THE DUELLISTS

The Duellists has some powerful imagery in it, filmed as if it were a series of 19th century paintinings brought to life along with the men of that era. It's about two officers in Napoleon's army (Keith Carradine, Harvey Keitel) who for reasons which are increasingly obscure, fight a series of vicious if non-fatal duels over a period years (non-fatal more by accident than design; Keitel really wants to kill Carradine). The Duellists  has something to say about the self-destructiveness of men fighting among themselves, and where this leads. There is one particularly vivid if bleak scene during the Grand Army's disastrous winter retreat from Moscow which resonates with life in the modern wasteland. What makes the movie for me, though, is the ending, in which Carradine ends the mutual self-destruction, and does so without killing his foe nor going soft by reconciling. The duels have for him become a spiritual journey, a means to outthink the opposition. Unique and, again, something to ponder.

FREQUENCY

Frequency was something of a surprise. The plot is about a policeman (James Caviezel) whose father, a fireman (Dennis Quaid), communicates with him via shortwave radio and helps him solve a mystery. The kicker is that the father died heroically when the cop was a kid, and the communication is across time. Frequency was a little more on the science fiction side than I had expected, contrasting against the gritty realism of the worlds of law enforcement and emergency rescue. But it does have a lot of solid things to say about father-son relationships, and all the what-might-have-beens had things not conspired to undermine them, a metaphor indeed for today's world.

THE LOST BOYS

It's the 1980s and Jason Patric is a young man whose fatherless family moves into a resort town only to find that underneath the edenic glitter there are sinister doings, namely a gang of hip (or was it "rad" in those days?) teenage vampires on the prowl. He gets seduced by a female who leads him on into the dark side, but is rescued by his brother and a duo of adolescent van Helsings. There's some things in here about the rootlessness of female headed families and the temptations of the (female) flesh, as well as the brotherhood of arms (even if the weapons are only squirtguns loaded with holy water). And some fun satire on Hollywood vampires (what do you do when garlic doesn't work?). Plus Keifer Sutherland as the head of the stylish if (literally) bloodthirsty gang who promises eternal coolness in exchange for one's soul. The downside is that in the end the "princess" has to be rescued, and it all comes to a head in a literal if hysterical bloodbath.

...and speaking of Faustian pacts...

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER

This is another of those movies I remember seeing as a kid on the Late, Late Show (does television even have a Late, Late Show any more?).  The Devil and Daniel Webster  is Hollywood's retelling of a tale from American folklore, about a man in the early Republic who makes a Faustian pact with the Devil, then comes to regret it. He calls upon legendary orator and politico Daniel Webster (played Edward Arnold) to save him, and being a lawyer, Webster demands a trial by jury. What follows is an epic court battle in which Webster expounds mightily about freedom and that the idea of America is to give a man the right to a second chance. I still remember all those words, and they are something to think about given the country's current direction. Time to shake that American fist at the powers-that-be.

K-19: THE WIDOMAKER 

OK, the Cold War is over and now we can be friends with the Russians, so bear with me and as they say, "this is based on a true story". It's 1961 and K-19 is the new Soviet nuclear submarine, with the standard crew:  Hardcore captain (Harrison Ford), popular first officer (Liam Neeson), plus the green  lieutenant who proves himself, the doctor who doesn't really want to be aboard a ship which he knows to be not very seaworthy, and let's not leave behind the "heavy" political officer (whom the captain chews out for not being "heavy" enough!). Come to think of it, this is sort of like the Run Silent, Run Deep crew, but what makes it work is that K-19 is a much harder edged movie, the characters much harder disciplined--this is the old Soviet navy, after all. And there is a hard reality: the K-19's submariners are fighting the boat as well as the environment. In one particularly horrific scene, volunteers have to fix a leaking nuclear reactor without protective suits! As is to be expected, the men triumph and bring the ship home, or at least to the surface safely. K-19 got kind of panned, but the movie does give a new edge to the struggles which men face and the real victories they win.

ENEMY FROM SPACE

(moved to Science Fiction & Fantasy)

BREAKER MORANT

Breaker Morant is based on a real incident from the Boer War (1899-1902), in which a trio of British-Australian officers were court martialed for shooting prisoners. Now, I will state that this was a violation of the laws of war, and worse, evidence of loss of self-control on the part of the principles. Yet Breaker Morant resounds with the dilemma that men face: being put into impossible situations and having the rug pulled out from under them by the very system in whose interests they were fighting. Edward Woodard plays Lieutenant Harry "Breaker" Morant, who provides a spirited defense of not simply himself and his men, but of men everywhere who refuse to play along with the system which is out to destroy them. "It's a new war for a new century," Morant remarks at one point, and that war is still going on.

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE

It's good to be king, unless you are losing your sanity, as King George III is doing in this movie. Even then, it's still pretty good because the king is surrounded by loyal friends who see him through the crisis, plus a dedicated doctor whose regimen is a little ahead of its time. Nigel Hawthorne plays George III, the sovereign who lost the American colonies in the not too distant revolution and now has to face skullduggery within his own court all while losing his mind. The king regains his sanity and saves his throne under the discipline of Ian Holm's doctor, with a message in there that one can not govern others unless one governs one's own self. That's important so I will say it again: one can not rule others unless one rules one's own self. The movie has a lot to say about male qualities of rationality and self-discipline, but then again, this was the Age of Reason.  There's also a loyal wife played by the ever regal Helen Mirren, and an image of functioning marriage in those days before no-fault. Madness   has a lot going for it, including  an unorthodox debate on political issues which still resound today, and a definitely non-Hollywood look at the late 18th century in all its smallpox scarred and frazzled hair glory.

RIO BRAVO

John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson are lawmen taking on a town boss in a Wild West boom town. But that's just the backdrop. The story is really about how men overcome their inner demons;  the bad guys' siege of the jail is a metaphor for the forces assailing each of the protagonists. Rio Bravo is told in a minimalist style, with most of the action taking place in either the protagonists' jailhouse sanctum, the neutral ground of nighted streets, or the dive bar which serves as the antagonists' stronghold. The movie abjures the sweeping outdoor vistas and cattle stampedes of the genre and instead concentrates on the human dimension, which is always the real story. Wayne remade Rio Bravo a couple of times, as El Dorado and Rio Lobo, but this first version is the best.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA

It's the 1980s in all its neon pop morally ambiguous glory, and William Petersen is a Secret Service agent on the trail of parvenu counterfeiter Willem Dafoe, set against the background of an urban wasteland. The movie takes all the cliches of the machismo hero flik and turns them upside down. Petersen is after Dafoe because the latter killed the former's partner, but the chase turns into a Kafka-esque journey into the other side of the mirror. At one point, Petersen and his neophyte partner (played by John Pankow) rip off a mob bagman and then find themselves in the middle of a federal sting operation, escaping via a wrong way drag race on the LA freeways. It's all emblematic of the moral and bureaucratic labyrinths in which men frequently find themselves entrapped.  There's a way out, but it means casting off past assumptions.  One interesting thing about the movie is the cynical male-female relations, where partners openly use each other to gain their objectives, a welcome relief from the obligatory phony romances Hollywood foists on us. To Petersen's agent Richard Chance, the mission is the thing, not happy ever after. Yeah, it's a dark side movie, with one of the feds being killed in a definitely non-heroic non-cliche shootout, but the surviving agent sheds his naivete about the world and takes charge--something more men need to do. Directed by William Friedkan, with heavy overtones of the Miami Vice era.

THE STUFF

To sound film student-ish, The Stuff is a stunning metaphor of how modern consumer society, well, consumes the consumer. Michael Moriarty is an amoral industrial espionage operative on the trail of the eponymous "stuff", an addictive junk food with a life of its own, taking over its imbibers and turning them into something else. Yes, it's body snatchers time, but The Stuff has a curious quasi-documentary quality, perhaps because it is rooted in a reality too many men see in these declining days. The family, the workplace, the media, the cops, all have been taken over. But there's a way out. Moriarty links up with a young man who escapes his literally alienated family. Together, they work to uncover the secret behind the Stuff, and there is some good older guy-younger guy mentorship in there. There's also a paramilitary militia outfit led by an unsavory extremist which is recruited into the rescue. The movie says, don't trust the authorities, trust only other men who are fighting the system. Amen and out.