"jaws"

“Godzilla” is lumbering back out of the deep, spoiling for a fight and hungry for various delicious looking landmarks. Be warned, this relic of Japan’s atomic age nightmares has grown grumpier (and apparently more pot-bellied) in his fifteen years away from the big screen. And he’s definitely still growling from his treatment in Roland Emmerich’s 1998 big-budget disaster starring Matthew Broderick. In this newest iteration of cinema’s favorite Kaiju (Japanese for “monster” - something made exhaustively clear if you watched any of Guillermo del Toro’s plodding, nonsensical “Pacific Rim”) you’ll see the requisite shots of anonymous roving citizens gazing upward in horror, running full tilt, and glancing over their shoulders as cars tumble over the Golden Gate Bridge, sewer gasses explode, and your favorite bodega is demolished with a sweep of Godzilla’s powerful hind parts. But will you get your money’s worth? Should you spend the extra couple of bucks for 3-D?

It’s hard to believe it’s been over half a century since Hollywood experienced a creative renaissance. Just what happened back then? Starting in the mid-sixties, the film industry underwent a dramatic transition as the major studios realized their approach to moviemaking was no longer working. Too many big-budget releases were falling flat at the box office; the losses were staggering.

Sometimes, when choosing a film, only a documentary will do. 

Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated for a second term after a landslide election; his fall from grace would accelerate over the course of 1973.  Amidst the growing turbulence of Watergate, the Roe v. Wade decision came down, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed, signaling the end of the Vietnam War. A racehorse named Secretariat won the Triple Crown for the first time in a quarter century.

Who doesn’t love a good minion? They are fiercely loyal, almost invulnerable, and some even bite through solid steel. So if they chop the head off the odd statue or two… well, that counts toward reasonable wear and tear. With distinctive traits often spelled out in fancy nicknames (like Nick Nack, Tee Hee, May Day, and Xenia Onatopp) they get the best lines and the best deaths… but are they really dead? In “Live and Let Die”, Bond number two (Roger Moore) never does see the end of voodoo priest Baron Samedi (Geoffrey Holder of 7up commercial fame) — even after slamming him in a coffin filled with poisonous snakes — never got him… never will. There is no doubt that these colorful characters are far more memorable than any of Bond’s do-gooder friends – seriously, does anyone remember the many faces of Felix Leiter?

With the gradual passing of opening movie credits, we also lost a vital element that distinguishes many so-called “classic” movies: the original music score, including a heroic, memorable opening theme. What’s the last film you remember that had a score you could hum while walking home from the theater — a piece of music you knew you'd always remember and associate with the film?

It probably won’t surprise too many of you out there that Steven Spielberg is the highest grossing movie director of all time. His personal net worth is edging up to $3 billion. Does this make him inaccessible or out of touch with his fellow mortals? Not a bit. As his canon of movies attests, Spielberg stays very much in tune with us ordinary humans (even when his subject matter is the otherworldly).

It’s a bit of a mystery why lines like  “Do I feel lucky?” (“Dirty Harry,” 1971)  and “I’ll be back!” (“The Terminator,” 1984) enter the popular zeitgeist, but there’s no denying they do. And there’s more than a bit of magic to that.