic homilies to his dim ("Who's Babe Ruth?") doting mother (Emma Dunn), such as, "I hate places that I ain 't never seen!""

Inevitably it's love that keeps the poor sap trapped in Hicksvillle. He's fallen long and hard for his boss, the lovely Patricia Ellis, the women who runs the dry good store down the street . And he's lucky enough that she realizes the only way to loosen this barnacle is with a quick scrape of the brush; she rejects him as soon as he painfully mumbles out his feelings, then fires him, and in the cold fury of her apparent rejection he takes up the contract for the major leagues and heads out broken-hearted for fame and fortune. Elmer Kane , like many of Brown's characters, can have the tendency to set modern audience's teeth on edge, with the overbearing, know-it-allrube on the outside, barely covering up a world of ignorance and naiviete on the inside. Talented enough at baseball to lead his team to victory, but at the same time too dumb to know the difference between a sun lamp and microphone; hero to millions but also able to fall into the grips of organized crime boss because he thought he was "playing for fun" at the dice table, he often comes across as dim and otherworldly as an American Kasper Hauser. And if in the end if it's hard not to cheer for him when inevitably brings in that finally, muddy home run, and wins the pennant for the Cubs, you get the feeling that you still wouldn't really want to invite him over for breakfast after the game.

Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton), GAME 6 (2005)

Life couldn't be much better for Red Sox fans these days, what with two world championships in four years and even the much-maligned Bill Buckner getting a hero's welcome for throwing out the first pitch at this week's Fenway Park home opener. The image of the tormented Sawx fan has pretty much passed into mythology by now, so the Don DeLillo scripted Game 6, which takes us back to the fateful night that "little roller up along first" dribbled between Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series, is more of a quaint time capsule than was probably intended. Still, baseball brings out the best in DeLillo as anyone who read the dazzling "Pafko at the Wall" segment of the otherwise turgid Underworld knows, and it brings out the best in Michael Keaton, too. As playwright Nicky Rogan, whose latest effort is opening the same night as the pivotal Game 6, Keaton has his best role in years; he captures the feverish intensity of the true believer who sees the Red Sox as metaphor for all that's tragic in life, yet still can't take his eyes off them.

Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

Sure, it's a good thing for kids to have larger-than-life role models, like Reggie Jackson or Aquaman. But it can't hurt to develop a more attainable view of adulthood, which is where Morris Buttermaker, the manager of the Bad News Bears, comes in. (And with all due respect to Billy Bob Thornton, who essayed the role in the 2005 Richard Linklater remake, and Jack Warden, who took it to the small screen in a short-live 1979 series, the definitive Buttermaker is the original: Walter Matthau.) A failed minor leaguer turned swimming pool cleaner, perpetually disheveled and hungover, owner of a crappy car and so hard up for cash he takes a job coaching kids he can't stand--these are recognizable qualities of a man in full. He gets a bail bondsman to sponsor the team uniforms, he lets the kids drink beer in the dugout, and his idea of an inspirational speech is "Tanner almost got a base hit in the fourth inning." It is often said that baseball is a game of failure, in that even the best player makes an out in six out of ten tries. If that's the case, then what better manager for our nine? Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Buttermaker!

Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), THE NAKED GUN (1988)

We can't have a ballgame without an umpire, so we might as well pick one who can double as our national anthem singer. I've long maintained that the original Naked Gun movie (from the files of Police Squad!, natch) was the last shining moment for Leslie Nielsen, comic actor, because it's the last movie he made before he realized he was supposed to be funny and started mugging like crazy instead of maintaining his serene deadpan. Here is one of his finest moments, a slapstick sendup of every arrogant ump who ever decided he was the show all the fans came to see. Unfortunately, this clip doesn't include his equally sublime butchering of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in the guise of opera singer Enrico Pallazzo, nor the repeated bad calls he makes in order to delay the game and prevent the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, but you probably know it all by heart anyway.

--Robert Gomez, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak

Click here for Part 1!

Every Which Way to Witch Mountain

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Those of us who came of age in the ’70s long ago came to grips with the realization that there is absolutely no aspect of our childhoods that won’t be recycled, regurgitated or (guh) re-imagined by Evil, Evil Hollywood. Whether the final straw was Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Richard Linklater’s Bad News Bears or that TV movie about Evel Knievel starring the guy from CSI is a matter to be debated by scholars and historians for decades to come. One thing we know for sure, however: it isn’t over yet. We know this because Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (you know, the Tooth Fairy) has signed on for something called Race to Witch Mountain.

It’s not that 1975’s Escape to Witch Mountain is some sort of untouchable classic. If its release didn’t coincide with your time in grade school, it’s even possible that you’ve never heard of it. The story of two orphans with paranormal abilities fleeing an evil tycoon (Ray Milland) with the help of a curmudgeonly Winnebago driver (Eddie Albert) was fairly typical Disney fare of the time, but it struck a chord with those of us kids who enjoyed entertaining the possibility, however slim, that we might develop the ability to make the family station wagon fly. Also, I’m confident I was not the only seven-year-old on my block with a big crush on Tia, the girl witch played by Kim Richards. (Fun IMDb fact: Kim Richards is Paris Hilton’s aunt.)

In the new version, expected to be a more action-oriented affair, the Rock plays a Vegas cabbie who helps the witchy kids escape the clutches of Ciaran Hinds. Redundantly enough, this is not even the first time Witch Mountain has been remade. A made-for-TV version aired in 1995, and you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, beginning with the clip below.

The Ten Best Cussing Scenes in Movies, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:55:00 GMT

Back in 1970, Pauline Kael, reviewing Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, praised it for its "blessed profanity" and wrote, "I salute M*A*S*H for its contribution to the art of talking dirty." (Altman's father reportedly put it another way, warning members of the family to stay away from the theaters because "Bob made a dirty movie!") There's been a lot of cusswords under the bridge since then, so much that when a playwright-turned-moviemaker such as Martin McDonagh gives his actors some floridly profane lines to speak, it isn't even worth a concerned piece in the Arts & Lesiure section from the kind of writer who'd pitch a fit if language half as dirty turned up on one of his kid's rap CDs. So when somebody has managed to distinguish himself by cussing in a movie in a way that stays with you, a salute is in order. Andrew Dice Clay, watch and learn.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

It may not seem like such a big deal now, but seen in context, at the end of a big old-style Hollywood movie, spoken by Clark Gable in response to a tearful lover's plea, it's easy to imagine what a shocker it must have been at the time. God knows that, sixty years later, my own grandmother was just starting to recover from the shock. You can just see the fabric of civilization starting to come apart.

THE BAD NEWS BEARS (1976)

Kids love to swear. I'm sorry, parents, but it's true. Your little angel is/has been/will someday soon be a potty-mouth. The first phase of cussing is the most innocent one: you know the words are taboo, but have no idea what most of them mean. You never really think through the implications of calling your best friend a "pussy-eating cocksucker" – you simply don't have all the information you need to understand how wrong it is. The thrill comes from learning and then repeating the words, and for us kids who came of age in the 70s, The Bad News Bears was an invaluable resource. Hearing obnoxious little Tanner describe his teammates as "a bunch of Jews, spicks, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eating moron" was liberating not because we were a bunch of racists, Nazis and boogerphobes, but because we knew we'd just learned some new words our parents would kill us for saying. And there's still no more triumphant sentiment in the history of sports movies than Tanner's final kiss-off: "Hey Yankees – you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straight up your ass!"

FULL METAL JACKET (1997)

The training sequences at the beginning of Full Metal Jacket are so famously vulgar, intense and energetic that once they’re over, the air sort of gets let out of the movie for the entire middle passage and doesn’t pick back up until the end. For this reason, it’s often considered a lesser Stanley Kubrick film, which is somewhat unfair; there’s a lot to like about the movie even once Private Leonard Lawrence and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman exit the stage. But oh, that opening sequence! As Hartman, character actor (and actual Marine Corps sergeant) R. Lee Ermey works in obscenity the way that Picasso worked in paint; so staggeringly awful (and hilariously funny) are his vulgar degradations of his raw recruits that by the time he has his final confrontation with Private Pyle, no one in the audience has any trouble believing that someone would want to shoot him. Although Ermey has tried to claim credit for many of Hartman’s lines, what he really brings to the role is the pitch-perfect delivery; most of the lines are taken directly from Gustav Hasford’s novel The Short-Timers, on which the movie is based. There’s a telling moment early in Hartman’s tirade where he singles out Pyle for abuse, after he has committed the crime of laughing at his obscene explosions, but it cuts directly to the heart of the matter: as violent, hateful and repulsive as the sarge’s speeches are, they’re also incredibly amusing. His recruits don’t have the luxury of laughter, but we do.

NETWORK (1976)

In the first on-air flip-out scene by Peter Finch's Howard Beale, the newly fired newsman gazes serenely into the camera and promises to shoot himself on the air because he just can't take "the bullshit" anymore. The real punch line came a couple of years after the movie premiered in theaters, when it was first shown on network TV. CBS, eager to show that they were in on the joke, allowed Beale's supposedly unbroadcastable "bullshits" to go throw uncensored. Bravo! But the scene was followed by one in which the movie's executives gather to discuss what just happened, and they are a foul-mouthed crew. And the soundtrack, on TV, turns into a veritable conga line of bleep!s.

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

"You never had no pussy like that. You can do anything you want with her. You can come on her, fuck her in the mouth, fuck her in the ass, come on her face, man. She get your cock so hard she'll make it explode. But no rough stuff, all right?"

On one level, it's the world's filthiest sales pitch, a street-corner pimp's patter for the passing johns who want to buy what he's selling. But consider the line that precedes these:

"Man, she's twelve and a half years old."

With those eight simple words, Sport's routine becomes something totally different, and altogether more chilling, thanks in no small part to Harvey Keitel's performance. Screenwriter Paul Schrader originally wrote Sport as African-American, but with Keitel standing in that doorway instead of, say, one of the gentlemen Travis sees at the Belmore Cafeteria, the scene takes on a different tone altogether. What might have been written as a scary, foreboding conversation now comes off as almost genial, with Keitel joking around with Travis' squareness before launching into his prepared monologue. It's an inspired touch by Scorsese and his actors, and one that ultimately makes the scene even creepier. It's not simply that Sport is selling wayyyyyyyyy underage girls to passersby, but that it's no big deal to him. In his mind, he's just catering to demand – after all, if nobody paid for twelve-and-a-half-year old prostitutes (it's the "and a half" that makes the line extra-creepy) he wouldn't need to sell them, right?

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

Click here for Part 2.