‘Tis the season to wreck havoc. Joe Dante’s 1984 tale of that loveable and unique Christmas gift which turns out to be more trouble than he’s worth is now a firm festive favourite, and similar to Die Hard, it has earned a loving place on that list whilst using the holidays ostensibly as a hook to tell the story.

Produced by Steven Spielberg under his now legendary Amblin banner, director Joe Dante was apparently brought on board due to the Jaws auteur being a huge fan of his debut feature, The Howling. The director’s playfully sense of dark mischief alongside that more traditional, wholesome Hollywood outlook serves the story perfectly, and the film has a little more bite than some of the other fantasy features it shares a kinship with from that era.

Dante’s own love for Christmas is palpable throughout, and he litters the film with amusing references amongst the creature mischief and carnage. He also has fun subverting the traditions associated with the season, and this is particularly apparent when a main character reveals why she doesn’t join in with celebrations, owing to the death of her father who broke his neck whilst emulating Santa and attempting to climb down the family’s chimney.

The Gremlins themselves are a fantastically evil creation, and the air of menace and danger is much more evident here than in the sequel, which opted for a more comedic, knockabout tone. In the days before CGI, the model work on display is pretty impressive, even with the limitations that process brings. The Mogwai and their green transmutations all possess distinctive personalities and the strong creature design and puppetry really help bring out those characteristics.

In fact, the effects work sometimes threatens to overshadow the sketchily-drawn human characters and the actors who inhibit them. Leads Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates (fresh from being the object of lust for young American males in Fast Time in Ridgemont High) are appealing if a little bland, and the performance of the principal human villain (the spiteful and cantankerous town matriarch Mrs Deagle) is very broad and veers a little too close to out-and-out caricature at times.

It’s definitely the Gremlins show and it’s easy to forget just how vicious and deadly they can be during the scenes which are more slapstick and spoofy in nature. That the cinema turns out to be the only place where they are visibly (and hilariously) enraptured is a wonderful moment and a fun comment on the power of the moving image.

Gremlins was the fourth highest-grossing film of that year (Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters and ‘Temple of Doom’ took the top three slots) and while it certainly hasn’t aged as well as Amblin stablemates, Back to the Future and The Goonies (it’s a very uneven film in terms of pacing and structure), there’s still much fun to had here, and it’s the perfect respite for those who tire of the overabundance of mawkish festive material which bombard our cinema and TV screens each year.

Thanks so much to Whitehouse Content who made this video (with a nod of the cap to The Vulture) as it literally had be laughing out loud! It basically shows what Jaws could have been like if it was a family-friendly Disney esk movie and I’m not hoping it gets made!

Prepare to laugh!

Here’s how / why the video got made and I’m so pleased it did!

“Camp Kuleshov” is a competition in NYC, CHI and LA between assistant editors. They are given a film and asked to edit a trailer for the movie taking it from its original genre into another genre. Caleb Hepler’s “Shark Song” took first place.

Spielberg’s been out of the director’s chair for a little while (since Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls) but is making up for lost time by putting out action-adventure spectacle (Tintin) and serious drama (War Horse) in short succession. It’s like 1993 all over again.

In honour of Spielberg returning to action, here are six of his best.

They are in no particular order and other opinions are available (please share yours in the comments section):-

1. Jaws

As with each film on this list, there is an insurmountable challenge in trying to find something new to say and so it eventually comes down to simply restating what anyone with half a mind already knows to be true, namely that Jaws is one of the finest films of this or any decade, genre or director.

A masterclass in atmosphere-building, working with limited resources and almost debilitating technical problems, Spielberg crafted a film of almost peerless tension, thrills and technical virtuosity. It is difficult to distil its high-points to a manageable few, but the appearance of the shark (nick-named Bruce after Spielberg’s lawyer, a name echoed in Nemo years later) as Roy Scheider chums the waters (“you’re gonna need a bigger boat”), the body popping out of the boat as Richard Dreyfus dives down to a wreck, John Williams’ matchless score as we witness the first strike on a skinny-dipper, the focus pull / dolly zoom on Scheider as he sits on the beach and sees the kid disappear in a plume of crimson and Quint’s fingernails on the blackboard all resonate to this day.

It’s been years since I last watched it, but it never ceases to feel fresh on each repeat viewing. Despite unimaginable leaps and bounds in special effects, Bruce remains an effective and affecting antagonist, even with the afore-mentioned technical difficulties. Although in many ways it is as impersonal and relentless as the truck driver in Duel (the film in Spielberg’s cannon to which this bears closest resemblance), it doesn’t feel as mechanical as a villain without a human face might be expected to be. My 11 year-old son, raised on a steady diet of far superior special-effects and model work has seen Jaws a few times now and he loves it too.

Consider it whole-heartedly recommended by both of us.

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Everyone knows the back-story, indeed the Indy series has already been the subject of a Video Vault special on this very site. Spielberg and Lucas, blah-blah, TV serials and cliff-hangers, blah-blah, James Bond, blah-blah. Enough. This is, quite simply, the finest action adventure film ever made.

Others tried to follow in its footsteps with such varied results as Romancing the Stone, King Solomon’s Mines and The Goonies, but nothing comes close. It is impossible to fault the film at any turn. The script is laced with witty one-liners, deft and light exposition and expert myth-building. The set pieces (snakes in the Well of Souls, the truck chase, the South American booby-trap prologue, the face-melting finale) are energetic and thrilling but threaded effortlessly into the narrative, avoiding so much of the stop-start and narrative/geographic incoherence that besets and bests so many modern action films. Harrison Ford has arguably never been better, even as Han Solo and certainly the rest of the cast have never come close to matching these exalted heights.

More fun than any film about Nazis and dusty archeological relics has any right to be, depending on which of Spielberg’s films you have seen most recently, this is likely to be one of your favourites. Simply brilliant.

3. Jurassic Park

Quite how Spielberg managed to avoid getting bogged down, making this and Schindler’s List in parallel, is astounding. In all the ways that Schindler’s List is, quite rightly (and commendably), heavy, serious and deliberate, Jurassic Park is light, lively and entertaining. As ILM had developed the CGI work from Terminator 2 to the point where dinosaurs could be believably rendered and as Stan Winston knew he could deliver believable and dexterous large and small animatronic models, so Spielberg welded his usual technical ability to a story that was both thrilling and intellectually engaging. Although Jeff Goldblum’s considered warnings about the dangers of playing God are quite fleeting in their time on-screen, they nonetheless provide an invaluable over-arching ethical context for the ensuing adventure ride.

The successive sequels (evidence of the law of diminishing returns, if ever it was needed) laid on more dinosaurs and more special effects, but it is this original that remains the most exciting, the most deftly directed, the most narratively propulsive. Holding off with the T-Rex until well into the welcomely brisk running time and giving the raptors their moment too, Spielberg brings all of the elements together perfectly and just compare the CGI-rendering of the dinosaurs to (say) Weta’s work on King Kong. The extent to which the seamless work of ILM has stood the test of time bears testimony to just how far ahead of the curve it was in 1993.

Everything has weight, texture, even personality and it is this that makes the set-pieces work as well as they do – the T-Rex chasing the protagonists through the trees, the raptors in the kitchen, the attack on the hapless Wayne Knight, the lawyer on the toilet. It is thrilling and compelling in every way from beginning to end and after the relatively below-par Spielberg efforts of Always and Hook, an utterly welcome return to form.

4. Schindler’s List

Schindler’s List was famously the project that Spielberg had known about for years but did not feel ready to make until the early 90′s. He had tried to get Roman Polanski to make it, but it felt to close to the nerve for him (though he would eventually channel his own experiences through The Pianist) and so it waited until Spielberg was ready.

Clearly it was worth the wait. Although it is easy to simply batch together a number of Spielberg’s efforts into his “serious” films as opposed to his popcorn entertainment (Amistad, Saving Private Ryan, Empire of the Sun and Munich would accompany Schindler on such a List), Schindler’s List stands head and shoulders above even such exalted company.

On its release on video, one bus stop advert simply quoted a review from the time, “quite simply one of the greatest films ever made”. It is as true now as it was then. Yes, Spielberg could be accused of lapsing into sentimentality for Schindler’s final collapse against his car as the Allies approach, but that is churlish in the extreme. There are sequences of Schindler’s List that are so unflinchingly, unforgivingly and harrowingly shot that it is all you can do to not sob uncontrollably for much of the running time. Liam Neeson was perfectly cast as the conflicted and undoubtedly opportunistic Schindler, but all the plaudits were rightly taken by Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth, a monster of a man, capricious, cruel and likely psychopathic, shooting Jews with a sniper rifle from his balcony as if he were merely on a morning stroll.

The first sight of a little girl, hiding from the Warsaw extermination, her red coat deliberately sticking out against the monochrome stock of the rest of the film at first seems like an almost unpardonable gesture of optimism and sentimentality, until we catch sight of that same coat on a conveyor belt, body after body being carried to an incinerator after having been exhumed. What looks for all the world like a beautiful winter snow-storm turns out to be a blanket of ash, blown from the fires of extermination camps. We breathe a sigh of relief as Schindler’s Jews are rescued from Auschwitz and herded back onto their train, only for the camera to pan over to another queue of Jews, headed down into a basement below a chimney that it blowing endless clouds of smoke and ash into the cold night sky. We see industrious children finding hiding places, only to have the wind knocked out of us as those hiding places are revealed to be faeces-filled pit latrines. We tense up as we watch Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern walk across a compound while Goeth takes pot-shots and the camera follows Stern as in the background we see the prostrate forms of those not so fortunate. Blood pumps from skulls, lives and bodies shattered by bullets shot at point-blank range.

What is perhaps most incredible is that amidst such harrowing incidents and details, Spielberg is able to avoid getting bogged down in the bleakness of it all. Yes, of course, a film about the Holocaust was never going to be a laugh riot, but the subject matter is so disturbing, so traumatic, that the occasional moments of levity are an essential respite and it is to Spielberg’s eternal credit that the finished film does not feel tonally inconsistent or abrupt. A quip from Schindler (“if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I’ll be very unhappy”), the cathartic release of a seeming gas chamber turning out to be a shower, these interludes, however brief, mercifully leaven an otherwise unmanageable meal. But we must take it and this is why Spielberg had to make the film real but accessible. It is an unenviable task and a seemingly insurmountable one, but he succeeds and we are all the richer for it. An incredible story, imperiously and impeccably told and unchallenged by anything else Spielberg has made before or since.

5. Minority Report

Spielberg came to Minority Report off the back of a relatively “serious” patch, comprising Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and the austere and cold AI:Artificial Intelligence. Tom Cruise was in the middle of an incomparably successful period, having notched up Jerry Maguire, two Missions Impossible, Vanilla Sky and Magnolia in the previous years, before moving on to The Last Samurai, Collateral, War of the Worlds and more Impossible Missioning. It was really one of those seemingly obvious and inevitable joint ventures of stratospheric star and peerless director that made you wonder, “how come this hasn’t happened already?” The end product is a fascinating melding of chase movie, crime drama, sci-fi thriller and philosophical treatise that is arguably as close as Spielberg had come to perfection since his 1993 double whammy almost a decade earlier.

Although Spielberg resolutely refuses to hem in or pin down interpretations of his films through DVD commentaries, the making-of content on Minority Report is thoroughly considered and thought-provoking stuff, with the metaphysical elements (prosecuting someone for something they are destined to do, but have not yet done) having remained at the front of Spielberg’s mind throughout and finding their way front and centre in the final screenplay. Set-pieces such as the scrap with federal agents at the Lexus factory (has Colin Farrell come close to being this good since?), the alleyway run-in with jet-pack wearing Pre-Crime agents, the opening finding and arresting of a murder “suspect” and the escape from the shopping mall with the help of Agatha’s foresight are breathless, with special effects used in the advancing of the story rather than showing off and the silvery-blue cinematography proving evocative rather than distracting.

Were it not for the now inevitable (but nonetheless infuriating) Spielbergian sentimental coda, this could have given Raiders, Jurassic Park and Jaws a literal run for their money in the “which is Spielberg’s best action film” stakes. As it is, his insistence on wrapping it all up with a bow rather takes the shine off what might have otherwise been a sensational film rather than a merely excellent one.

6. Munich

At last, Spielberg seemed to have found a way of telling a serious and compelling story without spiralling into sentimentality at the last. Whether War Horse or Lincoln will be able to show that Spielberg can pull it off more than once remains to be seen. Munich is unlike anything else in Spielberg’s oeuvre.

All of the polish is gone and what we are left with is something gritty, bleak and savage. Consider two stand-out moments. Firstly, Eric Bana’s Avner reuniting with his wife and their desperate, frantic love-making. Avner is clearly somewhere else entirely and the scene plays out as one of a man in utter turmoil, having become someone, something else entirely. Secondly, there is the almost unwatchably personal and frank assassination (murder?) of a female target, shot repeatedly with makeshift weapons in necessarily close-up detail. Spielberg’s point is clear – these are not meaningless Arnie killings, dozens of faceless “baddies” mowed down by machine gun fire. These are people, on both sides, and the killings carry grave and enduring consequences for everyone, as personal vengeance becomes mingled in with the overall mission.

Once again, the cinematography is perfect, a multitude of muddy shades and grainy stocks effortlessly evoking time and space. The tension of the build-up to the assorted hits is superbly crafted, ratcheting the pressure to almost unbearable levels, though Spielberg has the presence of mind (as he did with Schindler’s List) to sweeten the pill with a few welcome lighter moments, that we might be able to digest his more important, over-arching themes. Eric Bana has the most heavy lifting to do, acting-wise as he conveys the sense of a man honouring his sense of duty and national identity, but losing himself and his soul in the process. He presents us with a compelling portrayal of a man who has lost everything in his efforts to do that which he is assured is “right”. But right and wrong have become utterly and helplessly blurred, not by way of a cop-out from Spielberg, but simply because a hopelessly fraught and complicated historical situation has created a world where there is no black and white, only greys.

It is in the finale that perhaps the greatest and most important gut-punch is found. Avner speaks with Geoffrey Rush’s case officer in New York and in the background stand the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Of course nothing is said regarding them and the inclusion of them is subtle, but the point is clear. Though the events portrayed are rooted in slightly more distant history, the themes and issues could not be more relevant, more resonant for us today. A formidable piece of work from a director who seems able to continue to stretch himself.

Premiering at the 65th Edinburgh International Film Festival in June to – mostly – rapturous applause, Albatross is a coming-of-age comedy-drama centring on verbose, would-be writer Emilia’s incendiary effect on a struggling author, Jonathan (Sebastian Koch), and his respective family, including wife Joa (Julia Ormond) and daughter Beth (Felicity Jones.

Last week, HeyUGuys had the opportunity to speak to the films riotous writer Tamzin Rafn about Albatross’ inspiration, the trials and tribulations letting her script be made into a film, how she felt about Niall MacCormick as a director, her neglected yet brilliantly titled rom-com and her plans for the future.

Here is said interview in its full, unabridged glory.

___________

HeyUGuys: Firstly, what was your inspiration behind Albatross?

Obviously there are pre-conceived ideas and conventions behind the coming-of-age genre. For me, Albatross marked a defiance of those boundaries and represented a new direction. Was it always intentional to push the boundaries and try something new rather than succumbing to generic ideals?

Did you work closely with him/have any say when it came to the final cut?

Who in the film industry do you admire?

Can you name some of your favourite films. Did they have any influence on Albatross?

Do you have any projects currently in the works?

Finally, for those who might not know much about Albatross, could you sum the film up in a snappy sentence for us?

Ambition is in the eye of the beholder.

Thank you very much for your time, Tamzin.

Albatross hits U.K. cinemas on October 14. Click here to read my review.

Toronto's late, lamented University Theatre

I first saw Apocalypse Now at Toronto’s exquisite University cinema on 17th August, 1979. The film opened on Wednesday 15^th August as part of an inaugural three city run in New York, LA, and Toronto, with tickets sold in advance as they had been in the past for ‘road show’ presentations. The University was a 1500 seat deco/nouveau single screen cinema with a beautiful facade and lobby which was equipped for 70mm projection; the 70mm presentation of Apocalypse Now was the first to utilise Dolby Stereo 70mm Six Track, and the cinema probably had to upgrade its sound system to accommodate the demands of Coppola and his sound editor Walter Murch.

I remember being very nervous as I presented my ticket as I was not 18 and the film had received an R (18 and over only) rating from the Ontario censor.  Happily, my very youthful countenance didn’t register with the ticket taker in the melee, and he barely looked at me as he handed me a programme with an introductory note from Coppola listing all the credits and biographies of the key players. We took our seats in the balcony with a sense of heightened anticipation; we were about to see the most talked about film of the decade, and when the film began without any credits, I realised why we were given the booklet on the way in.

These were the halcyon days prior to our culture’s obsession with the excruciating minutiae of celebrity and pop culture; North American television was some years away from being saturated with programmes hosted by fawning mannequins doing little more than breathlessly regurgitating press releases. Before the days of multi-platform promotional carpet-bombing beginning a year or more before release, the only sources of information about movies was traditional print media and segments devoted to entertainment on news or current affairs programs. After the triumphant Godfather Part II, the world was expecting more greatness from Coppola, but as soon as shooting began on his Vietnam epic, stories emerged from the Philippines indicating that all was not well.

The press dutifully reported on one mishap after another: lead actor Harvey Keitel was fired days into shooting; Coppola didn’t really have a finished script and was making it up as he stumbled along; weather destroyed sets and shut down the film; Martin Sheen had to stop shooting for more than a month due to ‘heat exhaustion’ (later revealed to be a heart attack); the film was wildly over budget with no end in sight. When the prolonged shoot finally ended in May 1977, Coppola and his film seemed to disappear into a post-production black hole, and for film obsessives and average viewers alike, the calamity and misfortune that had befallen one of the greatest filmmaking talents of his generation was as dramatic as anything one could see on screen.

Perception of the film improved after it finally emerged and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May 1979 (shared with The Tin Drum), where it screened as a 3 hour work in progress, but Cannes didn’t mean that much to the average person in North America at the time. When it was announced a few months later that it would be premiering in August as a special presentation in just 3 cities, and that Toronto was one of those cities, I was ecstatic. As soon as tickets went on sale a friend who was a couple of years older than me (thus over 18) bought us tickets for the Friday evening screening.

The spell the film cast over me at that first screening is still quite vivid. It was quite unlike anything I’d seen before, a 2 1/2 hour journey into hell that was not so much a war movie as it was a phantasmagorical meditation on man’s inhumanity to man in the context of American imperialism. It’s wonderful to recall experiencing the film’s most memorable moments and dialogue before they had burrowed into our collective cultural consciousness: Duvall’s flamboyant surfer/cowboy lunatic Colonel Kilgore (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning…”) and the Air Cavalry’s chopper attack, the mysterious civilian/intelligence op present when Willard is briefed on his mission (“Terminate….with extreme prejudice”), Brando’s death rattle (“the horror, the horror”).

I doubt I was aware the film was a loose, uncredited adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness before I saw it, but I had just read the book in school and recognised the plot by film’s end; I tried to convince my English teacher the following week that the school should arrange for our class to see it (which was never going to happen as we were all under 18). The film opened wide in 35mm in the autumn, and I convinced my father that we should see it on Boxing Day. I was possibly even more mesmerised the second time (although my father was fairly unimpressed), anticipating the chopper attack, the Playboy bunny sequence, the slaughter of the water buffalo, and more. I was taken aback by the destruction of the Kurtz compound at the end as the credits rolled, as that was not how it had ended when I saw it in August. Had Coppola changed the ending? Had the destruction been left off the 70mm print because it had no onscreen credits? My confusion was compounded further when I saw it again in 70mm at Toronto’s IMAX cinema (the world’s first) sometime later (it screened there regularly for many years as a highlight of their 70mm seasons), and the film once again ended on Willard and Lance leaving in the boat as the screen went to black; I wouldn’t solve the mystery of the different endings for a number of years.

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I attended a morning screening of the digitally cleansed Apocalypse Now at the Leicester Square Empire a couple of months ago in advance of the theatrical reissue to promote the Blu-ray debut. While the experience of seeing it in a cinema again could never match the experience of my first viewing in August ’79, or watching it subsequently with my late father in an empty cinema, I relished the opportunity to sit in a darkened room with others and watch it, and as often happens when I watch films that are my touchstones, I was both absorbed and contemplative as I thought about the 17 year old watching the film all those years ago and my own journey up river these past 32 years. The film looks superb and sounds tremendous, and I look forward to watching the BD at home at some point, where I can enjoy listening to the clarity of the DTS-HD 5.1 audio track and watching it in the original theatrical 2.35:1 aspect ratio for the first time on any home format.

Confession time: I have yet to watch Apocalypse Now Redux, although I have owned the DVD for years (I did however see a fair bit of the footage that was added to create AN Redux on a VHS bootleg at a friend’s place in LA one evening in the late ‘90s, which until now has satisfied the completist in me). I don’t really know why I haven’t, as I intended on seeing it when it had a theatrical release, and didn’t, and when I reach for the film every year or two to renew our acquaintance, I default to the original version. Perhaps my reticence is partly attributable to my dislike of revisionism; once a work is put out there, apart from restoration when the image has deteriorated, I think it should be left as it is, warts, flaws and all (although I understand the urge to correct or improve after the fact as I suffer from it myself). I read an interview this past week with Steven Spielberg in which he talks about the in-progress Blu-ray version of Jaws (at last!) and stated that nothing would be done to digitally enhance or modify anything that looks ropey or unconvincing to the contemporary eye (meaning Bruce the shark): I applaud his stance and hope other directors who control their work follow suit.

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And so we come to the contents of today’s (13^th June) eagerly awaited UK Blu-ray release of Apocalypse Now. The 3 disc ‘Full Disclosure’ Edition is about as close to  definitive as we are likely to get, unless Coppola decides to create a longer version of the film, or release additional outtakes or behind the scenes footage, or create a hilarious bloopers feature (rather unlikely).

Here’s what you get:

Disc 1: Apocalypse Now feature / Apocalypse Now Redux feature / Audio commentary by Francis Ford Coppola

Tech specs:

Features running time: 153 mins / 202 mins / Colour PAL / Feature Aspect Ratio: 16/9 2.35 / Video: BD50 / AVC / Feature Audio: 5.1 DTS Master Audio

English Language

Disc 2: Interview with John Milius (49 mins) / Interview with Fred Roos (casting Apocalypse) (12 mins) / A Conversation with Martin Sheen and Francis Ford Coppola (60 mins) / The Mercury Theatre on Air: Hearts of Darkness Nov 6 1938 (37 mins) / The Hollow Men (17 mins) / Monkey Sampan “Lost Scene” (3 mins) / Additional Scenes (27 mins) / Kurtz Compound Destruction with credits (6 mins) / The Birth of 5.1 sound (6 mins) / Ghost Helicopter Flyover (4 mins) / Apocalypse Now: The Synthesizer Soundtrack by Bob Moog (still images) / A Million Feet of Film: The Editing of Apocalypse Now (18 mins) / The Music of Apocalypse Now (15 mins) / The Sound Design of Apocalypse Now (15 mins) / The Final Mix (3 mins) / Apocalypse Then & Now (4 mins) / 2001 Cannes Film Festival: Francis Ford Coppola (39 mins) / PBR Streetgang (4 mins) / The Colour Palette of Apocalypse Now (4 mins) / Disc credits

Tech specs:

Total running time: 323 mins / Colour PAL / Feature Aspect Ratio: 16/9 or 4:3 / Video: BD50 / AVC  / Feature Audio: 2.0 Stereo DTS / English Language

Disc 3: Hearts of Darkness feature / Audio commentary by Francis and Eleanor Coppola / John Milius script excerpt with Francis Ford Coppola notes / Storyboard Collection / Photo Archive: unit photography, Mary Ellen Mark photography / Marketing Archive: original trailer, radio spots, theatrical program, lobby card and press kit, photos /

Tech specs:

Feature running time: 96 mins / Colour PAL / Feature Aspect Ratio: 16/9 1.77 / Video: BD25 / AVC / Feature Audio: Stereo 2.0 DTS Master Audio / English Language

The nine hours plus of bonus features (which thankfully includes the brilliant Hearts of Darkness documentary that has been unavailable for years) touch on almost every aspect of the film’s genesis, torturous production and lengthy post-production, but one thing I’ve never seen is even so much as a still of Harvey Keitel in character as Willard. This is likely to do with contractual stipulations or union regulations regarding his removal from the film, or just plain courtesy and discretion on the part of Coppola, but I imagine there are cans sitting somewhere in the Zoetrope vault marked ‘AN – HK footage’ which may yet see the light of day.

Most of the excellent featurettes were included on the 2006 North American DVD release ‘The Complete Dossier’, and the two new interviews filmed in 2010 for the North American Blu-ray release, featuring Coppola talking with John Milius and Martin Sheen, are both entertaining.

The most satisfying outtake is a scene in which Dennis Hopper’s photographer is shot and killed by renegade Green Beret Colby (Scott Glenn), who is then killed by Willard. If Coppola had included this scene in some form, it would have answered the mildly nagging question of what happened to Hopper’s character.

After immersing myself in the film, my memories and the Blu-ray special features, I’ve decided that when I next watch the film it will be the Redux version, at long last. Jim Morrison’s musical assertion notwithstanding, my journey up river with the PBR Street Gang is far from at an end.

Soul Surfer is almost a good movie, its flaws are easy to forgive in light of the fact that the story is as inspirational as anything that will be released this year. Even when the film dips into sappy melodrama and cliched sequences, its story is uplifting enough to help the audience through the running time.

The film’s voice-over narration by Bethany Hamilton, played by AnnaSophia Robb, affords us a clear window into her world and the world of a surfer and makes the tragedy that befalls her all the more terrible. We need to care about Bethany so the attack and subsequent narrative has more weight, and Robb, along with the rest of the cast, do a good job in setting up the premise of the film.

The film’s family dynamic is played out nicely; the parents, played by Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, are good in their respective roles and have plenty to do in terms of driving the story. The minor characters like Bethany’s friend and her family fill out a cast that, while never distracting to the story, are nothing special. All in all, the cast does the most with a script that had no less than seven credited writers on the story, which doesn’t necessarily make for an incoherent narrative, but rather, makes for a story that has no real voice.

One of the overlaying themes of the film is faith, based in Christianity, which is obvious in its approach but never preachy. The faith aspect revolves around Bethany’s involvement with a church youth group and its youth leader, played by Carrie Underwood. Underwood makes her film debut here, and its really nothing to write home about, however, that isn’t to say that her performance is bad, it just is. Director Sean McNamara, whose credits are deeply rooted in Disney channel fare and not much else, has a style of his direction which makes for a film that goes through the motions within the standard three-act structure while not making any leaps or bounds.

It’s hard to call this film anything more than inspiration on demand, but the movie may have a hard time finding viewership outside of a faith-based audience. That’s not to say that the film shouldn’t be viewed by non-believers or that a general audience won’t get anything out of the film; this is a film that takes the sports movie formula and plays out an inspiring yarn in a beautiful setting. It’s worth noting that the surfing sequences in the film are a lot of fun to watch while the shark attack was about as heavy as the drama got and made for an impressive sequence.

Soul Surfer is a decent family flick that doesn’t reinvent the sports genre, but does it’s best to leave the audience with a sense of how tragedy can bring out the best in someone through strength, perseverance and a little bit of faith.

**~~~ (2/5)

Review by Anthony Charles

I’m sure we all have our own ideas on what the most profitable films of all time are, and reading this piece over at Moviefone I was half expecting to see the likes of Paranormal Activity, Blair Witch etc.

How wrong I was. The piece references a list compiled by CNBC and it brings up some quite surprising results not least with the title at the number one spot which elicited the response of “You’re shitting me!” from me.

So here’s the list from 15-1 including their return on investment:

15 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – ROI: 1008%

14 – Mrs Doubtfire – ROI: 1160%

13 – There’s Something About Mary – ROI: 1194%

12 – The Hangover – ROI: 1297%

11 – Jaws – ROI: 1308%

10 – Ghost – ROI: 1446%

9 – Home Alone – ROI: 1590%

8 – The Passion of the Christ – ROI: 1749%

7 – American Beauty – ROI: 1780%

6 – Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope – ROI: 1938%

5 – Grease – ROI: 1975%

4 – Pretty Woman – ROI: 2013%

3 – Slumdog Millionaire – ROI: 2520%

2 – E.T. – ROI: 3172%

1 – My Big Fat Greek Wedding – ROI: 6150%

So there it is. I didn’t guess many of those at all going in to the piece. It’s worth noting that all the figures used to compile the list have been adjusted for inflation but still the gap between My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the rest of the list is huge.

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly (via FirstShowing), we get to see the full length trailer for Soul Surfer tells the story of a top notch surfer (play by AnnaSophia Robb) who loses her arm in a surf attack and has to learn how to surf all over again with just one arm.

Sean McNamara directs with a cast which also includes Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt, Jeremy Sumpter, Kevin Sorbo, Craig T. Nelson and Carrie Underwood. Soul Surfer is scheduled for release in the UK 17th June and you can check out the new trailer below.

You may recall the story from 2003 of female surfer Bethany Hamilton who (following a run-in with a tiger shark), lost her left arm in the attack, only to overcome that life-changing injury and return to the waves less than a month after the incident.

It’s the kind of inspirational tale that screams out for a film adaptation and sure enough, the big screen version of her story went into production last year and the teaser trailer is now up on YouTube.

Soul Surfer stars Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s AnnaSophia Robb in the role of Hamilton, while Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt co-star as her parents. The shark incident isn’t touched upon in the teaser, which I’m guessing the makers are consciously downplaying in the marketing of the film, as to avoid it becoming an off-putting Jaws Jr. for the intended family audience.

Maybe they should be looking into how it could play as a double bill alongside this year’s similarly themed limb loss/life affirmation tale, 127 Hours.

Sky Movies HD have got quite a good season coming up called ‘Movies You Never Got Around To Watching But Always Wanted To See’ and this sort of thing is perfect for people who aren’t sure what movies they should watch.

Their week of films starts Monday 11^th Oct – Sunday 17^th Oct and includes classic and groundbreaking movies like Jurassic Park, Jaws, Cool Hand Luke and Dead Poets Society.

Have a look at the list below including the date and time it will air and I’ve given trailers for each movie, when it’s on TV and some of my favourite clips for some of the movies too.

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Mon 11th 5.45pm Dead Poets Society

Director: Peter Weir

Cast: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Welker White, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles

Synopsis: Set in an exclusive boys preparatory school in 1959, a newly appointed English teacher uses unconventional techniques to inspire his students in classic poetry.

O Captain, My Captain! (this is actually the last scene in the movie so don’t watch if you don’t want to know the end!

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Mon 11th 8pm Thelma & Louise (1991)

Director: Ridley Scott, Bobby Bass

Cast: Susan Sarandon, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Brad Pitt, Geena Davis

Synopsis: Two women leave their small town, taking off on a run for their lives, after one of them kills a would-be rapist.

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Mon 11th 10.15pm Robocop (1987)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O’Herlihy, Dan O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith

Synopsis: In the not-to-distant-future, a newly transfered Detroit police officer is remade into an indistructable cybornetic cop after being dismembered by a gang of thungs in an abandoned warehouse. Reborn as Robocop he is programed to serve and protect the citizens of Detroit and eliminate the rampant crime in the city streets so that a massive city-wide reconstruction project can get underway. But once he has completed his task, he sets his sites on the corruption inside Securities Concepts Inc.- the corporation that created him.

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Tues 12th 3.25pm Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Cast: Dennis Hopper, Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J. D. Cannon, Lou Antonio

Synopsis: A brooding loner is sentenced to a prison chain-gang, stands up to the Nazi-like guards, and eventually becomes the leader of his fellow prisoners.

Cool Hand Luke Clip – Eating 50 Eggs!:

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Tues 12th 5.40pm A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Paul Bettany

Synopsis: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experiences it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery once he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over this tragedy, and finally, late in life, received the Nobel Prize.

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Tues 12th 8pm Gran Torino (2008)

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her

Synopsis: Walt Kowalski is a widower, grumpy, tough-minded, borderline-hateful, unhappy old man who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1973 Gran Torino he keeps in cherry condition. When his neighbor Tao, a young Hmong teenager, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Tao’s family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them form the gangs that foul their neighborhood.

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Wed 13th 5.50pm Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Director: Nicholas Ray

Cast: Dennis Hopper, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus

Synopsis: The landmark teen film that solidified Dean’s image with the public follows the story of rebellious middle-class teens, disenfranchised with their parents, and given to a life of thuggery and deadly dangerous drag racing to win over women.

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Wed 13th 8pm Jurassic Park (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Joseph Mazzello, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Synopsis (Wikipedia): The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange small lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student Ellie Sattler are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond (founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen) for a weekend visit to a “biological preserve” he has established on an island 120 miles west off the coast of Costa Rica.

Jurassic Park: T-Rex Attack

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Thurs 14th 5.50pm Ghost (1990)

Director: Jerry Zucker, Steven Charles Jaffe

Cast: Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen Root, Patrick Swayze, Tony Goldwyn

Synopsis: After he’s murdered, a young executive attempts to communicate with his girlfriend through a phony psychic.

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Thurs 14th 8pm Road To Perdition (2002)

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Tom Hanks, Daniel Craig, Stanley Tucci, Paul Newman, Jude Law

Synopsis: Two fathers: Michael Sullivan, a hit man for the Irish mob in Depression-era Chicago; and Mr. John Rooney, Sullivan’s boss and the man who raised him as a son. Two sons: Michael Sullivan, Jr. and Connor Rooney, each desperate to earn his father’s favor. Jealousy and competition put them all on a collision course, ultimately bringing Sullivan’s work into his private life and leading to the death of his beloved wife and youngest son, Peter. Now Michael Sullivan and his surviving son are set on a journey instigated by tragedy and fueled by revenge.

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Fri 15th 6.15pm Tron (1982)

Director: Steven Lisberger

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, Barnard Hughes

Synopsis: A video game designer trying to prove a big time executive stole his idea is sucked into a corporation’s mainframe where programs are personified counterparts of their writers and “users” are subjects of religious faith. A well-crafted and scripted metaphor, TRON benefits from breakthrough computer animation.

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Fri 15th 8pm Minority Report (2002)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare, Tim Blake Nelson, Kathryn Morris

Synopsis: In Washington, D.C., in the year 2054, murder has been eliminated. The future is seen and the guilty punished before the crime has ever been committed. From a nexus deep within the Justice Department’s elite Pre-Crime unit, all the evidence to convict–from imagery alluding to the time, place and other details–is seen by “Pre-Cogs,” three psychic beings whose visions of murders have never been wrong. It is the nation’s most advanced crime force, a perfect system. And no one works harder for Pre-Crime than its top man, Chief John Anderton. Destroyed by a tragic loss, Anderton has thrown all of his passion into a system that could potentially spare thousands of people from the tragedy he lived through. Six years later, the coming vote to take it national has only fueled his conviction that Pre-Crime works. Anderton has no reason to doubt it… until he becomes its #1 suspect. As the head of the unit, Anderton is the first to see the images as they flow from the liquid suspension chamber where the Pre-Cogs dream of murder. The scene is unfamiliar, the faces unknown to him, but this time, the killer’s identity is clear–John Anderton will murder a total stranger in less than 36 hours. Now with his own unit tracking his every move, led by his rival Danny Witwer, Anderton must go below the radar of the state-of-the-art automated city, where every step you take is monitored. Because you can’t hide, everybody runs. With no way to defend himself against the charge of Pre-Crime, John must trace the roots of what brought him here, and uncover the truth behind the questions he has spent the past six years working to eliminate: Is it possible for the Pre-Cogs to be wrong?

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Sat 16th 4.30pm High Noon (1952)

Director: Fred Zinnemann

Cast: Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, Grace Kelly

Synopsis: On the day of his wedding to a peace-abiding Quaker girl, the marshal of a small town prepares for the peaceful, civilian life until word comes down that four outlaws are arriving that day on the noon train to seek revenge for things past. Thrown into the conflict of staying to fight or leaving his post as was planned, the marshal decides to confront them to the dismay of his new bride. But, when he can’t corral any help from any of the townsfolk who were his supposed firends, he must face the four alone.

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Sat 16th 6.10pm The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

Director: Victor Fleming, King Vidor

Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan (II), Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley

Synopsis: The tale of a young Kansas girl who dreams of a better world “somewhere over the rainbow.” When Dorothy is thrust into the eye of a tornado and lands in the fantasy world of Oz, she soon finds herself in a heap of trouble with three hapless misfits to guide, an evil witch at her heels, and no way to get home.

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Sat 16th 8pm Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, Earl Boen

Synopsis: A decade after Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) destroyed the original Terminator, a second unstoppable killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) arrives from the post-apocalyptic year 2029. But this time his mission is to stop an even deadlier Terminator, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick), made entirely of shape-shifting liquid metal and determined to kill young John Connor (Edward Furlong), the future leader of the human resistance. Sarah, John, and the Terminator counter by going after the scientist responsible for developing Skynet, the computer system fated to destroy humanity, leading to an explosive and spectacular clash with the fate of humanity in the balance. Whereas James Cameron’s original THE TERMINATOR was a low-budget marvel of efficiency and speed, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY is an action-packed blockbuster with some of the most amazing stunts ever filmed and ground-breaking, Academy Award-winning special effects. Star Schwarzenegger was paid in the form of a $15 million dollar jet to revisit his most famous role as the Terminator, this time made kinder and gentler against the silent, relentless T-1000. One of the most popular films of the 1990s, James Cameron’s action masterpiece is both a thoughtful look at violence in human nature and an exciting, nonstop thrill ride.

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Sun 17th 3.20pm Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

Director: Ken Hughes

Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Frobe, Anna Quayle

Synopsis: A wacky inventor creates a super-car that can float as well as fly, and, along with his children, uses it to rescue his kidnapped father from an evil prince.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Clip – Toot Sweet

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Sun 17th 5.45pm It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Ward Bond, Frank Faylen, H. B. Warner, Samuel S. Hinds, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: George Bailey is a small-town man whose life seems so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls to see the world, but circumstances and his own good heart have led him to stay. He sacrficed his education for his brother’s, kept the family-run savings and loan afloat, protected the town from the avarice of the greedy banker Mr. Potter, and married his childhood sweetheart. As he prepares to jump from a bridge, his guardian angel intercedes, showing him what life would have become for the residents of Bedford Falls is he had never lived.

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Sun 17th 8pm Jaws (1975)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton

Synopsis: A giant great white shark arrives on the shores of a New England beach resort and wreaks havoc with bloody attacks on swimmers until a part-time sheriff teams up with a marine biologist and an old seafarer to hunt the monster down.

Jaws: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

I was having a conversation with one of my HeyUGuys colleagues on Twitter recently about how I haven’t yet seen The Shawshank Redemption.  After the shock of my confession subsided, he had mentioned how great it was going to be for me to experience it for the first time.  We then talked about a couple of films that we wished could be erased from our memory banks, just so we could watch them and feel the excitement of seeing them for the first time.

Obviously when you go to the theater to see a film, you’re going because it’s something you want to see.  There are times where the film in question turns out to be worse than you expected, right on the mark or better than you expected.  Then there are the rare occasions where the film transcends every expectation you could have had.  Those are the films that when you leave the theater, you want to get right back in line to watch it again. There are also those films that you may not have been able to see in the theater but you love so much you wish you could go back and see it for the first time on the big screen.

This is not something that is experienced often.  At least not for me personally.  I love movies.  I love going to the movies.  I love all different types of movies.  I wanted to share with you a handful of films that really struck a chord with me and ones that I wish I could experience again for the first time.

Jaws (1975)
I’m pretty sure I didn’t see Jaws in the theater.  I would have been 3 at the time.  But my folks were pretty liberal with what films I was allowed to watch so it’s entirely possible that they did take me when they went to see it.  I have very early memories of Jaws so it’s safe to say that I’ve watched this film through out most of my life.  It’s one of my favorites and it’s also my “deer in the headlights” film.  Meaning that whenever it’s on, I HAVE to turn it over to see what part it’s on and I get stuck watching it to the end.  I can’t turn away from it.  I wish I could experience Jaws through the eyes of a first timer.  To feel the suspense, to jump at the scares, to scream at Quint that he does indeed need a bigger boat!  Just think of how grand that would be!  I want to experience all of these things, but mainly, seeing it on the big screen in all of its glory and hearing the soundtrack on the theater sound system would be the best treat of all.

Aliens (1986)
I went to see Aliens with my Dad when it came out.  I knew of Alien and knew this was its sequel but I hadn’t seen Alien at the time.  I mainly went to spend some time with my Dad and he really wanted to see it. I was already familiar with James Cameron having seen The Terminator countless times.  It didn’t take long for me to become completely entranced with Aliens.  Sigourney Weaver put strong female characters on the map with the gun-toting-flame-thrower-wielding-grenade-launching-power-loader-driving-protective mama hen Ripley.  Is there anything Ripley can’t do?  She’s a bad ass. Plain and simple.  Aliens had the suspense, the gore, the jumps and the action.  This film is a classic and also one of my all time favorites.  Even though I remember seeing this film in the theater, I would so very much love to see it again, for the first time. I would choose and also recommend the director’s cut.  It contains almost 20 minutes of footage that was not included in the theatrical release.  SCORE!

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003)
I have to group these three films together because that’s how I think of them.  Not so much as three individual films, but one film that just happens to be 87 hours long, and that’s not even taking the director cuts into account.  I saw all three of these films in the theater multiple times.  I had absolutely no connection or knowledge of the source material either.  I went in completely blind and came out completely smitten with all of them.  Even though I get a little ho-hum with the Frodo storyline, I’m all ears with it comes to the other story lines.  These films really have it all.  Action, adventure, friendship, sword fights, creatures great and small, wizards, magic and best of all Gandalf.  Ian McKellen is an actor I could watch and listen to all day.  He has the most expressive eyes in the business.  He’s can tear you down with a look in one second and the next he’s got that twinkle that makes the world all warm and fuzzy.  I would geek out if I could revisit these three films back to back for the first time just so I could be filled with that child like wonder once again.

Batman Begins (2005)
By 2005 the comic book movie genre was moving full steam ahead.  We had already seen how great they could be as proven by X-Men and it’s sequel, as well as Spiderman and Spiderman 2.  We were also shown how bad they could be with Catwoman, Hulk, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen etc.  The list goes on….and on.  When talk of a reboot to the Batman franchise surfaced it was to the tune of “been there, done that.”  Tim Burton took on Batman in two installments which were unsuccessfully (in quality anyway) followed up with another two installments by Joel Schumacher.  Both of which were truly a waste of time.  It was at that point that I had written off any hope of a great Batman story.  Then Christopher Nolan comes along with his Batman Begins.  Taking the film into origin story territory, we get to see a new take on how Bruce becomes Batman and what led him down that path.  Christian Bale was a perfect choice and the direction the story took was more than I could have hoped for.  I remember sitting there in the theater just speechless because I didn’t want to miss a single frame.  I told my friend right after it was over, that I wish I could see it again for the first time.  I still love it and think that it holds up.  I love The Dark Knight as well, but would go with Batman Begins if given a choice.

Star Trek (2009)
I’ve seen every Star Trek movie in the theater with the exception of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier.  My favorite of the original cast was The Undiscovered Country and my favorite of Next Gen was First Contact.  I will agree with the theory that the even numbered Trek films are the good ones while the odd numbered ones, not so much.  After the dismal disaster that was Nemesis, the future looked bleak for the Star Trek franchise.  Deep Space Nine was done, Voyager was done and Enterprise ended after a few seasons.  None of those were prime fodder for a script.  Word came out that J.J. Abrams was looking at rebooting the franchise.  While the word “reboot” tends to fill me with dread, the name attached to it made me pause before I opened my mouth to slam the idea.  With a beloved franchise like Star Trek, the person undertaking such a thing would surely keep the fans in mind, right?  RIGHT?!

After seeing that brief teaser that was released about a year before the film came out my interest was piqued.  It doesn’t take much ,I know.  Once stills and a proper trailer hit the web, I was sold.  Hook, line and sinker.  Once again, we get another origin story.  This version follows how the crew of the Enterprises meets and begins working together.  Incorporating tweaks to the time line in the story, the writers and Abrams managed to make the story fresh and exciting.  This film did the impossible.  It managed to drag me out of my house to a sneak peak screening, which I had to pay full price for.  On a school night even!  Those things that NEVER happen.  Imagine my surprise when I loved it so much I went again 2 days later.  The second time I went, I took my best friend who managed to stay away from all advertisements and trailers and had no clue that Leonard Nimoy was in the film.  The look of excitement and surprise that she had resembled a kid on their first trip to Disneyland.  I would love love love to recapture that feeling again.

When I see a film I never think, “Ok, maybe this will be the one” or anything of the sort.  These types of films are true gems and ones that manage to sneak up on you.  That is normally the way it happens and the way it should be.  Having those expectations can sometimes ruin a movie and who wants to do that?  One last thing, I do promise to watch The Shawshank Redemption as soon as I can.  I’ll let y’all know my thoughts after.

What films do you wish you could experience for the first time again.  Leave us your comments and let us know.

You can find me on Twitter at @baddladd

The IMDb250. A list of the top 250 films as ranked by the users of the biggest Internet movie site on the web. It is based upon the ratings provided by the users of the Internet Movie Database, which number into the millions. As such, it’s a perfect representation of the opinions of the movie masses, and arguably the most comprehensive ranking system on the Internet.

It’s because of this that we at HeyUGuys (and in this case we is myself and Barry) have decided to set ourselves a project. To watch and review all 250 movies on the list. We’ve frozen the list as of January 1st of this year. It’s not as simple as it sounds, we are watching them all in one year, 125 each.

This is our 30th update, my next five films watched for the project. You can find all our previous week’s updates here.

This week I watched five absolutely brilliant films for the project, all very different but all highly entertaining in their own way. Chaplin provides some silent movie laughs, Bruce Willis puts on one of the greatest every action movie performances, A shark terrorises a small beach town, the Python’s put on one of the funniest films and Johnny Depp goes for an Oscar as a rum drinking Pirate. I could barely find a fault with any of them.

No.170 – The Gold Rush (1925) – Rating 8.1

Another Chaplin movie from the list and again Chaplin offers everything you could want from a comedy film with heart.

The story of Gold Rush has the iconic character Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) travelling to Alaska to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush. Bad weather strands him in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with fellow prospector Big Jim Mckay (Mack Swain) who has found a large gold deposit. An escaped fugitive called Black Larsen (Tom Murray) joins them and after reaching a point of starvation they part ways with the Big Jim and the Larsen fighting over the claim ending with Big Jim getting a blow to the head causing amnesia and Larsen falling off a cliff to his death.

The Tramp eventually returns to town where he gives up prospecting, falls in love with a girl Georgina (Georgia Hale) and lives in a run down cabin planning to spend his life with Georgina but when Big Jim arrives and recognises the Tramp he also remembers the claim and so recruits the Tramp to help him find his claim by leading to the place they shared for a split of his gold.

The story is typical Chaplin with equal measures of comedy brilliance and touching moments. The stand out scenes are Chaplin doing the iconic bread roll dance to impress Georgina that will always put a smile on my face, the shear simplicity of the scene just adds to the magic of Chaplin and his natural comic ability. Another scene where Chaplin and Big Al struggle to find food so they cook up and attentively eat a stewed shoe or where the cabin hangs over the edge of a cliff and Chaplin does his fantastic physical comedy to add laughs to a dangerous situation. All add so many memories for me from the film and add fuel to the fact that Chaplin is easily one of the greatest ever comedy directors/actors there will ever be.

If you haven’t seen a Chaplin film before the Gold Rush is a fine place to start. The story is a joy to watch and Chaplin’s performance is as ever perfect. Another film that will no doubt be placed in the IMDb 250 list for a long time to come.

No. 114 – Die Hard (1988) – Rating 8.2

Die hard, the greatest action movie ever made? in a lot of peoples eyes absolutely, for me it’s definitely up there with the best.

The story is classic action movie popcorn. Police officer John McClane arrives from New York to attend his wife’s office party in a huge office tower at the same time as some terrorist robbers arrive who proceed to hold the party hostage. McClane avoids capture and for the rest of the film torments head terrorist Hans Gruber and his goons by killing them off one by one until it’s just him and Hans who takes the express elevator to his death.

Die Hard has everything you could possibly want from an Action Movie. The plot is wonderfully creative and the characters are just perfection with our hero John McClane full of charisma who carries the film so well, his partner over the walkie talkie, Sgt Al Powel (Reginald VelJohnson), gives McClane someone to bounce banter with and is his voice to the outside world and the villain of the film, Hans Gruber played majestically with intelligence and brains by Alan Rickman in his first film role is equally as strong and memorable as Bruce Willis is as John McClane. Top this all off with some excellent cliched bad guys then you have everything in place for a great film.

The entire cast provide us with a film that’s so full of wonderful scenes, whether it’s the roof top explosion scene as McClane escapes gun fire and explosions or when McClane dispatches a number of baddies with humour and agility like the Ho Ho Ho now I’ve got a machine gun part. It’s eternally memorable, it’s completely cool and it’s just pure energetic action movie perfection from start to finish.

I can’t fault it as an action movie and as always I had such a blast watching it, despite being roughly the twentieth time of watching it, I can never get bored of watching John McClane kicking arse.

Another bunny recreation below.

No. 106 – Jaws (1975) – Rating 8.3

One of the greatest films of all time, but only placed at 106. Come on.

I remember seeing Jaws for the first time as a kid and the music just completely scared me, the scene was set and after watching the film I never wanted to enter the sea again. That’s an impact you never forget.

From the opening John Williams score you know the film is going to be something special as the camera speeds through the sea with the Tuba blasting the unforgettable theme. The kill of the girl straight afterwards is just suspenseful genius, you know whats coming, you know she’s going to die and when she does it’s just horrible to watch as you can feel the bites pulling her under the water from the unseen killer.

The film goes on to follow Chief Brody and the town of Amity island dealing with a collection of deaths from what seems like a shark attack. Through bad judgement from the mayor of the town due to it being the peak season, they keep the beaches open for the tourists but another death sparks further panic and so Brody recruits marine biologist and shark specialist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfus) and boat owning shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) to capture the great white shark. One thing’s for sure, they will need a bigger boat.

The story is so well paced with plenty of character development to make the film less of a horror/monster movie than you would expect and throughout the tension is built to create a genuine fear of the water. You barely see the shark throughout the movie as its fin breaking the water or the floating yellow barrels that have been harpooned to the shark that are trailing after Brody’s boat is enough to create panic and fear. But when you do finally come face to face with the shark it’s an incredible moment that reminds me of The Third Man and Orson Welles appearance, it’s what you have been waiting for the whole film and when it comes it’s a wonderful unforgettable movie sequence.

Spielberg has made one of the finest films of the 70′s and of all time and what really sets it apart from the average creature movie are the strong characters, the faultless acting and excellent dialogue delivered from every single person in the film. There are also some really memorable scenes littered throughout, like the really charming moment where Brody and his son are sitting at the table and he mimics everything his dad does or when Quint introduces himself to the panic stricken town folk with nails down the chalk board and especially the scene when Quint, Brody and Hooper compare stories, scares and booze on the boat and eventually singing us out with “Im Tired and I want to go home”, I can’t help but love the film and every time I watch Jaws I fall in love with it again, there is no better movie of its type and I doubt there ever will be.

No. 67 – Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) – Rating 8.4

I believe that The Holy Grail was my first introduction into the world of Monty Python when I was a young chap, I never really got the jokes first time round and as I grew older my love of The Holy Grail grew too as I understood the genius of the comedy. It’s a film I really really enjoy with a passion.

The story of the film is a Monty Python retelling of the legendary tale of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table seeking the Holy Grail. It is of course typically hilarious, bonkers, surreal and highly entertaining.

We follow King Arthur (Graham Chapman) as he trots (trusted aide clapping two coconut halves together) across England trying to recruit Knights for his Round Table. Arthur enlists the Knights Sir Bedevere (Terry Jones) Sir Galahad the Pure (Michael Palin), Sir Lancelot the Brave (John Cleese) and Sir Robin the not quite so brave as Sir Launcelot (Eric Idle) as they take on different sub quests and venture to find the Holy Grail.

There is not much else to say on the plot as the film takes on the form of short sketches involving the Knights and their misadventures to find the Grail, they come across killer rabbits, horny nuns, insulting French Knights, animated multi-eyed monsters, Tim the Enchanter, a psychotic Black Knight, The Knights that say ‘Ni’, Shrubbery’s,  three headed Knight, the Police and many more. There are just so many funny laugh out loud scenes to pick from as they start coming right from the beginning of the film with probably the funniest ever opening credits ever made and each little sketch is full of quotable lines and really original comical situations.

It’s so good to see a collection of comedic actors in such fine form performing in such a natural and enjoyable way and with Terry Gilliam co-directing with Terry Jones it has a real feel of pure Monty Python madness. Michael Palin always stands out when I watch it and his multiple performances always have me laughing the most but Cleese comes very close with a truly memorable turn as Lancelot, especially his raid on the castle, and as Tim the Enchanter. It’s a very consistent comedy and lacks the realy surreal moments which I know puts a lot of people off Python comedy and the story, despite being crazy, it’s so enjoyable you can return to it time and time again and almost quote every scene with a big smile on your face.
I recently had a chat at work about the film and we both ended up laughing out loud a lot when recalling our favourite moments, you cant beat that effect a film has on you.

Regarded as being better than The Life of Brian by 81 places, The Holy Grail is definitely a more accessible comedy film, but better? I don’t think so. It has spawned a very successful musical production and is definitely one of the most loved comedy films ever made, if I ever need cheering up I would probably stick it on for an instant pick me up.

My favourite scene below.

No. 221 – Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) – Rating 8.0

Pirates of the Caribbean is a surprise inclusion in the IMDb250 list, it won’t be there for much longer as it will no doubt drop out of the list by the end of the year, but what it is is one of the finest swashbuckling action adventure movies to have come out in many many years and a film that created one of the most loved movie characters in Captain Jack Sparrow played effortlessly and with perfection by Johnny Depp.

The plot is of Jack Sparrow sailing the seas in a small dilapidated boat and arriving in Port Royal to steal a better ship. He mistakenly saves a drowning woman called Elizabeth (it would have been a better film if she drowned) who is the governor’s daughter and because he’s a pirate he’s put in jail and condemned to hang. An evil pirate called Barbossa attacks Port Royal and searches for a gold coin, held by Elizabeth, that’s needed to end an ancient Aztec curse that’s been cast on himself and his crew of the Black Pearl. Barbossa kidnaps Elizabeth believing she’s the child of old shipmate Bootstrap Bill and her blood is whats needed to lift the curse.

A blacksmith called Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), who loves Elizabeth, enlists Jack’s help to rescue her. Jack agrees and the pair hijack a British naval ship, recruit a motley crew of scabs, and chase the Black Pearl to the Isla de la Muerta for Jack to reclaim his ship ‘The Black Pearl’ and for Turner to rescue Elizabeth. Yo Ho Ho.

There is something truly enjoyable about Pirates of the Caribbean, It has a perfect combination of Johnny Depp stealing the film with his memorable Oscar nominated role as Jack Sparrow, a plot that’s from the books of Pirate mythical lore with walking the planks, parrot’s, caves, buried treasure etc, a wonderful musical score from the legend of Hans Zimmer and the resurrection of a genre not seen for many years so it felt really fresh and original. Add to this some awesome action set pieces with a fair dose of comedy then you have one of the most enjoyable summer blockbuster of 2003.

Unfortunately the film had to build on its success and it produced two pointless sequels with a forth film with a new story in the work. It’s become a rather disappointing franchise, although I am quite hopeful about the forth film as it doesn’t star the minimal acting ranges of Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom who just annoy the hell out of me.

You can find Barry’s next update next week, catch you in two.

Don’t forget, you can follow our progress on Twitter at http://twitter.com/baz_mannand http://twitter.com/Gary_Phillips

James Cameron’s Avatar is now certain to become the highest grossing movie of all time, both at the domestic US Box Office and internationally, well, sort of. Factor in inflation and things look a little different. Ed crunches the numbers and finds out if today’s blockbusters are really more popular than their counterparts from yesteryear.

Box office analysts, those curious loons who spend each weekend with a calculator in one hand and their pleasure appendage in the other, thought that James Cameron has compressed all their Christmases into one and rendered it in 3D when Avatar inverted the trajectory of the average blockbuster. As any fule no, the release strategy for the Hollywood tentpole is now well established and has generated a model of return which is just as reliable. In days of yore, before home cinema and online theft, a movie, like a fine wine, was given time to breathe. Released in a few hundred cinemas in major cities, it would gradually tour, building word of mouth as it went. It might spread to the countryside, assuming anyone in the metropolis had bothered to see it and after a period of several months, sometimes years, it would quietly fade away, perhaps to be revived in rep a few years later, perhaps to find new life on television. Cinemagoers were often older and perhaps a little more adventurous, propelling movies like The Godfather and Doctor Zhivago to stratospheric box office.

Jaws changed all that. Hollywood learnt that a movie that appealed to a younger audience, a hyperactive, thrill seeking, devil may care audience, could generate enormous revenues, and fast. Jaws’ presence in America’s multiplexes soon expanded and its gross reflected the fact that audiences were returning to see it several times. Without intent, much like the serendipitous invention of Viagra or Penicillin, Spielberg’s film invented a new way of doing business. Now Blockbusters can expect to make most of their money on opening weekend. This is due to a blitzkrieg model in which a new release is relentlessly marketed in the months prior to its reveal then booked into as many screens as humanly possible, usually in excess of 3,000. In this opening “frame”, the movie can expect to make the lion’s share of its final take. Those analysts, who live for little else, keep their beady eyes on the so called sophomore frame, that second weekend in which good or bad word of mouth, coupled with the bulk of the target audience having blown their load, usually leads to a substantial decline. A movie can lose half its audience in the second week so any decline of less than 40% is deemed to indicate that the film has “legs”. Most don’t. Based upon this pattern of decline it then becomes fairly easy for the number crunchers to predict how much the movie will end with. If it flops, no matter – the cinema is only the first market anyway. Those ancillaries, DVD, Blu-ray and soon, legitimate download, may recoup costs, sometimes even turning a profit. But we digress.

What’s extraordinary about Avatar, and it certainly isn’t the plot or the characterisation, is the speed and consistency with which it’s made money. The opening weekend, $77M in the US, was solid but not extraordinary. However, Cameron’s film, just as Titanic had done 11 years earlier, broke the cycle of box office decline and has held on to its audience who seemingly can’t get enough of its gimmicked environs. In that sophomore frame it lost just 11% of its audience, virtually – no pun intended, unheard of and 5 weeks later it remains no.1 at the usually fickle US box office. It is the fastest movie in history to make $500m at US tills, the fastest to $1b worldwide in just 32 days. Screenings remained fully booked and sometime in February it will beat Titanic to take the number one all time spot in the US box office chart. By that time it will easily have assumed the same position worldwide. A gross in excess of $2b is attainable and highly likely. Now that all sounds marvellous and would seem to make Avatar unassailable, suggesting that cinema attendance is in rude health but it is of course, a lie because box office charts only reflect the actual figure amassed. They do not alter this figure to account for ticket price inflation. We, however, will do just that.

The truth is that Avatar is an enormous hit but no more so than several movies from the distant past. When one does account for inflation, as any honest comparison of box office tallies must, then Avatar is currently 32 on the list of US domestic blockbusters, sandwiched between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Ghostbusters, both of which made the equivalent of $519m in 2010 money. Assuming it finishes around the $600-650m range, as it likely, it would be no more popular than The Phantom Menace, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark or, wait for it, The Graduate. If Cameron wants to beat himself and there are many who wish he’d try, Avatar will need to bank $943,342,301 at US multiplexes to make more than Titanic did in 1998. You see, it’s not quite the clean sweep you thought it was.

HUG readers may be more interested to know how Avatar stacks up against their childhood favourites and this is actually a useful comparison because many movies, pre-1980, would only achieve their totals from multiple releases. Even Star Wars, which has a Rancor sized gross of $1.3billion in adjusted dollars – that’s US alone, has amassed that total from $320m from 1977 added to a further $138m from 1997. You then have to look at average ticket prices, attendance, a comparison of average prices if attendance figures aren’t avai- look, it’s complicated alright?

A more pertinent question for the box office analyst, rather than why is Avatar doing so well, might be ‘why don’t more modern movies do as well as Avatar?’ Recent blockbusters, even those which are critically acclaimed such as Lord of the Rings, can only boast no.51 in the chart overall. Johhny Depp’s impression of Keith Richards might have propelled Pirates of the Caribbean to worldwide success but he couldn’t do better than Henry Koster’s 1953 biblical hit, The Robe. Have you seen it? No, didn’t think so. In fact if Avatar does finish where we imagine it will, it will be the only film released in the Noughties to finish in the top 25.

So how do your favourites compare to Cameron’s behemoth? It will end up in Return of the Jedi country ($691m adjusted) but far short of Jaws ($941m adjusted), E.T ($1.04b adjusted) and the all time champ, Gone with the Wind (an incredible $1.48b adjusted). The other bad news for Hollywood on the box office front is that they’re having to swim twice as hard to cover the same distance from a generation ago. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek easily surpassed its predecessor’s numbers with $257.7m last summer, but that looks less rosy when you look at inflation. The previous leader in the Trek canon, 1986’s The Voyage Home, made $100m at a time when tickets cost about half as much. On a $30m budget (about $60m today), it made 80% of Abram’s take. The 2009 film by contrast cost $62m in 1986 money, over twice as much and would have grossed $132m at 1986 prices. A victor then, but not by the margin we all imagined.

If you’re a Hollywood exec trying to work out why you need to spend twice as much and a third again on marketing just to match the kind of grosses movies were making 25 years ago, you could blame the proliferation of home entertainment and the internet, or, if you were being smart, you might think that today’s blockbusters don’t have the same legs because they offer audiences less in terms of plot, character, dialogue and ideas – those essential storytelling elements which endear a film to patrons, drive word of mouth and promote repeat business. The 80s movies that still rank in the top 30 did so with lower budgets, fewer screens and no 3D glasses. Makes you think.

Still, it would be churlish, I mean more so than I’ve been already, to underwrite Cameron’s achievement. The advance in technology represented by Avatar has mouth watering potential which is just waiting to be wasted by poor screenwriters. In any event, he’ll end up with two movies in the all time top ten, an achievement only matched by Steven Spielberg and with that boat movie, he still managed to rake in two thirds of Gone with the Wind’s gross in an era when less than half as many people went to the cinema. Imagine what Cameron could do with a great script as well the promise of never before seen spectacle. It might even beat inflation…for a while.

Thanks to the fine folks over at Sky Movies HD, HeyUGuys attended a very special screening of Jaws HD at the SeaLife London Aquarium. The screening was set to take place after hours in a specially set up area right next to the shark enclosure. So to say that an atmosphere had been created was an understatement. After a select audience of writers, bloggers and competition winners were primed for the screening with seafood Canapés (a perfect irony), we made our way down to the appropriately decorated underbelly of the makeshift cine-quarium to take our seats. On the way down we got a close up viewing of the aquarium’s own collection of sharp toothed fish via a glass floor!. The further down we went, the more the fish got bigger, and then we found ourselves in the screening room.