Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948) is a claustrophobic masterpiece – a spiraling descent into the dark recesses of human nature. Hitchcock explores the rough edges of ego and impulse and how they can lead to horrible consequences.

It may be Hitchcock’s greatest movie. Certainly it is his most tightly constricted piece – filled with long takes in near real-time. It’s an amazing achievement of controlled tension.

The only exterior shot in the film comes during the opening credits. The camera rests on an apartment window with the curtains pulled shut. There is a muffled scream and then suddenly we’re inside the apartment where David Kentley is being strangled to death by two of his friends.

The movie setting goes internal. It reflects the direction of the film because we’re about to get inside the minds, motivations, and the personalities of the characters. We’re trapped inside the apartment for good – just like poor, dead David who has been stuffed into a chest.

His murderers are two wealthy, intellectual young men named Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Philip Morgan (Farley Granger). They have killed their friend for one reason – to experience the sensation of murder. They want to pull off the perfect crime – and revel in their superiority.

To make matters even more horrifying, Brandon and Philip are throwing a dinner party and inviting David’s family, his girlfriend (Janet), the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, and their former academy teacher Rupert (their mentor who has inspired their crime with his misinterpretations of Nietzchian philosophies of the Superman).

“Nobody commits a murder just for the experiment of murder,” Brandon says as he pops a bottle of champagne. “Nobody except us.”

But the celebration isn’t what Brandon expects because the heavy weight of their crime begins to crush the more sensitive Philip. Brandon is the cold, charming snob – and a classic sociopath. Philip, however, slowly begins to unravel. He gashes his palm after crushing a wine glass in his hands when David’s aunt mistakes another guest for David.

But even the cool and calm Brandon has moments of panic. When David’s father asks where his son is, Brandon stammers: “I thought he was coming with you!”

Rupert (Jimmy Stewart) doesn’t show up until 30 minutes into the film. And once he arrives the film becomes his. Stewart – one of the greatest actors in American history – is amazing in “Rope.” Personally, he didn’t like his performance, but the movie is in essence about the transformation of Rupert – his growth from a bitter cynic into a connected human being. And it works.

Here’s a peek into Rupert. Introduced to Janet (Joan Chandler):

“Ah, Miss Walker,” he says.

“How did you know?” she asks.

“Brandon has spoken of you.”

“Did he do me justice?”

“Do you deserve justice?” he asks and then waltzes off with a smirk.

The commanding personality of Rupert begins to melt Brandon. He joins Philip as the weight of his crime is reflected back to him in the presence of his mentor.

Rupert – a naturally suspicious and cunningly observant man – gets his first thread to pull when Brandon – a game player – serves chicken for dinner. Philip no longer eats chicken after having to strangle one at Brandon’s farm. When Brandon tells the story with an evil twinkle in his eye, Philip has an outburst of anger. The scene gives Rupert his first clue and his investigation begins.

He comes up with gems like this: “You’re more than unusually allergic to the truth tonight Philip. That’s the second time you haven’t told it.”

Ultimately the keen Rupert finally discovers the grim secret in the bottom of the trunk. It’s a chilling scene. The movie ends with Rupert throwing open the apartment window and letting the outside cleanse the inside of the apartment with its noise and voices.

And Philip utters the last words of the movie: “They’re coming.” They don't make movies like "Rope" anymore. But they should.

Labels: Hitchcock, Movie Review, Movies, Ode To, Rope

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George A. Romero discovered a universal truth: Zombies rock. What’s not to love? Shambling, animated corpses with a taste for living flesh? Desperate survivors with trigger happy fingers decapitating said zombies with rusty machetes or well-aimed head shots? Zombies piling up like chords of wood? And the screaming!

It’s like Christmas at the organ donor shop.

Romero’s original “Dawn of the Dead” made in 1978 is a lot of things: horrifying, taboo-shattering, gory, and disturbing. It’s also horror camp at its finest – skewering the mass consumer culture of the United States in our most shallow of decades: the 1970s.

Romero has a gleefully good time with his pack of survivors holed up in an indoor shopping mall. The slow-moving zombies that bang into the display cases or stumble up the escalators aren’t so far removed from normal everyday mall shoppers – at least according to Romero.

Why do the zombies congregate at the mall? “Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives,” one of the characters informs us.

Yeah, even dead we like buying stuff at the mall.

But one thing the Romero film is not? Scary.

That’s one reason why we’re also fans of the much maligned 2004 remake by director Zack Snyder. That’s a sacrilege in many quarters, but for pure fright – Snyder tops Romero. That’s the truth. Romero’s low-budget wonder is a classic – no doubt. It can be uncomfortable to watch, but there is more dark humor than actual chills. Romero focused his film on his wicked wit: satire instead of terror.

Snyder isn’t interested in delivering a sardonic message. He wants to scare you. And damn it if he doesn’t. His zombies – like the times we live in – are fast. There’s no shambling here – but straight out sprinting.

The gem of Snyder’s movie is the opening 10 minutes. It may be the most frightening sequence of any horror movie made over the last 20 years. It has a disjointed, sour flavor as if the orange juice you drink every morning has been spiked with cyanide.

Sarah Polley plays a nurse named Ana. She’s at the end of a difficult shift at the hospital. All she wants to do is go home. Traveling home over washed out streets in a bland suburban tract, she arrives home for “date night” with her husband. They make love in their messy, little bed in their messy, little house.

Then it all goes to hell.

The little girl next door wonders in and lo and behold the lower half of her face has been chewed off. She creeps into the bedroom and Ana’s husband jumps up concerned. But before he can react, she takes a bite of flesh out of his neck.

Ana locks the little girl out of the bedroom and then has a grueling life and death struggle as her husband dies and then reanimates as a zombie. It’s bone rattling violence and by the time Ana gets into her car – her neighborhood, her world is in chaos.

It’s absolutely chilling.

While the overall Snyder’s film doesn’t quite live up to the original (and the characters make some ridiculous decisions – especially at the end), Snyder delivers a zombie movie that belongs on the list of greatest undead flicks ever made – with Romero’s original and the superb “28 Days Later.”

The two movies follow the same premise – but are very different movies. That’s why you can enjoy them both: turn to Romero for the horrifying satire (you can often overlook the rather awkward acting) and then lean on Snyder for some in-your-face terror (and for using Johnny Cash's "Man Comes Around" as an opening number).

Either way -- it’s a great two for one.

Labels: Dawn of the Dead, Horror, Movie Review, Movies, Ode To

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60 Years After its Release, "It's a Wonderful Life" Remains a Powerful Human Story

It’s difficult to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) without a few tears splashing down your cheeks.

It’s a tearjerker, but the film isn’t maudlin or manipulative. “It’s a Wonderful Life” rises above that kind of trite nonsense and becomes a truly human film – a masterpiece in the tradition of Charles Dickens (but with an American backdrop). That’s the power of the film – viewers experience the turbulence and triumphs of George Bailey’s life.

Director Frank Capra – in top form – creates a complicated and complex man in George Bailey (played with amazing range by Jimmy Stewart). So much so that viewers feel his anger, relish in his bouts of happiness, and can’t help but rooting for him. Few films provide such fully realized characters.

Bailey is in many ways unlikable. He can be a seething loudmouth (telling a boy dancing with Mary Hatch to stop annoying people). He’s got an explosive temper that he unleashes on his wife and on his uncle with shocking fury. He’s an envious, jealous man especially in his mixed emotions toward his pal Sam Wainwright who becomes a rich industrialist. He also falls into periods of depression and self-loathing.

Yet despite all of his flaws, Bailey has a sweet and tender side. He cares deeply about his mother and brother (sacrificing his own happiness for that of his family). He’s loyal to the core. Bailey’s a dreamer – a man who longs for adventure and “to build things,” but can’t muster the courage to move out of his hometown.

But Bailey doesn’t stand alone. He is given a supporting cast of original characters – all of whom bring their own histories, prejudices, and complications to the story. From his crazy Uncle Billy (who lives with squirrels and crows) to the wheel-chair confined industrialist Henry F. Potter.

Don’t let the holiday theme fool you. “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a dark film – disguised by its title and its reputation as a Christmas movie. But the movie is about a man’s lost dreams, his plummet into hopelessness, and finally into an attempted suicide. This is the story of a man who comes to despise himself so much that he wishes he were never born.

And what a triumph that the darkness turns to light. Bailey gets to redeem himself. Through the lens of his own death, Bailey is given the gift to discover the consequences of what would have happened to the people he cares so much about if he’d never existed.

The most chilling scene in this sequence is when Bailey stumbles through the snow of a cemetery and falls to his knees at the base of a gloomy tombstone. Etched in the cold stone is the name of his brother who drowned in a sledding accident when he was nine years old.

Distraught, Bailey turns to his guardian angel Clarence.

Clarence: Your brother, Harry Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.

Bailey: That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war - he got the Congressional Medal of Honor, he saved the lives of every man on that transport.

Clarence: Every man on that transport died! Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry.

The full impact of what he has wished for sinks into through his facial expressions (his eyes wild with fright and loathing, his hands trembling). It’s a powerful scene.

This darkness is what makes the ending so heartwarming. We watch the town of Bedford Falls rally behind its favorite son. They come out in droves to show support for this desperate man – this flawed, yet inherently good man.

And viewers see a mirror of themselves – what would it be like if we were in the same circumstances? Would people come out to support us? Would our families and friends be there? And that’s when the tears start.

Because George Bailey is all of us.

Read our ode to the Bourne Supremacy

Read our parody of "It's a Wonderful Life"

Labels: It's a Wonderful Life, Movies, Ode To

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All you really need to know about the movie “Fight Club” (1999) is that the nameless narrator, played by Edward Norton, has a penguin as his “power” animal.

That’s when you understand that you’re in uncharted territory.

“Fight Club” (1999) nears movie making perfection until the last 15 minutes when it veers off course and smashes into a brick wall of chaos. For all intents and purposes the last 15 minutes is a parody of the beginning and middle – a Keystone Kops version that features Norton scrambling around in his boxer shorts like some deranged circus clown.

It’s ludicrous.

But until that breaking point – the turning point happens when Meat Loaf is shot and the members of Project Mayhem begin to chant “His name is Robert Paulson” – the movie is a gritty, subversive portrayal of a disenchanted yuppie’s descent into madness. Or it might be about the cultural castration of the modern male. Or it could be about the seductive attraction of fascism in a valueless society. Or perhaps it’s a satire about our advertising-driven and consumer-mad culture.

Then again it might not be about anything.

“I love this idea that you can have fascism without offering any direction or solution. Isn't the point of fascism to say, 'This is the way we should be going'? But this movie couldn't be further from offering any kind of solution,” Director David Fincher told Empire magazine.

I like to believe it’s about all of the above – but in a skimming the surface kind of way. “Fight Club” is the shallow end of the pool, but in a good way. It’s all wry observation and ironic snipe – offering its audience a black, tangled comedy, but nothing in the way of a philosophy or an answer.

That’s why “Fight Club” gives audiences some of the best throwaway lines of the last two decades:

• “We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”
• “It's just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled.”
• “I had it all. Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of... wherever.”

“Fight Club” is the rare movie that becomes better after multiple viewings. The reason is that once the surprise ending is revealed – that Norton and Brad Pitt are actually the same person – you can watch the movie over and over again searching for the telltale clues of the madness Norton is experiencing. It’s a dizzying experience (especially if you watch it on DVD). Flincher carefully constructs the narrative to drop subtle clues to Norton’s condition:

• The movie opens with an animated sequence through brain synapses and the narrator saying: “People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.” They’re asking him because he is Tyler.
• When describing the bombs rigged to blow up the financial center in downtown New York, the narrator says: “I know this because Tyler know this.” They share the same brain.
• In the DVD, we begin to see flickers of Tyler Durden – just flashes of Pitt decked out in red leather jacket and sunglasses, wearing a wicked grin. It’s the narrator’s mind beginning to form his delusion.
• The first time Tyler becomes a “real” person is in an airport sequence when the narrator passes him on one of the people movers. Tyler is wearing a white suit and a bright yellow shirt. Such an innocent scene – yet mind blowing at the same time.
• In the scene in his boss’s office, when the narrator beats himself up, he thinks: “For some reason, I thought of my first fight with Tyler.” In fact, his first fight with “Tyler” was his first fight with himself.

Strangely enough, the center of "Fight Club" is Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer. On the surface the movie is about the relationship between Norton and Pitt, but it's Carter's character that is the catalyst for the action. One can argue that Marla Singer is the model that Tyler Durden is created from.

The similarities are striking.

Both Marla and Tyler live on the outskirts of society. They are counter-culture and have rebelled against the mainstream. The first time the narrator meets Marla, she steals clothes from a Laundromat and sells them at second-hand store. The first time Tyler materializes into a “physical form” at the airport, he steals a sports car.

Marla is Tyler – or at least the masculine version of her.

There’s no doubt that “Fight Club” struck a nerve and has become a bona fide cult hit. And for the first hour and 48 minutes the movie cuts to the bone with its wit, humor and scathing social commentary. It’s that last 15 minutes though that comes close to nearly blowing the whole spectacle up: kind of like Tyler Durden himself.

Read "Fantastically Bad Cinema: Cocktail"

Read our picks for the 12 best romantic movies

Labels: Fight-Club, Movie Review, Movies, Ode To

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