The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 9-15, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

You’ve had the dream. You find yourself in a classroom you’ve never seen before, sitting at a desk in your underwear. The professor is passing out the final exam. Your heart freezes, your fingers go numb as you suddenly realize – you forgot to read the Screengrab this week! Don’t let this happen to you. Catch up on all the highlights now, including:

The Top 20 Movies About Movies, Parts One, Deux, Three, Four and Five. These will definitely be on the test.

A moment of silence please for Bernie Mac, Bernie Brillstein, Isaac Hayes, and Elvis Presley and his crappy movies.

You know you’ll be asked about new movies, like Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, The Clone Wars and A Girl Cut in Two. But you should also be prepared for more obscure questions about Mad Dog Time, The Driver, The Last Sign and Summer Rental.

Remaking Rocky Horror: Bad idea or terrible idea?

Is Angelina Jolie playing Catwoman a more enticing proposition than Angelina Jolie playing Tom Cruise?

Woody Allen: Is he a better filmmaker or bronze figurine?

When is a documentary not a documentary?

Study hard or you may find yourself working for Troma.

Summer of ’78: “The Driver”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 14 Aug 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 Driver

Release Date: July 28, 1978*

Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley

The Buzz: It’s Barry Lyndon going really fast!

Keywords: Car Chase, Parking Garage, Existentialism, Pursuit, Neo Noir

The Plot: Ryan O’Neal is the titular Driver, the consummate wheelman. Bruce Dern is the Detective determined to bring him down. Isabelle Adjani is the Player, a gambler who sees the Driver’s face after a casino robbery and is brought in for questioning by the Detective. She has been paid off, however, and refuses to identify the Driver. Since he’s played by Bruce Dern, the Detective is not a by-the-book kind of guy. He sets up his own bank robbery, using two lowlifes (Glasses and Teeth) facing 10 years in prison as bait. Although he knows the Detective is onto him, the Driver wants to beat him at his own game. Car chases result. Lots of car chases. In the end, it appears the Detective has caught the Driver holding the bag, but it turns out that both men have been duped by a low-level money launderer. This is perhaps what makes the film existential, in addition to the fact that none of the characters have names and nobody besides Dern talks much.

The Test of Time: I’m surprised at myself. As a fan of car movies, '70s cinema and Walter Hill’s pre-Streets of Fire oeuvre, I really should have seen The Driver long before now. Forget about the so-called “existential” stuff; it was all cribbed from Two Lane Blacktop anyway. Walter Hill is a man of action, and he delivers some top-notch car chases here. The first one, in which the steel-nerved Driver manages to plow half a dozen cop cars into walls or over embankments, may be the best. The camera is placed right up front, either on the hood or in the front seat, and the chase unfolds in long takes – you know, so you can actually see what’s going on. (Hello, Michael Bay and company? Hello? Is this on?) My favorite scene, however (which you can watch in the clip below), is O’Neal’s “audition” for the lowlifes, in which he chauffeurs them around a parking garage, reducing their car to scrap metal in the process – then tells them he’s not going to work for them anyway. Hill uses O’Neal’s blankness to his advantage, but I couldn’t help but think as I watched it that this was a movie made for Steve McQueen. (Sure enough, checking Wikipedia this morning I see that was the plan.) Dern is very Dern, and Adjani is eye-catching, although in her first English-speaking role she matches O’Neal in the monotone department. The only real groaner comes near the end, when Dern and about 20 cops somehow materialize behind the ever-cautious and prepared O’Neal in a bus terminal, but The Driver is still a worthy entry in the annals of four-wheeled cinema.

Quotable Quote: “That's a real sad song. Only trouble is, sad songs ain't selling this year.”

2008 Equivalent: The best bet for automotive mayhem is, unfortunately, Death Race.

*Perhaps you are wondering why we’re still in July of 1978. Go check the IMDb for August 1978 releases and you’ll learn, as I have, that there aren’t many. You may think late summer is a cinematic dead zone now, but compared to ’78, it’s an embarrassment of riches. I did have plans to do Interiors (released August 2, 1978), but it was covered in last week’s 15 Films That (Almost) Could’ve Been Directed by Someone Else list. (That’s fine by me, as I was spared having to sit through Interiors again.) But rest easy, for next week we’ll have a genuine August release to enjoy.

Previously on Summer of '78: Hooper

The Screengrab : the driver

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: August 9-15, 2008

Summer of ’78: “The Driver”