Cynical Cinema

10,000 BC is unfortunate in that it occupies some distressing middle ground.  It IS too stupid to be a movie, but not stupid enough to be hilarious.  Which means it is just one long, boring, irritating, idiotic ball of suck.  This movie has absolutely no idea what it’s doing.  Ostensibly, it’s about a clan of cavemen from the mountains.  Cavemen who are not especially hairy, and who seem to have a fairly good command of the English language.  Which is fine, if you want to just assume that they know English, so the movie can be in English.  Like in Hunt For Red October, where all of a sudden they started speaking English.  That was fine.  We, the movie-goers accept that.  But the cavemen in this movie (so we don’t forget they’re primitive) talk in broken English.  Look - they couldn’t possibly know English.  It’s one of those suspension-of-disbelief movie devices.  Why not make them at least competent in English?

Then, the hero of the story kills a mammoth by himself, and becomes…the hero of the story.  But his heart is torn, because his new status means he will get to be with his girlfriend, but he knows he was only half-assed attempting to kill the mammoth, and whole-ass running away from it.  So, it being a matter of honour, he…camps thirty feet outside the village.  What?  It’s a good thing he does though, because it means he can see his gorgeous girlfriend (who wears makeup the whole time, by the way) get kidnapped by a marauding band of thugs on horseback.  Who speak another language!  With subtitles!  NO ONE KNOWS A LANGUAGE YET!  Make them all English!

Then the narrator comes in, several times, talking about “many moons this” and “many moons that”.  Ummm…OK…so now they’re native?  And the narrator, who talks like he is one of the tribe, is British?  Or is he modern…ancient…native…British…demented?  We just plain don’t know.  Or care.  What we DO care about are things like - why don’t they just call the mammoth a mammoth?  They’re speaking ENGLISH, why don’t they have the ENGLISH word for things?  Why call it a maddott, or whatever word they’ve invented.  And why does the bad guy have a computer-generated voice when he isn’t even speaking ENGLISH?  And at the end of the movie, when the good guys triumph over the aliens, did they do a ‘hip-hip-hooray’ cheer?

Yes, I said aliens.  And Gods, and supreme beings, and slavery, and pyramids, and a bizarre scene where the hero talks down a sabre-toothed tiger.  (By the way, THOSE things look bad-ass.  Why don’t the fight those, instead of the giant Moas?)  But anyway, who cares?  This movie stinks so bad that nothing could redeem it.  The great thing, usually, about caveman movies, is the loincloth-wearing brief glimpses of nudity.  Well…that and Ringo Starr.  And there’s none of that here - after all, this movie needed to keep it’s PG rating to reach a wider audience.  So no nipples, no nudity.  But lots of loincloths and exposed skin.  This, despite the fact that they’re in the mountains.  So, they’re basically wearing bikinis on a glacier.  And we’re basically turning this off at the twelve minute mark.

Come Drink With Me is an absolute classic of the martial arts genre, filmed in 1965 and released on DVD tomorrow, June 24th, by Alliance Films. It stars Cheng Pei Pei, a legend of Chinese kung-fu films, who might be familiar to modern artists as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger, incidentally, is a film that owes a lot to Come Drink With Me, not just the involvement of Pei Pei, but also in tone and in the concept of the high-flying wire stunts that make up so much of the action. While it isn’t as visually incredible as Crouching Tiger (it WAS filmed in 1965), the costumes and set design were first-rate.

This really is one of the best kung-fu films ever made. Cheng Pei Pei is gorgeous, and incredibly skilled and convincing as a fighter, much like Zhang Ziyi today. She plays Golden Swallow, a martial arts expert and bodyguard for the royal family (who also happens to be the daughter of the king) who sets out on a mission to rescue her brother from the clutches of a group of bandits led by an evil kung-fu abbot. Along the way, she finds help from a local drunken beggar named Fan Da-Pei (or, Drunk Cat). His character is one that would become a staple of the Hong Kong martial arts movie industry - the old drunk who’s always singing and sloppy and messy and gross, but is secretly the leader of a lost clan of martial artists, and a ridiculously proficient fighter when push comes to shove. I think it likely that in the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 80s, it was quite likely that people left the drunks in the bars alone, for fear that hassling them might provoke a lethal barrage of kung-fu kicks and punches. And the drunks are always the good guys.

As the movie progresses, it relies on an impressive series of wire-aided fight scenes between Golden Swallow and the bandits, culminating with her showdown with the bandit leader Whiteface, while the drunken master takes on the evil abbot who is also his brother. Throughout, the film is part comedy, part musical, part drama, part romance, and all action. The story is very straightforward, while underlying themes run through the narrative. The major one, of course, is female empowerment. But it also touches on the idea of corruption through religion. This film is widely considered, in Asia, to be one of the best Hong Kong movies of all time, and it made a star out of Cheng Pei Pei and her drunken co-star, Yueh Hua. Their stars would continue to shine brightly in Hong Kong for years to come, and this film is as good today as it was when it was released.

The first actor we see in The Spiderwick Chronicles (out June 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment) is David Stratharin. He is writing a book about creatures in our midst, beings that exist among us always, that we can’t see because they choose to remain hidden. Through his book, we catch glimpses of drawings of these creatures, but we don’t see enough of them to know what’s coming. Strathairn, you see, is Arthur Spiderwick, the man who discovered this realm existing in tandem with our own. And he recorded all the secrets of this realm in a giant book, the Spiderwick Chronicles. We learn fairly fast that this book was never meant to be read by anyone, ever, because reading it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Of course, someone is clearly going to come by and read it anyway.

That someone is Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who actually appears as twins in the film. The two have very distinct personalities, and Highmore does an excellent job making sure that we always know which twin is which. Simon is a bookish, nerdy pacifist. His twin brother Jared, however, is the trouble-maker. The bad apple. The one kid the family doesn’t understand. Right away, we know Jared will be the star of the movie, because it’s always that kid who ends up being the star. The bookish intellectual is nowhere near as interesting as the angry rebel, we suppose. Jared’s anger seems to stem from several sources, like an absentee father, a sudden move to a new town and a new house. It must be summer, because the kids don’t have a new school or anything, and are allowed to roam about the giant house alone while their mom’s off at work.

Pretty soon, of course, Jared finds this book. And he opens it and reads it and unwittingly brings forces of evil down on his house and his family. His older sister is a fencer, which comes in handy when she has to slash up some goblins. His mother is never home during the film, so she is going to be in for a big surprise when she gets there. Simon rarely leaves the house, and when he discovers this world of goblins and evil-doers that exists right outside the door, he sets his brain to work devising defenses against the bad creatures. And Jared hits things, yells at his mom, hates the world and fights with his siblings, even in the middle of the most dire circumstances. Which becomes kind of annoying. Jared, through a lot of this movie, despite being the hero, is not very likeable. Highmore does a terrific job with the character, but he’s written in such a cliche’d “where’s may father? I HATE you” sort of way that it’s a little distracting.

Also irritating is the fact that the creatures have names we have already heard. We already know about goblins. We’ve heard of elves and griffins. We may well be familiar with those things. So why include things like that, and then make up three or four creatures of your own? I think the answer to that may well lie within the books. My youngest step-son tells me that the books are FAR different. I think what he means (if I understand correctly) is that the movie leaves out a lot of what is in the books in terms of detail. But then, what kids’ movie doesn’t? Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, even How To Eat Fried Worms. They are all forced to skip large chunks of the story because of time constraints, and the challenge is keeping the story intact and understandable while trimming it to that hour-and-a-half running time.

And for the most part, the director, Mark Waters, does a good job of this. Not only does he get a high-calibre performance out of Freddie Highmore, he manages to craft a terrific alternate universe with charming and interesting characters, and he keeps the pace moving along briskly. The only time the movie slows down is when Jared has one of his distracting temper outbursts. It’s nice to see David Strathairn in a kids movie like this, his presence adds a certain amount of credibility to the whole proceeding. Also cool is the presence of Martin Short and Seth Rogen as the voices of two of the friendly creatures, and the very brief but very bizarre cameo from Nick Nolte. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the better movies aimed at kids around ten years old. It’s no classic, but it’s above-average. And when it comes to kids’ movies these days, that is certainly good enough.

Iron Man is amazing. Not only is it one of the best summer blockbusters, it’s actually one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Robert Downey Jr., although a seemingly strange choice, is perfectly cast as the titular superhero. Tony Stark is a billionaire weapons manufacturer who sleeps with hundreds of hot women, lives the life of Hugh Hefner, and uses his genius brain to create some of the most devastating weapons in the world. He is kidnaped by terrorists, who attempt to force him to build a replica of his powerful Jericho missile. While appearing to build that missile for them, Stark is in fact building a robotic suit of armor that will allow him to make his escape and, eventually, turn him into Iron Man. With shrapnel near his heart, he must build a device to keep his heart running while he fights the forces of evil. This device ends up, of course, being Iron Man’s Achilles heel. Or, his kryptonite, if you will.

And of course Iron Man is a lot like a lot of the super hero movies out there. One thing I have always thought is that the first movies in these series is always the best. The movie where we learn about the origins of the super hero, and he undergoes a character transformation that leads him to become Batman, or Spiderman, or the Incredible Hulk, or what have you. In subsequent installments of these series, the hero is already fully formulated, so there is no more room for character growth. It all comes down to action, explosions and whether or not the bad guys are any good. Iron Man is true to that form, in that Stark undergoes a character transformation as well as a physical one. He decides that his company will no longer build weapons to kill other people, but rather will begin focusing on doing good in the world. The one problem I have here is that just like every other movie like this one, his transformation changes his outlook on everything. Here is a guy who used to get every woman he wanted. Now that he has become “good”, he begins to think about settling down with just one woman. Is that what “good” people do? Couldn’t he still live the life of George Clooney, and still be a good guy? Or are all good people monogamous?

Well, it is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark’s long-time assistant, the cheesily-named Pepper Potts. I am not normally a fan of Paltrow’s, but she is very well cast in this role, as the meek yet competent and smart assistant to a lascivious playboy billionaire genius…or who knows? Maybe anyone could play that role. Not anyone, however, could have played Obadiah Stane, Stark’s partner in the weapons company. Jeff Bridges is magnificent, with a shaved head and a certain amount of comforting sensibility that masks his darker intentions. I hate to call a role in a comic book movie a “tour de force”, but Bridges and Downey both come close. Terence Howard is in here as well, but he is badly underused as a military advisor and sometime babysitter of Stark’s, but it appears as though he is being saved for something much bigger in the second Iron Man movie.

Jon Favreau directed this adaptation of the comic book, and he shows an absolute command of the entire movie, as well as a love for comic books. The scenes where Downey is trying out his suit for the first time are quite funny, and seem to be taken (I can only assume) straight from the silly middle pages of the comic book upon which this is based. And the actual fighting done between Iron Man and the terrorists, or Iron Man and the bad super hero at the end of the film, are exceptionally well done. This movie is absolutely pulse-pounding, beginning to end, and for me it ranks with Batman, Batman Begins, Blade and Superman as the finest comic book movie adaptations of all time. Watch it!

When it comes to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal skull, you get what you expect. It isn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even The Last Crusade, but it is still better than Temple of Doom. Harrison Ford, now 88 years old, returns in this latest installment from Lucasfilm and Steven Spielberg as the archaeologist professor turned spy, soldier and superhero. Joining him once again is Karen Allen, his main squeeze from Raiders who apparently was always “the one”. Also signing up is Shia LaBeouf, who plays Allen’s son, a tough-kid Marlon Brando wannabe in the 1950s. His presence is announced in a fairly cheesy and hilarious fashion when he shows up riding a motorcycle, dressed up as Brando in The Wild One. And frankly, his presence in the movie is largely pointless, despite the big revelation that everyone saw coming from the start.

Cate Blanchett, the sublime actress responsible for such brilliant performances as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator, is as good as expected as the evil woman searching for the titular Crystal Skull for the Russians. (It’s the 50s - the Cold War is still big news.) The standard Indy fare is here - the friends who betray him, the kid who’s along for the ride, the hot-and-cold romance with Karen Allen, the fear of snakes, the temples full of trap doors and levers and booby traps, and the ridiculous action escapes from danger. Harrison Ford is as good as ever as Indiana Jones, making light of his age at the very beginning - “this isn’t as easy as it used to be”. References to classic moments in the first three movies abound. “Looks like you brought a knife to a gunfight”. And the warehouse that houses the ark of the covenant appears again at the beginning. Is that the corner of the ark we see?

I heard people complaining a bit about the movie when it ended - “aliens? Come on, farfetched much?” But in point of fact, the whole series is magical and mystical and farfetched. Are aliens really less believable than the ark of the covenant, the holy grail, and a mystic temple where people pull your heart out of your chest? So come on people. Jump on board and enjoy the ride here. For me, the fact that this time it’s aliens just adds to the B-movie feel that has been the hallmark of the Indy series up until this point. Is there anything more B-movie than aliens? I don’t think so. John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Jim Broadbent round out a cast that appears to have been selected more for cachet than for anything else.

There are moments which are, even for the Indiana Jones series, a strain on credulity. Like the one where he escapes a nuclear bomb, or the one where he makes an escape from that warehouse on some kind of super-high-speed rocket device. But all in all, the story moves along insanely quickly, as you would expect. The protagonists encounter several interesting ancient cultures, if only for two minutes at a time. The evil bad woman lives through the killer ants and the plunges off waterfalls to make an appearance at the very end. The duplicitous friend perishes when greed gets the best of him. And the demise of the evil woman is as Indiana Jones as it gets.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the poster child for “popcorn movie”, the definitive summer blockbuster, where you sit down for two hours of non-stop action, check your brain at the door, and allow for a guy in a fedora and a bullwhip to assault your senses with one stunt after another. It’s a testament to the skill of Spielberg and Ford that they make it so easy to shut off your brain.  A reasonably worthy inclusion into the Indiana Jones Franchise, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is worth the price of admission. And the price of a small popcorn.

When last we left Richard Kimble, “The Fugitive”, at the end of Season One, Volume 2, http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/2008/05/10/there-actually-was-good-tv-once-the-fugitive-season-one-volume-two-810/  he was holed up in a house with two crazy odd-couple friends who were shielding him from the long arm of the law.  The net was closing in on him as the cops had set up roadblocks and a search party in his area.  And then…he escaped.  I was kind of hoping for a cliffhanger ending to that first season, but I guess they didn’t do that in the old days.  They just figured that people would continue to watch if they made a good series.  And they DID make a very good series.  I would call it refreshing if a series did it today.  But this one is from the mid-sixties, so I don’t know what to call it.  I guess I just thought it was nice. 

          But this lack of cliffhangers and continuing story lines becomes a bit of a problem in Season 2.  It was great in Season One when each episode stood on it’s own.  It set up the premise of the show wonderfully, David Janssen was brilliant as Richard Kimble, and the writing was great.  So, OK.  Now you’re in the second season, and the whole premise of the show has now been set up.  Kimble has been wrongly convicted of murder, but managed to escape thanks to a disastrous train accident on his way to death row.  Now he is on the run from the law, searching for the one-armed man who is the real killer.  But now that I’m into this second season, I want more story.  I want to follow his hunt for the one-armed man, and I want to root for him as he gets chased by the law.  The whole premise of the show is one that screams for continuity between episodes, but we still get one-offs, all season long. 

          But of course, those one-offs are still very good.  Season Two of The Fugitive begins with Kimble looking for help from a superstar lawyer played by Ed Begley.  By the way - here’s a hilarious excerpt from a review of this DVD set at  www.tvshowsondvd.com  - or, at least I thought it was hilarious.“15 episodes that include guest stars like Ed Begley (father of Ed Begley Jr.)” Hmmm…no kidding, eh?  But you KNOW nothing is going to come of it, because each episode ends the same way it begins - Richard Kimble is on the move and on the run.  Anyway, the season moves along at a brisk pace, one episode at a time.  In the end, it is compelling TV, but it isn’t the kind of thing where you want to watch several episodes in a row.  Although, that is more than I can say for most television.  One at a time is enough, which means you can watch all fifteen hours of Season Two, Volume One of the Fugitive on fifteen different days, over the course of the next three months, which should be just enough time for Season Two Volume Two to come out.  Volume One comes out tomorrow, June 10th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.

As I wait, with breathless anticipation, for a chance to go see Son of Rambow, I have been forced to make do with regular Rambo in the meantime.  The fourth installment in this moribund franchise came out yesterday, and I begrudgingly rented it, feeling as though it were something of a duty, rather than a pleasure, to watch this re-hashing of the aging Stallone’s one-time moment of glory.  But then, I felt the same about Rocky Balboa, and it was the second-best of the moribund Rocky series.  So pleasant surprises are possible just about anywhere.  Although I hate to call Rambo a pleasant surprise.  In point of fact, Rambo did not surprise me in any way.  Rather, I surprised myself in watching it.  I’ll explain that in a moment.  First, a bit of Rambo history.

When I was a kid, Rambo was more of a punchline than an icon.  You would see someone cutting their sandwich with an unnecessarily large knife, and say “look out, Rambo’s in the kitchen”.  Or some other such clever childish thing.  By the time Rambo III rolled around, even eight-year-olds were making fun of the over-the-top idiocy of the film.  Rambo was in Afghansitan, fighting with the Afghani “freedom fighters” against the Russians.  I put freedom fighters in quotation marks not because these people were not really “freedom fighters” because it is a Rambo buzzword that separates the good guys from the insidiously evil ones.  And he mowed down half the Russian army, muscles bulging, as fifty of them stood on a hill vs. the one guy with the massive machine gun.  This was even more ridiculous than Rambo:  First Blood Part II, where he shot the communist bad guy with the arrow, and the guy exploded.  And even as children, we all understood this.

What gets lost in all this mess is that the first Rambo movie, First Blood, was actually good.  It was actually very good.  Stallone was the vietnam vet, unable to shake the nightmares and the violence that had become a part of his life, and he just wanted to eat a sandwich.  But some small-town backward hick sherrif decided to exert his questionable authority, and the next thing we all knew, everyone was dead.  A very cool, very dark, very gritty film.  But we don’t remember that, for the most part.  We remember the sheer insanity and bonkers mayhem that resulted in those last two abysmal efforts at “movie making”.  Which is why most of the world expected total nonsense and horrible acting and ludicrous pacing and unimaginable explosions with the fourth movie, 20 years after the third became the most expensive movie ever made.  (At the time.)

So I was cringing as I pressed play on the DVD player.  I was cringing through the opening credits.  I was dreading the Rambo cliches and the lousy dialogue and the ridiculous, unnecessary violence and explosions.  But all of a sudden, as the movie began, my opinion started to change.  Rambo is living in the jungles of Thailand - still a damaged man, he catches snakes and sells them for a living.  Yet somehow he can still afford a boat.  Anyway, I know what you’re saying - Vietnam was a long time ago, how can he still be damaged?  Shouldn’t he be over that by now?  But you see, this is Rambo.  He also saw (and caused) horrendous violence in Afghanistan and small-town U.S.A.  He just can’t escape it, and so he becomes a hermit at the beginning of every movie.  But then, of course, something happens to draw him back into the killing game.

In this case, that something is a group of missionaries who are trying to go up-river (it’s always up-river) into Burma (how timely) to deliver medical supplies and medical attention to that impoverished and war-torn country.  They want to rent Rambo and his boat, but he is a wise old soldier, and he knows that they should really not be going up-river.  They will be killed, he knows.  But a sweet, innocent missionary lady named Sarah (Julie Miller from Dexter) convinces him that they have to try, so off they go.  But these missionaries think that he’s John Rambo.  They don’t know that he’s RAMBO.  After he delivers them to their destination, they are of course captured by the crazy-evil Burmese.  And now Rambo is hired, once again, to take a boat up-river.  This time filled with mercenaries, who also don’t know that he’s RAMBO.

But we know he’s RAMBO.  WE have seen the three previous films, or are familiar with this cultural icon.  And it is that knowledge that fills me with anticipation as the crew goes up-river…wait - anticpation?  I find all of a sudden that I am actually anticipating the shunting aside of John Rambo in favour of the emergence of RAMBO!  Not only am I anticipating it eagerly, I am irritated it hasn’t come sooner!  I find myself thinking “when is he going to become RAMBO?” in a very whiny voice inside my head.  All of a sudden, I want ridiculous bloodshed.  I want over-the-top explosions and gigantic machine guns.  Where IS the violence?  Well, I know these mercenaries are loose-cannon and maniac enough to cause some mayhem.  Here we go!  And the violence beings, and the RAMBO emerges, and I am able to revel in the idiocy.

Bodies blasted completely into pieces are de rigeur in this film.  Whether it be by explosions, mines, sniper rifles, or the you-knew-it-had-to-be-there gigantic super-power machine gun, body parts are all over the screen and flying through the air for about half an hour straight.  Explosions which could just as easily have been small ones turn into staggering spectacles of fire and dirt and booming, as the body parts are scattered over many many miles.  It is not enough for Rambo to break a guy’s neck, he must rip his entire throat out with his bare hands.  Yes!  It’s THIS kind of excess that made Rambo II and Rambo III so terrible and so laughable, and as I realized here, so very nostalgic for me!  I found myself cheering for every single Rambo cliche in the book - the shadow that flits past the bad guy just before he dies.  The slow rise of Rambo into view behind the bad guy at the opportune moment, with murder in his eyes, so you KNOW that guy’s gonna buy it next.  And of course, the machine gun that I would assume no single human being could operate alone.

And then there are the nightmares, and the flashbacks.  Just so we don’t forget who John Rambo really is, we get flashbacks - to the previous movies!  Now it is these movies that are giving Rambo himself nightmares, as I am certain they did for many a movie critic in the late 80s.  Scenes from First Blood - “Nothin’ is ovah!”, scenes from the other two, all tormenting this man.  And it is important to know that he is still tormented.  Rambo has never voluntarily, in any of his movies, taken up arms.  He has been forced into a position where he had no choice but to kill everyone he met.  And this movie must fit that mold.  Also, there must be a cause, a noble one, that could be taken up somewhere in the world.  In this case, Burma (or, Myanmar), a horribly violent country with a civil war that has been ongoing for many, many years.  (In fact, bootlegs of this movie were the hottest selling items on the streets in Myanmar until the devastating hurricane that killed thousands.  Now, the hottest selling items are bootlegs of video footage of the hurricane devastation, so people can see what is actually going on, and not the sunny everything’s-OK picture painted by the government.) 

And all of these things add to the greatness of Rambo.  The fun one has when watching.  This is a real country, with a real fight, that really needs help in a big way.  And yet, the people who made Rambo are willing to, on a certain level, trivialize the conflict itself by showing an aging Sylvester Stallone get behind the biggest machine gun in the world and blow the arms and legs and necks off thousands of people.  But they don’t care.  They have a budget, and explosives, and damn it all, they are going to use every single ounce of both!  I am still cheering for the dream sequence, which was absolutely hilarious.  And there are some seriously wicked Rambo-style lines - my personal favourite being “you either live for nothing, or you die for something”.  I think we could all picture Mel Gibson delivering this line in Braveheart, for example, but Stallone?  As Rambo?  LMAO.

Stallone still has what it takes to play John Rambo.  The ability to flex and the inability to articulate.  In the year leading up to the film, he was caught with steroids.  I guess he had to stop taking them, which is why Rambo, for the first time, does not appear shirtless at all in this film.  His arms are still gigantic, and he does flex them a lot, but one would assume that at the age of eighty-four, Stallone’s abs are not what they once were.  So he wisely keeps his shirt on, and we are all the better for it.  And in the end, we are all the better for having seen this movie, knowing that Rambo is still out there, unable to speak his mind but still tortured inside it, unable to persuade people not to fight but still the ultimate fighter.  And the final scene in the movie, which makes it almost inevitable there will be a sequel, is sublimely foolish, powerfully obvious and the cherry on top of this movie.  A movie which is not brilliant by any means, and it probably isn’t even good, but it is Rambo.  John Rambo always finds himself in a situation where he has to do bad to do good.  RAMBO, on the other hand, just has to be bad to be awesome!

Alliance Films is on a roll with their epic films. A few months ago, they released a magnificent three-disc Limited Collector’s edition of El Cid to DVD, one of the great but forgotten Charlton Heston epics. It came with cards and comic books and dozens of special features and booklets and all kinds of trinkets. Today, May 27th, Alliance is releasing the next in this epic series, a Limited Collector’s Edition of The Fall Of The Roman Empire. The three-disc set is almost identical to El Cid in terms of the goodies that come inside. And the two films are very similar as well, in that they are massive military epics with casts of thousands, enormous sets, and Sophia Loren. Starring with Loren in The Fall of the Roman Empire is Alec Guinness, one of the most under-rated actors in history, as the reasonable and wise Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. He may well be one of the three greatest to ever live, up there with Brando and Olivier and Nicholson and DeNiro and Bogart.

The movie begins with Marcus Aurelius calling together the representatives of all the nations within the Roman Empire in order to secure peace and prosperity for the known world. Of course, this does not take place over the course of the film, and when it ends three hours later, it is with the Fall of the Roman Empire. This disaster comes about when Aurelius’ son, Commodus (Christopher Plummer), gets wind of his father’s decision to turn over the throne to his adopted son Livius instead of him. So Commodus decides to kill his own father in order to take the throne. And that leaves Rome in the hands of a childish, foolish man, who refuses to negotiate with his enemies or listen to other opinions, and thereby dooms the entire empire quite quickly. Well, in three hours.

This movie is famous now more as the movie that caused the fall of Samuel Bronfman’s cinematic empire, moreso than as a film. But as a film, it stands the test of time. The “Battle of the Four Armies” is as impressive a set piece as anything staged in The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur or Lawrence of Arabia. 8,000 soldiers and 1,200 horses were used for the production, which was shot on a massive plain in Madrid. And the detailed reconstruction of the Roman Forum remains, to this day, the largest ever outdoor film set. With set pieces and sets like these, it’s easy to see how the movie cost a massive amount to produce. And when it became a gargantuan financial failure, it took Bronfman’s empire with it. He had previously been responsible for some of the massive films of the era - El Cid, King of Kings - but after this one he never made another. It was more his business plan than the failure of this film, however, that did him in. He had spent so much creating the sets for these epic movies that he overextended himself, and owed millions of dollars when he became financially destitute and shut down operations.

The Fall of the Roman Empire plays a little fast and loose with actual, factual, history. But the tone, the costumes, the sets and the structure of the armies and the senate are all perfect. The Battle of the Four Armies, while an impressive scene, never actually took place. But the scene toward the end where the senators attempt to bribe the military into making one of them emperor is taken from historical fact. But in the end, you don’t watch a movie like this to learn specific facts about world history. You watch it to be entertained. And The Fall of the Roman Empire IS entertaining. Livius is played by Stephen Boyd, who does a terrific job in a role that was first offered to (of course) his Ben-Hur co-star, Charlton Heston. Sophia Loren is great as always, and of course smoking hot. The role of Commodus was only the third movie role for Christopher Plummer, and it’s the role that propelled him to stardom. And Alec Guinness is simply magnificent as Marcus Aurelius, a role that sadly ends halfway through the movie with his death.

There are many similarities to Gladiator in this film, and indeed a few people have suggested that on many levels Gladiator was actually a remake of The Fall Of The Roman Empire. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that is the case, but the stories certainly approximate one another. They occur at the same epoch in history, they deal with the same characters and the same downward spiral that consumed Rome in all her glory, and certainly the final scene is almost identical in both films. But Gladiator is a little more fanciful, and The Fall of the Roman Empire is way bigger in scale.

Now - while I certainly do recommend picking up this film, and this three-disc edition is wonderfully done, you might want to wait. For true rabid fans of this film, there is another edition coming out later, possibly as much as a year later. This edition features the standard two hour and 52 minute theatrical version that has been around for years. However, there was some lost footage that was discovered, too late to be included in this particular edition, that will be added to a later set. This will, though, likely be the only set with the poster-cards and the booklets that are included here. So perhaps, if you are a hardcore fan of The Fall of the Roman Empire, you could well do both. Like my nerd-buddy Dave, who owns all thirty-four different editions of the Star Wars trilogy. On VHS and DVD and LaserDisc and reel-to-reel and so forth. If only he had a laser disc player.

Of course, you knew when the new Indiana Jones movie was about to hit theatres, there would be all kind of reissues coming out. Paramount released the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Volume 3 a few weeks ago, and now comes the original trilogy, in special-edition form, on May 13th from Paramount. The first movie in the series, Raiders of the Lost Ark, remains by far the best of the three. The opening scene in the film is still, to this day, incredible, with the giant boulder and the bag of sand and the darts shooting out of the walls and the whip and the chasm and the closing door and the double crosses and the float plane escape…all very exciting. One of the best opening scenes in a movie of all time. And best of all - no gunshots or explosions! Amazing!

Although the thing that set Raiders apart from other movies upon it’s release and made it an instant classic was that no one had ever seen a movie like this before, what makes it a classic now is that it is still better than any other movie like it. Imagine a movie made now that has something of historic, biblical importance as the central object. Now imagine it involves car chases, gun fights, lost treasure, exotic locales, face-melting guitar solos, and Nazis. And, archaeology! Were this movie to be made now, it would likely star Matthew McConnaughey and Kate Hudson, and it would be directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and written by some Hollywood focus group-watching team of nincompoops. And it would probably be called “National Treasure 4: The One With Nazis”. And it would suck worse than “National Treasure 3: Search For the Necronomicon”.

It is a testament to the brilliance of both Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford that they did not allow this movie to become…that. Raiders of the Lost Ark is, in many ways, childish. And it is simplistic and cheerfully bonkers. And yes, it is standing on the shoulders of many movies that came before. But most of those movies were made in the 30s and 40s. And Raiders is set in the 30s. And it is both homage to the old John-Wayne-type serials of the early era of cinema, and also a completely new film going experience. It’s one of the only movies, ever, that is basically wall-to-wall action and yet could be considered classic. Harrison Ford did more than a good job as Indy, and he did more than create an iconic character in a movie. Much more.

This is what he did: He created an iconic persona in film in general. Not many actors have been able to do that. In the years following films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you could tell in other films when people were playing John Wayne. The Duke created an all-new screen persona. Same goes for Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird, Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. And now, when you watch certain movies, you can see other actors playing Indiana Jones. And that is a remarkable achievement in acting. Harrison Ford makes Raiders magical with humour, toughness, intelligence, good looks and stoicism. And Spielberg makes it magic with the set pieces, the camera work, and the ability to create wonderful moments in dialogue, scenery, and especially action.

Also terrific in Raiders was Karen Allen. Now, for a long time, I always thought that Margot Kidder starred opposite Ford in this film, simply because they look alike and the Superman series ran almost parallel to the Indiana Jones series. But Margot Kidder was NOT in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or…was she? I did some checking.

And in so doing, I have uncovered a conspiracy! Yes, I saved it for the end of my review, because it is such a huge revelation I wanted to save it for last. And here it is: Margot Kidder was born October 17th, 1948 in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The daughter of an explosives expert, she rose to big-screen fame playing a bit part in the film Gaily, Gaily, and then scoring the starring role in the Brian DePalma film Sisters. Soon, she became a household name thanks to her portrayal of Lois Lane in the major blockbuster, Superman, in 1978. Superman II, II, IV, V, and eventually Superman XLII followed. After “Sisters”, she briefly dated DePalma, and was linked to Pierre Trudeau for a time. She was married and divorced four times, none of those marriages lasting more than a year, and now lives as a little bit of a recluse, saying she prefers the company of her dogs to that of men. In the early 90s, she came under fire from the press and the establishment in the U.S. for criticizing the press and the government over the Gulf War, saying that they did not realize the long-ranging ramifications of their actions. She had a well-publicized breakdown in 1996, when she was found wandering the streets naked and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Karen Allen was born October 5th, 1951 in Carrollton, Illinois. The daughter of an FBI agent, she rose to big-screen fame playing bit parts in Animal House (1978) and Manhattan (1979). In 1981, she teamed up with Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg in the massively successful blockbuster, Raiders of the Lost Ark. She didn’t marry until 1988, when she tied the knot with Kale Brown, some guy who was in “Challenger”. She had a son in 1990, and the couple divorced in 1998. Since then, she has become more reclusive, and has professed her love for knitting as an activity. In fact, she loves knitting so much that she started her own textile company in 2003. She teaches acting in Massachusetts, and has been coaxed back to the big screen this year to reprise her Raiders role in the new Indiana Jones flick.

Now for the big revelation - Margot Kidder and Karen Allen are the same person! First of all, here is some photographic evidence:

Here’s what I think happened. Margot Kidder, finding that her Canadian background closed certain doors to her in Hollywood, while opening others, decided to make the best of both worlds by creating an American alter-ego for herself. As Karen Allen, she decided to make herself three years younger, since certain roles always go to the younger actress. She made sure that the family background was similar. Their birth dates, for example, were only two weeks apart. While Kidder’s father was an explosives expert, she decided that Karen Allen’s father should be something a little more vague, and thereby easy to explain - and FBI agent. Possibly one with knowledge of explosives. When Kidder hit the big time with Superman in 1978, she was unprepared for the sudden fame, and the alter-ego, Karen Allen, took over. Working with people she admired (like John Belushi and Woody Allen), as Karen Allen, and working with people who wanted her simply for her name, as Margot Kidder.

Then, in 1981, disaster struck. Karen Allen was offered a part opposite a little-known actor named Harrison Ford, in a movie helmed by a fairly interesting, two-hit wonder director named Steven Spielberg. It seemed like a perfect role for the Karen Allen persona - that was the side of Kidder that made the indie movies, and took risks, after all. But when that movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, became a massive blockbuster, all of a sudden both personas were out in the open and in the consciousness of America. Kidder tried to deflect attention away from her movie work by marrying and divorcing several times, but when she met Kale Brown, she thought it would be forever. And so, having painted Margot as the oft-marrying type, she had to get Karen to actually marry this guy and settle down. Once she was married, as “Karen”, she stopped working as Karen.

This gave her the opportunity to truly live two lives. One was the quiet, suburban home life with her husband and son, out of the limelight. That was Karen. Margot, on the other hand, since she no longer really existed, was totally free. Free to express her opinions and sound off about anything she wanted. After all, she had an escape where she could return home and be Karen for the rest of the evening, and let the Margot stuff slide off her back. But after eight years of this, the double life finally took it’s toll, and she snapped. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to snap as “Margot”, since “Margot” had already portrayed herself as the left-wing nut, the outspoken eccentric, and it would stand to reason that it was she, and not “Karen”, who momentarily lost her mind. In fact, Margot now wanted to live AS “Karen”, and was planning to do away with Margot completely, a la Fight Club. But rather than succeeding in killing off one of the two personalities, she merely succeeded in making one of them crazy. After nursing her back to health, and explaining the two personalities away conveniently as “bipolar disorder”, her husband could take no more and divorced “Karen” two years later.

Shocking, eh? Not only that, I can go one better - I know where Kidder got her idea for the final transformation! In 1988, as “Margot Kidder”, she starred in a made-for-TV movie called “Vanishing Act” with Elliott Gould, where she plays a woman who insists she is the husband of a man whose wife has just disappeared on their honeymoon, even though the man has never seen her before. Vanishing Act was a re-working of a Robert Thomas stage play called “Trap For a Lonely Man”, and had previously been filmed as “One of My Wives is Missing”, and “Honeymoon With A Stranger”, starring Janet Leigh. That same year, she, as “Karen”, married her final husband. Now, “Margot Kidder” hangs out in a rural area with her dogs, and “Karen Allen” hangs out in a rural area with her knitting. You read it here first, folks!

The opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is bothersome. Harrison Ford is sitting with some evil men, who mean to do him harm, and he really looks like Han Solo trying to play James Bond. The dialogue (the antidote - to the poison you just drank!), the set pieces (that big rolling gong), the utter ludicrousness of the entire scenario, just don’t feel like the Indiana Jones we know and love from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fortunately, as soon as this scene ends, he goes back to being the Indy of old, but the movie never seems to recover. Although Temple of Doom is still quite good, and definitely better than any of the imitators that have followed, it comes off as cartoonish when seen in th context of Raiders. Kind of like Return of the Jedi was a cartoon after watching The Empire Strikes Back.

Of course, Temple of Doom still has dozens of memorable moments, like the chase in the railway cars and the pilotless plane, and the raft ride, but it is so LOUD. It’s so busy, and loud, and over-the-top that it loses any charm Raiders might have had. The first forty minutes or so are non-stop action, when you kind of just want to get to the story. Short Round is still hilarious, and I still love that kid, but Kate Capshaw is irritating as the love interest, and the bad guys just aren’t as compelling as Nazis. The whole underground temple has just such a creepy feel to it that’s incongruous with the rest of the movie’s bonkers implausible tone. I don’t care if a guy can pull my heart out of my chest, I still fear the Nazis more. And those gross-out scenes with the monkey brains and all that? Totally unnecessary. And obnoxious.

In the end, Temple of Doom IS pretty good. But it comes nowhere near the standard set by Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it is the worst of the three films by far. Well worth having, this is one of those trilogies that needs to be complete in your collection, and you can’t ignore this one. But it will likely be the one you watch the least.  It’s out in Special Edition form tomorrow from Paramount.