PSYCHO COP RETURNS (1993)

"You have the right to remain dead. 

Anything you say can and will be considered very strange…because you’re dead. 

You have the right to an attorney, but it won’t do you any good because…you’re dead." 

It’s only every so often that I get to incorporate a youth-inspired memoirness to a write-up because there are only a small handful of films that, through completely random happenstance, I saw at a very young age that catapulted me into a permanent state of adoration for the genre. There's The Return of the Living Dead, the first Halloween and one of its sequels, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and, hilariously, there's Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight. If your formative years are all encompassing, then I was all too eager to absorb every weird, scary, or gooey second from these movies and the horror genre at large.

For some reason, Psycho Cop Returns (aka Psycho Cop 2) is one of them.

Glimpsed late at night on the USA Network’s B-movie showcase Up All Night, hosted by Gilbert Gottfried and/or Rhonda Shear (I don't remember which one had this particular honor), and which also presented such cinematic glories like A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, Dr. Alien, and Vampire on Bikini Beach, my young eyes feasted upon a very censored tale of a Satan-worshipping cop who zeroes in on a group of horny office workers hosting an after-hours bachelor party for one of their own, who then secure a trio of strippers and a filing cabinet of booze for a night of debauchery and having asses danced right in their faces. Officer Joe Vickers, the titular psycho cop, finds his way into the building and begins dispatching the office workers, the strippers, and whomever else might be around, all while letting off a series of puns so unbelievably stupid that Freddy Krueger immediately pressed charges.

Even in my early teens I could see that Psycho Cop Returns was poorly made, in most cases poorly acted, and certainly poorly scored. (This is one of the worst musical scores – written by two people! – I’ve heard in a horror film other than Jason Goes to Hell, and that’s saying something, because Jason Goes to Hell features probably every example of “worst I’ve ever seen,” up to but not including usage of The Blues Brothers‘ Steven Williams.) Nothing about Psycho Cop Returns is surface-admirable, but I’ll be damned if it isn't fun. And if I said I wasn’t just the tiniest bit disturbed as a tyke during the opening sequence when the psychotic cop gets into his squad car to reveal a blood-splashed interior, dismembered body parts, and satanic symbols, I’d be fibbing.

For years following the immense success of Die Hard’s debut in 1988, a slew of imitators came down the pike – some good, some not, but all sold as “Die Hard on a _____!”

Die Hard on a bus!

Die Hard on a naval warship!

Die Hard on the ice!

It became a tried and true method for making your pitch as succinct as possible while also trying to suggest your film would be at least as good as that Yuletide classic, and this lazy pitching gimmick reached across every genre aisle.

Psycho Cop Returns borrows that concept, presenting a sort of Die Hard meets Bachelor Party meets Friday the 13th: a group of office employees in a city high-rise are essentially taken hostage by a dangerous threat, who after neutralizing the only security guard, slips in unnoticed and attempts to blend in at one point to fool them. There are scenes in elevator shafts, on helicopter launch pads, a sexual tryst in an unused office. Only this time, it’s not the cop who will save the day. It’s the cop who will throw them off a building directly into a dumpster, then make a garbage joke while doing it. 

And it’s tremendous.

John Wick was here.

To those unfamiliar with the cinematic opus that is Psycho Cop Returns, the most surprising aspect would likely be the actor who takes on the murderous title role: stage name Bobby Ray Shafer, aka Robert Shafer, who might be most famously known as having played Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration in several seasons of The Office. Schaffer, who has admitted as such since the movie's release, was hoping to parlay his predecessor, Psycho Cop, into a horror franchise all his own a la Nightmare on Elm Street – and the production house behind the first film was equally optimistic, signing Shafer to a staggering, pre-Marvel five-picture deal.

FIVE Psycho Cop movies. 

Imagine living in a world so good and just where that would've been allowed to happen.

Sadly, Psycho Cop Returns would be the second and final in the series (so far – I would totally see Old Psycho Cop tearing ass around wherever old people hang out and do illegal things). By all accounts far better than its predecessor, Psycho Cop Returns is 100% video store shelf sleaze. Not nearly soft-core porn, but pretty close, there’s a detectably slimy and greasy vibe covering every frame that adds to the film’s appeal. Also appealing, and I’m being 100% serious: the screenplay. Yes, the story is very derivative of the aforementioned Die Hard and the dozens of slasher flicks that came before it, but the screenplay by Dan Povenmire, who worked as an animator for The Simpsons, is actually well written. Not the action, mind you, but the dialogue between characters. Jokes (non-murderous ones, anyway) feel natural. The ribbing between coworkers feels genuine. The exchanges really do bring at least an attempt at everyday life, even if the characters are nothing more than half-formed archetypes: the horny guy, the nervous guy, etc. And the ending, which both spoofs and embodies the grainy Rodney King beating footage, which was a huge cultural event in 1992, it suggests that, maybe — just maybe — Psycho Cop Returns had something to say all along.

Of all the stupid undeserving horror franchises that don’t realize they’re stupid (Saw, The Purge, and so forth), it really is a shame Psycho Cop didn’t spawn more than one sequel, because at least it knew what it was, and wasn’t vying for anything more. Its only immediate competition was the more restrained, the more hyperbolic, and the more Bobby Davi-having Maniac Cop series, which petered out with its lame third entry, but it’s typically the franchises that tend to strive for higher quality and relevance that run the risk of diminishing returns. Psycho Cop wasn't worried about that. Psycho Cop wanted to have sex, kill people, and pun. It’s not exactly a difficult beat to walk, so it’s a shame this cop retired so early – he definitely wasn’t too old for this shit.

If you have only a passing, casual interest in the horror genre, then holy shit, just keep walking, because this will not be the film that converts you. Psycho Cop Returns is 100% for people who live, breathe, and bleed the genre. Every single person involved in its making knows that it’s stupid. Not a single person among them has any delusions that maybe Psycho Cop Returns is a slice of cinematic genius capering as something less. No. Psycho Cop Returns features a scene in which Officer Joe Vickers stabs someone in the eye with a pencil and then makes ten “eye” jokes about it. And that’s totally fine with me. 

THE MORTON DOWNEY JR. SHOW: SLASHER MOVIES

So-called violent movies, TV shows, and video games (and comic books and rock 'n roll songs and rap videos and...) have been vilified by puritans and alarmists for as long as those mediums have existed. Though the offending examples often cited change with the times, the same talking points and skewed "studies" are trotted out time and time again to prove a point that's tantamount to witchcraft: movie violence causes real-life violence, horror and slasher movies warp kids' minds, and blah and blah and blah.

Likely a relic to audiences today, Morton Downey Jr.* (no relation to Iron Man) is considered the pioneer of trash-talk television. The literally and figuratively big-mouthed TV personality, whose titular show was produced in my home state of New Jersey, ran from 1987 to 1989 and was a slimy portent of things to come, both in terms of sensationalizing people's worst behavior as well highlighting outrageous hard-right leaning "conservative" viewpoints. (He was a staunch anti-abortion activist who never missed a chance to impugn liberal philosophies while dabbling in occasional racism and misogyny. Sound familiar?) A precursor to The Jerry Springer Show, which somehow ran for 28 years, Morton's format presented hot-button guests with opposing views on social issues and let them claw at each other's throats, often manipulating the conversation and taking both sides at once just to spur the conflict.

The below episode, presented in its entirety, focuses on slasher films of the '70s and '80s, namely (but not exclusively) 1974's The Last House on the Left and 1977's The Hills Have Eyes. (Between those two titles being thrown on the pyre, and Morton opening the show wearing a Freddy Krueger mask, I'm sure Wes Craven was pretty proud at the time.) Notable guests include Hills actor Michael Berryman, who played mutant cannibal Pluto, and former Fangoria editor Anthony Timpone to take the "everyone needs to relax" side of the argument, but whom you won't be surprised to hear are barely given time to finish their points before they're cut off by Morton or his puritanical counterpoint guests. The episode is definitely worth watching for all kinds of reasons, especially if you're a pro-slasher type of person, but mainly because television from the '80s is kind of hilarious.

The greatest irony of the claim presented on this episode, which is the ease at which kids were able to rent R-rated horror films from local video stories (RIP) was causing them psychological harm, is that the claim is coming to you from one of the trashiest daytime shows in the history of television – one so frequently condemned that it had a hard time maintaining a steady business relationship with advertisers – which was only a single remote control click away from our apparently very impressionable children. Though slasher films, throughout their history, often showcased bloody kills and pornographic images, they were fiction – gags created by special effects artists and blocked by directors and cinematographers. When it comes to things like The Morton Downey Jr. Show, from the host to the guests to the venomous audience members, these people were real and the behavior they exhibited was often hostile, dismissive, self-righteous, profane, hateful, and demeaning. There are two scenarios here: a child watches a movie maniac kill people, so they go out and do the same, or a child watches a "real" TV show where adults scream at each other and hurl insults and thinks, "Oh, I guess this is how I should act when I'm older."

You tell me which is more likely.

*Morton Downey Jr. happens to appear in my all-time favorite Tales from the Crypt episode, "Television Terror," in which he leaves his comfort zone of being a trashy TV talk-show host...by playing a trashy TV talk-show host (on location in an allegedly haunted house).

CULT OF CHUCKY (2017)

The Child’s Play series has been one wild ride. After the classic, humorless first film, the series – like most horror franchises – devolved into your more typical slice and dice (though I unabashedly love Child’s Play 2). After exhausting its straight-up horror experience, series writer Don Mancini (who also directed the three most recent entries) served up a mini-reboot with 1998’s Bride of Chucky, directed by Freddy vs. Jason’s Ronny Yu, which allowed the series to deviate in a more knowingly comical manner. Things got meta with Seed of Chucky, which saw a Hollywood film being made about the “real” killer doll’s exploits, and once John Waters’ face melted off, and, in a gag that hasn’t aged well, Chucky ran Britney Spears’ car off a cliff, it seemed like the series had found itself in a creative corner.

Well, Mancini took the opportunity to, again, softly reboot the series with 2013’s Curse of Chucky, which dropped the broad humor, the meta winking, and everything Jennifer Tilly, steering the series back to the darker tone established by the original trilogy. It was a worthy effort, and certainly better than Child’s Play 3 and Seed of Chucky, but it wasn’t quite a return to form. Still, Chucky voice actor Brad Dourif was back, and his real-life daughter, Fiona Dourif, played the lead “final girl” and became quickly beloved by fans, so it had some positive things to offer.

Cult of Chucky serves as a direct sequel to that film, and just might be the most ridiculous and insane entry so far (and I am totally including Seed of Chucky in that – ya know, the film in which two plastic killer dolls give birth to a child doll while rapper Redman is directing a fake movie about their lives). Original Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, making a return to the series after 28 years) is back, and he’s keeping a living Chucky doll head in his isolated cabin home for nightly torture sessions. And Jennifer Tilly is back as well, again playing Tiffany, murderous girlfriend of Charles Lee Ray (or, maybe she’s just playing Jennifer Tilly. Who knew a horror series about a killer doll could get so esoteric?).

It’s also strikingly directed. Mancini, who wrote several episodes of NBC’s short-lived Hannibal series (“I can’t believe they canceled that show,” Chucky grumbles at some point), embraced that series’ ultra-pretentious approach. Cult of Chucky is the most interesting looking film in the series – one might go as far as saying artfully directed  –  with one murder sequence in particular looking straight-up Hannibal inspired. Cult of Chucky actually looks phenomenal, and Mancini’s earlier mentioned Hannibal-inspired directing is largely to credit for that. Cult of Chucky takes place in the fanciest and most aesthetically pleasing asylum ever in cinema. It’s very white and institutional, but without being depressing, and everything is meticulously designed.

Cult of Chucky is also often very funny, mostly deriving from Chucky’s one-liners, which completely dwarf any that have come before. Dourif has been voicing this character for thirty years now and hasn’t lost his spark — not to mention gaining creative mileage from the asylum setting, a clear callback to the actor’s Academy-Award winning appearance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are multiple references to this, from Juicy Fruit to Chucky outright mumbling half that film’s title in his typically profane manner. And like the previous films, the callbacks to other horror films are numerous, even including an unexpected nod to The Witch.

However, there are portions of Cult of Chucky that don’t work. Nearly all of the characters beyond Fiona are either inconsequential, irritating, or serve no purpose other than to make the loony bin loonier and eventually die bloody. The gore gags are great in concept but not in execution. Chucky looks cheap – not quite Spirit Halloween-cheap, but close. It’s appreciated that the film leans more on puppetry and practical effects than CGI, but its results are still unconvincing. The return of Alex Vincent promises something big, but after some really interesting implications are made regarding his post-Chucky psyche, his character plays out with no point whatsoever, except for setting up the inevitable next sequel – or TV series? (Although the post-credits stinger has me legit excited.) Jennifer Tilly, too, seems shoe-horned in, and with an especially off-kilter performance, as if her character’s appearance here is more about fan service, and the dispatching of one character in particular is more about tying up loose ends rather than creating drama. Lastly, Cult of Chucky alludes to a really interesting, psychologically-based new direction very early on, but what’s set up here doesn’t come to fruition by the end, resulting in a missed opportunity.

And speaking of “that end” – yeesh.

By now, Chucky is on his seventh entry and the series has gone direct to video. Budgets have been cut, and multiple concepts have been explored. And I can name several other horror franchises that became completely lifeless before their seventh entry. If Mancini is on board for Chucky 8: Your Soul, then of course I am, too. By now, Chucky has become a horror hero to audiences, almost the good guy. And you can’t keep a Good Guy down.

Chucky is back in a mostly enjoyable sequel — one that towers over the last two entries, at the very least. It explores new territory (without much explanation) and slowly ties back in earlier events from earlier films in an effort to group everyone together. Is the next Chucky sequel to come the one where they finally get it totally right? Probably not. But that probably won’t make it any less fun to watch.

BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ (1962)

Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) was anything but a model prisoner when he was transferred to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in 1912. The first impression he made on his guards and fellow new-arrival inmates was smashing a window on the train, citing "he got hot." Once there, Stroud's behavior didn't exactly improve. After pushing his cellmate for his having touched a photo of Stroud's mother, he clocks another inmate during laundry detail. To complete the trifecta, Stroud stabs a guard to death after he tells him that his recent misbehavior has cost him a visitation with his mother. For this bloody infraction, he's charged with an additional five years of solitary confinement, after which he'll be hung until dead. However, after a plea of clemency from Stroud's mother to President Wilson, the death sentence is tossed out in favor of a life sentence in solitary confinement. After making enemies out of the crusty old warden (Karl Malden), Stroud resigns himself to a life that had already been promised to him: solitary. But on one rainy day when Stroud is taking a walk in the prison courtyard, he spies a starving sparrow in a nest, so he takes it inside to care for it...and for the next four decades, the ruthless, violent man that walked into Leavenworth Penitentiary will devote his life to the study of ornithology, even being called a "genius" by others in the field for his scholarly studies on bird disease, and by the time of his death, he will barely resemble the hardened criminal that bought him that one-way ticket to life behind bars.

Though it's often said that troubled productions lead to troubled films, Birdman of Alcatraz is anything but. Following the departure of original director Charles Crichton, John Frankenheimer signed on to finish the picture, and after two weeks, fired the original director of photography. Lastly, though star Lancaster and director Frankenheimer enjoyed a working relationship that yielded significant contributions to cinema, it was one that saw moments of tension and on-set confrontation. Despite all that, Birdman of Alcatraz is a remarkable end result of a tumultuous shoot. Though Frankenheimer would later go on to shoot "angrier" films, like The Manchurian Candidate and The French Connection II, here he imbues upon Birdman of Alcatraz, somewhat surprisingly, a soft, intimate, and inspiring touch. The audience's initial exposure to Robert Stroud has them meeting face-to-face a rather angry and care-nothing individual who seems to have no love for anything or anyone except his mother. But it's not soon after when Stroud's hardened heart begins to melt at the sight of the hungry chirping baby bird left abandoned in its nest during a rainstorm. Stroud carries the sparrow inside, nurses it back to health, and even teaches it tricks. Though the film was made during a time in which cameras were allowed to remain still and shots were allowed to linger, Frankenheimer opts to challenge his audience's patience even more by including a ninety-second close-up of a real hatching baby bird; except for a few removed frames, he allows his camera to capture the entire moment, including the freshly hatched bird wearing part of his broken shell as a hat. (Yeah, it's as adorable as you just imagined). And it's also a telling sign of what kind of film Frankenheimer wanted Birdman of Alcatraz to be: touching, gentle, and most of all, surprising.

Burt Lancaster once again finds himself sporting old-age make-up and playing a despicable character who later in life comes to terms with the person he was and the mistakes he has made, his immediately previous role being Ernst Janning in Judgment at Nuremberg. His performance as Robert Stroud remains likely the high-watermark of his career.

Putting aside the rather obvious irony of Stroud's moniker (it was at Leavenworth where he kept his birds, not Alcatraz), the original book's author, Thomas E. Gaddis (depicted on-screen by actor Edmond O'Brien, who also narrates), presents a rather compelling portrait of a man hardened by life, but softened by something as mundane and every-day as a chirping bird. Gaddis is not a stranger to writing biographical material on dangerous or diabolical men who still manage to find redemption (his other co-written book, Killer: A Journal of Murder, comes highly recommended); the care he shows in fleshing out the legacies of his real-life subjects is also matched by his objectivity. There's no attempt to paint Stroud as misunderstood, or a victim of "the system" - Andy Dufresne he is not - which makes his transformation all the more inspiring and effective. (However, reception of this version of Stroud - both in Gaddis' book and Frankenheimer's film - was labeled as wholly inaccurate by fellow inmates who knew the real man. Even post-birds, allegedly the real Stroud remained "a jerk" for the rest of his life.)

John Frankenheimer would go on to direct for an astounding forty years, luckily still able to craft at the very least exiting and entertaining fare like the Robert De Niro heist flick Ronin, though sadly his last feature film would be the remarkably stupid Reindeer Games. (He nearly directed an early iteration of what eventually became Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, directed by Paul Schrader...which eventually became Exorcist: The Beginning, completely reshot by Renny Harlin, before dying during pre-production). His filmography is a strong one, though many of his works are not nearly as well-known as what may also be the best film of his career - yes, even more so than The Manchurian Candidate. Forgive the pun: Birdman of Alcatraz soars to great heights.

It's easy to see the fingerprints of Birdman of Alcatraz all over more modern fare. Stephen King is likely a fan, as his short story "Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption" features an inmate carrying and caring for an injured bird (though in the original story it's not the Brooks we all know, love, and for whom we weep in the film version). The Green Mile has an inmate keeping a pet mouse in his cell, teaching it the same kind of tricks that Stroud did to his sparrow. Even Bill Murray manages to pay homage in the hokey but entertaining Charlie's Angels in the third act after he's locked up by a maniacal Sam Rockwell. When a filmmaker makes the best film of his career, or an actor manages to give his career-best performance, separately those are triumphs, but when those two come accomplishments come together, then history is made, and that's something to chirp about. (I'M SORRY.)

ROAD HOUSE (1989)

 

If the dictionary were a living, breathing, human man and you asked him to define “road house,” he would tell you that it was a roadside establishment in a country setting, off the beaten path, where one could seek alcohol, music, dancing, and perhaps some gambling. However, if you were to ask me — an actual living, breathing, human man — to define “road house,” I would tell you, “It’s the greatest film of all time, chicken dick.”

Both of us would be right. One of us would be more right. (It’s me.)

Road House is the kind of film that (wrongly) doesn’t feel like it belongs in Patrick Swayze’s filmography. More well-known for his contributions to the date-movie genre — Ghost, Dirty Dancing — or his closeted sobbing pedophile genre — Donnie Darko — and certainly not to speak ill of the dead, but Road House's joyous, unfettered insanity and manliness feels much more like a Kurt Russell vehicle. (Kurt Russell was a handy example because for the first fifteen years of my life, I was convinced they were the same person. Watch Road House and Tango & Cash back-to-back and tell me I’m wrong.) Sure, Swayze tussled in the action genre with Next of Kin, Red Dawn, Black Dog, the immeasurable if equally absurd Point Break, and that one which was clearly a Mad Max rip-off, but none of them ever caught cultural fire like Road House did. And none of them have its rewatchability, strange uneven tone, or its amount of Red West.

Frankly, it’s kind of a shame that even after having contributed three mainstays of the action genre with slightly ironic classics that Swayze couldn’t find surer footing with future solid action fare. For as celebrated as they are today, that Road House, Red Dawn, and Point Break didn’t solidify Swayze as at least an action semi-icon seems strange, but perhaps it was his ability to visit several different genres (often for the ladies) that made such an action-icon status elude him. Based on what kind of person he was, he would have really been tickled to have his name spoken in the same breath as Schwarzenegger and Stallone. Sadly, his last high-profile film project was a cameo in the Dirty Dancing sequel no one asked for.

Road House is a tough film to explain to those who haven’t seen it, and not because the plot can’t be cracked, because it certainly can — it’s a 1989 modern western which sees Swayze’s Dalton, he of the mysterious past, cleaning up a corrupt town and sending a handful of good-ol’-boys to their earth boxes pushing up daisies. No, what can’t be cracked is the extremely odd tone, which bounces back and forth between the kind of fun-and-fancy-freeness indicative of the ’80s and a sort of angry viciousness that never seems to gel. [Spoiler: The most telling example of this comes in the dispatching of the film’s primary villain, Wesley, as played by Ben Gazzara, in which members of the town he’s been victimizing kill him in cold blood. He’s shot full of holes and dies bloodily, but then everyone laughs when an idiot among them makes a stupid comment about a stuffed bear.] However, admittedly, it’s this same uneven tone that makes Road House such an entertaining watch. Having fun while spilling blood, being sexually explicit while also vying for romance, Road House plays by its own schizophrenic rules to incredible results.

As for my Kurt Russell theory, here's another thing to keep in mind: close your eyes and picture each of our manly mulleted men, Russell and Swayze, uttering the line, "Pain don't hurt." Go on, indulge me.

Now, let me guess: your version of Kurt Russell said it with a wink and a smile, right? That beautifully cocky but lovable delivery Russell has perfected over the years? Because when Swayze says it, his face is still, stoic, and serious. He means it. And that's the difference.

Road House became a midnight movie in recent years, as people began to embrace the sheer lunacy brought on by a film that has so much going on you don’t know where to look. And MGM, its home studio, knows of its marquee value. A direct-to-video sequel was released in 2006, starring a cast of actors who generally only appear in direct-to-video sequels, while a remake with Ronda Rousey stepping into Dalton’s shoes (lordy) under the direction of The Notebook’s Nick Cassavetes (lordy) has been threatening to emerge since 2017. What all this means is the Road House name still means something, and using that simple two-word title suggests to the audience a certain kind of experience, successful or not: uncorrupted ass-kicking.

I sincerely doubt there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t seen Road House by now, but if you haven’t, that’s likely why you aren’t realizing just how empty your life has been. Once you see Road House for yourself, you will then realize you haven’t fully lived. Road House isn’t a “good” film — not by any stretch — but it is a damn fine time, with all the fight scenes, sexytime, cartoon villainy, and Sam Elliott you could want. A great soundtrack, some rafters-shooting performances, and a strange tone of broad comedy meets disturbing violence make Road House a unique experience and an essential missing component of your life. I mean, Jesus Christ, it was even directed by a guy named Rowdy. What the fuck else do you need?

Patrick Swayze’s wife shared that, in his final weeks of life, he’d expressed fear that he wouldn’t leave behind a legacy that would still have people talking about him long after he was gone. He, like the rest of us, feared that he hadn’t left a mark on this world, that he’d be forgotten. Anyone could have pointed to a half-dozen titles in his career that would ensure such a thing would never happen, regardless of which genre they prefer. And, like anyone knows, the movies that come from the collaborations of actors both remembered and forgotten are bigger than any one person; because of that, titles like Ghost, Dirty Dancing, Point Break, and The Outsiders alone would've ensured Swayze's immortality. But when it comes to Road House, one thing is certain: his character Dalton (first name or surname, we’ll never know) will long be held in high regard as one of the most infamous and celebrated action heroes of all time.

And that’s a legacy worth leaving behind.

DUNKIRK (2017)

Steven Spielberg, over the last 30 years, has adopted a practice that’s become known as “one for them, one for me,” which is how he chooses his projects. He makes one film “for them” — the audience who wants the big and fun tentpole — “and me” — the more personal and intimate story that he feels compelled to tell. Think Munich (“for me”) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Crystal Skull (“for them” — and thanks for nothing, by the way). Christopher Nolan, through his extremely successful (and profitable) tenure with Warner Bros., has been embarking on the same journey — and billions of Batman revenue has made the studio pretty amenable to keeping Nolan codified. But even then, his more personal films have still been bigger than life. His “one for me” films consist of The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar, all of which have still managed to find a wide audience while satisfying his itch to tell those less broad kinds of stories. Like Spielberg, these kinds of non-mainstream tentpoles also found success at the box office.

So it’s kind of appropriate that Nolan’s latest finds him in World War II territory, which Spielberg previously explored with Saving Private Ryan (perhaps his best “one for me” film).

Dunkirk shows Nolan at his most experimental since Memento — not because of the story he’s telling, but in the way he chooses to tell it. This wartime experience is told by three separate groups of people, who for the most part never share screen time with each other (including fighter pilot Farrier, played by Tom Hardy, who conceals his face for most of his screen time with his jet’s face gear). It’s not quite real time, but it feels damn close, and there’s an intent on both Nolan’s part, as well as composer Hans Zimmer, to never let the tension cut. Whether it’s two soldiers trying to “buy” their way onto a rescue ship by carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher, or a father and son civilian team steering their boat to the Dunkirk coast to transport soldiers home, or a trio of fighter pilots trying to quell the enemy in the air, Nolan never lets the looming threat settle, and Zimmer’s music slowly, slowly, slowly builds, rarely taking a break.

There was some minor guff online about Nolan’s audacity in making a PG-13 war film, because war in real life is brutal, and hence… But once you see that Nolan isn’t interested in shooting something as grisly as Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy Beach invasion, all of that falls by the wayside. There’s very little blood in Dunkirk and almost no violence, but it never feels “missing” so much as it becomes known early on that it’s simply not necessary.

Where Dunkirk falters is in its characterization, with its various characters being defined as: scared, patriotic, and brave. In the case of the former, this unfairly taints the audience’s view of the few soldiers on screen who have every right to have been psychologically ravaged by war, but who don’t have the audience’s sympathies, anyway. The film opens with young soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) first running from enemy fire as his fellow soldiers are shot down, and then trying to take a shit on a beach, and then attempting to sneak on board a rescue ship, later defying orders from a superior officer to scram and hiding below the docks. This is our first impression of Tommy, who says more than once throughout that he “just wants to go home,” and he’s not someone the audience can become fully invested in. Between the treatment of this character, and things like Tom Hardy’s one-note performance, during which he makes the Tom Hardy face the whole time (and who I swear tries to sound a little like Bane in some scenes just to fuck with people), Dunkirk is better left to revel in its IMAX-shot war scenes than with the characters participating in them.

Dunkirk is a solid wartime film, and Nolan’s overall best since Inception, but its somewhat cold depiction of its characters muddy the waters of what the audience has come to expect by now of their on-screen war heroes. In this regard, it’s no Saving Private Ryan.

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD (2008)

It can be difficult to create an all-encompassing documentary that looks at the history of cinema unless it’s on one very specific topic. How can you possibly cover everything that’s worthy of being covered? How can you convey what you want to convey when knowing you can’t possibly include everything that should be included?

Mark Hartley’s 90-minute documentary on Australian cinema, Not Quite Hollywood, finds a way. Split into three main sections — exploitation, horror, and action — Harley explores Australia’s movie making beginnings and the country’s efforts to at least get their movies into American theaters. Not Quite Hollywood excels not just as a respectable examination of Australian films and filmmakers, but also serves as a witness to the creation of the Australian aesthetic — a look and feel that would soon become known as “Ozploitation,” and which would aid filmmakers in transitioning from making films inspired by other people to establishing their own identity.

In the beginning, when filmmakers were focused on trashy sex pics, nearly soft-core porn, the influences of Roger Corman are almost tangible. Same goes for the horror phase, with obvious odes to Hitchcock, Spielberg, and H.G. Lewis. But once the doc transitions again to the action and adventure phase, much of which is vehicular in relation, you see filmmakers begin to step up and create their own works that would, in turn, inspire American filmmakers. George Miller, perhaps one of the few Australian directors to command the Hollywood box office (along with James Wan), most recently with Mad Max: Fury Road, is a notable exception of a director who, like John Carpenter or George Romero, started small with low budget productions and eventually changed the landscape of movie making.

Not Quite Hollywood is also often very funny, getting a lot of mileage from frequently cutting back to Australian film critic and full-time curmudgeon Bob Ellis for him to dryly voice his disapproval over certain titles, certain directors, or certain entire cinematic movements. Hartley also occasionally lets his camera linger on certain certain subjects whom other interviewees have suggested as having, er…interesting or combative personalities, in an effort to offer an inkling that maybe there was something to those claims. Inversely, stories about the utter insanity that Dennis Hopper engaged in during the shooting of Mad Dog Morgan, when compared to the interview portions with Hopper (who good-spiritedly appears) that present him as very calm, reflective, and absolutely honest about his past behavior, are equally amusing.

It’s no surprise that Quentin Tarantino turns up as a talking head, and probably gets more screen time than some of the actual Australian filmmakers whose films are being discussed, but the overly excited director helps to represent that next generation of international directors who were clearly inspired by Australian cinema. James Wan and Leigh Whannell also appear, with Whannell freely admitting that the scene in Mad Max where Mel Gibson offers a bad guy shackled to a flaming car a handsaw directly inspired one of the main concepts of their then-hit horror film Saw. (Not Quite Hollywood was produced in 2008.)

Even if you don’t have a particular interest in Australian cinema, you’d be wise to embrace Not Quite Hollywood anyway. Though the accents may be different and the environments more desert-ridden than cityscaped, the spirit of low budget filmmaking — and all the trials and tribulations that come with it — are universal.