1971--The Year in Review

A truly magnificent year for movies--especially American ones. I mean, just an astounding array of cult films, action films, intimate dramas, costume epics, musicals, documentaries, comedies, science fiction, horror, romances, westerns, cinematic television product, and the emergence of a potent black presence in film. But we also suffer a precipitous drop-off in quality from world cinema--a valley that will stretch across much of the ensuing decade. My top choice is an evocative, downbeat, gloriously black-and-white throwback to the emergence of the teen culture in 1950s Texas. It continually breaks your heart. But its closest competitor is also an examination of a possible future teen culture, vastly more perverted and still justifiably championed by most everyone. I still can't understand how Malcolm McDowell escaped even a nomination for his dynamic Alex De Large. I must reiterate: the sheer number of high-quality movies of all types ensures that some terrific titles are left out of the final mix. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold. 

PICTURE: THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (US, Peter Bogdanovich)
(2nd: A Clockwork Orange (UK, Stanley Kubrick)
followed by: McCabe and Mrs. Miller (US, Robert Altman)
Fiddler on the Roof (US, Norman Jewison)
The French Connection (US, William Friedkin)
Punishment Park (UK/US, Peter Watkins)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (UK, John Schlesinger)
Two-Lane Blacktop (US, Monte Hellman)
Carnal Knowledge (US, Mike Nichols)
Macbeth (UK, Roman Polanski)
Harold and Maude (US, Hal Ashby)
The Beguiled (US, Don Siegel)
A New Leaf (US, Elaine May)
Walkabout (Australia, Nicolas Roeg)
Dirty Harry (US, Don Siegel)
Klute (US, Alan J. Pakula)
Directed by John Ford (US, Peter Bogdanovich)
The Emigrants (Sweden/US, Jan Troell)
The Hospital (US, Arthur Hiller)
Taking Off (US, Milos Forman)
The Devils (UK, Ken Russell)
Duel (US, Steven Spielberg)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (US/UK, Mel Smith)
Millhouse (US, Emile De Antonio)
THX-1138 (US, George Lucas)
Vanishing Point (US, Richard Serafian)
Johnny Got His Gun (US, Dalton Trumbo)
The Andromeda Strain (US, Robert Wise)
Panic in Needle Park (US, Jerry Schatzberg)
Get Carter (UK, Mike Hodges)
Shaft (US, Gordon Parks)
Play Misty For Me (US, Clint Eastwood)
Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasssss Song (US, Melvin Van Peebles)
Minnie and Moskowicz (US, John Cassavetes)
Bananas (US, Woody Allen)
The Boy Friend (UK, Ken Russell)
Straw Dogs (UK, Sam Peckinpah)
Death in Venice (US/Italy, Luchino Visconti)
The Clowns (Italy, Federico Fellini)
The Hired Hand (US, Peter Fonda)
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (US, John Hancock)
The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick (West Germany, Wim Wenders)
Fata Morgana (West Germany, Werner Herzog)
Summer of ’42 (US, Robert Mulligan)
Ten Rillington Place (UK, Richard Fleischer)
The Decameron (Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Silent Running (US, Douglas Trumbull)
They Might Be Giants (US, Anthony Harvey)
Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (US, Ulu Grosbard)
Land of Silence and Darkness (West Germany, Werner Herzog)
Valdez is Coming (US, Edwin Sherin)
The Point (US, Fred Wolf)
A Fistful of Dynamite (Italy, Sergio Leone)
Sometimes a Great Notion (US, Paul Newman)
Mary, Queen of Scots (UK, Charles Jarrott)
And Now For Something Completely Different (UK, Ian McNaughton)
Christian the Lion (US, Bill Travers)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (UK, Robert Fuest)
Kotch (US, Jack Lemmon)
The Last Movie (US, Dennis Hopper)
The Strawberry Statement (US, Stuart Hagmann)
Diamonds are Forever (UK, Guy Hamilton)
Monte Walsh (US, William A. Fraker)
Red Sky at Morning (US, James Goldstone)
What's The Matter with Helen? (US, Curtis Harrington)
Pretty Maids All in a Row (US, Roger Vadim)
Behind the Green Door (US, Jim and Artie Mitchell)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (UK, Val Guest)
WR: The Mysteries of the Organism (Yugoslavia, Dusan Makavejev))

ACTOR: Malcolm McDowell, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (2nd: Gene Hackman, The French Connection, followed by: Topol, Fiddler on the Roof; Gene Wilder, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; Jack Nicholson, Carnal Knowledge; Walter Matthau, A New Leaf; George C. Scott, The Hospital; Peter Finch, Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Clint Eastwood, The Beguiled; Warren Beatty, McCabe and Mrs Miller)

ACTRESS: Jane Fonda, KLUTE (2nd: Ruth Gordon, Harold and Maude, followed by: Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller; Kitty Winn, Panic in Needle Park; Jessica Walter, Play Misty for Me; Liv Ullmann, The Emigrants; Zohra Lampert, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death; Glenda Jackson, Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Jenny Agutter, Walkabout; Geraldine Page, The Beguiled)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ben Johnson, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (2nd: Warren Oates, Two-Lane Blacktop, followed by: Jeff Bridges, The Last Picture Show; Cleavon Little, Vanishing Point; Andy Robinson, Dirty Harry; Roy Scheider, The French Connection; Art Garfunkel, Carnal Knowledge; Tom Baker, Nicholas and Alexandra; Michael Bates, A Clockwork Orange)



SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cloris Leachman, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (2nd: Ann-Margret, Carnal Knowledge, followed by: Ellen Burstyn, The Last Picture Show; Candice Bergen, Carnal Knowledge; Barbara Harris, Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?; Vivien Pickles, Harold and Maude; Lee Remick, Sometimes a Great Notion; Jo Ann Harris, The Beguliled)

DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (2nd: Peter Bogdanovich, The Last Picture Show, followed by: Robert Altman, McCabe and Mrs. Miller; Peter Watkins, Punishment Park; William Friedkin, The French Connection; Norman Jewison, Fiddler on the Roof; Roman Polanski, Macbeth; Monte Hellman, Two-Lane Blacktop; Mike Nichols, Carnal Knowledge; John Schlesinger, Sunday, Bloody Sunday)

NON-ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FILM: THE EMIGRANTS (Sweden, Jan Troell) (2nd: The Clowns (Italy, Federico Fellini), followed by: The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick (West Germany, Wim Wenders); Fata Morgana (West Germany, Werner Herzog); The Decameron (Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini); Land of Silence and Darkness (West Germany, Werner Herzog))



DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD (US, Peter Bogdanovich) (2nd: Millhouse (US, Emile De Antonio), followed by: Fata Morgana (West Germany, Werner Herzog); Land of Silence and Darkness (West Germany, Werner Herzog); Christian the Lion (US, Bill Travers))



ANIMATED FEATURE: THE POINT (Fred Wolf)



ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Peter Watkins, PUNISHMENT PARK (2nd: Paddy Chayefsky, The Hospital, followed by: Penelope Gilliatt, Sunday, Bloody Sunday; Andy and Dave Lewis, Klute; Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry, Two-Lane Blacktop)



ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Peter Bogdanovich and Larry McMurtry, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (2nd: Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange, followed by: Robert Altman and Brian McCay, McCabe and Mrs. Miller; Ernest Tidyman, The French Connection; Joseph Stein, Fiddler on the Roof)



LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: HAPAX LEGOMENA: NOSTALGIA I (US, Hollis Frampton) (2nd: The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (US, Stan Brakhage); Hot Dogs for Gaugain (US, Martin Brest); Sentinels of Silence (Mexico, Robert Anram); Last Year in Vietnam (US, Oliver Stone)



ANIMATED SHORT FILM: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (UK, Richard Williams, won in 1972) (2nd: Evolution (Canada, Michael Mills), followed by: Freedom River (US, Sam Weiss); The Cat in the Hat (US, Hawley Pratt); The Selfish Giant (Canada. Peter Sander)



CINEMATOGRAPHY: Oswald Morris, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (2nd: Robert Surtees, The Last Picture Show, followed by: Vilmos Zsigmond, McCabe and Mrs Miller; Gilbert Taylor, Macbeth; Gordon Willis, Klute) 

ART DIRECTION: THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, Fiddler on the Roof, The Boy Friend, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nicholas and Alexandra

COSTUME DESIGN: THE BOY FRIEND, Nicholas and Alexandra, Macbeth, Fiddler on the Roof, Death in Venice

FILM EDITING: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, The French Connection, Fiddler on the Roof, Punishment Park, Dirty Harry 

SOUND: FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, A Clockwork Orange, THX-1138, The Last Picture Show, McCabe and Mrs. Miller 



ORIGINAL SCORE: Isaac Hayes, SHAFT (2nd: Lalo Schifrin, Dirty Harry, followed by: Michel Legrand, Summer of ’42; Jerry Fielding, Straw Dogs; John Barry, Walkabout)



ADAPTED OR MUSICAL SCORE: John Williams, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (2nd: Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley, and Walter Scharf, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, followed by: Peter Maxwell Davies and Peter Greenwell, The Boy Friend)



ORIGINAL SONG: “Theme from Shaft” from SHAFT (Music and lyrics by Isaac Hayes) (2nd: “Don‘t Be Shy” from Harold and Maude (Music and lyrics by Cat Stevens), followed by: “If You Wanna Sing Out, Sing Out” from Harold and Maude (Music and lyrics by Cat Stevens); “Me and My Arrow” from The Point (Music and lyrics by Harry Nilsson); "Diamonds are Forever" from Diamonds are Forever (Music by John Barry, lyrics by Don Black); "Last Morning" from Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (Music and lyrics by Shel Silverstein); “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Music by Leslie Bricusse, lyrics by Anthony Newley); "Bless the Beasts and Children" from Bless the Beasts and Children (Music and lyrics by Barry DeVorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr.)

SPECIAL EFFECTS: SILENT RUNNING, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Bedknobs and Broomsticks

MAKEUP: THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, Kotch, The Boy Friend 

Review: LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER

While I adored the story it was recounting, and the incredibly able, expertly assembled cast of black actors in its support, LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER left me cold.  And I was disappointed that it did so.  Least of all concerns, the shameless stunt casting of almost all the presidential cameos was underwhelming, as I predicted early on after seeing its trailer.  But, most vexingly, the film as a whole was generally, and genially, silly on the screenplay and directorial levels.  It talks down to its audience, no matter its makeup, and assumes it knows nothing, and I found that hard to take (actually, I found this insulting).  Regardless of subject matter, THE BUTLER is another of those many extra-respectful bio-pics that sets out to cover too much history, and too much of its lead Cecil Gaines' life (the character is based on real-life White House butler Eugene Allen, and I have to ask: why didn't they use the man's real name?)  And so, as it trundles dutifully through eight decades of black strife and achievement, THE BUTLER tiredly plays like "America's Most Horrible Hits" as do so many forgotten Hollywood bio-pics.  Out of a generous 135 minute running time (and a better movie could have supported even more time), fully 15 minutes of the film is taken up with "televised" versions of all those incredibly important but widely-seen film clips some of us have viewed about a hundred times before in documentaries and narrative films dealing with the 1960s and 70s (there are lots of shots of people watching TV in THE BUTLER, and this is never a good thing; what's less interesting than watching people watching TV?).  Even if you make allowances for younger audiences (and are we all really now being asked to sit through movies that are dumbed down for those audience members who really have no value of history), I ask you, once you've seen it: Imagine what THE BUTLER would have been like if it had simply taken place between the years 1963-1971 (with a epilogue set in Obama's 2008).  Can you possibly see where that would have resulted in a more focused and exacting film? 

Visually, Andrew Dunn's colorful cinematography for THE BUTLER impresses (unusually so for a 2013-era period piece--red, yellow and blue actually appear in full here, and the film does not read overwhelmingly sepia as many present-day period movies do).  Ruth Carter's vibrant costuming is also deeply impactful throughout, most particularly when leads Forrest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey joyfully appear in matching black-and-white disco suits in their initial 1970s scene together, though they don't get much time to revel happily while so bedecked.  But it's Danny Strong's screenplay that takes things down here: it ladles on massively distracting cliches, especially in its unneeded narration (there are plenty of scenes that would've worked on image and performance alone, but the overly-obvious voiceovers make your discomfited eyes roll back in your head).  Lee Daniels' direction stays on a gracious level (too gracious, actually--surprisingly so for this director of the more daring PRECIOUS and THE PAPERBOY) but Daniels' efforts build up to spectacular fashion in one single, jarring scene that searingly intercuts between three locales: a diner sit-in (with black protesters defying a whites-only seating law), a usually regal VIP serving at the White House, AND the brutal, name-calling preparation black protesters subject themselves to in preparation for an onslaught of white insults.  This sequence is remarkable in its imagination and structure. I am left only to wonder what the whole movie would have been if it had risen up, in entirity, to match this memorable highpoint. 

I also love some of the party scenes at the butler Cecil Gaines' home.  Though the writing in these scenes is sometimes too self-aware, it gives a large portion of the black cast (including Terrence Howard, Lenny Kravitz, Pernell Walker, and Dana Gorrier) a rare opportunity to play off each other, with lively results (this is the best I've seen Cuba Gooding Jr. perform in a good while; he really impressed me here with his energy and humor, and it reminded me why he won his Oscar in the mid-90s).  I loved Forrest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey as the film's leads--Whitaker is impossible to dislike, in any movie--but I did get antsy at the fact that Winfrey's character is confined mostly to the claustrophobic Gaines household for the film's entirety. She's only seen outside the house in two key moments, and the final one--the one we expect early on will be the big payoff--is instead a massive dramatic letdown.  Still, they're both quite fine in the film, and the chief reasons to see it (and, though she's actually the female lead in the movie, Winfrey is assured a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, especially for her shining final scene). 

Oh, and those presidents...ugh.  John Cusack, with his sweaty face and pointy fake nose, fares a little better than I would have expected while playing Nixon, but I still saw SAY ANYTHING's Lloyd Dobler in front of me, and found myself not understanding why it's so difficult for moviemakers (including Oliver Stone) to cast an actor who actually resembles the incredibly unique-looking Nixon for that role. Alan Rickman does recall Ronald Reagan with all that caked-on makeup, but he's doing a sleepy Southern/British accent as "Dutch." and it just totally does not work (though I would add that his portrayal, as a politician who acts differently one-on-one than he does when expected to tow party lines, is historically accurate). The rest of the actors--James Marsden as JFK, Liev Schreiber as LBJ and Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan, among the best of them--are correctly cast for their roles, but they barely register as characters, as they are seen so briefly.  Still, I get that the movie isn't about the presidents, and that's fine...but why cast huge stars in the roles?  Why couldn't have the excellent Anthony Edwards played Dwight Eisenhower?  How about the jowly Dan Hedaya as Richard Nixon (yeah, he played him in DICK, but why should that be a negative)?  Given the long running time, I was thankful, somehow, that Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were left out of the mix, though I had to wonder if a scene with Carter might have been the most interesting one in the movie (could I posit a wig-wearing Ron Howard as Carter?) And why does Vanessa Redgrave need to be in there for a 90-second role, when absolutely no one goes to see a movie nowadays because Vanessa Redgrave is in it?   Ahhh, it's all so confusing, and I dislike that I even have to ask these questions, or attempt to "fix" the movie, and maybe I'm being a too-picky blogger now.  But if THE BUTLER were made with more steadfast integrity, all this conjecture would be unnecessary...

Furthermore, and most negatively, I have to add--having Cecil Gaines' son (David Oyelowo) carry the transparently Forrest Gump-y aspects of the movie--as a man who was always there at the right time to be a witness to history--was a poor decision (though Oyelowo, a fine actor, does his best to sell it).  It's ridiculous that his character--in this film that's "based on a true story"--finds his way into the Memphis hotel room outside of which MLK was shot, while later becoming a high-ranking Black Panther (with an afro-ed Angela Davis stand-in, presumably, as girlfriend, which denigrates HER standing as a black hero), and even later being a top protester against South Africa's apartheid, and later still winning U.S. senatorial standing, all while being the trailblazing lead character's son (without that aspect of the son's past ever being something that ANY of his cohorts talk about specifically, though it is bandied that house help for white people has played "an important role in our people's history").  All of this is astoundingly reductive, as if all black people had everything to do with what all black people were doing (historically, absolutely no one in MLK's circle had anything to do with the Black Panthers, and absolutely no former Black Panther has made their way anywhere near the Senate).  And I have to ask this...how was this politically radical son, as an inevitably closely watched person, able to make way into the White House kitchen to late at night to confront his father in one key 1960s scene?  Now, I realize, it seems that I am babbling on about the film's shortcomings, and maybe it seems that I'm picking on it.  But that is just something that THE BUTLER forces you to do, as much as you want to love it.  And I wanted to love it.  Eugene Allen was a lion, and his story is a valuable one.  But, the way it's told here, THE BUTLER is all just too much to swallow, and I kept wishing that the filmmakers had stuck more lovingly and closely to the actual narrative of Eugene Allen's life (though, I should add, Daniels and company did get some details of Allen's amazing career correct, including his accurately-portrayed aid to Jackie Kennedy after JFK's assassination).  Still...I mean, really...why the heck couldn't the filmmakers have just recounted Allen's ACTUAL story (and using his real name, and telling the true history of his family, or even--God forbid--leaving that soapy element by the wayside?)

I wouldn't argue that LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER is a movie not worth seeing--it's important, yes, for black history, and certainly for those black and white people who don't know such history, and that largely means members of those groups born after 1990, whom I gather (from personal experience) don't realize any history existed before the advent of the Internet.  But I will say that Daniels' movie simply and sadly registers for me--a movie lover, first and foremost, and a history maven second--as an opportunity squandered.  With over three years of prep time, and with a story that was massively worth such effort, THE BUTLER could have been a seriously great film.   Now, as it arrives, it's merely a well-intentioned one.

I finally have to add: where are the black-directed bio-pics of Oscar Micheaux, W.E.B. Dubois, Frederick Douglass, Miles Davis, Louis Armstong, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, James Brown, Shirley Chisolm, George Washington Carver, Richard Pryor and about a thousand more black heroes whose stories need to be told (and whose stories exist largely outside of the time many of us have lived through, and whose stories largely do not require the participation of many white characters)?  I know that it's hard to get these movies made in white-controlled Hollywood.  But it's absolutely time for this to change.  This is the lesson of THE BUTLER: If the goal is to educate, and educate us all, then let's get goddamn down to educating, and artfully so, too!

BTW, this is a link to my reaction to Sasha Stone's unqualified positive take on the film on AWARDS DAILY.  

RIP Michael Sarrazin (1940-2011)

With an unassuming face, not so unworldly and yet not so evil, he sometimes seemed like a blank slate, and was often used as such. But Michael Sarrazin remains an interesting icon from the 1970s, even if he'd faded from view by the 1980s. For me, he'll always be the wide-eyed innocent caught in the middle of Depression-era misery, often at the mercy of the suicidal Jane Fonda, in Sydney Pollack's 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

But he also hit another much different note on TV in 1973 as Frankenstein's slowly rotting creation in the most accurate telling of Mary Shelley's seminal horror tale, filmed as Frankenstein: The True Story (and co-starring Leonard Whiting, David McCallum, James Mason, Jane Seymour, Tom Baker, John Gielgud and Agnes Moorehead). Sarrazin's Creature actually steals the film; you cannot forget the sight of his high-cheekboned visage being ravaged into pulp by the elements, nor the Creature's reaction to his doom. I still think that, Karloff aside, Sarrazin might be the most perfect version of Mary Shelley's monster.



In the title role for the recession-tinged comedy For Pete's Sake, he held his own opposite the always overpowering Barbara Streisand:



He was the lead performer in The Gumball Rally, the original Cannonball Run, centering around a cross-country car race (it's a LOT more fun than the Burt Reynolds film). But no one can remember him in that because the movie features so many other, wilder characters (including an early but no less insane appearance by Gary Busey, who makes much noise in the film's trailer):



I haven't seen The Reincarnation of Peter Proud in a long time, and I'm just now discovering it's available on You Tube (I'll surely be watching it soon). I can't remember much about it, having seen it at a drive-in when I was seven, but I do recall that it frightened me deeply at certain points. It co-stars horror queen Margot Kidder, and has quite the denouement, if I remember correctly. Here's the film's first part:



After 1978's failed epic Caravans, Sarrazin's career burnt out big time, at least on the big screen. He spent the rest of his life doing guest appearances on shows like Murder She Wrote, while co-starring in low-profile films that often hailed from his native Canada. But I remember him in so many movies (including more obscure 70s fare as The Groundstar Conspiracy, Sometimes A Great Notion, and opposite James Coburn in Harry in Your Pocket) that I felt compelled to say goodbye to him here.

Film #122: The China Syndrome

This whole notion of life imitating art--it really doesn't happen too often. But it certainly happened in 1979, and in an unlikely, timely manner. On March 16th of that year, writer/director James Bridges (at that point most notable for giving us 1974's law school drama The Paper Chase), unleashed The China Syndrome upon American audiences. This taut, expertly-produced thriller imparted the fictional account of Jack Godell, played passionately (if in his typically mannered fashion) by Jack Lemmon. Godell is an engineer at California's Ventana Nuclear Power Plant who has suspicions that faults in the plant's construction might set the stage for a core meltdown that could send radiation spewing into the atmosphere and groundwater. We follow Godell as he bucks stonewalling plant management and leaks Ventana's shaky status to the news media--specifically, KXLA puff-piece news anchor Kimberly Wells (an excellent Jane Fonda) and her cameraman Richard Adams (producer Michael Douglas, in an understated role originally slated for Richard Dreyfuss). This intriguing scenario was considered pure, albeit sobering, fantasy on the part of Hollywood and nuclear power experts--until a scant 12 days after the film's release (very nearly 20 years ago today), when Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear reactor had a similar mishap that caused it and The China Syndrome to remain the subjects of newspaper headlines for the ensuing months (making the connection between the event and the film even more palpable is an onscreen physicist's assertion that an extreme core meltdown--deemed "the China Syndrome"--would render "an area the size of Pennsylvania" permanently uninhabitable; when Michael Douglas made an appearance on Johnny Carson upon the film's release, Johnny quipped "Boy, you sure have one hell of a publicity agent").Stark and scary, The China Syndrome flickered on screens at a time when people needed it the most (though Columbia Pictures did its best to distance the film from the event, so as to look as if they weren't cashing in; it didn't keep the film from box-officing 51 mil--more than 300 mil in today's money). The well-researched screenplay--co-written by Bridges, Mike Grey, and T.S. Cook--simply but effectively explains the then-inscrutable workings and risks of nuclear power, and assays a chilling portrait of the consequences were something to go wrong with the whole precarious set-up. The movie takes cues from other 70s-paranoia classics like The Parallax View and All The President's Men in its deft balance of character, suspense, and political intrigue. The leads in the cast are terrific, but the supporting players provide a whole other level of greatness--among them: James Karen (Poltergeist, Mulholland Dr.) as the TV station's director, Richard Herd as the heartless Ventana manager; James Hampton (The Longest Yard, Sling Blade) as the plant's smiling PR man; and especially good is Wilford Brimley (above right) in his breakout role as Ted Spindler, Lemmon's best friend and co-worker in the Ventana control room (Brimley's final moments on screen are totally shattering).

Lemmon would win the Best Actor award at Cannes for playing the justifiably nerve-wracked Godell; both he and Fonda would nab lead acting nominations at that year's Academy Awards. Bridges' writing team would also get nominations, as would the film's insanely accurate art direction (constructed by imagination only, since no plant would allow reference photos to be taken). Also, try and notice the nearly invisible special effects, rife with matte paintings and extremely convincing miniature work by Henry Millar. Bridges contributes flawlessly as director (he wisely eschewed scoring the picture, making its tense ending completely unforgettable). He'd go on to helm one more box office hit, 1980's John Travolta vehicle Urban Cowboy, and one more critical darling, 1984's Mike's Murder (an extremely underrated mystery starring Debra Winger) before succumbing to failure with the career-killing 1985 aerobics-drama Perfect and 1988's sorry Bright Lights, Big City. He wrote the excellent screenplay to Clint Eastwood's 1990 White Hunter, Black Heart (about the making of The African Queen) before passing away prematurely in 1993. But with The China Syndrome, James Bridges truly made his mark.

And now, may I say: nuclear power still thrives. And is still as dangerous as ever. Sweet dreams.

Film #83: Barbarella

Jane Fonda, then absorbed in the cheesecake phase of her career she no doubt regrets, teamed with her then-husband, overrated womanizer/director Roger Vadim, to produce 1968's campy adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest's French comic book Barbarella. Psychedelicized art direction by Luchino Visconti's house designer Mario Garbuglia (The Leopard, Rocco and His Brothers) and costume design (by Jacques Fonterey and cologne magnate Paco Rabanne) make this quirky cult film a visual treat as it follows super-sexpot Barbarella in her fight against loopy madman Durand-Durand (Milo O'Shea) who, of course, threatens peace in the universe.

Along the way, she's assisted by a blind angel played by John Phillip Law (who was himself a staple of Italian film and the star of producer Dino De Laurentiis' equally wild though much better Danger: Diabolik--the male Barbarella, as I like to refer to it, also from 1968 and directed by horrormaster Mario Bava). Barely clothed throughout (which I have to admit, is the main reason I like this movie), Fonda's Barbarella seeks advice at one point from the world's most famous mime, Marcel Marceau (in a rare speaking performance as Professor Ping) as well as from Blow-Up star David Hemmings as the suggestively monikered Dildano. Finally, she faces the lesbian Black Queen, played by a scenery-devouring Anita Pallenberg. Using her powerful sexuality, Barbarella vanquishes Durand-Durand and his Orgasmotron (the funniest scene in the film), as well as Pallenberg's memorable sharp-toothed, clothes-tearing devil dolls. As in all superhero movies, Barbarella, shall we say...comes out on top.Barbarella is a really idiotic, sloppy movie (it's ripe for a remake, supposedly to come with Rose McGowan as the lead--an idea which could do no damage to the film's worth). Despite having a script co-written by an obviously bombed-out Terry Southern (Candy, Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider), it falls apart in its latter half, save for O'Shea's appearance as the famously named Durand-Durand (y'know...that band...in the 80s? Oh, never mind...). But I do eat up its elegant design. And it has one of the most famous credits sequences ever--Fonda shedding her space suit to the tune of that fetching title song, sung by the now long-gone Glitterboxes (60s keyboard-meisters Ferrante and Teicher did a good version of it, too). And up until about 40 minutes in, I have great affection for its goofiness. But I get real bored as it gets bogged down in a plot I hardly care about. It's only Fonda's baby-doll-with-a-hot-box that gets me through it all. But that's enough, I gotta say! Whew!! That girl was FIT!!