Back to the Future, Close Encounters of the boring kind, Apocalypse Now

10/30/16 Back to the Future, Best Sound Effects Editing, 1985 #56 BBC, National Film Registry

I don't have any deep, insightful comments for Back to the Future. If there is some philosophical meaning, I've missed it. I can say that over 20 years later, it's still a fun movie. I can even say I understand why it's on the National Film Registry, but not so sure why it's on the BBC list (that list has to be the most perplexing of the four). Anyway, in case you have lived under a rock or are under thirty and you are not familiar with Back to the Future, a brief synopsis follows. Michael J. Fox is Marty McFly, a sort of hip high schooler who is friends with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), a 'mad scientist' with a dream of building a time machine. Marty's parents, George and Lorraine (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson) are less than average, schlumpy and defeated, especially in the eyes of Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), a high school classmate and George's boss. Doc Brown builds his time machine, in the form of a DeLorean and powers it with plutonium stolen from a group of Libyans. Doc Brown gets shot at by the Libyans as he his ready to test the DeLorean, and McFly jumps in trying to escape. Marty goes back to 1955, when his parents were in high school. Marty tries to fit in as the new kid and being a peer to his parents. All kinds of time shifting things can and do happen. Fox is perfect as McFly, with a wise-cracking and and engaging manner. Lloyd, who is also known to fans of the television show Taxi as Reverend Jim, is addled and compelling, the science teacher we all wish we had. The movie is fun and has fun with the time travel aspect, including Marty McFly influencing Chuck Berry and his duck walk. It also raises the question of what happens if you change one little thing in history - what else gets changed? The movie is fun and family friendly, and has tons of great trivia questions (like, do you know what a DeLorean is?). It won't go down as one of my favorite movies ever, but I also don't resent watching it again (see below).

11/4/16 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Best Cinematography, 1977 #75 BBC, National Film Registry

Oh my god. I didn't really get into this movie when I saw it the first time almost 40 years ago; I thought there was a chance that now that I'm older and wiser and appreciate things that I didn't before (early bed times, vegetables, Westerns), maybe I would like it now. Nope, no, uh-uh. I kind of liked the last 10 minutes, but honestly, I just didn't care. I just could not suspend my sense of disbelief for any length of time. In my opinion, not one of Steven Spielberg's best films, even though it's #75 on the BBC's 100 Best American Films, and it's on the National Film Registry as being of historical significance. Perhaps I'll give you that it was groundbreaking; I'm sure my dad would say that, in fact, I think he owned it, but he also made me watch Star Trek  re-runs my entire childhood.

11/5/16 Apocalypse Now, Best Sound Mixing, Best Cinematography 1979, #30 AFI, #90 BBC, National Film Registry

There are a couple of versions of Apocalypse Now, but I only watched the original cut, which is the one that was nominated for the Oscars and is on all three of the other lists. Apocalypse Now is set during the Vietnam War, but is based on Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, which is set in the Congo (I have not read the book, so I cannot do any kind of compare or contrast). The movie is seen through the point of view of Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen), and follows his journey to find Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando) and kill him; Kurtz has created his own ideology, and in turn, amassed loyal and fanatical followers, some from the army, but some also from the indigenous Montagnards in Cambodia. He has become a threat to army and they want him eliminated. The time that Willard actually spends with Kurtz is far less than the time spent on the journey up river with members of the PBR Street Gang, led by the Chief, Chef, Mr. Clean (a very young Laurence Fishburne) and Lance Johnson. They're not all that thrilled with having to escort Willard and they have their own conflicts, with him, each other and others in the military. The group meets up with an Air Cavalry regiment, led by Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who admires Lance Johnson because of his reputation as a surfer (Kilgore/Duvall also utters the famous phrase 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning'); Dennis Hopper as an American photojournalist who seems to be under the spell of Kurtz. I was surprised that Sheen wasn't nominated for Best Actor for his role; it's through his eyes we experience the story, and the senselessness of the war and the death that surrounds the him and his comrades in arms, the twisted irony that is his mission: trying to kill a decorated U.S.Special Forces colonel in neutral country, a man who would otherwise be a hero. The movie is filled with complexities, a lot of dialogue, symbolism, multiple viewings reveal different things; it's also a movie that comes with its own legend and movie about the movie Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. None of this is surprising when you consider that Francis Ford Coppola directed, produced, co-wrote the screenplay and the score. I was shocked and a little upset that a movie this intense, well-acted (Hopper annoyed me and have the time I couldn't understand what he was saying, but aside from that), thought-provoking, only won two of the eight Oscars for which it was nominated. And, not to disparage Kramer v. Kramer, but really? Kramer v. Kramer won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (again, Sheen not even nominated), Best Adapted Screenplay. That's kind of like would you like a really good frozen pizza or a delicious pizza from (Twin Cities' own) Pizza Luce. Um, Pizza Luce please. Which one do people still talk about 35 years later? It's an investment in time and attention, but one that I think is totally worth it. It has far more of a place in cinematic and social history than many of the other films of that year.