Escape From New York (screens Oct.13 and Oct. 15 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK screens Friday October 13th at 7:30 pm and Sunday October 15th at 9:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinemathque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

All his career John Carpenter has told folks that he’s really only wanted to make “westerns.” Yet he has consistently delivered horror and science-fiction and the occasional one-off nonconformist like a good TV biopic of Elvis Presley (featuring Kurt Russell) or the police thriller ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which is regarded as a partial remake of RIO BRAVO. Okay, but not since his student-film days, if I’m not mistaken, has the dude actually delivered a genuine western.

Maybe he’s doing one of those things from The Little Prince, in which there’s a drawing of a lamb that is so perfect it’s just the box in which the lamb resides; you will never actually see a lamb, but you can still just imagine how the drawing is exactly right (sort of like my career). Same with John Carpenter and his “westerns.”

Carpenter’s 1981 flick ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, at least, does have the DNA of a proper Hollywood-studio western, in the Howard Hawks no-funny-business filmmaking style (most recently personified by Clint Eastwood’s work behind the cameras), hitched to a high-concept dystopia plot.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

By George M. Thomas

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens on screens Friday.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 earns a rare distinction.  It joins a list of films -  THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE– that equals or outdoes a predecessor.

A myriad of reasons reveal themselves to bolster that assessment.  Guardians, however, has shown in two outings that it’s the one series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that can balance humor, action and heartfelt emotion into a charming, irresistible cinematic cocktail – one that’s easy to consume and say “Thank you, please, may I please have another.”

Deepwater Horizon

By George M. Thomas

Mark Wahlberg stars as Mike Williams in
 "Deepwater Horizon."

DEEPWATER HORIZON could have easily taken an exploitative route and become the typical disaster flick.

Think POSEIDON ADVENTURE.  However entertaining such a film might be, in this case it would have been a disservice to those who perished in the most significant oil rigging accident in history, which caused a spill that still has lingering effects on the Gulf Coast some six years after the fact.

Instead, the filmmakers behind this story, which obviously takes some dramatic license, choose to concentrate on trying to tell a tale fraught with plenty of drama.  Every scene in director Peter Berg’s film rings with some element of truth.

Each situation within the film is allowed to stand on its own with respect to evoking an emotional response and while the film’s strength are those emotional elements, there’s little doubt that Berg (STATE OF PLAY, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) captures the epic nature of this accident and all of its tragic beauty with his camera’s eye.

The Hateful Eight

Review by Bob Ignizio

A group of rough and rugged men and one female prisoner on her way to be hanged get trapped in a blizzard and make plans to stay in a tavern for three days in Quentin Tarrantino’s latest film, THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Most of the characters don’t much like any of the others, and fragile alliances can change quickly with just the right story or revelation. It’s going to be a tense, and ultimately bloody, layover.

It wouldn’t quite be fair to say that THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an uncredited remake of John Carpenter’s THE THING, but it certainly has some parallels to that movie. A small group of characters are trapped together during a blizzard. None of them can trust each other. And at least one of them is looking to take out some or all of the others through surreptitious means if possible, blatant ones if necessary. Only unlike THE THING, there’s no blood test to reveal who the bad guys are. And if there was, the whole cast would likely come up positive.

Bone Tomahawk (now on video)

[BONE TOMAHAWK is now available on video and on demand.]

Review by Wayne Richards

The extraordinary difficulties in getting a movie made in Hollywood have been well documented. Television shows, books and documentaries dedicated to telling behind-the-scenes stories and the unique struggles in the creation of films are quite prevalent in the realm of entertainment. Getting financing for a film, hiring capable and cooperative actors and choosing a director with the ability to be efficient with time and to stay within a given budget are just a few essential factors in reaching a successful outcome. The fact that first-time director S. Craig Zahler filmed BONE TOMAHAWK in three weeks (shooting 16 hour days) on a shoestring budget is miraculous. And what is even more remarkable is that a directorial debut on such a low budget (estimated $1.8 million) could include such an esteemed cast of A-list talent.

The Art of the Steal (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Canadian filmmakers poured lots of Hollywood-level money and international talent into this enjoyable, if over-plotted and farfetched 2013 caper movie. THE ART OF THE STEAL is at least as good/bad/kitschy as whatever's in the theaters right now, in our collective hangovers from late-summer junk season.

Writer-director Jonathan Sobol's flick has the fate to share a title with a recent documentary about a contested art collection, though it's no lie that art masterworks unethically obtained (and, in a pulp-fiction way, art appreciation) is the fulcrum of Sobol's plot.

Stargate (April 2 at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[STARGATE screens Saturday April 2 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

If you'd told me when STARGATE premiered in 1994 that it was going to be the cornerstone of a successful science-fiction franchise, I probably wouldn't have believed it, any more than I thought Battlestar Galactica would have an illustrious second life. To me, STARGATE was a nice try - a gangbusters first half of a really fun escapist fantasy that just didn't pay off. Obviously I'm not a good fortuneteller of the future (could've used a few stern warnings about my own), but I'll cling with my tattered, 20-year-old opinion here, take it or leave it.

Important thing to know, at least for me at the time, is that this was the big Hollywood entree for the filmmaking-writing team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, two guys who had previously done most of their work in West Germany, cranking out, no, not angsty cut-your-wrists Rainer Werner Fassbinder film-festival melodramas but imitation Tinseltown Lucas-Spielberg sci-fi kitsch, like MOON 44, done with ever-escalating budget and polish. I always thought of these guys as the ultimate fanboy backyard-filmmakers, but with real 35mm and backlots to play around on. When they came to the US the sheer joy of their finding their element - here and in the subsequent INDEPENDENCE DAY and the much-disliked GODZILLA remake - is almost enough to compensate for their chronic-fanboy mentality and material of the level of Perry Rhodan or pulp magazines of the 1930s.