the Anderson Tapes: (1971. dir: Sidney Lumet) Although no better than a mediocre film itself, it wears the honor of being one of the first of the Paranoia Films of the seventies, emerging in the same year as Klute, the French Connection, and Day of the Jackal, but preceding the other greats of the genre.
Apparently uncertain where to take it, this one was played for laughs, --albeit at a subdued chuckle,-- and it doesn't really work, although Dyan Cannon has a successfully dry and witty delivery. The "heist" parts don't work because of the slow pace, a result of forty ensuing years of ultra-acceleration. More damning is that Sean Connery is utterly miscast; it was a role designed for somebody much schlubbier. The characters as written remind me some of the Hot Rock, do you remember that one? "Afghanistan bananastand"? It seemed rompingly funny and suspenseful when I was a kid, and then a weirdly stubborn non-starter when I saw it again in late adolescence. (Mostly I remember the Mad Magazine satire. A lot of movies from the '70s and late '60s I remember that way. I never saw Love Story, but in the Mad version, the Ali McGraw character dies of a disease only found in Hollywood in which she becomes increasingly gorgeous until her final breath.)
The running "joke" in the Anderson Tapes is that many different private and governmental agencies are monitoring these criminals, with no two communicating with each other, and most of the taps are barely legal, if at all, resulting in more chaos than justice. That's the theme, albeit clumsily done, which keeps it interesting in the long run. Without it, it'd be forgotten as the Hot Rock.
Except that it also boasts Christopher Walken in his film debut, and he already has the skills and Intangible X-factor which set him apart from the rest of the pack.
Conan the Barbarian (2011. dir: Marcus Nispel) Khal Drogo and Daxos from Game of Thrones partner up to wreak Cimmerian vengeance on a father-daughter Axis of Evil (Stephen Lang and Rose McGowan; they're so good) who are determined to conquer the world through sorcery and deviltry. Whether you want to label the movie "epic in scope" or "pedestrian and interminable" will depend largely on whether or not you cared about the books. Although I hold a fond spot eternally in my heart for Arnold's old Conan movie, this one, this guy, Jason Momoa, is Robert E. Howard's warrior. ("I know not. I care not. I live, I love, I slay. I am content." CLASSIC.) Personally, I found the first third, with its backstory (poor Ron Perlman), pretentious narration (Morgan Freeman, naturally, who has officially inherited the Voice-of-God mantle from James Earl Jones), and yawningly predictable roller-coaster through hysterical melodrama, swelly Bombast-Musik and bathos, to be a pretty tough ride. As soon as the Sandmen attacked, though, I was glad I'd stuck with it.
Hardcore: (1979. dir: Paul Schrader) THIS is the follow-up to Taxi Driver? Thematically, sure, with clunky rendundancy. But the same guy wrote this lame-assed script? George C. Scott tosses himself in headlong and mines some nuggets of gold (or, anyway, pyrite) from this story about a religious man who loses his daughter to the Los Angeles porn industry and will burn down the world if that's what it takes to get her back. Mostly it comes across as contrived, removed, and trying to shock us with "truths" about the seedy underbelly of the city, and, like most things about porn, it suffers from an only half-acknowledged sense of the ridiculous. Because porn appeals not to the brain but to the, well, under-brain, its mechanisms always look embarrassing from the outside. One of the great things about Boogie Nights was that this, the main and over-riding "truth" about porn, was fully embraced.
The best part of the script is in fact when Scott's searcher (and he does have something in common with Ethan Edwards) describes the tenets of Calvinism to Season Hubley's "industry worker", then tells her she wouldn't understand, looking in from the outside. She replies, "Anything makes sense from the inside. A pervert one time came that close to convincing me to do it with his German Shepherd." And then, equal parts cynical and forlorn: "At least you get to go to Heaven. What do I get?"
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