I was watching the Top 10 Show this week and they were doing the Top 10 Jack Nicholson films.  I try to do a list of my own for each week’s topic, but, when investigating, I was surprised that I could not come up with ten films from Nicholson that I liked.

However, I had not seen several and so I thought I might get a couple of more movies in his oeuvre watched so I could complete the list.  I decided to start with the highest film on John and Matt’s list that I had not seen, which also checks off one of those boxes of an iconic film that I had never seen before.

Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson as Jake “J.J.”Gittes, a private investigator who gets hired by a woman claiming to be the wife of chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) to prove that he was cheating on her.  When Mulwray is killed, Gittes discovers that the woman who hired him was a fake and that the real wife Evelyn (Faye Dunaway) had secrets.  Gittes began investigating the murder, which was connected to disputes in Los Angeles over water.

The story is complex and really develops over the course of the movie.  It is absolutely a movie where you need to give your complete attention if you want to understand what is happening.

Directed by Roman Polanski, Chinatown is a neo-noir crime film with a very complex mystery at its heart.  However, there is more than just the murder in this mystery with the film taking a couple of difficult turns along the way.

Jack Nicholson is the top of his game here and his presence truly drives the film along.  Faye Dunaway has great chemistry with Nicholson and stands out.  John Huston only has a few scenes in the movie, but you gain a deep hatred of him right away.  The performances as a whole are every bit as complex as the story that the movie is telling.

I am unsure how I feel about the ending.  SPOILER (if you haven’t seen the film after all these years) As Faye Dunaway is attempting to escape from John Huston, the police shoot and kill her, making the ending tragic as can be.  Apparently, Polanski wanted this ending and had conflict over one of the writers who had wanted a less tragic ending.  I am not confident how I liked that.  It did leave me feeling unsatisfied, if not emotional.

Chinatown is a certainly a classic film and I was pleased that I finally checked off this box.  It will certainly make my own list of Top 10 Nicholson movies.

Today’s big news that Warner Brothers has begun talks with Michael Keaton to resume his role of Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Flash film brought a great deal of excitement and anticipation to the DC movies.  It made me watch the film that started it all.

In 1989, Tim Burton directed Batman, starring Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Jack Nicholson as The Joker/Jack Napier.  This film took the character of Batman in a different direction than he had been.  In the comics, Batman had begun to become darker, especially within the Dark Knight Returns mini series from Frank Miller.  The Joker had started to be portrayed as a more psychotic killer in the comics, The Killing Joke, which came out in 1988, a good example.

Burton’s Batman took the two Batman versions, the campy version from the 60’s TV show and the darker comic book version and combined them into a great movie compilation.

Keaton and Nicholson are magnificent in their roles.  Keaton was really considered poor casting at first, but he truly knocked it out of the park.  Nicholson was comedic and over-the-top, giving the Joker a ton of personality.  Of course, he was just playing Jack Nicholson with the volume turned way up.

Gotham City was as much of a character as any of the main actors in the film.  The city was dark and filled with crime.  The look of the film was pure Tim Burton design and lead to many movies following this one providing important details to Gotham.

Kim Basinger is fine in the film, but honestly, I think the Bruce Wayne-Vicki Vale romance is easily the weakest part of the film.  I did not buy these two falling for each other after one basic night.  And when Alfred (Michael Gough) takes her into the Batcave, well, that just was done to movie the plot along.  I liked her use here, but I would have liked for their relationship to have developed more than what it was.

Watching this again for the first time in a lot of years, I was impressed with how much it held up.  With the exception of the Vicki Vale relationship, I really enjoyed the movie.  In comparison to the more recent Batman flicks, Batman ’89 feels more campy than it did at the time of the release, but it does catch a nice balance between the two styles of the Bat.

The ending of the film is fabulous, taking place at Gotham’s 200th anniversary and ending up in the belfry of a church.  The final battle with Joker is just amazing and Nicholson steals every minute of it.

I personally see this as not as influential a movie as some other people do.  The third and fourth Batman movies following this slid into nearly total camp and almost destroyed the comic book movie.  I credit the Sam Raimi Spider-Man and the original X-Men movies as the true inspiration of the current comic book movie world.  However, that does not make Batman any less entertaining.

I recently watched the Neverending Story, a film from the 1980’s that featured a scene (the death of Artax the horse) that traumatized a generation.  However, there may have been one other scene that was more scarring to the youth of the 80’s than Artax’s death and it appeared in Transformers: The Movie.

That scene is, of course, the scene where the Autobots’ leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) is killed in a battle with Megatron (Frank Welker).  There are countless children whose first concept of death came from this animated movie.

I remember where I was when I was watching this movie for the first time.  Prime dies int he first act of the film and it took the whole air out of the rest of the movie.  I disliked the film at the time because they were trying hard to introduce a bunch of new characters into the cannon, most of which were oddly colored and non distinguishable from the others.

Hot Rod (Judd Nelson) led the new characters, all voiced by well known actors, and he was the most distinct of the new Autobots.  Megatron was transformed as well into new bad guy Galvatron (Leonard Nemoy) and they introduced the epic villain Unicron (Orson Welles).

Most of the music is just horrible, but the song called “The Touch” is a perfect song for the moment and, of course, Dare to Be Stupid by Weird Al Yankovic was a great surprise.

Watching this again, the story is weak and the film never really builds on the emotion of the death of Optimus Prime.  The animation was not much better than the animated series from the 1980’s.

I just cannot understand the choice to basically toss aside all of the characters that was well known and loved from the TV show to introduce a bunch of new characters that would not last for long.  It would not be too long before Optimus Prime was brought back to life and the characters from this film are discarded.

I was a fan of the animated series, but this film not nothing to continue this.

This was the second time that I watched this movie.  My memory was of the first time figuring out what was going on.  On this second viewing, I liked it even more because I could notice set up that I did not see before.

It is 1954 and federal marshal Leonardo DiCaprio arrived on Shutter Island, an insane asylum, to investigate the escape of a prisoner/patient who had been committed because she murdered her children.  As he investigated, DiCaprio discovered that there was much more going on at this facility than was obvious.

I will protect the ending in this review so if you are someone who has not yet seen the Martin Scorsese film, you can still approach it with a blind eye.

This is well crafted and constructed.  The story works well and unfurls at a good pace.  There are several distinct, almost horror-like aspects here too and they all work in detailing the narrative of what is going on here.

Along with DiCaprio, the film features strong performances from Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, and Michelle Williams.  The acting is stellar here, especially since the performers are acting in a way that is meant to be interpreted differently later.

The film has some fantastic scenery and some beautiful shots, except for one point when DiCaprio and Ted Levine were in a jeep.  That was a painfully noticeable green screen.  Other than that, the film was beautifully rendered.

The mystery of the film is gripping and does a great job of moving you through the story.  It may be a touch too long, but that is a minor complaint.  You do have to pay attention for maximum enjoyment, which should not be a negative either.  I enjoyed Shutter Island quite a bit.

I consider myself a fan of Kevin Smith.  However, I have never been a huge fan of many of his movies (outside of Dogma which I love).  Most of the movies that he makes, I find okay at best.  I really love listening to Kevin Smith tell stories.  I am a fan of his podcast and his verbal skills.  He also seems to be a truly fine person.

Red State feels like a totally different film than most, if not all, of Smith’s oeuvre, and I enjoyed the switch up.

Three horny teenage boys head out in their community after finding an older woman on the internet that was willing to have sex with them.  Turns out, the woman was a member of the Five Points Trinity, the local cult lead by fundamentalist preacher, Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) and she drugged the boys and took them to the Cooper compound to be used in their religious ceremony.

ATF Agent Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) was also on the trail of Cooper, but for different reasons.  When all of the forces came together, all hell broke loose.

This movie kept me off guard the entire time because you never knew what was going to happen.  Every time it felt as if we were following a certain main character, that character winds up dying.  Nobody involved in the story felt like our hero.  They all felt like rotten people, whether conflicted or not.

John Goodman is the closest we have to a heroic presence in the film but he seemed to be concerned more with self issues than doing the right thing.  Admittedly, he was the most conflicted in the cast and Goodman gave a stellar performance.

Michael Parks is great as the charismatic cult leader.  It gives you a real idea of how these kinds of men are able to get, apparently, normal people to follow and commit atrocities in their name.  I feel that this character is all the more relevant in the world today as I can see pieces of certain leaders in his role.

The film is very violent and filled with gun play.  The seemingly randomness of the deaths during the shoot out speaks to the chaotic nature of guns and how they can be damaging depending on who are using them.  However, the government forces are not shown as the hero here either as their overall goal in the situation is anything but moral.

The ending is controversial, but I found it very funny and ironic.  The ending is absolutely an example of a deus ex machina, a literary technique where “an unexpected power or event saves a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device.”  Many times this technique can be seen as a negative, but, when used properly, it can be a wondrous event.  This ending may feel to some anticlimactic, but I found it to be a perfect end to this film.  It turned out to be as random as the rest of the film had been.

Red State does not follow your expectations of how this type of movie should be and that is part of its charm.  The film has solid performances and keeps the audience confused and uncertain about how this is to be resolved.

Checked off another box this afternoon.

For the first time, I watched what is undoubtedly a masterpiece from the classic director Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai.

This movie has inspired multitude of films over the years from The Magnificent Seven to the Avengers.  You could literally see the development of what would eventually become tropes in action movies worldwide begin in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

A village of farmers in 16th century Japan are being threatened by a group of bandits, who are preparing to pillage the village.  To protect themselves, the village decided to hire a group of samurais to protect them.  The samurai warriors were assembled and fought the bandits.

Toshirô Mifune played the rapscallion rogue Kikuchiyo.  Takashi Shimura played Kambei Shimada, the older and respected leader of the samurai.  Isao Kimura played the young and untested son of a wealthy family, Katsushirō Okamoto, who talks Shimada into taking him on as an apprentice.  

All of the samurais received a certain spotlight in the movie, and not just one from the action.  Each character had important pieces to their story that really brought each man to life.  You did care for each one, so when they were in jeopardy, you felt it.

There were other characters among the farmers that received character bits as well.  Keiko Tsushima played Shino, a daughter of one of the farmers who wants her to be a son.  She has a relationship with Katsushiro that leads into struggles for both characters.

This is a spiraling epic of a movie, lasting over 3 and a half hours (including an intermission breaking the film into parts).

The battle scenes in this are absolutely beautifully shot and masterfully planned out.  Each moment is important to, not only, the story, but to each character’s development as well.

There is no doubt this is one of the great movies of all time.