My Top 20 movies with explanatory notes. (Only one is done so far, Deliverance)
Thumbnail Movie Reviews!
Bad
Santa
Timeline
Gothika
In
the Cut
Alien
(Director's Cut)
The
Core
Texas
Chainsaw Massacre (remake)
Irreversible
Out
of Time
Underworld
Secondhand
Lions
Cold
Creek Manor
Once
Upon a Time in Mexico
Cabin
Fever
The
New World
These are in no particular order...
Deliverance (1972)
A John Boorman film
Deliverance probably holds the record for "Movie most quoted by people
who have never seen it". This is a shame because this is a really
good movie and doesn't deserve to be brushed off as the "movie where
the chubby guy gets raped by hillbillies". At its core this is a
movie about man versus his environment and a study of how thin the veneer of
civilization is. It is a deceptively simple story, filmed in a fairly
straight-forward fashion...no special effects, no tricky camera work, just
four excellent actors who really bring their characters to life. The
story is about four men who, one weekend, decide to take a canoe trip down
the Cahulawassee River, so they can see it before it is dammed up and
becomes a lake. The two main characters, Ed (Jon Voight) and Lewis
(Burt Reynolds), are an interesting contrast. Lewis is obviously the
Alpha male of the group and Ed is equally obviously in awe of Lewis's
off-hand masculinity and laissez-faire attitude towards life.
In an early scene after Ed informs Lewis that Bobby (Ned Beatty) is an
insurance broker, Lewis comments "I've never had insurance in my
life...there's no risk in it", Ed nods some sort of agreement, but you
can see that he would never dream of being uninsured, and that his own
feelings bother him, as if he is constantly measuring himself by Lewis and
finding himself wanting.
The early sequence where they are getting gas and trying to find someone to
drive their vehicles downriver takes place in a small backwoods village that
seems like something out of an HP Lovecraft tale, there is a palpable aura
of decay and barely suppressed madness. It is here that the famous
"Dueling Banjos" scene takes place, between Drew (Ronny Cox) and
an inbred boy who is apparently an idiot savant and is disturbingly unable
to communicate. It's during these opening sequences that we start to
feel that the characters are no longer in their own world and that the
scenery, while beautiful, has it's own rules that are inimical to casual
visitors. The sense of aloneness and the leaving of the known for the
unknown is summed up in the scene where the four canoeists are passing under
a footbridge and the banjo playing boy is staring down at them without a
flicker of recognition, he just placidly watches them until they are out of
sight.
There are several interesting scenes that take place while they are camping
along the river. After their first night out Ed wakes before the rest
and decides to go hunting with his bow (which he seems to have solely
because Lewis hunts with one), he goes to wake Lewis and finds him
sleeping fitfully, whimpering in his sleep while curled up under his
blanket. Ed decides that he will go out alone and while he finds a
deer, he is utterly unable to actually kill it, and he ends up startling it
when he fires into a tree, letting it get away. He claims on returning
that he didn't see any wildlife, lying rather than admit his inability to
kill.
The sequence where Ed and Bobby pull over to take a rest and are accosted by
two mountain men is probably the best known part of the movie. The
attempts by Ed and Bobby to talk their way out of any trouble and their inability
to accept that these two men will not behave in a rational, civilized manner
is almost as viscerally disturbing as the actual rape scene. Most
people joke about it, but the rape scene is probably the most unpleasant
sexual assault ever put on film (male or female). The unflinching
manner that it is filmed in makes it difficult to watch as Bobby is forced
to strip, is humiliated, beaten and finally sodomized, while Ed is held at
gun point by the second leering hillbilly. Just as the second
hillbilly is about to have Ed fellate him at gunpoint, Lewis, who has just
caught up from up river, skewers the gun-toting rapist with a well aimed
arrow. After they run off the second rapist there ensues a fascinating
ethical debate, should they report the incident to the police or simply hide
the body and let the lake-to-be cover up any trace of the crime. Drew
is the most vehemently in favor of reporting the event to the law, but
Lewis, totally in his element, gestures at the miles of surrounding
wilderness and asks "Where's the law?". Bobby wants no word
of his ordeal to be publicized and votes to hide the body, leaving the final
decision to Ed, who after some waffling goes along with Lewis.
After burying the body they head back down river, no longer enjoying the
scenery, but wanting to get home as quickly as possible. While
navigating a narrow gorge, Drew, possibly grazed by a bullet, pitches
overboard and causes the canoe he shares with Ed to capsize. The canoe
wedges itself between two rocks and the second canoe slams into it, dumping
Bobby and Lewis into the rapids as well. After swimming the rapids Ed
finds that Drew is missing and Lewis has a badly broken leg (bone and flesh
are protruding from his thigh through his neoprene pants), leaving only
himself and Bobby to deal with being trapped in the gorge by a gunman on the
ridge above. Now Ed has deliver on what he has only been wishing he
possessed, with Lewis barely conscious and Bobby totally unprepared, he has
to climb the cliff face and confront the gunman with his bow. During a
difficult nighttime ascent (which is slightly marred to modern eyes by
having been filmed during daylight and filtered to look dark...it just looks
kinda fake), Ed finds reserves within himself that enable him to reach the
top and prepare himself for the gunman's return in the morning. After
the rather tense battle with the second hillbilly, where Ed barely overcomes
his inability to fire his bow at a living target, he and Bobby sink the body
and load Lewis onto the remaining canoe...continuing their journey to back
to civilization.
After going downriver for several miles they come across Drew's body wedged
between some rocks. Realizing that the police would be able to tell if
he had been shot, they quickly come to the conclusion that they must also
sink Drew's body in the river. The ease with which they agree to this
is telling, their survival instincts are in full gear and the veneer of
civilization is long gone. Even Bobby, who for the most part has been
ineffectual for most of the film, seems to develop a hard exterior and he
quickly and efficiently goes along with whatever will get him out of this
nightmare in one piece. After arriving in the decayed town of Aintry,
Ed and Bobby concoct a story of Drew falling overboard in the rapids and
Lewis breaking his leg when the canoe tipped over. The sheriff (played
by James Dickey, the author of the book), plainly finds their story hard to
swallow, but they steadfastly stick to their tale, even when part of the
second canoe is found upriver from where they claim the accident
occurred. That these two rather mild-mannered businessmen can go from
law-abiding citizens to killers able to lie to the face of the police, tells
something of the nature of mans ability to survive, by whatever means necessary.
As Ed and Bobby take leave of each other at the end, Bobby tells him "I
don't think I'll be seeing you around for awhile". You know that
far from bringing them together it has simply made outsiders of both of
them, outsiders that cannot acknowledge any bond between them and must
therefore sever that bond, only by compartmentalizing and forgetting the
events of the last days can they re-enter society with any hope of
reclaiming their normal lives.
More to come soon...
Jaws
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
12 Angry Men
A Clockwork Orange
Inherit the Wind
Last of the Mohicans (1990's version)
The Piano
The English Patient
Alien
Aliens
Tombstone
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Titanic
Pulp Fiction
The Blair Witch Project
Terminator 2
Braveheart
American Beauty
Honorable mention goes to The Poseidon Adventure (which I saw 30+ times as a kid)