Steven Spielberg wanted to make a James Bond movie until his buddy George Lucas said, ‘I have a better idea.’ And he did. Lucas created Indiana Jones, a globe-trotting archaeologist who sought treasure for fortune and glory while encountering a variety of adversaries in his travels, starting with the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones would become the new name of film adventure in the 1980s, paying homage to the cliffhanger serials of yesteryear while simultaneously elevating them with a bigger budget and more attention to craft and character. Lawrence Kasdan’s screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark is a well-oiled machine that never falters or skips a beat, balancing the thrills with a healthy dose of humor and the spectacle with likeable characters with whom you’re more than happy to go the distance.
Robert Redford directs this adaptation of Judith Guest’s novel, about a family reeling from the accidental death of the eldest child. Unlike so many dramas, it’s what you don’t see and what isn’t said that makes Ordinary People such a gut-wrenching, powerfully moving film.
Timothy Hutton, Donald Sutherland, and Mary Tyler Moore give superb performances as family members struggling to reconnect with one another after the tragedy. Hutton won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his raw, riveting portrayal of young Conrad Jarrett. Moore plays his mother, an emotionally unavailable woman barricading herself from further distress by ignoring her family’s problems, even after Conrad tries to take his own life. Sutherland plays the father, the mediator between mother and son, desperately trying to hold his family together. Judd Hirsch appears as Conrad’s therapist, a savior shrink who forces Conrad to confront his guilt and fear.
This was the first blockbuster superhero movie (for better and for worse) and I doubt there will ever be a better film adaptation for the Man of Steel. Under Richard Donner’s (The Omen, Lethal Weapon) direction and good taste, Superman is a winning blend of action, drama, charm, and yes, camp. The first forty minutes are emotionally powerful, more than any other comic book adaptation I’ve ever seen. I get choked up every time I watch this movie, whether it’s seeing Marlon Brando (as Jor-El) say goodbye to his son before sending him away from their doomed home world, watching the Kent family deal with the death of Jonathan Kent, or the gorgeous wheat field scene where Clark tells Ma Kent it’s time for him to go.
Ten years after Night of the Living Dead, which pretty much invented zombies as we now know them, George Romero went back to the well and made a sequel that I like even better. Never content to make a zombie movie that is just a zombie movie, Romero infuses Dawn with a statement on the soul-numbing effects of crash commercialism. It’s excellent fodder for college essays, but the message isn’t too overbearing. Dawn functions first and foremost as escapist fare, a kind I particularly enjoy. I mean, how cool would it be to live in a giant mall, even if (especially if?) it was under siege by the living dead? Dawn also benefits from the same claustrophobia and documentary-style film making Romero employed in the first film.
