Deep Impact (1998)

Director: Mimi Leder.

Cast: Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman

Have I Seen It Before: Set aside, for a moment, the reality that the summer of 1998 was just one of those summers where I made it a point to see everything I could (Hope Floats, anyone?), you didn't get out of that summer having an opinion about the two big asteroids coming for the Earth films*.

Did I Like It: And now it's time for me to share those opinions, too. The lore around this movie is that it is the "smarter" version of the story, as opposed to its brother from a different studio. That's ultimately true, but l also think that forces almost every person on the planet to give Deep Impact more credit than it ultimately deserves.

Sure, Deep Impact reaches for emotions, whereas other movies are content with manipulation.

Indeed, there's some attempt at real science fiction, where there's a moment in that other movie where a character solemnly develops Space Madness, which I believe was cribbed from an episode of Ren & Stimpy. This one also has a score from James Horner, which automatically makes it better than most films you get in any particular summer, and a good measure better than any film that is to come**

But the reality is that Deep impact can really only be called a smart movie when it is compared to one of the silliest, most ridiculous films to ever blow out the speakers at your multiplex. It is a movie-of-the-week, with a cast of dozens, and plenty of moments of movie emotions, but it is still a big summer movie built with the largest, least discerning audience in mind. When compared with that animal crackers scene, however, Deep Impact suddenly transforms into a film for serious grown people only.

Deep Impact is the cinematic equivalent of my father growing up. His older brother was a wild child. Notoriously, legendarily so. I think Bart Simpson may have been partly based on my uncle.

Was my father a particularly well-behaved child? I don't tend to think so, but when those comparisons come in, I can see why my grandparents thought he was the calmer one.

Huh. And I didn't think I could get through an entire review of this movie without mentioning Armageddon (1998). There. I ruined it.

"I have no trouble imagining many of the people with those opinions didn't bother to see both films. I'll leave you to guess which one they did see.

**Maybe the Avatar sequels. Maybe.

Hearts of Darkness (1991)

Director: Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola

Cast: Eleanor Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen

Have I Seen It Before?: I have a vague memory of watching a battered VHS copy long ago. It is odd that I have stronger memories of this film than of previous viewings of Apocalypse Now (1979).

Did I like it?: Usually when I start these reviews, unless I’m seeing the movie in the theater (kids, ask your parents)—I’m typing as the film still plays out. I’ve had the damnedest time starting (to say nothing of finishing) this review, as the film is so engrossing. Most behind the scenes material is produced with the intention of promoting the eventual finished film. Much of the material here is produced with that same idea, but the work of putting that material together has created something far more honest about art and obsession. Certainly, the talking heads are still trying to maintain their, likely self-serving, version of events. But their facial expressions won’t lie. I don’t think we got all of Coppola back after this movie. I’m glad we got most of Martin Sheen back. Dennis Hopper was largely unaffected either way.

It’s sort of unrelentingly strange that the first filmmaker to kill somebody with a helicopter was John Landis and not Coppola. Whatever insanity the actual film depicts had to be harnessed from the production of the film, and there is plenty to harvest.

To talk more about the film might be to deprive you from experiencing it for yourself. As much as the scene of Willard/Martin Sheen freaking out is unsettling in the context of Apocalypse Now (1979), the uncut version depicted here is hollowing to the viewer, especially when you realize that Willard as a fictional construct barely exists. The helicopters that never fail to impress me in Apocalypse Now becomes all the more impressive when you realize they appear only via a tenuous agreement with the Philippine government, who was also a little preoccupied with a civil war of their own. It’s sort of wild to think about how other troubled productions pale in comparison to this. Somebody like Josh Trank tripping over himself to screw up Fantastic Four (2015) couldn’t possibly know trouble like this.

Community was right. It’s way better than Apocalypse Now. To my mind, it may be the best thing with which Coppola has ever been associated. That’s saying quite a bit.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Title: Apocalypse Now (1979)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper

Have I Seen It Before?: Here’s the weird thing, especially when you consider the name of my company. I think I’ve seen it before. I recently procured a deluxe blu-ray of the film that includes the original theatrical cut from 1979, the Redux version released in 2001, and Hearts of Darkness (which, if I’m being honest, is the real reason I bought the set again). The opening minutes of Redux felt like it was significantly different from the film I remember. But, as I restarted the film with the theatrical cut, it’s largely unchanged so far as the first few minutes are concerned.

I’m honestly not sure what the hell I’ve seen.

Did I like it?: Orson Welles tried to make it, and before any sizable portion of the country would be skeptical about war to make it work. George Lucas was all set to make it, before he ended up becoming an action figure salesman. Only Coppola got it done, and given his output afterwards, it probably broke him far more than we could see at the time.

I’d go into the staggering scope of the film, but that may be a topic more at home in my eventual review for Hearts of Darkness. However, I will note that in the early scenes of the film—before it really has said much about war and the madness therein—where helicopters bob and weave off the coastline is staggering. They don’t—won’t, really—make movies like that anymore. Now such terrible things will look only slightly more realistic than Mario jumping for coins.

And they are terrible things. I can’t think of another war movie that not only makes the view feel what I can only imagine is the violence of war, but the deep, unrelenting insanity of the effort as well. It’s also deeply unsettling to see Martin Sheen this upset about anything, but then again I would feel that way about any of the cast of The West Wing.

THX 1138 (1971)*

Director: George Lucas

Cast: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah, a couple of times. Hell, I’ve owned it on DVD a couple of times, just like any cineaste of sufficient stuffiness.

Did I Like It: It’s a trip, to be sure.

It’s sort of fun to imagine what kind of filmmaker George Lucas might have become, had he enjoyed any measure of commercial success earlier than he did. This film feels like the kind of movie he has really wanted to make this whole time. He may be still be producing “tone-poems” like this in some fashion after his retirement from big-budget blockbuster, if his interviews post-Disney takeover of Lucasfilm are to be believed. 

I can see why people didn’t like it when it was initially released. It is dour and aloof in a near-monolithic way. Lucas might have refined his film school sensibilities further had the studio system not so thoroughly kicked the crap out of him during the early goings. But, I got a lot of neat action figures over the years, so I guess that’s nice, too.

It should be mentioned that the ending of the film sticks with me long after the film is over. It’s the strongest, most coherent part of the film, and that’s no surprise as it is largely a remake of Lucas’ previous student Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967). While the feature tries to go through the milieu of Orwell’s 1984, things take a turn when the almost happy-ish ending where THX (Duvall) escapes society, largely because the authorities don’t have the budget to keep chasing him. Something about that gives me hope. We’re all too expensive for tyranny to truly break us.

Anyway, it’s a strange film, and the Lucas we all came to know is almost undetectable in the movie. Could you imagine if George Lucas kept going along this path? Can you imagine what he might be working on now that he has totally divorced himself from the audience? It boggles the mind, or at least the mind’s eye. The mind’s ear might be able to keep up. His early films almost sound like radio plays.

*Unlike with the original Star Wars movies, I had to watch the final George Lucas directors cut, complete with additional CGI effects. The augments are clearly less obtrusive than they became in his other, more famous movies, but it would have been something to see the film in its original form.