Movie Review: The Shining
Year of Release: 1980
Country of Origin: UK, USA
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Plot outline: A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future (IMDb).
Time and space are elements that Stanley Kubrick toys with in all of his movies, but a near empty hotel may be the perfect place for him to explore those particular elements. He has plenty of long hallways to play with, interesting rooms and confines to scope out and a stark surrounding landscape to finish it all off. Quite often the camera starts far away from its subject and either the camera closes in or the subject slowly approaches the camera. This creates a permanent sense of unease, nothing is ever quite in focus, objects take up more space than they should or are confined to a smaller area that feels comfortable. At every moment Kubrick plumbs the depths of the landscape of the hotel, leaving no area safe. His camera is always pervasive yet standoffish at the same time. Much like its lead character The Shining never feels quite right visually and in that way it is perfect. The question then becomes, sure, the craftsmanship is great, it’s a great looking picture, but how does it work as a horror movie? The answer to that isn’t easy, or maybe it is, I’m not sure. The simple answer is that The Shining may be the best horror movie ever made, but to get to that conclusion requires a bit of complexity. Most great horror is all about the mood and atmosphere of the picture, and The Shining has mood and atmosphere in spades. It starts with the eerily artificial score, there’s no better way to instill horror in a naturally beautiful setting than by having a score that sounds like something from another world entirely. Every scene has a bit of an edge to it, even when there isn’t any malicious intent in the story the score implies that there is and the viewer is taken aback by this contradiction. I’ve already covered the visuals, so that moves us onto the acting. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd are very naturalistic and minimalistic in their approach. This isn’t Jack being Jack, this is Jack adapting his natural persona into a creepy atmosphere to great affect. Duvall is scared and because we relate to her fear we are scared for/along with her. Lloyd isn’t a typical child actor, he is mighty creepy and never once feels out of step with his adult counterparts. All of the above elements combine to form the slow cooker approach to horror. For those who don’t understand what I mean, think of that crock pot in your parents kitchen. You watch them put all sorts of ingredients in and then walk away. Hours pass by and the ingredients slowly combine and join together to form what will eventually be a scrumptious meal. That is the horror on display in The Shining, not the fast slasher type or the twist type, but the kind that slowly cooks over the course of the movie. It cooks and cooks until it reaches its conclusion, a conclusion that never had any choice but to be great, because all the ingredients were slowly added and cooked to perfection. (BT)
My judgement: **** out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Little Nikita
Year of Release: 1988
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Richard Benjamin
Cast: Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, Richard Jenkins
Plot outline: A teenager discovers his parents are "sleeper" KGB agents who, after being inactive for 20 years, are called upon to run one last dangerous mission (IMDb).
Is River Phoenix a star? Perhaps not. But his hair is. Little Nikita would be nothing without River Phoenix's hair. It's the most engaging, the most watchable thing in the movie. It has body. It has character. It even has drama. In other words, it has everything that's missing from the rest of the picture. Everything in the movie feels arbitrary and unmotivated, and time after time, scenes that should have payoffs don't, or there is action without the necessary set-up that would allow us to make sense out of it. The director is Richard Benjamin, and he is so inept that he can't even stage a car chase. And that, you'd guess, is pretty much the one talent needed these days just to get your guild card. The difficulties reveal more than simply the absence of a style or visual flair. They indicate a lack of any grasp of the essentials of the director's art. Benjamin's camera reveals nothing. When he moves it, it's usually for no particular reason and to no real effect. Both the action and the dialogue scenes are without pace. And there's little compensation in his work with the actors. (HH)
My judgement: *1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: The Organization (1971)
Year of Release: 1971
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Don Medford
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Raul Julia, James A. Watson Jr.
Plot outline: When a group of revolutionaries fighting the drug rackets are framed for murder, detective Virgil Tibbs steps in to clear their names (IMDb).
We first met Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night, when he was a cop from Philadelphia. In They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! he moved to San Francisco and had a really elaborate hilltop home. Now, in The Organization, he has moved into a less elaborate home (apparently after reading the reviews wondering how he could meet the payments on his police salary), but he still has his loving wife, sweet daughter and smart-mouth son. There is just barely a chance for each family member to do his thing, however, because Tibbs is up to here in the most complicated caper of his career. It is so complicated, in fact, that I am not sure I could figure it out. The plot is not exactly believable. It's about a strange gang of characters (a storefront preacher, a member of a girl's track team, etc.) who steal an enormous shipment of heroin. But after they make their getaway, someone else kills the guy they left behind, bound and gagged. They let Tibbs in on their secret because they don't want the murder rap (although since they DID kidnap the guy and nothing can bring him back to life, you'd think they would keep quiet). Anyway, after an investigation that gets a little confused, Tibbs is suspended from the force for concealing his knowledge. And then he is either put back on the force (in a scene not in the picture) and is on plainclothes duty in the unfinished subway system, or he was not cleared and just happens to be working on the subway when the movie's big chase scene goes by. Anyway, there's a bit of shooting, a few identities are untangled, and the movie comes to an unmourned end. (RE)
My judgement: *1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Buck and the Preacher
Year of Release: 1972
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Sidney Poitier
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee
Plot outline: A con man helps a group of former slaves survive the perils of the wild West in their search for the promised land (IMDb).
Sidney Poitier's directorial debut, Buck and the Preacher is a slowly paced western that mixes action and comedy. His effort here is commendable, but the script ineffectively blends the two elements. Namely, the action is missing. The story builds slowly, but that isn't a bad thing; the characters are developed enough that viewers will want to stick around and see what happens to them. But, until the end, there is little but plotting and suspicious eyeing between Buck (Poitier), who used to be a sergeant in the Union Army, and the Preacher (an ex-con, played by Harry Belafonte). Despite excellent performances by Poitier and Belafonte, it never quite clicks. Nice, though, to see the Indians riding to the rescue instead of the Cavalry. (HP)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!
Year of Release: 1970
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Gordon Douglas
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau
Plot outline: A police detective's investigation of a prostitute's murder points to his best friend (IMDb).
This sequel to In the Heat of the Night will suffer in inevitable comparisons to its infinitely better predecessor. Instead of looking like a theatrical movie edited for television, the movie looks suspiciously like a TV movie edited for theatrical release, with grainy photography, cheesy opening titles, and sets that look like they're made of plywood. The murder sequence has a glaring continuity error: the camera shows two hands choking the girl, then a shot of a hand reaching for a statuette, then a shot of the girl being choked with two hands again, and finally the statuette coming down for the fatal blow. Solving the case should be easy: find the only guy with three hands! :-) But the shoddy production values can't completely obscure this movie's considerable merits: namely, Sidney Poitier's performance as the cool detective determined to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, even if it implicates a friend. Martin Landau is also convincing as the do-gooder preacher-activist suspected of brutally murdering his prostitute girlfriend. In addition to being haunted by the case, Tibbs is conflicted about his home life, but the issues of race and Tibbs' barely concealed sense of social outrage are absent here. So is the complex murder mystery that made its predecessor so compelling. (MDB)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Year of Release: 1980
