A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(c) 1983 Warner Bros.  Writer-director Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” is a rousing adaptation of author Tom Wolfe’s eponymous non-fiction bestseller about the beginning of America’s space program. Starring Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Barbara Hershey, Fred Ward, Scott Glenn, Veronica Cartwright, Dennis Quaid, Pamela Reed, Mary Jo Deschanel, and Lance Henriksen, “The Right Stuff” dramatizes how a top secret military aircraft evaluation project evolved into the highly publicized manned space endeavor named Project Mercury. Set between Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager’s (Shepard) “breaking of the sound barrier” in October 1947 and astronaut Gordon Cooper’s (Quaid) “Faith 7” Mercury mission in May 1963, “The Right Stuff” is an epic film that successfully blends historical drama, fantastic special effects, and great performances. And although “The Right Stuff” wasn’t a box office success – it only earned $21.1 million, which was less than its $27 million budget – it was widely h

When I was a junior in high school, 20th Century Fox released director Harold Becker's  Taps,  a well-acted if rather unrealistic film about a group of teenaged military school cadets who, with visions of honor and duty in their minds, challenge local law enforcement agencies and even the Army National Guard to keep their military academy from being closed. Starring a  Patton- esque George C. Scott as Gen. Harland Bache, the superintendent of Bunker Hill Academy,  Taps also features a cast of young actors who were either already Academy Award-winners (Timothy Hutton) or destined for future Oscars and/or greater success in Hollywood (Sean Penn, Tom Cruise). Based on the novel  Father Sky  by Devery Freeman, the screenplay written by Robert Mark Kamen, James Lineberger and Darryl Ponicsan is best seen as an allegory about teenagers' extremist interpretations of such notions as honor, duty and courage rather than being a true to life mish-mash which blends a look at military sch

In the summer of 1987, Universal Studios released  Dragnet,  the third feature film based on the long-running radio and TV police procedural series created in 1949 by actor-director-producer Jack Webb.  The show, which ran on-and-off from ’49 to 2003 on various media platforms on two networks and in syndication, is famous for its musical theme (“Dum - - - de - DUM - DUM"), its cinema verite approach to storytelling, and Webb’s deadpan delivery of his dialogue.  Five years after Jack Webb’s death (which came just as a new version of  Dragnet  was in pre-production), writer-director Tom Mankiewicz teamed up with actors Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks to create a comedy which was part parody and part loving tribute to Webb’s very straight-faced drama.  Here, Ackroyd, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mankiewicz and Alan Zweibel, stars as Joe Friday, nephew and namesake to Webb’s famous Los Angeles Police Department plainclothes sergeant.  The younger Friday is a bit taller and stockie

With the phenomenal success of Star Wars in 1977, George Lucas realized he could continue the planned trilogy he had been outlining since the early 1970s. His original outline contained the raw material for Episodes IV, V and VI as well as the nebulous backstory that would become the foundation for the current prequels. So in 1978, with Star Wars (which would be rechristened Episode IV: A New Hope) earning hundreds of millions in box office receipts, Lucas, producer Gary Kurtz and the Lucasfilm production team began work on The Empire Strikes Back, the film most Star Wars fans believe is the best in the entire saga. Lucas gave his story to Leigh Brackett, an acclaimed science fiction writer, and hired her to write the screenplay. She passed away soon after finishing the first draft, so Lucas (who would serve as executive producer) handed the project over to up-and-coming writer-director Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, Continental Divide, and Raiders of the Lost Ark). Furthermore, h

Heartbreak Ridge,  the 13th film directed by Clint Eastwood, is a strange war movie that takes  very  familiar stock characters and situations and attempts to give them some contemporary (at least in 1980s terms) twists to a story about the training of a Marine platoon and its eventual baptism by fire in battle.  Eastwood, who also produced  Heartbreak Ridge,  plays Gunnery Sergeant (GySgt) Tom “Gunny” Highway, a 30-plus year veteran and holder of the Medal of Honor who is facing retirement after seeing combat in Korea, the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic and – of course – Vietnam.  Because he has been in the Corps since he enlisted as a young adolescent, Highway is not too thrilled at the prospect of mustering out and feels he still has some role to play in the service.  Naturally, since the Marine Corps is one of the smallest branches of the military and “Gunny” is well-connected within the network of noncommissioned officers, he arranges to be transferred to the same

Blogger's Note: This review was written originally for Amazon sometime in November of 2003, then updated (twice) for Epinions. It is not about the four-movie box set which was released in late 2008 after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, nor is it about the soon-to-be-released Indiana Jones Blu-ray box set. Since the advent of the Digital Video Disc format in the late 1990s, there were two long-awaited movie trilogies: the Classic Star Wars films and the Adventures of Indiana Jones. The former was first released in September of 2004, but the daring fedora-wearing archaeologist had almost a year's headstart when Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Video released a 4-disk set in November 2003. The Adventures of Indiana Jones  box set consists of the first three films of the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaborative creation, 1981's  Raiders of the Lost Ark , 1984's  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Cru