Empire of the Sun (1987)

Not surprised at Spielberg’s brutality here, necessarily (after all, he is the same man who went on to make the incredibly traumatic War of the Worlds), but by his ambiguity. At first glance he’s trying to have his cake and eat it too by tempering the gauntlet Jim is put through with a sense of adventure and whimsy, but the bombing run on the prison camp was the Rosetta Stone for me*: it’s actually a film about survival through denial. Jim has to contextualize his experiences through the filter of his adventure comics because otherwise he’d be catatonic with fear, grief and guilt. But the darkness is always creeping in. It’s a challenging and brilliant movie and it never gives the viewer easy catharsis. Even the “happy” ending feels more like a funeral than a reunion (hence the final shot).

But it is also an incredibly exciting and fun movie, particularly any time John Malkovich is on-screen. Malkovich’s commitment elevates his character and, often, the film itself, turning simple jokes like “I’d bet my Life on it.” into incredible catharsis. Pretty much my only complaint is that it’s a little long in the tooth. But I can easily see that changing upon a rewatch. A-

*The other key moment for me is when Jim and his parents are driving through downtown Shanghai to go to the party. The scene starts from Jim’s perspective, as the camera floats past well-framed vignettes like the establishing shot of an Indiana Jones movie. Locals bartering, fireworks, exotic wares; the stuff of kids’ adventures. Then the orphan is beaten by a cop and the tone changes as it switches to his dad’s side of the car. Suddenly the camera pulls back and we see the squalor, the grotesque disparity in wealth between the Graham’s and the locals, the bubbling tension. Fantastic moment that sums up the tonal shifts that the rest of the film will play with.

Invasion USA (1985)

Yet another “action” movie whose action sequences mostly consist of people standing still, yelling, and firing machine guns. The same kind of inert sequences you see in something like Rambo: First Blood Part II. It’s definitely an 80’s thing, where just the idea of soldiers shooting dozens of rounds a second was enough to give your red-blooded male action movie audience a chubby. I thought the ludicrous premise of an army of terrorists invading America would sustain a film like this comedically but, a few deliciously paranoid conservative moments aside (“They don’t even understand their freedoms. WE WILL USE IT AGAINST THEM.”), it really squanders the idea. To be fair it’s probably an over-ambitious plot for a film budgeted like this, so it ends up playing mostly as a series of vignettes in which Chuck Norris (who co-wrote the film, based on a story by his younger brother, so I guess the whole Norris clan is nuts) fucks up terrorists’ days. They want to blow up this church of decent, God-Fearing, white American people but wascally Chuck Norris sabotaged their bomb and blows them up instead! Wash, rinse, repeat.

This was the first Chuck Norris movie I ever watched and I still don’t think I have a good handle on what his persona as an action star was. He mostly just seems quiet and bearded. In this he’s even kind of off-putting and creepy, as a man whose sole reason for existing is to whisper ever so gently in the head terrorist’s ear “It’s time to die.” There’s a reason gay jokes and modern ironic appreciation of 80’s action movies always go hand in hand. You kind of wish the two would just bone and get it over with. D+

Soldier of Orange (1977)

Vivid and fascinating WW2 thriller about the occupation of the Netherlands. You’d never expect Verhoeven to shine in something as large and serious as this, but his personal history with the material (having lived through the occupation from ages two to seven) tempers most of his puerile sensibilities, while those that remain serve well to liven up your coming of age cliches (though all the actors look much to old to be college students anyway), the man getting sucked into war cliches, group of close-knit friends ending up in wildly different places cliches, etc.

It’s a first rate thriller in it’s own right, but what makes this film especially great is how, like Black Book, it actively muddles the black and white morality of WW2 narratives. There are members of the Dutch resistance who are anti-semitic, there are traitors working for the Nazis in order to protect their loved ones who are Jewish, there are members of British intelligence who are more than happy to send Dutch refugees on suicide missions as little more than diversions, Dutch citizens who cheer equally as hard for Nazi parades and parades of their Queen’s return after the liberation. As much as I love Verhoeven’s Hollywood sci-fi/action films, I think this is probably his greatest film. A

Starship Troopers (1997)

Verhoeven’s masterpiece, as far as his ventures into smart dumb movies go. Love how it’s less an action movie than an old Hollywood style tale of star-crossed lovers. Other than that, everyone on the internet knows why this movie is fantastic. I have little to add to that. A

Sergeant York (1941)

So conflicted. On the one hand, it’s a well-made film with an incredibly riveting climactic battle sequence. On the other, Howard Hawks might have accidentally made one of the most offensively patriotic films of all time. It plainly equates God to country, and the triumph of the film is a man overcoming his pacifism. A-

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

To get the praise out of the way, this is a compelling and propulsive thriller/procedural that, while not reaching the thrilling highs of films like Zodiac or All The President’s Men, is exceedingly well-made, containing nothing but very good performances. That said…

So, people who think that this film doesn’t endorse torture…what could have been in the film that would have meant it DID endorse torture?

Because I see a film that
1) says torture happened (certainly true)
2) says that torture got information that lead to the capture of Bin Laden (probably true)
3) gives no compelling argument that the assassination of Bin Laden wasn’t worth it.

Maybe that last one is where you disagree, stating that Chastain’s final shot implies all the toll the war on terror has taken on her. I think that’s a stretch. She’s too much of a cipher to really assign a definitive reason for her crying but if I had to take a guess it’d be the Hurt Locker factor: the past 12 years of her life have been hyperfocused on a single goal, and now that that has been achieved, what is left for her? To connect it with torture is to connect it with events on the movie that haven’t been seen in 2 hours, barely referenced after that, and even then they aren’t referenced from a place of moral regret.

I don’t think the movie is a tract that is promoting torture. And I don’t think the film pulls many punches in depicting the violence of torture. But I think the films refusal to comment on it in any meaningful way is an implicit approval of the US’s decision to utilize torture in the War on Terror. It’s depicted and discussed by characters too casually, and the casual nature of it isn’t later subverted, it’s just ignored.

It’s still a really good movie. I don’t have to agree morally with a work of art in order to like it. I don’t even think Kathryn Bigelow endorses torture just because I think she made a film that does. But what in this movie leads you to believe that it doesn’t (with reservations, certainly) endorse torture?

And for semantic purposes, I’m using the dictionary definition of endorse as “to approve, support, or sustain”. B+

Casualties of War (1989)

A story like this deserves more subtlety than De Palma is capable of, but all the performances are good and he somehow manages not to fuck it up. Michael J. Fox is surprisingly good. B

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

This movie is as lunkheaded as it’s title. I’m afraid I have no tolerance for this kind of mindless carnage (as opposed to, say, Commando’s kind of mindless carnage). Especially after marathonning so many Michael Mann movies, what counts for a gunfight here is just pathetic. Shot of Rambo waving his gun around like a 5 year old at recess, cut to minority clutching his chest and falling, wash, rinse, repeat. Jungles are horrible settings for action sequences anyway. The geography is always impossible to make out and it’s just not dynamic. Other than the insane body count (which, unlike Commando’s, feels more repetitive than gloriously excessive) this is a film almost entirely without flavor of any kind. The only reason I’m not giving it a lower score is that it does have two genuinely good sequences: the first being Rambo in the spinny helicopter of death (which is the only part, other than wasting an exploding arrow on a single retreating soldier, that feels like the good Commando kind of excessive violence) and the second being the helicopter chase, particularly when Rambo’s chopper starts going haywire. There’s little as nerve-wracking as watching a helicopter spin around, barely in control. Anyone else who’s played Pilot Wings will agree with me there. C-

Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

It’s always interesting to see how cinematic convention changes in specific sub-genres (no pun intended) like this. Every submarine movie I’ve seen post-Das Boot has that famous “camera whizzing through the narrow corridor shot” in it. Pre-Das Boot, the camerawork is a LOT more stationary, emphasizing closed frames to heighten the inherent claustrophobia. As for the film itself, t never quite reaches the heights of something like Enemy Below or The Caine Mutiny, but it’s still a relatively effective submarine thriller. I would say it’s main problem is that it offers zero surprises or innovations. All the plots and character arcs are wrapped up in the most straight-forward and plain ways, without even the elegance to have them coincide (they defeat their enemy and learn to trust their domineering captain, but at completely different points of the film). C+

K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)

If you need The Caine Mutiny on a nuclear submarine, Crimson Tide exists. There’s really no reason to watch this. It does everything wrong and takes over two hours to do it. I don’t know what anyone involved was thinking while making this, one of the most expensive independent movies ever made. But they blew it on every front, and paid for their hubris with a massive failure, so maybe there is justice in this world. D