Films That I Like: Scrooged

CROSS

We have spent forty million dollars on a live TV show. You guys have got an ad with America's favourite old fart, reading a book, in front of a fireplace! 

(beat)

Now I have to kill all of you.

We continue with my occasional series in which I blog about films I like and the particular aspect of the film that I enjoy. These are not reviews, there is no attempt at objectivity or to create a holistic analysis or in fact any analysis at all. It's just films that I like....

Scrooged

(1988)

Written by Mitch Glazer  & Michael O'Donoghue

Directed by Richard Donner

It has Alfre Woodward in it

Which is a good thing in any movie.

GRACE

He's fired? But it's christmas

CROSS

Thank you, call accounting, stop his bonus.

GRACE

(into phone)

Eliot Laudermilk - code nine.

It has an excellent Danny Elfman Score

He's love of interwining the cheery, the twee and the sinister suit the themes perfectly.

Design and Direction

It's beautifully directed by Richard Donner who gives some of the early Cross scenes a sort of terrifying granduer and moves things along with wit and economy. I'm particularly struck at the use of practical, almost theatrical stage effects used to evoke the supernatural elements. These were more common in the far off days before routine CGI but while the film has access to the state of the art (in 1988) optical effects it doesn't lean on them.Good examples are the arrival of the Ghost of Christmas Present and the use of editing to switch through time periods during the Ghost of Christmas Past sequence.

CROSS

Did our people do that? We're going to get phone calls.

J. Michael Riva's production design is also brilliant in this film, I love the off kilter hospital corridor in the Ghost of Christmas Future sequence and the underground sewer and impromptu tomb that Cross finds himself in earlier on.

Films That I Like: The Brother From Another Planet

The Brother From Another Planet (1984)
Written and Directed by John Sayles.

I remember going to see this several times when it was first released. Made for $350,000 and filmed on location in New York. It's a rambling structureless film that loses it's way in the third act by, ironically, trying to impose a conventional story on itself.

What drives the film is the device of making the Alien, played by Joe Morton, unable to speak so that he spends the film listening to the stories of the characters around him. Thus the film becomes a series of vignettes as the inhabitants of Harlem tell him their life stories, their hopes and dreams. His willingness to listen allows him to assimilate into his environment much more effectively than if he was constantly trying to impose his own viewpoint. This is contrasted with the two white businessmen who wander into a Harlem Bar by accident and never shut up long enough to learn anything at all.

Other highpoints are the alien bounty hunters, and their ultimate fate, the sequence on Ellis Island and what the Alien does with the record sleeve.

Films That I Like: Outland

I've decided to write a few blogs about films that I like. They're not reviews they're just the things that I like about a particular films. 

Outland (1981)
Written and Directed by Peter Hyam

O'NIEL

There's a whole machine that works because everybody does what they're supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's what's in the program, that's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. I don't like it so I'm going to find out if they're right.

You can pick as many holes in this film as you like but the script and the performances are amongst the best of any I've ever watched. All the actors portray their characters in a low key, naturalistic manner. I'm particularly fond of Nicolas Barnes's portrayal of O'Niel's wonderfully unattractive son Paul. A lumpen blob of a boy who could only be loved by his parents and has been cursed with the pet name of Paulie. He, along with Kika Markham who plays O'Niel's pusillanimous wife, help demythologise Sean Connery to the point where we accept him as being an ordinary bloke who decides to do something extraordinary.

I've mentioned the script; watch how all the characters are differentiated not just by their performances but also in their dialogue. When Frances Sternhagen, as Dr Lazerus engages in witty banter with O'Niel note how that while she's equipped with a ready wit O'Niel's responses are stilted and clichéd. James B. Sikking's character, Montone, speaks in hesitant half sentences and questions - a man desperate to avoid committing himself. None of this is accidental and is one of the signs of a proper professional writer.

The art direction is another stand out. As O'Niel chases a suspect through the complex see how each area has been carefully thought out and made to look authentically functional. I particularly like the line of pipes where workers, dressed in their pressure suits, plug themselves in to recharge their air supply.