Movie Madness with Richard Doyle

Richard Doyle's
MOVIE MADNESS

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)
Schrader's highly stylized masterpiece focuses on the life of one of Japan's most controversial figures, author and right-wing militarist Yukio Mishima. Alternating between black and white segments depicting Mishima's life and colour segments dramatizing his key works, Mishima is an unflinching portrayal of this often conflicted, narcissistic man. Roy Scheider originally narrated, but this was cut from the DVD release for legal reasons. Mishima's family cooperated with the production, but then withdrew support when Schrader refused to cover up Mishima's homosexuality.

The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)
This stylized gang-war epic sparked riots and critical controversy during its initial release. It's an expertly crafted, deliberately comic-bookish action film about a small-time New York gang falsely accused of murder, and fleeing other gangs and the police while trying to get home. James Remar impresses as an especially animalistic youth.

Heavy Traffic (Ralph Bakshi, 1973)
Bakshi's autobiographical piece of experimental animation originally received an X rating for sex and violence. It tells the story of a young cartoonist growing up in Brooklyn and trying to find his way in a world filled with violence and poverty. Bakshi began his attempts at blending animation and live action here, and it contains his first experiments with rotoscoping. Definitely worth a look for fans of underground animation.

Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
Lee's underrated masterpiece is a harrowing and humorous examination of racism that takes place during the hottest day of summer in New York's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood. Over the course of the day, a small disagreement over pictures on the wall of the local pizza parlour leads to racial violence, death, and a full scale riot. Lee brutally and honestly examines how lack of communication and the ability to see the other's point of view creates hatred and violence. Greatly misunderstood upon release, Lee was accused of fostering hatred, when he in fact created a sad meditation on hatred and the roots of racial violence.

Star Trek: First Contact (Jonathan Frakes, 1996)
"The Next Generation" crew inherits the "Star Trek" series in an exciting tale of time-travel and battle with the relentless alien Borg, led by seductive she-Borg Alice Krige. Crewmember Frakes displays a sure hand in his directorial debut, giving the film a dark atmosphere previously unseen in the series, and adds real character development and psychological complexity to the film. The best Star Trek since The Wrath of Khan.

Day of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1985)
Romero's zombies find themselves all messed up with no place to go, doomed to stagger on empty, sans the shock value of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead's brilliant excesses. The film centres on a dozen or so soldiers and scientists who hole up in an underground bunker in a bid to find out what makes the cannibalistic corpses tick. Much infighting and stale, profanity-driven dialogue ensues between the disharmonious factions, while the mindless zombies marshal their forces above ground, preparing for their inevitable assault on the grossly outnumbered human survivors. Day of the Dead is not totally bereft of redeeming moments, such as the scenes where scientist Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) attempts to civilize captive zombie "Bub" via standard behavioural techniques. When the student zombie grows unruly, petulantly upsetting a lab bench, the doc turns out the lights and testily admonishes, "You can just sit here in the dark and think about what you've done." The film also generates some genuine last reel suspense thanks to Tom Savini's revolting makeup effects, but it's a case of too much, too late.

Die Hard: With a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995)
The director of the original Die Hard returns for what is ultimately a tired rehash of the original. Jeremy Irons, sporting a dreadful German accent, appears as the brother of Hans Gruber, putting Bruce Willis and new sidekick Samuel L. Jackson through a series of intricate ordeals meant to disguise yet another huge heist. The early parts of the film are entertaining in a sort of brain dead manner, but the film soon degenerates into "one thing after the other" action fare.

Arachnophobia (Frank Marshall, 1990)
This large budget scare epic gets off to a fairly bright start, as a South American spider stows away in a coffin shipped from Venezuela to scenic Canaima, California, where it breeds with a local spider and mutates into a new deadly breed. Canaima's unsuspecting citizens fall prey to an outbreak of fatal spider bites. It's up to spider maven Julian Sands and arachnophobic hero Jeff Daniels to end the reign of terror. Unfortunately, this Steven Spielberg produced "thrillomedy" begins its steady decline as soon as we are introduced to the wimpy Daniels and the rest of his Typical American Family - level-headed spouse Harley Jane Kozak and a standard pair of standard-issue sitcom offspring. A mechanical script crammed with clichéd creature set-ups, hoary horror film gags, and Spielberg's patented brand of anvil whimsy conspire to keep Arachnophobia from having any real bite. On the plus side, Marshall, abetted by the expected intricate effects, delivers some genuine shocks, especially in the excellently staged concluding basement battle between Daniels and the lead spider. But the film would have worked better with fewer Spilebergian suburban antics and more authentic arachnid anarchy.

The Prophecy (Gregory Widen, 1995)
Highlander scripter and debut director Widen fashions an original and surreal fright fantasy about a second war in heaven that spills out onto the earth. After a dead angel - with no eyes but dual sex organs - turns up in an alley, good angel Simon (Eric Stoltz) contacts failed priest turned cop Elias Koteas to warn him of an insidious plot. Trumpet-toting bad angel Gabriel (a showy Christopher Walken, playing the role in glib living-gargoyle style) shows up to steal the soul of a newly dead military strategist, a maniac who performed unspeakable atrocities during the Korean War, and use his troops to carry out an attack. Stoltz, meanwhile, has stashed the late officer's soul in the body of a little Native girl (portrayed by the imaginatively named Moriah Shining Dove Snyder). While Widen apparently lacked the budget to give The Prophecy the sweeping treatment it deserved, he still offers many a memorable tableau, such as an infernal field of impaled angels, and concocts some interesting twists on angel lore (e.g. they possess heightened olfactory abilities to compensate for weak eyesight). Amanda Plummer is terrific as a dying woman recruited by Walken to serve as his zombie chauffeur, while Viggo Mortensen is creepily intense in a last-reel cameo as Lucifer. Not every riff works and loose threads are left hanging, but The Prophecy stacks up as a thoughtful, chilling addition to the religious horror sub-genre.