#6 KILL BILL (THE COMPLETE WORK)

                       One of the things that Quentin Tarantino does in all of his movies is incorporate his love and appreciation for movies into his movies. There will constantly be moments in his films that do two things. They completely work as a construct of his individual artistry and pulsating energy but at the same time they are his love letter to great cinema of the past that he pays homage to with his flare, his one of a kind master cinematographer, Robert Richardson (who I believe to be one of the top three cinematographers working), his consistent ability to cast the perfect people in his roles, and his ability like a master hip-hop mixer to blend story, image, music, and pacing. You'll watch his movies and be captivated by the story and also consciously or unconsciously revisit a great movie memory from the past. Whether it be his great respect for the spaghetti western and how a great scene works in that genre, his reverie for exploitation films, capturing that rawness and outrageousness, or simply his love and respect for another director like Brian Depalma which can periodically be seen in his movies. Sometimes you see something amazing in one of his films that you've never seen before because Tarantino experienced something in a movie that few people have seen, found the gold in it, and was inspired to pay homage to it in one of his movies. He is a genius at recognizing genius.

                       The Kill Bill movies to me are Tarantino's finest moment as a director. They have the energy and cool factor of his masterpiece "Pulp Fiction" but the story is told on a much larger scale while remaining richer in character and story. 

                       When speaking to these movies i'll divide my commentary into "Kill Bill Volume One" and "Kill Bill Volume Two" because even though I consider it to be one great work it was divided this way into theaters. 

                       The first volume of this mythic story manages to be gritty, graceful, epic, intimate, outrageous and brilliant. The movie is all over the place in tone but what keeps it tight, energized, and never ever boring is its simplicity. It's a story about betrayal, loss, and vengeance. The story is simple. Its telling is anything but. We have a raw knockdown battle royale in a suburban house with fists swinging, bodies flying, and furniture crumbling. We have a beautifully coreographed samurai sword fight of mammoth proportions filmed in color and black and white, and we have the grandeur of a slower samurai duel between two great warriors in a garden of snow that belongs in a painting or poem. We have an unheard of anime sequence in the middle of a live-action movie that works deliciously well, and then we have a more intimate scene of beauty and grace in which the bride is having a sword forged by a samurai master in Okinawa. Each of these very different pieces work within the framework of the overall film because Tarantino cares very deeply for his characters and their story and injects passion into every frame. It never gets old. You never know what you're going to get and you're on the edge of your seat the whole time on a wave of adrenaline. It all fits perfectly into this simple story of revenge.

                     Tarantino doesn't mess around with special effects or overdone action sequences. He focuses on raw action as it would happen between two or more people and what that violence would really look like in all its weight and physics, blood and destruction.

                     Before the movie even starts we have a sign that this has Tarantino's signature all over it. We get the logo for Shawscope which was like the cinescope for The Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies of the 70's which Tarantino adored. We then get 70's music and the message "Our Feature Presentation" before the movie starts. He wanted to recreate that feeling of being in a grindhouse theatre in the 70's and it definately brings you into a different experience. 

                     The first image is a black and white closeup of a tortured, bloodied, terrified bride, played by Uma Thurman. We then get the cool, calm voice of Bill, played by David Carradine speaking to the bride in the charming manner that only the best villains possess before he pulls the trigger for the final death blow. We have a huge saga ahead of us that will be in retaliation for this act in which we see the bride suffering on the brink of death. After the gunshot a perfect song is playing over the opening credits. Nancy Sinatra's "Bang, Bang (You Shot Me Down)" a song of beauty and loss slowly plays and feels almost operatic. The first part of the movie shows her lowpoint in which she has been betrayed, tortured, left for dead. We understand that she survived the bullet but has been in a coma during which time she no longer has the child that she was carrying and has had degrading things done to her. If anyone deserves vengeance it is she and because this is vividly described her vengeance every step of the way is given added weight and momentum. Catharsis in this movie is bubbling over.

                     I'm going to focus on two scenes. One for its beauty and grace and the other because it's one of my favorite scenes of all time and is the perfect example of what I referred to earlier as Tarantino's mastery of the melding of story, image, music, and pacing.

                     The first scene takes place in Okinawa where the bride has found Bill's master Hattori Hanzo who is the greatest Samurai Swordsmith in the world. He is a sushi chef and there is this light, almost flirtatious rapport between himself and the bride when he asks her. "What brings you to Okinawa?"

                                                                        "I came to see a man."

                                                                        "You have a friend living in Okinawa?"

                                                                        "Not quite."

                                                                        "Not friend?"

                                                                        "I never met him."

                                                                        "Who is he, may I ask?"

                                                                        "Hattori Hanzo.", and you hear a glass break as he is visibly shocked. Things slow down and get serious. "What do you want with Hattori Hanzo?"

                                                                        "I need Japanese Steel."

                                                                        "Why do you need Japanese Steel?"

                                                                        "I have vermin to kill." The scene shifts to his attic and this is where the beauty and grace comes in. The entire room is lighted in a certain way that makes it seem like it's glowing. When the bride walks over to look at all the Samurai Swords hanging gracefully on the wall they seem to be glowing the most. There's this slow, almost angelic music in the background with this beautiful voice singing. This is the moment in the story where the warrior has found their weapon and Tarantino nails it. The bride picks up a sword and has such awe and reverance that she's almost shaking. There's a look in her eyes as if she has come to the end of a spiritual quest. When Hattori Hanzo finishes forging her sword he has the perfect words. "I've completed doing what I swore an oath to god, 28 years ago, to never do again. I have created something that kills people. And in that purpose, I was a success. I've done this because philosophically, I am sympathetic to your aim. I can tell you with no ego this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter god......god will be cut. Yellow haired warrior go."

                     The second scene i'm discussing is entitled "The House of Blue Leaves." and it's like liquid cool. You can't help but sit up on your chair kind of rocking back and forth with your jaw dropping with pure giddiness. If we categorized scenes into music classifications, this would be pure rock n roll. I like to cheat and call this whole chapter of the movie one scene because it's like one perfectly choreographed constant movement, building tension, energy, momentum until we get a fucking fantastic crescendo that then transitions into its encore with a calm beauty. I consider its beginning with the flight over Tokyo. We have a cross-cut showing O Ren Ishii, played by Lucy Liu riding in her limo with an entourage of Samurai Sword wielding bad-asses on motorcycles and the bride in an airplane descending onto Tokyo, the scale in size skewed so that the airplane is much too big and too close to the buildings, giving the bride this momentous quality as she begins to descend upon her prey. Then we get her on the streets in a yellow jumpsuit on a shiny motorcycle riding down the strip and the camera is right in front of her, really taking in every last possible drop of cool. We keep cutting to her looking incredibly hot and dangerous on her motorcycle to Oh Ren and her entourage looking the very essence of cool, calm, collected, and deadly in her limo. The two of them stop at a light, she peers over at the car, with her helmet masking her identity, and then the light changes, she speeds away in front and we have kicked it up a notch as the music shifts and we are getting ready for war at The House of Blue Leaves.

                     There is so much energy in this next phase of the chapter that you almost want to jump out of your skin. We are now at a club and it's so fucking alive. There is so much happening and we are constantly following it. The scene starts off with a slo-mo tracking of the Yakuza gang and their shit-kicking strut, then pans down to the band which is the source of a lot of the music in this scene, lending it even more authenticity and raw energy. We then have a tracking shot of the bride getting up from her seat at the bar and up the stairs. We get a tracking shot of the owners of the club and then what may be my single favorite moment of this entire scene. Once again a tracking shot reveals the bride strutting down the hall towards the bathroom and we know she's the hunter. We wouldn't even have had to see a single scene before this one to know that without a doubt she is in control and she is hunting. The camera follows her from every direction, from the side, from above, from below, and at one point the camera tilts the image at a forty-five degree angle. This whole sequence gives her this intense, sexy power. Immediately after this we get a tracking shot of Sophie, the hunted. She walks down the same hall, following the same path to the bathroom as the bride. Hers is a regal, aristocratic stroll. Not a care in the world, knowing the kind of power she possesses everywhere she goes. The energy builds and just moments later it gets seriously primal as the bride shouts out a battle cry and the music feels like a war drum. The energy of this scene, already on fire, takes us into a blissfully bloody showdown of epic proportions that begins with the loss of Sophie's left arm. It builds as row upon row of Yakuza soldiers are torn apart, shifting from color to black and white, to beautiful silhouettes depending on the section. It shifts from terrifying to playful, to soaring kinetic energy, and ends with a line suited for this scene. The bride perched atop a railing looks down upon her bloody conquest and shouts "Those of you who are still alive may leave but leave the limbs behind. They belong to me now. Except for you Sophie. You stay right where you are." The scene ends with a slow, graceful sword fight between two warriors, the villain (Oh Ren Ishii) and the vengeful (the bride), amidst a garden of snow befitting the violence and beauty of this movie.

(Coming Soon "Kill Bill Volume #2")

                      

                     

"Drag Me To Hell""

            Wow. What a fucking rush. This is the kind of movie in which you feel like you've bonded with everyone inside the theatre. We all screamed, laughed our asses off and I just about shit my pants. What Sam Raimi has done with "Drag Me To Hell" is to give us a gift of a kick-ass supernatural horror movie in the same vein as "The Ring" and "The Exorcist" that is reverential to the genre and the material but still has a wicked sense of humor, translating into a very, very good time at the movies.

           At it's core is a simple yet terrifying story of a young woman who has been cursed to be dragged into hell and eternal damnation in three days time. It's a horror film about someone losing their soul and suffering for eternity. That's about as bad as it gets. There's this ever present all consuming "Oh my fucking god I am seriously fucked in the worst way" feeling throughout. This is the kind of fear and terror that clings to every scene, marinates in every tense moment and to me outweighs the classic slasher film where there are a series of non-sensical killings. This isn't about fear of death. It's fear of eternal damnation which is just a tad bit worse.

          The greatness begins even before the story starts with a classic credit sequence of both gothic artistic impressions of hell and a great gothic score which gets you in the mood from the very beginning.

          From start to finish instead of overly complex twists and turns and multiple plot points we get a very simple story told perfectly. The concentration is solely on this woman's journey into the hell realm and eventually into hell itself. Through incredible sound effects, visual effects that support the story but don't get showy, and incredible pacing that takes it's time we get every last ounce of of this story. We feel every bit of the effect of this demon that is haunting her and driving her mad, as we see her whipped around in her room, thrown against the wall, tormented by loud creaking noises, shadowy hands reaching to grab her. It's raw, horrifying stuff.

          What makes this movie so dramatic is that we have an almost angelic female character in her mid twenties who's instincts tell her to do good.  She's an innocent girl from the country trying to become a success. She wants a promotion at the bank that she works at and she wants to hold on to her professor boyfriend who's mother thinks she's not good enough for him. In order to be accepted and successful she feels like she has to go against her more humanistic instincts and it costs her dearly. It's actually a great fable about morality, the giving into what she knows is a wrong decision in order to attain success is allegorical to selling one's soul, and in the end she literally loses her soul and suffers eternal damnation.

           The thing that creates so many of this film's great moments is the fact that this woman needs so badly to be accepted and because of the decision that she makes towards this goal she is cursed by an old gypsy woman, is driven mad, and looks like a crazy woman at her boyfriend's parents house, at work, at home, and symbolically changes her opinion of her kitty in one of the film's more twisted moments. Speaking of this old gypsy woman. Holy shit what a fucking bad-ass crazy bitch. She gets this movie rolling right along, especially with the classic fight scene in the parking lot involving biting, clawing, and just your basic cornucopia of the macabre. She is seemingly unstoppable, terrifying, and absolutely disgusting. She is classic Sam Raimi with his twisted sense of humor entwined with classic horror.

           The scene that stands out for me in this movie is the seance scene which totally rules. When the goat is inhabited by the demon, starts to talk, and takes a chomp out of the man's arm this movie arrives at worshipsville.

           Every great horror movie nails its landing and this is no exception. It looks like she's finally in the clear, she did everything that she had to do, and it turns out that the envelope that she gave to the old gypsy woman had her boyfriend's coin and not the cursed button. The sun's out and it's a beautiful day, which makes it suck that much more because she realizes that she is so fucked in the worst way and can do absolutely nothing about it. It's too late and It's about the worst feeling a person can have. It's perfect that she falls in front of a train because getting hit by a train would actually be a happy ending compared to what happens right before the train reaches her. The earth crumbles beneath her and she is literally dragged into hell, and the last image we see is her face melting as she is dragged into eternal damnation. Harsh.

           A friend summed this movie up perfectly. "Every time I screamed I immediately laughed right afterwards." It's joyfully terrifying. 

#39 TOUCH OF EVIL

       "Touch Of Evil" is an epic masterpiece full of fire in it's belly. Part film noir, part grindhouse it's an incredibly unconventional film that binds everything together with a mastery of visual style. If Quentin Tarantino were to make a 50's film noir it would look not altogether different than this. It's a unique film all it's own oozing with cool and class. 

        The opening scene is right there at the top of the list of the best opening's in all of film. Not only that but most critics believe that it's the very best long shot in movie history. I remember the first time I saw it and it was one of those moments when you feel an electricity in your veins, and I remember knowing that this film was going to stand apart. The first image is a closeup of a ticking time-bomb, a great first image for a dangerous film noir. What follows is a crane shot, uninterrupted, for three and a half minutes. It starts with a first person view on the man holding the timebomb as he watches a couple walking towards him. He races towards a car, and like so many moments in this movie there is this incredible image, because the camera focuses on the wall that he's running beside and we see this quick shadow of him on the wall as if a phantom is inhabiting it. Just too cool. Once he reaches the car he quickly places the ticking bomb in it's trunk and that's the last we see of him. We don't know who he is because we only see his back. The camera is on a crane so it allows us to follow the car from up above and take in the festive night life surrounding it. The camera and the music are huge in this scene as well as in other scenes in the movie. The music that we hear in this scene is full of life and varies between 50's rock n roll and latin rythms. Orson Welles wanted it to be realistic music. What he meant by this is that he wanted the music that we heard to be a part of the scene, not just music accompanying a scene. The music that we hear comes from cars, night clubs, bars, etc. that exist on the street that we're watching. He deliberately recorded these sounds played through a cheap horn in the alley outside the sound building and then re-recorded with a tiny exterior horn. This created that imperfect sound that you get if you hear music from a passing car or walking past a bar. We follow the car and the scene already has this incredible energy because at any moment that bomb is going to explode. That energy keeps building. We see groups of people laughing, vendors crossing the street, couples smiling as they leave bars, or on their way somewhere and these loud latin rythms are playing in the background as well as rock n roll coming from the car with the bomb. It's incredibly vibrant. The camera then reveals the two main protagonists, Detective Vargas, a mexican narcotics officer played by Charleton Heston and his wife, played by Janet Leigh, who are now walking beside the car. The crane shot stays in front of the couple and they are walking briskly and soulfully, relaxed and smiling. The combination of their energy, the movement of the camera in front of them, the music, the bomb that's going to go off at any moment, and the bustling night life makes this scene explode. Excuse the pun. The other thing that makes this scene so great is that as the camera follows this couple, the car for most of the scene is right beside them, barely visible on the screen. The couple and the car are moving simultaneously towards the mexican border and throughout this movie the two will be linked. Once this car explodes it will trigger an investigation that Vargas will be involved in and Vargas's wife will go through hell.   

       The next scene isn't necessarily as bold or brilliant as the opening scene but it's still beautiful. The car explodes and we have a perfect example of the rythmic, almost dance-like quality of much of this movie. As Vargas and his wife are running towards the burning car there's a criss-cross motion of this swarm of people heading towards the accident. There's a graceful, almost choreographed feel to the moment, like the offshoot of a swing dance as people are running forward, hunched over. Once they get to the car it's classic film noir filled with darkness and shadows, and low angled closeups, but more severe than normal. What seperates this scene from so many is the fire. The contrast between the darkness and the fire is gorgeous. Behind Vargas and his wife is a four-tiered fountain on fire which looks like multi-layered torches, and in front of them is the blazing car. It looks and feels as much like an epic as a film noir. 

        Fittingly, we first see Quinlan, the main villain, in the midst of fire, darkness, and shadow. Quinlan speeds up in his car and the first time we see him it's a great moment. The camera is up close and down low and when Quinlan gets out of his car he looks like an imposing giant, and a vintage film noir character with a scowl on his face and a cigar in his mouth. Everything he says and does in this scene is cool. He's an obese, bitter, corrupt bully but he's the perfect obese, bitter, corrupt bully and he's the jewel of this film. He is actually a great detective with incredible instincts but ever since his wife was strangled and they couldn't find the killer his life has been about catching the killers his own way, and his way is corrupt and not within the guidelines of the law. He likes to plant evidence and he's gotten away with it for years. It's also, however, led him further and further away from good and turned him into a poster child for the film noir universe.

         From this point on the movie splits into two storylines. One involves Vargas, the corrupt Quinlan and the investigation of the murder of the passengers in the flaming car. The other storyline involves Mrs. Vargas and the menacing Grande family.

         The first storyline is rooted around a duel between Quinlan and Vargas, the corrupt detective and the righteous detective, and feels like classic film noir but with a dangerous edge. As forementioned every scene involving Quinlan is great. He is a total mess but he is a survivor and if you mess with him you better be ready. Vargas isn't nearly as interesting as a character but is a great example of the good detective trying to uphold the law. Most of this storyline results from Vargas realizing that Quinlan planted evidence on their main suspect. Vargas researches all his past cases and finds a trail of corruption. Quinlan, realizing this outsider is trying to mess with him pulls out the big guns and pairs up with Uncle Joe Grande to hit Vargas where it hurts; his wife. Two scenes really stand out for me in this storyline. One involves Quinlan going to visit a gypsy fortune teller who, it's subtly revealed, used to be a lover of his. The scene feels almost dream like as Quinlan walks the street with trash flying around everywhere. As he's walking towards the fortune teller's the camera is far off, giving him space. This world he's about to enter is seperate from the darkness and shadows. It almost has a fairy-tale like vibe and he enters her place which feels lighter and slightly magical. We see Marlene Dietrich and it's like old hollywood on the screen with polish and class. Her eyes are hypnotic and a cigarette dangles from her mouth. She looks dazzling, mysterious, and unflappable.  It adds to that epic nature of this movie, this larger than life woman in the same room as this larger than life man. We see her dazzling silent movie star face and she blows out cigarette smoke, pauses and says, "We're closed." and walks away. Quinlan is slowly eating his candybar. She comes back with a pot. "You been cooking at this hour." "Just cleaning up." "Have you forgotten your old friend." "I told you we're closed." "I'm Hank Quinlan." "I didn't recognize you. You should lay off those candybars." "It's either the candy or the hootch. Must say I wish it was your chilly I was getting fat on. Anyway you're sure looking good." "You're a mess honey." In this scene we get an idea of the man he used to be as he looks at her tenderly and she barely recognizes him. More than anything else, though, it's just such a classy scene. The other scene that comes to mind is the scene in which Quinlan murders Uncle Joe Grande. Quinlan and Uncle Joe are partners in a scheme to set up Vargas and Mrs. Vargas and Quinlan doesn't like any strings left attached. In the room in which Mrs. Vargas is in bed, purposefully drugged and incoherant, Quinlan violently strangles Uncle Joe. There's this great moment where Uncle Joe is smashing a window to yell for help and the camera follows Quinlan stomping towards him and he almost looks like one of the old-time movie monsters tracking it's prey. There's a flurry of activity, severe closeups of both of them, the whole scene is supercharged and dangerous and Quinlan strangles him and then lets him drop lifeless onto Mrs. Vargas's bedpost. When she is more coherent she sees two bulging eyes staring at her and screams. This is a great example of the over-the -top nature of a lot of the dark scenes in this movie and why it feels so alive.

           The second storyline focuses on the Grande boys, a menacing bunch of hooligans, terrorizing Mrs Vargas. One of the great aspects of this storyline is that for part of it Mrs. Vargas holds her own. In an early scene in which Uncle Joe Grande, the current head of the family, is saying something slimy to her, there is this great dialogue between the two of them. "You silly little pig." "Who are you talking about?" "I'm talking about you, you ridiculous old fashioned, jug eared, lopsided, little caesar." "I didn't get that Senor. You'll have to talk slow." "I'm talking slow but in a minute i'll start to yell." It shows us that Mrs Vargas is a fighter and it's an interesting element to a film noir where the female is usually either a strong villain or a lady in distress. Mrs Vargas ends up being a lady in distress but not without a fight. Most of the rest of Mrs. Vargas's story takes place at a hotel where she is dropped off until her husband takes care of this investigation. What she doesn't realize is that the hotel belongs to the Grandes. The whole sequence at the hotel is incredibly entertaining in almost a b movie mentality. The hotel clerk is this kind of slapstick, wacky coward who is very amusing in the midst of all the darkness. There's this exaggerated menace as the Grande boys take over the hotel and begin to terrorize Mrs. Vargas with loud rock n roll and eventually enter her room. When they enter the room it is ultra grindhouse. Everything is over the top. She opens up the window and there's this extreme closeup of a guy just standing there, the door slowly creeps open and then Mrs. Vargas is about to become hysterical in severe closeup on her bed. A group of the Grandes slowly comes in. They all look like they're right in her face and the way they're filmed and the way they're moving it once again feels musical. It's got a beat to it and it feels dangerous with all the closeups. They hold her down and it looks like something terrible is going to happen as they close the door. Mind you, during all of this Janet Leigh as Mrs Vargas has her hair down, and a nightgown on, and looks smoking hot. You're in this classic Orson Welles film noir with incredible imagery and style with these heavy elements along the Quinlan storyline and then the movie is injected with a certain lightness in this storyline. It's b movie feel adds some fun to the story. It's scary, wacky, sexy, dangerous. It's a breath of fresh air, a perfect balance to the other storyline, making the whole movie flow effortlessly. That saying, "It never gets old" applies to this movie.

         The movie ends like a conventional film noir but with the polished class of Orson Welles. Vargas wires Quinlan's partner in order to get him to admit to planting evidence. It's a classic setting as they walk along an oil field, dirty, industrial, and a symbol for corruption and greed. Vargas follows along hiding in the shadows listening to the conversation on his device. Quinlan and his partner end up walking on a bridge overlooking a river and Quinlan shoots him after suspecting that he's been betrayed. He immediately walks into the water to try to wash the blood from his hands. Quinlan and Vargas end up in one final confrontation and just before Quinlan is about to shoot Vargas, his partner from up above on the bridge shoots him. Quinlan dies in the garbage infested river. The final image is of the captivating Marlene Dietrich who says, "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people." and she walks away from the camera into the night.

       

#10 JAWS

      "Jaws" is an absolute classic. Many would say that it's Steven Spielberg's best movie even though it's only his first mainstream film. It would mark the brilliant beginning to a director who is synonymous with great event films and great films in general. "Jaws" is considered by many to be the first summer blockbuster and the film that influenced the very idea of the summer blockbuster.

      What makes this movie so scary and so exhilerating is that it's a monster movie about a real monster. This is a creature that has existed for thousands of years and is universally feared by everyone. We know going in that this is a movie about a man-eating shark but what Spielberg does is he takes this already very real monster and places it in a place of comfort and safety. He places it in an innocent beach resort town called Amity and into the lives of a family that we get to know and care about. Everything he does makes this experience more real, more terrifying and eventually more exciting.

      The movie opens with a bang, arguably one of the best opening scenes of all time. After showing us a classic night time beach scene with a group of kids relaxing near a bonfire, a woman decides to go for a night swim and the camera follows her as she runs towards the water. The camera feels aggressive and adventurous, and it raises the adrenaline level as it follows her and the admirer chasing after her. She swims to the first buoey. Her admirer, drunk, doesn't make it past the beach. We get a wide shot of the ocean with the woman looking almost lost in it, completely alone. Everything is dark, the sky, the water, and then we get a severe closeup that creates a jolting immediacy to the scene. It feels almost like the camera itself is dangerous, and by not allowing us to see anything in her periphery she seems vulnerable as do we, watching, waiting. The mood has shifted, edgier, and we get the shark-cam, a view lurking in the water underneath her, and it gets closer and closer as we hear the iconic John Williams "Jaws" theme music gradually increasing it's ferocity. Suddenly we get the same jolting closeup of her and this is when the scene goes to the land of "HOLY SHIT." She violently submerges and we know what it is but there's still an initial shock because of the suddenness of the attack. For the remainder of the scene we see the result of something under the water attacking her. We see her rapidly being forced in different directions in the water like a rag doll, screaming, going under, resurfacing, terrified, screaming "It hurts." The entire time we don't actually see the shark. Every time something suddenly terrifying and aggressive happens to her it becomes more terrifying and shocking for us because in a way we can identify with her. We can't see what's coming either. We also can only imagine what terrible monster is doing this to her and our imaginations are way beyond the real thing. The scene is gut-wrenching and your jaw drops pretty much the entire time. 

     The scene shifts from night to day, we hear the crashing waves, the seagulls, we see the same waters, but the association has changed from peaceful and friendly to dangerous, and as we get to know the town of Amity we realize that something bad is going to happen to this innocent beach resort town where the biggest emergency at the moment is kids karate chopping the town fences, a town where they've never had to make a "beach closed" sign, a town where there has never been a shark attack.

     The horrifying remains of the girl are found and the movie launches in to a tale of moral corruption where the town's mayor is in denial of the probability of a shark attack because he knows that if they close the beaches it will be catastrophic to the town financially with 4th of july days away. The sheriff Brody, played amazingly well by Roy Scheider, rushes around to do the right thing and the powers that be convince him not to. We know something bad is going to happen and the drama is amped up because those involved are going to be affected deeply by this. Brody wants to do something but doesn't and the mayor, in denial and being led by power and control, won't do anything. The great white shark is just waiting to take advantage of this and terrorize these waters.

     The thing that I always remember most about "Jaws" is the way in which the shark attack scenes are perfectly choreographed. I already discussed the opening scene, and the combination of suspense, paranoia, and sudden terror in the remaining two beach scenes is just awesome. Spielberg uses quick-cuts and closeups of people in the water in order to create chaos and tension. In the one scene we see a closeup of a boy on a raft, a dog fetching a stick, people playing in the water, a girl going under water, a black bathing cap that looks like a shark fin, all quick cutting, and throughout all of this there is splashing water which is disorienting and leads to a further state of unease. It seems like at any moment there's going to be an attack. All of a sudden we get the shark-cam again and that classic music, and as soon as it gets to it's victim there is sudden violence, blood spraying, the raft pushed up out of the water and screaming, panicked swimmers rushing to shore. When the attack happens we get a beautiful Hitchcockian pull forward closeup of the sheriff to show his sudden awareness of this terrible thing that is happening, an iconic moment. The second attack works amazingly well because of misdirection. We get the same technique of quick cutting closeups, helicopters flying above the water, shark watchers in boats, underwater shots, and a seriously paranoid Brody. Suddenly there's a shark fin in the water and everyone panics. A whistle blows and everyone rushes out of the water. The beach is bedlam and we soon find out that it was two pranksters with a cardboard fin. Everyone relaxes, we exhale, and then, just when we think everything is o.k. a girl sees a shark in the adjacent pond and screams "Shark. There's a shark in the pond." and because we are all lulled into a sense of false security it becomes eerier, almost like it's happening in slow motion, and we are more susceptible to the fear. To up the fear factor Brody's son is in the pond as well. Once again the attack is quick, violent , and gory, and until Brody's son gets out of the water safely we are on edge. Throughout all of these scenes we don't see the shark until this last attack and only for a second. This adds to the suspense and terror. It gives it a more monstrous quality. We've seen sharks but not this one. Only our imaginations have seen this one, a mythical creature created in our minds.

    Throughout the first half of the movie there is this combination of not showing us the shark but gradually revealing information about how dangerous these creatures are. Brody looks through a book on sharks and sees images of the scars from a shark attack, a shark eating through a boat, a great white's bite radius, and also learns that most shark attacks take place  in three feet of water, ten feet from the beach. He also learns that rogue sharks will stay around until the food supply is gone. This makes the whole movie scarier because we know that everything that has happened on the screen is normal, not extraordinary, because it happens in real life, bringing us closer to that pre-existing primal fear of sharks. When we see the attacks we are bringing this magnified fear coupled with the suspense of not having seen this creature that we have now created in our minds. It's an explosive double whammy.

    The second half of the movie is like another movie in itself. If the first part is the horror movie this is the adventure movie. It's this giant hunt between the archetypal sea captain, king of all shark hunters and the king of all sharks.

    Quint, this larger than life character has been hired to hunt and kill this shark, and Brody, and Hooper, a marine scientist specializing in sharks, played by Richard Dreyfuss join him on the journey.

     Quint, played by Robert Shaw, elevates this adventure to mythical levels. He has a swagger about him with his scottish accent and sea songs, and we are hypnotized by his seeming invulnerability. We are watching a powerful man in his element, walking his vessel as if it's an extension of himself. Almost every image of him is a closeup; Quint leaning against the forepeak of the boat with a grin, legs crossed, in complete control; Quint in the crow's nest gazing at the sea; Quint readying the massive fishing rod as if in his sleep.

     The dynamic between a man like this, who is also incredibly arrogant, brittle, and has control issues, and the other two men is enough to make this movie great by itself. Brody is completely out of his element with no knowledge of what to do on this boat, and terrified of water. He bumbles around fearful and disoriented and Quint gives him tasks as if pampering a child. Hooper has all sorts of state of the art equipment on board the boat and Quint hates his fancy equipment and his white-collar background. He excessively orders him around and the two become rivals.

    One of my favorite scenes and possibly the greatest moment in the movie is a scene taking place at night in the cabin of the boat. The three men are drunk and Quint and Hooper are comparing scars. It's obvious that both men have seen some serious action, and Brody points to Quint's arm and asks him "What's that?" What follows is a revealing story that on one level is the scariest moment in the film and the moment when we truly understand what is really motivating Quint on this hunt and previous hunts. On his arm had been a tattoo of the USS Indianapolis which he had removed. He tells the haunting story of what happened to him on the way back from delivering the atomic bomb that would be used in Hiroshima during WWII. "Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour." Quint proceeds to tell a tale in which men formed themselves into box formations to protect the group, a tale in which by the first dawn one hundred men had been eaten, and by the fifth day in which he was rescued, only three hundred sixteen survived. We begin to understand why this man is so fiercely great at what he does, and why he is so hardened and strong.

    The second half of the film has night scenes of silence and tranquility, both hunter and hunted patiently awaiting the other's move and during the day an exhilerating chase, involving  the harpooning of barrels to the shark in order to force it to the surface. Both the men on the boat and the audience are continually impressed by the shark's strength, speed, and elusive nature. It is hunting them as well, the two sides consistently switching roles.

    The reveal scene is when things really get cooking. Spielberg uses the fact that we haven't really seen the shark yet to his advantage when finally revealing it. Brody is scooping fish guts into the water, bored, and his head is turned away from the sea when out of the water comes this massive shark right up close and nearly bites brody's arm off. It's shocking because we've been used to nothing and all of a sudden this huge shark seems like it's jumping almost out of the screen at us with absolutely no warning, no shark-cam, no music, no quick cuts. It works perfectly and leads to one of the most memorable lines in movies. "We're gonna need a bigger boat." It's also perfect timing. This is the adventure, not the horror portion of the movie. Not seeing the shark served it's purpose in the first half but it's time to see the shark in all it's glory. In order to truly feel the scope of this we have to be able to almost reach out and touch this creature.

    The ending doesn't disappoint. Simultaneously, the shark is chasing the boat and Quint is luring the shark into shallow waters. Quint thinks he's tricking the shark but he's so stubborn and arrogant and that becomes his undoing. He goes too fast, puts too much pressure on the engine, and fries it. It turns out the shark outsmarts Quint, attacks the stranded boat, and in the end, eats the great shark hunter. It's a classic case of a king destroying himself with the same thing that made him so great; his will, his fury, his determination, but with a single-minded blindness. Ironically, the terrified cluless brody ends up destroying the shark in the end. There is this great image of brody and hooper paddling back to shore on nothing but barrels. There's no boat, no shark, no Quint. The great hunters are dead and the companions are the only ones who have survived.  

#27 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

       Alfred Hitchcock talked about "The Chase" being the key element to any great suspense movie. He talked about the chase taking many forms, but at it's core it's one character running from someone or something. At it's simplest The Cohen Brother's "No Country For Old Men" is about one great chase. It is a chase so flawlessly executed, with incredibly rich themes, and amazing characters that it transcends a mere suspense movie and reaches the peak of cinematic experience.

      The movie opens with the voice-over of a west texas sheriff, talking about his lineage of lawmen, and the fact that in the old days some of them never even wore a gun. We see a series of beautiful shots of the wide open west texas plains. The sheriff talks about crimes these days that are hard to fathom, the world making less and less sense. That to be a lawman in this day is to put your soul at hazard, to say "ok, i'll be a part of that world." Just as he is saying this we see a shot of Anton Chigur, the symbol in this film of the unfathomable world he's talking about, riding away in a cop car. This is a poetic opening that prepares us thematically for what is about to happen in this film. With the visions of the wide open plains it reminds us of a western, a place that is timeless, that hasn't changed, and the overriding theme of this movie, in the end, is that the sheriff of this unchanging county no longer belongs in this world, like the westerns where the cowboys no longer belong to a more complicated time.

      I can't continue talking about the movie without talking about it's main force, the almost god-like opposing force of will, Anton Chigur. Without the brilliance of this character and the performance by Javier Bardem this movie is an average suspense movie. Imagine "The Silence of the Lambs" without Hannibal Lecter and the performance by Anthony Hopkins. It's that significant. We feel the immovable power that is Chigur. He occupies almost all of the space in every scene that he appears in. You can't take your eyes off of him and you kind of want to because he's fucking scary. In his eyes you see absolute, single-minded cold willfulness. You look at him and you know to be afraid, but not to run because what's the point? He'll win. He creates a haunting atmosphere with just the look in his eyes or the way in which he speaks his words. Anton Chigur is the world moved on into a realm that the sheriff can't understand and fears to understand, and never before can I remember a film where one man symbolized so much. He is truly one of the greatest villains on screen ever. The brilliance of this character translates to the power of the main theme of this movie. The world in this movie has met an opposing force that can't be defeated, a colder, darker time.

      Chigur's first victim, the deputy who has him in custody, utters his last line to his superior on the telephone. "I've got it under control.", before he is brutally strangled. Our first real look at Chigur as the camera hovers over his face is a man on fire, eyes bulging, a kind of demon. The title of the movie "No Country For Old Men" translates to a world where the type of man living in this simple, old fashioned region can't understand or defeat a force such as Chigur or that which he represents. He continues to confront and then kill or threaten to kill the men in this world. Most of the men are older, but it is as much about what the men represent as it is about age. Lewellyn, the main protagonist, is symbolically represented as one of these old men because he symbolizes what they symbolize. He is old fashioned, a bit of a cowboy, lives a simple life and has a simple charm.  

      Chigur carries with him an air gun and it's significance to the overall theme of the film is told brilliantly in a conversation between the sheriff and the wife of Lewellyn, Carla Jean. The sheriff tells her how one of the local owners of a slaughterhouse used to kill the cattle by shooting them in the head, but one thrashed around once, the bullet grazed it's head, ricocheted and hit him in the shoulder. He says "Even in the contest between man and steer the issue isn't certain. course they slaughter steers a lot different these days. They use an air gun. Shoots out a rod about that big and the animal never knows what hit them." The air gun that Chigur uses represents his indestructability. The certainty that you won't survive. Evil has constantly been fucked over by good age after age. Evil has found the perfect instrument in Chigur and Chigur in this air gun. These are darker times. 

     Let's cut to the chase. The setup is a man named Lewellyn who happens upon the deathly remains of a drug deal gone wrong and a bag with a lot of money. After thinking about it very briefly he decides to take the money and goes home. If this was the end of it the story might have turned out differently. The lone survivor of the bloodbath, a dying man, had asked him for water, and later that night we get the same camera hovering over Lewellyn that we saw when we first encountered Chigur. He has awakened and decided to bring water to this man. As the camera revealed Chigur earlier it now reveals Lewellyn and he is a good man, the type of man who will risk his life to bring a dying man water. He knows that there is a good chance that he could die doing this but he does it anyways. He tells his wife Carla Jean "I'm fixing to do something dumber than hell but i'm going anyways. Tell your momma I love her." "She's dead." "Then i'll tell her myself." He gets to the man and the moment he realizes that the man has died he looks up and sees that he's not alone. There's a truck next to his on a hill in the distance. He sees some men letting the air out of his tires and the great chase is about to begin.      The chase is the meat of the movie and it's executed with precision, detail, and imagination. The truck on the hill suddenly lights up like a devil with it's headlights, rooflights, and searching strobelight glaring in the night. There is the loud rumble of the truck, the sound of crackling thunder, and we see a single bolt of lightning in front of the racing Lewellyn. He barely escapes after getting shot in the shoulder and he enters a river, paddling his way down current. The men's vicious dog has also entered the river and slowly paddles after him in probably my favorite image from the whole movie. It's a foreshadowing of what he's about to encounter from Chigur, a menacing will.

     My favorite part of the chase, and the most suspenseful and terrifying moment in the film is when Chigur, who has been hired to get the money back, is using a tracking device to find Lewellyn. Lewellyn, unknowingly is being tracked because there is a device inserted in his money bag. So Chigur knows, and more importantly for the building of the tension, so do we, when he is close to Lewellyn. The tracker begins to beep, and then beep more rapidly when it's close to the money. Just as Lewellyn finds the device in his hotel room, and realizes that he's being tracked, he hears the door of the hotel open and voices in the lobby. He calls the desk clerk. No answer. This is a bad sign and the tension builds. We hear footsteps coming down the hall and then we hear the beeping. The tension is now like a vise. The beeping becomes more rapid and we see the dark shadow of Chigur underneath the door. This scene seems influenced in some way by the last scene in Rear Window but uses a little more imagination and takes it to the next level. Awesome.

      The chase is told with very little dialogue. It continues to gradually build the story and the tension by simply showing the hunter and the hunted in fine detail with nothing of insignificance added. There is no meat left on the bone. It's tight and even though each scene slowly takes it's time the pace feels like a bullet.

      And suddenly we get the rug pulled out from under our feet and realize that this has been the sheriff's story all along. We cut to the sheriff in the midst of the chase and he discovers the dead body of Lewellyn at a motel. It's a shocking conclusion to Lewellyn's story and further emphasizes Chigur's power and Lewellyn's powerlessness. He didn't even get to finish his own story. We discovered it through the sheriff's eyes. It also changes our view of the film from a tale of the good guy running away from the villain, to a tale of a world in which the villain has complete control, and the old men are powerless against him.

      The movie ends with the sheriff discussing, with his wife, a dream that he had the night before. "I was with my father, both back in the older times, going through this pass in the mountains. He rode on past and kept on going. He had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When I rode past I could see he was carrying fire in a horn. In the dream I knew that he was going on ahead and he was fixing to make a fire somewhere in that dark and I knew that whenever I got there he'd be there." It's a sad yet hopeful ending. The sheriff is outmatched and done with the fight but there is still a place of comfort waiting for him and his kind.

"Into The Wild" (2008)

         This is an incredibly personal movie. It reminds me of a time and a place so I can't write about it without writing about my connection to it. About 12 years ago I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor of my rustic apartment on 24th st. in San Francisco and feeling tremendous pain as I was readying myself for a personal journey. I was crying, literally pulling my hair out, and rocking back and forth on the hardwood floor. I had been having a profound spiritual experience and I knew in my heart that the next step was to give up the life that I had known up to then. This meant giving up my belongings and my family and friends. I had no idea where I was going but I knew that I had to be alone. My friend Jeff was living in the same apartment at the time and I was explaining this to him and feeling more alone than I had ever felt in my entire life. I also felt this enormous guilt because I knew how much pain this was going to cause everyone. I spent a night stewing in it and by morning knew that I couldn't do it. It was too damaging to everyone. I felt relief and a new kind of guilt. I felt like a coward, like I was avoiding my true path and it honestly, to some degree haunts me to this day. I know I would have lost everything and I would have never met my future wife or my future children, so I know I made the right decision, but it still haunts me because I remember how at a deep soul level I knew that I had to give up my name and find myself.

         "Into The Wild" is the true story of a young man's journey to the Alaskan wild to find peace, freedom, and his true self. What it really is, however, is a story of incredible loss.

         The main character is Christopher McCandless, played by Emile Hirsch, an adventurous soul who has recently graduated from Emery University. He hates what society represents, and the idea of the american dream. He believes his way to true happiness is to let go of all of society's conventions, to rid himself of his belongings and his name and to hitchhike across the country to the Alaskan Wild. He believes that only in living in this wild, in living apart from the lies of his old world and giving himself a new name, will he be free.

          Christopher's journey is filled with such a mixture of beauty and sorrow. There are scenes of magnificent forests, wide open plains, rivers, mountain vistas, and the quiet desert. When he arrives in a California city it's such a depressing jolt that we identify even more with his need to rid himself of his old world. Most of the beauty and sorrow come from the people that he meets along the way. As I met each of these characters I slowly fell in love with each of them. Three characters, in particular, were important in his journey, each of them a symbol of the family that he's left behind. There is a hippie woman, played by Catherine Keener, who takes to him right away. He reminds her of the son, about his age, that she hasn't seen for two years. She is a beautiful person, an earth mother of sorts, but there is a visible hole in her and a great sadness. He meets an old man, played by Hal Holbrook, who has isolated himself from the world ever since he lost his family to a drunk driver while he was in the war. He is so alone it's almost painful to watch and he truly loves this young man that he's barely just met. He even offers to adopt him after Christopher tells him he has no family. Thirdly, he meets an attractive, flirtatious sixteen year old girl, played by Kristen Stewart, who is about the same age as the sister he left behind. She is lonely and awkwardly isolated,  and seems to have found in Christopher someone who will fill a hole in her. There is so much love in these scenes that your heart almost can't take it. These people adore him, and their beauty expands in his presence. As he continues on his journey you feel such an overwhelming sense of loss. You feel the pain of these people that have to say goodbye to a light that filled them for a little while and you feel his loss as well. Even if he doesn't fully recognize it he has left his family again, a surrogate version, but a family that maybe loved and understood him more than his own.  

         Gradually, throughout the movie we learn that he has had a difficult childhood filled with violence and lies. His father repeatedly abused his mother in front of him and his sister, and his mother was complicit in his father's lies, one being that he was still married to another woman when he was born. This has resulted in anger and disillusionment. Christopher hates what his parents represent. His father is an incredibly succesfull NASA scientist who values prestige and success over anything else, and his mother is the perfect suburban housewife. Part of this journey is about them. There is an element of sado-masochism to the whole thing. He's angry and he's punishing them, but he's also turning that anger inward and punishing himself. He's not prepared for this journey. He brings no map, and little knowledge for survival in the wild, and as much as he's experiencing beauty and peace along this journey, he's also suffering.

         The story ends tragically with Christopher trapped on the other side of an untraversable river, with no food, and he mistakenly eats a poisonous root that causes slow paralysis and impairs the digestive process. At one point in the movie Christopher talks about how important it is to do things that don't necessarily make you strong but make you feel strong. One of the last images of the film is of him withered, weak, barely able to move and a bear comes upon him, huffing, taunting him and then walking away. Nature has kicked his ass. The bear at any moment could have torn him to shreds but his threat level was non-existent. It's almost as if the bear pities him. This journey wasn't pure. It was filled with rage and delusion as much as it was with love and truth.  He is suffering greatly in the end and right before his death, when it is too late, he realizes and writes in a book that true happiness is shared with others.

         Towards the end of the movie we have seen the effect that this quest to the Alaskan wild has had on Christopher's parents. They are absolutely decimated. They have lost their son. They weren't good parents and they were both fucked up people but they loved their son and now he was gone and they couldn't find him. There is an image of the father, played by William Hurt, sitting splayed out in the middle of the street clutching his knees and he is on the verge of madness. The mother, played by Marcia Gay Harden, sometimes hears him in her sleep. 

          It is a movie about loss. Every character connected to Christopher has suffered. They have felt the beauty of his soul, his greatness, and had to say goodbye. Christopher, in the end, realizes that he has time and time again left behind beautiful people in order to be alone and that it is the greatest mistake of his life. 

#21 WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005)

                       More than any other film that i've seen "War of the Worlds" reminds me of the feeling that I had on September 11th, 2001. There was a sudden act of annihilation from an outside force and there was this feeling of terror, helplessness, like nowhere was safe and all of a sudden this could happen anywhere at any time. It felt for that brief moment like the end of the world.

                       Never before on film have I witnessed a more pure realization of the atmosphere of apocalypse. The images and sounds in this movie are terrifying and unforgettable, building upon each other to immerse us in the ultimate feeling of doom.

                       It starts with an ominous sky that looks like a storm, but beyond anything we've ever seen. We then get loud and unsettling lightning bolts repeatedly striking the same place with ferocity. Next there appears to be a giant earthquake and something comes out of the earth. This is some serious biblical, apocalyptic imagery. Throughout all of this we see neighbors, who just minutes before were going about their daily routines, looking on in panic and terror. Wow. This is some heavy shit. The overall tone makes "Independance Day" feel like "Mary Poppins".

                      Out of the earth come the tripods and they are some ominous looking motherfuckers. They look like something both mechanical and biological, the form of giant mechanical insects with monstrous pyramid-like heads. And the sound they make, it's like a mechanical fog-horn from the underworld. It's loud, unsettling, and becomes a reflex for terror every time we hear it.

                     Within minutes the world has changed forever and these tripods are exterminating people in large numbers and it is incredibly uncomfortable to watch because it conjures up this deep archetypal feeling of holocaust. We are experiencing the end of life and the absolute powerlessness to do anything about it. Somehow Spielberg tapped into these deep unconscious fears and gave them truly vivid life. It's as if he went into the collective unconscious of all humankind and retrieved theses images that had always been waiting there, buried, unseen.

                     My favorite scene in the whole movie is the ferry scene. Spielberg masterfully captures mass-hysteria. He's proven this in "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan", and I think he does his best job here. There are images of large groups of people walking along the road because almost nothing mechanical works, so there are no other cars. There is sudden violence when a mob takes the protagonist's precious car, and soon after we have a beautiful shot of a large flock of birds flying rapidly past some tall trees and we know instantly that this a bad sign, as we realize that they are flying away from oncoming tripods. True panic sets in and everyone is rushing to get on this ferry, shoving, trampling, clinging for dear life, and as the ferry begins to move a tripod again comes out of the bowels, but this time the water. There is no escape and everyone is totally fucked as mechanical tentacles come down to claim everyone. The main characters make it out of the water to the other side and we, through their eyes see the absolute horror of it all. We are watching a holocaust. People are being plucked out of the water and a huge terrified crowd is running down a hillside as the tripods randomly vaporize one after another. There is no music, lending to the overall atmosphere of the scene. All you hear are the sounds of the tripods annihilating people and loud screaming. And it gets darker. Soon after we watch the military swatted aside like small insects. We see truly powerful images of tanks on fire and jets exploding.

                     We have a series of dark, powerful images in this movie. We see large groups of dead bodies floating down a stream, clothing falling from the sky because its owners are dead, and fertilizer from human blood being sprayed from the tripods onto a new, red veined earth.

                     One of the most powerful images in the film is a crashed plane in the middle of a suburb. It looks so out of place, as does everything in this film. A reporter near the plane explains the true scope of what's happening as we see images on a monitor of large groups of tripods in another area of the world. This is when we truly digest the magnitude of what is happening and realize that we can multiply exponentialy what we have already seen. 

#26 THE MIST

              With "The Mist" Frank Darabont continues a match made in heaven between himself and Stephen King. For the most part Stephen King adaptations are forgettable, almost B-Movie experiences. When done well, however, they have become masterpieces of cinema such as "Carrie", "The Shining, and now a total of three from Darabont, including "Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile". This is his first true horror movie and he shows that he is more than up for the challenge. 

               But I wouldn't necessarily call this a horror movie. I put this under a sub-category of horror called Dread. Examples of great Dread movies are "The Birds", "28 Days Later", and "The Ring". These are scary movies that do as much with overall atmosphere as they do with scare tactics. They usually slowly build tension and fear and an overall feeling of "Oh my god we are so fucked." The meat of the movie is more in that feeling than in any plot device, quick jolting camera angle, scary music, etc. It's all about atmosphere.

                We start with a storm, a wonderful way to begin the dread. Then there is calm because it's important to have plenty of calm in between the storms in order for that nice juicy dread to sink in. The father and son, who are the main protagonists in this movie, are outside the morning after the storm with the boy's mother and they notice a mist coming down from the mountains  across the lake. It's an eerie image and we slowly feel that pit in our stomachs. The foreboding builds. As the father and son ride into town large numbers of army trucks race past them away from their base on the mountain. When they are inside the supermarket fire trucks and police cars race by. Something is wrong. Then comes the siren. Nobody moves and everyone is suddenly silent except for a haunting siren, similar to an air raid siren. Everyone is still because the town siren only sounds when something is really fucking bad. The siren in this movie  is one of my all time favorite moments of sound in a movie because so much is said in just one simple ominous sound. Now something is seriously wrong. As the siren is sounding a bloodied man comes running towards the supermarket, visibly terrified, and yelling about something in the mist which we can now see enveloping everything. The doors in the supermarket close once the man comes in and the people inside begin to realize that something terrible is on the other side of that door. We have a moment where everyone is panicked and beginning to feel really fucking freaked out and then the whole supermarket begins to shake as if there is a large earthquake. Aaaah Dread.

                The great thing about the perfect dread is that once you've built it it's there until the end. The rest of the movie is just marinating in it. In "Jaws" we didn't see the shark until about 2/3 of the way through the movie. Through pacing, camera angles in the water, sound, and story, a dread was created without even seeing the shark. We are more afraid of that which we can not see as long as we can feel its impact.

                Don't get me wrong. Their are creatures. We don't see most of them until at least half way through the movie but they are wonderfully creepy and magnificent. We have monstrous bugs, terrifying spiders, flying pterydactils from hell and an awe inspiring tentacled beast at least 100 feet tall taken right from the pages of Lovecraft. Dread doesn't work if there is nothing to dread.

                The characters also seperate this movie from most movies of its kind. We have a living, breathing community that makes everything more real, and we have people that we genuinely care about. The movie takes its time and we get to know about the father and son, the school teachers, supermarket employees, etc. We have less music and more slow, quiet moments of conversation that build the characters and the overall mood. We are truly in the middle of these moments where gradually everyone begins to realize that this could be the end of the world.

                 There is a very interesting aspect to this movie that goes against convention. Throughout almost the entire movie we encounter a woman named Ms Carmady. We are led to believe that she is a religous fanatic and just a little bit crazy. We are taught as viewers to see her as an evil force but by the end we realize that everything that she has predicted has come true. "It's death out there". "They'll come at night and take another". Everything that is happening is straight from the scriptures she keeps talking about. A storm, smoke, a beast, locusts, spiders, sacrifice, particularly the sacrifice of the only son of Abraham which comes into play later.  We realize by the end that this supposedly crazy woman, seen as a monster herself, may actually  have been the voice of reason and truly there to help these people. We realize that this may be a movie about facing monsters instead of running from them. Everyone who tries to run away, except for the father, ends up dying, and we know that he ends up suffering the most in the end. When someone dies or is sacrificed (at the willingness of Ms. Carmady) the monsters go away for a while. Those who stay in the supermarket like Ms. Carmady suggests end up outlasting this apocalypse and those who try to outrun it end up failing. I'm not saying that this is the point of the film but it's an idea that makes this movie so much more complex than others of its kind.

                This movie will be remembered most for its shocking ending so i'll end there. The father, son, and three other main characters decide to make a run for it at the end. They drive as far as they can before the gas runs out. They see horrible things. The father sees the dead body of his wife wrapped in a giant spider web, they see cars overturned, telephone poles decimated, they hear horrific beastly sounds in the background, and see a 100 foot tentacled monster walking in the distance, it's every step quaking the earth. The car runs out of gas and the father has a gun with four bullets left. The car sits still, terrible sounds surround them, and there has been a non-verbal agreement that rather than being taken by the monsters he will shoot them and put them out of their misery, his son included. He finishes the deed, but with only four bullets in the gun he is left to suffer the death of his son. He screams in rage, gets out of the car, pleading with the monsters to come and end this. He hears growling coming towards him and prepares himself to be torn apart. As it gets closer he realizes that the mist is fading, going away, and these aren't monsters but tanks and helicopters cleaning up the mess and transporting the survivors. The world hasn't ended and his real suffering begins. 

                 This is the kind of ending that knocks you on your ass and stays with you long after you leave the theatre. It's an ending with fucking teeth, that kind of destroys you and fills you at the same time. I adore the ending of this movie for the incredibly powerful emotional punch and also because it gives the movie such a multi-layered theme. Is he being punished for trying to run away and not being willing to suffer god's wrath? Is he being punished for not having hope that this would end? Has the world been spared because he has sacrificed his only son like Abraham's in the scriptures? Is he a Christ-like figure who has now suffered monumentally so that the world can move on? Whatever the case, it does that thing that truly great endings do. It takes the experience to another level and makes everything that came before it more powerful and more complex.